Season of Gifts (Neighborly Affection #8)

32. Henry

Chapter thirty-two

Henry

M other refused to accept the safe course of action and remain in the hospital another night. She refused to allow Henry to carry her up to her bedroom when he flatly rejected her plan to continue sleeping in the conservatory. Twice in a lifetime was more than enough to see one’s Mother dying amid the greenery.

They’d prescribed her a portable oxygen tank, for goodness’ sake. She belonged in the cardiac unit, not laboring beneath a foggy mask after spending several minutes climbing a single flight of stairs. The décor would require a permanent change—seats for resting at top and bottom of the stairs. He’d had to fetch this one from farther down the hall. Perhaps they could install a small home elevator.

Mother sat with her back straight, her shoulders level, carrying every inch of the bearing she’d learned in childhood, even as she inhaled again and again through the mask. Lina had been kind enough to run a change of clothes over to the hospital this afternoon, when it had become clear that Mother’s adamant stance was unshakeable and the pajamas she’d worn on her ambulance ride were suitable only as rags. Her wool dress buttoned from her collarbone to her knees, with thick buttons she could manage herself. Where Lina had pulled it from, he had no idea.

His mind bludgeoned him with the knowledge that he’d forgotten something between the frantic scramble of the paramedics and the long night of wakefulness and Mother’s despair at once again waking in the hospital. The coy bastard refused to tell him what, of course; it merely pounded the inside of his skull with a vague sense of doom.

He crouched before the chair, clasping Mother’s free hand between his own, gently pressing away the chill. He’d kept the sedan so overheated on the way home that he’d sweated all down the back of his shirt, yet even that warmth hadn’t put color in her cheeks. “You’ll be much more comfortable in your own room, your own bed. Less drafty. Closer to the lavatory. I’ll open the curtains; I’ll bring up some of the smaller potted plants from the conservatory.”

He would pile an exceptional number of pillows behind her back. Reading between the lines of the doctor’s talk with them today had uncovered Henry’s mistake, the one that—compounded with his inattentiveness—had nearly proved fatal. He’d let Mother lie flat to sleep, with only the thin pillow she preferred. During the day, he used extra pillows to allow her to gaze outside, converse with him while he read aloud, and eat her meals. But at night, as she lay flat, her heart and lungs communicated poorly. The oxygen in her bloodstream faltered. Her heart ordered greater effort, but there was none to give.

He was as bad as his father, practically killing her with his lack of proper care. Not noticing the signs. Not seeking help until the crisis was upon them.

“We’ll have a light supper, low sodium, a Tuscan bean soup.” That would demand perhaps forty-five minutes away from Mother at most, and he would be able to check on her while it simmered. His legs ached from the lengthy crouch. Barely twenty-four hours ago they’d been gathering the ingredients at the grocer after her rehab session. Riffling through spinach to secure the least wilted offering, she’d seemed hearty and hale. Not like a woman hours from suffocating in her sleep. “Bread and a spot of butter. I’ll bring you tea. Would you like a cookie beforehand to whet your appetite?”

One cookie would be permissible, though her diet overall would need to conform to strict standards as part of the effort to slow further deterioration of her heart. Miscarriages increased the likelihood of heart trouble later in life. If they’d known that decades ago, perhaps there would have been fewer attempts at children. Perhaps Henry himself would not exist.

Mother let the mask drop from her face. Her cracked lips needed moisturizer, and her dry skin sucked in light like a dull matte finish, bouncing no spark of reflection but for her eyes. She sighed heavily. “You needn’t placate me with treats like a small child. I’ve lost the argument; I’ll stay in my room.” She ruffled his hair with a ghostly touch. “My heart is tired, that’s all. I’m fine, Henry.”

“You are not fine .” His voice shook; his knees tipped toward the floor. The present pitched him overboard, into the heaving seas of the past.

The moose eyed him from its perch in Father’s study. He was new, the moose, and the big whitetail bucks had been forced aside to give him the center spot on the wall. Henry slipped past the three of them and turned toward Father’s desk. His back prickled, itchy and goosebumpy; the dead eyes would still be on him, but he couldn’t see them now.

Father wrote smoothly with his fat silver pen. The ink glided across the page in deep blue swirls. Henry waited. This was the game; if he was patient before his goodnight, he might have a real talk with Father the way Robert did. Only Robert had gone back to school weeks ago and wouldn’t be home for forever. At the spring break, Lina said, but she’d had to flip three calendar pages to get there.

Father’s desk had thick, square legs with flared feet. Deep grooves made them shaggy like the big farm horses Henry’s class had visited once.

The pen clicked into its holder. Henry hurriedly lifted his gaze. Father didn’t like when Henry was idle and daydreaming.

“Yes?” Father folded his hands. “What is it, Henry?”

He stood tall, shoulders back, and kept his chin up the way Robert said to every time he left for school. “I’m worried about Mother.”

Father closed his eyes when he sighed. His nose flared. His jaw moved, even though he wasn’t chewing any candy. Father didn’t keep candy on his desk.

“We’ve been over these fears of yours several times.” Father glanced toward the photo on his desk. Only the little stand at the back showed from Henry’s side, but he’d seen it before. He’d dressed for it and obeyed the photographer’s instructions to stand just so, with his hand on Mother’s chair, to smile but not too much. Robert stood on the opposite side, with Father behind them all. “You are a sensitive soul, I do see that, but I am at the end of my patience.” Father rapped his knuckle on the desk. “Your mother was ill, but she is recovering. She is fine, Henry. You need more time outdoors with other boys your age. I’ll have Lina make the arrangements.”

Mother had come home from the hospital five weeks ago, and she hadn’t left her bedroom since. Lina took all her meals up to her. Father was sleeping in the side room for guests. Henry visited her for tea every day after school. She loved to hear all the details from the moment the bell rang, so he tried his hardest to memorize everything, but her eyes were always red, her face pinched with tight lines. Her stomach was still tender. She looked like the crumpled leaves that crackled underfoot before the snow smothered them. “I don’t want the snow to swallow her.”

“You don’t want—” Shaking his head, Father sighed and gazed past him, over his head. Maybe he and the moose had a pact.

Father pointed at the grandfather clock between the windows. The tubes and hanging disk shone behind the tall glass front. The dark cabinet matched the rest of the wood in Father’s study. Father called it cherry, but it didn’t look anything like a cherry—not red, not delicious. Maybe like the hard pit Henry was supposed to spit out, but only carefully into his napkin.

“To bed with you, young man. You may kiss your mother goodnight, but don’t pester her for a story.” The fat silver pen slipped out of its holder and back into Father’s hand. “You’re old enough to be responsible for yourself. Off you go.”

Lina would have left fresh pajamas on his bed and a glass of water on the nightstand. Mother’s door at the end of the hall stood open a thin crack, with light falling through it. He pushed, and it swung silently away. “Mother?”

She called his name with glee. “Is it bedtime already? What book did you bring? Come sit with me.”

He halted at the edge of the bed, smoothing the tiny ripples in the quilt. “Father said not to. I’m not to bother you.”

Usually he would have a book in his hand and carefully pull himself onto the bed so as not to hurt her. Mother let him rest his head on her arm while she read; she said that was the best way for her to steal his playground energy and leave him sleepy enough for bed.

“You are never a bother, darling boy. You are my utter delight.” Today’s quilt was the all-white one with the extra white on top, fancy stitches in tiny patterns. Mother loved it because it was a gift from her mother. But it just looked like snowflakes upon snowflakes, all mounding over her body up to her arms.

He followed the edge of the snowbank all the way around to her side and strained on his tiptoes to reach her cheek for a kiss. “Goodnight, Mother.”

She smushed her lips together in a sad kissy face. “All right, then. But I want a story. Fetch me one, and I shall read it to myself. Out loud, if I like.” She lifted one eyebrow at him. “You may keep me company.”

He did want a bedtime story. But Father said he was too old for that, and Father knew everything. Henry was supposed to kiss Mother, brush his teeth, put on his pajamas, and turn out his light. Father had said not to be a pest, but he hadn’t said what to do if Mother wanted a story. “Is that lying? If I stay for the story and say it’s yours and not mine?”

“A little white lie, perhaps. But those don’t hurt us, Henry. They are a kindness.” She rubbed her hand over his hair, her fingers soft. “Sometimes they are what keep us going.”

Keep going, yes. His knees ached. He was taking Mother to her room. The oxygen canister on its little wheeled cart rested beside the leg of the chair.

“Henry?”

He lifted his head, and the soft fingers in his hair slipped away.

“My apologies. I didn’t mean to shout.” More of a shouted whisper, but still. A man ought not behave so abominably toward his mother. He rocked back on his ankles and ignored his complaining calves as he stood. “Are you ready to continue?”

She studied him with too-knowing eyes. “We should talk about it, darling. The past is so close now; I almost imagine Dickens’ first specter will whisk me off to what might have been.”

Discussing the past was unnecessary. He had devoted much attention to it years ago; including art therapy in his college major had certainly been an emotional reaction to the difficult time when Mother had been so ill. “I should start dinner for us both. But I want you safely in bed, please.”

He positioned his arm in front of her as the rehab team had taught him, the steady grip bar Lina had used last weekend. Of course Lina would have known how to best assist; she’d undoubtedly helped his mother with innumerable tasks his younger self had been utterly unaware of.

Mother did possess a mulish glare when she wished. “You are wearing yourself out. I love having you here, darling.” She laid a hand on his forearm. “It eases my heart, yes. But it is also asking more of you than you should have to bear.”

She gripped, and her weight pressed down on him as she gained her feet. A basket of feathers, she was.

“You are never a bother,” he whispered. “You are an utter delight.”

Her lips curved in a warm smile. The oxygen mask dangled around her neck; she hooked one arm in his and nudged the tank carrier forward with the other. “You win, darling. If I cannot have my garden, then please bring me my studio. Sketch for me. Let the sound of you absorbed in work you love be my lullaby this evening. Draw me the garden. Draw me the seashore. Draw me your spouses’ beautiful faces.”

The tension planting him in place released. “A fair bargain. After dinner, then.”

He settled her in the bedroom and plugged in the baby monitor Lina had left for him on the nightstand as promised. Her grandchildren no longer needed it. He would consult with the full-time nurse, once they had one in place, on the best long-term solution. He tested the system, then left Mother with her book and her glass of water, carrying the portable walkie-talkie style listening device with him to the kitchen. If she needed him, he would hear her.

The rhythms of cooking, so familiar, proved soothing as he neared thirty hours of wakefulness. Mother’s request for sketching after dinner might send him to sleep as easily as her. Once they had a nurse—the nurse candidate. He’d been scheduled to meet with her today. Dammit. Six-thirty now, likely past their office hours, but he could call and ask to reschedule at her earliest possible convenience.

He finished his prep work on the soup and urged the stovetop to a boil. Washing his hands in pure cold from the tap woke his sleepy mind further, and he set the electric teakettle on to boil as well. His phone showed no urgent notifications from Alice or Jay thus far today; he left an apologetic message for the nursing service and recorded an audio update for his spouses before the kettle boiled. After hunting for a small tray suitable for the bedside table, he assembled the tea things—including a plate of cookies much reduced from their usual gluttony, to make Mother laugh—and lowered the temperature under the soup to a simmer.

The nagging sense that he’d missed something remained.