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patience . I said, "Dad. You really worried me tonight. Why didn't you answer the phone when I called back?"
    "Oh, I was too busy packing to go to the place." He looked defeated. "Ethel insisted.”
    Arlene said, "He wouldn't let me help him at all.”
    "Ethel, couldn't I just stay with you?" Dad's wild brows couldn't hide his worry.
    Mom crossed her arms in a gesture I knew well. "Harold. We've been over this. Those lounge chairs they bring in here don't work for you. Remember the time you broke one after Monica had Davey?"
    A tiny sound escaped Yvette, who was shrinking in the corner like a cockroach.
    "What place?" I asked.
    Mom said, "Well, I won’t be home for a few days. We didn't want to bother you, Rhonda, with your job and all. It's just, you know what a terrible cook your father is. And lately he's started falling a lot, and of course he takes his medicine throughout the day."
    "Ethel, couldn't he stay home?" Arlene said. "I could set out his lunch and his noon pills before I go to my volunteer job.”
    "Thanks, Arlene, but …" Mom said, "It's just a few days before our trip, and we've been visiting these places anyway. Mansfield Mansion, Buckingham Battlements, Champagne Chateau. Well, Ralston House has room for Harold this week. Don't you see? It's a perfect time for him to preview the place to help us decide if we want to live there." She nodded at dubious Dad. "They'll provide all his meals and help him with his medicines, and their van can even bring him here to visit me. Then we won't be a drag on Rhonda."
    I frowned at my mother's perfect efficiency, even now an exact match for my father's discomfort. With Monica's added help, nothing had ever been left for me to do, even at holiday dinners. Except chauffeuring loquacious Great Aunt Maddie from the airport. But when had the folks gotten old enough to need Ralston House?
    "My Christian Scientist wife." Dad grinned around the room. "She's going to get better because she believes she will. So I figure the doctor should just believe he'll get paid, right?"
    James pointed at his watch and scooted out of the room. Yvette scurried right after him.
    "Mom, surely Ralston House needs more notice than this," I said, watching them go.
    "Oh, no. It's their respite program, you know. Like a hotel." Vanna Mom yelled towards Dad's good ear, "They have a bridge group, Harold.”
    Dad looked worried. "Well, I sure hope they feed me enough. The portions they give those old people in those places aren't enough to fill my right nostril, much less my big ole stomach. You know how old people find their meals in the boarding house, Yvonne?" Patting the wide body part, which exuded a bouncy personality of its own in his XXXL plaid shirt, he looked around for Yvette. "With a magnifying glass," he said, deflated at not finding her.
    Mom said, "Rhonda could you get my hand cream? The lavender one." A pastel assortment of creams and lotions already sat on the shelf by the window, arranged by shade in little plastic bins, with a stack of order forms nearby. Mom, the opportunistic entrepreneur.
    I stood up to reach it and my heel caught on something sticking out from under my chair. Yvette's little pink purse.
    Mom pointed at it. "And tell your dad about that party trick you girls did earlier with that little purse. He'll scream."
    Dad looked affronted. "Ethel, I do not scream."
    I grabbed the bag and ran out into the hall just as the elevator doors closed over a pink sweater at the other end. I started down the hall, but stopped short. What was I doing? Let the little weevil worry a little. Do her good.
     

CHAPTER 5
     
    "Hey, did you hear the one about the farm boy and the city girl?" Dad said.
    It was an hour later, and Dad was signing his name on the admission form at the desk of Ralston House and grinning at two giggling young female staff members who held his bags.
    He answered himself. "They passed a cow nuzzling a calf in a field, and he said he'd like to do the same