The Double Room for Mom and Dad

The first night

We got the recliner up the walk and through the door, and then down the hall to the corner room, with Becca walking ahead of us holding every door. It was a good room.

It was bigger than I had expected, and bright, and it had the east window just as Georgia had said.

Two beds, set a hand’s width apart with one nightstand between them. A private bath. A door onto a small courtyard with a bird feeder.

Neal and I set the recliner by the window. I turned it a little so that Dad would catch the morning sun on his face and the afternoon light on his book.

Then I stood back, and Dad lowered himself into it with a long sigh, as though he had been holding that breath since August.

Mom pulled the visitor’s chair up beside him and took his hand again. “This is nice,” she said. “Whose place is this?” “Ours, Elaine,” Dad said. “Is it? I like the window.” “I thought you would.”

They did not seem to need me then. I stepped into the hall and leaned against the wall, and Neal came and stood beside me, and we did not say anything.

At five o’clock, the aide wheeled in two trays. Meatloaf, mashed potatoes, green beans, a square of yellow cake. Dad looked at his, and I braced myself, the way I had braced at every meal for nine days. He picked up his fork.

He ate all of the meatloaf, and the potatoes, and half the beans. When he had finished, he sat for a moment with his hand on his stomach and said, “Is there any pie?”

I made a sound that was not quite a laugh.

Becca went and found him a piece of apple pie, left over from lunch, and he ate that, too, while Mom watched him with the satisfied face of a woman who had been right all along.

“You’re getting thin,” she told him. “I told them you weren’t eating.”

“Well,” Dad said. “I’m eating now.”

I drove home at nine o’clock that night, and I cried the whole way down the highway, with the radio off and the fields black on either side.

When I got into the house, Neal was waiting with a glass of water and a hand on my back. I slept eight hours. It was the first time in a month.