You’re still alive, Frank said. Maybe you’ll have a deathbed conversion.
Dad studied Frank’s face. You’re being cynical. You’re just talking.
Of course.
You don’t mean what you said.
No, I don’t mean it. I’ve been too goddamn angry. I’ve been too filled up to my throat with bitterness. Oh Jesus. I could smash your dying face right now.
Why don’t you? I wish you would. Go ahead. I want you to.
Frank stood up. I got to go. He stepped on his cigarette and put it out.
Wait. You don’t have to leave yet, Dad said. You should see your mother. Are you going now?
Yeah. I better.
Well. Good-bye, then, son.
Frank moved toward the door.
Wait. Would you give me your hand? Dad said. Before you go. But he was gone on out into the doorway now. Dad still watched him. This tall middle-aged balding man. Broad in the doorway. Not too old yet. But wearing old clothes. Ragged-looking. Still, there was something there. He was still a good-looking man. There was something there yet. It hadn’t come out yet.
38
THE NEXT MORNING Mary lay in the old soft double bed with Dad until the sunlight streamed into the room. She got up and went into the bathroom and returned and put on her shirt and jeans and leaned close over the bed to look at him.
Dear. Are you waking up now? He didn’t move. Dad?
He lay staring up at the ceiling out of half-open eyes. Then he breathed deeply, a kind of rattle. She felt his forehead. He felt cool, clammy to the touch.
Can you hear me? she whispered.
She bent and kissed him and went quickly upstairs to Lorraine’s room.
Honey, can I come in?
Lorraine had just gotten out of bed in her light summer nightgown.
What’s wrong?
He’s going now. I’m afraid he is.
Is something different?
He won’t wake up. I can’t get him to talk. He feels cold.
Lorraine put her arms around her. We knew this was coming, Mom.
Come down with me, would you. I want to turn him on his side. The nurse said he’d breathe a little better on his side if we turned him.
Lorraine put on a robe over the nightgown and followed her mother downstairs. Dad’s eyes were shut now. He breathed and stopped and breathed again, rattling in his throat. They folded back the summer blanket and the sheet and turned him so he was facing the door, and placed an old flat pillow under his head, and put another between his knees. His feet looked mottled with blotches climbing up his legs and his hands were blue and on the undersides of his arms were more blue spots that were like faint bruises.
Look at his poor fingernails, Mary said.
Yes.
They covered him again with the sheet and blanket and stood together beside the bed, watching him. His mouth stayed open. He breathed and made a little involuntary noise and breathed again.
He never woke that day. He lay quietly in the bed, his mouth open and dry and his lips cracked, his face yellow and washed out. Lorraine called the nurse and she came and examined him and looked at his feet and hands, the blue places and mottling on his arms and legs, and told them he was in the final stages. They talked about what they should do. They said they would bathe and dress him themselves after he died, they preferred that, they wanted that last duty and moments of caretaking for themselves, and the nurse said, That’s fine. But you still need to call me so I can certify his death and dispose of the unused medicine. When you’re ready we can call the mortician. But there’s no rush. You take as long as you want.
We’ve already talked to George Hill, Lorraine said. He’ll take care of all the details for the cremation and there’ll be a service at the church and a brief graveside service. Some of his ashes will be buried at the cemetery. But we’ll keep most of them here.
Just please call me if you need something, the nurse said. It doesn’t matter what time it is.
What about his pain now, while he’s like this? Mary said. I’m afraid he’ll choke if we give him a pill.
Give him liquid morphine under his tongue, with the eyedropper. That’ll be all right. And just keep him dry and clean and turn him regularly. That’s about all you can do.
Will it bother him for us to talk in the room here while he’s sleeping like this?
No, I wouldn’t think so. He might even like hearing you even if he doesn’t seem to.
I think he might, Mary said. It might comfort him.
They checked on him every half hour. And then at midmorning they turned him again, toward the wall now, and he was wet and they changed his diaper and washed him. He slept on as before, breathing, stopping, starting again, the rattle still there in his throat.
In the afternoon Berta May called and she came over, and they called Rob Lyle and he came too. Lorraine met him at the door. He put his arm around her.
Thank you for coming, she said. She brought him into the living room and he hugged Mary.
I’m glad you’re here, Reverend Lyle.
I’m not a preacher anymore, he said.
Aren’t you still a reverend?
No.
You do still pray?
Yes, I still pray. That hasn’t changed.
Will you pray for Dad?
They went in the room and sat on the bedside chairs and Mary and Lorraine and Berta May and Lyle held hands, looking at Dad. He lay facing the door now. They bowed their heads. May we be at peace together with Dad Lewis here, Lyle said softly. May there be peace and love and harmony in this room. May there be the same in all the difficult and conflicted world outside this house. May this man — he stopped and spoke directly to Dad in the bed — may you leave this physical world without any more pain or regrets or unhappiness or remorse or self-doubt or worry and may you let all your trials and troubles and cares pass away. May you simply be at peace. May each of us here in this room be at peace as well. Now we ask all of these blessings in the name of Jesus, who himself was the Prince of Peace. Amen.
Thank you, Lorraine whispered.
Afterward they talked quietly and watched Dad and looked out the window to the hot summer day, to the flatland beyond the house.
Would you be willing to tell us about your life? Lyle said. This would be a good time to talk.
Oh, nobody wants to hear that, Mary said.
Yes, we do. Of course we do.
She looked at him and then looked at her old husband lying in the bed with the sheet and blanket spread over him.
We met on the corner of Second and Main Street in the summer of 1947 right here in Holt. I was coming out of a store and Dad was crossing the street.
What store was it, Mom? Was it the Tavern?
Don’t be funny, Mary said. It was the department store. I was standing in front of Schulte’s on the corner trying to think about something.
What were you thinking about?
I was deciding if I had got everything I needed. I was sewing something. And Dad was walking toward me. I was thinking about my sewing and I stepped off the curb and walked right into him. I almost fell down but he reached and caught me. He helped me back up onto the curb. I was embarrassed. Oh excuse me, I said. Please. I wasn’t watching. And he said, I was coming toward you anyways, miss. You didn’t have to fall for me.
They looked at Dad in the bed, trying to see him as a young man. They looked at his back and the shape of his sharp hip and puny legs under the blanket.
That was his little joke. I suppose it doesn’t sound very funny anymore. But I did fall for him. That’s the whole truth. I did with my whole heart. And that’s how and when I fell.
Then what, Mom?
Oh, you’ve heard all this before.
I want to hear it again. We all do.
Well, then we went to the pharmacy. Brown’s Drugstore. They had some little round drugstore tables to sit down at, at the back. We drank soda drinks and got acquainted. Then he asked me out that weekend to a picture show and six months later we got married and two years after that you came along and in three more years we had your brother.