The Crooked Heart of Mercy by Billie Livingston

Author:Billie Livingston
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2015-12-25T16:00:00+00:00

EIGHT

Ben

Sounds as if the days leading up to your hospitalization were spent looking after a father who didn’t do much fathering,” Lambert says.

Here he goes again with the father shit. Father this, father that. Digging in the dirt and making mud pies.

“But you kept showing up,” he says. “Must have been difficult to bite your tongue.”

Bite your tongue. Bite the dust. All your enemies with their mouths open against you. Ben’s the kind of dupe who gives them more teeth to do the job right. Even the old man, lying there toothless and diapered: perfect place to leave him. Not old Ben. He keeps showing up like a kicked dog. Circling, waiting.

Those chill pills, those antipsychotics they gave his old man, they made him seem almost human. Wrists still tied, but he was talking, not trying so hard to rip out the tubes.

Ben showed up with his dentures. Maybe the nurses could put them in and the old man would start to look human too.

“Wondered where the hell those were,” the old man said. Hard to make out when he’s all gums. “Can ’ou shash my nose?”

You scratch my nose, I’ll scratch yours. Never works out that way, does it?

Ben stared at the old man’s sunken eyes, his sunken lips. He reached past the bed rail and rubbed his father’s nose. The old man moved his head around like a cat, and looked at Ben as if he loved him.

Ben pulled back, stuck his hands in his pockets.

“Can you get these things off me?” The ties on his wrists. Fit to be tied. Even with one hand tied behind his back.

“No. I can’t.”

A nurse came to the foot of the bed. “Are you his son?” She told Ben they’d had to give the old man another unit of blood. Pressure kept dropping. Had to send him down for another scope and an MRI. “You can untie one of his hands if you want. Just make sure you tie it back up before you go. He’s fast!” She went back to the monitor at her desk.

Fast and furious. When he was a kid, Ben heard a story about Willie Nelson and what a miserable prick he was when he drank. His wife waited until he passed out one night, tied him up with the kids’ jump ropes, and then beat him black and blue. Why didn’t Miriam do that? Why don’t we do that?

He looked away. “I gotta take off.”

“My teeth?”

Who’s afraid of the big bad wolf? Ben looked at the denture container. “You want me to get the nurse?”

The old man shook his head.

Ben opened the box, took out the upper. His old man stared up with the trust of a lamb. He opened his sad mouth as if he was about to receive Communion.

Ben slipped it in, watched him try to push it in place with his tongue. The teeth flopped around his mouth. Christ. Ben untied the nearest wrist, unwound the long cotton strap.

The old man’s eyes teared up.

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