The Trouble with Being Born: A Novel

Father

164 “C’mon Frances, get ready. Do you know where I’m taking you? I don’t know if they’ll let me come in the booth with you, but I’ll be right there. C’mon.” I wish there was something someone could do to stop this. She’s really going downhill, she’s going downhill fast. “We got to get your coat on.” It’s not warm in here, and they don’t even put a sweater on her. I told them I was taking her out: you’d think they’d have her coat on her and ready to go. She should say something too. She never complains. Never says “I’m cold” or “I have to go to the bathroom .” Jesus God, this is hard on me. It wasn’t supposed to be like this. I have my civil rights work, my Italian civil rights campaign, and now I have to be a caregiver. I’m an old man. It’s not fair. I go to her closet to get her coat. Her roommate is lying down with her back toward the door and her face toward the window. She’s been in here ten years. Ten years with the Alzheimer’s. God, I hope Frances doesn’t stay in here ten years. I hope to God she gets better. I look around the room. We had to put a bed with short legs in here because she fell out a couple of times. A bed, a closet, a nightstand. That’s what she has. I should put a TV in here. She likes to watch those old shows like I Love Lucy and the Beaver show. That’ll cost Father 165 father some money, though. I’m already paying almost four thousand a month. Four thousand for what? For basic room and board. She’s not getting any help. She’s not getting any therapy. Look at her arm, look how thin and weak it looks. Like a skeleton’s. She’s been out of the cast almost three weeks and that arm still looks like that. What therapy? What therapy I ask you? A TV would cost a lot. Maybe I’ll do it though. These labels on everything—light, bed, closet, bathroom —I don’t know what goddamn good they do. I don’t know how much she reads. She used to read the paper forwards and back, used to x-ray the goddamn paper. She’d sit in that chair for an hour at least, humming to herself, reading every page, even the ads. Here’s her coat. I have to put nametags on everything, even her breast prosthesis, or else they disappear. Mrs. Nance tells me it’s the other patients who take things, but they’re just covering their asses. If they’d pay these people more, I mean the foot soldiers who do all the work, who change and bathe these old people, then they wouldn’t have to take the clothes and other stuff. Her prosthesis was missing for almost a month. A hundred and fifty dollar prosthesis , the size of a football, and they couldn’t find it. Who would steal a thing like that? I said to them, “What are you people doing? Why would someone take a breast prosthesis? You can’t sell the goddamn thing.” And they said to me that it wasn’t stolen, it was just “missing.” Missing. I got on ’em. Every day I’d ask them, “Where’s her prosthesis? Did you find her prosthesis?” I’m not making any friends here. Finally they found it. One of the nurses’ aides misplaced it with one of the other ladies’ things. You got to get on these people here. You got to say, “Did you brush her teeth? Did she go to the bathroom ? Put a coat on her.” I’m not popular. I got to be this way. Think about all these old people who don’t have no one to care 166 father for them, no one to watch out and see if they’re getting cleaned up, if they’re getting the right medicine, if their prosthesis and stuff isn’t stolen. No one here likes to see me coming. But I like what I am. “Frances. Come here. Before we get in the car, you need to write out the names of who you’re...