each note, Jo-Jo grows more distressed and is soon wailing.
And Patrick looks downright angry. He’s agitated and throwing his arms around and drops his recorder. Then suddenly he leaps up and tries to cover my mouth with his hand. His fine motor skills are rather deficient and he misses my mouth altogether, but succeeds in smacking me in the eye and knocking my contact off center.
“Bah.”
“Patrick!” Ms. Momin darts out from behind Jo-Jo and grabs his flailing arms and settles him back in his chair.
“Are you okay, Robert?”
I think I may have a corneal abrasion, but otherwise, I’m okay. I excuse myself and go to the bathroom to reset my contact. When I return, Patrick is sulking. I take my seat.
Ms. Momin smiles down at me and shrugs. “They don’t much like change,” she says.
Got that. I survey my charges. “All right, guys. I have a great idea. How about we play ‘Mary Had a Little Lamb’?”
Patrick beams. It takes him a couple of tries, but he finally manages to get his mouthpiece in his mouth and grins with self-satisfaction.
Ms. Momin helps Sophie. Jo-Jo is gripping his recorder and sniffling and rocking back and forth. I lift his arms so the mouthpiece fits in his mouth. It’s like moving a toy robot. His arms will stay exactly where I put them until one of us moves them again.
“On three. Ready?” I smile to myself. Ready enough. “One. Two. Three.”
The racket that comes from the recorders sounds nothing like “Mary Had a Little Lamb.” It doesn’t matter. I ratchet up my own volume so they hear the tune and believe in their own performance.
We play the song maybe a dozen times, and I congratulate them after each one. And after each one, Patrick stands and spazzes because he’s happy, the kind of happy that is so pure and simple it breaks your heart, the kind of happy I don’t think I’ve ever known, or at least can remember. Sophie still stares off into the distance, but she played. I could hear her play, and that’s something of a triumph in itself. Jo-Jo is laughing now. It’s truly one of the sweetest sounds I’ve ever heard, and I can’t help but smile back at him.
Sometimes it’s hard to say good-bye when the session ends. Today, it’s especially so.
I step in it when I get home, although I’m not exactly sure what it is. At first it looks like apple juice pooled in the grout grooves between the kitchen floor tiles, but it could just as easily be pee. I don’t really want to know. I pull some paper towels from the roll as I scan the rest of the kitchen—a soggy waffle with one bite out of it crowning a pile of dishes in the sink, a carton of milk warming on the kitchen counter next to an open jar of peanut butter with a knife sticking out of it, the refrigerator door standing open.
I close the refrigerator door, and I’m just about to wipe up the floor when Noah darts through the living room toward me. “Wobert!” he squeaks in a voice I know means he’s a little freaked out. “Aunt Whitney needs help.” He grabs my hand and tugs me toward my parents’ bedroom. I drop the paper towels on the counter, and with a feeling of dread, follow Noah.
Franny, who at twelve is the oldest of my cousins, presses herself white-faced against the wall as we pass her in the hallway, and I fear what new horror awaits me. At the foot of the bed, the huddled twins—Matthew and Mark—look up at me with tear-filled but hopeful eyes.
“Robert, is that you?” Aunt Whitney calls from the bathroom.
There’s something about a crisis in a bathroom that screams, You don’t want to be a part of this. As it turns out, it’s not as bad as I feared. Dad is sitting on the shower floor and leaning against a plastic chair seat, his forehead cradled in the crook of his arm, his eyes closed. A towel is draped across his lap.
“Where have you been?” Aunt Whitney demands.
“You okay, Dad?”
“He slipped off his shower chair,” my aunt says, stepping into the stall with Dad and gripping him around his bare shoulders. “Get this chair out, then I need you to help me lift him.”
“Where’s Mom?”
She rounds on me with a suddenness that makes me flinch. “I don’t know where your mom is. But she’s damn sure not here where she’s supposed to be. Your dad’s been on this shower floor for twenty minutes.”
I seethe at the unfairness in her words as I brace myself against the far shower wall and lift the chair over her head and Dad’s. She has no right to dump on Mom. Mom’s the one who has taken care of Dad all these years—drove him everywhere he wanted to go when the seizures robbed him of his ability to drive, sat with him during endless rounds of doctors’ visits and MRIs, filled his prescriptions. She’s the one who supported the family because he couldn’t, who paid the bills and took care of the house and me because he wouldn’t. She’s been the glue holding this family together, but not once have I heard any of them thank her or defend her. It’s like she’s the hired help.
“Where have you been?” Dad repeats in a pained voice.
And sometimes I feel like the bastard son. I set the chair in a corner, out of the way. I can tell from the pinched look on his face that his head is really hurting.
“I had to make up a test and then I had my group.”
He scoffs. And the implication of that small exhalation is like a knife in my gut. I wrap my arms around him in a bear hug and heave him to his feet. He’s nearly two hundred pounds of dead weight. He’s weak, but once I get him upright, he manages to support himself just a little on his one good leg. Aunt Whitney takes one side and I take the other, and together we half drag him back to the bedroom.
I’m keenly aware that his towel is not traveling with us, and I’m angry all over again—this time at Aunt Whitney for not protecting his privacy, at Aunt Olivia for dumping her four kids here and disappearing, and at Dad for not dying with more dignity.
I’m not being fair. I know that.
“Where’s Aunt Olivia?” I ask as we settle Dad down on the bed. Aunt Whitney lifts his legs onto the mattress.
“She’s on call. She had to run to the hospital. One of her tonsillectomy patients blew out his scabs and had to go back into surgery.”
“If she’s on call, why didn’t she just leave her kids home with Uncle Thomas?”
“You know what,” she says, snapping her head up. “Your aunt Olivia and I are giving up our evenings to take care of your dad because you and your mom are just too busy with your own lives to do what’s right. So I don’t want to hear about it. Okay?”
I’m speechless.
The four-year-olds have jumped up on the other side of the bed and are giggling, while Franny leans against the footboard, intently studying anatomy.
Dad groans and shifts.
Aunt Whitney finally shoos the kids away and pulls the sheet up. “Hand me that oxygen tube,” she says.
I want to defend myself and my mom, I want to walk away, I want to pretend like this isn’t my life.
