After she calmed him down, we had lunch.  She let him make the peanut butter and banana sandwiches while she heated up some Campbell's tomato and rice soup, which she poured from a can made of actual metal.  The sandwiches were lumpy because he had hacked the bananas into chunks the size of walnuts.   She tried to get him to tell me about the daylillies blooming in the back yard and the old Boston Garden and the time he and Mom had had breakfast with Bobby Kennedy.  She asked whether he wanted TV dinner or pot pie for dinner.  He refused all her conversational gambits.  He only ate half a bowl of soup. 

He pushed back from the table and announced that it was her nap time.  The bot put up a perfunctory fuss, although it was clear that it was my father who was tired out.  However, the act seemed to perk him up.   Another role for his resume: the doting father.   "I'll tell you what," he said.  "We'll play your game, sweetheart.  But just once -- otherwise you'll be cranky tonight."

The two of them perched on the edge of the bot's bed next to Big Bird and the Sleepums.  My father started to sing and the bot immediately joined in. 

"The itsy bitsy spider went up the water spout."

Their gestures were almost mirror images, except that his ruined hands actually looked like spiders as they climbed into the air.

"Down came the rain, and washed the spider out."

The bot beamed at him as if he were the only person in the world.

"Out came the sun, and dried up all the rain.

"And the itsy bitsy spider went up the spout again."

When his arms were once again raised over his head, she giggled and hugged him.  He let them fall around her, returning her embrace.  "That's a good girl," he said.  "That's my Jenny."

The look on his face told me that I had been wrong: this was no act.  It was as real to him as it was to me.  I had tried hard not to, but I still remembered how the two of us always used to play together, Daddy and Jenny, Jen and Dad.

Waiting for Mommy to come home.