“How’s your job at the newspaper?” my father asks me. He is sitting on a couch, a plush throw blanket spread across his legs.

“The newspaper’s fine,” I lie.

I lie because it is simple. I lie because it is quick. I lie because it is easier than trying to explain to my father that though I have worked for 25 years, I have never worked at a newspaper.

We stare at each other. I wait for him to launch into a story about his life. He has about six of these stories, or rather he has thousands of stories but only six he remembers at any one time. All of them are old, almost ancient. They happened decades ago and I’ve heard them hundreds of times already.

I sit in one of two swivel chairs across from the couch. A glass table piled with magazines and newspapers squats between us. We’re in the living room of the house I grew up in, the same house my parents have lived in for more than 40 years.

My father looks bored. He fusses with the blanket tossed across his legs simply to have something to do. I know from experience that talking to him about current events is useless. Neighborhood news, international intrigues, it’s all lost on him because he doesn’t recognize any of the names or events.

He looks out the large bay window at the bird feeder my mother hung from a tree branch.

“Look at those things, they’re there all the time,” my father says and points out the window. I can tell by his expression there’s more he wants to say so I wait for it.

“Those birds, they jump from branch to branch then grab a few mouthfuls and disappear.”

I nod. My father can watch birds for hours.

“Have you seen any other animals in the yard?” I ask.

My father thinks about this as if he hasn’t been asked this question dozens of times before. He points to the backyard. “There were two huge deer back there. They walked out of the woods and right across our lawn. Then they went down the driveway, crossed the street and disappeared behind someone’s house.”

Once there were acres of woods behind my parents’ house. Housing developers slowly swallowed all of them. There haven’t been deer in the backyard for years.

“Where is Kathleen?” my father asks.

This is a relatively new development. Kathleen is his wife and my mother, though he never used that name with us, especially when we were kids. Adult first names were only used with other adults. She was always “your mother” in our conversations, just as he was “your father” when Mom talked about him. Even when we were well into adulthood the “your mother” and “your father” monikers stuck. But not lately. Now every week he asks me where Kathleen is. It makes me wonder if he no longer recognizes me as one of his children.

As to where Mom is, she has escaped, at least temporarily. She’s out in the car driving nowhere in particular, simply getting away from her duties to Dad for a few hours. He is not healthy enough to be on his own so I come by every weekend as a small relief, a kind of living get-out-of-jail-free card, albeit a temporary one.

I picture my mother cruising around town, Willie Nelson blaring from the car speakers, the top down even though it is a bit chilly for that today.

“Where is Kathleen?” my father repeats.

I consider turning on the television. Like watching birds, my father can watch TV for hours and be perfectly content.

“She’s out,” I say.

He tilts his head and scowls. “What?”

Maybe he didn’t hear me or maybe he just doesn’t like my answer, I can’t tell which.

“She went out,” I repeat.

“Out with who?”

He is stuck now, trapped in one of his verbal loops. It’s happened before. He will ask where Mom is again and again until the moment she’s home. I’ve decided this is an insidious way to slowly drive his listeners insane.

“Kathleen was here a minute ago,” he says. “I don’t know where she went.”

“She went to church. She had to go to mass.” The lie pops out of my mouth unexpectedly, like a ghost from a closet.

The scowl leaves my father’s face. He leans back on the cushions and settles into the couch. The loop, as if by magic, is broken. He quietly stares out the bay window for a little while then points at something. “Have you seen the birds jumping around on that thing out there?”

I am saved from answering by the ring of the telephone bolted to a wall in the kitchen. I recognize the number on the caller ID. It’s my sister. She lives on the other side of the country and feels guilty for doing so. She calls our parents and mails them things, sometimes things they need. Because of the distance she never visits; that she leaves to me and my brother.

“I thought you’d be there,” she says after she hears my voice. “How is Dad?”

I shrug as if she can see me. “The same. His mind seems a little worse but maybe I’m imagining that.”

“Sorry,” she says, as if she caused his atrophying brain.

I ask about her husband and she asks about my wife but really all we want to talk about is our parents.

“Mom’s out gallivanting?” she asks.

“For the moment,” I reply.

“What’s on Dad’s hit parade today?”

“Stories about Fort Bragg and his big war wound.”

“Oh God, not the thumb-he-got-caught-in-the-rifle story.”

“That’s the one.”

My sister sighs. “He’s so lucky he never saw combat.”

I pace across the kitchen. “He was badgering me about where Mom went, like he does every week. Today I couldn’t take it. He wouldn’t listen to the truth, so finally I told him she went to church.”

My sister pauses as if thinking of a response. “Then there’s your answer,” she says. “Tell him anything that calms him down, anything he’ll accept without question. Or switch subjects, distract him. Whatever it takes, do it.”

Suddenly I had license to lie.

“Shall I put him on?”

I carry the receiver over to the couch. The phone has a comically-long cord expressly for this purpose.

“It’s Ashley,” I say as I hand him the phone. I leave the rest up to my sister. While they talk I text my wife.

How much bourbon do we have in the house?

This is a kind of ritual for us. At some point my wife realized what would help smooth some of the edges created by these parental visits was a large craft cocktail, ideally served the moment I step into our house. She tracks my phone on her phone and knows the exact moment to start filling the cocktail shaker.

I hear the ding of a text and look at my phone

Plenty of bourbon. Perhaps a Manhattan tonight?

I text back

A double please

Eventually, I hear my father say goodbye several times and I return the receiver to the kitchen. I count backwards from ten and when I hit zero I poke my head out of the kitchen and look at my father. He is staring at the television screen though the TV is not on. I slip out the side door and walk along the back of the house then around to the driveway. I open and close the door to my car, take a deep breath then step on the walkway that leads to the house. I knock a few times on the front door and step inside.

“Hi, Dad. How are you?” I ask.

My father looks surprised. I see a mix of recognition and confusion in his eyes.

“Hey, come in,” he says. “Come in and sit down.”

I do as I am told.

“How’s the newspaper?” he asks.

“They’re sending me on a trip,” I say.

His eyes open wider.

“They’re flying me to Italy to write a story.”

He sits up a little straighter. “My grandfather was born in Italy.”

Of course I know this, but I pretend I do not.

“Where in Italy?” I ask.

My father knits his brow. “I don’t remember. Somewhere in the middle. They have a big family.” He starts counting siblings on his fingers. “There’s Fannie, Gloria, Ida, George, Tootsie….”

“He was born in Rome,” I interrupt. “That’s where I’m going.”

“Ah, Roma,” he says wistfully. “I’d like to go there some day.”

“You’ve been there.”

My father frowns. “No I haven’t.”

“I can prove it.” I disappear into the study and rummage among the bookshelves. I emerge with a stack of books, photo albums, city guides, and maps which I lug over to the couch. I open a guidebook to Rome and hold it so my father can see the pictures. “There’s the Colosseum and the Forum,” I say to jog his memory and give him some identifying landmarks. Then I grab a photo album and thumb through the pages. “The newspaper’s sending me to Rome so I can talk to the Pope.”

My father breaks into a smile. “I saw the Pope.”

I stop at pictures my father took of Vatican City, color photos of Castel Sant’Angelo, a Bernini fountain, portraits of Swiss Guards. I point to a picture of St. Peter’s Square. A man in white robes is standing on a balcony.

“Who’s that?” I ask.

My father leans closer to the picture. “That’s the Pope.” He smiles and takes the album from me. “Look at all the people there.” He touches the picture as if to make sure it is real, then shifts his gaze to other photographs on the page. He points to a picture of two people standing in front of an ornate fountain.

“That’s me and that’s your mother,” he tells me as if I would not recognize them.

I let him look through several pages then distract him with a map of Italy.

“Here’s Rome,” I say as I point to a section of the map. “You also went to Siena one year. Up here.” I drag my finger to another section of the map. “You went to the Palio with Roger.”

My father looks unconvinced. “Who’s Roger?”

“Your other son,” I explain then open another album. “You went to watch the horse races.” I point to a picture of horses running in circles.

My father looks at the picture, initially with a blank expression. Then it’s as if a switch goes on in his head. “They build a track in the middle of the town and everyone jams in around it. People are screaming and cheering and placing bets. Then the horses fly around the track. It’s wild.” His eyes fix on mine. “Have you been there?”

“You went with Roger,” I repeat. “Your son Roger. He ran track in high school, remember? He did the hurdles.”

I scramble through a photo book until I find a picture my father took. It shows Roger mid-flight over a hurdle, a study in energy and grace. Roger looks like he’s gliding over the hurdle, one leg forward, one back, arms outstretched, every part of his body streamlined except one: his hair. It sticks up and out at odd angles, blown in all directions by the wind.

“He was fast,” my father says as he looks at the picture. “He blew by everybody on the track he was so good. He was always running. I bet he’s still running.”

“Yeah, he is,” I say though I know my brother developed arthritis in one knee and had replacement surgery a month ago. “He won a few medals last weekend.”

My father gasps. He pulls the blanket off his legs and hands me the photo album. “I want to show you something.” He stands and wobbles into the dining room past a row of framed photographs on the wall and stops in front of a series of tall, narrow frames. Each one has a circular gold or silver medal attached to a long red and blue ribbon. “These are some of Roger’s medals. Have you see them?”

I shake my head no, allowing my body to lie for me.

“I’m telling you Roger is very good.”

I point to a picture in the photo album I’m holding. “That’s Roger and that’s you in front of a Greek restaurant in Siena. You jokers fly all the way to Italy and eat in probably the only Greek restaurant in the country.”

My father laughs, a hearty, booming laugh I remember from childhood. “It was a good restaurant,” he says.

I wake up the smart speaker sitting on the dining room table and tell it to play Sirtaki dance music. The mandolin and bouzouki begin to play, the rhythm slow and steady at first, then building hypnotically to something faster and irresistible. My father arcs his arms in the air then swings them back and forth in a bad imitation of Zorba the Greek. I am afraid he will hurt himself or fall over. I divert his attention to the pictures on the wall.

“Tell me where those are,” I say.

My father uses his cane to point to a giant chasm carved into the earth. “That’s the Grand Canyon,” he tells me. “I rode a donkey on a trail all the way to the bottom. At the bottom there was a lake and we all went swimming. The water was freezing.”

There are parts of this story I have never heard before and I make a mental note to confirm how much of it is true.

My father points to a hill bathed in the golden glow of sunset. “That’s a mountain somewhere in the Grand Canyon. We went on tours to look for cave drawings and dinosaur bones.”

He uses his cane to totter back to the couch and sits down. “What happened to the music?”

The Greek tune plays again. This time my father waves his arms and snaps his fingers as he sits on the couch.

“Louder,” he yells.

Like the wheels of a train, the pace of the music gathers steam, the rhythm teases and entices like a seduction, the notes fly together creating an urgency, a need to move, and suddenly even I start shuffling my feet and twirling my arms. I command the music to play louder and my father and I move as if spellbound, powerless, like puppets whose limbs are controlled by the strings of a mandolin. A spell broken only when my mother bursts through the front door.

“Looks like you two are having fun.”

I lower the music. “I can’t really explain this,” I say.

“No need to.” She puts down her packages and joins my father on the couch. “What are you looking at?”

I gather the bags that have groceries and head for the kitchen. I pour glasses of lemonade, assemble a tray of Italian cookies and carry them out to the living room.

“You’ve heard a lot of stories, I’m guessing,” my mother says.

“A few I haven’t heard for a while,” I reply.

We talk until I decide it’s time to go. My mother hugs me goodbye, my father and I shake hands.

When I am in my car I text my wife

Just leaving my parents’ house now

I hear the ding of an incoming text

I’m tracking your route. I’ll have the Manhattan waiting

That’s right, the drink. I had preordered alcohol like you do at the opera or at Broadway shows. It’s hard for me to believe but I had forgotten about it, perhaps didn’t even need it. The edge I usually feel after these visits isn’t there. I put the car into reverse and back out of the driveway. I could text my wife and save her the trouble of concocting cocktails. I could but I do not. Instead I drive home. Who am I to give up the distinct pleasures of a handcrafted double Manhattan?

JG Alderisio needs to eat better and exercise more. Oh, and breaking an addiction to handheld devices wouldn’t hurt either. When not staring at an iPad, he is writing. His stories have appeared in print and online publications.