These days, when I see her, I’m behind the chair looking down at the top of her head and the part in her hair and the collar of her dress.
 
She couldn’t stand hair in her face, so hers was always short—more brown than gray, and so thin the scalp showed through.
 
I wish I could see her face half as well, but it doesn’t hold together in my mind. Her eyes were, on their own, pale and unremarkable, but you didn’t turn away when she looked straight at you.     
 
Sally remembers her lurching and falling, but for me she’s just always sitting.
 
Sally says I block out the bad stuff, and that may be true. But she’s three years older; why wouldn’t her memories be different from mine?
 
We both remember pushing the chair—up the ramp between the kitchen and the living room, down the slope to the road, along the road to the bridge.
 
It could take muscle to maneuver the chair, especially once we got the VW bus and could drive her places. She wasn’t heavy, I’d say at the most 140; but this was before the ADA, no handicap access, no curb-cuts, a lot more lifting.
 
Not that there were curbs or sidewalks where we’re from.
 
For a long time the house I grew up in didn’t have central heating; there was a kerosene stove, and a fireplace. My oldest son, Matt, says that made us pioneers. Losers, is what middle-son Luke would say. My youngest pays no attention to such things.
 
One winter afternoon, my mother was sitting on the couch by the fireplace, as usual. Just the two of us were home, the house was getting cold, as the fire had gone out. All we had to do, she said, was stick some bunched-up newspaper and a few little sticks around the half-burned logs and light the newspaper and we’d get a fire going.
 
She handed me the bunched-up newspaper.   
 
I edged over to the hearth.
 
The fireplace was dangerous. I’d seen it blow ash out of its deep dark throat into my father’s face. I’d seen him double over, coughing and cursing.
 
I held my breath and tossed the ball of paper in. I threw sharp little shards of kindling in the direction of the logs: one handful, two.
 
“That should do,” my mother said. “Now we can light it.”
 
She tried giving me her lighter first, but I couldn’t hold the little gear down, even with both thumbs.
 
She had me get a book of matches from the kitchen; but they were the puny paper kind with tiny heads that blazed up and singed my fingers as I dropped them.
 
After a while she said we’d do without a fire and bundle up together on the couch.
 
“How did that blanket get down behind the couch? Can you get it, Charlie? Good boy.”
 
She wrapped us up and we stayed there what seemed a long time. When Sally and my father got home, she told Sally to run me down the road to the bridge to warm me up, and off we went.
 
I doubt I would have noticed that there was a different cover on the couch when we got back. But Sally noticed and asked, and was told by our mother, who was sitting with our father at the kitchen table, to mind her p’s and q’s.
 
Sally says mother had another one of her setbacks that afternoon—one of those times when, however much trouble she usually had getting around, it suddenly got worse. Sally says there were many such times.
 
Sometimes I wonder if blocking things out is something my sister won’t do. Or if it’s something she can’t do.
 
But I know why I remember that winter afternoon, and it’s not because my mother wet herself as we sat together on the couch. It’s because she could have made me keep trying to light the fire. She could have scolded me for being scared. But she didn’t.
 
She managed to be kind.
 
 
Sally
 
Sometimes, on hold for I hope a human voice, I think of the nights I listened for my mother’s.
 
“Ready when you are, Sally!”
 
On the friendly nights, that’s how she told me it was time.
 
On the nights she wasn’t speaking, I had to listen harder.
 
The click of the lighter… will that be her last cigarette?
 
How long does it take to smoke a cigarette?
 
Silence.
 
Is she still reading the paper?
 
She reads it at the kitchen table every night and smooths the sections back together, unwrinkled and in order.
 
A car goes by with a splat of gravel.
 
Click.
 
Another cigarette.
 
When did it get dark?
 
When did the last bird go quiet?
 
They’re deep in the trees now, fast sleep. Their claws hold fast to the branches, even in their sleep.
 
“Like a bird on a wire…”
 
“I’m ready.” Her voice.
 
The wheels creak as you push her up the ramp, over the sill, and into the room that’s been hers since she stopped walking.
 
There’s no need to speak as you help her get ready; you both know what to do: dress off first, bed jacket on…
 
Watch her push around the things on her bedside table: the ashtray, the bottle of aspirin, the box of tissues.
 
Wait until she rolls up beside the bed and stops.
 
Position yourself in front of the chair.
 
Lean over.
 
The second she throws her arms around your neck, step back, pull her with you, kick away the chair, swivel as she sags against you. Slowly set her down on the mattress. Those seconds on the edge are hard for her, just you between her and the floor.
 
When her grip loosens, scoop up her legs and get her settled.
 
Next: The snap-to of one rubber glove, then the other.
 
The squish and plop as the diaper drops in the pail.
 
The thud as water hits plastic, the splash and piddle as the basin fills, the spurt of soap when you squeeze the bottle.
 
The pine tree brushes against the side of the house.
 
From the soft little mound of her belly comes a gurgle and a whine.
 
“The peanut gallery sure is loud tonight,” she says on the friendly nights.
 
Meanwhile, you can change a diaper without speaking, and in silence she can have her diaper changed.
 
Dump the dirty water in the laundry tub.
 
Strip off one glove, then the other.
 
Watch your face disappear from the window when you turn off the light. Return to her room.
 
As the motor grinds her upright in her bed, she reaches out a hand.
 
“My cigarettes.” A command.
 
Hand them over and you’re finished.
 
It still sometimes feels like I’ll never be done.

Author's Comment

This story is an excerpt from my novel-in-progress.