Arriving on the hospital’s ground floor, Kyle wheeled Ruth out of the elevator, navigating the crowded lobby to the foyer, while Abe was tasked with lugging Ruth’s walker. Though it weighed very little, the apparatus was cumbersome. It might have been easier to simply utilize the damn contrivance as it was intended instead of dragging it clumsily through the throng, clipping shins and elbows at every turn, but Abe’s pride would not allow it.
“You wait with Mom,” said Kyle when they reached the outer entrance. “I’ll go back round to the garage and pull up in front of the sliding doors.”
Abe was doing his stubborn best to begrudge the fact that Kyle was there upon Anne’s insistence to accompany them through the transition. The truth was, though, it was a relief to have Kyle on hand for the discharge, and especially for what promised to be a harrowing drive through downtown to the terminal.
Abe stood behind Ruth like a sentry as they looked out at the steady traffic on Pine.
“You comfortable?” he asked her.
“A lil chilly,” she said.
Indeed, every time the sliding doors opened and closed, an arctic wind rushed into the vestibule. Abe stooped to rearrange her lap blanket so that it covered her arms as far as the elbows.
“Ank ou,” she said, her speech still muddled by the ravages of the surgery that had taken half her tongue.
A few minutes later, Kyle pulled up, jumped out of the driver’s seat, and circled the Bronco, leaving it to idle at the curb. Wheeling Ruth as close as he could to the vehicle, he set the brakes on the wheelchair and opened the rear passenger door. Snow was falling again, wet flakes filtering down from above like bits of tissue, dissolving on contact. The pewter sky crowding down on them promised more flurries to come.
“Okay, Dad, together, now,” said Kyle.
One on either side of her, they clutched Ruth under the arms and carefully hoisted her out of the chair, guiding her into the back seat. Awkward though the transfer was, it wasn’t hard; Ruth was light as a feather pillow.
“Easy peasy,” said Kyle, who opened the rear hatch and stowed the walker. “Hop in, Dad.”
But instead of the front passenger seat, Abe followed him around the rear of the car to the driver’s side.
“I’ll sit in back with your mother,” he said.
Though barely noon, it might have been dusk it was so dim, particularly in the back of the Bronco amidst the black leather interior. In silence, they traversed the hill in fits and starts, missing nearly every light. Clutching Ruth’s liver-spotted hand, Abe could hardly bear to look at her, still unaccustomed to what now passed as her jaw. It wasn’t like it sounded, though. It was less the loss of any physical beauty that unnerved Abe and more the loss of vitality: the deliberateness of her every movement, as though it might break her; the new fear draped like a veil over her eyes; the dissipation of her very presence. Ruthie would always maintain her beauty, no deformity could compromise that, but he was unprepared to see her diminished in such a capacity. To witness her confined to a hospital bed after her surgery was one thing, but how would it be back at the farm, in her own kitchen, her own bed?
“Looks like we’re missing the twelve twenty-five,” said Kyle, stalled in traffic at Third and Madison. “You okay back there, Ma?”
“Fine, dear.”
They remained in the vehicle for the ferry crossing, mostly in silence. It was after two by the time they arrived at the farm, and the snow had turned to rain. The familiar sight of the place was an immediate salve to Ruth’s beleaguered spirit, a sight she’d thought she might never see again: the grass field once mowed to stubble now knee-high; the overgrown orchard, now punctuated with dozens of tiny volunteers; the pond, protected from ice beneath its thick blanket of algae; the dilapidated barn somehow still standing, its truss folding in on itself. And the old farmhouse itself, badly in need of a new coat of white paint, the wood of the blue shutters gone punky from the relentless assault of moisture, yet, in its way, the domicile more formidable than ever in its decrepitude, like a squat old prairie woman brandishing a rifle.
The driveway was a muddy morass; thus, Kyle hefted his mother out of the back seat in spite of her protests and conveyed her in the manner of a newlywed up the steps to the landing as Abe fumbled with the keys at the front door.
God, but it was good to be home in that old house. Gripping her walker, Ruth paused in the foyer to breathe in the familiar scent of the place, the slightly camphorous odor of old cedar mixed with dog hair and dust, and from the kitchen, halfway across the house, still the faint remnants of fifty thousand meals prepared.
As ever, the hallway was drafty as Ruth inched her way toward the bedroom, Abe and Kyle trailing nervously behind in case she faltered.
“How’s the leg?” said Abe.
“Fine,” Ruth lied.
In reality, the limb seared and pulsated deep beneath the muscle, in the spot occupied by what was left of her tibia. Ruth wasn’t even sure she could make it to the bedroom.
“You sure?” said Kyle.
“Positive,” she snapped, immediately ashamed of her irritability.
When she finally arrived at the foot of the bed, exhausted from the effort, she yearned only to climb under the covers, but her full bladder harassed her.
“I need to use the lavatory,” she announced.
Oh, but Ruth abhorred the new normal, this dependency on others to execute the simplest of bodily functions.
Kyle took her by the elbow as though to lead her to the bathroom before Abe intervened.
“I’ll handle this,” said Abe.
And thus began Ruth’s care at the tender if less-than-expert hands of her husband, who’d changed but a handful of diapers in his life, bandaged five or six scraped knees, and could barely survive a common cold himself. For seven decades, Ruth had cared for Abe, ministered to his ailments, from his aching lumbar to his plantar fasciitis, from his tension headaches to his gallstones, from his peptic ulcer to his bruised ego, and now the tables were turned, and Ruth didn’t like it one bit.
Over the course of the next forty-eight hours, Abe would assist her to the toilet on at least a dozen occasions without incident, including several times in the middle of the night. Snapping on the bedside lamp, he would circle to her side of the bed, position the walker, then stand by drowsily just outside the bathroom doorway as she endured the runs. Ignoring the malodor as he lifted her off the toilet seat, Abe disposed of her soiled pad, heavy with moisture, then fumbled to extract its replacement from the package and secure it around her waist before finally helping her up with her drawers. He shepherded her to the sink on the strength of his elbow as she washed her hands one at a time. Delivering her to her walker outside the doorway, he followed her back to bed, only to repeat the sequence two hours later.
By day, Abe served her applesauce and probiotic yogurt, pureed yams, pureed beets, pureed lentils, rice and black beans, pureed cheer, and encouragement, and affirmation, as Ruth drank the food down, dabbing her own chin after every bite. Abe assisted her on and off the mattress, where she spent the majority of her hours. Two or three times a day, he persuaded her to leave the darkened confines of the bedroom at the back of the house, coaxing her to the kitchen or the living room to watch TV, even to the front porch in the rain just so she could look out upon the sodden farm. Ruth complied mostly for Abe’s sake, for every one of these activities left her exhausted. At once grateful for and humiliated by the constant care and attention, at times Ruth missed the solitude of her hospital room. Somehow it was easier to heal alone, to lick one’s wounds in isolation, than beneath the watchful eyes of a worried husband. Add to that Kyle’s presence as reluctant arbiter, who owing to proximity was his siblings’ consensus pick to oversee the transition. Ruth found his ubiquity suffocating; he was always checking in on Ruth while she was trying to doze off, perpetually monitoring Abe’s ministrations when he wasn’t taking his father to task for various offenses, from leaving the freezer door open to spattering the kitchen window with pureed carrots. Funny how Ruth had been yearning for the companionship of her children for decades, but now that one of them was a fixture on the farm, she wished he’d go home to his own wife in Edmonds and leave Abe to care for her alone.
Indeed, if Kyle’s constant supervision was an annoyance to Ruth, it was a burden to Abe. It was like Abe was auditioning for his own job. The added pressure only seemed to undermine his ability to execute the most basic tasks.
Dad, you left the toilet seat up again!
That’s way too hot, Dad! You’re gonna burn her mouth!
You forgot to turn off the shower, you’re gonna flood this place, Dad!
The cumulative effect of Kyle’s micromanagement drove Abe beyond the edge of despair, squarely into the realm of outright indignation. The nerve of him, his own child, belittling his every effort, correcting his every little oversight or omission, mediating his every move, as if Abe, or at least Ruth, had not taught him how to tie his own shoe and wipe his own bottom. Kyle treated Abe as if he were inept, a feeble old man, incapable of caring for himself, let alone anyone else.
That’s not the way you do it.
You can’t leave her alone like that, Dad.
That’s too quick, you’re supposed to ease her up.
The constant editing and auditing and redressing finally achieved critical mass on the evening of the fifth day, when Abe snapped.
“How about you just get off my back?” he said. “Believe it or not, I don’t need your help.”
“I’m not so sure about that, Dad, no offense. Last night, you left the gas on.”
“The damn knob sticks,” said Abe.
“You could have killed us all,” he said.
“Well, I didn’t. If you want to be useful, find some 3-in-One oil in the garage and fix it.”
That evening, Kyle phoned Anne with a progress report from the living room, Abe eavesdropping as he loaded the dishwasher.
“I mean, there’s times when he seems sort of out of it, but I think he can handle it,” said Kyle. “He sure seems convinced he can do it. I’m a little worried about him driving her around, honestly. But I guess it’s only Poulsbo.”
Abe wanted so badly to grab the phone from Kyle and give Anne a piece of his own mind. The audacity. The presumption. The indignity. It seemed a cruel arrangement that one’s children, the very nurslings who once drooled on your shirt collar and threw up on your lapel, who wet the bed and crapped on the floor, those helpless lumps of adipose who depended upon you for every little comfort, nay, for their very survival, one day grew into sanctimonious, domineering, irredeemable despots, hell-bent on infantilizing you as though it were the natural order. At what point did they reckon they’d surpassed you in wisdom and experience? When was the torch passed? At sixty, at seventy, at eighty? No, there was nothing natural about this order.
The following evening, to everybody’s relief, Kyle finally consented to leave.
“You’re sure about this, Dad?” he said in the foyer, duffel in hand.
“Of course I’m sure.”
“Mom?”
“Yes.”
“Remember, Twin Pines is only seventeen miles,” he said. “It’s fully covered by Medicare. Great facilities, on-site rehab, twenty-four-hour care. You could visit Mom every—”
“Go,” said Abe.
Abe watched from the front step as Kyle climbed into the car, honking once as he pulled away. It wasn’t until Abe watched the Bronco disappear up the driveway that he released the breath it seemed he’d been holding for a week.
Following a fitful night’s sleep, Abe woke before Ruth and crept to the kitchen, where he concocted a smoothie of yogurt and greens, frozen mixed berries, and fruit juice, amending it with a powdered dietary supplement. He poured it out into a glass and brought it to her in bed, sitting patiently beside her on the edge of the mattress as she ingested it through a straw. After breakfast, Abe retreated to the kitchen, where he rinsed Ruth’s glass and placed it in the dishwasher. Returning to the bedroom, he assisted her to the toilet and sat her down before removing himself to the doorway and closing the door three-quarters of the way. It was apparent from her groaning that she was still suffering from diarrhea. When he heard the toilet flush, Abe retrieved her and helped her to her feet, where Ruth held fast to his shoulders as he replaced her soiled pad and pulled up her underwear.
Back in the bedroom, Abe helped Ruth into her jeans, now hopelessly baggy on her balsa-wood frame, the back pockets drooping halfway to the hollows of her knees. Goodness, she couldn’t have weighed ninety pounds.
“You’re gonna need a belt for these,” said Abe.
Around nine thirty, Abe pulled the Subaru up to the front porch and ever-so-deliberately guided Ruth down the steps to her walker, then lowered her into the passenger seat, clipping the cant rail with the top of her head.
“Oh, my God, I’m so sorry,” he said.
“It’s nothing,” said Ruth.
At the doctor’s office, Abe waited in the lobby, thumbing through an issue of Popular Science for the better part of an hour. How corporations helped fuel the big business of spying. Seismic sensors reveal the true intensity of explosions in Ukraine. Your car could be capturing data on your sex life. Doubtful.
When Ruth finally emerged from physical therapy, ushered down the corridor at a snail’s pace by a nurse practitioner, she was noticeably hunched and gray in the face, perhaps discouraged at her lack of progress.
“She did amazing,” said the nurse. “She’s a trooper.”
Abe could see how much Ruth abhorred the implications of such a statement, how exceeding expectations only wounded her pride, as it only served to remind her how low those expectations were.
Once they were settled in the car, Abe took Ruth’s silence as an invitation not to converse. Instead, he gripped the wheel with both hands and peered straight ahead, eyes on the road. It was stop-and-go through Poulsbo on 305 with all the signals. Abe remembered when there were no lights at all. No shopping centers or Dairy Queens, no Subways or strip malls, just the Evergreen Motel and the service station, and, later, the short-lived Mark-it Foods where they shopped but once.
Before they reached the new roundabout at Johnson Road, its very presence an offense to Abe, Ruth had already dozed off in the passenger seat. Instead of driving straight to the farm, Abe decided to buy her some clearly needed rest, thus he picked up Miller Road at West Day and drove south past the Grand Forest and Fletcher Bay to Lynwood Center, where it was shocking to see how developed the area had become: a second shopping center tastefully rendered in matching Tudor across the street from the original, kitty-corner to a trio of three-story apartment buildings. It seemed like only last year when it was just the old theater and Walt’s grocery, old Walt with his generous mustache and exorbitant prices.
Abe piloted the Subaru past the old post office, now abandoned and sagging, though the adjacent storefront was under reconstruction. Abe proceeded on Point White Drive as Ruth continued sleeping, her head canted slightly to the side, exposing the entirety of her ravaged jaw, the sunken cheek, and the long incision below the ear, running raised and pink the length of her mandible. Glancing sidelong at his wife, Abe was humbled by her strength and endurance.
All told, Abe drove for thirty-five minutes on the south end of the island, around Point White along Rich Passage, north to Crystal Springs, before turning back south and down Baker Hill to complete the loop. Finally, he began winding his way back north to the farm, where he awoke Ruth gently, leading her into the house on her walker, then straight to the bedroom without a word.
When Abe felt she was sufficiently rested, he coaxed her out of the bedroom and situated her on the sofa as he prepared her a mug of tepid beef broth. She took her nourishment again through a straw, as side by side on the sofa they watched the tail end of the six o’clock news, then half of the seven o’clock news before Ruth was once again sapped of energy.
“I can hardly keep my head up,” she said. “I’m gonna call it a night.”
Assisting her to the bathroom, Abe stood by as she gargled her disinfectant mouth rinse before he helped lower her onto the toilet seat.
Finally, he followed Ruth to the bed, standing by as she settled in beneath the covers.
“I’ve got an idea,” he said.
“Mm,” said Ruth, eyes half-closed.
Abe withdrew briefly to the dresser, where a dozen books were stacked willy-nilly, as they had been for years. Such a pile had existed in some shape or form their entire lives on the farm. Abe selected a tome at random, then joined Ruth under the covers, flipping on the bedside lamp. Lying there beside her, Abe began reading aloud from a dusty volume of John Donne.
“Well, that was uplifting,” observed Ruth drowsily.
“Was it?” said Abe.
“I was being facetious,” she said.
“Ah,” he said.
“You know,” said Ruth, “Donne was never really my cup of tea when I was younger. His tone always sounded a little stodgy to my ear.”
“I just picked it off the pile,” said Abe. “I can pick a different one.”
“No, no,” said Ruth. “Keep reading. I’m finding I like it more now. I like the metaphysical conceit, and I like the vulnerability. I never recognized it before.”
Whatever that meant. God, what a woman, though. Nearly nine decades on this earth, and still mentally limber, still willing to be open-minded, still game to reconsider ideas and opinions she once held as truths. How different from Abe, who clung to the ideas he’d always known, the ideas that had served him well as a young man, the principles that fit him like a trusty old pair of slippers.
Abe read on in the steadiest tenor he could muster, his voice dry and brittle at the edges, baffled by the mellifluous language, oblivious to most of its intent or meaning, but determined to do the poems justice for his wife’s sake. After a few more stanzas, Ruth began to snore, and Abe set the book aside, snapping off the light. For twenty minutes he lay in the darkness, trying to get his head around the meaning of the death poem and getting nowhere. Was it really as simple as heaven or hell for this Donne fellow? Finally, Abe was too exhausted to pursue the matter further. Never in his life had Abe been so thoroughly played out. Sleep fell upon him heavily, like six feet of dirt.
When Abe awoke, it was morning; dull-witted, he turned to discover Ruth’s side of the bed empty. Bolting upright dazedly, he registered Ruth’s walker upended in the bathroom doorway. Heaving himself out of bed, he nearly lost his balance as the room pitched sideways and the world spun counterclockwise. He righted himself against the dresser for an instant before he rushed to the bathroom. Arriving there, he discovered his worst fear confirmed: There lay Ruth, sprawled unconscious on the tile at the foot of the toilet, blood pooling beneath her head.