What?
I wish I drank. I wish I was a drinker. I never cared for it though.
Are you sick? You want me to stop?
This would be a good time for it.
To start drinking.
Yes.
What’s wrong? I don’t understand what you’re talking about.
What did you think would happen today? she said.
I didn’t think much of anything would happen today.
You were right about that. It didn’t.
You sound upset.
I am upset. I’m disappointed that we don’t have anything to do with him. Anything more than this. Than what happened back there. You give me money to give him and I put it in an envelope for Christmas and he hasn’t even thought to have anything to give us in return. We see him working at the café and we follow him up to his dirty little apartment room in a dirty old house and we drink tea and we talk for five minutes, then you go outside to warm up the car and that’s it.
What did you expect?
I wanted it to be nice. I told you that. Something present there between us and our son. We’re going to lose him, she said. Don’t you know that?
We lost him a long time ago.
You lost him. I didn’t.
Dad pulled out on the highway to pass the truck ahead of them and they went around its long high length in the night and sped on faster. He looked at her. You wish I was a drinker too?
No, I wouldn’t wish that on us, she said. We have enough already.
She dozed the rest of the way, until Dad pulled up in front of the house and stopped the car. The house was all dark, Lorraine was not home yet. She was still out somewhere in town with her friends. It was almost midnight, the latest they’d been awake for a long time. They sat for a while looking at the unlighted house and then Dad shut the engine off and they went inside and fell to sleep beside each other in their familiar downstairs bedroom at the back of the house.
27
THE HOSPICE NURSE had come and gone. The same small quick efficient woman with the beautiful smile. It was late morning now on a hot July day toward the end of the month. She had arrived just after nine o’clock and Dad was back in bed when she came. He had gotten up for breakfast, had drunk his morning coffee and eaten a little piece of buttered toast, dunking it in the coffee, and afterward he had sat for an hour at the window in the living room looking out at the green lawn and the shade tree, then he had gone back to lie down in bed in the back room. The nurse had attended him there.
She checked his blood pressure and pulse and temperature and asked how he was and he said he was a little worse maybe, he couldn’t tell but felt he might be slipping faster now, and she asked about his pain, and if he was taking the medication regularly, and he said it was all right, he could live with it, and again she told him he didn’t have to just live with it but could have relief, and he looked away and said he knew that, he understood that, then she checked his pills, to see if he had enough, and asked was there anything else, and he said he couldn’t think of anything, but he wanted to thank her for coming and looked at Mary and Lorraine who were standing at the foot of the bed watching and listening to it all, and then the nurse leaned forward and took his hand and pressed it warmly and said she’d be back, to call her if he needed anything, anytime day or night, and then she packed up and left.
Mary and Lorraine walked her outside and stood in the shade of the silver poplar trees. How long do you think now? Lorraine asked her.
Two weeks maybe. Sometimes they surprise us. Maybe ten days.
Is there anything more we should be doing?
No, I don’t think so. He’s lucky to have such good care. A lot of people don’t. But you need to be sure to take care of yourselves too. You must know that.
We can rest later, Mary said.
Yes, the nurse said.