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force tried to escape was met by the staff.
    Dad, hi! H’lo Dad.
    Hi Dad! Hey. Looking good Dad…
    Dad this is Norm, I’m Vince. You know…
    Your sons. Hi Dad.
    Your sons, Dad. Hey this is quite a place. Quite a…
    In this way the visit with Dad began with ebullient spirits and raised smiling voices. Within seconds my mind detached itself from the scene. I was damned impressed: my brother who’d always been three years younger than me was now at least three years older. His eyes were older. The terror between us was This isn’t Dad. This elderly man. Not Dad any longer. We could not look at each other, our eyes could not meet out of dread of Then we are not brothers, either. For we have no father any longer.
    I went to the window to open it. Having trouble breathing suddenly. Like trying to suck oxygen through clots of greeny phlegm notyour own. Help! Sweated through my fresh-laundered white cotton shirt, underwear stuck in the crack of my ass. The smell of wettish goat wasn’t so powerful in Dad’s room but there were other smells. Only one window, and it was stuck. My brother said, Hey: that window doesn’t open. Grinning at me like it’s a joke. I looked down and saw for Christ’s sake the window is inset in the sill like concrete. You could rupture your guts trying to shove it open.
    Where my brother and I were, we were in the E-wing. Visiting Dad in the E-wing of Meadowbrook Manor. From the two-lane country highway out front Meadowbrook Manor more resembled the campus of a well-financed community college than what brochures call an assisted-care facility. Seeing the Manor from the highway you wouldn’t guess how certain of its wings were under tight security and guarded as a prison. You wouldn’t guess how if any patient in these wings tried to escape confinement or through mental confusion appeared to be trying to escape alarm bells were triggered. E-wing patients like Dad were outfitted with unremovable bracelets around their left wrists with metal tags that, if brought through electronic detectors without clearance, set off alarms through the facility.
    My brother had told me he’d heard the alarm once. Ear-splitting it was.
    My brother had told me that Meadowbrook Manor was the best assisted-care facility within one hundred miles.
    In fact my brother was saying now Dad is a favorite here. All the nurses say what do the nurses say Dad the nurses say every time I come to visit what a sweet old gentleman your dad is.
    What I was noticing was the Manor was brightly lighted as a stage set. Furniture in bright pastel vinyl. Nurses and nurses’ aides mostly black women in dazzling white uniforms smiling often at us who were visitors. My brother spoke of doctors, too. Of course my brother had met with doctors. This is the best place for Dad my brother said. His smile was a brave smile and infectious.
    In my vinyl chair as we visited with Dad I was wondering how many times Dad had tried to escape, and when had been his last, or his most recent attempt. I was wondering how far the old man had gotten before the alarms went off. Before he was restrained. And how exactly was he restrained. Were physical restraints involved. Did strait jackets stillexist. In his loud voice my brother spoke of the nursing staff. Very nice they were. Very sincere. Genuinely attached to their parents my brother said, then laughed at himself saying I mean patients: genuinely attached to their patients.
    In his loud voice my brother asked me if he’d told me Dad is a favorite here.
    At the highway beyond the wall, the unmovable window, the lawn greenly svelte as a golf course, a diesel truck thundered past.
    I would not ask where Dad believed he was escaping to. The old house was gone. The past in which Dad had lived was gone. Nothing remained. An elderly doomed man might wish to escape to the years in which he was neither elderly nor doomed but those years are gone. You wake up one morning, those years are gone. There’s a comfort in