38
Don Fidencio woke up early the next day with his arms and legs wrapped around the extra pillow. Though the shades were drawn and only the bathroom light was on, he was pretty sure it was morning. There was no partitioning curtain or another old man in the room; his own bed was missing the rails that the aides raised every night and then had to come back to lower from one side each time he had to trudge over to the toilet. It wasn’t until he heard the sound of something clanging atop the stove that he finally recalled where he was. He smiled for only a second before he let go of the pillow and stuck his hand under the covers and reached for his crotch. Then he patted the mattress under him and on either side. The pillow, he remembered, had been between his legs. All of them were dry, though. In his old head he tried again to understand how it was that two accidents could still be considered accidents. He thanked God that the last one had happened away from that place, away from where they would have forced him to start wearing the diapers that the rest of them did, and from there how long would it be before they put him in a wheelchair or started spoon-feeding him at The Table Of Mutes? Since arriving there he’d seen men much younger than himself lose control of their bodies. Their eyes lost all correspondence with the person behind them, not to mention with the person in front of them. Their bowels gave way or simply shut down for good. They had to be fed once, then again because their mouths would open before they chewed the food. And he thanked God even more — lying down and not on his bare knees only because he worried about ever standing up again — that this last accident had happened someplace other than in his daughter’s house, where he would have never heard the end of it.
With much sacrifice, he sat up in bed and placed his feet on the floor. As soon as he felt the coolness of the cement, he knew that he’d forgotten to wear the padded socks his doctor had recommended. Wasn’t it enough that he could remember to brush his teeth and comb his hair and almost always pull up his zipper and that he wasn’t telling the same story over and over like the one who liked to tell everybody about his ugly finger? At least his grandfather’s story had been handed down to him and he was only trying to keep it from slipping away, though he never imagined having to retell it with so much detail. His throat still felt raw from talking so much the day before. After his brother and the girl had left, he had made up so many things he couldn’t say where the truth ended and the less-truthful parts began, so that with time it all became the same to him.
He grabbed his cigarettes and lighter off the nightstand and shuffled to the bathroom to take care of his morning business. Once he had turned around and backed up some, he pushed his boxers down past his knees and, holding on to the sink, lowered himself onto the pot. As soon as he was comfortable, he lit his first cigarette, making sure to keep his arm extended so the ashes wouldn’t fall on his underwear. What could be more pitiful than an old man spending his last days wearing underwear with burn marks on them? These were the new pair the girl had bought for him after his accident. They came with what looked like tiny alligators on them. At least that was what he thought when he first saw them — now he couldn’t tell if they were lizards. Carmen had offered to wash his clothes later today. He would have to ask her then — alligators or lizards? A man should know what he has on his underwear. For now he would say they were alligators.
From where he was sitting, he reached into the sink and tapped off the ashes. It seemed years since he had smoked indoors, much less while on the pot. Before it used to be that there was always someone watching. It was a miracle that he had been able to get out through the back gate. Or that he had been outside when his brother came around. If it had been drizzling, as it looked like it might, he would have stayed inside and waited for later. Or even that his accident in the hotel bed hadn’t been something worse like another stroke that might have landed him in the hospital and from there back in the nursing home. He realized that it was only by a miracle of God that he was so far away from that place and all those strangers. And really, how many miracles could one old man expect to have?