Falling Over Sideways

by Jordan Sonnenblick

  The doctor said, “Maybe.”

  She said, “And he’s starting to get close to saying other words in context. Isn’t that right, Claire?”

  I said, “Uh, I think so. Wait, what does that mean, exactly?”

  “You know, like when he poked you and said, ‘Portant,’ in the waiting room. He was definitely trying to tell you the news was important. Right?”

  “I think so, Mom.”

  My mother turned to the doctor and said, “So you see, he’s definitely improving, but I admit the progress is … well, it’s slower than we’d like. Are there some additional things we can do to help this process along?”

  The neurologist took off his glasses with one hand, and rubbed the bridge of his nose with the other. Crud, I thought. There’s no way that’s a positive sign.

  Next, he called the nurse back in. “Mr. Goldsmith,” he said, “would you please take a little walk down the hall with my nurse, Alison? She’s just going to see how well you are getting around.”

  Mom touched Dad’s knee and said, “It’s okay, honey. You can go with her.”

  The doctor waited until the door closed behind Dad before he spoke. “Mrs. Goldsmith, more than this cognitive piece, I am extremely concerned about your husband’s weight. He’s lost twenty-seven pounds in two months. If you can’t reverse this trend immediately, I’m afraid you aren’t going to be able to maintain your husband at home.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “I’m talking about a nursing home placement. That might be temporary or it might be permanent. But right now, your husband is literally wasting away. Now, I’m going to prescribe a medication to increase his appetite, and I am also going to write down the name of a nutritional shake I want your husband to drink every day between lunch and dinner. When you go to check out, they will call over to your husband’s primary care doctor and schedule a follow-up appointment for three days from now. This is the kind of decision we will all have to make together as a team, but you and your husband are the ones who have the most direct control over the results. You have to do whatever it takes to increase his food intake.”

  Mom and the doctor kept talking about the details, but I kind of zoned out at that point, because my father came back in. I looked at his cheekbones and his neck and his elbows. I noticed how his clothing was hanging off him loosely. I didn’t think it had always done that. He noticed me looking and smiled at me, the same smile he had always turned my way whenever I needed him.

  That was the moment I stopped being angry.

  And started being depressed.

  So the mission at home changed completely overnight, from entertaining Dad and trying to get him to talk, to Operation: Weight Gain. Every meal went from excruciatingly long to ultra-excruciatingly long. Then there were the between-meal shakes, the snacks, and Mom’s “spontaneous” nightly ice-cream parties. There were also supposed to be major changes to Dad’s exercise plans in order to build up his muscles and increase his appetite, but when I asked one night how that was all going, Mom just said, “Eat your ice cream before it melts, Claire Bear.”

  Things got so desperate on the food front that one evening, when we were all in the car on our way home from one of Dad’s appointments, Mom suddenly swerved into the parking lot of a donut shop and said, “Guess what, kids? It’s snack time!”

  Matthew, who’s the King of Schedules, said, “No, it’s not. It’s dinnertime.”

  Mom reached into the backseat, grabbed his leg, and nodded in Dad’s direction. Matthew got the hint and said, “I mean, yay! Snack time for everyone!”

  Dad looked kind of panicky at the thought of going into the shop. It had been months since all of us had been out in a public place together, plus he had to know how obvious his eating struggles were to anybody who was watching. Still, the donut place seemed like a pretty perfect choice. You didn’t even need utensils to eat a donut. All you had to do was grab and bite.

  Mom smiled a huge, fake smile, hurried around the car to Dad’s side, and said, “Let’s go, honey! This will be fun!”

  Mom practically skipped into the store, if it’s possible to skip while dragging a shuffling man. Matthew and I kind of slunk in behind them. I was praying we wouldn’t see anybody we knew.

  Mom got us a table and positioned Matthew, Dad, and me in seats. Then she went to the counter and ordered donuts and drinks. When he first caught sight of the food on the table, Dad looked pretty excited. But then he tried to grab a Boston cream donut, and his thumb squished its way right through the dough part and into the filling. This made him try to drop the donut, but it was sort of impaled on his finger. He started shaking his hand, and didn’t stop until the entire pastry flew off and landed on the floor several feet away.

  Needless to say, the situation didn’t improve. The final score of our outing was Floor 3, Dad’s Mouth 0. We were finally forced to flee in despair.

  On the way out, I noticed the strangest thing. My father almost seemed to be smiling, just the slightest little bit, as though he had intentionally sabotaged the whole adventure.

  When we weren’t out on disastrous fried-dough missions, I still kept playing the sax for my father whenever I could, and Matthew borrowed a book of Beatles songs for trumpet, so our house sounded a lot more cheerful than it actually was.

  In my downtime, all I wanted to do was lie on my bed and stare at the wall. I stopped returning texts from friends and dropped out of sight on social media. It was like, What’s the point? Everybody else would be posting pictures of their healthy, happy families going away for the weekend, or making witty comments about their fathers’ Halloween costumes, and what was I going to do—put up a selfie of me and my dad in matching drool bibs?

  Leigh Monahan would have loved that.

  At school, and even at dance, everything was just a big ball of blah. Mostly, I spent my time fighting an overwhelming urge to curl up in a ball and do nothing. Everything looked gray. All my favorite foods tasted gray. My friends were annoying without meaning to be, and my enemies—ugh. Teachers who didn’t notice my mood were awful, but teachers who did notice and tried to be extra kind to me were even worse. I almost appreciated the steady, routine terribleness of Mrs. Selinsky, because at least I knew I’d never have to pretend to be thankful to her or say, “Oh, it’s nothing, I’m fine.”

  Because I wasn’t fine. My father was starving to death, apparently, and if we didn’t keep jamming food down his throat every second, he was going to have to go live in some kind of nursing home.

  Making him eat was so sad. He clearly didn’t want to. He was so tired, and chewing took so much effort. The shakes were easier for him to swallow, but I tried a bit of one and it tasted like very slightly flavored chalk. We would all sit around the table, pretending to be excited about every morsel, as if he was some two-year-old. I kept waiting for my mom to go, “Here comes the airplane, open up the hangar!”

  When Dad had really had it, sometimes he would literally cover his mouth and whimper.

  It hurt to see my father like that. Some part of me wanted him to jump up out of his seat, roar with rage, and knock all the food off the table. At least then, he would be fighting instead of acting so helpless.

  In the middle of all this, Mom had insisted on hosting Thanksgiving. I thought she was nuts, and even Matthew argued against it, but all she said was, “Your father deserves a nice holiday meal with his family, and this will be easier on him than trying to travel.” She had a point, but still … I was expecting the worst Thanksgiving of my life. I mean, I hate turkey with a burning passion that defies all explanation every year, but I usually love the sweet potatoes with marshmallows, the stuffing, the mashed potatoes, and my all-time favorite: the green-bean casserole. Plus, there are all the desserts we have only once a year, like pumpkin pie and pumpkin roll. I usually love seeing my whole extended family, hearing what everyone is thankful for, and playing with all the little cousins all day.

  But I found myself dreading the ev
ent because, for one thing, while my dad’s mother and sister had obviously both seen him since the stroke, none of my cousins had. They lived a couple of hours away, and we hadn’t exactly been inviting people over right and left. I had a feeling some of them were going to freak out and make a scene. And then there was the stupid going-around-the-table-and-being-thankful scene. What was I supposed to say? “I’m thankful that Dad’s stroke wasn’t the fatal bleeding kind”?

  There were days when I wasn’t even sure this was better for him. He couldn’t do his work, he couldn’t do anything for his family, he couldn’t even get a meatball from his plate to his mouth. If I were being a hundred percent honest, I couldn’t really say I was thankful he was alive in this condition.

  Besides, what was the next kid going to follow that with? “I’m thankful for rainbows and unicorns! Please pass the squash-and-apple casserole”?

  The whole thing was just the setup for a nightmare, and that was before Mom put Dad’s entire dinner in the blender. What came pouring out was the most revolting glop I’d ever witnessed. You know the reindeer poop they sell at Christmastime? Well, this stuff was the Thanksgiving equivalent—turkey vomit. It featured little foamy bits of marshmallow on top, and smelled vaguely of both overcooked bird and cinnamon.

  You should have seen Dad’s face when everybody else got an overflowing plate of sliced poultry with all the trimmings, and he got a steaming mug of the liquefied version. His eyes got all squinched up, his cheeks flushed red, his teeth clenched, and his nose wrinkled up. He even clenched both fists, although the right one was admittedly not super tight. Anyway, this was the one time since September that he had been able to express his feelings perfectly without words.

  Mom didn’t make us go around and say anything. Instead, she just said, very quietly, “I’m thankful for all of you—your love, your support—and David and I are so glad that we can all gather together around a warm table, especially at this difficult time. Now, come on—eat.” I don’t know who else noticed, but for a while after that, she kept wiping her eyes when she thought nobody was looking.

  Dad had gotten pretty good at using his special fat-handled spoons, and rarely had problems eating if we were careful about what we gave him, and as long as he did everything slowly and carefully. I don’t know if it was the distraction of all the people around the table, the emotion of the holiday, or the disgustingness of his actual food, but all of a sudden, halfway through the meal, he went into a massive coughing fit.

  Matthew and Mom both patted him on the back, and Gram jumped up from her seat and scurried over to him, but he seemed to be okay after a couple of minutes, and people started talking around the table again. The main strategy was apparently to pretend this was a normal holiday dinner, so the little kids got loud and laughed too much, my aunts and uncles all pretended their misbehavior was super cute, our older cousins blabbed on and on about how miserable high school was and/or how amazing college was, and the adults discussed sensitive political topics.

  The political talk was the worst, because normally my father would have been the fiery liberal in the mix, but this year, my most right-wing uncle was all, “More guns! Less government! Yay, white people!” and Dad couldn’t challenge anything he said. I looked at Dad and tried to judge whether he understood the conversation. I noticed his eyes were squinty again, and the good side of his mouth was curled into a snarl.

  He understood enough.

  Well, at least that was a positive sign from a medical point of view, as long as he didn’t have another stroke from the frustration of listening to the extreme opposite of every view he had, without being able to say anything back.

  Then a semi-amazing thing happened. Matthew jumped in. He started hurling statistics, historical facts, and quotes from the Founding Fathers at my uncle. It was surprisingly similar to watching my father in action. Dad even reached over and patted Matthew’s arm, which made everybody laugh.

  Mom took that as her cue to break up the battle by serving dessert. But actually, I had been loving the display. Usually, I was the bigmouthed one. It was kind of sweet to see Matthew take the heat while I sat back with imaginary popcorn and watched. My first thought was Hey, Dad would have been proud. My second thought was No. Dad is proud.

  The day after Thanksgiving seemed pretty normal, or at least it was our new normal, but on Saturday morning, Dad woke up coughing. At first, we thought it was just a cold. But by Sunday night, he had a fever. On Monday morning, Mom told us she was taking him to the emergency room.

  I asked whether I could stay home from school to go with them, but she told me I should just go to school, because “there’s no use worrying” and “it might be nothing.” Meanwhile, my father was shivering uncontrollably, doubling over with coughing fits, and sweating like he had just run a marathon.

  Matthew just shrugged, said, “Okay,” and marched off to school. He’s always been the good listener in the family.

  I’m not Matthew, though. So yeah, I definitely wasn’t going to be worrying while I was in school. And I was sure my dad hacking up a lung probably wasn’t going to turn out to be anything serious. I started arguing. But Mom finally just said, “We don’t have time for this. Listen, bring your phone to school and leave it on vibrate. I promise I’ll text you updates when I can, and I’ll send one of your grandparents to get you if anything urgent is going on. Okay?”

  “But I’m not allowed to use my phone in class. I’ll get in trouble.” This was true. The teachers on my team went berserk if they saw a kid with a phone. Whipping out your phone in class was like holding up a KICK ME! sign at a karate tournament.

  “If you get in trouble, I’ll stick up for you. Now help me get your father into the car.”

  So I did. As I attached his seat belt, I whispered, “I love you, Daddy,” and kissed his forehead. It was hot and damp and tasted like salt. He moaned and his eyes rolled.

  Don’t worry, my butt, I thought.

  I checked my phone every thirty seconds all day, but of course nothing happened until the worst possible time—science class. I kept thinking I felt the vibrations, and pulling the phone out under my desk, or asking to go to the bathroom and then checking, but there was nothing. Then I would torture myself, like, If she hasn’t texted, is that a good thing or a bad thing? Maybe he’s fine, but as long as she took the day off from work, she’s getting him a haircut and some new clothes, so she just forgot to call. They’re probably just out getting some nice, soft ice cream—Dad loves soft ice cream.

  No, who am I kidding? He was wearing filthy sweats. Even if he somehow got cured on the way to the hospital, Mom would never take him out in public in sweats. Besides, lack of texts is definitely a bad sign. Mom likes giving good news, and hates messing with our school days. She’s probably sitting there right now next to Dad’s lifeless body, going, “Well, sure, he’s dead, and the kids technically have a right to know. But they can’t do anything about it right now, and I’d hate to disrupt the educational process.”xs

  So there I was, watching Mrs. Selinsky hop up and down on one foot and gesture wildly like some crazed witch doctor—which I was somewhat sure was her attempt to teach us something about the concept of gravity, somehow—and resisting the urge to slip my phone ever so slightly out of my pants pocket. That’s when all h-e-double-hockey-sticks broke loose. The PA system crackled to life, and the principal’s booming voice, which was pretty pumped-up on a normal day, practically shattered the speakers:

  ATTENTION ALL STUDENTS AND STAFF. THIS IS A LOCKDOWN. I REPEAT, THIS IS A LOCKDOWN. THIS IS NOT A DRILL. YOU WILL ALL SHELTER IN PLACE UNTIL YOU ARE GIVEN FURTHER INSTRUCTIONS BY AN ADMINISTRATOR OR EMERGENCY SERVICES PERSONNEL.

  I had been vaguely aware that something was missing from my day, and after the announcement, I knew what that something had been: raw terror. I looked around, and almost every student in the room appeared to be as panicked as I felt. Ryder’s head was twitching back and forth. He looked like a rabbit trying to watch a Ping-
Pong match. Roshni was staring at me, mouthing, What’s happening? I shrugged. Jennifer and Desi were hugging each other.

  Barf.

  The only two calm people were Regina and Leigh. Regina just sat there, cracking a big old piece of against-the-rules bubble gum. Leigh was flipping through a fashion magazine under her desk and didn’t even seem to have noticed that class had been interrupted.

  Meanwhile, Mrs. Selinsky was scrambling around the room, flipping off all the lights (which made Leigh mutter, “Hey!”), pulling down all the window shades, and locking the only door. Then she told us all to huddle together in the corner of the room against the hallway wall, farthest from the door.

  I had just scrunched down next to Roshni when my phone buzzed. I took it out as subtly as I could. The message could have been better:

  Sweetie, your father has pneumonia. The doctors think he must have inhaled some food when he had that coughing fit at Thanksgiving. He is being admitted to the intensive care unit. Grandpa just picked up Matthew and is on his way to get you right now. Then you will all come here.

  That’s when I heard the sirens. It sounded like every police car, fire truck, and ambulance in town must have been outside our school. I looked up and saw the swirling lights from lots of emergency vehicles sweeping the spaces between the windows and the shades. About a minute later, a whup-whup sound joined the general echoing chaos.

  “Holy cow,” Ryder said. “That’s gotta be a police helicopter.”

  All I could think was, That’s what my mom gets for her stupid optimism. She had been wrong about everything. My dad wasn’t okay. Somebody was disrupting the crap out of my educational process. And I had a feeling my grandpa wasn’t going to be taking me anywhere.

  Mrs. Selinsky’s next step was to reorganize our squatting positions so that we were with our lab groups. Because moving us all around in the dark made a lot of sense. Also because, you know, in a potential bomb, mass shooting, or hostage situation, that was definitely going to increase our chances of survival. I could picture it. Mrs. Selinsky, heroic teacher, would be interviewed on the seven o’clock news, and the reporter would ask, “How did you stay so calm during the crisis?”