Eddie's father used to say he'd spent so many years by the ocean, breathing seawater. Now, away from that ocean, in the hospital bed, his body began to look like a beached fish. His condition went from fair to stable and from stable to serious. Friends went from saying, "He'll be home in a day" to "He'll be home in a week." In his father's absence, Eddie helped out at the pier  , working evenings after his taxi job.               When Eddie was a teenager, if he ever complained or seemed bored with the pier, his father would shout, "What? This isn't good enough for you?" And later, when he'd suggested Eddie take a job there after high school, Eddie almost laughed, and his father again said, "What? This isn't good enough for you?" And before Eddie went to war, when he'd talked of marrying Marguerite and becoming an engineer, his father said, "What? This isn't good enough for you?"               And now, regardless of all that, here he was, at the pier, doing his father's labor.               Parents rarely let go of their children, so children let go of them. They move on. They move away. It is not until much later, as the heart weakens, that children understand; their stories, and all their accomplishments, sit on top of the stories of their mothers and fathers, stones upon stones, beneath the waters of their lives.               Finally, one night, at his mother's urging, Eddie visited the hospital. He entered the room slowly. His father, who for years had refused to speak to Eddie, now lacked the strength to even try.               "Don't sweat it, kid," the other workers told him. "Your old man will pull through. He's the toughest man we've ever seen."               When the news came that his father had died, Eddie felt the emptiest kind of anger, the kind that circles in its cage.               In the weeks that followed, Eddie's mother lived in a confused state. She spoke to her husband as if he were still there. She yelled at him to turn down the radio. She cooked enough food for two. One night, when Eddie offered to help with the dishes, she said. "Your father will put them away." Eddie put a hand on her shoulder. "Ma," he said, softly, "Dad's gone."               "Gone where?" From the last part of the passage, we learn that   _  .
Eddie's mother liked to listen to the radio Eddie often helped his mother wash the dishes Eddie and his wife lived in his mother's apartment Eddie's mother missed her husband so much that she was at a loss