< Apart From Love: Chapter 35 >

Lay Me Down

At the end of the cab ride to Sunrise home, the silence is finally broken when my father glances at me, and his face softens, and he says, “Anita is quite right. I need to separate between what is real and what is not.” 

And I say, “This here between us, this is real. And the loneliness, too.”

In return he says, “I am so sorry, Ben. Forgive me.”

I turn to him, utterly in surprise, and notice that he is bringing his eyebrows together, the way he does when he has a severe headache. He looks in my direction through clouded eyes, as if his vision has suddenly blurred. Which is when, for the first time, the idea comes to me that perhaps, he is not going to make it through the night.

At once, I push it out of my mind.

Still, his lips are moving. “Now that you are back,” he lets out, “I am happy. Truly happy. I want you to know it.”

I see him forming words, but his voice is too weak to carry them. So I bend over, putting my ear to his mouth.

He breathes, “I could not have written it any better. This is the most important day, the most important hour of my entire life. I can see things clearly, more clearly than ever before, as if from a distance. You,” he takes a pause, “you have made your share of mistakes—but the whole thing started with mine.”

“Sorry, dad,” I say.

And he says, “It is my fault, and we both know it. Both of us have been paying the price. Don’t worry, Ben. I am going to fix it.”

These few words between us do me good, and my lungs expand and suddenly I can breathe so much easier than before—even though I am left wondering what he means by the whole thing and how exactly can it be fixed. 

The cab comes to a stop in front of Sunrise Assisted Living at half past five in the morning.

I have expected to see the doors locked for the night, but to my surprise they are thrown open, and someone is being carried out on a stretcher, soon to be loaded into an ambulance, which is parked slightly ahead of us. As the medics pass by my side I glance at the stretcher, and recognize the head lolling to one side, peaking out of the white sheet. I recognize it because of the black, utterly toothless mouth, which is open in a long O, as if to start singing.

I help my father out of the cab. He is having trouble balancing on his feet, so I practically carry him past the medics, past the young, unfamiliar woman dressed in a nurse uniform, who is rushing around everybody in great confusion. She must be in charge of the night shift crew. Martha, the care giver, has not arrived here yet.

We are inside. Without saying a word, my old man points his finger at the third door in the raw of doors along a long corridor. It is the only door which is open. I bring him in, knowing in my heart that this is where he has been heading all night along. I wonder if he can find the words, if he can even explain—to himself most of all—what possesses him to do so.

There are two twin beds in the room, one of them unoccupied. In the other, lays my mother. In her deep slumber, she looks as if she is smiling.

“Now,” says my father. “Lay me down.”

My old man seems dizzy as I lower him into her bed. From time to time he is given to uncontrolled shaking, so I pull the blanket over both of them.

Then I go back and close the door to the corridor, which at once darkens the room. It is a vacuous black, a nothingness that is falling in upon us. I have to feel my way around, as if my eyes have suddenly grown blind. Finally I reach the corner and crouch down there, on the floor, and I hear him breathing, breathing in distress.

The one thing that seems to help him relax is listening to the sounds around him, especially to the sound of my mother breathing, and to my voice saying, I am here if you need me.

After a long while the room starts to take shape. You can slowly discern the folds, the faint folds of the curtains, and the light seeping in under the wavy edge. And in the bed, you can see his outline.

By now my father must have forgotten, somehow, that this is not his bed. His eyes wander in confusion, trying to decipher the shadows of the room, and his hand jerks searchingly around him. The more I watch him, the more I become convinced that he is trying hard to control it, to reach out and press some key, which only he can see. But he cannot guide his hand quite where he wants to go—nor can he stop it from trembling. At last, he lifts his head to me and whispers, Record.

By which I think he means, Remember. Or maybe he means, Talk to me, Ben.

So I start describing this room to him, especially the light poking a hesitant finger through the slit between the curtains, and stripping the darkness away from the empty bed next to them, a bed which is bare, because the sheets have already been taken away, to be cleaned and sterilized for the next person to lie here.

I go on to tell him that I knew the old woman who used to occupy this bed. He seems to be listening, so I start drawing from memory how, on my first visit here, she would hunch her shoulders over her empty hands, and lift her head to gape at me, and how her mouth would breathe slowly into the air.

“Twinkle... Twinkle... Little star... How... I wonder... What you are...”

I sing these words for him, with a voice that is thin and barely audible, just like hers used to be. And I hope that it brings to his mind the musical mobile hung there, in the window back home, between one blind and another. I hope he can fall asleep now, dreaming of reaching up, of pulling that string, to make the plush animals turn around, and go flying overhead faster and faster till all is a blur, to the sound of that silvery note, which is chiming, chiming, chiming, as if to announce a moment of birth.

Afterwards, I cannot figure out for certain at what point my voice has trailed off, leaving me lost in a jumble of memories, fearful to open my eyes, fearful to glance at my watch, to figure out the moment, the exact moment when I have realized that I am alone.

All I know is that somewhere along its arc, the light has crawled across the wall and leapt onto their pillow, and it is resting there now, on his open eyelids.

It is a fairly strong light, a glare that can blind you if you look directly into it, which strangely he seems to be doing. So I rise to my feet to pull the curtain shut, and then, in spite of myself, I glance at him. His chest barely rises.

He lays there, having wrapped himself in my mother’s arms, his eyelashes still somewhat aflutter, his hands still shivering slightly over his heart, his face pale, nearly blue, and I know that if I would leave him at this moment to go look for Martha, the care giver, it would be over. Dad would be gone by the time I rush back.

So I draw closer and stand there, behind the head of the bed, over my sleeping mother. From this angle, his ribs seem to move—but I think it is because of his clinging to her, and because of her breathing next to him, which is so deep and so peaceful. I lean over her arms to take his hands in mine, absorbing his shiver, taking it into my flesh, until finally it dies down.

And the light, growing even brighter, washes his face, till all that is left is a smile, frozen.