with age. The old Japanese woman shuffled through the kitchen. She peered up through the dirty screen.
“Yes? May I hel-pu you?” After fifty years in Idaho she still spoke with the deliberateness of a foreigner, carefully pronouncing words, lining them up one after another, and launching them tentatively into the air.
“Hi, Momoko. It’s me, Cassie. Can I come in?”
The old woman backed away from the door and held it open.
“Yes. Plee-su.”
All the lamps in the house were off, and the shades were drawn. Cass set the basket of food on the kitchen table and yanked the cord on the roll-up blinds, letting in the cold, dim light of the morning. The plastic blinds were torn in places and patched with Scotch tape that had turned yellow and brittle. She could hear Momoko saying something in Japanese behind her. She talked to herself, always had.
Cass looked around. “Did you and Lloyd have breakfast?” she asked, hoping to see crumbs on the counter or dishes in the sink, some sign that a meal had been eaten, but the kitchen looked barren, like a dusty exhibit in a wax museum that no one visited anymore. It was the labels. Lloyd had written them out in black marker on index cards and taped them to the furniture and the various appliances. TOASTER, read one. MR. COFFEE, read another. Momoko was forgetting the names of things. Cass went to the REFRIGERATOR and took out a macaroni casserole she’d left a few days before. Some of the cheese had been picked off the top, but mostly it had not been touched. The old woman watched.
“You want to play with Yumi-chan? Maybe she is in her room. I call her.”
A bad day for Momoko, Cass thought. The woman was having more and more of them, days that dissolved backward, dragging Cass with her until she could almost believe she was six years old with pigtails and had come over to play. It was the air in the house. Smelled funny. Maybe a gas leak? No, not gas. Something unpleasant. She opened a window.
“Mrs. Fuller, didn’t you fix your supper last night?”
Momoko nodded her head. “Oh, yes, thank you very much.”
“What did you have?”
She blinked, slid her eyes from side to side behind her glasses, looking for clues. She pointed to the casserole dish in Cassie’s hands.
“I make that one. Nice whatchamacallit. Lloyd’s favorite.” She nodded.
Cass took the lid off the macaroni casserole and showed it to Momoko.
“Yes,” Momoko agreed, looking in. “Pot roast. He like it very much. He is meat-and-potatoes kinda guy.”
Cass sighed. “Good for you. I’m glad you had a nice supper. Now, how about some breakfast?”
“Okay. I go upstairs to call Yumi.”
“I don’t think Yummy’s here, Mrs. Fuller. Why don’t you go up and get Lloyd? See if he wants to come down for breakfast.”
“Okay,” said Momoko. “Then you go out and play.”
The old woman shuffled from the room. Cass poached up some eggs and heated water for coffee. She sliced the bread, annoyed with herself for forgetting to buy Wonder. The crusts of her home-baked loaves were too hard for Lloyd. She had seen him struggling one day, sucking on the crust to soften it and then mashing it between his gums. She was out of the habit of store-bought since Will had gotten her the bread machine for Christmas several years back, when potato prices were up. What she’d wanted was a new oven. What she’d really wanted was a whole new kitchen, but that was another story.
She heard Momoko upstairs, talking to her husband. He wasn’t bedridden, but he liked to take his time getting up. Mornings were difficult. It was hard for him to get downstairs, and he liked it when Cass could give him a hand.
“You’re a big, strong girl,” he joked. “Momoko’s too small. She’ll just buckle. Look! I’m afraid I’ve bent her in half already!”
“Ooooooh, he is so big man!” Momo said, slapping him. “I carry him all the time on my back! How you say? Like on back of piggy? See? He make me crooked all over!”
Sometimes the three of them could share a laugh.
“You so old man!” Momoko would scold him. “How you get so old?”
And Lloyd would smile. “How’d you get so pretty?”
Sometimes it wasn’t so bad.
“Breakfast is ready!” Cass called. “Lloyd, do you need a hand?”
She walked to the foot of the stairs in the living room and waited. The room was still and close. It was a nice room and had potential, but it would have to be entirely redone. She rubbed the shiny banister. She could still hear Momoko, muttering upstairs.
“Lloyd?” she called again.
The heavy curtains shut out the morning sun, except for a single shaft of light that shot through the gap where the fabric panels didn’t quite meet in the middle. The light touched the air, made it substantial, made it come to life with motes and particles, flying things. Maybe it was the tilt of the shaft, but Cass felt the room shift, no longer familiar. She held on to the banister. Probably just hunger, she hadn’t had her own breakfast yet. Still, there was a feeling.
The light came to rest on a dusty horsehair love seat. She had a history with that chair. The last time she’d sat there, feeling oversize, was a year ago, when she and Will signed the last of the documents that Duggin had brought over for the closing. Lloyd sat across from them, sunk deep in his ancient recliner. Momoko had brought them all coffee in stained cups, then joined them, sitting on a small, hard-backed chair, her worn flip-flops dangling a few inches from the floor.
“My colon this time,” Lloyd told the lawyer. “Cancer. Nipped it in the bud, but they took out close to a foot of the darn thing. Have to wear a contraption now.”
He paused, contemplating his breached innards, then continued, with something like pride. “Always thought my heart would kill me. Never expected this—”
He looked around for confirmation, but no one would agree, or even answer. No one would say, Yes Lloyd, it sure is funny. Or, Absolutely right, Lloyd, with a trigger heart like yours. Will was looking down at his lap. Duggin was aligning the edges of the contract of sale. Cass stroked the upholstery on the arm of the love seat. She found a hard bit lodged in the nap and worried it with her fingernail. The silence was long, until she broke it.
“You’re doing great, Lloyd,” she said, too late to be quite convincing. She’d had a run-in with cancer herself, so she could sympathize, but while she was doing great, she knew he wasn’t. Recently she had taken over helping him with his colon bags, too. His thick, hardened fingers had trouble with the snaps, and Momoko couldn’t remember how the appliances got attached.
Lloyd sighed. “Not likely I’ll ever be up to running three thousand acres again, eh, Will?”
“No, sir,” said Will, looking up. Blunt. Honest. The old man hadn’t run three thousand acres for years.
“It’s a lot of work—” Duggin said.
