31

The day after a funeral service, I scrub and vacuum and put everything in order. You’d be surprised at the state of our house after the mourners leave. Already, today, I’ve had to turn off bathroom faucets, throw out scraps of toilet paper, and itemize petty thefts—missing candles, floral arrangements, whole boxes of tissues, even items from the fridge.

Pop will spend the day making follow-up phone calls and visits. He’s good at this, though it wears him out. Comforting stoics is not easy work.

We eat omelets for dinner, needing a break from elk. Our mealtime is quiet. A breather. I don’t know what tires me out more about funerals—the bursts of activity or the long periods of waiting. But sometimes it is two or three days before I recover.

Pop pours himself a drink.

“Did you ever check on Doris?” I ask as he starts to leave the room.

He slowly nods his head.

“She was asleep on the sofa when I stopped by. I didn’t want to wake her.” He swirls his drink. “She’s quite thin,” he says.

He opens his mouth as if to say more and then closes it again, always cautious when observations cross over into gossip. He starts to walk up the stairs, anxious, I think, for that first sip.

“Robert asked if you might stop over,” he says, pausing on a step. “I think he may have decided to go with my ideas for the service.”

“Really?”

“He’s feeling too many obligations right now,” he says. “You can see he’s overwhelmed.”

“Let me clean up dinner first,” I say. “Then I’ll check in with him.”

I walk casually into the kitchen and bend over in relief. He wants to talk. I’m no longer caught between him and my father. I breathe and breathe.

Once the kitchen is clean, I dress in hat, scarf, and parka.

I call upstairs, “I’m heading out, Pop.”

“You have to go to the side door.”

“Why?”

I put on my gloves.

“Front room’s so crowded with her tarps and easels,” he says, “you can’t open the door.”

Crossing the street, I raise my scarf over my face. Stray snowflakes whiz by here and there. I haven’t knocked on the Goldens’ door since my trick-or-treating days.

As I walk up the driveway, I nearly trip on chicken wire and netting that have been stacked behind the back wheel of Robert’s truck. More lay by the driver’s side. I have to watch my feet the whole way. At the side door, I knock lightly.

Robert answers. He’s wearing an undershirt and jeans. Without the jacket, he’s much thinner with unmuscular arms. He seems to have shaved in bad lighting, a strip of stubble across one cheek.

Before he can speak, Doris calls from another room. “Who’s there? Robert? Has someone come to the door?”

I try to speak quietly. “My father said you wanted to talk to me?”

“Robert, is . . . ?” There’s a spasm of coughs and heaves for breath.

“Oh, my God,” I whisper. “Is she all right?”

“Hold on, Ma,” he calls, but the coughing and wheezing continues. “Maybe you’d better come in.”

He holds the door open, the memory of our angry words between us as I step inside.

We follow the sound of his mother’s coughing.

The wooden floor is slanted, everything on a tilt, and spattered in so many colors of paint as if it’s been stepped in, sat in, and tracked about the house. We walk into the living room and the spots of paint continue to the carpet, even the arm of the couch. Doris sits at one end, wearing a green knit cap and the housedress I have seen so often.

The room feels damp, a humidifier misting in one corner. A portable oxygen tank beside the couch sounds like the machine that fills balloons at the fair. Robert props a pillow behind his mother and adjusts a tube in her nose, taking out, then reinserting the little prongs into her nostrils, smoothing the tubes that stretch from her nose and over her ears like glasses.

“There,” he says. “Wasn’t your worst.”

His mother tries to push him aside to see who has come into the room.

“Oh, it’s you, Mary,” she says in a thin voice that doesn’t sound finished with its coughing fit.

Doris leans forward, moving a cup and a bottle of hand lotion to one side of the coffee table but giving up on the pile of newspapers and random clutter.

“I’m not prepared for guests,” she says, leaning back into the couch again.

“Oh, I’m not staying,” I say.

“Nonsense,” she says. “Sit. Sit here.”

I step over slippers and a magazine to reach the couch. I sit down at the far end. The fabric is sticky.

Up close, the woman I’m used to seeing through the window has a gray tint to her skin, a rattle in her breath. Her milky eyes look unusually large against such a thin face. There seems to be so little of her beneath all that fabric. But there is a charm to the paint splattered on her housedress and how her face is wiped clean of makeup the way I would see her in my workroom: honest, like the dead.

“I’m sorry for the mess,” she says, seeing my fingers pick at the fabric. “I’m sloppy with my acrylics.”

Finished paint-by-numbers, some still wet, lean against the baseboard.

“It’s like an art gallery in here,” I say.

Her smile is tentative, as if trying to decide if I’m giving a compliment or criticism.

“Would anyone like some tea?” she asks.

“Oh, no, thank you,” I say.

“Ma, no. That’s too much trouble.”

But she gets up anyway, slowly, using the handle of a little cart that holds a canister of oxygen. She takes it with her to the kitchen.

“Mind if I make a fire?” Robert calls to her.

“Yes, do that,” she says.

Her steps are so tiny it takes a long time for her to cross the room.

Robert crouches before the fireplace, arranging logs into a teepee.

“Mary,” he says. “I’m sorry about . . .” He lowers his voice. “I shouldn’t have spoken to you like that.”

He jabs at the fire.

“I want to focus on the time I have left with my ma,” he says, “I just get frustrated when anything gets in the way of that. This isn’t an excuse for my temper.”

I can feel the tension ease in my jaw.

“You’ve changed your mind?” I ask. “You want to use my father’s ideas?”

“No,” he says. “I’d rather come up with ideas that mean something to me. But of all the people here, I shouldn’t have lashed out at you.”

The fire, only smoking until now, ignites and Robert warms his hands. His hair is a mess. How can he not want to press it flat with his hand?

“I’m nearly finished with the questions,” he says. “And enjoying them too. They’ve really helped open things up between me and my ma. She’s told me stories I’d never heard, and we’ve been playing music together the last few days. She’s trying to decide on her favorite.”

“Really?” I ask as the kettle whistles in the other room. “You’re listening to music together?”

“I bought her a CD in Agate the other day. I only thought of it because of a question on the form you gave me.”

We turn toward the noise of Doris struggling with a tray, cups and spoons and a sugar bowl clinking. She holds it so low it looks like it might hit her knees.

“Oh, Ma, that’s more than you needed to do.”

He hurries to take the tray from her.

“That’s too much to carry,” he says. “And what did you do? Leave your oxygen in the kitchen?”

“I’m all right,” she says, but seems relieved to let go of the tray.

Robert looks for a clean space to set it down, and I notice that so much tea has sloshed from the cups, they’re mostly empty.

“This is the problem with trying to take care of my mother,” he says, catching my eye. “She still insists on doing all the caretaking.”

I look at Robert, both of us bruised and glad for each other’s company. He puts a hand on his mother’s back to guide her. “Sit in this chair, Ma. I don’t want you too close to the fire.” As he retrieves the oxygen cart and gets his mother settled in again, I reach for a cup.

“This one’s mostly full,” I say, trying to make do.

Robert tries to reinsert the tubes into his mother’s nose, as she fights him. “No. I’m telling you no. I don’t need that right now.”

Her hands bat him away.

“Stop fussing over me,” she says. “We’re having tea right now.”

Robert picks up a cup that’s all but empty and sitting in a pool of liquid. Doris only now sees what has happened, and I hear “Stupid, stupid” under her breath.

“Well, that’s a relief,” Robert says. “Can I admit it?” He gives a wry smile. “I kind of prefer wine at this hour.”

Doris swats at him again. And, more upset, says, “We don’t have wine.”

“I’m going to have a look in Dad’s old work area,” he says, standing. “He used to stash bottles in the back corner.”

Once he’s gone, Doris and I sit stiff and quiet, machines gurgling, wind clawing at the house.

“I was afraid you were going to be one more person bringing over a casserole,” she says.

“A casserole?”

“People like to show up with them at the end,” she says. “I’d rather they didn’t.”

“You don’t like casseroles?”

“Other times in my life I would have enjoyed so many visitors and so much food,” she says. “But I get tired easily now. Poor Robert has to keep making excuses for me.”

“I can leave if you’re tired,” I say.

“No. Stay,” she says. “I suspect you’re here to help Robert make arrangements.”

I pick a piece of lint and a stray hair from the couch, then wish I weren’t holding them.

“Don’t feel uncomfortable, dear,” she says.

She looks into my eyes and I sense her trusting me to see her at her most exposed. We acknowledge this silently and then look away. I cross my legs and clasp my fingers together in my lap.

“Look what I found under the workbench,” Robert announces as he walks in carrying two bottles with a third tucked under his arm. “Vintage by now.”

“But I don’t have a corkscrew,” Doris says.

“I have a ballpoint pen,” I say.

And Robert, laughing, says, “I have a house key.”

“Do you have a coat hanger?” I ask.

“I have a fork,” Doris says.

Robert reaches into his pocket and smiles as he pulls out a jackknife.

“I’ll have it open in two minutes,” he says.

But Doris has passed me a pair of scissors, and we are already working on the other bottle. It’s become a race with cork crumbling into our laps and onto the carpet.

“You’re going to beat him,” Doris says to me.

It feels good—carving, gouging, pounding. I hold up the bottle I’ve been working on and call out, “First!”

Robert laughs at the crumbled cork in my lap. He collects three wineglasses from a china cabinet, blows dust out of them, and pours for each of us.

“A toast,” he says.

He raises his glass, stuck for words.

“To good company,” Doris says.

The room fills with relieved smiles as glasses clink. Mine has a good bit of cork in it.

“Well now,” Robert says. “I didn’t have high hopes for this wine but it’s quite good.”

“A man reveals his heart,” Doris says, “by where he spends his money.”

Robert, hearing the lack of strength in her voice, steps beside her and attaches the oxygen. This time she doesn’t fight.

The fire has faded to an orange glow and Doris stares into it, gloomy, hypnotized.

“I wish,” she says and stops, oxygen buzzing.

“What do you wish?” I ask.

She takes a long sip and shakes her head.

“Tell us, Ma.”

“It’s not possible,” she says. “It’s just . . . I’d like to be with both of my boys one last time.”

She covers her face with her thin hand, the veins blue and raised.

I think of Doris posing with her dead child and her living child. I wonder now if the story was true and there was actually a photo taken. My fingers pick at the painted fabric.

“I’m just babbling,” she says. “Don’t pay any attention to me.”

She finishes her glass and holds it out for a refill. Robert opens the bottle he’d been working on with his jackknife and pours another round for each of us.

“It’s snowing,” I say, pointing my glass to the window.

My tongue feels thick, relaxed. Doris spits some cork into a napkin, and we both laugh.

“Want me to get the fire going again?” Robert says softly to his mother.

“That would be nice, Robbie,” she says.

I smile at the name.

“I think I better use the ladies’ room,” Doris says, removing the nose piece. She takes her time standing, takes slow steps.

Robert goes outside to get more wood, and I rise to watch snow settle on the cottonwoods planted close to the house, and farther out, on machinery, barbed wire, and the grain elevator.

When Robert returns, he stands in the doorway, cheeks red and wet, snow clinging to his curls.

I turn toward him. “I know the West Coast has the ocean,” I say, “but I’ll bet not many places do snow better than Petroleum.”

Robert puts another log on the fire and sorts out the kindling until the flames catch.

“There’s a lot I missed about this place,” he says. “The big sky, nighttime dark enough for stars, wild animals grazing right outside your door, only the sound of wind at night.” He pauses, gives a sad smile. “Wind and oxygen machines.”

He finds a pillow from a nearby chair and makes a seat for himself on the floor.

“When I was away,” he says. “I could see how much of the town was in me. I like to eat in quiet. I like to take long walks and not know where I’m going. I’m forever searching the ground for fossils and plants. Forever searching the horizon for movement.”

He removes his boots, then his socks, placing them near the heat to dry. Once the fire’s burning bright again, he stretches his legs. There are dark hairs on the tops of his toes, and I think, What a terribly intimate thing that I know how they look. I’ve seen a lot of bare feet but, lately, not many with blood running through them.

“You’re smiling,” he says. “Why?”

“I’m not smiling.”

Now he smiles, too. Fire glows against the dark walls.

“Hey, do you think I should check on your mom?”

“Yeah,” he says. “If you don’t mind.”