Chapter 3 - The Tray I Carried After Bedtime
Graham was already dressed when I came downstairs. It was 5:47 in the morning and the house was still dark, the kitchen lit only by the light over the stove. He sat at the dark wood table in his light blue button-down, his hands flat on the surface like he was holding it steady. My plate from last night was in the sink, rinsed but not washed. He hadn't slept.
He didn't say good morning.
"We do this now," he said. "Before Miles gets up. Before you go to work."
I nodded. My throat was dry. I was in sweatpants and my beige blouse from the night before thrown over a t-shirt, my hair still pulled back. I could hear the upstairs vent ticking.
"Give me the key," he said.
I went to the junk drawer by the fridge and pushed aside batteries and takeout menus. The small silver key was taped under the tray. I’d put it there three months ago when Robert first came home from the facility in Des Moines. I’d told myself it was temporary until I figured out what to tell Graham. Then temporary had become a schedule.
Graham watched my hand shake.
The closed light-colored interior door was right off the dining room, between the hall closet and the laundry. We’d always called it the storage door. Graham had never tried it because I’d told him the lock was stuck. When I put the key in, it turned easily.
The air that came up was different. Warmer. It smelled like laundry detergent and Ensure and that faint sour smell of an older person sleeping. The stairs were carpeted. I’d put a runner down so Robert wouldn’t slip. At the bottom, I flipped the switch and the finished basement apartment came on in a soft yellow glow.
I heard Graham stop one step behind me.
It wasn’t a scary basement. It was a one-bedroom with low ceilings and a vinyl plank floor I’d mopped every Sunday. A hospital bed was against the far wall where our old couch used to be, cranked half up. A recliner chair with a blanket tucked over the arms. A mini fridge humming next to a microwave on a folding table. And on that table, the white patterned plate from last night with the broccoli pushed to one side and the meat cut into small pieces, barely touched. My fork was still on it.
My father was in the recliner, not the bed. He’d gotten up again. He was thin in a way that made his pajamas hang loose, his hair white and cropped short, his hands knotted in his lap. He stared at the small TV that wasn’t on. When he heard us, he turned his head slowly.
"Sarah?" he said. His voice was hoarse and small. "Sarah, you brought someone?"
Graham’s breath caught behind me. I felt his hand not quite touch my back.
Robert looked at me and his face eased. He didn’t see Graham clearly. He didn’t see the house clearly most mornings. He thought it was 1998 and I was still in high school and his name for me was the only name I’d ever had.
"Hi, Dad," I said. I tried to keep my voice even. "This is Graham."
He blinked. "Is she making biscuits? Sarah always makes biscuits."
He reached for my hand. His skin was papery and cool. I took it because if I didn’t he would get agitated.
Graham stepped fully into the room then. I watched his eyes move the way Miles’s had at dinner, slow, taking inventory. The pill organizer on the dresser, Monday through Sunday, AM and PM, half the lids flipped open. The blood pressure cuff. The stack of adult briefs by the bathroom door. The calendar taped to the wall with Letty’s handwriting in black marker: Letty M. - Mon/Wed/Fri 9-2, Tues/Thurs 4-7, Call cell. Under it, a second note in my handwriting: Dr. Chen - 11/14 refill. County forms on the fridge with a paperclip.
"This is how you’ve been doing it," Graham said quietly. Not a question.
I nodded. "Letty comes in the side entrance. Through the Bilco doors. So Miles wouldn’t hear."
"Three months," he said. He was looking at the plate again. "That plate. You were taking him dinner while we were eating."
"After Miles brushed his teeth," I said. "I’d tell him I was getting laundry."
Robert squeezed my hand and then let go, his attention drifting. "Sarah, honey, where’s your mother?"
"She’s not here, Dad," I whispered.
Graham didn’t move for a long time. He stood in his pressed shirt in the middle of my other life, the one I’d mopped and medicated and hidden key by key. He finally looked at me, his eyes red from no sleep, his stubble more pronounced in the basement light.
"That’s why it’s Sarah," he said. "He only knows you as Sarah."
"Yeah," I said. It was the first true thing I’d said about it out loud.
Upstairs, the floor creaked. The sound of Miles rolling over in bed. We both looked at the ceiling.
Graham swallowed. "We’re not done," he said. His voice was low so it wouldn’t carry. "You hear me? I’ve seen him. Now we have to figure out what this is. Legally. Medically. You don’t get to keep him down here like this."
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I knew he was right. I also knew Robert had started calling for me in the night again, louder than before, and Miles’s school bus came at 7:20 and Graham had a meeting downtown at eight.
I pulled the blanket up over my father’s knees. The clock over the mini fridge said 6:01.
