A Day at the Races

My Father was born in 1889. He is 105 years old today, which means that Barbara and I are going to take him to the racetrack.

My father usually wins a lot of money at the races. He claims to have a genetic theory of judging horseflesh. He calls it skill. I call it the luck of the wicked, but not to his face, of course.

The man is amazing. He walks two miles on the beach every morning. He does t'ai chi for an hour after breakfast. He watches his investments like a hawk, and that's not all: He plays chess like achampion, brews his own beer, flirts with his night nurse and makes me take him to the country club every Wednesday for an hour on the practice tee. My father can still hit a five iron as straight as an arrow, and he is hell on the putting green.

I ask: With his genes, how can I lose?

"With his genes, you're a schmuck," Barbara says as she fills the dog's water bowl and turns on the burglar alarm.

Barbara is wearing her usual race-day outfit: green eyeshade, orange tank top, black spandex tights, Nike jogging shoes. She looks like a minor-league Raquel Welch, which is not bad.

I look like the middle-aged banker that I am, one who gets sunburned unless the car windows are tinted. On my worst days, and this could be one of them, I look like the Pillsbury Doughboy, even in my Hawaiian shirt and Polo shorts and sandals.

"Your father is not normal, Harry," Barbara says. "He gives me the creeps. I mean no disrespect. But there's something about him. His eyes are like mud. His face is the face of a dead man. I predict (continued on page 161) Day at the Races (continued from page 92) he's not long for this world."

"Wishful thinking, Barbara," I say, laughing. I am watering the palm tree in the entryway.

We took out a second mortgage to redesign the entryway to the house. It now looks like the interior of Brazil. The palm tree was imported from the banks of the Amazon. One of my father's friends sent it to us.

"You want my father dead," I say. "You want his money."

"That is a terrible thing to say," Barbara scolds me. "Besides, we don't really know what he has in his portfolio, do we?"

"Schmidt's not talking," I say.

"Your father could die any day now, and you don't know what he's got? His own son, a banker in his own right?" Barbara asks. She checks the answering machine and turns off the sprinklers.

"Schmidt assures me it's all taken care of, and Schmidt is the best probate attorney in San Diego," I say.

Sometimes Barbara is so aggressive. But then again, so am I. We have acquisitive instincts.

"I wish your mother were still alive," Barbara calls to me from the indoor swimming pool, where the filtration system is on the blink. "Your mother used to tell me things."

"Such as?" I ask. There is a centipede on the diving board. I flick it into the chlorinated water and watch it struggle. I am amused. Yes, there is a cruel streak in me.

"Hundreds of bars of gold buried in a salt mine in the Urals. A Rembrandt stored in a basement in Istanbul. A silk Tabriz carpet in a trunk in Vienna. Precious things, Harry. Your father has many hidden, precious things. Your mother told me so. She thought we should have them appraised."

"My mother was crazy," I say with a smile. "When she died, she had a backyard filled with 200 plaster statues of German shepherds. She wrote poems to a mountain in Bavaria. She yodeled for an hour on her deathbed. You can't believe a thing she said."

I make sure the blinds in the bedroom are down.

Suddenly, Barbara is standing beside me. "Your mother was a saint," she says. "She put up with your father, didn't she?"

"You knew my mother for only a week," I say. "She died while we were on our honeymoon."

"That may be, but women talk," Barbara says, nodding knowingly.

"Sometimes I think that's all they do," I mutter. As soon as I say it, I know it is a tactical error.

"That is a very sexist thing to say."

"Yes, dear," I say with a nod.

"You should be ashamed of yourself."

"Yes, dear, I am," I say. I lock the wall safe and turn the combination. I do not want to fight with Barbara. When I do, I never win.

"Shame on you for that attitude. You think all that women do is gossip? Is that the implication? You are a grown man, Harry, but I have yet to see an ounce of maturity in you."

"I'm working on it," I note.

Barbara stares at me for a long minute.

We check the house again. I confess: Our house does define us. It is a reflection of our values, and we have put an incredible amount of time and money into it.

We have wonderful possessions, and these are tough times in southern California, which is why we are so careful about security. Just the other day, our neighbors down the hill were robbed for the fifth time in two years.

"Ready?" Barbara asks.

"Let's do it," I say.

Strange, but what I like best about our house is the drive away from it. Such a view. The valley and the horse farm stretch below us, and hot-air balloons float like fat butterflies. The Pacific Ocean shines in the distance like aluminum foil, and the cypress trees with their ever-peeling bark line the road like graceful sentinels. As we navigate the twists and turns in our new Mercedes, our bodies seem to remember the movements. A downhill dance toward the water, you might call it.

My father's condo in Solana Beach overlooks the water. Today, as on so many days, he stands on the sun porch with one hand on his hip and the other in the air. He mouths words from his speechesto the wind.

There on the coastline, on a small cliff covered with ice plant, my father relives his life. He rallies the sea gulls and woos the dolphins. Sometimes at night he waves a tiki torch while he talks as if he were signaling all the ships at sea. Like so many old people, my father lives in his memories.

And what an interesting life he has led. Do not believe what you read about him, by the way. There is a lot of filthy propaganda in the world. My father was an outstanding chief executive officer of a powerful industrial state. That is how I see him. He was a brilliant organizer and a great strategist. If he were beginning his career today, who knows how far he would go. Why, he might even be teaching at Harvard Business School, or perhaps he would be a topflight management consultant. He certainly fits those profiles.

"Hi, Dad!" Barbara and I say as we walk into his sun porch. We speak loudly because his hearing was damaged years ago, as you know. And yes, he still walks with a limp, but it doesn't hurt his golf game.

He turns to look at us, and I can see that he is confused. He does not like to be startled, and he seems to have forgotten that we have the keys to his front door. His focus is unsteady, his face pale. The smile he wears is that of the hypochondriac or the paranoiac.

"Children," he says at last. For a moment there are tears in his eyes as he cries softly. In spite of everything that has happened to him, my father remains a sentimental man.

I think that is miraculous.

"Happy birthday, Dad!"

We sing to him with joy:

"Happy birthday to you,Happy birthday to you,Happy birthday, dear Father,Happy birthday to you."

"Children, I thank you," he says in a quivering voice. A tear runs down his nose and onto his little white mustache. He wipes his eyes with a handkerchief. His fabled forelock falls onto his forehead. "I can't tell you how much I love all of my children."

"We know, Dad," Barbara says. She puts down the cake that we brought and gives him a hug. She can be such a hypocrite.

"I wish you two would have children," my father remarks absentmindedly to Barbara.

"Maybe one day we'll adopt," she says, smiling. Only for a second, though, because adoption is a painful subject that runs counter to my father's philosophy of life.

"Never!" my father shouts. "You must never adopt!" He clutches his chest and sinks onto the sofa.

Barbara freezes in surprise. "Oh, God, I forgot, Harry. He's an ethnic-cleansing kind of guy, isn't he? I'm so sorry to mention something that upsets him."

"Nice going, Barb," I say. I search for his pills, find them, help him raise a glass of water to his lips. "Relax, Dad," I say to him.

He grabs my sleeve. "You must never adopt. The bloodline must remain pure," he whispers. "Do not contaminate the bloodline."

"Yes, Dad," I say with a nod. "A pure bloodline. Absolutely."

He calms down as I reassure him.

We share the German chocolate cake and a bottle of Bernkasteler Doktor Moselle. We give him a new recording of Schubert's Lieder on a Deutsche Grammophon compact disc. We sing marching songs from Bavaria, and his eyes light up in fond remembrance.

I am moved to make a little speech, and I stand with my wineglass extended. "You know, Dad," I say, "I can remember the day we arrived here in California. You were driving that yellow Volkswagen we had in Mexico. All our worldly possessions were tied to the roof. We looked like refugees from the Great Depression. But it was 1951.

"I was five years old, and all I had ever seen was our house and garden in Cuernavaca. You never left that place, and you never let me leave it, either. Then one day you ordered Mom and me into the VW and we drove to the border and crossed into San Diego without any trouble.

"Remember how we buzzed north along old U.S. 101? We swam in the Pacific Ocean for the first time. When you got out and ran into the surf, I followed you, and you picked me up, spun me around and yelled, 'Eva! Harry! We've made it! No one knows us. This will be our new start. This will be heaven on earth.'"

"I thought the car was a Volvo," Barbara says.

Dad laughs. "It was a VW," he says.

"Last time I heard that story from Harry, it was a Volvo," Barbara says, shrugging.

"It was a 1949 VW Beetle!" I yell angrily. I should probably explain that I do have a temper at times.

"All right already," Barbara says. "But I never could figure out what you guys were doing in Cuernavaca in the first place."

"Just call it an extended vacation," my father says. He smiles fiercely at her.

"Hey, whatever you say, Pops," Barbara says.

My father looks at her warily. "All right already'?" he leans over and whispers to me. "She's talking like a Jew. She's Irish, right?"

"Absolutely, Dad. Purebred Irish," I say. To distract him, I suddenly clap my hands. "Let's hit the track!" I yell. My father, the spry old goat, is the first one out the door.

Chula Vista Racetrack: The sun is as bright as gold, the heat makes the pavement shimmer. All the bookies and kooks are taking their Racing Forms into the grandstand. It may be 1994, butit is also Pal Joey time. There are little old ladies in tennis shoes and retired dry cleaners from Chicago and landlords from Orange County and computer freaks with their laptops and theirdreams of glory. There are young women in sunsuits and surfers in wet-suits and sharks from Las Vegas in silk suits and Panama hats. Hollywood is here, but so are Mexico and Japan and eastern Europe.

"How many years have we been coming here?" I ask, laughing.

"More than I can count," my father says with a sigh.

As we walk through the crowd, people look at my father as if they have seen him before. It is something we have learned to live with.

They do not stare, exactly. It is more like a double take. You can see their thoughts working: He looks familiar, I think I've seen him before, he's very old, I don't believe it, they say he's dead, they say the Russians found his body in his bunker in Berlin. It couldn't be him, forget it, why should I bother myself with such a thought?

As I say, we have grown used to it.

After we are seated in the clubhouse and Barbara has headed to the paddock to study the horses, my father asks me again, "Harry, your wife, you promise me she's purebred Irish?"

"Barbara is 100 percent Irish, Dad," I say, smiling. "Racially speaking, she's as clean as a hound's tooth."

He taps his Racing Form on my chest. "People are like horses, Harry. Breeding counts. I shouldn't have to tell you that."

"Genetics über alles?" I ask.

"Don't mock me," my father says quietly.

"I'm not mocking you, Dad."

"You study bloodlines and you win," he says softly. He is holding the front of my shirt with his fists. His face is turning red. "You ignore them and you lose. Never forget that."

"Easy, Dad," I say. I smile carefully as I pry his hands from my clothes. I pat his face. "Relax. Everything is OK."

I shift the mood. I buy my father a tonic and lime. I bring him an avocado salad in keeping with his vegetarian ways. I use my Racing Form as a fan to keep the cigarette smoke away from him. As always, when I am with him I am his servant.

"Looks like Dancer's Delight in the fourth," Barbara says as she returns from the paddock. She has brought us two large cups of lemonade and two vegetarian burritos. "I like his looks. And I like the jockey. Best bet of the day, if you ask me."

"Dancer's Delight?" my father asks. "In the fourth," Barbara answers, nodding.

"I don't think so, " my father says after studying the Racing Form.

Barbara looks at me, then at him. "I've seen the horse. I was just down there. He's a beautiful animal."

"He's a mutt," my father says. "He comes from nothing." He shoves the Racing Form at Barbara. "Read it yourself. He's a nobody out of nothing. He has no bloodline. He's a Gypsy."

"A what?" Barbara asks with a laugh.

"A Gypsy," my father repeats.

"That is the first time I've heard a horse called that," Barbara says. "What do you mean?"

"Gypsies have no breeding, no purity, no clean inheritance," my father says loudly. "They contaminate the world. They are ethnically sordid. They should be destroyed. All of them!"

"Hey," Barbara talks back at the same level, "Dancer's Delight has a good trainer and a good record, and I like the jock. That horse won his races the last two times out, and he had good splitsin his last workout. What more do you need?"

"More!" my father shouts. "Much more!"

He rises from his chair. He looks like he looks in the newsreels, only older. Charlie Chaplin with white hair and a white mustache, you might say. A little emperor on Social Security who is having a sudden temper tantrum at the racetrack in Chula Vista.

"Everything OK here?" one of the ushers asks me.

"We're fine," I say. I pull on my father's shoulder, but he has amazing strength at this moment.

"Yes, we are fine," my father lectures the usher. "But you, sir, are part of an establishment that is organizing its own destruction. You are befouling the system." He shakes the Racing Form at him. "I hold the evidence in my hands. You are permitting slime to race here. You are ignoring nature's rules."

"Is he going to croak?" the usher asks me.

"He'll be fine," I say. "Look, my wife and I will handle this. We'll take him home. He's a little excited."

"He looks familiar. What's his name?" the usher asks.

That one always throws me. "Never mind," I say.

"It is all here!" my father bellows. His voice is somewhat high-pitched, hysterical. While standing in front of his chair, he stamps his foot, shakes his head, raises his arm in a grand salute.He could be back in the Bürgerbräukeller in München or the stadium in Nürnberg.

"All the proof we need is here. Look at these people. They are as ill-bred as the horses. We have genetic impurity here. We have social unrest. We have economic chaos. We have a people who havelost all faith in themselves, who have no sense of identity because they have lost their ethnic purity. They live in fear, profound fear. One day soon it will be my time again. Through me, they will learn who they are. I will give them an identity. I will weed out the impurities."

"Harry?" Barbara asks with a worried look.

"He's lost it," I say.

"Fuck you and the horse you rode in on," a man yells at my father as we start to lead him away.

"Yes! A horse! A purebred horse. A horse descended directly from the gods," my father yells in return. "I will ride on that horse and you will worship me. You will thank me for saving you. I will purify you and give you a sense of yourself."

"Fuck you all over again," the man calls.

"Arrest him!" my father shouts at me.

"That's enough, Dad," I say. I have him in a bear hug and am pulling him through the crowd.

"To the camps with him!" my father screams.

"Shut up, Dad," I say through my gritted teeth.

"No one can defy me!" he shrieks.

It is quite a scuffle. I wrestle my father through the gate and into the parking lot. He is muttering to himself, scolding me, kicking at Barbara.

"I've never seen him like this," she says. "Does it run in the family?"

"No!" I say.

"Yes!" my father says, nodding vigorously. "Yes, it runs in the family! All things run in the family!"

"I should hope it doesn't," Barbara says in a huff.

"You are not really Irish, Barbara," my father says, panting, as we push him into the car. "I know that now. You are not a purebred."

"My maiden name is O'Connor," Barbara says.

"You were probably adopted. You are a Gypsy," my father says, laughing harshly. "Yes, a Gypsy. Just like that horse of yours. Do you know what I did to the Gypsies? I eliminated them. I gassed them and burned them as if they were lice on the skin of the earth."

He begins to calm down as the air conditioning kicks in, and we ride quietly. He does not speakuntil we are driving up the hill toward his condo in Solana Beach.

"Barbara," my father says from the backseat, "I must tell you that if you and Harry were to have children, you would defile the family lineage. Forever."

"Dad," I say. "I'm 48. Barbara is 40. We're very career-oriented, and the biological clock is winding down. I don't think we're going to have any kids. I'm the end of the line."

"It is just as well," my father says quietly.

"I'll say," Barbara replies.

"Me, too," I add.

"Well, good. That's settled," my father says to no one in particular.

It is a small moment. But powerful.

By the time we reach my father's condo, he is asleep. Rather than wake him, I carry him up the steps and into his bedroom. He seems so frail now, so vulnerable.

While Barbara waits in the living room, I tuck him in, turn on his night-light and write a brief note for the night nurse.

"Happy birthday, Dad," I say again.

He moans once, softly, as if he were dreaming.

"See you later, birthday boy," I say.

He moans again and turns onto his side.

Not for the first time, I wonder: Does my father dream? And if he dreams, what does he remember?