I To see you collapsed in front of the TV in the middle of the afternoon breaks my heart. I mute the sound. Silence. The glow of the screen colors the air as if the light has filtered through a chapel''s stained glass. Late afternoon sun from the window to your left forms a halo around your white hair. On the shelves behind you, a vast expanse of brown leather-bound books, gilt titles shimmering on their spines. I push your wheelchair aside to clear a path to you. I sit on an ottoman beside your mechanized recliner and take your hand.

You raise my wrist to your lips, cover my arm in kisses. "How sweet of you, my beloved darling, to visit your decrepit old father. Your ancient papa, a poor old fool." "Hush, come now." I smooth back your hair. I brush away crumbs from your unevenly shaven cheeks. I lower my surgical mask to kiss your neck. I hold back tears.

How I will miss your scent. Now the room smells of pharmaceuticals and piss. You welcome my embrace with a kind of calm acceptance that the Greeks might have called ataraxia -a word you taught me. I moved back to France to be near you as you neared death. You often lamented the distance between us over the two decades I spent in America. We talked regularly, you called me late at night, until you stopped being able to use the phone. You still have your beautiful head of hair, and your temples still carry the smell of the little round plastic brushes you used to smooth it. You bought them in elegant old-fashioned pharmacies, along with your signature bottle of Schoum, a lime-green digestive tonic I never saw anyone else drink; extra-strong Ricqlès peppermint spray; eau de cologne Impériale; and an array of other novelties that you simply couldn''t live without.

These scents permeated your skin; your scarves and overcoats; the dashing suits you used to wear, linen or cashmere, dark gray, navy, or camel, with Dior ties and matching pocket squares. Now the suits are stored away-forever, most likely, but I prefer to think that they are waiting for you, as I so often did. You fall asleep mid-sentence. I enjoy watching you at rest. The way you hold your head remains as dignified as ever, I decide, despite the stains on your sweater, the diaper protruding a little from your sweatpants. You keep your legs crossed as you did in your reading chair, in your office, a gentleman''s pose, but now there are elastic bands around your bony shins, your enormous, bandaged feet stick out. Your feet are covered in scabs, sores, and cuts that won''t heal, won''t ever heal again. Your left foot looks like a Cubist sculpture underneath its dressing, your toes crooked, the big one entirely black.

That monstrous toe was already terrifying to me as a child-a nail the size of a baby tooth clinging to its flesh. As I hold your hand, I couldn''t care less that you remember nothing-not my age, not my children, not my mother''s suicide. The war is pretty much all you remember, so when you resurface from sleep, I ask you one more time to tell me about the Nazi invasion, the exodus, your family''s destitution under Vichy. From your recliner or your sick bed, you bring me, again and again, aboard the Massilia in June 1940. I follow you each time onto the deck as though it were a stage. And at the conclusion of each performance, I hear, in your rapid heartbeat, the audience applauding-a protracted curtain call, a refusal to let the drama end. May it never end. My father was a man of another generation, one might have said to excuse his misogyny or his pedantry, a man whose success supposedly justified his arrogance, whose affability could turn suddenly to rage, whose excessive, baroque, and unbridled displays of affection betrayed his eccentricity or explained, in part, the devotion he inspired in spite of his impossible temper.

I was his baby girl-"Number eight" was how he referred to me in public. In private, he called me "Little angel." In addition to me and my sister, Elsa, two years my elder, my father had six other children, from three different women, spread over thirty years. In the spring of 2020, I told my daughters, who had been in "remote school" for months, that we would be moving to France to be near their ancient grandfather. George and Sissi were born in New York and thought of English as their mother tongue. They called my father "Doggy," a nickname passed down across generations, its origin obscure, and which they hadn''t questioned until their formerly commanding Doggy found himself diminished, dependent, and so the term of endearment became disturbing, shameful. It didn''t help that my father and his wife also owned a very barky and incontinent Yorkshire. Over four decades of marriage, they had owned a series of Yorkies, each impossible to tell apart from the next.

They had no children, but they always had a dog, who Doggy called his dog-child. "And why is Doggy''s dog named Loup ?" Sissi asked me, as she tried to condone my father''s odd nickname. Good question, my beloved darling. We must have some kind of compulsion to mix up names and species in our family. I recognize in my little girl''s puzzled look the confusion I felt as a child when trying to figure out our family tree and my place in it, to separate out myth from reality in our genealogy. I, too, still struggle to understand, and I keep myself from telling her. "Sissi, mon amour ," I reply, "didn''t you name your bunny rabbit Wawa , like a puppy''s bark in French? Well then." A nurse from the French welfare system comes several times a day to change your dressings.

Your wife wants to keep you home, a decision for which we, your children, are grateful. Another private nurse helps you travel from your bed to the living room in a wheelchair at mealtimes or when you have visitors. You thank her with pompous courtesy, then implore us to fire her. What in the world does this woman want from you? You beg to be left in peace. Why can''t she let you enjoy your daughter''s visit? You break down in tears of rage and humiliation. What is this talk of changing you? Have we all lost our minds? You insist that you and I must dine out, that you will take me to a restaurant. I try to mollify you. Instead of stating the obvious fact that you''re in no condition to leave the house, I remind you that public spaces are closed until further notice.

You have always preferred eating out. At lunch and dinner, on vacation, and in Paris. Soon, your wife will bring you a tray with a bland meal that I will help you ingest in child-sized bites. This role reversal reverses time, past and future collide, interpenetrate, dissolve. My girls love hearing stories about you. Fanciful adventures where Doggy goes on epic quests-such as shopping for dinner, skipping the customary restaurant. We call this story "Doggy Goes to Market." And here we have Doggy on his way to the bakery.

(You are always already old in these stories, but charmingly so, without shit or suffering.) Doggy has a chair waiting for him by the shop entrance- his chair, Monsieur Huisman''s chair. Doggy sits, cane in hand, and greets Madame the Baker, whom he has known for a very long time-yes, a very long time, longer than his little angel has been alive! " Bonjour madame, bonjour mesdemoiselles , how are you this morning?" says Doggy to the young ladies who work there, a twinkle in his eye, before calling out his order from his seat: "My dear lady, I should like, if you please, six croissants, eight pains au chocolate, and, let us see, four raisin rolls, and give me"-here, I tap on his shoulder. "Papa, slow down, who''s this all for?" "Well, everyone!" "Everyone who? There are only three of us: Elsa, your wife, and me. With your diabetes, you can''t have any of this. Nobody''s going to eat it all!" "Of course we will, everybody will, these are exceptional viennoiseries ! Where was I? Oh, I see your p'tisseries look especially fine today. Let me get this tart here"-he points with his cane-"and what is it, may I ask? Apricots! It looks like it''s encrusted with emeralds. Ah, pistachios! Marvelous! And that superb Black Forest cake, did your husband make it? Congratulate him for me.

What a fine fellow he is, and so talented. And a sample of éclairs, yes two, no three, of each, yes, chocolate and coffee, and a box of your fabulous sugar cookies, world famous really, and ." (What do you think, girls? Do you think he''s ordered enough? No, you''re right, it''s never enough for Doggy.) "Papa, this is really too much! We''re never going to eat it all, please stop!" (Do you think he listens? Of course not.) When we finally leave the shop, I''m balancing six boxes of cakes, one on top of the other, four bags of pastries are dangling from my wrist, and I have three baguettes wedged under my arm. Next stop: the butcher! (Can you guess what happens there? It is never enough .) When we arrived in France, I asked the girls if they wanted to visit Doggy with me. "Oh yes," they''d replied, "we''d love to!" I thought they laid it on a little thick.

On our last visit, when the pandemic was still a distant nightmare, my father had asked George ten times who she was. "You''re asking me again? I''ve told you, lots of times! I''m George! George! Your granddaughter!" Doggy had burst into laughter. "Of course, my beautiful George. I''d be just as indignant if I were you. How awful to have to put up with such a senile old fool." (You''d raised her wrist to your lips, covered her arm in kisses.) "Little angel!" ( Little little angel.) "My, my, growing old is no fun .

" The three of us had laughed it off, embraced. I''d taken my beloved father''s hand in mine, his knotty, bluish hand, his fingernails yellow and striated like dandelions before they go to seed. "It''s okay, Papa, you''re allowed to.