Three by Annemarie Monahan

Author:Annemarie Monahan
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: PM Press
Published: 2012-12-15T00:00:00+00:00

KITTY V

We’re taking shifts now. At first we swarmed the ICU— Mom, Faith and Ron, my family, endless cousins towing parents and kids. Dad hasn’t spoken since the ambulance ride, and hasn’t opened his eyes since Tuesday. He’s not doing well, but since he stabilized enough to be in a regular room, it’s been Faith, Mom or me, one sentinel by the bed.

Mom has the fierce, fixed look of a dog dragging her wounded mate. She tends to Dad from midnight to noon, as if her will could propel him through a fresh day. She sleeps in a cot pulled next to him when she sleeps at all. She speaks less and less while we’re there, his silence becoming hers.

Faith stays with Dad from noon to six, the hours of brightest daylight. When she talks about his condition, she forces a chirpy, upbeat tone, sparkly as a costume diamond. It’s not if he goes home, it’s when. It’s not what he would want, it’s how he has to think about it.

I take over at six, through the gold of the day to midnight. Except for hello and goodbye, I don’t say much to my father. I watch the light. I watch the reach and grip of the sun loosen from his body, every evening the shadows sharper. Am I numb? Am I caught in crisis mode? I haven’t cried at all. I just sit, a stone parting the stream of the night.

Saturday, two weeks after the stroke, I meet Faith for an early lunch near the hospital. I let her complain about how hard it is to find a good goldsmith before I get down to business.

“You know, we should talk about Mom. I’m worried about what happens when …”

She’s not listening. She’s looking over my shoulder. Jutting her jaw, she exposes the full row of her bottom teeth, and curls in her top lip. She rolls her eyes around jerkily as she gnaws the air. Her piranha act, something she’s done since we were kids.

I swivel to see a young girl staring at her from her seat. The mother has her back to us.

“Stop it, Faithie,” I giggle.

“Stop what?” She bugs her fish-eyes out at the girl, who shrieks in horror and delight. Her mother sighs and tells her to be quiet.

“Stop torturing that kid, or you’ll get sued for therapy bills.”

She shrugs. Pretending to notice the tender child-meat for the first time, she makes hungry little snapping motions.

“Moooom!” the girl screams, pointing. But when the woman turns around, Faith looks back innocently. The mother scolds the kid. A teenager at the next table is laughing, his shoulders heaving like he’s in mute pain.

“Ellie Mae!” I exclaim, “Ah told you, behave or you go raht back to the home.”

“Y’all not the boss of me, Billie Sue!”

“Faith, I’m serious,” I whisper. “We have to talk about Mom. She needs help.”

“We’re helping her now,” she says stubbornly.

“She needs more help for when …”

She glares.

“… in case,” I demur. “Nobody’s talked about what’s next.

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