38 Samantha
38
SAMANTHA
W E CAME INTO the house in our black suits and black dresses in black moods. No color today for anyone. Not even gray.
“I can’t wait to go to bed,” I said, pulling off my heels.
“Pajamas,” Jeneva said to the boys. They ran up the stairs. “I’m down for a glass of wine if anyone wants to join me.”
“You may have a bottle from the cellar,” Tristan said. “One.”
I scoffed. “So benevolent. I have work tomorrow, but I’ll eat ice cream.”
Tristan was already heading for the basement.
“Get the Hales Vineyard Merlot!” Jeneva called after him.
Dad took Mom upstairs to put her to sleep. I went to let out Pugsly and feed Pooter. I changed into Xavier’s hoodie trying not to get more depressed than I already was that he was gone. I came back to find everyone in the kitchen. Someone had put out one of Xavier’s charcuterie boards. Tristan was eating a stack of cheese slices with a single piece of salami in the middle. My sister was already drinking a glass of red wine in her sweats. She’d set the strawberry ice cream out for me. Dad had a whiskey.
“It was a nice service,” I said, grabbing a bowl.
Everyone mumbled agreement.
Dad took a swallow of his old-fashioned, the ice clinking in the glass. “There’s something I need to talk to you about,” he said. “I don’t really know how to say this. I’m too tired for tact.”
We all looked at him.
“Your grandmother had a heart condition.”
Jeneva and I glanced at each other.
“Did the autopsy come back?” Jeneva asked.
“No,” Dad said. “She told me. Months ago.”
We all stared at him.
“She needed a surgery. An aortic valve replacement. She’d been aware of it for a while, it was progressive, her doctors were monitoring it, she was just starting to have issues. It’s probably what caused her to pass.”
I abandoned the ice cream and sat gingerly on a barstool. “Why wouldn’t she tell us?”
“Because she wasn’t planning on fixing it,” he said. “She didn’t want you pushing her to try.”
“Why wouldn’t she fix it?” Jeneva asked.
“It was a major surgery. They needed to crack open her chest. Months of recovery and physical therapy—if she even made it out at all. I think she thought she had more time and she didn’t want us to have to take care of her. We were already spread too thin.”
Tristan’s eyes were fixed on the floor, still holding his cheese.
“And you just… didn’t tell us,” Jeneva said, looking stricken.
“She asked me not to,” he said.
“So what?! She’s gone now, maybe we could have convinced her!” she said.
“I honored her request,” he said in an end of discussion tone. Then Dad dragged a hand down his mouth. “I think it’s time to consider a memory care facility for your mother.”
The entire room jerked to attention.
“ What? ” I said.
“Wha—We promised her she would stay at home,” Jeneva said.
Dad looked weary. “I know. I know what we promised her. But the situation has changed. Her condition has changed. And I can’t do this anymore.”
“And why is that?” Tristan snapped.
Dad looked at him with bloodshot eyes. “I’m worn out. I don’t know how much I have left. You have no idea the level of care she requires.”
“Don’t I? We fucking live here—”
“Yeah?” Dad said. “Are you up with her in the middle of the night when she’s sundowning until three a.m.? Are you showering her? Dressing her? Are you changing her diapers?”
Tristan pressed his lips into a line.
Dad shook his head. “You think putting some makeup on her and dyeing her hair is the extent of what she needs right now? Your grandmother and I had been doing the bulk of the heavy lifting here for the last six months. She’s gone. Your mother’s care is complex and evolving, and I’m tired .”
I licked my lips. “Okay. I can understand that. But I think there’s some things we can do before we go full assisted living—”
“Like what?” he said, looking at me. “The adult day centers? Driving her there and back once a day when she tries to jump out of moving cars? Home health aides? I’ve looked into it. Her social security will only cover a fraction of the cost and we’ve already tapped into every program we qualify for. We’ll come out of pocket for the rest of it. You know how much it is to have someone come here? Twenty-five to forty dollars an hour . Do you know how many hours are in a day? It would cost us three hundred dollars just to cover me for one full night’s sleep. It’s cheaper to put her in a facility than it is to pay for her to stay at home. Your grandmother and I talked about this at great length. It was her idea. And I think she was right.”
“Her idea?” Tristan said. “How convenient that we can’t ask her.”
Dad blinked at him. “What exactly do you think is my angle here, Tristan? Your grandmother was dying. She knew what this was going to look like when she was gone. A core part of your mother’s care team is no longer here. We don’t even have someone to watch her while everyone is at work.”
“I can,” I said. “I work from home—”
He started laughing. A mirthless, worn-out laugh. “Good luck.” He shook his head. “She’s restless, emotional, and she’s living in a haunted house. She can’t remember that her mom is dead. This place reminds her that she’s missing. Every day she’s going to ask about her. Every hour. Sometimes every minute. Are you ready for that? In the middle of a conference call? In the middle of a project? Her wringing her hands and working up to a meltdown while you’re here alone from nine to five?”
He waited for me to reply. I didn’t.
He looked at each of us. “Her condition is progressing. It’s moving beyond what we can handle. It just is. And it’s not even about us. Do you think your mother wants to hurt you when she has a blowup? For you to have bruises and scars from holding her down? Do you think she wants her children seeing the things you will see? Wiping her? Changing her diapers? She would want dignity. She would want us to have quality of life.”
My chin quivered. “But we promised…”
“Those places are like six thousand dollars a month,” Tristan said. “Just so you know.”
Jeneva looked up at him in shock. “Are you serious?”
“Yup.”
“How do people do this?” she breathed. “I mean, it’s taking all four of us just to afford the basics for her—”
“They become wards of the state,” Tristan said. “That’s how they afford it. And then they end up in the same kind of place Dad wants to send her only shittier.”
“I wouldn’t take her to a place like that,” Dad said. “We would find somewhere nice. And yes, they’re expensive. But the cost of keeping her at home is going to end up higher if we bring in help.”
“No,” Jeneva said, shaking her head. “I won’t do it. I won’t put her into a nursing home.”
Dad nodded. “Okay. So tonight is your night to sleep with her.” He got up. “Let me know if you still feel the same way in the morning.”
“Okay, just wait,” I said. “Wait. I hear you. It’s been harder than we knew, you’ve been shouldering this stuff alone, you’re getting burned out. Let’s try different meds. Stronger sleeping pills—”
“That I can’t get her to take half the time?” Dad said.
“Let’s do it at dinner,” I said. “When she’s already used to drinking something. Maybe we just put her to bed earlier. We didn’t know it was like this, Dad. You didn’t tell us.”
Dad went quiet.
“How about if we start helping with showers?” Jeneva said. “Everyone but Tristan. We can alternate nights.”
“And maybe we do get some help during the day,” I said. “Someone to help with toileting. We could do a shorter shift so it’s only ten to three or something, not as expensive. Just Monday through Friday while I’m trying to work.”
“If I have to change a diaper, I have to change a diaper,” Jeneva said. “Right?” She looked at me.
I nodded.
Jeneva peered at each of us. “We have to make it work here. We have to make it work with the four of us. It’s what she wanted and I can’t afford to chip in for more care.”
“We agreed to split it,” Tristan said. “That was the deal.”
“Yeah? Well I have kids, Tristan. I’m a single mom and I don’t get a dime of child support. I’m already paying on the remodel—” She buried her face in her hands and let out a shuddering breath. “God, why did we do that? What were we thinking ? I have to put these boys through college,” she said, so quietly we could barely hear her.
“When it comes time for the boys to go to college, we’ll figure it out,” I said. “Nobody’s going to leave them behind. Nobody is leaving anyone behind.”
My sister didn’t look up, but she nodded.
Dad was staring at his glass. “I just don’t see this working. I think we’re putting a Band-Aid on a knife wound.”
“She wanted to stay with us,” Tristan said. “It’s the only reason why I’m fucking here.”
“What she wanted was to be remembered ,” Dad said. “She didn’t want to be left somewhere and forgotten. We’d never do that. We’d go see her every day, we’d take her home for the weekends and holidays. And when we’d see her we’d get to do what we’re supposed to be doing, enjoying her, not resenting her.”
“Wow. Tell us how you really feel.” Tristan crossed his arms. “Why don’t we talk about what this is actually about.”
Jeneva made a frustrated noise. “Tristan, knock it off. Dad is not cheating.”
Tristan scoffed. “Oh no? For someone who cares so much about sleep, he sure disappears a lot between the hours of midnight to two.”
“What I do to relieve stress is none of your business,” Dad said, his voice a warning.
“It is if you’re trying to dump her in some nursing home so you can go fuck around,” Tristan said.
The three of us looked at Dad.
“Your mother is beyond understanding anything that happens in this house or this marriage,” Dad said, carefully.
“So you’re admitting it,” Tristan said.
Dad stared at him, his face more haggard and weary than I’d ever seen it. Or maybe it had been this way for a while, and unlike the slides I see of Xavier, it had happened before my eyes and I’d gotten used to it.
“I love my wife. I always will. There are days I’d rather be dead than have to live through the things happening to her,” Dad said. “Her body might still be here, but she is gone and she has been for a very long time. I am a full-time caregiver to someone who barely knows my name. I will not apologize for what I have to do to make it so I can wake up in the morning to the reality I’m forced to endure. My life is a permanent, intolerable unhappiness. And I pray you never know what that’s like.”
He put a hand on his whiskey. “You three talk about it. Give me your answer tomorrow. I’ll do whatever you decide.”
He threw back the rest of his drink and left.
Tristan glared after him. Then he turned on us. “You guys are seriously fucking okay with this?”
“Tristan, stop,” I said wearily.
“No. He’s not even trying to hide it now!”
“And why should he?” My sister’s tone caught me by surprise. “Dad has a right to happiness, Tristan.”
“Not if it means he’s fucking cheating!”
She set her wineglass on the counter with a clink. “So Dad goes on dates. Who gives a shit? Not Mom. All Mom knows is that he’s here . In the grand scheme of everything that’s going on is this really the hill you want to die on?”
“He’s trying to put her in a home!”
“Dad’s being forced to make decisions that none of us could ever comprehend,” she said. “He has to think about what’s right for her, what’s right for us, what’s right for his grandkids. And everything he said was true. Her care is complicated. We’re all making sacrifices and nobody’s making more than him. If you want to be pissed about something, be pissed that our grandmother had a terminal illness and we didn’t get to know about it until two weeks after she’s dead.”
“Stop,” I said.
My brother’s chin quivered. He looked like he was about to burst into tears or storm out or both.
He chose both.
He swiped the Merlot from the counter, flipped Jeneva off, and left.