by Andrew Roe
•
A woman answered the door.
“Hi,” said Porter.
“Hello,” the woman replied, an accent he couldn’t place, her hair pulled back and piled high atop her head and held in place by a series of pins and a brightly colored headband.
Had his mother already died? Was he too late? Had someone else already moved in?
“I’m Porter,” he said, explaining, immediately wondering why he had to explain anything to a stranger—but if not to a stranger, he thought, then who else?
“Oh yes, yes, Por-ter,” the woman repeated slowly. “The other son. The other brother, Emm-ett, he told me about you. Yes, yes. You come in now, please.”
Once he was inside the small entryway, there stood his brother. Waiting. Eyes red-rimmed. Heavy stubble. Looking simultaneously pissed and relieved at seeing Porter. The same perpetual scowl he’d had as a boy and had never lost. There was no formal greeting.
The woman who’d answered the door took Porter’s jacket and disappeared down the hallway, the house dark and quiet. It was around four a.m. now. Only a few lights were on, and the rain’s volume increased, more water coming down now that he was inside. He smelled coffee. When Porter had arrived for work at The Alibi—that seemed like another day, another lifetime ago. Somewhere, he had an apartment. Somewhere, there was junk mail waiting to be opened. Somewhere, there was a life for him. He would try to get there. And by doing this, by being here now, he had a better chance. And that was something.
“She’s who hospice sent,” said Emmett. “She came right over. Margarita. She sings and hums. Ma likes it. She thinks she’s an old cousin. Didn’t know we had any Indonesian blood in the family.”
“That’s where she’s from?”
“Something like that. She’s a little hard to follow, but like I said, she’s helping Ma relax. And she’s got beads. Those religious beads.”
“Rosary beads? Did Ma get religious?”
“No, I don’t think so.”
“I bet that happens a lot, toward the end.”
“Well, this is the end. Come on. Come say hi.”
The hallway was a gauntlet. Like watching his life quickly pass before his eyes. Both walls decorated with framed photos of him and his brother, starting from when they were babies. Pictures of Emmett playing Little League, Emmett receiving an academic award; also pictures of him, Porter, perched unhappily atop an equally unhappy pony, another one as an angry teenager, defiantly gazing away from the camera, not wanting to be captured, staring off at some distant forgotten thing. In one of the pictures Emmett had braces. By the time it was Porter’s turn, there wasn’t enough money, and so he went through life with crooked teeth. Every time his tongue noted the resultant tilts and gaps, he thought of his brother.
The door to his mother’s bedroom was open. She had one of those hospital beds that went up and down and had rails. They must have installed it at some point. Porter wanted to ask Emmett about this but caught himself, because there was his mother, ancient and ruined, body stretched out like a corpse. Her eyes were closed, her mouth open, and it seemed like this was how she was going to stay, it was over, she was done, he was too late, but when he reached out and touched her hand, her eyes flashed open, life still there, and she blinked and said, “Porter, Porter. You came.”
Retractable. That was the word for the bed. When things go up and down, back and forth, one way and then the other.
“Hi, Ma.”
His energy wasn’t balanced. His energy was all over the place, fucked up and every which way, dispersed in ways he didn’t understand.
“It’s so good to see you, dear. And just in time. We have to get packed. We have to get ready.”
“Oh yeah? Where you going, Ma?”
“Montana. Or Wyoming, maybe. There’s something about those states. The wide openness, I guess. The space. I’ve been dreaming of that. I’ve always wanted to go there, to see that. Your father had a cousin there. In Montana. We always talked about visiting but never did. They have that geyser. Old Faithful. I’d like to see Old Faithful. Just stand there and watch and be amazed one last time.”
Emmett leaned over, whispered: “Margarita said this is pretty common. Talking about a trip towards the end. It’s normal. Just go with it.”
Porter turned back to his mother. She still held his hand. Her voice was slow and drugged. And the more she talked, the slower she went, and the more pained she seemed.
“Montana,” he said. “Sounds great.”
“Porter, I’ve missed you. It’s so good to see your face. You live so close by. And we never see each other. Or hardly. But now you’re here. You’re here.”
“I’m here, Ma. I’m here now.”
Then Margarita entered the room. She was in her mid-fifties mostly likely, efficient-bodied, a compact woman, bird-like in her movements, certain of her place in the world and what she needed to be doing. And what she needed to be doing was this: caring for a dying woman.
“Time for your medicine, Mrs. Schill-er. Open wide now. In it goes. Drop drop.”
His mother obeyed, and Margarita produced a dropper from her pocket and administered two quick drops of a clear liquid into his mother’s mouth.
“Five milliliters,” Margarita instructed the brothers. “Every two hour. You watch. You do it next time. Por-ter or Emm-ett. Okay?”
“Morphine,” Emmett told Porter. “It’s the only thing that helps.”
Margarita left and Porter looked at the sliding glass door that led to a small patio area where his mother kept her beloved plants and flowers. But it was dark out there. You couldn’t see anything.
“Isn’t there a light out on the patio?” asked Porter.
“It’s not working.”
“Is it the bulb?”
“No, it’s not the bulb. I already tried that. It’s the goddamn wiring or something. It’s not working.”
There was a moan: slow, deep, rising. It consumed the room. And it was not a sound that emanated from the woman who lay there now and who had given birth to them and sometimes—not often, but sometimes—let them fall asleep on the couch on Saturday nights while watching old movies; no, it came from someone, somewhere else. And it kept going, the moan. They paused until it passed. Then they paused some more. It was hard not to marvel at the otherworldly quality of the moan. Porter had never heard anything like it before.
“I thought you said she wanted to see her plants,” said Porter.
“She does, Porter. It’s all she’s been talking about. Until you got here. Here she is dying and all she cares about is her goddamned plants. But I got enough going on with the morphine and Margarita and the Neptune Society. Besides, it’ll be light soon. Not all that much longer.”
“Wait. I’ve got an idea.”
Porter walked to the kitchen, rummaged around in several drawers until he located what he was looking for: flashlights. There were three total. He took them and some masking tape, too. Back in the bedroom, he opened the sliding glass door and got to work. He taped two of the flashlights to the arms of a patio chair, set the third one on the seat. Then he angled the chair toward the plants and turned them all on. It worked. The patio was lit up enough to see what was out there.
“Is she awake?” he asked his brother when he was back inside.
“She’s in and out. It’s kind of hard to tell.”
“Ma, you awake or asleep?”
“Awake,” she said, opening her eyes.
“You can see your plants now.”
They helped her sit up a bit more so she could see.
“Is that better, Ma?”
“Yes. Thank you.”
He wondered: Could one positive act erase everything that had come before? Did it really work that way? No. Probably not. But it was a start. And sometimes it was just the right thing to do. Simple as that. Not symbolic. Not a sign. Not anything except what it was: kindness.
“And not just for the patio,” his mother said. “But for coming.
”
“I’m sorry. I should’ve come sooner.”
“You’re here now.”
She meant this. The words were true. They were a comfort.
“Just rest, Ma. Just enjoy your plants. You can see them now. You don’t have to do anything else.”
“There’s some new bulbs. My tulips. I hadn’t noticed.”
Then she drifted off again, eyes closing, body seeping further into the bed.
“Why don’t you get something to eat, Emmett. Take a shower. Whatever. Take a break. I’ll sit with her.”
“You sure?”
“I’m sure.”
Porter settled into the chair by his mother’s bed. The room was the same as it had been for years: simple, orderly, hardly a trace of the person who slept there. The walls mostly bare, the furniture brown and grandma-ish, a lone turquoise jewelry box that held little jewelry. There wasn’t much for Porter to do except stare at the plants on the patio. Sleep would come at some point, but not yet. He thought of the woman at The Alibi, dancing to the Stones song, and then he thought of someone else. All that bursting greenery out there because of his mother’s meticulous care, because of all the rain, all the cloud-filled days and nights here in Humboldt, this forgotten top half of California, this gloom-hearted weather that allowed everything to thrive.
The shower was now going in the hallway bathroom. His brother. Dishes stacking, cutlery clanking—that would be Margarita—in the kitchen. It was a tiny house. It had always been a tiny house. No sound a secret, no grudge ever completely hidden.
He sat and watched his mother sleep and thought of how he didn’t know the names of any of the plants and flowers on the patio—maybe some ferns or something, but that was about it—and he also thought of how this small, shitty little thing, this minor lapse, not knowing the names, was as substantial as any of the larger failures in his life. The shitty little things added up. They meant something individually but also when taken in full. The next time his mother woke he would ask her to tell him the names, to recite them multiple times. They would say the names together. Repeat them like a chant or prayer. He would make the effort to remember and retain, and this, then, would be carried on, the names, passed down, from her to him, from mother to son, the names he would remember for all the years ahead, all the open, unknown time during which he would make up for everything in the past. He’d been awake almost twenty-four hours straight now.
Then he dozed for a while, he couldn’t be sure how long, and when he awoke it was starting to get light, the day taking hold, and his mother was awake, too.
“I need more medicine,” she said.
“I’ll get Margarita.”
“I want you to do it.”
He went and got the morphine. Emmett was snoring away on the couch in the living room, Margarita at the kitchen table, reading her Bible.
“Two quick drops,” she reminded him. “Drop drop. And tell her to swallow. Sometimes they forget. Swallow is very important.”
By the time he got back to the room his mother’s eyes were closed again. She was asleep.
“Ma? I’ve got the medicine.”
She opened her mouth without opening her eyes, and Porter carefully administered the drug. Drop drop. Just like Margarita said. He watched his mother swallow, sigh. Then she wanted water, so he picked up the glass on her nightstand and put the plastic straw to her lips—lips so wasted and dry that he thought she’d take a long, thirst-quenching gulp, but all she could manage was a quick, one-second sip and she was done.
“Is that better?” he asked.
“Yes. Thank you. There’s still pain but it’s less pain with the medicine. Thank you.”
Porter returned to the chair, not sure of what to do or say next.
“Do you want to talk?”
“No, not now,” she said. “It hurts to talk. Everything hurts.”
Outside on the patio: more growing gray light, birds fluttering and chirping, a view of the overgrown lawn and the back fence and the neighbor’s roof and chimney. His mother had lived here for decades and soon she would not be here. Someone else would be in this same spot, looking out this sliding glass door, seeing the same things. This was fact. This was inevitable. But still, it didn’t seem possible.
“But you can talk. Just keep talking. That would be nice. I’ll listen.”
“Just keep talking?”
“Yes.”
“Like what? Anything?”
“Yes. Anything. I just want to hear your voice.”
So Porter leaned back in the chair and thought of what he could say and then started talking, hoping that it would be enough.
STALLING
My son, six, is practicing dying. It’s something he’s started doing at bedtime, part of the nightly wind-down routine, when I read him books and he stalls because he doesn’t want to go to sleep yet. So he pretends he’s dying.
Lately I’ve been telling him about my father, who died two months before he was born. And along with telling him about my father, his grandfather, there have been the usual tricky questions about death: What happens to our bodies when we die? Where do we go? Do we know we’re dead? Is it just like sleeping?
“Watch,” he instructs me, gently lying himself down in his bed and flattening his arms against his sides, like a body in a coffin. “No, wait—now. Watch me now. See if you can see me breathing.”
He holds his breath for as long as he can, about fifteen seconds, though it seems longer, his chest remaining flat and still, and he looks dead, enough so that it makes me hold my breath. Then his breathing returns in one big exhale and he coughs and it’s over and he’s asking more questions, stalling:
“What was I like when I was a baby?”
“What were you like when you were a baby, Daddy?”
“What was Mommy like when she was a baby?”
“What was Grandpa Ron like?”
I answer the questions. The last one is hard, though, even after all these years. I tell my son that his grandfather loved him very much, that he liked tennis, that he was funny and liked to joke, and that we’re all very sad he’s not here.
“We’re sad?” my son asks.
“Yeah, we’re sad,” I tell him. “But it’s okay to be sad. We just miss him.”
He rolls over on his side, like he might finally be ready to sleep.
“I miss him, too,” he says.
He breathes and closes his eyes. I hold my breath again. He doesn’t move.
ROUGH
Anna told Aaron that she liked it kind of rough. They were walking back to his apartment, mildly drunk, shuddering against the streaming San Francisco fog and cold. He wasn’t sure what that meant exactly, “kind of rough,” but he didn’t want to disrupt the flow of the potentially epic evening (so far so good) with stupid questions that would reveal his staggeringly sedate suburban roots and quasi-conservative leanings, which he still felt vaguely embarrassed about even after having lived in the famously liberal city—The City—for close to seven years now. That’s what they called it here, The City, capital “T,” capital “C,” as in “I’ve been living in The City for close to seven years now,” as if there was only one city and where else would you live?
As it turned out, though, whether or not Aaron was sexually qualified in the rough department didn’t really matter. After a poorly executed elevator kiss (his initial overture got ear and hair instead of lips), and after opening a bottle of Kahlúa (the only alcoholic beverage he could forage in the kitchen—it was either that or NyQuil) and engaging in some subsequent sofa groping and minimalist dialogue right before (Should I?…There…How’s that?…Maybe if…Okay, good…Wait…), he came in like five seconds and then it was over.
“So much for rough,” he said, going for levity, because at that point what else could he do? And then because she didn’t say anything back right away he added, “It’s been a while.”
“Me too,” she said.
•
Aaron’s brother gav
e the toast at the wedding. He was in A.A. so he didn’t raise a glass of champagne. He raised a glass of water instead. The speech incorporated all the standard themes and conventions of the limited genre—the use of humor and embarrassment mixed, ultimately, when it came time for the 150 or so guests to uniformly hoist their glasses upward and wish the happy couple the best, with sincerity; covering Aaron’s nontraumatic childhood, his bumbling yet endearing adolescence and teenage years, his partying college days (and here Aaron’s brother inserted a cautionary note about the perils of excessive drinking, offering himself as an example), and his eventual relocation to The City, except Aaron’s brother, being a lifelong Midwesterner, made the faux pas of saying the actual name; and then bringing in Anna, what a great girl she was, and how she made such a great addition to the whole curmudgeonly Cahill clan, and of course ending with the final thought of how now there was one family instead of two, etc.
Everyone agreed that the wedding was a major success (although, granted, the D.J. ignored Aaron and Anna’s emphatic request not to play “Y.M.C.A.”). Guests mingled easily, naturally; trays carrying wine and hors d’oeuvres kept appearing just when more food and drink were needed, as if on cue; time slowed to a tranquil, celebratory hum; and the outside world temporarily receded away like a spent wave returning to the ocean. And there was one point during the reception when Anna looked across the room and there was Aaron talking to a pregnant cousin of his and then he turned and their eyes met at just the right time and it was one of those totally clichéd yet very real cinematic moments (complete with orchestral soundtrack building in the background, or so it seemed to their mutual internal stereo system) where everything falls into place and you know you’re doing the right thing and that people are meant for each other and no, we’re not all essentially alone, and yes, a life can in fact be shared, truly, wholly, deeply.
Why do we say what we say, do what we do? Can reason and motive and certainty ever be completely confirmed? How does love begin? How does it end? Does it end at all? What, if anything, lasts? This was the babbling brook of thoughts and questions that flowed through her on the cab ride home, still dark, The City still asleep, but the night just about ready to expire, to become something else, the sky slowly lightening.