over the couch. There are three large crucifixes that I can see at first glance, one on each wall. The room smells like a zoo.
“Good, Louis. How are you?” Ryan straightens in his wheelchair. Kelly says he looks up to me. I wouldn’t know about that, but I do know he makes an effort to act more normal during the rare moments that we’re alone together. The one or two times a year when I allow that to happen, I appreciate it. “Where’s Kelly?”
“She stayed with your mom at the hospital until very late last night. So she’s sleeping in a little and she’ll meet us there. You ready to go?” I back toward the door, keeping my eye on the white bird.
“I spoke to Mother around nine o’clock last night and she said Kelly had already left.” Ryan wheels after me as I head for the elevator.
I press the button and wince to hear the elevator chug into motion. I’ll dismantle the elevator the day I close on the building. “Your mother was on some serious painkillers. She was confused. She thought Kelly was Theresa for part of their visit.”
“Oh my,” Ryan says. “I’ve been praying for her all morning. I wish I didn’t have to go to the hospital. I’ve known for weeks that something bad was going to happen to her, though. I’ve been waiting.”
“Your mother’s getting older. It was only a matter of time before she fell, or had a stroke, or something along those lines.” I push him toward the car. I could let him wheel himself, which is what Kelly does to foster his independence, but then the whole process would take much longer. Besides, why let him think he’s independent when he’s not?
“A matter of time,” Ryan repeats. “I guess everything is just a matter of time.”
I help him into the front seat, then fold up his chair and fit it in the trunk. I make sure he’s buckled in before I start up the car.
We arrive at Catharine’s hospital room before anyone else. It is barely eight in the morning. I push Ryan in ahead of me, up to her bedside. Catharine looks better this morning than she did yesterday. “Your color’s better,” I tell her.
“It was all that medication,” she says. “I insisted they hold off this morning until they have to put me under.”
“You look fine, Mother,” Ryan says. He is hunched forward in his chair, stretching toward Catharine. “I don’t believe in hospitals, you know that. I don’t feel God’s presence when I’m in a hospital. Maybe the doctors were wrong. In my opinion they usually are. I bet you don’t need the operation.”
“I’ll be outside,” I say, and squeeze Catharine’s hand before I leave the room. I know I won’t see her again before the surgery. Soon she will be mobbed by children and grandchildren, all terrified that this fall is the beginning of the end. As far as I can tell, she has been fading, ever so slowly, since Patrick died. I don’t understand why she has chosen to take so long about it. My own parents seemed to disappear in a matter of minutes. It was startling and painful for me at the time, but later I came to appreciate the fact that it was quick. There was no gray area, no ambivalence. One minute they were here, the next they were gone. They never met Kelly, much less my daughters. My mother and father have no connection to the family I have now. I rarely think of them.
I take a seat in one of the orange plastic chairs in the hallway. I pick up a magazine on auto racing someone left on the chair next to mine, but before I can even turn the page the shaky feeling comes over me. It shows up out of nowhere. I hate and dread these moments. It is how I feel whenever I think of Eddie’s fall, but lately the shaky feeling has come to me on its own, with Eddie nowhere near my thoughts. I am unable to function until the sensation leaves me. It rumbles through me like an attack of nausea. All I can do is double over and pray for it to pass. Until the shakiness leaves and I feel normal again, I am in a cold, dark place where all I can think of are the terrible moments in my life. Moments that give me that same uneasy feeling.