53 "happy with you"

On Saturday, my mom came over to help me clean my house, which she does once in a while. Usually (lately) my dad comes with her. He watches TV or talks to the birds or the cats. I even had something for him to do--I had a bunch of scrap paper I needed cut into quarters.
But he didn't come over; he went to his friend's store instead. No big deal.
My mom was done with the cleaning part she came to do in less than an hour, and she left. I retreated here to my computer to place a Body Shop order from a party the night before. I had the TV on one of those digital music stations, and I did think it odd that a song played in "soundscapes" (new age music) would have a guy saying "hello? hello?" over and over so I got up from my chair and there was my dad in my living room.
Remember, he's got no truck now, and even when he had the truck, he wasn't driving anymore. So my first question was, "How did you get here?"
To which he replied, "I walked." It's only a couple of miles, but still, I wasn't happy about him wandering around town on foot. He had to cross the train tracks, for one thing.
He was looking for my mom, and was sad that she had already left. He said, "I wanted to come here and be happy with you." Then he apologized several times for bothering me and said he'd go walk back to the store.
That morning I had already been out once, to go to the bank, and my first thought upon leaving my back door was "wow my yard smells bad" --not like something died bad, just gross awful bad. No wonder I woke up with a headache. I realized that it wasn't my yard, it was coming from either Cy-Tec or the trash plant (both of which are less than a mile from my house--Cytec is a plastics factory which used to be called Cyanamid and it's always stunk). I've lived in this town my whole life and I only smell the factory if it's really odorious. I don't believe in the 12+ years I've lived in this house I've ever smelled it before from my yard (only when driving by the factory itself). I stopped at the end of the street to get gas and I could smell it there too, and the gas station is further away from the factory and the trash plant (they are next to each other) than my house. So it was pretty bad.
I realized that my dad had been walking around in that stench, breathing it in for who knows how long, so I told him I'd give him a ride home. First I tried to call my mom to tell her I had Dad, but she didn't answer. I gave my dad my empty soda bottles (I hate the bother of returning them--I believe I already did a rant on the $3.57 they are always worth no matter how many I bring) and put him in my car to take him home. Except that he didn't want to go home, he wanted to go back to the store.
As we were driving, he said, "It's different when you're walking. I went way down there and I had to come all the way back." So obviously he took a wrong turn somewhere, but at least he found my house, and didn't just keep walking and end up in Cheshire or something. My mom told me later on that he turned on Hall Avenue instead of Quinnipiac St.
I dropped him off at the store and there was his old truck, shiny and sparkly, parked in the lot. (The guy who owns it now is the son of the guy who owns the store.) I said twice, "isn't that your old truck?" but my father didn't answer. He just told me to tell my mother that he'd come to my house looking for her.
I took the bag of bottles up to their house but my mom still wasn't home so I left her a note.
When he got home she asked him why he didn't just come with her in the first place and he said, "I don't know."
At least it was a funny adventure that turned out okay.