Robin’s mother, Edie, was having another surgery in a week. Same procedure, different leg. Everyone kept saying, At least we know what to expect. Robin and her downstairs neighbor, Daniel, were toasting the leg at the bar across the street from their apartment building. It was cold out. January in Chicago. Robin had worn five layers just to walk across the street. Daniel was already drunk by the time she got there. Her mother was getting cut open twice in one year. Cheers.
The bar was a no-name, no-shame, no-nothing kind of place. Robin had a hard time giving directions to it. There was a fluorescent Old Style sign in the sole window, but no number on the front door. Between 242 and 246 is what she would say, although for some reason that confused people. But not Daniel. He knew the way.
“Here’s to number two,” said Daniel. He raised his glass. He was drinking the brown stuff. Usually he drank the yellow stuff or the amber stuff, but it was winter. “Is it the right or the left leg?”
“You know, I can’t even remember. I think I’ve blocked it out. Isn’t that terrible? Am I a terrible person?” All of it had been a surprise, though it shouldn’t have been. Her mother refused to eat properly or exercise, and in the last decade she had grown obese. Two years ago, she had been diagnosed with diabetes. It was an advanced case. The diabetes, combined with a disastrous gene pool, had led to an arterial disease in her legs. What had started out as tingling had turned to constant pain. Robin had seen her mother’s legs in the hospital, after the first surgery, and had gagged at their blue tinge. How had her mother not noticed? Or her father? How had this slipped through the cracks? The doctor had inserted a small metal tube—a stent—into her leg, so that the blood could flow properly. (Robin wondered: where did the blood go, if it did not flow?) Originally the doctor had wanted to do a bypass, an idea that threatened everyone. He still did, according to Robin’s brother, Benny. “This could get serious fast,” he had told her. “We’ve been warned.” But Edie had negotiated with the doctor. She promised to behave herself. She promised to do the work to get herself right. Thirty-five years as a lawyer, she knew how to put up a fight. Six months later Edie had changed nothing in her life, taken not one step to help herself, and here they all were again.
“It’s not that I don’t care,” said Robin. “It’s just that I don’t want to know.” She knew too much already. This was real life, kicking her in the face, and she wanted nothing to do with it.
Last weekend she had gone home to check on the madness, back to the suburb where she had grown up and then evacuated thirteen years earlier, hoping never to return, but finding herself there all too much these days. Her mother had picked her up in front of the train station, and then driven around the corner and parked in front of a movie theater. It was late afternoon; there had been a half day at the school where Robin taught. (She’d had fantasies about what she would do with that free afternoon: a long run along the lake during the warmest part of the day, or an early bender with Daniel. But it was not to be.) Senior citizens walked out of the matinee as if in slow motion. A few stay-at-home moms dragged their toddlers toward the parking lot across the street. Robin almost hurled herself out of the car after them. Take me with you.
“There’s something I need to tell you before we go home,” her mother had said, heavy breath, hulking beneath her fur coat, no flesh visible except for her putty-colored face, her drooping chin, her thick-ringed neck. “Your father has left me. He’s had enough.”
“This is a joke,” said Robin.
“This is for real,” said her mother. “He’s flown the coop, and he’s not coming back.”
What a weird way to put it, Robin realized later. As if her father were being held like some house pet, trapped in a cage lined with shit-stained newspaper. Her feelings for her father swerved wildly in that moment. Her mother was tough. The situation was tough. He had taken the coward’s way out, but Robin had never begrudged people their cowardice; it was simply a choice to be made. Still, she hated herself for thinking like that. This was her mother, and she was sick, and she needed help. Thrown up against her admittedly fragile moral code, Robin knew that there was an obvious judgment to be made. His decision was despicable. Her train of thought would never be uttered out loud, only the final resolution: Her father would not be forgiven. She had not liked him much before this happened, though she had loved him, and it did not take much to push her over the edge toward something close to hatred, or at the least the dissolution of love.
Her mother was sobbing. She touched her mother’s hand. She put her hand on her mother’s shoulder. Edie was shaking, and her lips were blue. One step from death, thought Robin. But she was no doctor.
“I should have treated him better,” said her mother.