Dean Durning hovered anxiously as John, Mike, Robin, and Katie made quick work of clearing out room 116, hours after returning Rose home following their supper club send-off for Larry. The harried administrator knew he was unlikely to see the old building brought down during his tenure, but at least its final resident had taken his leave. By dawn, it would be left to the rats and raccoons.
The family divvied up the memorabilia on the shelves. Most of it went to John’s living room, where new images and maybe new memories would surround Rose as she settled in with John and Robin.
Mike took the framed newspaper story about his band. John took the Lucite block commemorating the move into the new hospital. The brothers squabbled over the Donald Duck figurine, until Katie emitted a girlish giggle at holding it.
Soon there was nothing left but the hospital bed and the rotting boxes of medical records that John never returned to the gymnasium after he pieced together the Vicky Farragut story. Durning nudged a box with his foot and watched it crumble, the air filling with mold and dust.
“Jesus,” Durning said, clearing his throat as it clouded menacingly around him. “This stuff could kill you.”
John heard this with his ears, and then felt it punch him in the gut, and then staggered beneath its weight as the possibility announced itself:
It appeared that John might have killed his father.
The internal retelling of the tale would agitate and enthrall John’s mind for the rest of his life. If, as it surely appeared, it had been his digging through the hospital’s rotted files that ended his father’s endless life, that would be okay. Poetic, really. And funny, kind of. If you were willing to go there.
These mad rationalizations would come in time; in the moment, what John might have done to his father ricocheted against the insides of his skull as the others left him behind.
The last to leave room 116, he forced himself to tamp down this new information just long enough to properly acknowledge the pure, uncomplicated silence he was leaving behind.
Then he closed the door, and thought it all over.