Life Before (21 page)

“Just look at my face, Graham.”

I can’t look her in the face, so I look down. But I can’t look down without seeing her body.

Her skeleton, more like. Those soft parts that the rest of us have just … aren’t there. Her
knickers
stretch between her hip bones like a trampoline with a huge gap next to her navel. There is no fat or pudgy belly to stretch the elastic. Sophie has almost no muscle. She doesn’t really have thighs.

Skin and bones is a real thing, and her knobby knees are totally bereft of hair.

Is Sophie dying?

She tries to hold my elbows as I lower her onto the toilet.

She needs a nurse. Or, at the very least, someone more professional than a seventeen-year-old kid who has just seen his first naked woman and can’t cope with her age. This is so beyond the scope of my job. Today is worth every penny that Curt offered, and more.

“Graham, it’s a cruel fact of life: aging isn’t for the faint of heart.” She teeters on the toilet seat. “You can wait outside for this part.”

Her bony butt could get stuck in the toilet bowl, and I can’t afford to let her fall off the toilet, either. I also don’t want to embarrass her. I reach for some levity. “Between all my friends and my parents, I’ve probably heard the worst bathroom noises ever.”

Apparently we have not crossed the threshold of embarrassment. “This is something I would like to do in private.”

“Okay. I’ll wait right outside the door. Just call for me when you’re ready.”

Curt is not paying me enough for this.
How hard can it be?
Really freaking hard.

Every few minutes, I say, “You okay, Sophie?”

After the third time, she sing-songs, “Gra-ham! I can’t get anything done in here with you talking. Get yourself a magazine or something.”

Digging through my backpack, I snag Jill’s bracelet. What Would Jill Do? Jill would probably bail. Taking care of people who are small—physically or otherwise—is her least favorite thing. What would Xander do?

He would support Sophie. Because that’s who I am. I grab Bill Bryson from my stack of books and resume my bathroom watch.

But I can’t read. Sophie has gone from walking around the neighborhood to practically bedridden in a matter of days. Getting old sucks. Sophie isn’t even that old. Curt’s in his early twenties, and he’s her fourth child, which makes her mid-sixties at the oldest, right?

So Sophie is sixty-five, give or take a few years. She looks like she’s a hundred. What the hell happened to her? I should have written down the name of her prescriptions so I could do a little research.

Sophie is right: aging is not for the faint of heart.

Or for the heartbroken, apparently. Mom won’t get a chance to find out if aging was for her. She won’t get a chance to joke about her ailing body. She’ll never embarrass over some poor schlep dragging her to the john.

Maybe Mom was lucky to die in her thirties.

Only someone responsible for his mother’s death would think that.

Mom will never have to age, but she lost everything else in exchange.

Her life is in a box now. Complete. Every thought, every day, every meal, every fight Mom ever had is packaged and ready to go. Nothing more to add to her life’s contents. She is gone from me, yes, but her life is also gone from her.

I guess that’s what she lost: a future.

What will happen to her clothes? And her books? And the rest of her stuff? She’s wearing her green dress, but she has a closet full of clothes for all seasons. I guess they’ll go to Goodwill, where many of them came from in the first place.

The battered women’s shelter might take her clothes. Would that be weird? An abused woman accepting clothes from a woman who died at her ex-husband’s hands?

“Graham?” Sophie’s tone suggests it wasn’t her first time calling my name. “Have you left me?”

I open the door. “I’m so sorry, Sophie. I was thinking about … aging?”

“Not for the faint of heart, but better than the alternative. Could you tear off some toilet tissue for me, please?”

Way, way, way, way above my pay grade.

Sophie knows it, too. “Don’t worry, I will do the wiping myself.”

Tearing off far more than she could need, I thrust it toward her.

Sophie mutters something about being reduced to this. “I raised my children, sent them out into the world, and now I am the child.”

She excuses me back to my side of the door.

It’s just too much. The first naked woman I have seen in person—other than Jill, who is practically my sister—is sixty-five years old. Frail and wrinkled. Tucker would have a field day with this.

Chuckling, I slide down the wall to sit on the floor.

“I can hear you, Graham.”

I am mortified. Seeing another human naked is nothing compared to Sophie’s issues. Losing her ability to function as a whole person must be demoralizing.

I can hear her straining. Her ring clangs on the bar next to the toilet.

“Sophie!” I push open the door. “Do not try to stand up by yourself.”

“You cannot handle this,” she says.

I can’t get kicked out of this house. I can’t get fired from my not job-job.

“Wait. Wait, Sophie.” Only the truth can absolve me. “I was laughing at myself, not at you. I just realized this is the first time I have seen a woman … unclothed … the first time I have seen an unclothed woman. And my friends will have a field day with this.”

Sophie freezes and I double back. “I mean, they would. If I ever told them, which I won’t.”

“No, you will not.”

I put on my best commanding voice. “And you, Sophie, will not try to get off the toilet without help today. Curt told me to make you respect your limits.”

She holds my elbows to steady herself again. “Keep your eyes on my face, put me back together, and flush without looking.”

This time, I obey.

After we wash her hands, Sophie leads me back to the bed, where I lift her legs onto the mattress and tuck the blanket around them. In an eighty-degree room.

“It’s just a bad day, is all,” she says. “Tomorrow will be better.”

I certainly hope so. “Right. Last week you were walking down the block. Tomorrow will be better.”

“Thank you.”

“No problem.”

Sophie nods. “Tell your mother she has something new to be proud of.”

No matter how hard I bite my lip, I can’t stave off the tears. Sophie looks at me, expectantly, but I can’t speak. Saltwater rolls down my face and my mouth is brackish with fresh blood and tears.

“Graham?”

I’m supposed to be taking care of Sophie. I was supposed to be taking care of my mom.

“Graham, what is it, son?”

Anything louder than a whisper would make me start wailing. “My mom died.”

Sophie tilts her chin downward and slowly pats the edge of her mattress. When I shake my head, she nods and pats it again. She can’t quite reach me, but I want her to. I want her to know. I want my mother. And in the absence of
my
mother, I want
a
mother. Someone to tell me I’m not alone. To lambaste my foolish decisions. A mother to promise there will be an end to this Burlington fiasco.

Instead, sitting beside Sophie, I get a mother’s love. She strokes my back and says the right things—my mother loved me, she will always be with me, her love and her pride live in me—and Sophie knows. She knows not to ask, not to push. She knows how raw I feel, and she doesn’t pretend anything will ever make it better.

And, by some divine miracle, Sophie doesn’t tousle my hair. She just rubs my back until I run out of tears. And she doesn’t chastise me for snotting on my sleeve.

Because mothers know when you are so low you just can’t keep it together anymore.

Sophie is having difficulty keeping her eyes open. The room shifts, and again Sophie is the child. She claims she won’t need anything else before Curt comes home and excuses me for the afternoon.

I would prefer to stay here, with the understanding of a mother, even though she isn’t mine. I could close my eyes and, just for a minute, imagine that her hand is Mom’s, rubbing slow circles around my back. Mom has done that a thousand times. Every time I vomited. Every time I was hurting from Gary. Every time we were the only thing each of us had in this world.

I would prefer to pretend with Sophie, but she’s firm.

I close the door behind me, and I’m alone again.

T
HIRTY-ONE

Tuesday is another day off. Curt is stumbling through some vintage Mario game while I half-concentrate on my book. Someone bangs on our front door at about ten in the morning.

Curt focuses on Mario. “S’open!”

“I’m so sorry,” Kat says about a thousand times, tripping over herself as she enters. Same short shorts. Another Sharpie shirt. Hair still amazing.

Curt hits pause. “I told you on the phone it was fine.”

“I know, but I wanted to see Sophie and apologize to her, too. Is she up?”

“Probably awake in bed.”

Kat disappears behind Sophie’s door and I dive back into my book. I’m down to the last two pages when Kat rejoins us in the living room.

“Thanks, Curt. I needed to see her. I’m headed to the library now. Do either of you need anything?”

Without looking away from the TV, Curt says, “Take that one with you. No library card, and he goes through books like water.”

My face feels hot, as if reading is an embarrassing hobby.

Kat sizes me up, literally, from head to toe. “Do you have a bike?”

“Mine’s in the shed. Combination is 2-7-1-3. Go.” Curt’s Mario flies through the clouds.

Kat opens the shed, dusts off the bike, tests and inflates the tires, and adjusts the seat.

“I can do that, you know.”

She keeps working. “Working helps my stress level. I’m so embarrassed. I have never missed a day of work. I’m never late. After yesterday, Sophie will always think I’m unreliable.”

“I doubt that.”

Kat points her bike toward the street and yells over her shoulder, “Stay close.”

She’s fast. Like, race fast. At the very end of the street, she levels her pedals and stands on them, shaking her head in the wind. This is summer.

Burlington is zipping past me, and I feel alive again. I could just as well be chasing Jill on our bikes, though we haven’t ridden together since middle school.

Outside the library, Kat locks our bikes to a dull gray rack.

Fifteen minutes later, I have my typical stack of assorted nonfiction and she’s checked out a pile of journals. I’m ready to mount my bike and head back, but Kat has other ideas.

“Want ice cream? Ben & Jerry’s is a five-minute walk, tops.”

Kat leads me down College Street. We could be in any small town in the world, just two friends, hanging out.

“So, you can tell me, Kat. Was it true? You had a family emergency?”

Kat stares at me, mouth agape. “Why would I make up something like that?”

“I dunno. Maybe so you didn’t have to help Sophie use the bathroom?”

“Curt said you stayed with her. How was that for you?”

How can I put this nicely? “I don’t think I could do your job, that’s for sure. It seems like she needs more help than just you.”

“We get by.”

A pastel display of sweets beckons from a cupcake shop. I want to stop, but Kat’s heart is set on ice cream. We turn on to Church Street, a brick thoroughfare that allows only pedestrian traffic. Shops and bistros line the sidewalks. Mom would have loved window shopping here. To her, envisioning the perfect occasion for a dress, or salivating over a menu, felt like a real afternoon out.

Kat leads me into Ben & Jerry’s and treats me to a scoop of Cherry Garcia. Outside, we settle on the brick sidewalk, our backs to the building.

“So, why you? How did you wind up taking care of a woman old enough to be your grandmother?”

She licks the drips of her Chunky Monkey in a way that is not entirely unsexy. “Sophie and I are friends. When she and Curt decided she needed help, I volunteered.”

“Yeah, but why? I mean, how did it start? Your family’s in New York, right?”

“They’re in New York
now
. My parents moved to Burlington when I was sixteen. Sophie’s old house was in our backyard, and I think she liked having a girl around. We bonded. Back then, Curt basically saw me as a nuisance. Now I help with his mom.”

“And your parents?”

“They get tired of cities pretty quickly. They left Burlington in the middle of my senior year.”

“And you stayed here.”

Kat nods. “I was accepted to the university, and finally—finally!—I knew I could be in the same place for more than a year. Sophie let me stay with her until school was out. Then I got a job and rented a room.”

“And when did you start working for Sophie?”

She glares at me. “You ask a lot of questions.”

“I’m trying to figure you out. I mean—I’m trying to get to know you.”

Kat guffaws. “There’s not much to know. I go to school a lot. I study a lot. I live with two people I hardly see. Working with Sophie pays the bills.”

“Not your parents?”

Another laugh. “Definitely not them. Basically, they think I’m an unambitious mess. It’s going to take me six years to finish school and they think I should take on a load of debt and push through in four.”

“You’re more patient than I am. I’m taking my AP credits to Tulane and hope to get out in three.”

“I’m just enjoying the experience.” Kat smacks her arm. “I hate these damned mosquitoes.”

I assume mosquitoes are a regular fixture of Burlington summers. Kat doesn’t appreciate my pointing that out.

“They’re always awful, but this year they’re especially bad.”

We’re sort of in the way of lots of people, but Kat acts like she owns the curb. Shoppers walk around us to get wherever they’re going, and she just keeps talking. We tend to our ice cream, discussing loads of other things, most of which are trivial. I marvel at the fact that I’ve never eaten Ben & Jerry’s in a cone. In Ohio (or, you know, Georgia), we just buy the pints.

Kat says, “I never really thought about that. I guess it’s a luxury.”

“Thanks for the scoop, by the way.”

Kat’s whole face changes when she smiles. When she’s not focused intently on whatever it is she’s always focused intently on, Kat is radiant.