Some Pieces Are Missing
BY TRISHA KOSTIS
In Joanne’s Fabrics, I’m standing before a wall of puzzles, holding a box of frolicking kittens in one hand and Niagara Falls in the other, trying to guess which version of my father I’ll find today. Yesterday, he fumbled a lot, his pudgy thumbs struggling to hold on to the tiny pieces of colorful cardboard. I don’t want to insult him with the “Ages 5-10” size. That could cause a scene.
That’s what we have now—scenes.
We don’t watch TV much. He gets so immersed in the movie that he thinks the bomb Tom Cruise just detonated is outside the neighbor’s front door. We both find this terribly unsettling.
Conversation is a thing of the past, although we try.
“Honey,” he calls me, because generic endearments are easier than names, “Did you remember to put the lettuce in the washer or… I think I need to call Joe Buff. Wasn’t he just here when I was born?”
“No, Dad. Uncle Joe wasn’t here, and we can’t call him right now.”
I suppose we could call. Joe Buff, Dad’s brother, died five years ago and can’t answer the phone. I could just tell Dad that he’s not home. I live in Dad’s world now.
We are not puzzle people. Our family didn’t gather around the post-Thanksgiving table to work on a 5,000-piece replica of the Mona Lisa. Dad did the weekly crossword in the newspaper and, after his diagnosis, worked on word searches and other “brain game” exercises that were meant to preserve something. We’re way past that now.
Scenes happen when Dad’s understanding of the world crashes into the impermeable now. He thinks he is capable of driving, paying bills, showering, and going to work at the construction site, like he did yesterday, 60 years ago. Giving him a puzzle with the words “easy to see and handle” could spark an angry outburst that could end badly, like the time I took away his car keys and ended up calling 911.
I settle on a puzzle from the “iconic landscapes” section and head back to Dad’s house. He’s being “watched” by a neighbor so I can run this errand, stopping only to smoke two cigarettes without interruption. Smoking is probably the worst bad habit I picked up from him as a teenager, and I stubbornly cling to it even though he quit decades ago, for his health.
Since we discovered the tactile magic of snapping oddly shaped cardboard pieces into matching voids, we’ve become kind of obsessed. It’s calming for both of us, despite the agony of watching Dad try to fit a section of rust-colored desert bluff into a patch of cerulean sky. It kills time, even though the days are 46 hours long.
He likes the Grand Canyon panorama and places the box at the head of the table as a guide while we sort through the fragments searching for the “flats.” I came up with this word for the straight-edge and corner pieces because it was the only way he could comprehend how the outside edges differed from what belongs inside.
Dad has dementia with primary aphasia. This means when he looks at a pencil, he calls it a “thingy.” Other items he calls “thingy” include beds, hair, toothbrushes, shoes, cats, the sun, Walmart, cars, and the crucifix on his bedroom wall, to name just a few. Eventually, there will be only thingies.
“Dad, get all the flats together, OK?”
“Sure, honey. Oh, I like this one. What color is that?”
He holds up a piece of the North Rim.
“It’s like a clay or umber color. Do you recognize the picture, Dad?” I point to the box.
“Should I?”
“You took us there when we were kids. In the motorhome.”
It is my favorite childhood memory. His worn and softened flannel shirts smelled like motor oil and sky, and in all the family photos his turquoise eyes against the rust color of the canyon made him seem like an indigenous part of the landscape.
“Wow!” he bellows and smacks his forehead.
Very often he behaves like a learning-disabled child, and it is shocking every time. His eyes roll back, his face twists and knots awkwardly. It’s why I can’t take him to Publix or Walmart or anywhere there are people. I’ve even stopped taking him to church because he kissed a woman on the mouth during the sign of peace, and I saw, reflected in her face, the look of fear that I felt in my soul. Neither of us knew what he might do next.
He focuses on the task at hand and gathers all the flats in the bottom of the puzzle box. I inspect the remaining pile to see if he’s missed any. He rarely does. Nothing wrong with his eyesight. Putting together the border is his specialty. I can see the carpenter in him figuring it all out. All those houses, churches, convents he built all started with a frame. Filling it all in, that’s where he needs me.
We work together quietly, the silence punctuated by an occasional squeal when the click of a perfect connection is made. He struggles, turning a piece around two, three times, trying to force a male piece into another male until I stealthily guide his hand with my finger and watch his face relax when the tab finds its proper spot. I am always grateful that my interference doesn’t anger him. The disease has stolen so much from him, but I know he still has pride.
As the majestic desert scene comes together, I see the great abyss forming and imagine it’s Dad’s mind. Craggy, damp, musty; a vast chasm of nothing but still breathtaking, nonetheless.
After a few hours, I see his eyelids falling. When he slips into this ethereal state, between awake and asleep, I must be careful how I wake him. He has taken a few shots at me before. I don’t know where he goes in these moments, but it must be wondrous if he gets that angry when he’s disturbed.
I leave him be. For as long as I can remember, he’s always been able to sleep very peacefully in the oddest places, in the strangest positions. I will continue to assemble this landscape, and when he wakes, it will be complete, and his bleary blue eyes will dance with excitement. Tomorrow, we will begin again, with a new puzzle and a few hundred pieces that, for now, connect us to a shared world.
