It’s a Saturday morning, just like any other. My father and I are sitting side by side at the kitchen table in our apartment, eating breakfast. Coffee for him, juice for me. Toast for him, cereal for me. It’s still early, but the sun is already high in the sky, illuminating my father’s newspaper with muted rays of light as he reads today’s business section. As usual, we eat quietly, our silence broken only by the small clinks of glassware and the rustling of paper as my father turns the pages of The New York Times.
I get up to pour myself another cup of juice, and my father watches me over the metal frames of his glasses.
“Sleep okay?”
“Yeah, but I’m still kind of tired,” I reply, grabbing the O.J. from the refrigerator. “Did you?”
“Not bad,” says my father, stretching in his seat. His hair is all messed up, matted down in the front and sticking up wildly at the crown of his head. His upper lip is slick with Vick’s Vapo-Rub. “But your mother was tossing and turning all night. She’s still not feeling well.”
“That’s too bad. Is she still asleep?”
“Not sure. Why don’t you go check?”
I tip-toe to the other side of the house, knowing better than to be loud. My father gets mad if I wake her up too early.
Slowly, I open the door to my parents’ bedroom, willing it not to creak. It’s dark in there, the shutters closed and the blinds tightly drawn over all the windows. I wait a few moments, listening for any sounds of movement. I don’t hear anything, apart from the hum of the dehumidifier and the slight puff of the plug-in air freshener. A heady wave of pine scent washes over me.
“Mom?” I whisper, but there’s no answer. She must be asleep.
I shut the door quietly and shuffle back to the kitchen, my slippers scuffing against the carpet.
My mother’s not well. She hasn’t left the bed in almost a year, not since she got pneumonia last winter. But my father and I take good care of her. Our medicine cabinet is as well-stocked as any pharmacy, and every other night my father gives her a sponge bath. During the day, we roll the TV into the bedroom so she can catch up on her soaps.
“I’m the luckiest woman in the world,” she always tells us. “Two handsome men to wait on me hand and foot.”
Back in the kitchen, my father is finishing his last slice of toast.
“How is she?” he asks. His voice is casual, but I know he worries about her. My parents have been married for 19 years, going on 20 this May. If she’s better by then, my father’s going to surprise her with a trip to France.
“Sleeping,” I say. I clear the dishes without asking, like I’ve been taught.
“Well, we might want to wake her up soon. Can’t forget about her antibiotic…” My father furrows his brow, probably calculating dosages in his head. “Hey, why don’t we bring her breakfast in bed?”
“I think she’d like that.” I put a scoop of decaf in the coffee maker and open the fridge, surveying its somewhat meager contents. Ever since Mom got sick, my father has done all the grocery shopping. I don’t think he’ll ever get the hang of it.
“I’ll make some eggs,” I say finally, grabbing two big ones from their cardboard nests. “Why don’t you make a couple pieces of toast?”
“All right,” says my father, putting down his newspaper. “Hey, did you know that the Jets won last night?”
I groan. “Not again!”
My father and I watch football together a lot. My mother has no interest in any of it- she calls it “male bonding time.” Which I guess it is.
Once the food is ready, I arrange it all pretty on a wooden tea tray. I even pluck a flower from the planter outside and stick it in a small glass vase. It’s a purple pansy, my mother’s favorite color.
“Just like room service!” my father says, squeezing my shoulder. It makes him happy when I do little things like this for Mom. “We can bring it to her together.”
The breakfast tray balanced on one hand, I open my parent’s bedroom door for the second time. Mom’s still asleep, the covers piled high over her still form.
As I set the tray down on the bedside table, my father opens the blinds halfway, letting some light enter the room. He plugs in another air freshener, this one floral. I gingerly sit down on the edge of the bed and slide an arm under the covers, feeling for my mother’s hand. The sheets are slightly damp. Despite the blankets covering her, my mother’s fingers are cool- another symptom of her illness, my father says. I squeeze them gently, but she doesn’t lift her head from the pillow. Her eyes are closed, and I can almost see them flickering back and forth beneath the lids. It’s a sign of REM sleep, which we learned about in school last week. I wonder what she’s dreaming about.
“I feel bad waking her up, Dad,” I say, smoothing a lock of hair from her forehead. There’s a small bubble of dark liquid at the corner of her mouth, and I wipe it away. “She looks so peaceful.” And she does. She’s still beautiful, even though the sickness has made her skin as pale and fragile as parchment. Every night my father rubs a special cream on her arms and legs to help the circulation.
My father sits down gently at the foot of the bed. “You’re right,” he says, his eyes never leaving her face. “We’ll let her sleep a while longer. We can leave the food as a surprise when she wakes up.”
His hand clenches involuntarily at the covers, and I immediately know what he’s thinking. He’s been under a lot of stress at work lately, and Mom’s condition isn’t helping. She’s been waking up later and later each day, and I know he must be worried. Sometimes he shuts himself in their room for hours while she’s sleeping, just watching her.
“It’s okay, Dad,” I say, reaching over to touch his hand. “You said yourself that she was restless last night. She’s probably just tired.”
My father is quiet for a while. “You’re right,” he says finally, standing up. “She needs all the rest she can get.”
He pulls the covers up around her chin, and a familiar yeasty odor fills the air, like the smell of slightly spoiled bread.
“Did you bathe her last night?” I ask, and immediately regret it. An annoyed expression briefly flickers across my father’s face.
“Of course I bathed her.”
“Just making sure,” I say quietly.
There’s this sore on her tailbone that just won’t heal, no matter how many times we dress it. I worry that it’s because she’s been in bed for so long. Sometimes it leaks white stuff, and we have to change the sheets.
My father closes the blinds again and we silently leave the room, leaving the tray of food behind. I worry that it’ll be cold when she wakes up.
The morning goes on as usual. My father washes the dishes, and I do a load of laundry. I begin working on my history presentation that’s due on Monday. Around noon, my father wheels the TV into my mother’s room, and soon I hear the familiar opening credits of Days of Our Lives. When he comes back out, he’s holding the now-empty breakfast tray.
“Your mother wants me to tell you that breakfast was delicious,” he says with a smile. “Especially the eggs.”
“Good,” I say, relieved that her appetite is back. “How is she feeling?”
“She’s doing okay,” he replies. “But she’s still exhausted. She’s asked us not to bother her for the rest of the afternoon.”
“Okay,” I say. This isn’t unusual. My mother needs a lot of sleep, probably more than the both of us combined.
It’s almost three o’clock when someone knocks on the door.
My father looks at me. “Are you expecting anyone?”
“No,” I say. You never let me have anyone over, I bite back the urge to add. Not since Mom got sick.
My father hesitates a moment, and then gets up to look through the peephole. Something visibly changes in his posture. Slowly, he opens the door.
“Adams residence?” Standing on our doorstep are two policemen, fully uniformed.
“Yes,” says my father, his face unreadable. I am suddenly aware of my father’s shabby appearance, how he’s still in pajamas even though it’s the middle of the afternoon. How his too-short pants expose his knobby ankles.
“I’m Officer Gibbs, and this is Officer Handel,” says the shorter policeman, stepping forward slightly. His belly bulges over his belt, and a gun glints at his right hip.
“How can I help you?” asks my father. One of his hands is fiddling with the closure on his bathrobe, and I wonder if he’s aware that he’s doing it.
This time Officer Handel speaks. “Well, Mr. Adams, this is just a routine visit,” he says, and I follow his eyes as they sweep around the interior of our kitchen. “To put it bluntly, your landlord has received some complaints from other tenants about a strange odor coming from your apartment. And despite informing you about it on several occasions, nothing has changed. I know it’s a hassle, but in the state of New York it’s protocol to send in an investigator when multiple complaints have been filed. Just to make sure everything’s in accordance with code.” He looks at us expectantly.
“Of course,” says my father, his face contorting into something resembling a smile. “Come inside.”
Officer Gibbs’s nose wrinkles up as he steps inside our kitchen, but I can’t smell anything.
“So, it’s just the two of you then?” asks Officer Handel.
“No,” I pipe up, and my father gives me a hard look. I shut my mouth.
“My wife is in the bedroom,” my father says finally. “She’s been sick for a while. Please don’t disturb her.”
The policemen exchange a glance.
“Well, Mr. Adams, we’re going to have a look around, if you don’t mind,” says Officer Gibbs. He has a thick mustache, like cops in the movies.
My father nods and takes a seat at the kitchen table. He opens the newspaper as if to read it, but his eyes are staring off into space.
I trail behind as the officers make their way through our apartment. They’re meticulous, opening every door and peering under every piece of furniture. Officer Gibbs even looks inside our refrigerator and washing machine.
Now they’re in the living room. Officer Handel looks uncomfortable. His face is screwed up and his eyes are watering when he turns to ask me, “Is your mother in there?” He points to the closed door of my parents’ room, the faint sounds of the television emanating from within. I nod.
“Please stand back, son,” says Officer Gibbs. He unclips his radio from his belt and mutters something unintelligible into it.
I watch as Officer Handel slowly opens the door, his right hand hovering above the gun within its holster.
The bedroom is dark, the only source of light the faint glow from the television. Days of Our Lives is playing again, a rerun. I can make out the lumpy shape of my mother in her bed, swaddled in blankets like a baby. Dangling from the ceiling is a mobile of air fresheners, the kind you hang from your rearview mirror. Little green trees. One of the policemen makes a stifled gagging sound.
I hover in the doorway, watching as the two officers approach the bed. Their boots are loud even on the carpet, and I want to tell them to be quiet. They’ll wake her up if they’re not careful.
They’re at her bedside now, and my eyes have adjusted to the dim lighting enough that I can see that my mother is almost completely buried beneath the covers, only a coil of hair protruding onto the pillow. A single pale hand dangles off the edge of the bed, her wedding band visible on the ring finger. There’s that smell again, this time almost cloying.
I glance behind me. In the kitchen, my father is still seated at the table, his head in his hands. Somewhere in the distance, I hear sirens.
Slowly, Officer Gibbs pulls aside the blankets.
“Oh, Jesus,” says Officer Handel, the color draining from his face. “Oh, Jesus… it’s been months.”
And I step forward, unable to stay quiet any longer.
“Please, don’t wake her,” I say. “Please. She needs her rest.”
—
Credits to: photofreecreepypasta
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