or even the sharp edge of a book page would cut her and cause her to stain
everything a browning sanguine. At least, that’s what I was always told.
Since Mom was hospitalized, the house has changed. With every room
purged of all that Mom owned or loved, Dad and I often just sit silently, staring at
the TV, our faces pale and blue in its light.
Tonight, Dad must have fallen asleep or I’d see him on the couch. I wade
through the shifting light of the television and into the kitchen, pulling some stale
black licorice from the kitchen drawer. When I was young and my tears were still
new to me, I used to hide in the shrubs by the lake until Mom came to calm me
down, with hugs, and handfuls of black licorice. The practice became so common
that I eventually stopped crying and the flavor of anise replaced the salt of my
tears.
When I first went to visit Mom in the hospital I brought her a bag of
licorice, but she wouldn’t eat it, instead turning her head away when I tried to
feed it to her. I dumped the bag across her bed, licorice rope tangling with her
bed sheets and bandages and tubing and dirty hair, screaming at her, angry
and afraid because the licorice which had always solved our problems in my
childhood would not fix her now. Then the nurses came in and asked me to leave,
putting my name down on the “no visit list” to ensure that I couldn’t bother her
again.
The last threads of licorice come apart on my tongue as I press on Dad’s
bedroom door. The darkness penetrates the hazy glow from outside, swelling
with the ebb and flow of Dad’s breath. He still sleeps on his side of the mattress,
still hangs one leg out of the sheets to leave room in their twin size, and will still
wake to follow the routines they created together. They were a beautiful couple.
Without Mom beside him, Dad looks lopsided now.
My feet sink into his mattress, lowered to the floor ever since he burned
Mom’s bed and the bloodstains she left on it. The entire time, I am painfully
aware of his presence. His breath makes the room expand and contract in its
rhythm. I cross over him to the bedside drawer, to photographs of us together: me
as a baby in
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