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WHAT WOULD YOU WANT AN OLD MAN TO REMEMBER

A small, thin man, his white hair feathering out from underneath his wool cap, his cane resting against his chair, leans against a heavy-set woman whose mouth is just beginning to show middle-aged wrinkles—his daughter. They sit in chairs in Dr. Maloney’s waiting room, she leafing through a six month old copy of TIME. He appears to be dozing but perhaps he is remembering, remembering his honeymoon at an isolated cabin on a small lake in Maine—wood stove in the kitchen, kerosene lamps, outhouse five yards from the back door, feather bed—no one around for miles and miles. He shivers thinking of the cold August mornings and how he’d jump out of bed, his erection bobbing up and down, to add kindling and wood to relight the stove, then jump back in bed to make love once again to his bride. He was just 20, tall and lean with wavy brown hair. She was fair, a smattering of freckles across her nose, with long brown hair and green eyes. She was only 18 and as hungry for him as he was for her.

He thinks back to how they spent their days—paddling their canoe around the edge of the lake marveling at the hemlocks, maple, birch; moss growing on trees, on fallen logs, on the large gray rocks. Once they saw an eagle fly low over the lake and reach down with barely a splash to grab a fish with its talons. Another morning they caught a glimpse of a moose that had come down for a drink. In the afternoon, they went skinny dipping in the lake. He sighs remembering her lovely breasts whose every curve he relished, the dark patch between her legs which opened to untold mysteries of pleasure. They played in the water, washed each other with soap, dove under to rinse off. He shifts in his seat, yes, and then it was 56 years together, this daughter and five more children, 14 grandchildren.

Maybe he is not thinking that at all. Perhaps he has been remembering how he spent his life in a cramped apartment over a Chinese Restaurant next to a rumbling elevated subway in Bensonhurst, and how his honeymoon consisted of two nights and three days in an Atlantic City hotel with paint peeling from the ceiling wondering why he’d married this stranger in bed next to him.

          Of course, he may simply have fallen asleep.