She Has A Broken Thing Where Her Heart Should Be - J.D. Barker Page 0,246

February 16, 1958 to August 8, 1980. Loving wife, mother, and sister,” I said softly.

“And that’s your daddy?”

His stone was clean, a fresh yellow rose in the vase. I nodded. “That’s your grandfather.”

He read that one aloud without any prompting from me. He was a good boy. When he finished, he looked to the stone on my father’s left. “Who’s Abel Mag…es…witch?”

“Abel Magwitch,” I corrected.

“Abel Magwitch. Who is he?”

“That’s my father, too.”

“You had two daddies?”

I thought about this for a moment. I tried to explain it last year and completely flubbed it up. He had asked questions for nearly a week, before the subject finally faded away. He was six then, seven now. A world away. This time, I went with the line I carefully crafted on the drive this morning. “I only had one daddy, but he lived two lives.”

“So he gets two graves?”

“Yeah. One for each.”

This seemed to please him. “Wow, so cats must take up a lot of room in pet cemeteries.”

“They most certainly do.”

There would always be next year.

My father, Edward Thatch, died for the second time on July 20, 2006—four years ago—eight years after the events at Carrie Furnace. He was only forty-eight. The end came swift, as it usually does, but his death had been drawn out for nearly those full eight years.

At first, he became forgetful.

I deeply regret that first year, because we did nothing but argue. I’d ask him about the car accident that took my mother’s life and the events to immediately follow, and he’d provide nothing but cryptic responses, these short answers that only led to more questions. Then I noticed even those answers were fluid. He initially told me he hid in California for nearly a year after fleeing Pennsylvania, but then when asked again, he said he hid in Georgia. I’d ask him about the tests Charter ran on me when I was young and he said he couldn’t recall anything beyond what I already knew. A year later, he barely remembered even those events. I found myself reminding him, prompting him to remember.

The doctors called it early-onset Alzheimer’s.

I thought he was faking, and that only led to more fights and confrontations. It wasn’t until I caught him standing in front of the mirror one morning, attempting to put on a tie. I watched him for nearly five minutes—he’d wrap it around his neck, make it about halfway through the process, then untwist and start all over again. When he spotted me at the door, he asked me to find my mother. He said she usually tied it for him. This was in May of 2000. He was only forty-two. The doctors ran a series of tests and found severe genetic mutations in three genes—APP, PSEN 1, and PSEN 2. Typically, a mutation in only one could lead to early-onset Alzheimer’s. Mutations in three were rare. My father and I had a pretty good handle on the root of those mutations, but we didn’t tell the doctor about Charter or the shot. Instead, we took his pamphlets and list of recommended reading, and I drove him home. He moved into my old apartment in Brentwood. I was just glad to see someone living in that place.

He took to calling me Pip. At first, I thought it was because he heard Stella use the name, but then I remembered the envelopes, my monthly cash deliveries, Pip written neatly on each. I thought about the copy of Great Expectations he left for me in his grave. I realized the envelopes had been yet another clue, one meant to draw my focus to that book when I eventually found it. He saw himself as my Abel Magwitch, Pip’s benefactor in the novel. I asked him about this once, but he only smiled.

Less than two months after his diagnosis, my father stopped speaking. One week after that, he stopped getting out of bed on his own. I had no choice but to place him in a facility capable of monitoring his condition and taking care of him on a day-to-day basis. He spent his remaining six years in Cloverdale Assisted Living in Monroeville, Pennsylvania. I visited often, and I always found him in the same place, in his wheelchair at a large window overlooking the west lawn and a small duck pond.

Prior to his death, the nurses said he never spoke while awake, but he often mumbled in his sleep. He said the name, David Pickford, often, but they could make out