I was sitting in the waiting room of the New Horizon retirement community, thumbing the yellowing pages of my favorite book. Having been through the process enough times in the last two years, I’d already pre-arranged that they check in with my dad to see about his state of mind before I went up meet him. The book I had was pulled off my shelf as a sort of whim. It was written by my dad the year I was born. The book flipped itself effortlessly to a certain passage and I began to read:
Compassion, it said, A word that seems to have degraded several meanings. To speak of compassion is no insipid little incantation. Compassion is the act of stepping out of your own shoes for just a moment, and stepping into those of another conscious being, to know and feel its suffering as your own. This of course requires the understanding that another’s suffering is not an irrelevance to you, because distinctions like “me” and “you” are only isolated and temporary states of being in the—
“Ms. Daschle?”
“Hmm?” I looked up to see Mrs. Nusbaum, a kind and gentle woman who nonetheless looked like a witch with makeup on and a dragon without it.
“He was able to tell me your name without me prompting him,” she said, smiling stupidly like happy people always do.
A killing tension I hadn’t even noticed was there suddenly lifted from me. Even cowering under Mrs. Nusbaum’s cruel visage, I was able to muster some hope. I’d been missing my dad.
“Thank God.” I said, and I wasn’t just saying it. In my heart I was sending Him my gratitude too, a trick I’d learned from my father.
The apartment was a short walk from the main office, and it lead me down an immaculate winding stone path through perfectly green lawns. It was all so perfect it looked artificial. The house was pure white, the door yellow. Full of words and plans, I knocked.
The man who answered the door resembled my dear old dad in every way, except for the eyes. The once immeasurable eyes were now very finite. Where once they were a bullfighter’s eyes, they were now a child’s. What’s more, they did not seem to recognize me. My heart dropped two notches.
“Hi.” I said, trying to decide whether or not to just go.
He began to clench and unclench his jaw, which he always did when he was thinking very hard. Suddenly something seemed to spark, and he said, “Oh, I’m so sorry, come in.” He moved aside and I followed him in. “How have you been?” he asked, moving toward the living room.
“Oh, you know, not so good.” He was the only person I would say something like that to.
“Oh?” he said, seeming confused again.
“Yeah, my daughter is trying to get me to take pills. I don’t know how my existential funk suddenly became a scientific interest.” I grinned at him, and he grinned at the TV. I kept going, because I knew he enjoyed my rants. “I swear I remember us being half-animal, half spirit, with an infinite capacity for hope and change in us, but I guess we’re just chemicals now.”
“Well yes… that about sums it up,” he said, trying to work the buttons on the TV. “Now here’s the real problem,” he said, and I was all ears. He pointed at the flickering image of a cowboy on the screen, “It’s been doing this for two days.”
It was my turn to be confused. This was no great advice. “Walt,” I said, already fearful of calling him dad to his face, “Who am I?”
He looked up, and with total confidence he said, “They sent you to fix the TV.”
“Yes,” I said, flattening, flattening, “I suppose they did.”
Without thought or feeling or even a word I checked the connections on his TV. The coaxial cable was barely screwed in. I tightened it and he thanked me. On my way out the door he tipped me two silver dollars.
I had missed my dad again. I missed him all the way back to the car. In my mind I took back all the gratitude I’d given God, and with numb fingers I dialed my pastor.
“Hi, Tamura. How about that seafood? Yes… yes. I think I’m serious this time. Sounds fine, see you there.” I hung up the phone and then wished for a brief moment, that I had time to sit there and wait for a feeling to emerge.
We met at a place called Gladstone 4 Fish, wedged directly between the sprawling ocean and one of the fastest and most congested streets in the city. There was a cool wind coming off the water but the sun was beating down hard, soaking into everything and making it hot to the touch. We picked the most isolated table we could find.
Tamura was an old friend of the family, and in his late fifties like my father. He still had the same sort of peaceful exuberance my father used to have.
“So Lisa, I hear you want to get rid of me,” he said, smiling.
I laughed. “No, not you Tamura. I still think there’s hope for you.” We both got a chuckle out of that. “No, I’m afraid my problem is with your boss,” I said, gesturing to the roof over our heads.
“I’m sorry to hear that,” he said. “Does this have to do with Walt?”
I nodded slowly. “He thought I was the maintenance lady.”
“I’m sorry,” he said, giving me a warm sad smile that did nothing to comfort me. Is that what compassion looks like, I thought, a warm sad smile? “Why do you blame God?” he asked.
“I don’t blame Him for anything,” I said. “It’s a bad habit. Things just happen, and they’re fucked.” I said, and then remembered who I was blaspheming to. “Sorry.”
“It’s ok, we’re not in church, you don’t have to hold back.”
“So tell me why.”
“Why what?”
“Three years ago he was a brilliant, capable man. With his IQ he should have been the least likely candidate for faith.”
“Let me tell you, his ideas were an inspiration even to me.”
“So tell me why.”
“Just say it. I have to hear you out before I can find you a cure,” he said, giving me a sort of half wink. It was always a very easy thing to talk to Tamura, so I decided to let him have it.
“This freak early onset is driving me crazy. From what his doctor keeps saying, it seems like nothing short of divine intervention could have made him lose his mind that fast. So tell me why, why does God punish the righteous? Where is his compassion? Is He so big he can’t even see inside of us?” I was thinking of Job then, and how stupid and senseless the moral of that story was.
Tamura gave me that smile again and said, “I like to think He’s so big He can’t help but be inside of us.”
We let the next few moments pass in silence. I pretended to let that sink in, but in reality I didn’t believe a word of it.
“What would you turn to?” he finally said.
“Humanism, probably.”
“It’s admirable that you’re not giving up on people, but really, what will you do with God?”
“His role will stay the same. He’ll stay undetectable and not do anything. The only change will be that I’ll stop expecting him to do anything.”
“I’m sorry,” he said one more time, “Are you scared?”
“Maybe, why?”
“The world is full of forces we don’t understand. I’d be terrified if I couldn’t call them God’s will.”
“I keep thinking that all these senseless horrible things that happen are because to Him we’re like ants, and when He tries to change things in our fragile little world He just wrecks things with His big clumsy hands.”
“That’s an interesting way to look at it. But don’t forget that He exists as the gentle presences in the world too. He is everything from the atom to the atom bomb.”
“He’s the greatest good, and we should strive to be like him, even when he’s the atom bomb?”
“Have you ever seen an atom bomb tree?” I laughed and shook my head. “It was the free will God gave to us that made the atom bomb,” he said. “The fact that he trusts us with something like choice, however misused, proves his benevolence.”
It didn’t prove anything to me. I pictured him up there watching us fuck each other up with our tools of death, and with all of his immense power, just sitting there and smiling sadly and shaking his head.
“Thanks, Tamura,” I said.
“No problem,” he said, gathering up his coat. “Look sorry, I have to be at the shelter in ten. Since I may or may not be seeing you Sunday, do me a favor?”
I nodded.
“Read Job again,” he said, getting up to leave. Once again, I pretended to consider it. As he was leaving I couldn’t help but call out to him again.
“Tamura?”
“Yes?” he turned, still smiling.
“How can you smile? How can you commiserate and smile at the same time?” I asked.
“It’s not easy,” he said. “I probably wouldn’t have the strength to do it if I didn’t know God was up there smiling down at me.”
Great.
I sat there for a full twenty minutes after he’d left, going over everything I’d failed to gain by talking to him. Finally I decided that I couldn’t just sit there and push my swordfish steak around. I paid, picked up my favorite book, and left.
When I got outdoors, there was a small commotion in the parking lot. An old man in a jogging suit and an oxygen tank was on his hands and knees. Groups of people were gathering quietly around him and he seemed to be working furiously at something on the baking pavement.
“He left his dog in the car,” someone was saying, shielding his eyes from the blistering sun. I moved ahead a few paces, pushing through the gawkers to get a better look. I wished I hadn’t.
The man looked about sixty, and he was weeping like a woman, pouring water from a large to-go cup over his tiny motionless dog. It was one of those adorable little pugs with the bug eyes. It was obvious that the dog meant the world to him, because every so often he would wipe the spittle from his lips and bend down to give it mouth to mouth. Its large buggy eyes stared up at his chin, glassy and motionless. Five feet from him traffic passed at killing speeds.
My heart broke for the old man, and it kept breaking and multiplying and breaking until I couldn’t keep it inside me anymore. What was wrong with all these people, standing around and shaking their heads as if going through the motions of sadness were enough to appear human?
But then again I didn’t do anything either. I wondered if God was looking down on this situation he’d set up. The old man just kept crying and pumping the dog’s little chest until its little tongue pushed between its teeth. I wondered if God was looking down on this and smiling that stupid warm sad smile.
When I got home later that night I fell on my bed, drained and dazed. It didn’t feel like I’d really done much that day, but in a sense I felt purged. I opened my favorite book and read the quote on the inside jacket. In my father’s handwriting it said: Laugh, and the world laughs with you. Weep, and you weep alone.
I rolled over and opened the drawer to my night stand. I took the bible from it, from its rightful home in ten years, and moved it to a shelf with all the other books.
What that wonderful Historical Fiction story of yours had that this doesn't is definition. 
All in all, while this is still written well, I don't feel like it accomplished much character or plot-wise and it comes across like the story itself doesn't know where it's supposed to be going or what message it's trying to send. You need an underlying backbone to hold all these little pieces together, or else it feels like a character study instead of a developed story.