It was only the memory of Luke’s hand on her thigh this morning that kept her from screaming. He didn’t think less of her, didn’t think she was terrible or even selfish. His words made what she had to do the tiniest bit easier.
Lunchtime had come and gone. Now her father was taking a nap. The hospice coordinator had arrived an hour ago; her father hadn’t been well enough to attend the meeting. They weren’t putting him in a facility, but at least he’d agreed to allowing hospice in to help. The middle-aged woman gave Bree and her mom pamphlets on the stages of dying and the support services they offered. They’d arrange for an aide to come in twice a day starting tomorrow, Sunday, to help with her father’s personal care. When the time came, they could order a hospital bed—there was enough space for it by the window in her parents’ bedroom—and any other homecare items they needed. A bed pan, IV, catheter, a tray of drugs by his bedside. Morphine for the pain.
Bree couldn’t take it in. Her father was actually dying.
Once the visit was over, Bree had made her mother a cup of tea. They sat at the table in the breakfast nook. Outside, the sky had grown dark with impending rain, but inside, the heater was pumping stuffy, hot air into the small eating area.
“Here’s what we can do, Mom. Since my commute won’t be as long, I can go into work about nine-thirty, which means we can get Father fed and everything before I go. Then I’ll leave work early, say about two-thirty.” Bree would tell Erin on Monday, but she already knew Erin and Dominic would support whatever was necessary. “You can have one of the respite care volunteers come in for a little while during the day, too.” The volunteer could help with meals or just let her mother get out of the house for a bit. “Plus I can work from here if I need to.”
Her mother wrapped her hands around the mug. “Thank you. I couldn’t do this without you,” she answered, her voice listless.
She wasn’t old, only sixty-five, yet the last few months had added years to her face. She’d stopped dyeing her hair, and it was now a harsh gray, not even a strand of her original black left. Bree had gotten her height from her mother, but now she was taller. Back stooped, shoulders slumped, her mom seemed to have lost a couple of inches, and the once vibrant blue of her eyes had been washed out of her gaze.
Bree leaned forward to cover her mother’s hands with her own. Sitting across the table reminded her of this morning with Luke, only then he’d been the one offering the comfort, she the one in need. “I’m sorry it took me so long, Mom.”
“I understand, dear.”
They’d never been close. Sometimes Bree wondered what it would be like when her father was gone. Would their relationship finally have a chance to improve?
“I know you don’t want to be here, Brianna. But I’m grateful that you’re doing it for me.”
Brianna. Her full name. Yes, her mom was in distress. God, the screws of guilt. Bree sat back, holding her own mug so her mother wouldn’t see the tension in her hands. “It’s difficult.”
“You won’t leave me alone at night, will you? I don’t want to be all alone in the dark if . . .” Her mom bit her lip. “You know, if something happens.”
Yeah, Bree knew. Her mother didn’t want to be alone when he died. For just a moment, she was pissed as hell that her father had refused to go into a hospice care facility. It would have been so much easier on everyone, him included, especially her mom, but he had said no. He could be such a selfish bastard.
“I won’t leave you alone at night.” God, what if she needed Luke? What if she had to see him or go crazy? Did the volunteers come in when you needed to see your master?
“I love you, Bree.”
She wanted to say the words, too, but her brain wouldn’t form them and her lips couldn’t say them. “We’ll get through this, Mom.”
They lapsed into their own thoughts. The house was so quiet. Usually her father was calling for this, that, or the other. He’d always been a big presence. Though not a tall man, he’d been stocky and thickly built. Older than her mother by five years, he’d made his living as a car mechanic. He’d had his own shop until a few years ago when his customer base dropped off. He’d blamed the failure on the new-fangled electronics on cars, but he wasn’t a man who easily changed his ways. That’s when he’d gone downhill, when he didn’t have his work anymore. The cancer seemed like a byproduct of his disappointment in what life had left him with. The only good thing to be said was that he’d made sure there was enough in savings for her mother to live decently once he was gone.
“Did you hear that?” her mother said, jumping to her feet, knocking her mug over, and rushing out of the breakfast nook. A milky tea stain spilled across the lacy tablecloth, but she hadn’t even noticed in her haste.
That’s how Bree had grown up, exactly like her mother, jumping whenever her father demanded something.
She wondered if she and her mom would still be jumping long after the bastard was dead.
6
BREE LAID A FEW NAPKINS OVER THE MESS, SOPPING UP THE WORST, then followed her mother down the hall. She hadn’t heard a thing, but her mom was hypersensitive. She passed the den, then her old room, the bathroom she’d used, and the spare room her mom kept for sewing. Her parents’ bedroom was at the end of the hall.
Pretty lace curtains covered the big window facing the large back garden, where the grass was green and overgrown with the recent rains. Her dollhouse stood in the corner by the back fence, though it wasn’t really a
doll
house. As a child, she’d been able to stand fully upright in it. Her father had built it for her eighth birthday. Its shingles were pink, lemon yellow scallops edging the roof and window like a gingerbread house. The bottom of the yellow siding was painted with a border of pink and red flowers, the colors still bright as if it had been touched up in the recent past. As if her father had been out there taking care of it.
Bree clenched her hands into fists and turned away from the sight. The sky had turned cloudy, casting shadows across the bedroom’s worn beige carpet. The room’s air was stale with bad breath, medicines, and the scent of a body that hadn’t been washed well.
A small wheeled canister of oxygen sat beside the bed, but her father hadn’t been using it while he was napping. He didn’t need the oxygen all the time, only when he’d exerted himself with too much activity, like now, as her mother struggled to pull him up from the queen-size mattress, straining with two hands on his arm.
“I gotta pee,” he said in a longtime smoker’s gravel, phlegm bubbling in his throat as he breathed heavily.
“I’ll help you, dear,” her mom was saying, but he batted her aside, muttering curses. “He’s not himself,” she told Bree.
Not
himself
? The lung cancer was starving his brain of oxygen, and his mind was definitely going. Last weekend when she was leaving, he’d asked her where she lived. But this, the belligerence, was
exactly
like him.
Bree went to his other side, grabbing his arm, and together, she and her mom pulled him to his feet.
“Goddamn, see what I have to put up with,” he groused, steadying himself with his hand on Bree’s forearm.
See what her
mother
had to put up with. The oxygen deprivation was like Alzheimer’s, bringing out his mean streak. What was already there got exaggerated.
“The mattress is too low,” she told her mom. “We need to have hospice bring in the hospital bed so it’s easier to get him in and out of it.”
“I don’t need no fucking hospital bed.”
Bree ignored him. “Come on, you have to walk. We can’t carry you.” She tugged gently on his arm, and with her mom steadying him on the other side, they shuffled over the carpet.
He stumbled on the rug leading into the master bathroom, and Bree almost lost her grip on him.
“Goddamn,” he said again. “I’m gonna piss myself if you don’t get me there.”
Her mother
tsked
. “You’re doing beautifully, dear, just a few more steps.”
Dear
. Bree felt an irrational anger at her mother’s tone, as if she were talking to a petulant child, not a man who had so often treated her like dirt.
The bathroom was small, but the tub was huge, taking up a good portion, and Bree ended up sidling him closer to the toilet, her mother having to step back.
“You have to unzip him, dear.”
Why do I have to do it?
Bree wondered how her mother had managed to dress him this morning, every morning. She hadn’t realized how weak he’d grown. Just last weekend, he’d still been walking under his own steam. But there was no time for guilt or blame. Or anything else. Letting him lean slightly against her body to keep him steady, she unzipped his pants, feeling queasy with the chore.
“You have to take it out, Father.”
He fumbled, and there it was. Like a worm. Swallowing back the bile that had suddenly risen in her throat, she closed her eyes to let him do his business.
“Bree” her mother shrieked, “he’s getting it all over.”
He was peeing on the bathmat, the seat, the tank, even the little row of flowered plates her mother had hung above the toilet. It was everywhere.
“Bree, you have to
hold
it.”
Please don’t make me, Daddy.
She wanted to scream at her mother. But she grabbed his shriveled penis, forced it down, held on until there were only dribbles into the toilet water.
She was going to be sick all over the floor.
“Help me zip him up, Bree.” Her mother was now close enough to shove him back in his pants, and Bree held the bottom of the zipper as her mom tugged up the tab.
“I’ll clean up the mess,” her mom said.
Then her father turned, as if suddenly he was going to move under his own power. And his foot caught. On her mother’s shoe, the bath rug, who knew? He started to go down, and Bree grabbed, pulled, but he was like a dead weight, and her mother was shouting, stumbling back herself, knocking her hip on the countertop.
Jesus, Jesus.
Bree couldn’t hold him; she just could not hold on, and they went down in a tangle of limbs, his knees cracking on the floor, Bree’s back slamming into the edge of the porcelain bathtub.
Her mother was crying. “Oh my God, oh my God.”
He was half on her legs, and Bree couldn’t move him. Was he dead? Had she killed him, letting his neck snap when he went down?
God, oh God.
She wanted to lay there and die, never get up, let it be over.
Please, please, God, I can’t do this.
Then she heard him curse. “Goddamn bitches.”
And she would not let him beat her.
“He’s okay, Mom, we’re okay. We just need to get him up.” Once he was back in the bed, she would never let him up again.
She pushed his legs off hers, got to her hands and knees.
It took fifteen minutes, her T-shirt was drenched with sweat, and her father’s breathing was labored, but they got him back into the bed.
“Have some water, dear.” Her mother bent over him, putting a straw into his mouth. He sucked like a child with a sippy cup. When he was done, she fit the oxygen tubing into his nostrils and turned on the canister. “You rest.” She patted his arm.
What about me?
Bree wanted to shout at her mother.
What about how I feel?
Her heart still pounding from the ordeal, the terror of that moment in the bathroom, she followed as her mother tiptoed out of the room.
She was so good to him, so patient. Bree didn’t know how she did it. Sometimes, she almost hated her mother for always doing everything he said. For always taking his side. For always making excuses for him.
But she couldn’t expect her mother to change now. That was the past; it was all over. Now, she was the one to blame for leaving her mom all alone with him. Her mother was simply coping the way she’d always coped, and Bree was the shitty daughter.
“I’m sorry,” Bree said in the kitchen. “I didn’t realize how bad it had gotten.” She hadn’t wanted to believe when her mother kept calling to say he was going down fast.
Her mom patted her arm just as she’d patted Bree’s father in the bedroom. “It’s all right, dear. This whole thing has been very fast. You’re right, we need the hospital bed.”
“And a bedpan. Even between us, we can’t get him to the bathroom.”
“What about a walker?” her mom suggested.
“I don’t know, the carpet could catch on it.” If he fell . . . Bree hated to think about it happening when she wasn’t there to help. “We’re safer if he doesn’t get up at all.”
Her mother squeezed her arm, sniffed away the last of her fright. “I don’t know what I would have done when he fell if you hadn’t been here.”
“I’m so sorry.” Her eyes ached, but Bree didn’t cry. “I’ll clean up the bathroom while you call hospice to order the bed.”
He was already asleep again when she went back in there. She pulled the curtains against the afternoon light, shutting out the sight of the dollhouse, too. Then she stood at his side a moment. His cheeks sunken, his eyes like big dark pools in his gaunt face. With the
shoosh
of oxygen, his breathing seemed a bit easier after the exertion in the bathroom. He’d been so strong, such a force. When he spoke, his voice had been thunder. When he slammed a fist down on the table, the house shook. When he told you to do something, you did it, right that minute.
He was a shrunken version of the man he’d once been. She wasn’t sure he even frightened her anymore.
She was more frightened of how she’d feel when he was gone if she let her mother do this all alone. It was the guilt. She’d only avoided it this long by ignoring it. After he was gone, she’d never get rid of the guilt.
There it was, staring her in the face. The old man was dying. She couldn’t ignore it, and she wasn’t such a bad person that she’d leave her mother to handle this by herself.
For a long moment, she simply hung her head, and breathed in the stale scent of him. Then she went into the bathroom to clean up the mess her father had made.