Chapter 22
CHAPTER
THE WOMAN LYING IN THE bed looked to be well into her eighties, thought Nash as he drew a bit closer. The twin-size bed seemed to dwarf her emaciated frame, although he noted that her legs were long with bony knees propping up the covers.
“This is my mother, Alice,” said Parker.
The woman stared up at her daughter and then at Nash. She gummed her lips for a few moments before saying in a low, croaking voice, “Thirsty, Rose.”
“Yes, of course, Momma.”
Parker rushed to the little nightstand next to the bed and poured out water from a pitcher, then got her mother to sit up and gently helped her to drink.
As she did so, Nash looked around the confines of his old room and fixed on the spot where he’d had his desk and his first computer, a Bondi blue Apple G3 that he’d bought with money earned from his paper route and mowing lawns.
Standing there now were a portable toilet and a rolling table with some prescription bottles carefully arranged. An oxygen tank was set next to the bed. Its tubing was attached to a canula in Alice’s nostrils.
Nash turned back to Parker with an inquisitive look. When she rejoined him he said quietly, “How long has your mother been here?”
“She… I brought her the day after your father passed.”
“I see. And where was she before?”
“At a facility. But they said she needed to go somewhere else. Only I had nowhere else.” She glanced at her mother as the woman closed her eyes and slowly drifted off to sleep.
“They told me to put her in hospice, but her benefits are limited and the ones that would take her, well, the level of care there I knew was not… not what my mother deserved. Not that anyone does. Particularly at this stage in life.”
“I understand.”
“I did talk to your father about it before he passed. He knew my mother and liked her. He said it would be okay.”
“But how will you manage this while you’re working? She looks like she needs constant attention.”
“I got a month’s time off to care for her. Under FMLA.”
“Right, the Family Medical Leave Act. But isn’t that leave unpaid?”
“Yes, Mr. Nash, but I had no other options. I had already used up all my sick and vacation time. I wasn’t sure what I was going to do. And my salary doesn’t go far. But with the money your father left me.” Her eyes again filled with tears. “Well, it makes things a lot easier, that’s for sure.”
“Very timely,” he said gently. “I’m glad this has worked out for you, I really am.”
She lowered her voice. “She doesn’t have long.”
“What’s wrong with her?”
“Old age, mostly. Things are pretty much worn out. And she was a smoker for fifty years and has COPD as a result. That’s why she’s on oxygen.”
“When you followed me to the deli and met up with me after, who stayed with your mother?”
“A friend of mine from the VA. I just had to talk to you. That’s why I… followed you. Things were getting… desperate.”
“I understand perfectly, and I’m sorry.” He looked at her mother. “This must be incredibly difficult for you, Rosie.”
“I look after people like this every day, Walter. I don’t mind it. I… like to feel useful. And people who are sick and scared and… well… they shouldn’t be alone to look after themselves, should they? They should have someone to help them.”
“Yes, they should. And she’s lucky to have someone like you.” He paused and added awkwardly, “Well, as I said, I came to look over some of my parents’ things and to open the safe and review the contents.”
“That’s all in the bedroom closet downstairs. The safe is also in the closet.”
He left her there and went downstairs, through the living room, past the minuscule dining room where he had eaten every meal with his parents, and down the short hall with the varnished floors to his parents’ bedroom.
He opened the door and surveyed the space.
It hadn’t changed much since his childhood.
The bedcovers, of course, were newer, and there was a chair he didn’t recognize.
When he looked at it more closely, he saw that it was one of those assisted-lift models.
In his mind’s eye he imagined his father using it to get to his feet.
He would have hated that vulnerability, Nash understood quite well.
That weakness, as his father would see it.
He opened the closet and saw his mother’s clothes still hanging there.
She had been petite, but his father had been six four and chiseled out of granite.
Nash had taken after him in the height if not the musculature department.
On a shelf in the closet were two plastic boxes with lids.
He pulled them out and placed them on the bed.
Inside one were letters that he’d written to his mother while he’d been in college and through his first few years of marriage, before everyone started corresponding mostly via emails and texts.
He read through several of them, each bringing back important memories.
He found himself forgetting about his present dilemma and allowed himself to be whisked back in time to the simpler existence of a little boy, then a teenager, then a young adult.
He pulled out his Eagle Scout sash with all the earned merit badges.
He had felt proud wearing the uniform and working toward that elite status.
He had thought his father would be proud of him, too, but he’d been pretty much indifferent about the whole thing.
There were also presents that Nash had made his mother for her birthdays, simple things crafted from popsicle sticks and plastic, and lots of Elmer’s glue.
And Hallmark cards, which his mother loved.
Then there was his high school diploma and senior yearbook.
He couldn’t even look at the gawky, nerdy youth he’d been at eighteen.
There was an old bottle of pain pills that his mother had taken for her cancer. He would dispose of it properly.
He decided to take the whole box with him.
The second box contained mementos of his father’s military career. One of his Army hats, his medals and ribbons, his discharge papers, letters of commendation, and one old photo.
Nash sat on the bed and looked at the picture.
There was his young father and a youthful Shock, both bare-chested, and looking more like armored trucks than human beings, in the middle of a jungle. His father had a can of beer in one hand and his M16 in the other.
Shock had let his dog tags dangle from the muzzle of his rifle and held a machete in the other. Behind them was a chopper with its long blades hovering over them like the long limbs of a metal tree.
He turned the photo over and saw written in pen there: My life in the worst damn war in history.
And under that line in writing he recognized as his father’s was: I’d rather be at fucking Woodstock.
I bet, thought Nash with a smile.
As he dug into the box he found two other things: his father’s Army Ka-bar knife with the initials TQN carved into the handle. As a young boy Nash had imagined blood on the knife blade and had felt chills down his spine with the thought.
There was also his father’s Colt .45, also known as the M1911A1. Ty Nash had schooled his son about the weapon: It was a single-action, recoil-operated, semiautomatic chambered in the forty-five caliber ACP.
Saved my life more times than I can count after my M16 piece of shit jammed for the millionth time, he’d told his son.
Nash set the knife and gun aside after checking to make sure the latter was unloaded.
He put his father’s box next to his mother’s and stared at them for a long moment.
It didn’t seem substantial enough to represent the lives of two people who had mattered to him greatly.
The boxes should have held more, a lot more.
But what will my box hold when I’m gone? Maggie and Judith will be set financially, but what else did I really contribute to either of them?
Depressed by these thoughts, Nash pulled out the paper with the code to the safe, and located it at the rear of the closet.
Inside were the deed to the house, what looked to be Ty Nash’s settlement papers with the Army over his Agent Orange claim, a copy of his will, three spare mags for the Colt, and an envelope, sealed and with Nash’s name written on the outside along with: To be opened only after I’m dead and buried.
Nash’s fingers trembled as they held the envelope. He put it inside his father’s box along with the other papers, then carried everything out to the Range Rover.
On coming back in, he met Parker in the foyer.
“Did you get everything you wanted?” she asked anxiously.
“I think so, yes. My mother’s clothes can be donated, along with my father’s, unless you want anything?”
“Well, I have been wearing some of your father’s shirts. He… he got thin before he passed. And I can roll his pantlegs up and wear his jeans.”
“Rosie, you will have the money in your account shortly. You can buy some new clothes all your own.”
“But I don’t want to waste anything and I’m used to being… frugal.”
“I think the best thing you can do is make a fresh start. Purchase some things of your own, clothes, furniture, I don’t know, pillows, whatever.
Take your time, select what you want. You will have the money to pay for it.
And if you like, I can invest the settlement funds for you so that it will generate interest and dividend income.
I’ll be glad to do that free of charge.”
“I… I was just thinking of putting it in my savings account.”
“That pays next to nothing, which is why banks have all the money. Please let me set that up for you. It won’t be a huge amount, but I believe I can get it to generate over ten thousand a year, and some of it is tax free.”
“Ten thousand!” she exclaimed. “Dollars? A year?”
He was a bit taken aback but nodded and said, “Yes. The interest will go in each month for the bonds and with the dividends when they are declared and distributed.”
“Thank you so much, Mr. Nash.”
“It’s Walter, remember?”
“Yes, but with this business stuff and all, I really think you’re Mr. Nash.”
He smiled at the compliment. “How is your mother?”
“She’s awake again, if you’d like to say goodbye.”
She led him upstairs where Alice was now propped up in bed. The woman watched Nash like a hawk as he approached.
“Momma, this is Walter Nash, Ty’s son. And we get to stay here. Momma, do you understand me? Walter is helping us, so that this is our house for now.”
Alice continued to eye Nash with an unfriendly look. “You really Ty’s son?” she said in a voice raspy and faint.
“I am, yes.”
“You sure don’t look the part.”
Nash glanced down at his suit and tie and polished shoes. “No, I suppose I don’t.”
He gazed back up at her. And in that look, there seemed, at least to Nash, to be a bit of a bonding moment.
Alice said, “Sons ought to be different from their fathers. Otherwise, what’s the point?”
“I think so, too,” said Nash with a smile.
“But,” began Alice.
“But what?” said Nash pleasantly.
“But I see some of Ty in you.”
“Your eyes are better than mine then,” joked Nash.
However, Alice didn’t crack a smile. “I been around a long time, son. Seen a lot. And I see Ty in you.”
Nash looked at her awkwardly until Parker, sensing his discomfort, quickly said, “Walter was just leaving. He wanted to say goodbye.”
“Goodbye, Walter. Thanks for the house.”
“Well, you can thank my father for that, Alice. But on that point he and I are in complete agreement.”
She then gave him an endearing smile and it hurt his heart, because Nash thought it quite likely that this would be the last time he would see the woman. And he also thought about what she had said.
She can see some of my father in me?
No one had ever said that before. Quite the opposite, in fact.
He had heard some of the dads of his few friends growing up discussing in quiet tones how a combat warrior like Ty Nash—a man’s man, as Shock had said at the funeral service—could have a son like him.
And even as a youngster, the precocious Nash understood it was not meant to be a compliment.
He started to walk out to the Range Rover but then changed direction and ventured into the backyard.
Miraculously, the house next door still had the old doghouse from his younger days.
He leaned on the chain-link fence, closed his eyes, and imagined himself a little boy again sneaking over there to play with his furry chum, Rusty.
When he opened his eyes he saw a little boy emerge from the back of the house followed by a yapping and bouncy terrier puppy.
He saw Nash and waved. Nash waved back and asked, “What’s your dog’s name?”
“Sup.”
“Sup?”
“Like, ‘what’s up?’ You know.”
“Yes. Right.” He pointed to the doghouse. “Does Sup stay in there?”
“No way, mister. He sleeps with me.”
“Very smart,” said Nash. When the boy’s mother came out of the house and gave Nash a suspicious look, he turned and left.