“That’d be great,” I said, though when I pictured him in New York I could only see him disoriented, fumbling with a MetroCard or struggling to make it up a staircase. I knew he’d walk around Crown Heights with the sad scared look of a parent who could no longer protect his child from the outside world.

I asked him how they were treating him in the hospital and he told me only one of his nurses had a sense of humor. “Anyone without a sense of humor should not be allowed to handle someone else’s body,” he said.

He told me one of his nurses was a Seventh-day Adventist who kept trying to convince him he had something to fear. “I told her religion is just a way to sedate the masses. ‘The meek shall inherit.’ In other words, don’t fight back, stay down, stay poor, rewards are coming, you only have to die first. Just because I had a heart attack doesn’t mean I can’t recognize a crock of shit.”

It was a speech I’d memorized, but I enjoyed hearing it again, like replaying a favorite cassette tape—Dad’s Strongest Opinions.

“You getting out soon?”

“Tomorrow.”

“Dad, was it a bad one?”

“Don’t worry about me. They’re calling it mild. It only hurt like hell.”

Hanging up made the distance between us feel very great. It seemed to me that he existed in the past. It was strange, how I could call him from the future. I thought of him wearing his blue terry robe even though I was pretty sure he’d thrown it out long ago.

I pulled on a sweater and fell dead asleep on that lawn chair for several hours. I woke shivering, covered in salty mist, and grateful to the house for being there, for not ejecting me, for not giving me away. I was just in time for the six A.M. train. And that was it.

AS IT HAPPENED, I NEVER HAD A CHANCE TO BOOK ANY PLANE tickets. My dad went out for a beer later that week and collapsed face-first on the bar. They told me it was a case of sudden cardiac arrest, that he probably didn’t feel any pain.

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