Excerpt: The Inheritance

We settle into an easy silence, reading the paper and listening to Dad breathing. The nurse comes in and takes his vitals. “He looks good,” she remarks. My father’s illness has taught me that good is a relative term. She means that he looks good for a man who is dying. Better than those cancer patients on the third floor. Better than the burn victims in the ICU. He looks better today than he did Monday, the day he passed out in the bath and was sent immediately back to the hospital, but worse than last Friday, when he walked the ten steps to the bathroom on his own when none of us were watching. He does not look good. His cheeks are sunken; his left eye twitches, even when he sleeps. He looks like he is dying. He looks just like Uncle Don did, those last months before he died. He looks just like I might look, forty years from now. I try not to think about it.

It’s all that I can think about.

Dad wakes up just as I’m finishing my Spanish homework. Grandad is asleep next to me, his head resting on his shoulder. My father eyes me vacantly for a moment, then moans lightly, looking away.

I offer a smile. “Hey, Dad.”

His eyes are focused somewhere over my shoulder. “You need anything?” I continue.

He looks confused. That was how it started, back when I was too young to think anything of it. He would get lost driving home. He would forget words, simple words, words he used every day. He couldn’t remember the names of the boys I was in Cub Scouts with. He knew, then, that it was only a matter of time. His mother’s illness. The one that was killing his brother. He knew it would be his curse, too.

Now, the confusion is the only thing that ever gets to me. I can handle the weakness. I will lend him a shoulder whenever he needs one; will help him into his pajamas after his morning bath without ever dwelling on the significance. The twitching, the difficulty swallowing, none of it bothers me. It’s just how it is. But when the confusion is frustrating, some days even heartbreaking. Most days, he knows that he should recognize me. The frustration is palpable. It is that moment that you are enthusiastically greeted by a childhood friend you no longer recognize, stretched over days and weeks. Except that I am not some third grade classmate. I am his son.

Beside me, Grandad stirs. “Dennis? Are you awake?”

Dad moans again. Grandad stands and approaches the bed. “You thirsty, buddy?”

My father gives a slight nod.

“I’ll get it,” I offer.

Grandad shakes his head. “I’ll do it.” He grabs the plastic cup off Dad’s bedside table and heads toward the hallway.

I stand and shuffle toward my father, smiling halfheartedly. “I got an A on my chem test. The one I told you about last week, that I thought I did so bad on? I guess I’m smarter than I thought.”

He stares at me blankly. He has no idea what I’m talking about. He has no idea who I am.

“Addie’s cooking tonight, so I have to leave soon. You know how she is when people are late to dinner. But I’ll be back tomorrow, alright? Maybe you’ll be awake when I get here. I mean... I didn’t mean it like that. I know you need your sleep. I just like talking to you. And stuff.” I clear my throat awkwardly. These one-sided conversations never get any easier. “You’ll be back home soon, anyway. They say you’re doing really well. The nurse who was in here a little while ago said you looked good. That’s good, right?”

His eye twitches. For a moment it looks like he’s trying – trying to place me, trying to understand. But it’s gone as soon as it arrives. He stares vacantly ahead, his eyes not even turned in my direction.

When I was a kid, he quit his job to stay home with us. My mother was livid. She asked him what he planned to leave behind for us, for me, when he was gone. What would become of my college fund? How would we pay his hospital bills? He said he only had a couple more years left to work, anyway. That was true. He said that he had it taken care of. That wasn’t. But despite my mother’s protests, he stayed home. He was at all my Cub Scout meetings and T-ball games; he made the cake for my seventh birthday party; he taught me to ride a bike and play the piano. He clapped the loudest of anyone in the auditorium when Addie was in the chorus of the school musical. He limped his way to all of Allie’s junior high track meets, even though he sometimes forgot what he was doing there and left halfway through. He was right: within two years of quitting his job, it was obvious to us that he wouldn’t have been long for the workforce, anyway. He started leaving boiling pots of water on the stove and wandering off to take a nap. Sometimes he couldn’t tell the twins apart, even though they’d lived with us since they were six years old. His limp morphed into an exaggerated lurching, and he couldn’t walk up stairs without help. Those were the early years. We knew that worse was coming. We’d seen it before with the twins’ father, so bad he couldn’t stand to let them watch him live and sent them to stay with us. We knew it was only a matter of time until this. Until he could hardly move, couldn’t speak, was weak and absentminded and unable to eat solid food or even swallow, some days.

We knew that this was coming. We knew exactly what to expect. But that doesn’t make it any easier.

Grandad returns, carrying a cup of water. “Hey, buddy. I brought you some water.”

I retreat from Dad’s bedside and shoulder my backpack. “I’ve got to get going. I’ll see you tonight, Grandad?”

“Sure thing, champ.” He parts my father’s lips and pours a drop or two of water between them. Dad can’t swallow anymore. We’ve all learned how to coax individual droplets from a brimming glass, barely enough to moisten his lips. It’s one of many skills I wish every day I didn’t have to have.

I nod, forcing a smile. “Okay. I’ll be back tomorrow, Dad. Hopefully you can come home soon, alright? Mom is talking about hiring somebody, but we’ll see. You know how stubborn she is.”

Except he doesn’t know. He doesn’t know my mother, not right now at least, and he certainly doesn’t remember what she’s like. He would be lucky to put a name to her face if he thought about it all day. But we pretend. I do, she does, Grandad and Addie and Allie do. That he knows us. That he cares about us. That if we were in that bed, he would do the same for us.

Read my NaNovel as I write at http://the-inheritance.blogspot.com