Everything Happens Today by Jesse Browner Page B

I’m sorry.”
    â€œShe doesn’t remember, Wes. She forgets everything.”
    â€œI know, I know. I’m truly sorry.”
    â€œNyeh.”
    â€œIs that ‘Nyeh, I forgive you’ or ‘Nyeh, you’re an asshole?’”
    She giggled into his T-shirt but didn’t answer.
    â€œTell you what. I know you’re bored. Give me a little time—let me take this up to mom and get started on my homework—and I’ll take you out later.”
    â€œWhere will you take me?”
    â€œDog run?”
    â€œNyeh.”
    â€œMuseum?”
    â€œNyeh.”
    â€œMovie?”
    â€œWhat movie?”
    â€œ
Taxi to the Dark Side
?”
    â€œNyeh.”
    â€œYour choice. Nothing too girlie. And walk the dog, please.”
    â€œNyeh.”
    Wes rinsed the soiled spoon in the sink, shook off the excess water, and retrieved an individual-portion cup of rice pudding from the fridge. He took the stairs on his tiptoes, three steps at a time, and again paused outside his mother’s door before tapping. This time he entered without waiting. Bob Ross had started a new painting, a subdued forest scene with a winding path, shrubbery in full bloom, and a sunlit clearing just around the bend, but Wes’s mother seemed to have fallen asleep. Wes was not entirely sure, as she had not moved and she often closed her eyes even when she was awake, but there was something about the rhythm of her breathing that told him so. Just to be sure, he allowed the bowl of the spoon to make a light ping as he placed it on the glass tabletop. Her eyes opened momentarily then closed again. Wes could see them moving beneath the pinkish lids, blindly looking for something, as she licked her lips. She looked just like a lizard lazing on a rock, but in the darkened room the resemblance took on a sinister cast.
    Occasionally Wes stumbled into wondering what things would be like when his mother was gone. When his mother was dead. Usually, he was able to suppress these thoughts, reminding himself that her disease was not fatal in itself, and that even in her weakened state she could easily survive another bout or two of pneumonia, as she had survived the last. But every so often the doubts would sneak in when he wasn’t paying attention and entertain themselves in his head, bouncing off each other and jockeying for dominance before he caught them and shut them down. And then, too, especially when he was too tired, fed up or depressed, he sometimes gave them free rein and listened, with a kind of detached, horrified fascination, to what they had to say. The first thing that would happen, without doubt, is that his father would move back into the master bedroom. All this—the sling, the carpeting, the heavy drapes, the television, the hospital bed—would go. And although his father never talked about it, Wes knew that, despite her inheritance and the medical insurance, his mother’s illness weighed heavy on the family finances, so when she died there would be money to pay for the redecoration. Wes was as sure as he could be that his father would want to make a new start. The kitchen would be the first thing to go—his dad was obsessed with the plans for the new kitchen, with its under-the-counter Sub-Zero freezer and six-burner Wolf cooking range—but the bedroom would come next, and there would be nothing left to remind anyone that she had spent years as a dying prisoner here. But he also knew that whenever he passed on the landing and heard the clicking of laptop keys instead of Bob Ross’s soothing murmur, it wouldn’t make any difference. This room would always be haunted, even if his father never sensed it. As for Nora, his mother’s death would be a disaster. Already, Nora clung to the wreckage like a shipwreck victim hanging on to a floating timber, desperate to convince herself that it would keep her afloat indefinitely. It meant everything to Nora, being able to go