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I was at Van Buren Hill—a nice place, my first choice among all the places I'd been looking at, not disgusting or depressing, but not full of Republicans either. I was doing quick calculations in my head—multiply dollars per month by twelve to get dollars per year, then add years—how many?—to eighty-nine, when the case worker asked for proof of residency.
"What do you mean?" I said.
"Usually a utility bill," he said.
"Is it required?"
"Well there's a different fee structure for out-of-state residents." He looked at me and smiled. "We do get some funding from the state."
I smiled back. "Really. What's the difference?"
"Oh, at the level of care we're setting up for Arthur"—he used Dad's name as if he were talking about a kindergarten student—"the difference would be about five hundred a month. At the assisted living level—let's see, that would be about twelve-fifty. Two thousand for in-state, thirty-two-fifty for out-of-state."
I thought for a moment.
"All the utility bills are in my name," I said. "Except for his cell phone."
"Cell phone?" he said. "Do the bills have the street address?"
"I think so," I said, but in fact I knew so. I had bought Dad a cell phone and a national plan five years ago. The bills had his name on them, but they came to my house, and I paid them.
"That'll do," said the case worker.
And so I needed Dad to be discreet. For a month or so. Till he settled in.
"Try not to talk about Terre Haute." I said. "Or the house."
"What else will I talk about?" he said.
"You don't have to lie," I told him. "Just... push that stuff back into the past. Act as if you've been living here for a few years."
After all, he has spent at least five or six weeks a year visiting me. For a good decade or so. It's not as if he's unfamiliar with my house, my neighborhood, and therefore, ipso facto, his new official state of residency. And people know him around here—in a way. The clerk at the bakery would see him every day for a week, she even got to know his breakfast order, coffee and a scone, no butter, and she would recognize him when he returned, two months, three months, four months later, and joke with him about having his breakfast somewhere else. He enjoyed that.
Of course, there's a lot of turnover at that bakery. There was only the one clerk who remembered him, and she's gone now.
Ten years he's been coming, or, actually, ten years I've been going to get him. Every school vacation and twice each summer.
He moved into Van Buren Hill today. One day before the end of the month—no extra charge, said the case worker. They call them case workers but they're really sales agents. This guy was okay, though.
The movers were carrying the flattened cardboard boxes out of the new apartment and I was taking care of the last few bits of paperwork when I noticed that Dad wasn't around.
"Don't worry," said the case worker. "He's probably meeting his neighbors. Everyone's very friendly here."
We found him in a little alcove near the elevator, sitting on a bench, talking with two women about ten years younger than himself.
"That's wonderful," he was saying as the case worker and I approached. "We don't have anything like that in Terre Haute—"
"There you are!" I said, maybe too loudly.
"You must be his daughter!" said one of the women. She stood and shook my hand. "My name's Dorothy," she said, "and this is my friend Louise. We've just invited Arthur to join us on an expedition."
