there is something so sad about dad’s apartment. the christmas decorations. i’m here with the cats. alvie is unhappy.

dad returned around 11:30 from dinner with his friend. he said ‘i’ve had one too many beers’ maybe four times and kept offering me help. i didn’t know what to say, i’d say ‘no thank you’ or ‘i know you’re here to help, thank you dad.’ he kept coming back into the living room to say a new thing to help me or that i should take xanax or ‘i hope you can take a break’ and i’d say something like ‘it’s not exactly hard work, it’s okay. i’ll watch some TV.’ in the kitchen he said ‘you know how they say ‘this too shall pass…?” like it was the first time but he’s been telling me that since i was little. felt far away. i said ‘i know, that’s good. you seem more worried than me dad, it’s really okay.’ think it started with him asking me how my night was. i had said ‘not feeling great’ and not much about why, but he didn’t seem curious about why, he just went into ‘things will get better, this too shall pass, take a break, i’m here to help’ mode, maybe because of drinking.

i asked him about the TV. he showed me how to use all the remotes and said ‘one of these doesn’t work, so i don’t know if you want to try one of them, or both, so, just so you know: it’s one of these remotes. uh. it’s one the comcast cable remotes we have here, here on the table, see—and here’s another one for the TV. that one works pretty well. so it’s not that one, it’s one or the other of these two comcast remotes, here on the table, one of them doesn’t—i don’t know what’s wrong with it—but one remote here, doesn’t work.’ i said ‘thank you for letting me know, i’m sure i’ll figure it out.’ he said ‘i’m sure you will, you’re so smart,’ saying ‘you’re so smart’ in a way that sounded like ‘you’re so smart and i’m so stupid,’ like he had started thinking things like this a long time ago, that his saying ‘you’re so smart’ to me had nothing to do with me, outside of my saying something that reminded him of things other people have said that have caused him to think he’s stupid.

a little after the remotes on one of his last help-offering trips i thought i wasn’t going to be able to act okay and say ‘thank you, no’ anymore. i was thinking ‘how am i still saying this’ and the event of still-saying it was upsetting me, like the ‘it’s not my fault’ part in ‘good will hunting.’ dad left after i said ‘thank you, no.’ my voice cracked when i said ‘goodnight, sleep tight,’ sounded blanche dubois-style, like, tremory and fragile, about to fall apart, but it was an accident. dad said ‘what?’