Chapter 2
Robert
I turn my cell phone back on as I cross the parking lot. It vibrates immediately. Five new texts. All from Nic. I thumb through them as I walk.
I’m standing by your car. Hurry up.
Answer your phone.
OMG. Where are you? I don’t have all day!!!
WAITING!
I’m done. Leeeeaving.
I note the time stamps and estimate he waited a whole ten minutes. I reply, although I don’t know why I bother:
Had to make up test. Have group tonight.
He responds immediately. You could have told me that sooner.
I might have if I could have gotten past his posse of cheerleaders. Besides, we had no plans to meet after school. We never have any plans to meet after school. We rarely have any plans to meet anywhere. Sometimes I think Nic is my boyfriend in name only, when it’s convenient, when he needs some arm candy. Not that I consider myself arm candy, but I think he does the way he clings to me and parades me around on the rare occasion when we do go somewhere together.
Sorry. Text you later.
He doesn’t respond. I have about an hour before I have to be at Ms. Momin’s for my music therapy group—we’re playing “Jingle Bells” today—but I don’t have the emotional energy to deal with Nic right now anyway. And I damn sure don’t want to go home.
So I climb in the car, put my phone on silent, then tilt my seat back and close my eyes.
I allow myself to drift back to the classroom, to those gray eyes with the dark rings around the corneas, and that snug sweater over a striped, collared shirt, and the chest hair at the base of his throat that always shows no matter what he’s wearing.
I wonder if Mr. McNelis could smell it on me—the want to. Freshman year, in health (the sex ed unit, not the oh-my-god-that-feels-good unit as Coach Gideon liked to remind us, ha, ha), we learned that humans, like animals, give off a scent when they want to mate. I’m not saying I want to mate with Mr. McNelis, but I’m not saying I don’t want to either.
I’m pretty sure I don’t want to mate with Nic. Not that I haven’t tried once or twice. Nine months of dating and I haven’t touched him. In fact, the last time I tried, he followed his No with a That’s nasty. I’d be lying if I said that hadn’t hurt my feelings. I haven’t tried again. I do sometimes wonder why I tried at all. Yes, he’s cute. And, yes, he can be very sweet when he wants to be. But I don’t know him any better today than I did nine months ago, and he doesn’t know me. And I don’t think either of us really cares one way or the other.
On the other hand, I wouldn’t mind touching Drew McNelis. In fact, I’m indulging myself and imagining what that would be like when a sharp rap on the top of my car startles me. I turn the key and roll down the window. Luke Chesser sticks his head in.
“Hey, bro, no sleeping in the parking lot. People are going to start thinking you like it here.”
“Maybe I do.”
“Yeah, well . . .” He shivers. “It’s cold out here. Unlock the door.”
I do and he climbs in the passenger seat, slamming the door behind him. I roll the window back up.
“I’m really sorry about your dad, man. Anything I can do?”
“You want to make out?”
He grins, then laughs.
He knows I’m kidding. Luke and I have a history, but mostly a platonic one.
“You want the wrath of Curtis to fall on your head?” he jokes. “He’s the jealous type, you know.”
“I do know.”
I study my good friend. Luke is the head drum major and my former pseudo-boyfriend. Long story. Curtis is a junior at Sam Houston State University. They’re crazy about each other, and I’m crazy with envy. He settles back in the seat, grabs the cuffs of his hoodie, and folds his arms tightly across his chest to warm up, then puts his feet up on the dash and rolls his head to me.
“So what’s going on with you and Nic?” he asks.
“Have I ever thanked you for fixing me up with Whore-Hay?”
“No, I don’t believe you have.”
“Then I won’t.”
He laughs. “That good, huh? Well, I never told you this, but remember when I set you two up? It wasn’t exactly the way I told you.”
“Exactly what way was it?”
“I told him you liked him and he should ask you out. He said—wait.” He sits up and takes on a prissy air, then says, “ ‘I don’t ask boys out; boys ask me out.’ ”
His Nic impression is so spot-on, I can’t help but laugh.
“Listen,” he says, “you should come up to Sam with me one weekend. Curtis has friends. Who knows, you might like one of them.”
“What’s it like dating an older guy?” I can’t resist asking.
This slow grin inches its way across his face, and he flicks his eyebrows at me.
“That’s just cruel,” I say.
He props his feet back on the dash and breathes a dreamy sigh. “So, um, what’s it like with Nic?”
“I wouldn’t know.”
“Really? Ha, ha. You know, one day you’re going to consider that a blessing.”
I already do. Reluctantly, I check the time on my phone. “I got to get going. I have my music therapy group in fifteen minutes.”
“You still don’t have all your service hours?” Luke asks, surprised.
“I just need a couple more.”
He takes a deep breath and lets it out loudly. I do the same and he smiles. “You call me if you want to talk. Okay? Don’t worry about Curtis. I’ve got him wrapped around my little finger.” He winks and gets out.
“You sure you’re up to this?” Ms. Momin asks as she closes the front door behind me. She’s the facilitator of the group, an elementary school music teacher who does music therapy with special-needs kids on the side.
“Yeah. Of course.”
I wasn’t so sure about working with these kids when Ms. Lincoln first suggested it. I’d completed most of my sixty hours of community service—a graduation requirement—last summer working at the animal shelter, but Ms. Lincoln thought some diversity would look better on my college applications and hooked me up with Ms. Momin’s group. I’m glad she did. It’s the highlight of my week now.
From the foyer I see Patrick wrestling an ornery chair toward the living room. It tips. He steps back and utters a frustrated “Bah” as the chair falls over on the tile floor.
“Patrick,” I call out.
When he sees me, a big goofy grin takes over his face. He lumbers over and gives me an awkward hug.
“Hey, man. Thanks for starting to set up the chairs. You want some help?”
He bears down and concentrates hard before exploding with a big “Bah.”
“All right. Let’s do it.”
I right the chair and help him maneuver it into the other room, careful not to get ahead of him and pull the chair from his hands. When we position it, he steps back and throws his bent arms out to the side. “Bah.”
“Good job, man.”
“Ya. Ya.”
Patrick makes me smile. He’s fourteen and tall and lanky, with a sprinkling of acne on his forehead. But despite his physical challenges, which play out in exaggerated smiles and frowns and spastic movements, I think he is quite handsome. One in a million in fact, or perhaps one in seven hundred thousand to be more exact—the odds of being struck by lightning in any given year. He was only nine. Sucks to stand out sometimes.
By the time Sophie and Jo-Jo arrive, the chairs are set. Ms. Momin helps me settle everyone, then straps Jo-Jo into his chair so he won’t slide to the floor, and takes up her usual position behind them all.
I look at their faces, and I’m really glad I came.
“Who’s excited about Christmas?” I ask.
Patrick jumps up from his chair and spazzes a moment, then drops back in his seat. Sophie is staring off at something or nothing over my shoulder. Jo-Jo, the smallest in the group, is laughing. It’s an uncontrollable kind of laugh, but I find it infectious. Jo-Jo is the least physically capable of the three. In addition to some physical challenges I don’t fully understand, Ms. Momin says that, like Sophie, he has some form of autism. He laughs a lot, at nothing, and sometimes he whimpers, and sometimes he breaks down and cries. But he’s laughing right now, and that’s good.
“Me too, Jo-Jo. Soooo, I have a surprise for you guys. We’re going to learn a new song today. ‘Jingle Bells.’ ”
There’re a couple of beats of silence, and then Jo-Jo’s face contorts and he starts this snuffling crying.
“It’s okay, Jo-Jo. Let’s just try it. I think you’ll like it.”
Patrick looks like someone just farted. Sophie’s expression remains blank. Ms. Momin grins at me, then tries to comfort Jo-Jo.
“I’ll play it first.”
I’m hoping once they recognize the Christmas song their attitudes will improve. So far, we’ve only played “Mary Had a Little Lamb.” “Jingle Bells” requires only two additional notes. I mean, after three months I think we’re ready for a new song. And frankly, they aren’t really playing the notes anyway, so learning a new song is no big deal.
Despite their obvious displeasure, I place the recorder in my mouth and play “Jingle Bells”—chorus only.
With each note, Jo-Jo grows more distressed and is soon wailing.
And Patrick looks downright angry. He’s agitated and throwing his arms around and drops his recorder. Then suddenly he leaps up and tries to cover my mouth with his hand. His fine motor skills are rather deficient and he misses my mouth altogether, but succeeds in smacking me in the eye and knocking my contact off center.
“Bah.”
“Patrick!” Ms. Momin darts out from behind Jo-Jo and grabs his flailing arms and settles him back in his chair.
“Are you okay, Robert?”
I think I may have a corneal abrasion, but otherwise, I’m okay. I excuse myself and go to the bathroom to reset my contact. When I return, Patrick is sulking. I take my seat.
Ms. Momin smiles down at me and shrugs. “They don’t much like change,” she says.
Got that. I survey my charges. “All right, guys. I have a great idea. How about we play ‘Mary Had a Little Lamb’?”
Patrick beams. It takes him a couple of tries, but he finally manages to get his mouthpiece in his mouth and grins with self-satisfaction.
Ms. Momin helps Sophie. Jo-Jo is gripping his recorder and sniffling and rocking back and forth. I lift his arms so the mouthpiece fits in his mouth. It’s like moving a toy robot. His arms will stay exactly where I put them until one of us moves them again.
“On three. Ready?” I smile to myself. Ready enough. “One. Two. Three.”
The racket that comes from the recorders sounds nothing like “Mary Had a Little Lamb.” It doesn’t matter. I ratchet up my own volume so they hear the tune and believe in their own performance.
We play the song maybe a dozen times, and I congratulate them after each one. And after each one, Patrick stands and spazzes because he’s happy, the kind of happy that is so pure and simple it breaks your heart, the kind of happy I don’t think I’ve ever known, or at least can remember. Sophie still stares off into the distance, but she played. I could hear her play, and that’s something of a triumph in itself. Jo-Jo is laughing now. It’s truly one of the sweetest sounds I’ve ever heard, and I can’t help but smile back at him.
Sometimes it’s hard to say good-bye when the session ends. Today, it’s especially so.
I step in it when I get home, although I’m not exactly sure what it is. At first it looks like apple juice pooled in the grout grooves between the kitchen floor tiles, but it could just as easily be pee. I don’t really want to know. I pull some paper towels from the roll as I scan the rest of the kitchen—a soggy waffle with one bite out of it crowning a pile of dishes in the sink, a carton of milk warming on the kitchen counter next to an open jar of peanut butter with a knife sticking out of it, the refrigerator door standing open.
I close the refrigerator door, and I’m just about to wipe up the floor when Noah darts through the living room toward me. “Wobert!” he squeaks in a voice I know means he’s a little freaked out. “Aunt Whitney needs help.” He grabs my hand and tugs me toward my parents’ bedroom. I drop the paper towels on the counter, and with a feeling of dread, follow Noah.
Franny, who at twelve is the oldest of my cousins, presses herself white-faced against the wall as we pass her in the hallway, and I fear what new horror awaits me. At the foot of the bed, the huddled twins—Matthew and Mark—look up at me with tear-filled but hopeful eyes.
“Robert, is that you?” Aunt Whitney calls from the bathroom.
There’s something about a crisis in a bathroom that screams, You don’t want to be a part of this. As it turns out, it’s not as bad as I feared. Dad is sitting on the shower floor and leaning against a plastic chair seat, his forehead cradled in the crook of his arm, his eyes closed. A towel is draped across his lap.
“Where have you been?” Aunt Whitney demands.
“You okay, Dad?”
“He slipped off his shower chair,” my aunt says, stepping into the stall with Dad and gripping him around his bare shoulders. “Get this chair out, then I need you to help me lift him.”
“Where’s Mom?”
She rounds on me with a suddenness that makes me flinch. “I don’t know where your mom is. But she’s damn sure not here where she’s supposed to be. Your dad’s been on this shower floor for twenty minutes.”
I seethe at the unfairness in her words as I brace myself against the far shower wall and lift the chair over her head and Dad’s. She has no right to dump on Mom. Mom’s the one who has taken care of Dad all these years—drove him everywhere he wanted to go when the seizures robbed him of his ability to drive, sat with him during endless rounds of doctors’ visits and MRIs, filled his prescriptions. She’s the one who supported the family because he couldn’t, who paid the bills and took care of the house and me because he wouldn’t. She’s been the glue holding this family together, but not once have I heard any of them thank her or defend her. It’s like she’s the hired help.
“Where have you been?” Dad repeats in a pained voice.
And sometimes I feel like the bastard son. I set the chair in a corner, out of the way. I can tell from the pinched look on his face that his head is really hurting.
“I had to make up a test and then I had my group.”
He scoffs. And the implication of that small exhalation is like a knife in my gut. I wrap my arms around him in a bear hug and heave him to his feet. He’s nearly two hundred pounds of dead weight. He’s weak, but once I get him upright, he manages to support himself just a little on his one good leg. Aunt Whitney takes one side and I take the other, and together we half drag him back to the bedroom.
I’m keenly aware that his towel is not traveling with us, and I’m angry all over again—this time at Aunt Whitney for not protecting his privacy, at Aunt Olivia for dumping her four kids here and disappearing, and at Dad for not dying with more dignity.
I’m not being fair. I know that.
“Where’s Aunt Olivia?” I ask as we settle Dad down on the bed. Aunt Whitney lifts his legs onto the mattress.
“She’s on call. She had to run to the hospital. One of her tonsillectomy patients blew out his scabs and had to go back into surgery.”
“If she’s on call, why didn’t she just leave her kids home with Uncle Thomas?”
“You know what,” she says, snapping her head up. “Your aunt Olivia and I are giving up our evenings to take care of your dad because you and your mom are just too busy with your own lives to do what’s right. So I don’t want to hear about it. Okay?”
I’m speechless.
The four-year-olds have jumped up on the other side of the bed and are giggling, while Franny leans against the footboard, intently studying anatomy.
Dad groans and shifts.
Aunt Whitney finally shoos the kids away and pulls the sheet up. “Hand me that oxygen tube,” she says.
I want to defend myself and my mom, I want to walk away, I want to pretend like this isn’t my life. But I don’t do any of those things. I hand her the tubing and she gently slips it over Dad’s ears and positions the prongs in his nostrils.
Dad squeezes his forehead with his one good hand. His hair has grown back only sparsely since his last chemo treatment, and he no longer wears a beanie to cover the scars and indentations on his scalp. His face is bloated from the steroids, and the oxygen tube presses into his flesh. He used to be handsome, I guess—six-two, solidly built, sandy blond hair a shade darker than my own, a wide mouth that showed beautifully straightened teeth that I rarely got to see unless he was laughing with one of his sisters.
I find it hard to look at him now.
Aunt Whitney gropes around under the mattress for a key that she uses to open the gray metal box on the bedside table—Dad’s home pharmacy. She shakes out a couple of morphine tablets, then helps Dad sit up. He takes the pills with a shaky hand and tosses them both in his mouth. She hands him a glass of water. When he’s settled again, she locks the box and picks up a small spiral notebook on the table.
“I brought your dad something,” she says to me like she didn’t just cut my balls off. She hands me the notebook. “I thought he could use this to record his thoughts for you while he still can, give you something you can hold on to, share with you his favorite memories of being your dad, his hopes for your future. Things like that.” She brushes her fingers across his forehead.
I shift my focus to Dad and see tears glistening in his eyes.
I should be moved. I should feel something. It scares me that I don’t.
He says something, but his voice is raspy and I don’t catch his words.
“What’s that, Dad?”
He opens his eyes and fixes them on me with a look of exasperation. “I need you to clean the fish tank,” he says with some effort.
Aunt Whitney smiles down at him, indulgently, I think, then turns her smile to me. “He’s been worrying all day about those fish. He wants you to check the water’s pH and replace the filter.”
The thirty-gallon tank is Dad’s therapy. He set it up in their bedroom ten years ago, a couple of months after his diagnosis. Aunt Whitney says it gives him a sense of control. I say it gives him just one more way to avoid interacting with us.
“Do you need anything else?” I ask.
“Just take care of the goddamn fish,” he growls in a whispered voice. He squeezes his eyes shut like he’s fighting the reverberation of his words in his brain. Fighting that same reverberation in my soul, I turn to go.
“And don’t forget to vacuum the gravel and do a water exchange.” I look back at this stranger for a moment, then I go.
In the garage I have to move aside the lopsided, five-foot Scotch pine to get to the siphon tubing hanging on a rack on the wall. The tree has been soaking in a bucket of water for over a week now and the garage smells like a pine forest. It’s unlike Mom not to have the tree up and decorated the weekend after Thanksgiving, but this year is unlike any other. I finger the needles and focus on breathing for a few moments. It doesn’t feel like Christmas to me. It feels like some kind of purgatory.
I take a deep breath and remove the tubing along with the deep bucket hanging next to it. There was a time when I really liked cleaning the fish tank. It was one of the few things I ever did with my dad, but when it became all too clear that the only reason Dad let me help was because he could no longer do it by himself, the fun evaporated like the water in the tank. I was just a necessary evil, like the cane or the scooter or the wheelchair.
He despised every one of those crutches. The tumor started on the right side of his brain, in the motor cortex, and even though the doctors removed it, the damage was done. The seizures that affected his left side were pretty well controlled for a long time, but then the breakthroughs became more frequent and the weakness on his left side more prominent. Despite the radiation and the chemo, it was clear he was losing the battle. Eventually he was forced to use a cane to maintain his balance. The second surgery to zap the tumor also zapped the brain tissue that controlled those muscles, and what little use he’d retained of his left arm and leg was suddenly gone. He had to trade in his cane for a power scooter, something I knew he found humiliating. Then the cancer spread, and the scooter was replaced with a wheelchair.
I drop one end of the tubing into the tank. When I get the water flowing into the bucket, I drag the larger end across the gravel to vacuum up all the debris. I know what I’m doing, but I still feel Dad watching me. And I can’t help wondering whose future he is more anxious about—mine or the fish’s.
He never wanted me after all. That’s a hell of a thing for a kid to find out. Maybe it’s because I’m an only child that I know things I shouldn’t.
Like the fact that my dad wouldn’t have married my mom if she hadn’t been pregnant with me, and he did that only because my grandmother went all Catholic on him.
Like the fact that when Mom got pregnant again eight years ago, Dad asked if she was sure the baby was even his. Like the fact that she miscarried my baby sister in a hospital room during one of my dad’s many admissions, this time for pneumonia; she was almost five months pregnant.
Like the fact that Dad took his metal box of narcotics into the closet one night almost a year ago, and Mom didn’t try to stop him.
I don’t want to know these things, but I do.
I hang the siphon tubing back on its hook in the garage and return with a garden hose. An adapter is already attached to the bathroom sink.
I think Dad is asleep, or at least drugged to the gills, until he croaks, “Don’t forget to condition the water.”
Like I could.
I’m just wiping off the hood and the outside of the tank when I hear the garage door go up. I store the chemicals in the cabinet below and flip off the light under the hood.
“Leave the light on,” Aunt Whitney says.
My mistake. Dad doesn’t like the dark. It’s too much like being dead, I guess. He quit sleeping at night years ago, instead staying up and messing around on his computer until the sun came up, and then going to bed and leaving Mom to get me off to school or whatever. I turn the light back on.
In the kitchen, Mom is clearing the right side of the sink of soggy waffles and dirty dishes. She glances up at me, then runs her forearm across her brow and sighs heavily. “I swear those children were raised by wolves.” I smile as she shuts off the water and dries her hands. She pulls the knife out of the peanut butter jar and shakes her head. I screw the lid on as she drops the knife into the sink and opens the dishwasher.
“Sorry, Mom,” I say, helping her unload the dishes. “I would have cleaned up for you, but Dad wanted me to clean the fish tank.”
She stops and looks at me for a moment, then musses my hair. “How was your day? Did the kids like ‘Jingle Bells’?” She withdraws her hand and looks a little guilty for touching me. It’s an echo from my touch-me-not days in junior high. I regret now making that stand.
Did the kids like “Jingle Bells”? Her question actually makes me laugh, just a little. “ ‘Jingle Bells’ was a total bust,” I tell her, “but otherwise it was okay. I stayed after school and made up my calculus test. I made a one hundred, sort of.”
“Sort of?”
“Yeah. Mr. McNelis helped me through it.”
She smiles and hands me the silverware basket. “Since when do you need help with a calculus test?”
I don’t respond, but I can feel her watching me as I sort everything into the plastic tray in the drawer. She takes the basket from me and hugs it to her chest. “I’m so sorry you have to go through all this.”
“It’s okay, Mom. I’m sorry the rug rats keep trashing the house.”
She smiles.
“Where did you go?”
“The families we adopted picked up their holiday bags today. I was going to miss it, but they were shorthanded and since your aunt Whitney was here—is that pee on the floor?”
“Apple juice,” I say, grabbing the earlier abandoned paper towels. “At least I hope it’s apple juice.”
Mom sighs and rubs her eyes. “What else happened while I was gone?”
You don’t want to know.
Later, I haul the Scotch pine and the boxes of decorations into the house, and as we decorate the tree together, I fill her in anyway.
I can’t sleep. Even though the volume is fairly low, I can still hear the TV in my parents’ room. And then there’s another noise, like Dad is fumbling around for something on his bedside table. It’s always this way. I don’t know how Mom gets any sleep.
It’s been two days since Dad had his last MRI, since his neurologist confirmed what we all suspected—the cancer is out of control. Dad pushed for more chemo, more radiation, bone-rattling, anything. When the doctor told him no, he’d gotten irate, and when Mom tried to calm him down, he’d turned on her. She called me at school, and Ms. Lincoln sent me home early. Aunt Whitney and Aunt Olivia were already here, crying with Dad in his room, assuring him they would take care of him. And Mom, she was furiously cleaning the baseboards in the kitchen.
He’s going to die at home. It’s what he wants. A hospice nurse is coming tomorrow. Aunt Whitney says they’ll do whatever they have to to keep him comfortable until the end.
I wonder if there’s a hospice for the family.
A goddammit sets my heart pounding. The clock reads two AM. I lie still and listen and piece together what happened.
Mom, yelling: “Why didn’t you wake me up?”
Dad, crying: “I’m sorry.”
Mom, more calmly: “Just stop. I’ll get it. I’ll get it. Why didn’t you ask for help?”
Dad: Incoherent.
Mom: “Oh, for God’s sake. Please. Just lie down. I’ll—”
Dad: “Leave me the fuck alone!”
Mom: Nothing.
I hear the hallway closet door open, then close, the kitchen faucet turn on, then shut off. A few minutes later the steam cleaner is roaring in their room. And then I get it—Dad has knocked over his urinal again.
When it shuts off, I get up. “I’ll put it away, Mom,” I tell her, taking the steam cleaner from her in the hallway. “Go back to bed.”
She’s on the verge of tears as she bends over to wrap the power cord around the hooks. “It’s okay, baby. I’m already up. You’ve got school tomorrow. Try to get some sleep, okay?”
I let her take the steam cleaner back from me. “I’m sorry,” I say.
She smiles wanly and shoos me back to my room.
I don’t sleep a lot, but I do sleep. In the morning it’s not my alarm that wakes me; it’s Dad clanging this infernal bell Aunt Olivia gave him to summon us when he needs something. Aunt Whitney took his power scooter away weeks ago; yesterday she put his wheelchair in the garage so he won’t attempt to use it alone. I don’t really understand why they’re trying to protect him anymore. A concussion seems like a pretty attractive alternative at this point. He’s used the bell only a couple of times, but I have a feeling that’s just changed.
When he’s still clanging it a minute later, I get up and pad into the room to see what he needs. The running shower explains why Mom didn’t heed his call.
The carpet is wet under my feet, and I’m suddenly reminded of last night. “What do you need, Dad?”
He pinches his face up when he speaks. “I need you to help me with the urinal.”
At least he asked, but I don’t want to do this. I really don’t.
He unsuccessfully tries to untangle himself from the sheet, and eventually I have to help him. With his good hand, he grips the side rail that Mom had me install a year ago, but he doesn’t have the strength to pull himself up. I grab his other arm at the elbow and help him into a sitting position. When he’s stable, I swing his legs around to the side of the bed. He’s nude under the sheet, his skin an odd color, slack, bruised, his useless left leg thinner than the other by half and completely lacking in definition. I support him, then avert my eyes as he releases the rail and positions the urinal. It takes a while for him to get started.
When he’s done, he hands the plastic container to me. He’s got the handle, so I’m forced to take it by the main body before I can make the switch. It’s warm, and the instant aversion I feel makes my skin crawl. He reaches for a tissue to catch the drip, then hands me that too. I help him back into bed, then dump the foaming urine and the tissue in my bathroom toilet, resisting the urge to gag.
I’m not remotely cut out for this kind of intimacy with my dad.
So when Mom hands me an external catheter as I’m getting ready to head out half an hour later and asks me to roll it on Dad’s shriveled penis, I just can’t. Apparently Dad made a pity call to Aunt Whitney in the middle of the night and told her what happened, so she stopped by on her way to the clinic, before I woke up, and dropped off the catheter.
“Can’t the hospice nurse do this?”
“No, she can’t. She’s not even going to be here until this afternoon.”
“Mom, please don’t ask me to do this.” I hold it back out to her.
She looks at me with a mixture of anger, frustration, and sympathy, then snatches the plastic bag out of my hand and rips it open. Tubing and something that looks like a condom with a funnel on one end spill onto the kitchen floor.
“I can’t do this anymore, Robert,” she says through clenched teeth. She kicks the catheter out into the dining room with her bare foot, then kicks it again into the living room, then again into the hallway.
“Mom.” I get out in front of her and pick up the catheter and coil the tubing. I’m pretty sure it’s no longer sterile, but I don’t think anybody much cares anymore. I hold it out to her. “I can’t do this either, Mom.”
She wipes her eyes on her robe, and I hate myself that I can’t do more to help her. She snatches the catheter from my hand and fires off a string of curses. I wince at the onslaught. Then she composes herself and heads to her room. I grab my backpack and get the hell out of there.