A pretty rough day

After the party, I realized I probably couldn’t go to Paris after all.

I’d been quietly hoping — and then, when it seemed everyone was stable, Dad settling in at Nora’s, Mom packing up the house, waiting for an offer — I’d started planning.

There was a class I’d been pointed toward for years. It was in France — a week-long intensive at Chartres Cathedral, the second week of August. It could be part of the postgraduate curriculum I’d been building, slowly and carefully. If I kept at it, chipping off a few credits here, a few there, I might actually make my dream a reality: a master’s in Wisdom Studies. Maybe even a PhD.

The Chartres program would cost an entire paycheck — but I’d been saving. So I held my breath and sent my editor an email: Do you think it would be possible for me to work from Paris, remotely, for one month this summer?

I think we could work that out, she’d written back.

—

And then I thought — I could add a week in Paris! Maybe Katie could join me.

“That sounds reasonable,” Matthew said.

“Really? You mean that? We can afford it?”

“We can’t afford it,” he said. “But there may be a way. This is important to you. It’s part of your program. Let’s figure it out.”

I found a round-trip flight and saved the itinerary. “I’ll make it your 50th birthday gift,” he said. “I’ll pay for Katie’s ticket.”

—

Online, I found a listing for an apartment in Le Marais — a charming two-bedroom with a pullout sofa, a private cobblestone courtyard, blue painted shutters, boxes overflowing with bright red geraniums. A short walk to the Bastille, the Picasso Museum and several lovely cafes, the caption promised. I was imagining showing my daughter the places I lived during my junior year abroad — introducing her to the Metro, the Marché aux Puces. I envisioned us sitting at a café in the Latin Quarter, café crème with those little cubes of sugar melting on the bottom. The bread… oh, I couldn’t wait to share a meal with her there.

Thus was I dreaming — when my phone rang.

“This is the Life Alert operator. Your father has pressed his call button. This morning at 11:30 he had a bathroom accident.”

“A bathroom accident?”

“We sent the police to the house, but they couldn’t get inside.”

“Police!”

—

When Life Alert calls, I always call Dad to follow up — and usually he barks at me. It’s all over. I’m fine. Nothing to worry about.

But this time, hearing my voice, he sighs. “I had a pretty rough day,” he says.

He’d had to move his bowels, but he couldn’t get out of bed. He held on as long as he could. When he couldn’t hold on any longer, he tried to clean himself up — dragging his body along the floor to the bathroom, getting undressed, washing himself as best he could, making his way back to bed. He stripped the sheets and carried the soiled linens to the hamper.

“It took me over two hours,” he says. “And I was so exhausted that, on my way back to bed, I fell. And I couldn’t get up.”

“Oh, Dad...”

“And while I was down on the floor, it happened again. That’s when I pressed my button.”

—

“I can’t afford this!” Nora’s voice comes fast, panic stitched through every word. “The police called me at work. They were at my door and they couldn’t get in. I was an hour away, across the river. I begged them not to break down the door — do you know what that would cost me? I had to promise to send someone. But I was at work. I can’t handle this, Amy. There was shit all over the floor.”

“I can’t imagine,” I say.

“It’s time for your father to move out.”

—

I plan the conversation as I drive.

It’s time for a nursing home, I will say.

Stop controlling me, he will say.

I’m not controlling you, I will say — or, more likely, sob.

As I drive, memories flap at me, a flock of wild birds with desperate wings. Dad handing me twenty-dollar bills. Dad carrying my luggage. Dad picking me up at school, at the airport, at the train station. He was always there, listening as I tortured out my broken-heart stories, my ideas, my dreams. How can we do this to him? We took away his keys. He lost Kit. Nora wants him out…

I will never be able to tell him. How will I tell him? I climb to the top of Nora’s staircase, passing the loops that were supposed to help him make his way up and down. I step into the room, heart heavy with what I have to say.

But when I get there, he’s dreamy and quiet, and I don’t have the heart to say the things I’d planned. I sit beside his bed.

“I was three years old...” he begins, spinning his memory silk.

—

The next day, Nora emails. I am taking three weeks off in August. You’ll have to cover for me. And when I get back, I want your father out of here.

“They’re eating me alive,” I sob into Matthew’s arms. “I don’t know what to do. Do I take care of him? Do I run to Mom’s every time she calls? What about my sisters? I was supposed to be in Paris.”

He holds me. He listens. And when I’m settled — nose blown, eyes dry — we sit at the kitchen table, and he says it the way only he can.

“When this thing with your parents is all over — after they’re gone, and you’re looking back — all that will matter is what you think about what you did.” He pauses. “So. What do you have to do to feel good about this when it’s all over? To believe — and yours is the only opinion that counts — that you did the right thing? Make the choice that’s closest to who you really are.”

The right thing.

And I knew there was no choice.

I can’t go to Paris.

—

I feel very, very sorry for myself. My son is going to college next month and I am not there for him. My father is dying in a little room in Union City and I am not there for him. My mother is packing up her life into boxes and I am not there for her. My husband is drowning in work and I am not there for him.

Most of all, I am not there for myself.

“I wanted to go dorm shopping with Max,” I sob into Matthew’s arms. “I wanted to fill a shopping cart with bed linens and pillows. A little wastebasket.”

—

This is a scene from The End of Men, a memoir I started years ago.

The previous chapter, Small Coke is here. If you're new to the project, read the first chapter here: Keys. The full list of scenes, in order, is here.

Want to support the work? Leave a comment. Share a chapter with a friend. To receive the chapters by email, subscribe here. To support the writer (me) and the project, become a paid subscriber. Paid subscribers also get SOSI: The School of Sacred (Words and) Images

---

Photo by Sarah Wolfe on Unsplash