“Hello,” Cohen’s mother says, looking away from him and back down at his father.
He can’t tell for sure who she is talking to, him or his father. He stands there, unsure what to do. He wants to turn and leave, walk out the door. He hasn’t seen her for years. Decades? Yes, decades.
But something holds him there in the doorway. He wonders what it is. He knows it’s not love that keeps him there—he feels nothing for the woman at the foot of his father’s bed, the woman with white hair, the same piercing green eyes, the same rock jaw, and the same mist of firm opinions swirling around her head like clouds around the upper reaches of the world’s highest peak. He knows if he stays he will be subjected to them, their lightning crashes, their thunderous rolling. But still he stays.
“Hi, Kaye,” he says, not knowing what else to say, and Kaye seems to take his words as a peace offering. She comes all the way from the other side of the room, all the way from where the dark night spills in through the window, all the way to him. She wraps him in her arms. He returns the hug and holds her for an extra moment, if only to give himself more time to think about what to do, how to respond to the presence of this other person.
Kaye pulls away and looks up at him.
He sighs. “I’m sorry.”
She nods, looking like she might break.
“How is he?” Cohen asks.
She nods again, her mouth twitching. She raises her hand to cover it, shaking her head back and forth.
“I talked to the doctor,” Cohen says, looking into her eyes, then away, then back at her. He thinks she might be the most beautiful thing in his life. “They want us to consider taking him off life support.”
Kaye gasps, turns, moves to their mother’s side. She covers her face with both hands and cries in absolute silence. Cohen feels strangely unmoved, and he glances at his mother to see how the news affects her, how the weeping of her daughter affects her, but she stands there stoic as ever, and he wonders if she’s even heard him.
“These places always smell the same,” his mother says in a firm voice. Cohen’s not sure if he’s ever heard her speak so quietly. Maybe this news has struck her deeper than she’s willing to show. “You’d think they could spray something that smelled better. You’d think they could make use of those plug-in air fresheners. They charge enough for everything else. A candle wouldn’t kill anyone.”
“Mother,” Cohen says, and he doesn’t know what to do with the taste of the word in his mouth, but he says it again. “Mother, what are you talking about?”
She looks at him. “I’m talking about hospitals.”
“Did you hear a word I said?”
She stares at him with that same old look, the same old manipulating confusion, as if nothing he said would ever be worth listening to so why would she start now?
“Dad is dying. They want us to take him off life support.”
She stares. Unflinching. Cohen presses the heel of his hand against the center of his forehead, as if the pressure will change everything. He closes his eyes and digs in deeper, his sinuses aching. He reaches down and pinches the bridge of his nose, the pressure soothing something far beneath the surface.
Kaye has quieted. She moves back over to the window, and he follows her, staying far back from his mother as he passes behind her.
They both stand there, looking down at the nighttime city far below them. Kaye has one hand on the glass.
“Where were you?” she asks, her voice pained. “How could you leave him here alone?”
“I had to get out.”
“Where?” Kaye asks again.
He shrugs. “The church.”
She reaches over and holds his arm. “You’ve always gone back. After Mom and I left, we tried to find a church. Here and there and everywhere.” She smiles. “Eventually we quit trying. But you, even after everything. You always went back.”
Her comment seems to find some deep mark. He nods, but it’s not meant for her or anyone else, it’s simply meant as a placeholder while he tries to figure out what that says about him. He has always gone back. It’s true. Time and again. Even after his father, a pastor, betrayed his family in the sanctuary, Cohen has always gone looking for God.
“I guess so,” he says.
“Well,” she says, “right now? Cohen, I need you here. I need you—here.”
He nods again. “Why did you bring her?” he asks without looking at Kaye.
“Mother?” she asks, as if he could be talking about someone else.
He looks at her and raises his eyebrows.
“You want to talk about that here?” she asks, her words crossing into a different place, an area of disbelief. “Maybe because they were married once upon a time.” She’s trying to whisper, but frustration or disbelief or even anger gathers momentum behind her words, edging the volume up. “Maybe because she deserves to know what’s going on. Maybe because she’s our mother.”
“She’s not my mother, not anymore, hasn’t been for a long time.”
“She’ll always be your mother. You are half her. Whether you want it or not.”
He shakes his head but doesn’t say anything. Kaye walks back toward her mother and stands at the foot of the bed beside her. Cohen looks at the object of their gaze, his father, his bald head shining, though the stubble grows. His large features. His fading.
“We had good times, the four of us,” their mother says, almost a plea to see things differently. She has never done that before. She has never pled for Cohen to see things the way she does—she always assumed everyone would come around in time.
“It’s true,” Kaye says. “It’s true.”
“Remember when he brought home that kite and added string?” their mother says, her voice incredulous, and Cohen cannot separate the amazement in her voice from the insinuation of his father’s stupidity. This is the mother he remembers. “The three of you flew it and let it out until it was just a speck.”
Kaye smiles. “I ran inside and told you to come out.”
“I didn’t want to, but you begged and pleaded. When I came out, it fell from the sky, probably killing some far-off person or animal, and the three of you went traipsing after it, through the woods, through the fields, the mud and the muck. You didn’t come back until after dark, and you all had to shower. I had to wash your manure-covered clothes.” She shakes her head at the naivete, at the innocence of trying to find lost things that have fallen that far away.
“We found it,” Cohen says, as if that is argument enough.
“Yes, you did,” she says, but her voice is not an admission that Cohen is right as much as it is a statement that finding it wasn’t even remotely close to being the point.
“Remember when Dad brought home that telescope?” Kaye says, laughing now.
Her mother frowns. “That thing cost him a week’s pay. It took us months to recover from the expense.”
“We could see the rings of Saturn,” Cohen says quietly, without emotion. “We could see details of the craters on the moon.”
“He hooked up a flat white board to the eyepiece so we could watch the eclipse. Remember how the round shadow moved across the sun?” Kaye asks enthusiastically.
“I have to use the restroom,” their mother mumbles, moving toward the door.
“He was a good father,” Cohen says.
“There’s a bathroom here in the room,” Kaye says. “You can use this one.”
“These places always smell the same,” their mother says, disregarding Kaye and walking out of the room.