The Air Mattress in Our Basement
“Fine,” Rick said. “Fine. You think that’s a punishment? I’ve slept on worse in a deer stand.”
He took his beer and he went down the thirteen steps, and he shut the door behind him.
Josh ladled himself a bowl of soup. His hand was shaking a little, I noticed. He was sixteen. It had cost him something.
“Is Grandma going to eat?” he said.
“I’ll bring her a tray.”
“I’ll bring it.”
He did. I stood in the hall and listened to him sit down on the edge of the bed and tell her about practice, about a kid from Osseo he had to wrestle on Saturday, in the same easy voice he used every night. He never said one word to her about the basement.
By the time the dishes were done, only one person in my house was sleeping down there.
I thought it would last one night. I thought he would come up Wednesday morning stiff and sheepish, and say something halfway to an apology, and I would have to decide what to do with it.
Instead he came up at five-thirty with his jaw set, showered, and left for work without speaking. Wednesday night he ate supper standing up, took a flashlight and a magazine, and went back down.
He was going to outlast us. He was going to be so uncomplaining that we would feel foolish, and I would go down and ask him to come to bed.
I did not go down.
Then it was Thursday.
Thursdays were chemo days, either the long infusion or the bloodwork and fluids in between. I had used up every hour of leave I had in January, so I could not drive her. That had been worked out weeks before, and Rick was the one who had worked it out.
He had stood up at the men’s breakfast at Our Savior’s and said his mother-in-law was staying with us through her treatment and could use rides to Eau Claire. I heard about it from three different women. Rick Brenner, taking in his wife’s mother. Wasn’t that something. He had been shaking hands over it since New Year’s.
So every Thursday at a quarter after seven, Dale and Gary pulled into our driveway in Dale’s crew cab with the heat already running.
Dale was a plumber, sixty-some, built like a chest freezer. Gary was retired from the county highway shop and brought my mother a crossword book every week. Dale came to the door, Gary stayed with the truck to keep it warm, and Rick met them in the kitchen with coffee like a man hosting.
That Thursday, Rick was not in the kitchen.
He had come up at five-thirty and gone straight back down, I think because he did not want to stand next to me at the coffee pot. I could hear him moving around below us. Josh was at the table with his cereal. My mother was sitting by the door in her coat and scarf with her bag on her knees, twenty minutes early like always.
Dale knocked the snow off his boots and came in.
“Morning, Joyce. Morning, Angie. Cold enough?” He looked around. “Where’s Rick at?”
“Downstairs,” I said.
“Good. He asked me Sunday to take a look at that sump pump while I was here. Says it’s been thumping.” He was already pulling a flashlight out of his coat pocket. “Won’t take two minutes.”