by David Larmore
You agree to go only because your mother wants you to. You don’t understand why she wants you to be there. You’ve never sussed out why she still is. Fear, mostly. Being with him was always a tiny bit less scary than facing the world on her own. It used to make you angry. Now that you’re grown, you understand, a little. But only a little. What did she give up? No one will ever know.
It’s been a long time since you’ve seen the old man, even though you only live a couple hours away. You get in the car wondering if he’s as really as bad as your mom has told you. Margot, your sister, says yes. The dementia got a solid footing years ago, but the cancer is doing its thing. Good, you thought when she told you. Karma is a bitch. He probably doesn’t have the strength to hit anyone anymore. Even if he did, you could take him. One side of you wishes you had fought back, but the other part, the one that left him alone, is the side of you that didn’t want to see your mother cry again.
When you get to town, you slowly cruise the old neighborhood. You remember hiding places in bushes from games of kick the can during long summer evenings. Mosquitoes always played against you, eating you alive in the dusky heat until you couldn’t stand it. Running out too soon always got you caught.
When you arrive, the old man is lying in a hospital bed that takes up a third of the living room, sucking on a straw that drills into an iced caramel McFrappe that Margot ran out for before you got there. The old man can’t eat solid food anymore. The tumor at the top of the stomach has grown despite the radiation treatments. His last solid meal was the Thanksgiving turkey. When he’d started puking that up, along with the mashed potatoes, wild rice, and oysters, everyone knew something was wrong.
You’re surprised he looks as good as he does—shitty, but it could be worse. He’s thinner than usual, but that didn’t mean much. He’d always been a round man, using his size to intimidate. He always seemed taller than he was. You spot the catheter bag hanging on the rail. The old man’s face hangs slack, a little jowly. Someone has been shaving him, but he has a few days’ gray growth. The old man recognizes you, too, a surprise. He grins broadly and says, “You made it.”
“How are the kids?”
“Same as usual,” you say. “Getting big.” You weren’t sure he knew you had kids.
“Good,” he says, slurping the last of his drink, the bubbles in the straw echoing like death rattles. He coughs a couple of times.
In the kitchen you find your mother, sitting at her place at the table across from Margot, looking up at you with hope, an aging cup of coffee before her. She looks sadder than you’d expected, and she’s good at sad. You give her a perfunctory hug and Margot a real one. “He looks pretty good,” you say. “What’s with the catheter?”
“UTI,” Margo says. “Happens a lot with him. It’s supposed to come out tomorrow.” You haven’t seen Margot in a while. She looks ok, a little tired.
“How you been?” you ask your mother.
“It’s a lot,” she says. “We missed you at Thanksgiving.”
“Seems like you had plenty going on.”
#
Now he’s sitting up in bed, looking around like babies do, like owls turning their heads back and forth at whatever snags their attention. The old man can see into the small foyer, but not past the Yamaha upright and into the hallway that leads to the kitchen. You come from the kitchen and he smiles when he sees you. “Been a while,” he says. “Thanks for coming.”
“Yeah,” you say. It’s not for him, but he probably knows that. He should. The last time you saw him, he was giving you a hard time over a girl you were dating. He didn’t like her, and the only reason for it you could figure was because you did. You told him to eat shit when you left to meet her, and not coming around became a habit after a while. You’d talk to your mother on the phone sometimes, not telling her much. When things didn’t work out with the girlfriend, you didn’t tell your mother or Margot, because you didn’t need to hear a lecture about why he had been right. As a practical matter, he was not. It was a mismatch, but it didn’t make her a bad person. Or you. He’d have never seen that. When you got married to a different woman, you told your mother she was invited but he was not. So she had not come. Margot had, but she swore you to secrecy. It was a betrayal. And he was not yet weakened by anything.
“Tell me everything,” he says. “Tell me your life story.”
“You know it,” you say.
“Only up to a point.” You tell him about the kids, how smart they are, how everyone likes them. “I’d like to meet them sometime,” he says.
“Sure,” you tell him, but you mean “never.” You tell him what a good mother your wife is, how she keeps everything together. He wants to meet her, too. You nod and think, not likely. Maybe at the funeral, which looks to be not far off.
“What are you working on?” That was what you usually talked about, back in the day. You became an engineer because he told you that you would be good at it and because he wanted to tell people you followed in his footsteps. You are good at it, but you don’t like it. It’s too late to quit, though. You wear the golden handcuffs. Maybe in the next life you’ll be who you want to be. You tell him about a couple of projects, and he listens, asks the right questions, gives you a couple of things to think about. You wonder if he knows how hard it is for you to be in this room. You think if he’s going to die, maybe he might want to make things right. He doesn’t seem to remember anything bad. Maybe that’s something you should try.
“How do you feel?”
He says, “Well, I’m about dead. But I don’t feel too crappy.” He pauses, looks at you with watery blue eyes. He has looked at you with hatred many times, but there is none now. “I’m going to give you some advice,” he says, and you wait for it, because you don’t think he has much to tell you. “Have fun. It goes fast.” You nod slowly. Is that what all that was? Fun?
But in that moment, you do remember some fun. Learning to water ski with him driving the boat and your uncle, holding a can of Coors and a Winston, spotting from the rear of the boat; spring break in Tampa or Clearwater, where you’d meet guys down for spring training, and they’d sign a baseball for you; building a soap box derby car that actually won, because he knew what he was doing. Do they balance out the bad? You can’t say.
He looks down past his feet to the end of the living room by the piano, looks curious. “Who are they?” he asks, nodding in that direction. You regard the empty room and back at him.
“Who do you see?”
“That man with the suitcase and the lady with the umbrella,” he says.
You think about how to explain and then say simply, “They’re not with us.” He seems satisfied with that.
He starts to look sleepy, tells you he might nap for a bit, and you tell him to go ahead, that you’ll be around.
#
You’re going to dinner, and while you wait for the hospice worker to arrive, Margot announces that it’s time for her to take out the old man’s catheter. Your mother says the hospice nurse can do it, but Margot doesn’t trust whoever it is to be gentle. You stay in the kitchen, but you can hear it all.
Margot wakes him up and tells him he needs to roll onto his back. She’s going to take out the catheter. He says, “What?” She tells him again.
He asks, “Will it make me come?”
And very loudly, so she doesn’t have to repeat herself, she says, “God, I hope not.” You and your mother giggle at this, because you both might cry if you don’t.
You take Mom and Margo out to a steak place, and you buy, because you owe them—Margot, anyway—for taking care of him and not bothering you about it. You’re the sandwich generation, taking care of kids and parents both. Or you would be if you were helping with the folks. Margot is doing that all on her own. You owe her. Margo downplays it, but you know that without her, your parents would have failed by now. The best-case scenario without Margot is a hoarder house and the old man dying on a stack of old newspapers.
At dinner, you laugh about funny things your kids have done and said, how much they like their aunt Margot, because Margot visits sometimes and brings them things. Your mother has never met them. She desperately wants to, but she won’t come to your house without your old man, and he’s not invited. You can see that she’s torn. You expect that when he dies, she’ll be over. Or maybe you’ll bring the kids to the funeral. You’re not sure.
When you get home, the hospice lady tells you he’s been sleeping since you left. She tells you she was reading him the Bible, passages to pass the time, and she thought he liked it. How she would know, since he was asleep, is a mystery. If you were feeling snarky, you’d challenge her, but you had some wine, and Margot made you laugh, and you let this one pass. Maybe she’s right. Anyway, she’s doing work you don’t want to do. She seems nice.
You all sit down in the living room around the foot of the bed to talk. The lights are dim, and your mother lights a couple of candles. It’s pleasant enough. The old man is breathing quietly. You are surprised there’s no snoring. But then you all smell something foul at the same time. You realize that the old man needs a diaper change, and damn, it’s been years since you did a diaper for anyone, let alone an adult, let alone him.
You and Margot exchange a look. “We have gloves,” she says. Your mother is already off to find the box. Margot starts with the pants, and you’re feeling awkward and grossed out, disgusted because this is not what you signed on for. Your mother brings the rubber gloves, and you and Margot snap them on your hands as your mother withdraws across the room. “I’m sorry,” she says, “but I,” and she starts to retch and heave and holds onto the back of a chair.
“Go on,” Margot tells her, and she goes into the kitchen. She starts cleaning him up, and you help. The goddamn diaper slips to the floor. You start to try to catch it and Margot yells stop. “It’s like a knife,” she said. “You can’t catch it. It will just be worse.” While she cleans him up—you can’t believe he’s sleeping through it but he is—you reach for the soiled diaper on the floor. You’re not careful enough, and a turd rolls out onto the Pergo. Margot sees it and starts to laugh, and then you do, too. You pick up the log with your gloved hand, and you can feel its squishy solidity, not all that different from a dog turd. You fold it into the enormous diaper and take it to the trash can in the garage.
Back in the living room, Margot is giggling to the point of weeping. She says, “It was the coffee,” and sets you off again. You were irritated by your mother’s infirmity when she left, but now you don’t care. You would never have predicted this scenario. The room smells like a decrepit, rural gas station restroom, and if you weren’t laughing so hard with Margot, you’d probably retch, too.
#
After another hour, you and Margot get ready to leave for her house to sleep. You both go into the living room, and your old man is awake again. He smiles when she approaches him. You tell him you’ll be back in the morning. Then you go out to the kitchen to gather up your stuff. In your absence, the old man says to Margot, “Who was that man? He looks just like me.”
#
You stay at Margot’s house because you don’t want to sleep in your old room, don’t want to wake up in that house, with the memory of listening for his thick-soled footsteps as he marches around the house in the morning, angry. You and Margot stay up late, and you drink a couple of glasses of the wine that you gave her two birthdays ago. She’s not a drinker, but you never know what to get her. The wine is good. You got her a decent bottle.
She tells you the folks have no burial plots. She keeps trying to get your mother to shop, but your mother keeps diverting her, won’t focus. You tell Margot with confidence that you will get her to figure it out. Margot scoffs, which offends you, but you’re tired and a little drunk again, and she puts you in a guest room. You wash your hands for the eleventh time and examine your eyes, wondering if they’ll look runny and pale when you’re older.
#
In the morning, you and Margot pick up donuts and go to the house. Your mother has made coffee, and you drink some, even though you bought a cup at the donut shop. You’re shooting for the sugar and caffeine rush, but it backfires, and mostly you just feel jittery after a while.
Your father is still asleep. You go in to see him, but you’re not even sure he’s really in there anywhere. It’s just his body lying there. He looks so small compared to the way you remember him. Your mother says he has not been awake at all this morning. You take a book off the low shelf and sit down to read it, sipping your coffee.
You like a quiet morning, but you cannot focus on the book. You look at your father and realize that this person, this vessel slowly emptying of life, is not the same man he was. He is not the guy who hurt you and your mother, and sometimes your sister. You don’t know when it happened, but that angry soul receded over the time that you were not around and disappeared. You are not angry at this husk of a man. You don’t pity him, either. You watch him breathe.
Margot and your mother come in and sit. You say, “Mom, what kind of funeral are we looking at?”
“A normal one, I guess.”
“Ok. Where?” You regard her as she thinks of an answer. Out of the corner of your eye, you see Margot turn to stare at the ceiling.
“He would never talk about it,” your mother says. “I tried.”
“That’s fine,” you say. You talk gently with her as if she’s a child. “No one is blaming anybody. But we need a plan.”
“I don’t have a plan.” She looks around the room and fixates on a box in the corner by the stereo. “Do you think I should sell those old albums on Ebay?” she asks you.
Margot was right. “Mom,” you say. “We need to have a place to put him, and your freezer in the garage is not big enough.”
She says, “Maybe there’s a place I can take them that will do it for me, handle the shipping and stuff.”
#
Your father never wakes up again before it’s time for you to go the next day. He has barely moved. Hospice people show up, change him. When he starts to moan in his sleep, they give him injections. You and your mother and your sister sit in the room with him for a couple of hours in the morning, and then your mother moves to the kitchen to sit. She doesn’t want to see him like this. You’re not sure if she feels bad for him or for herself. She must be wondering what will happen to her.
Your mother has given you some books to take home and some tools she won’t need. You put them in your car and come back in to say goodbye. Your mom and Margot are waiting in the living room. You don’t want to say goodbye to your dad while they watch, but you don’t know how to ask them to leave. So you get close to him so he can hear you whisper, his gray beard almost touching your cheek. You say, “Go when you’re ready, ok? You’ve done a lot.” And then you step into the foyer and stand for a moment. You go into the bathroom and wipe your eyes. Then you hug your mom and sister and go to your car to drive away and live your life.
David Larmore is a writer, sometime actor, and lawyer. He has studied at Indiana University, the UCLA Extension, and Gotham Writers Workshop, and is an MFA candidate at the Bennington Writing Seminars. A subversive guy in a suit, he lives in southern California. This is his first publication.
