It Turns Out Like This by Coyne Stephen

Author:Coyne, Stephen [Coyne, Stephen]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: New Rivers Press
Published: 2017-11-06T00:00:00+00:00

Still Life

His mother’s rented hospital bed, huge as an altar, filled the living room, but the woman herself had gotten smaller in the last month: her head more like a skull, her hands all bone and skin. She clutched the sheet with those claws and pulled it up under her chin. Her eyes were astonishingly bright. She looked at Stu and informed him for the third time that morning that her letters were all out.

Nancy, the young woman from hospice, had tried to explain. Stu could not expect sense from his mother now that she was moving into, what Nancy called, “this new stage of her life.” The dying are already someplace else, she said, and really, that was okay. She had put a hand on Stu’s arm and looked into his eyes. It was, she said, perfectly normal.

He didn’t see why Nancy was trying to comfort him. He wasn’t the one dying. She kept touching him and saying gentle, reassuring things. He didn’t want any of that. What he wanted was his life back. His wife and daughter had moved out of the trailer a week ago to make room for Nancy, and Stu resented it. He wanted his family. He wanted his mother. But instead, everything was Nancy. Sometimes he wanted to grit his teeth and ask her who the hell she thought she was.

He bent down and kissed his mother’s sunken cheek.

She looked up at him, and her forehead wrinkled. “My window . . .” But like so much she had tried to say in the last week, the sentence had no ending.

Stu felt a hand on his back. He closed his eyes and turned from the bed to kiss his wife. She avoided his lips, though, and pulled him into a hug. When she loosened her grip, Stu leaned back expecting deep, dark eyes. But it was Nancy in his arms—her eyes cool and blue, like something you might skate on.

“Thanks,” he heard himself say. “Thank you.”

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