Today is not one of Harold’s better days. He’s fed up with Susan again. “You just stand there in the corner all day!” he shouts when she appears, which is pretty much a result of whatever’s going on in Harold’s mind at any given time. “Talk to me!” he commands. “Why won’t you talk to me?” It relaxes him to see her and he yearns to fall into the comfortable cadences they had for the ten years they were married before she died. When it doesn’t happen, he becomes frustrated and angry the way he is today. More and more, his head is a minefield of chaos cluttered with delusion.
“Okay, suit yourself then,” he says. “I’m going upstairs to be with Ellen. I’ll be staying with her for a few days. You can just fend for yourself.” Harold compartmentalizes his wives. He keeps Susan on the first floor, Ellen in the second-floor bedroom. He stomps over to the chairlift that travels the stairway between the first and second floors and clumsily wrestles himself onto the thinly padded seat. He used to know how to work the controls, but now he just jabs at the control buttons until the machinery kicks into action. His son Ellis has told him a hundred times to use the seat belt – “You don’t want to fall off, Dad” he urges in that exasperated impatient way he has that irritates the hell out of Harold – but Harold isn’t mindful. He stubbornly refuses to be parented by his son. Most of the time he stares at the seat belt quizzically and then flings it aside.
When he stumbles off the chairlift on the second-floor landing and enters the bedroom, he’s more than a little pleased to find Ellen lying on their bed, just waking up from her afternoon nap. “Want to get frisky?” Harold cajoles as he starts to undress. He chatters away at her for a few minutes to no avail. He doesn’t get so much as a glance from the unresponsive will-of-the-wisp Ellen that he’s once more imagined into existence. He reaches out to take her hand. “You’re so cold, Ellen,” he says. “Come closer, let me warm you up.” He presses up against her for a few minutes, but her body remains unresponsive and quiet, always so quiet. He can see that she’s going to continue to ignore him. In truth, these second-floor excursions rarely satisfy Harold. Before long he fumbles into his clothing and turns his back on Ellen. He leaves her lounging in bed where she spends all her time and rides the chairlift downstairs to the first floor of his unkempt home. He hasn’t cleaned anything for months. It’s as if he’s forgotten how or why or even that he should.
*****
“You’re becoming a hermit, Dad,” Ellis complains in his weekly phone call to Harold. “You don’t even want us to come in and visit when we drop the kids for their Saturday visits with you. I’m concerned. Jill’s concerned. How about –”
“Leave me alone, Ellis,” Harold growls loudly and abruptly clicks off. These phone calls are becoming a nuisance, he thinks. Maybe I’ll just delete his number. He pushes a few icons on the cellphone screen, but he has no idea what to do. He knows he used to know how to work it but now it all seems just too complicated – the apps, the menus, the endless sequences of steps. He tosses the phone away forcefully. His mind has drifted into a watery state, his thoughts and connection to reality slipping away from him like raindrops pouring through the fine mesh of a sieve.
“Susan!” he shouts. “I need help! Susan? Susan! Susan!” Of course there’s still no answer. She’s nowhere to be seen. His mood has turned belligerent, his speech aggressive and surly. Well then, Harold muses. What’s to be done, after all? She’s always been the more free-spirited of the wives. The more distracted, independent one. He knows that sooner or later she’ll be back.
He stares at the eclectic array of coffee cups Susan arranged along the decorative kitchen backsplash years ago, pink and white roses hand-painted on polished black tiles, the gift of a talented artist friend. The coffee cups sport a mixture of clever political humor, uplifting live-your-life-to-the-fullest exhortations, and photos of their grandchildren when the kids were very young. Harold has taken to moving them around randomly, a few changes every other day, week after week, just to see if she notices. How could she not? Their exact order has always been important to her, everything in its proper place. But she has said nothing for months. Well then, he muses again, throwing his hands in the air in front of himself as if gesticulating like that will somehow make a difference. When he sees her sitting on her stool at the kitchen peninsula or snuggled in her customary spot on the family room sofa under the colorful well-worn afghan he keeps there for her, it calms him at first like an anchor holding a small skiff in place in a wave-swept harbor. The interminable silences that follow – inevitable and as certain as breathing –infuriate him. Her absences are no better. They eat away at him like hydrochloric acid spattered on raw skin.
When Susan is present, Harold likes them to watch the evening news together. She always sits on the left side of their couch up tight against the armrest, legs snuggled under her afghan and pressed gently against Harold’s thigh. Sometimes he would swear she uses her toes to improvise a jazzy riff on his leg. Or maybe she’s just trying to tickle him, get his attention. Their piano takes up most of the space in the small airy alcove they set aside for her music, but he can’t remember the last time he saw her take a seat on the piano bench where she would stretch out her wrists above her head, wiggle her fingers and actually strike a note. Sometimes he watches her hands hover just above the keys and dance from one side of the keyboard to the other and back again in a soundless frenzy or a maddeningly slow and graceful glissando. When this happens, he imagines the sound of the notes and chords as wind-driven sheets of rain loudly lashing the surface of the lake where they once vacationed, and this makes him angry, so angry, and he shouts at her “Play! Play for real!” When he does that, he would swear she slowly turns her head toward him and whispers, “Harold! Shh! Be quiet so I can hear this passage!” “But I can’t hear it, Susan!” he shouts. And she shouts right back, “Open your mind!”
For two years, Harold has been inviting the evening television newscasters to sit with them on the couch to take in the nightly news broadcasts. At first, the newscasters ignored him. They seemed preoccupied with staying on screen, reciting their stories, the earnest political reports, the horrifying mass shootings, the weather warnings, the mundane human-interest pieces. But lately there has been a change for the better. Harold saw Lester Holt slither out from the screen a week ago, shake his arms and legs for a few seconds as if loosening up for a mile run at the track, and then sit down in the comfy chair where Harold often falls asleep. He nodded at Harold as if to say thanks for the hospitality, and when Harold saw him reach his hand out to shake hands, he eagerly grasped it and pumped away until Lester let go. “Something to drink?” Harold asked. “Nothing for me, thanks,” Lester replied and sank back into the sofa cushions to watch with Harold, commenting occasionally on the way the camera made him look ten pounds heavier than he really is.
As exciting as Lester Holt’s visit was, Katie Couric brought things to a whole different level. While she’s being interviewed on a morning talk show the day after Lester Holt materialized, Harold watches her turn from the interviewer to look directly at the screen, point at Harold with a surprised look on her face and say, “Harold! Is that you? Where have you been all these years? And that must be Susan sitting with you. I’d like to meet her. Give me a sec, I’ll be right there.” When Harold sees her body begin to move toward him, he shouts out as if his words have to penetrate a wall, “Be careful stepping over the edge, watch out for the coffee table right below the set, I don’t want you to trip and hurt yourself!” He leaps forward from where he’s been sitting and takes her hand to help her keep her balance.
By the time Katie has settled herself next to Harold, Susan is no longer present. Harold’s mind, aware of what he’s about to do, quickly adjusts to fit the circumstances. It simply wouldn’t do to have Susan nearby. Harold grasps Katie’s hands in his own. They are warm hands, loving hands, the kind of hands Harold wants in a wife, not the withered papery hands Susan offers him now. Harold is not a man who fails to seize opportunity. “Marry me, Katie Couric,” he cries out to her, kneading her hands in his, but gently, gently, a caress born of love and hopeful expectation. He even gets down on a knee, old school. “Of course, Harold,” she whispers, “of course.”
*****
Once a month on Saturdays Harold entertains his grandchildren. Ellis drops the kids off midmorning, and he and Jill enjoy a few hours on their own while Harold takes the sullen streetwise fifteen-year-old Evan and his younger sisters Lily and Anna for a burger or fish fry lunch, then maybe to a movie or video games at the local arcade, a round or two of miniature golf in warmer weather. Harold hates how they bury their faces in their smartphones and stack up hours of screen time, so he tries to insist the phones stay home. Ellis and Jill monitor the girls, but Evan chafes at being cut off from his friends without access to his Insta and TikTok, even for a few hours. That’s all right with Ellis and Jill. They actually want him to have his phone with him. “Just in case” they tell Evan, who’s beginning to wish these monthly visits would end. “Papa’s getting old, Dad,” he tells Ellis on their way to Harold’s today. “He says weird things to us.” One more warning sign, Ellis thinks. They’ve been accumulating for a long while. Even the kids are noticing.
“Where are my hugs?” as Harold prods on this September Saturday while he waves absentmindedly to Ellis and watches him escape for the day. He hasn’t seen his grandkids since they left to spend the summer at Ellis and Jill’s cottage on the Jersey shore. He lifts the girls up, first Lily, then Anna, and whirls each of them around two or three times before he has to stop to catch his breath and fight off a dizzy spell. “Come on, pile in the back seat, let’s get going.”
The kids know the roads and routes to the usual destinations so when Harold misses a turn, Lily pipes up immediately.
“Papa, you’re driving the wrong way. Are we going somewhere new today?”
Harold’s eyes remain on the road. “No honey, this is right,” he says. “This is right,” he says again, but suddenly he’s not sure about that. The road he’s driven for years looks unfamiliar, the landmarks unknown. It’s a less travelled back road that residents use every summer to avoid the surge of vacationers that flood the coastal town where Harold lives, crowding the beaches, slowing traffic to a crawl, jamming the fast-food joints and restaurants all day every day. He pulls off onto the narrow right shoulder, his eyes glancing wildly back and forth. “Where are we?” he rails, putting his window down before he suddenly thrusts his door open, steps out of the car and runs down the narrow bike lane looking frantically in every direction. When he steps out into the middle of the road, Evan and the girls start to panic.
The girls are crying and shouting loudly. “Papa!” they shout. “Papa!” Evan bursts out of the back seat just as an open-air Jeep full of rowdy teens traveling too quickly barrels around the corner where Harold is standing. The driver pumps his brakes and swerves, barely missing the wild old man standing immobile in the opposite lane. The air fills with the sound of the horn blaring and a stream of shouted profanities – “Move dickhead!” – as the Jeep careens past.
When Evan catches up to Harold, he grabs his hands forcefully and slowly leads him back into the car. Harold sits slumped forward as if in a trance, his eyes glazed over, his forehead resting on the wheel. His hands are motionless in his lap. “Papa, are you all right?” Evan doesn’t know what to do. Harold stays this way for several minutes, silent, breathing loudly while the girls and Evan keep looking at each other fearfully. Evan is about to call Ellis when Harold suddenly sits up straight. He sees the tears in Lily and Anna’s eyes and the ashen look on Evan’s face and says, “Evan, how did we get here? Why are we parked on the side of the road?”
The girls are mute. “We want to go home, Papa,” Evan says. “Can we just go back to your house now?”
Harold feels weightless, unmoored. He senses vaguely that something is amiss. “Well yes, let’s do that,” he says. He looks at their surroundings again, still not sure how they arrived where they are. “I’ll get some lunch delivered.” Lily and Anna are holding each other’s hands. Evan has moved into the front passenger seat and is carefully watching everything Harold does to drive the car, as if preparing to take over if anything else happens.
“Yes,” Harold says, “we better go home now.” He doesn’t see Evan text Ellis. Dad, can you come pick us up? Like right now? I think something’s wrong with Papa. Ellis’s alarm bells screech into overdrive, but when he arrives to pick up the kids, Harold’s demeanor is calm and unremarkable, as if nothing has happened.
“I’ll call you tomorrow, Dad,” he says.
*****
“His behavior is erratic, John. More so than ever. I’ve looked the other way for too long. Hard to accept that your parents might be on the way to becoming your children.” Ellis is meeting with an attorney who specializes in elder law. After several years of occasional off-kilter incidents and behavior he chalked up to nothing more than the effects of aging, it’s been clear to Ellis that Harold’s deterioration has been accelerating for the last several months.
“The things he tells me he’s been up to are bizarre, or simply impossible. It started maybe three years ago with a few small guess-what-I-did-yesterday stories that just seemed eccentric. But now it’s taken a turn for the worse. He just turned eighty-one and I don’t like it. We just had a dangerous event when he was with my kids. I’ve got to do something.”
For years John has heard stories like this from clients worried about an aging parent. “Senior moments, forgetfulness, confusion are completely common, Ellis,” he says. “These things often start in the sixties, sometimes at an even younger age. At eighty-one, you’ve got to expect some off-kilter behavior from your dad occasionally.” He asks for specifics. “When’s the last time you saw him? What was his mood like? And what happened with your kids?”
“I was in his house six months ago, just before we took off for our summer place. It was a mess. Stacks of unopened mail. Dishes piled up in the kitchen sink. A pot of what might have once been soup on the stove, the burner on a low setting thank God because the pot was scorched with no sign of liquid. The refrigerator was a chemistry experiment gone wild. Mold everywhere and foods oozing and coated with white growth. Laundry scattered around on the furniture. His prescription bottles were empty. There were little piles of pills on the bathroom sink, a few he must have stepped on lying crushed on the floor. He was a neatness freak all his life. Drove my mother crazy with it. I started picking things up and he grabbed my arm and stopped me. ‘Oh, you don’t need to do that Ellis’, he said. ‘Your mother’s upstairs. She’ll be down in a few minutes. She’s turned over a new leaf and prefers to do the tidying up. Just leave it. Think of that, Ellis’, he said emphatically. ‘My dear Ellen fussing over the crumbs on the countertop.’”
“I’ve been trying to visit since we got back from Jersey. He won’t let me in. Makes excuses. The house is a mess, come another time. I’m not feeling well. I threw my back out. Your mother and I need some privacy. Susan’s having friends over to play bridge. He likes to entertain my kids once a month on Saturdays. I drop them off, he spoils them and Jill and I get a child-free day together. Last Saturday after he piled them into his car, the kids told me he got lost, ran out into the road and then just sat in the parked car hunched over the steering wheel muttering as if he were talking to my mother and Susan. My fifteen-year-old Evan said it was like he was in a trance.
“But here’s where it really goes off the rails. When I called my dad the following day, I feigned innocence and asked him about his day with the kids. He said, ‘Oh Ellis, it was marvelous. I took them to Nantasket Beach, we all ate fried clams for lunch, then I bought tickets for the rides at Paragon Park and we rode the roller coaster and the carousel and played pinball machines in the arcade just like I did when I was a kid.’ I wish I could say I thought he was kidding. The thing is, John, Paragon Park has been closed for forty years.” He pauses, takes a deep breath, settles himself. “The kids are flat-out scared. They don’t want to be alone with him.
“When this all began, I thought it was just forgetfulness or harmless fantasizing. No more. He’s becoming a danger to the children. Possibly a danger to himself. Is this some kind of dementia? Alzheimer’s? He’s certainly disconnecting from reality. Perfect example: Katie Couric. Get this. He told me he married her last month and they flew off to Paris for their honeymoon. Walked the Champs-Elysees. Saw Monet’s Nymphéas at L’Orangerie. Took a midnight bateau mouche cruise on the Seine. All described in convincing graphic detail which he must have dredged up from memories of his trips to France with my mother and Susan. What the hell?”
Ellis pauses again, takes a sip of water, collects his thoughts. “He refuses any notion of moving to an assisted living residence or having an aide come into the house. Living with Jill and me – a flat no. Vehement no to seeing a psychiatrist or any mental health professional. I’m at a loss about what to do.”
John’s reply isn’t very satisfying. “You’d need legally actionable evidence to convince a judge to grant you temporary legal guardianship, Ellis. Do you have anything? A diary of events? Video of off-kilter behavior? Neighbors complaining to you about aggressive or threatening action on the street?” John tries to inject some levity. “Even something mildly offensive might help establish a case. Maybe he’s been watering his garden in broad daylight in the nude?”
A momentary smile from Ellis fades quickly. “We’ve really got nothing like that.”
“You could petition the Probate and Family court for temporary guardianship, but if Harold appears in court on a good day mentally, you’ll be denied and likely wind up in an adversarial relationship with him. Family combat with aging parents just brings on one stressful skirmish after another. I wouldn’t advise it.
“So, for starters, keep a diary of events. Contact the police – make them aware of your concerns. See if they’ve had any calls from the neighbors. Or if he’s piling up traffic tickets or any other kind of police record. If he goes off badly and the police get involved, they’re empowered to make a discretionary mental health arrest. He’d be held for 72 hours. There’d be a psych eval. You might come out of it with third-party corroboration of your suspicions sufficient for a judge to grant you temporary guardianship.”
Ellis’s frustration is palpable. There’s nothing to be done but wait.
*****
The breakthrough comes only a month later on a cold December Sunday afternoon. When Ellis’s cell phone lights up and rings and he sees the caller ID, his heart skips a beat and he rushes to answer.
“This is Sergeant Eddie McKay of the Monmouth PD.” The voice Ellis hears is businesslike but laced with urgency. “Have I reached Ellis Denton?”
“Yes, what’s –”
“Mr. Denton, we’ve got a situation going on with your father at his home. Harold Denton is your father, am I correct?”
“Yes.”
“You asked us to call you if any incident occurs with your father that’s reported to the station. Fifteen minutes ago, two of his neighbors called us within a few minutes of each other. They each told us he’s been rushing up and down the street in his pajamas in the ice and snow half-hysterical and shouting ‘Where are my grandkids? I can’t find Evan and Lily and Anna.’ It’s twenty degrees, Mr. Denton. He’s been trampling across lawns, banging on doors, running into people’s backyards. The one neighbor said he was screaming “Evan! Evan! Evan! Where are you?” He told that neighbor that the grandkids suddenly left his house and ran away from their dinner. Accused him of kidnapping. The other caller mentioned he thought he saw DoorDash bring a large take-out food order to your father’s house an hour earlier. The driver left two oversized delivery bags on the front stoop. Neighbors just being nosy I’m sure,” Sergeant McKay chuckles.
“We sent a squad car over there to check things out. Officers Sandra Nelson and Mickey Mongelli. They’re on the scene outside the house and report your father is inside at this time. They can see him clearly through the front bay window. He’s sitting on a stairlift chair, just muttering to himself. There’s no one else visible inside the house. He won’t answer the door. The officers have knocked repeatedly on the window to get his attention but he seems oblivious. Just stares vacantly like he doesn’t see them.”
Ellis is already rushing to his car. “Officer, those are my kids’ names. They’re all safe at home with me right now. They haven’t visited my father in more than a month. Look, I live close by. I can get there in fifteen minutes. I’ve got a key to his house. Please don’t break in. He’s been going downhill mentally, but he’s never been violent to himself or anyone else.”
When Ellis arrives at Harold’s house, the squad car is in the driveway, its lights strobing bright blue. Several neighbors are huddled together on the sidewalk across the street watching the scene and talking quietly. Officer Nelson tells Ellis nothing has changed. She has a warm-hearted demeanor and kind eyes, Ellis thinks. Sympathetic eyes, as if she’s been through incidents involving older people long enough to recognize what can happen when they’ve gone off their meds, or are ill, or when their mentation has gone awry. Harold remains on the stairlift, motionless, unresponsive to their many efforts to get his attention. It’s as if he’s in a hypnotic daze.
Officer Mongelli approaches Ellis. Mongelli looks like he was an athlete earlier in life, bull-necked, broad-chested, starting a potbelly but obviously still very strong. Definitely more brusque. “We need to get into the house, Mr. Denton. Our captain ordered us to arrest your father.”
Ellis’s alarm is obvious. “Arrest? For what? Assault? Is the neighbor pressing charges?”
“No, no, his neighbor says nothing came of their confrontation. Says he knows your father a little, talks to him on the street from time to time. I took down his exact words. ‘The guy’s just off. The lights are on but there’s nobody home. Seems harmless enough most of the time, until today. Living in a fantasy world inside that house.’” He pauses to choose his words carefully. “Mr. Denton, are you aware this isn’t the first call we’ve had about your father?”
“Your desk sergeant mentioned that when I first called the station. But he made it sound as if nothing came of it.”
“That’s true enough. Sandy and I drove over here a few months ago when a neighbor called to report your father was wandering up and down the street aimlessly. When we approached him, he seemed disoriented at first. He said he was lost. Then he suddenly just snapped out of it. Knew exactly where he was, took us to his house. Thanked us for our concern. They get this way sometimes, the older ones, you know what I mean? Nothing suspicious or unusual but it can make loved ones anxious, maybe a warning sign. We shrugged it off as one of those senior moments. No harm, no foul. Now we can’t ignore it. Too many warning signs. Possible endangerment to himself and others. Unmistakable indications of psychotic confusion. Bottom line, we’ll be making a mental health arrest. We have to hold him.”
“I know the basics,” Ellis interrupts. “My lawyer told me how this might go.” His emotions are howling, swirling in an alchemy of sadness mixed with relief that nearly brings an uncontrollable flood of tears. He knows they’ve reached an inflection point, the roads ahead no longer diverging, choices narrowing to a single path. “Let’s get inside.”
Harold doesn’t react when Ellis and the police officers approach him. He’s sitting in the chairlift quietly singing lyrics from one of his favorite Bob Dylan songs. Take me disappearing through the smoke rings of my mind.
“There was an image he talks about all the time from that song,” Ellis says. “He envisions himself dancing on a beach with my mother in the long orange light of a summer sunset with the moon already on the rise. Maybe he’s seeing that right now. I hope it’s still in there with him somewhere.”
Ellis leans down in front of Harold and takes Harold’s hands into his. “Dad, what’s going on?” There’s no response. “Dad?” Ellis says again, and this time Harold seems to startle as if waking from a dream.
“Ellis? Ellis what are you doing here? Where are the kids? We’re having dinner together.” He whips his head left and right looking around for Evan and Lily and Anna.
“Dad, the kids are fine.” He glances over his shoulder at Officers Nelson and Mongelli as if to ask them to let him handle things. They each offer a short nod. “I took them home to Jill.” He pauses to calm himself and try to slow the jackhammer of his rapidly beating heart. “Dad, these nice people are your tour guides Sandra and Mickey. They’re going to take you on that vacation we talked about. Do you remember that? Would that be all right? Let’s grab your coat, okay? They’re already in uniform, ready to go.”
Harold doesn’t offer resistance. He seems docile, childlike, almost as if he’s been waiting to surrender himself to this inevitable moment. “It’s all right, Ellis. I guess it’s all right. But what about Ellen and Susan and Katie? I can’t leave them alone here. I’m worried they won’t get along if I’m gone. I need to be here to keep the peace. They can get jealous.”
Ellis steps back from Harold to confer with Sandra and Mickey, hurriedly explaining who the women are. He asks for a few minutes to humor Harold. Sandra puts her hand on Ellis’s shoulder and whispers, “Go ahead, let’s not agitate him.”
“Dad, I’ll go upstairs to get Mom. I’ll be right back.” He hands the TV remote to Mickey and gestures at the silent console. “We’ll need to find Katie. Better turn on the set.”
Ellis hasn’t been on the second floor of the house in years. His mind is racing. He has no idea what he’ll find in a place where Harold conjures up his first wife. One of those grotesque life-sized sex dolls with a face that features long black eyelashes and oversized bright red lips and beckoning eyes waiting in bed for Harold? Will she be wearing one of Ellen’s old dresses, or sheer see-through panties and a scant brassiere? Will he discover some kind of shrine to Ellen aglow with the shimmering light from dozens of colored candles and the bedroom awash in scents of papaya or peach or incense? What he finds instead is Ellen’s framed wedding day portrait resting on a pillow with a small Post-it note attached to the glass that says “I love you” in Harold’s tightly compressed handwriting. He grabs it to take downstairs. It’s enough to break his heart.
When Ellis returns to the first floor, he sees Harold propping up a similar framed photo of Susan on the left side of the couch. “That’s Susan’s spot,” Harold says. “She likes to curl up under the afghan on the cold days.”
“That’s fine, Dad,” Ellis says. He positions the photo of Ellen directly to Susan’s right. “They’re together now, Dad,” he says. “They’ll keep each other company. It’ll be fine. I can see they’ll get along fine.”
“Well, what about Katie?” Harold asks. His eyes are darting left and right again and Ellis thinks he might be starting to panic. “Oh wait,” Harold says, pointing to the TV monitor where he sees a talk show host interviewing Oprah Winfrey. “There she is.” Oprah is looking directly into the camera lens and speaking. Harold sags back into the couch, his edginess gone, absorbing the relief that familiarity brings. “See, she sees me. She’ll be home soon.” Officers Nelson and Mongelli steal a glance at Ellis. The three of them manage to share a brief smile even when it’s a moment that calls for compassion and sadness. “Ya gotta laugh a little sometimes to get through the day,” Mickey murmurs.
Ellis has an arm around Harold’s shoulders. “OK Dad, how about you go along with Sandra and Mickey now? I’ll wait with Mom and Susan until Katie gets here.”
Harold stands up and gestures at the couch, the photos of the wives he spent his life with now resting on the couch side by side. “Falling in love is easy in this world, Ellis,” he says. “It’s staying in love that’s the hard part.” For all Ellis knows it might be the last lucid moment he shares with his father. “You be sure Mom and Susan and Katie are safe.”
Sandra takes Ellis aside just before she and Mickey leave with Harold. “Take a look around,” she whispers. “Make sure everything’s okay. Check the valuables. There’s a good chance he won’t be back here. At least not anytime soon.” She gathers Ellis’s hands in hers for a moment. “It’s difficult. I can see you care about him a lot. This isn’t the first time we’ve seen this sort of thing. That old cliché applies – the only way out is through.”
Ellis follows Harold and Sandra and Mickey to the front door and in the gathering twilight watches the squad car leave. The cluster of neighbors still standing on the sidewalk slowly breaks up. It’s only after he shuts the door, turns off the TV and starts to explore the house that he notices the unmistakable scent of Chinese food drifting toward him: soy and sesame, hoisin and chili paste, five spice powder. When he steps through the doorway into the dining room, he’s so completely stunned that he stops dead in his tracks.
The dining room table is set immaculately for dinner for four. Harold has laid out his China plates, forks and knives and polished silver serving spoons, crisply folded white linen napkins. Eight containers of Chinese food are spread out in the center of the table, appetizers and fried rice, dishes featuring chicken and shrimp and tofu. There’s a clear plastic bag filled with soy sauce, duck sauce, hot mustard and fortune cookies. But the source of Ellis’s horror is not the place settings, nor the food.
Perfectly positioned in the exact center of the plates are photographs of the faces of Evan, Lily and Anna cut into perfect circles. Harold must have taken them and had prints made. Gooseflesh breaks out on his arms and neck from the shock of what he sees. The memories of the pure fear he felt as a kid at terrifying scenes in movies like Alien when a writhing embryonic creature suddenly bursts through John Hurt’s chest and The Shining when Jack Nicholson axes his way through a door shouting “Here’s Johnny!” flood his mind.
This is the moment when what’s left of Ellis’s defense mechanisms are finally laid waste. Up to now he’s found a way to minimize, to hope against hope. The scene on the dining room table is so real, so tangible, so undeniably beyond any benign explanation that Ellis is overwhelmed by a sense of helplessness and alarm playing out beyond his control. Whatever’s going on with Harold is far worse than anything he thought it might be. He’d like to turn and flee and unsee the tableau before him and pretend that none of this, not this day, not the last six months, none of it is real. But of course, he can’t. Later, when he tells Jill about how he started to shake uncontrollably when he saw the photos of their children laid out on each plate, she’ll wrap him in her arms and whisper how much she loves him and hold him until his trembling stops.
For an hour Ellis sits on the couch with the photographs of his mother and Susan, recounting fond memories, hoping somehow that doing this might assuage his relentless guilt. He knows this is really nothing more than his way of coping with the immediacy of everything he’s just gone through. He tells each of them that Harold will always love them.
Eventually he picks himself up and returns to the dining room. He sits at the place set for Evan, directly opposite where Harold would have been sitting. He reaches for the nearest carton of food and in a moment of whimsy nods across the table at the specter of an imaginary Harold he knows isn’t there. The rising dread he’s been feeling for so long has been replaced, at least for now, by both resignation and relief. Maybe by the beginning of acceptance as well. He waits a moment, says a silent grace, empties some of the rice and stir-fry onto his plate, and begins eating.