No Visitors, Part Two: Dining Partners

Saturday. Cold and rainy. My sister and I are having lunch with my dad in his room. She’s just given him a shower and I’ve brought sandwiches for all of us to eat. This is one of my dad’s favorite things. To eat in his room. He is not fond of the food they serve at Oak Knoll and he’s had trouble with his dining partners. When he first moved here he roared through at least five of them. This one was too bossy and that one was too Republican. He’s generally not forthcoming with the particulars other than to say “Ah, you know, Floyd can be a real horse’s ass.” We long for him to have friends but the choices are slim here. His eating partner right now looks like a 90 year-old version of Porky the Pig. He’s fairly agile but mute. Never says a word, even if you ask him a question. Looking over my dad’s past run-ins with dining mates, it seems the quiet type suits him fine.

One disappointing non-match in the dining room was my dad’s falling out with this cool, seemingly with-it, jazzy black man named Floyd. Floyd lives in his wheelchair, has no legs, is a huge baseball fan, takes the shuttle to go see performances of classical music and listens to mysteries on tape. In comparison with most of the walking dead at Oak Knoll, Floyd was a dreamboat. My dad loved him initially but several weeks into the dining relationship he said he hated Floyd. For days we tried to figure out what had happened and decided that Floyd must have mouthed off about something baseball related. My dad loves baseball and knows everything about it. From the bleary tidbits we gathered (probing my dad, Floyd, and nearby dining witnesses that seemed semi-coherent) we decided that they butted heads over some obscure hitter from the Negro league, or Floyd made an anti-Semitic remark about Sandy Koufax. In reality, we’ll never know.

As we’re eating chicken salad sandwiches in his room the phone rings. After the sixth ring my sister answers it and then hands it to my dad.

“It’s Sam Vitale, dad. He’s calling to talk to you.”

“Who?”

“Sam Vitale. You know, he lived in the condo next door to you at the beach.”

“He’s at the beach?”

“No, you know him. You lived at the beach together. You worked at Universal together too.”

My dad looks at her like she’s insane. He reluctantly puts down his bag of potato chips and takes the phone and we here one end of the conversation.

“Hey, how the hell are ya?”

Big laugh. Huge smile. He slaps his knee and almost knocks his coke over. I’m worried he might choke.

“Ya keepin’ it outta the mud you old bastard?”

“Oh. Right. Well…..that’s great! That’s just wonderful, my friend.”

“What? Huh? Oh! Ahhhhh. Well, I’m fine. I’m fine. I’m here with my two beautiful daughters. They treat me like a king. I don’t know what the hell I did to deserve it. No one else gets any visitors! I can’t figure it out.”

“Yeah, well, I know…And they’re good lookin’ broads too!!!”

This gets a big laugh. He looks at us and beams. My sister and I break from our conversation to smile back at him. That’s us. Two good lookin’ broads.

“Alright! Great! Good to hear from you… I will. Thanks for callin!”

My dad hangs up the phone and looks at my sister and me; his most reliable sources for information.

“Who the hell was that?”

“It was your old friend Sam Vitale,” I say. “That’s so nice that he called you.”

“What’d be nice is if I knew who the hell I was talking to.”

He looks puzzled, then starts to laugh. Thank god.

“I mean Jesus. I don’t know who the hell that was. This memory of mine. It’s crap.”

“You sounded great, dad,” my sister says. “No one couldn’t tell you didn’t know who it was.”

“But who the hell was it? Did I know him?”

My dad has known Sam Vitale for 50 years.