Part 29 (1/2)

”Pa,” said Tom, walking beside his father, opening the car door for him. ”You see what we mean about her?”

”It was my fault. I forgot.”

”Forgot what?” said Tom, emptying his car ashtray onto the church parking lot. Not my son, thought Mr. Ca.s.sidy, turning his head.

”How she is,” said Mr. Ca.s.sidy. ”I lost my temper.”

”Pa, you're not G.o.d,” said Tom. His hands were on the steering wheel, angry. His mother's.

”Okay,” said Toni. ”But look, Pa, you've been a saint to her. But she's not the woman she was. Not the woman we knew.”

”She's the woman I married.”

”Not anymore,” said Toni, wife of her husband.

If not, then who? People were the same. They kept their bodies. They did not become someone else. Rose was the woman he had married, a green girl, high-colored, with beautifully cut nostrils, hair that fell down always, hair she pinned up swiftly, with anger. She had been a housemaid and he a chauffeur. He had taken her to the ocean. They wore straw hats. They were not different people now. She was the girl he had seen first, the woman he had married, the mother of his children, the woman he had promised: Don't let them take me. Let me die in my own bed.

”Supposing it was yourself and Tom, then, Toni,” said Mr. Ca.s.sidy, remembering himself a gentleman. ”What would you want him to do? Would you want him to break his promise?”

”I hope I'd never make him promise anything like that,” said Toni.

”But if you did?”

”I don't believe in those kinds of promises.”

”My father thinks he's G.o.d. You have to understand. There's no two ways about anything.”

For what was his son now refusing to forgive him? He was silent now, sitting in the back of the car. He looked at the top of his daughter-in-law's head, blonde now, like some kind of circus candy. She had never been blonde. Why did they do it? Try to be what they were not born to. Rose did not.

”What I wish you'd get through your head, Pa, is that it's me and Toni carrying the load. I suppose you forget where all the suppers come from?”

”I don't forget.”

”Why don't you think of Toni for once?”

”I think of her, Tom, and you too. I know what you do. I'm very grateful. Mom is grateful, too, or she would be.”

But first I think of my wife to whom I made vows. And whom I promised.

”The doctor thinks you're nuts, you know that, don't you?” said Tom. ”Rafferty thinks you're nuts to try and keep her. He thinks we're nuts to go along with you. He says he washes his hands of the whole bunch of us.”

The doctor washes his hands, thought Mr. Ca.s.sidy, seeing Leo Rafferty, hale as a dog, at his office sink.

The important thing was not to forget she was the woman he had married.

So he could leave the house, so he could leave her alone, he strapped her into the bed. Her curses were worst when he released her. She had grown a beard this last year, like a goat.

Like a man?

No.

He remembered her as she was when she was first his wife. A white nightgown, then as now. So she was the same. He'd been told it smelled different a virgin's first time. And never that way again. Some blood. Not much. As if she hadn't minded.

He sat her in the chair in front of the television. They had Ma.s.s now on television for sick people, people like her. She pushed the b.u.t.ton on the little box that could change channels from across the room. One of their grandsons was a TV repairman. He had done it for them when she got sick. She pushed the b.u.t.ton to a station that showed cartoons. Mice in capes, cats outraged. Some stories now with colored children. He boiled an egg for her lunch.

She sat chewing, looking at the television. What was that look in her eyes now? Why did he want to call it wickedness? Because it was blank and hateful. Because there was no light. Eyes should have light. There should be something behind them. That was dangerous, nothing behind her eyes but hate. Sullen like a bull kept from a cow. s.e.x mad. Why did that look make him think of s.e.x? Sometimes he was afraid she wanted it.

He did not know what he would do.

She slept. He slept in the chair across from her.

The clock went off for her medicine. He got up from the chair, gauging the weather. Sometimes the sky was green this time of year. It was warm when it should not be. He didn't like that. The mix-up made him shaky. It made him say to himself, ”Now I am old.”

He brought her the medicine. Three pills, red and gray, red and yellow, dark pink. Two just to keep her quiet. Sometimes she sucked them and spat them out when they melted and she got the bad taste. She thought they were candy. It was their fault for making them those colors. But it was something else he had to think about. He had to make sure she swallowed them right away.

Today she was not going to swallow. He could see that by the way her eyes looked at the television. The way she set her mouth so he could see what she had done with the pills, kept them in a pocket in her cheek, as if for storage.

”Rose,” he said, stepping between her and the television, breaking her gaze. ”You've got to swallow the pills. They cost money.”

She tried to look over his shoulder. On the screen an ostrich, dressed in colored stockings, danced down the road. He could see she was not listening to him. And he tried to remember what the young priest had said when he came to bring Communion, what his daughter lune had said. Be patient with her. Humor her. She can't help what she does. She's not the woman she once was.

She is the same.

”Hey, my Rose, won't you just swallow the pills for me. Like my girl.”

She pushed him out of the way. So she could go on watching the television. He knelt down next to her.

”Come on, girleen. It's the pills make you better.”

She gazed over the top of his head. He stood up, remembering what was done to animals.

He stroked her throat as he had stroked the throats of dogs and horses, a boy on a farm. He stroked the old woman's loose, papery throat, and said, ”Swallow, then, just swallow.”

She looked over his shoulder at the television. She kept the pills in a corner of her mouth.

It was making him angry. He put one finger above her lip under her nose and one below her chin, so that she would not be able to open her mouth. She breathed through her nose like a patient animal. She went on looking at the television. She did not swallow.

”You swallow them, Rose, this instant,” he said, clamping her mouth shut. ”They cost money. The doctor says you must. You're throwing good money down the drain.”

Now she was watching a lion and a polar bear dancing. There were pianos in their cages.

He knew he must move away or his anger would make him do something. He had promised he would not be angry. He would remember who she was.

He went into the kitchen with a new idea. He would give her something sweet that would make her want to swallow. There was ice cream in the refrigerator. Strawberry that she liked. He removed each strawberry and placed it in the sink so she would not chew and then get the taste of the medicine. And then spit it out, leaving him, leaving them both no better than when they began.