The Rules of Inheritance (44 page)

Authors: Claire Bidwell Smith

BOOK: The Rules of Inheritance

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I think about my dad in his condo, in his bed. About how we are inextricably linked, even in this very moment.

This is it, I realize. This is the time in my life I've been moving toward all these years. I guess I thought I had longer, that maybe I wouldn't lose my father until I was thirty. But I know that's no longer true. He is going to die soon, and I am going to be alone.

It feels like a choice, even though I know it isn't.

Years later I will realize that maybe it really was a choice. Just as stopping at Christopher's that night in New Jersey was a choice, so was the one to arrive here, in this exact moment in my life.

Some part of me must know that even now, because of what I do next.

When I am finished with my cigarette, I stub it out and walk into the bedroom, where I nudge Colin until he opens his eyes.

I'm moving in with my dad, I say.

I know, he says, closing his eyes again.

No, I mean for good.

He opens his eyes again.

ON MY WAY BACK to Garden Grove I replay the conversation with Colin. It was short and perfunctory. There wasn't much to say.

I'm shaking nonetheless. I've been trying to figure out how to leave Colin for years now, and I'm shocked by how easy it was to finally do so. He didn't fight me. Not once. Admitted that it was over for him too. His eyes were dead and he blew cigarette smoke at the ceiling.

We agreed that I would move my things out this week. We parted ways at the door and there was a wildness between us, something frightening and alive, fluttering like a bird.

I grip the wheel of the car with both hands and try to focus on my dad.

This is it. I'm really doing this, I think, as the car speeds south on the 101. Maybe when this is all over I'll just move somewhere where nobody knows who I am. I'll start over, pretend to be someone else, forget about all of this.

When I walk into the condo forty-five minutes later, I can immediately sense that something is wrong. Two days' worth of newspapers sits by the front door. Dishes are piled in the sink. The blinds are pulled shut against the noontime sun.

I see Eric's silhouette on the deck, the fine trail of smoke from the cigarette he holds between his fingers. My heart races as I make my way down the hallway to my father's room. The blinds are pulled in there as well and the room is dim. His six-foot-five frame looks somehow small beneath the sheets.

Dad, I say, taking one of his hands in mine.

His eyelids flicker but do not open. His breath comes in ragged shifts.

Dad?

I let go of his hand, placing it gently at his side and find Eric on the patio.

My voice is high, loud. What happened to Dad?

What do you mean? Eric's voice is flat.

He's completely out of it. He's hardly breathing!

Claire, he's dying.

I turn my back on him and go back to my father's side. I pull a rolling office chair up as close to the bed as I can and pick up his hand again.

After an hour his eyes focus, he flexes his feet. I squeeze his hand. I've decided not to tell him about me and Colin for the time being.

After a while he looks over, his face registering my presence. His voice is gravelly when he speaks.

I wish that I could just go to sleep and not wake up.

I pull my knees up to my chest and dig my chin into them, biting back the tears. I don't know how to respond.

Honey, you have to let me go. You have to.

Tears drip down into little translucent circles on my tank top.

You have to, honey.

Inside I'm screaming. But I know that he's right.

He closes his eyes and starts to slip into sleep again.

I choke out a sob but he doesn't seem to notice. There are things I need to say to him before he dies. I'm afraid to say them though. Saying them will mean that I'm letting go.

I think about that night with Michel, about my own night with my mother. Why do we feel like we have to say these things, these simple things that we spend our whole lives saying in one way or another?

Words. They are like living creatures. They must be honored.

Dad, I say, squeezing his hand until he opens his eyes and looks at me.

I love you so much.

He smiles at me, hinting at a nod.

I will miss you every day of my life.

He blinks, a slow heavy one, a nodding blink.

I manage to say to him, barely discernable through my closing throat, one last sentence.

If I ever do anything great in my life, it will be because of you and mom.

He nods at me and I try to memorize the color of his eyes. Gray like quarry stone.

That's it. Three sentences.

He falls asleep, and I remain at his side for hours, watching him breathe and listening to the sound of kids playing in the pool outside the window.

OVER THE NEXT COUPLE of days my dad pulls through whatever cloud he'd been drifting into and returns to a familiar state, although one in which he can no longer hear. The hospice nurse explains that sudden deafness can be a symptom of dying patients.

I have to shout to be heard now, and hate the sound of my voice when I do. Sometimes I repeat the questions in my normal voice just so I can hear them the way I meant them to soundâsoft and pliant. After a while I make up a series of flash cards that I can hold up instead.

Are you in pain? Are you hungry? Are you cold?

Before Eric leaves I spend one more day in Hollywood, packing up my belongings. Liz and Holly are living in LA now and they drop what they're doing to help me pack. Abby helps me drive it all down and unload it into my father's garage.

And that's it. I now live in a two-bedroom condo in Orange County. I soberly unpack my things into the dresser in the guest room, reluctantly place my toothbrush in the holder in the bathroom. Nobody can tell me how long my dad will live, how long I'll be doing this for.

It could be weeks or it could be months, the hospice nurse says.

That night my father wakes me up every three hours. I stand, slit-eyed against the brightness of the room, at the foot of his bed. I drop morphine onto his tongue and I lift his legs, which he can no longer lift himself, and reposition them.

The next day he is quiet. We sit together in the room, our reticence forced upon us. He reaches out his hand, and I lean forward to take it, my chin balanced on my knees, my eyes drifting to the corners.

He fusses with the bedsheets and flexes his feet.

I don't want him to die, but I also don't want it to go on like this.

Colin drives down from Hollywood that afternoon. We sit on the patio while my father sleeps and we say things that we needed to say a long time ago.

We talk about when we first met, about that first summer when we were both so young and so sad. He holds me for a long time after that, and I soak his shirt with tears, my breath hot and childlike on his neck.

When he leaves, I return to the chair at my father's bedside. He is still sleeping, so I take one of his hands in mine and close my eyes too.

I have never felt so alone in my life.

A FEW DAYS GO BY. Liz comes over every day. She brings me lunch, and we sit on either side of my dad's bed while he sleeps. Several years from now Liz's beautiful sister will die of cancer, grief becoming an even deeper aspect of our friendship.

For now, I am impossibly grateful for her presence. Even though we are both twenty-five, I can't help but see us as teenagers still, a quality that makes it feel even more surreal to be the only ones here caring for my dad.

When she goes back to work, panic rises in my sternum. My father is still sleeping and the condo is silent. I pad along the carpet in the hallway and stand in the doorway to his room, watching his chest rise and fall. The oxygen machine hisses in a corner.

He only wakes once that night.

The next morning I wake him gently and then sit beside him while he looks around, getting his bearings. I offer him a sip of water but he shakes his head, motioning for me to give him paper and a pen.

Why? I shout. Can't you speak to me?

He insists. I pass him a pen and a small piece of paper, and then watch as he writes a series of numbers down in wobbly handwriting. They trail down the page in a seemingly meaningless order.

487

.98

0.6

088.7

I scan the numbers, trying to figure them out. I think about my father's engineering background, about when he used to help me with my math homework in middle school.

What are these?

Here, just write a number, he finally says, and thrusts the paper at me.

I write down the number three and hold it up for him to see.

Where do they come from? He has a look of awe on his face.

I laugh then and he does too. We both shrug at each other.

I leave the room after a while and place a call to hospice. Confusion in the last days is normal, says the nurse on the phone.

The last days?

Your father is actively dying, Claire.