“Judy,” he says sharply. He turns to her in his wheelchair, and the napkin tucked into his shirt falls to his lap. “You don’t let me do anything.” His eyes flash like they used to when he’d catch me sneaking out of bed at night. The anger would pass quickly, and he’d let me watch TV with him, or he’d tuck me back in with his big yellow flashlight. I wish the monsters I have now were more like the ones that dissolved in his light. “You don’t let me do anything at all,” he repeats.
“What?” My mom pauses with the salad bowl in her hands. “Of course I let you do things.”
“Then let me have it.”
He reaches his hands out and looks down at them as if he’s just noticed how they shake. It’s not a caffeine shake or a muscle-exhaustion shake; it’s a violent trembling by a brain with no regard for how a hand needs to function. He continues to stare at them, and I wonder what he’s telling his brain to get them to steady themselves. I wonder if he sounds angry or sad or patient.
“I’m already holding it,” my mom is saying. “I’ll just give it to Cham myself, since I’m here.”
“No,” my dad says firmly.
“You know what,” I pipe up, reaching for the bread basket placed neutrally to my left. “I don’t really want salad. Spring mix is kind of a hoax. No offense, Mom.”
Relief washes over her face, and she sets it down quickly on the tablecloth. A tomato gets jostled around, but otherwise order is restored. She’s placing her plaid napkin on her lap when my dad clears his throat.
“Please pass me the salad, then.” His hands are shaking more the longer he holds them out.
As my mom extends the bowl to him, I keep thinking about that elephant in the room. Either we are hunting it, or it is hunting us, and I don’t know how long we can coexist.
“Thank you,” he says when the bowl finishes its journey across the table. His knuckles are white and it wobbles a bit. Just when I realize I haven’t been breathing, it settles into his palms. “There,” he says. “Now, did you want this, Cham?”
“Yeah, sure,” I say carefully. “Maybe if I just—”
The bowl slips from his fingers and falls onto the ceramic dish, sending salad and glass and blue pieces over the table and floor.
“Dammit!” he yells, pushing back from the table. “Dammit,” he says again, and his voice breaks. I bite my lip until I taste blood, and the iron nauseates me. He throws his napkin at the table and it catches the edge, then falls to the floor.
“Get me out of this chair, get me out of this sweater.” He rocks back and forth, but the wheelchair is locked and doesn’t budge. “I want to get out of everything. I’m sick of being sick and what it does to you girls, I can’t take care of you, I’m useless and a burden and—”
He’s crying. I’ve never seen my dad cry. His face has new formations. It loosens a rock and triggers an avalanche of sadness in me. Don’t cry, don’t cry, don’t cry. My mom jumps up to help him with his sweater and knocks her chair over. Her face freezes in a wince.
“Don’t help me!” my dad hollers, squirming away from her hands, which are reaching toward his shoulders. “I’m fine, I’m fine. Just let me get to my room.”
He struggles to undo the brakes on the wheelchair, then pushes back, but nothing happens. “It’s caught on the rug,” he says, looking down at the red and navy-blue designs. “Dammit, will you help me with this—”
My mom is already kneeling on the ground as he rocks back and forth in the chair, never finishing his sentence. Maybe he was going to end it with rug or chair, or maybe he didn’t intend to finish it at all. Maybe the things we need the most help with can’t be articulated, because to say them would give them more power than they already have over us.
“Can I do something, Dad?” I push my chair back and walk toward him tentatively as my mom pushes his chair from behind.
He shakes his head and looks down at his shoes. They’re brown with Velcro straps because last year was the last year of shoelaces. “I’m fine, I’m sorry to—I mean, I’m sorry, I’m just sorry.”
“Don’t be sorry. It’s okay. Salad is a stupid food anyway.” I open the sliding door for them. The hallway is peaceful except for the rubber wheels dragging over the wooden floorboards. My mom pushes the bedroom door open. “Give us a minute,” she says.
Back in the dining room with a garbage bag from under the sink, I pick glass and lettuce off the floor. Just a few more months until I can get out of here.
The doorbell rings and I walk toward the front door quickly, relieved that one of the health aides is here to get my dad ready for bed. It used to be weird having all these strangers in our house, back when it first became too much for my mom to take care of him and work full-time. Now my dad likes the company, and it’s good for all of us to have someone to act like everything is okay, even though it’s not actually okay.
I click the latch open, and my heart falls from a very tall building in my body. Brendan’s grinning on my doorstep.
Like the doorstep of my house.
6
Days ’til prom: Still 83
I SHIFT BACK AND FORTH UNDER THE PORCH LIGHT, WHICH IS threatening to give me second-degree burns. “Uh, what are you doing here?” I ask Brendan.
“Oh, sorry, Cham, I must have the wrong house. I’m a Beth Israel volun-cheer.” He sets his container of hot drinks down on the porch and checks his phone.
“Well, good luck finding—”
“Nope, this is the right one.” He picks up the drinks with a little tap dance that sloshes cocoa out the holes in the lids.
“You must be the volunteer with the hospital,” my mom says, coming up behind me. “I’m sorry, I forgot you were coming today. Come on in. My husband’s just getting to his room.”
I close the door behind Brendan. My chest is full of horses. They’re trampling me in their race to keep these people and places separate. Brendan comes from the world of things happening, and this is the world of things I can’t believe are happening. And yet here he is, holding out his hot drinks, and it’s their steam that’s crossing over first, from that world into this.
Dear Universe,
Wanted: A giant claw to come down and pluck Brendan from my house because he is an intruder from my other world, and home is my other other world, which is only safe for me, my family, and carpenter ants, which are like family, given that they eat all our food.
As we walk down the hall, my anger toward my mom rises. “I go to school with Brendan,” I hiss, as if she hired him specifically to embarrass me. Seeing as you can’t hire a volunteer, you probably can’t fire one either. She shoots me a death look.
“Remind me about this program, Brendan,” my mom calls over her shoulder.
“It’s just to follow up with anyone who’s had major surgery in the last year,” he says, no singing, thank god. “Your husband had his knee done a few months ago?”
“Yeah,” my mom says. “He hates hospitals, but we got him there for that.”