I pressed the button for the third floor. The elevator smelled like bleach and urine,
both at the same time. When the doors
opened with a Ping!, I headed towards
his room. Number 327. I walked slowly, delaying the inevitable. I would have to see him. He would have to see me.
Once in the doorway, I took a deep breath and came around
the corner. Separated from his neighbor
by a light blue curtain, George reclined in bed. He was gaunt now. I hadn’t seen him in at least a decade.
“Oh, my little Krissey.”
He had a gruff voice, always had, but the years of smoking had not been
kind to him.
“No, George. It’s
Caroline.”
“Yeah, Caroline.
Sweet Caroline.”
I shuddered visibly.
He used to call me that when he rubbed my back before I went to
sleep. My mother worked the late
shift. George always put Krissey and me
to bed. Sometimes, he would sing us a
simple song and stumble out into the living room. Other times, he was more lucid. Took his time tucking us in. Gave us “special” attention.
He had long fingernails.
They were tobacco stained and sharp at the edges. My mother said that he danced like Fred
Astaire. I had never seen him
dance. Not once.
He just stared at both of us, rubbing his round belly, his
hand drifting under the lip of his pants while we had tea parties or pushed our
plastic babies around in their strollers.
I would hear him sometimes, in his room, shuffling the
covers. He made grunting noises. I told my mother about it once in a while. She always said the same thing. “George is sick. He doesn’t feel well… it’s like when you get
a belly ache.” She would light one
cigarette off of the other, her hand always shook.
“George gets a lot of belly aches, Momma.”
“I know, baby.”
I had fantasies about George. When he took a bath, I threw a hair dryer in
the tub. When he slept, I tied a rope to
his arm and doused him with lighter fluid.
When he touched me, I pulled a kitchen knife from under my pillow,
poking him in that belly, cutting his flesh like butter. I thought about George all of the time.
My mother died in 1989, one day after my seventeenth
birthday. George filled out
paperwork. He was officially our new
daddy. George attended my college
graduation, my wedding. He walked me
down the aisle. Besides these events, I
rarely saw George as an adult. He sent a
check every once in a while. Or cash. Twenty dollars shoved into a smoke scented
envelope. I never looked forward to the
money. I looked forward to the day he
would die.
A lawyer had contacted me.
Apparently, I was the sole beneficiary of an insurance policy that
George had purchased sometime in our childhood.
She said that all I had to do was show up at her office and sign a piece
of paper. She said that George was dying;
he had a few days left.
I could have gone to that office. Signed that paper. Gone home… and waited. Instead, I signed that paper and got his
information from her. Where is he hospitalized? I showed concern where there was none. I had a few things to get off my chest.
In that room, I stared at George. I knew he suffered from dementia now, so this
here, this was for me. It was for Krissey.
I leaned over him, managing to get close enough to his ear
without sitting on the bed. “George,” I
whispered, “I have to keep the lights on when my husband lays on top of
me. I have to keep my eyes open the
entire time. I stare at him, for fear
that if I close those eyes, I would see you.
When he touches my back, I shiver.
When he gives me a kiss after even one drink, I can smell your breath. When someone smokes a cigarette, I imagine
them putting it out on my backside.
Today, I signed a DNR for you.
That means that if you go into cardiac arrest, no one brings you back to
life.” His eyes widened.
“You took my life.
Today, I take yours.”
