Everything Happens Today (5 page)

“Mom's ringing.” Nora's voice was normal, serene, a little impatient even, as if she had long since recovered her equanimity and had only been waiting for the right moment to break the silence.

“I didn't hear anything.”

“She's ringing. It's your turn.”

“Okay, let me get dressed and tell her I'll be there in a minute.”

Nora, relieved of duty, scampered from the room and bounced heavily down the stairs. Wes knew, among all his countless weaknesses, that he mustn't cry in front of Nora, or really be anything to her but the strong, optimistic big brother. What he really needed to be was the man of the house, competent and involved, forging on, a brave pioneer armored in fortitude and resilience, most especially for Nora's sake, since who was left to take care of her but him? What kind of a childhood was it for her? Wes, at least, had a handful of happy memories to fall back on. Nora had had to be the strong one, the cheerleader; fortunately she seemed to have the right stuff for it, but still it wasn't fair to her. After some jag of self-pity or weariness, Wes always felt renewed and capable, determined to relieve Nora of her burden, but it never lasted very long, and soon he'd be back in his room, hiding out among his books, and Nora would be left rattling around in that decaying old house, preternaturally silent, to play computer games, videochat and do her homework alone in the dining room that no one used anymore. This time, Wes told himself as he climbed into last night's jeans and a clean T-shirt, he would do it, and do it right: he would let Nora do her homework in his room when she asked; he would help her with her math and science; let her read a story to him out loud instead of making her feel like a baby; make sure she always had clean clothes to wear to school; not make fun of her for talking too loud and too fast and losing her train of thought in mid-sentence; accompany her on her walk to school sometimes; have a serious talk with dad about the need to be a more conscientious parent to his preteen daughter. Barefoot, Wes padded across the hall to splash some water on his face in the bathroom. Staring at himself in the mirror, trying on a smile that only made his pale blue eyes look watery and weak, Wes thought that even if he couldn't be strong enough to be a good person, he really might have it in him to be a better brother. As he looked at himself, he suddenly thought of Lucy and how horrified she would be to see how he lived, even for five minutes, and as he pictured that pretty face of hers distorted in disgust and incomprehension, with its Mustique tan and ski-jump nose and thick, dark scimitar eyebrows, he felt a mild twinge of triumph, as if he already were the good brother he aspired to be. She probably wouldn't even like Nora.

Wes dried his face and went downstairs and stood before the door to his mother's room, its surface creamy and rippled with generations of white gloss enamel. He hesitated only a moment before rapping gently and pushing inwards, the door whispering benignly against the thick burgundy pile.

He stood in the doorway, allowing his eyes to adjust to the dark, mitigated by the wan glow of the television. The new flat-screen LCD emitted a light far less lurid than that of the old cathode tube, but it was also less bright, and Wes had not yet accustomed himself to the change. It was an improvement, he thought, and the room now felt more like an aquarium for tropical fish than a laboratory in a science fiction movie, but he doubted that his mother, with her fading eyesight, had any great appreciation for the difference. The pervasive aroma of urine, buttered toast and topical antiseptic remained unchanged, and would do so as long as the windows, blinds and drapes sealed the room from the outside world. The natural reaction of anyone entering his mother's room for the first time would be to throw it all open to the light and air, but Wes no longer even raised the issue with her. The light hurt her eyes, and the fresh air brought on uncontrolled trembling, even when it was warm. This was her natural habitat now, and it was for visitors to adapt or inure themselves to it, as Wes and Nora had. Wes lifted his nose for any hint of pus or necrosis in the air, but the bedsores seemed to have healed since she had recovered limited mobility after the last attack.

“Hi, mom. How you feeling?”

“Wes? Come over here, honey.”

Wes crossed the room to the side of the bed, which was adjusted to raise her upper body for ease of viewing. The bedclothes were neat and folded at the top, which Nora must have done earlier, and her arms lay on top of them at her side, sleeved in the thin cheap cotton print of a hospital gown. Her head was nestled in a cradle of newly plumped pillows, hair so thin and colorless now that the white of the pillow cases showed through it. Wes propped himself at the edge of the bed, which was so high he was almost on tiptoes, and leaned in for a closer look.

“How are you feeling?”

“I'm just dandy.” Her voice was whistling and reedy, as if she had to push it through a rattan sieve to get it out; still, it was quite a bit stronger than it had been a month earlier, and no longer slurred. “How are you, honey?”

Wes was never quite sure what she meant when she asked him this. Sometimes, she was genuinely alert to what he had to say; more often, it was just the disease talking through her, as if she were a ventriloquist's dummy, and what she was really saying was “Just pretend everything will be alright.” Usually these days, Wes was reluctant to test her, but now he let a note of equivocation creep into his voice.

“I'm okay mom.”

“What is it, honey?”

“Oh mom, I don't know. I . . . ”

“Only I'm a little hungry. Can you bring me some pudding?”

“Didn't Nora already make you breakfast?”

“No she did not, the little beast.”

“She didn't make you breakfast?”

“Wes, do I have to tell you? She didn't make me breakfast, damn it.”

“Okay, okay, keep yer panties on. I'll take care of it. Can I turn the light on for a minute?”

“It hurts my eyes.”

“Just for a minute. You can close them. I want to check your skin.”

“Go ahead.”

Wes stood up and turned to the bedside lamp and walked straight into the support strut of his mother's electric lifter. It didn't hurt but Wes swore at the machine under his breath. It was a kind of swing set straddling the bed, but instead of swings it had a nylon sling, like the kind that are lowered from helicopters in rescue operations. In theory, Wes's mother could roll to the side, position the sling beneath her buttocks, press a button and rise and slide to her wheelchair besides the bed. The idea was to make her feel independent, but in fact she found it almost impossible to position the sling properly beneath her and hadn't used it for months. Wes and Nora had tried playing on it when she was in the hospital, but it had been less than fun. It was only kept around in anticipation of the day when she could no longer walk herself to the bathroom at all, even when assisted by one of her children, and that was why Wes hated it with its gunmetal finish and bright yellow warning labels ringed in orange. The insurance rep had told them, sitting around the dining room table, that it was cheaper to leave it there than to dismantle and remove it, only to have to reinstall it six months later.

Wes switched on the lamp and returned to his mother's side. Her face could be a little frightening to look at under its corona of colorless wisps, but Wes rarely noticed because it had been such a gradual decline. He had only the vaguest mem­ories of her as a healthy woman—a beach somewhere, where she had leaned back against her elbow and he could see her eyes smiling behind her sunglasses; some walks to school, with singing and hand-holding; a bright office in midtown, where she designed book jackets on enormous computer monitors and taught him how to use the software to make digital collages. He seemed to remember that she'd been gregarious, that she'd worn colorful scarves on her head, knotted at the nape, that she cried watching
E.T.
That she had played show tunes on the upright downstairs. It was odd how little he remembered, given that the earliest symptoms of illness had not manifested themselves until Wes was seven or eight; he supposed his mind must have packed all those memories away somewhere. It was as if she had always been sick. Nobody ever talked about her getting better or anything like that. It was only on the rare occasion when he joined Nora in her intense scrutinies of the family photo albums, the only evidence that their mother had ever been anything but a diminished invalid, that the damage stood out in stark contrast. Deeply sunken eyes the color of aged porcelain rhimed with red, grey lips collapsed upon themselves, restless liverish tongue always licking and seeking—Wes noted it all briefly with alarm, then allowed it to fade from consciousness. Now, under the lamplight, his only interest was in the color of her skin. The optic neuritis that had recently attacked her one good eye had been treated with massive doses of steroids, which had dyed her skin yellow. It was still as dry and transparent as tracing paper, but it seemed to have purged itself of most of the toxins, although it was hard to tell in this light. Wes kissed her on the cheek, switched off the lamp and leaned back against the raised segment of the mattress.

She was watching “The Joy of Painting,” and Wes sat beside her and watched for a few minutes. This obsession with “The Joy of Painting” had all started out as something of a family joke when Wes had come home from school one day to find Nora transfixed. For a while, they had made it a family tradition, poking fun at Bob Ross's afro and his obsession with woodland creatures and his catchphrases. They'd gone around saying “It's your world” and “beat the devil out of it,” and Wes had even begun calling Nora his “happy little cloud.” But then one day, after she'd taken to bed for good, his mother had explicitly asked Wes to find “Joy of Painting” on cable for her, and he'd tivo'd it, but by that point the show was only on once a week so he'd offered to find her some DVDs. In the end, though, it didn't make a difference as she didn't seem to mind watching the same limited number of episodes over and over again. She was often agitated, and it wasn't always clear what she was agitated about, or even if she could see the television clearly, but there was something about Bob Ross's gentle, monotonous diction that soothed her. Now it was just about the only thing she ever watched, along with “Gossip Girl,” about which she was almost as passionate as Nora. As a matter of fact, Wes himself was fascinated by Bob Ross and had even considered basing the protagonist of his first novel on him, although he was worried about lawsuits and might not take the risk.

As he sat beside his mother watching Bob Ross patch together a vile Alaskan wilderness, Wes thought of the thousands of bland, cheerful housewives and retirees in their converted garage studios across the country, following Ross's every move with their own fan brushes and alizarin crimsons, and he thought of his mother's imprisonment in this room and her declining health. He was convinced that she would never have watched Bob Ross if she was healthy. It seemed so totally unfair, but then could you ever really say that one person was worth more than another, or that the people who painted along with Bob Ross were making better use of the comfort he offered than someone who lay in bed all day and watched the same 12-year-old rerun over and over again? Wes thought of that game children play with each other, maybe when they're six or seven and first become aware of mortality and the ethical dimension of decision-making. “If someone comes with a gun and says he'll kill your mother or your sister, who would you choose?” It was never about who you loved more; in fact, there was always a right answer. If the choice was between saving your mother or your sister, you saved your sister because she was younger and had more to live for; if the choice was between your mother or your sister and your dog, you saved the dog, because it was innocent and blameless, although a few forward-thinking kids saved the sister because it was a sign of mature selflessness to sacrifice your dog for a lesser, though human life. Wes had never really understood the pleasure of the game, because the real mystery, which you were supposed to ignore, was how this situation was supposed to have arisen. Wes was always distracted by the question of what kind of circumstances could drive a person to offer you such an option. Why would it ever be necessary for anyone to have to kill either your sister or your dog, and even if it were, why would they offer the choice to a six-year-old child? These side issues always spoiled whatever was supposed to be fun about the game, both for Wes and the other kid. Wes supposed that, like playing with dolls or in competitive games, children instinctively grasp the need to rehearse in safety the only dimly understood decisions they see their elders make, but it wasn't until very recently, when it seemed as if his mother had finally gone into terminal decline, that he had seen the relevance of such preparations to his own life. That held even more true for Nora. Mother or brother? Mother or dog? It was even a game you could play by yourself, if there was no one else around to play it with.

It was, by all evidence, a game adults played among themselves, too. Wes had hazy memories of the house once having been lively with visitors, boozy dinner parties that ran late and rose muffled to his room through the floorboards and the pillow, but the visitors had gradually stopped coming by when she could no longer walk and became moody and withdrawn. At first, Wes had assumed that they had stopped coming because they were not real friends and she was no longer any fun to be around, but then he understood that she was the one who had sent them away. Was it because she was ashamed of what she had become, or too prideful to let others see her in this condition, or perhaps even that she had never much cared for them to begin with and had seized on her aggravated infirmity as an opportunity to let them drop? After a while, it didn't matter very much anymore. When it had become too difficult for her to negotiate the stairs to the second floor, they had considered installing an electric chair-lift, but that wouldn't have solved the problem of the stoop and her wheelchair, especially in the winter, so it had been decided to relocate her to the garden floor, where at least she had some access to the outdoors. When the weather was fine, a few friends of long standing would occasionally drop by to sit with her in the dappled shade and light her cigarettes. But she hadn't been kind or patient with them and they had gradually stopped coming. And it had become apparent by then, too, that Wes's father was secretly—and then not so secretly—resentful of having had to give up his study with the French doors to accommodate his wife's illness. One summer's evening, as he and Wes had sat on the wrought-iron dining room balcony overlooking the backyard, directly above the wide-open French doors, he nursed his third scotch and complained bitterly of how restricted his private life had grown, between work and parenting and insurance claims, that the only place he had left to call his own, where he could retreat and write and
just think
, had been his room on the garden, and now that was gone too, and then he had compared himself to Shakespeare's sister and reacted very peevishly when Wes had immediately recognized the allusion. And then he had moved out altogether for a while—Wes had almost forgotten that part—and didn't come home until it was clear that she would be bedridden for good. When he moved back in, she had returned to her bedroom on the second floor, where she had remained ever since, excepting hospitalizations, and his father had converted the garden study into an apartment, where he now slept and wrote and fucked his students.