When I tell him to get along on his way, he scrunches down again as if I have hit him. I turn away, head back to the house, but, turning for a parting glance, I see that he is lying on his back, paws nabbing at air. “Get along, little doggy,” I say. “Get along.” But I whisper it and hope he does not hear me.
After lunch, my mother is silent for a while, then makes her much-repeated pilgrimage to the laundry room. She washes more clothes than Prissy in Gone With the Wind. I am convinced she is taking in laundry from other neighborhoods. We are both spillers. During a brief snack time, I can turn a white button-down into a Jackson Pollock. She covertly launders her personal items. If I approach from behind as she tosses a pair of panties into our Speed Queen, she peers over her shoulder as if I have caught her disposing of a murder implement. “Do you have to follow me around all the time?” she demands. “I have some personal business in here.”
On the way to the washer, Betty pauses at the mirror in the dining room. “My hair looks awful. How did it ever get to looking like this? That girl who did this ought to be shot.” My mother’s hair life has always been complex. It isn’t just vanity; that hair is everything she can’t quite control. In the 1970s, she went to bed for days after getting a bad “frost job.” Said my father, “Well, I guess you’ll have to shave it off.” She screamed back, “You just don’t know what it’s like!”
My cell buzzes. I anticipate no good news. The Nazi hunter has been raving about a conspiracy against him at the Simon Wiesenthal Center. But no, it is American Express. In recent months, our relationship, never blissful, has entered a period of all but open warfare. They like to be paid promptly. I see the company more as a long-term financial partner. Our conversation makes me feel small in every way except size. If I save my money, I will be able to retire in Penn Station.
Yesterday I spent hours on the phone, sorting through Betty’s insurance policies, attempting to assess what would be covered if she entered an assisted living facility. I dialed cities across the plains—Omaha, Wichita, Tulsa. “Slow down,” I told them as they rattled off their explanations. “I have special needs.” There is more paperwork to sort through. Stuff that I would normally procrastinate about for decades needs doing right now. My to-do list begins with chores already done so I can cross off things right away.
. . .
Every day after lunch, Betty and I walk—down Sherwood Road to Hickory, then right on Cleveland, and then another right on McMurry, passing burned lawns and trees whose leaves are turning prematurely brown. Betty never wants to go, but once we’ve begun, she sets forth the best she can. “Just try to keep going,” I tell her. “Well what choice do I have?” she asks. “I’m not just going to lie down out here.”
Today, as we head out, I look fondly at a tree in our front yard, a big leafy oak that my father planted when we moved to this house almost forty years ago. It is dying. From its branches hang small brown balls, harbingers of a disease that, according to the yardman, is taking even the oldest, strongest oaks all over Missouri. This tree, I love. I can see my father, with his hair frizzed up, watering it with the hose during its nascent stages before giving it a good dousing with a few tossed-off shakes of Budweiser. I blame its disease on global warming.
I steer Betty out of the driveway. Looking small under the spreading branches, she stares up with a quizzical look as if she knows the tree is sick, but says nothing. Her balance is shakier and shakier, but she tries to forge ahead with no help, emitting the little grunts and groans that have become normal during these expeditions. A wad of Kleenex is stuffed into her hand. Less than halfway home, her nose always begins, inexplicably, to run. “I have to blow my nose,” she yells out. We must halt completely. Walking is hard enough without another task to handle simultaneously.
By the time we pass the house of our minister, she wants to turn back and her face has lost all color. “She’s on a cruise,” she says of the reverend. “Nobody at church can figure out where she gets the money.” Her look suggests I am involved in this.
Suddenly the dog reappears, dancing his dance, licking my hand, and moving to Betty to give her a good sniff and slurp. She grimaces, eyes him cautiously.
“Who are you?” she says. “Get out of my way. What are you doing?” Mr. Dog backs off. “Is that dog going to the toilet?” Betty demands to know. “I don’t want to see any dog going to the toilet . . . Who was that dog we had?”
“Toto.”
“What an animal!”
By the time we are heading back up our driveway, Betty is leaning on my side, tentatively, as if someone might catch her doing it and criticize. Before we reach the door she is gripping me desperately.