“So do I. But we can’t sell the house. It’s our family house.”
Daniel noticed that Molly said “we” can’t sell the house. But it was their mother’s house, not theirs. Molly spent ten days a year in the house, if that. What difference did it make to her? Daniel spent every summer there with his wife and children. He loved the house. But love and sentimentality were two different things, or they ought to be.
“It’s part of who we are,” Molly was saying. It was true she no longer spent any time there, but she thought about the house all the time. It was an anchor of some kind, an East Coast anchor. It was there, stable and firm, even if she was not.
“Why are you fetishizing this house? Mom and Dad need help, they need money to pay for the help, the house is an asset that can be liquidated. Do you want them to live in squalor so you can idealize a house you never use?”
“Children! Stop it right now.”
Molly and Daniel were quiet. They looked at her sheepishly.
“You can argue about the house after I’m dead.”
“Mom…” they both said.
“You can squabble about it then. I need peace now.”
Daniel wondered if the house was even worth anything. But it had to be worth the salary of an underpaid health-care worker.
“We just want you to hire—”
“How can I hire? I have no money! Why are you talking about real estate when your father is so sick?”
Daniel left, wanted to get home before the girls went to bed, and Molly walked with her mother back to Aaron’s room. She knew she was being selfish about the house. She did not like to think of herself as selfish.
“You know,” she said, “whatever you have to do about the house, I’m fine with it.”
Joy said, “Enough, Molly.”
“Not that you have to consult me or anything,” Molly added. “Or ask my permission.”
“I’m not selling the house with or without your permission.”
“Well, good, good. But if Daniel is right and you need money…”
“I am leaving the house to both of you. It’s all I have, and I want to leave it to my children.”
“Oh, Mommy,” Molly said, her voice tearful. She took her mother’s hand and squeezed it. “You know you don’t have to leave Daniel and me anything.”
“So you do want me to die with nothing.”
They got back to Aaron’s room just as Aaron was being hoisted from the floor beside the bed, soaked and soiled. He had lowered the bed rail. “Get off me,” he was shouting at the nurse. White, shaking, he was maneuvered back into bed by Joy and the nurse. Joy wiped him down as gently as she could, but he was a mess.
“Stop bothering me,” he kept saying. “Leave me alone, all of you.”
Joy helped the nurse attach a clean pouch. When the nurse had gone, she smoothed the sheets and poured some water, which Aaron refused to drink.
“We’ll be safer with this.” The nurse reappeared with an armful of nylon webbing. She began calmly to strap Aaron to his bed.
“What are you doing to him?” Joy cried.
“Get away from me!” Aaron said.
“Get away from him!” Molly said.
Joy lunged for the netting, trying to pull it off Aaron, but the nurse blocked her and continued with her task, saying, in the same calm way, “It’s for your safety, Aaron.”
Aaron struggled against the restraints. “Get me out of this!” His eyes rolled like a frightened horse’s. “Help! Help!”
“Nurse, please, why are you doing this? I’ll stay with him every minute, I’ll watch him, I’ll hire someone to watch him.”
“Maybe if you had arranged that earlier,” the nurse said. “But it’s too late for tonight. This is for safety, Aaron,” she said again as she wrestled him into the restraints. “Your safety.”
Aaron thrashed and scratched at the orange netting. “You!” he said, poking out a finger and aiming it at Joy. “You can’t do anything right! You can’t do anything right!”
Joy pulled her hand back from the strap she had been trying to unbuckle. The soiled towels she had used to clean him fell from her other hand to the floor.
“You can’t do anything right!” Aaron yelled again. He kept yelling: “You can’t do anything right,” his face distorted with rage. “You never do anything right! Never!”
“Aaron…”
“You did this! You did this to me! It’s your fault!! You do everything wrong! Everything!” He twisted in the netting like a huge, dying fish. His voice was hard. Spit flew from his cracked lavender lips. “You can’t do anything right,” he roared. “You can’t take care of anything.”
“Daddy, stop it. For god’s sake…”