The Caregiver by Samuel Park

Author:Samuel Park
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Simon & Schuster

During the days after the surgery, Kathryn liked to sleep in. I forgot she lived there as I cleaned her lonely house in the mornings. The house became the body whose well-being I was responsible for; the body I wiped, bathed, and rearranged; the body I had to return to a Platonic ideal, the version unspoiled by human touch. The house, I remembered even as I tried daily to push the thought from memory, that Kathryn had said would be mine.

I also began to notice little things that had escaped my attention before. Like all the lemon and avocado trees in the backyard. Or the fact that there were hornets’ nests outside many of the windows. Once, a raccoon crossed my path and made me jumpy. There were wildflowers growing next to camellias and a single red rose I’d nicknamed Bloody Mary. Bees, beetles, spiders, fireflies, and ladybugs were abundant. All of them—they could all be mine.

Hear this silence, Kathryn liked to say, whenever I brought her breakfast or helped her walk to the backyard. No sounds of lawnmowers, voices, music. Even the knives clopped in a muted manner. The water boiled while holding its breath.

I didn’t like silence. Back home, I’d cook and hear Janete cackling on the phone, turning her conversations into performance art. There were mothers calling out to their children on the street; warnings needed to be given, heeded, ignored. When music came on, I could never tell where it came from. Even at night the symphony continued—sirens, couples arguing, the elaborate jingle announcing the start of the news shows. The noisy stretches and yawns my mother performed before going to bed.

Visitors came bearing flowers for Kathryn for many days. Being ill turned the sick person into a celebrity of sorts. Those around her wanted news, gave her attention. The sick inspire devotion, curiosity. She drew people’s thoughts like a magnet, in a manner and a fashion she never could’ve while healthy. There was a dyad: the sick person awakened the healthy person’s desire to care, in the same way that a famous person awakened a regular person’s longing for fantasy. Something primal. They came for a few minutes, or sometimes they stayed for hours, and I listened as Kathryn received them all in her bedroom, drinking hibiscus tea with them, exchanging pleasantries, Kathryn subtly apologizing for reminding them of their own mortality.

In the downtime between making and serving meals, I sat by myself in the kitchen, or took a walk in the backyard. I had never known such stillness in my body. I felt as though the house had swallowed me in its vastness. Would she really be insane enough to leave it to me after she died? Yes, I took care of her and ran the occasional errand for her and had grown fond of her, genuinely concerned about her well-being. I had committed. But I was not a relative, nor an old friend, nor a lover. When I wandered through the house, my body didn’t radiate possession the way Kathryn, or even Nelson, did.

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