Matthew Thomas - We Are Not Ourselves

He went to a friend’s place in the city. They hit a few bars, closed the last one down. He took the first train home in the morning, the five-thirty.

• • •

He awoke to his mother shaking him.

“Your father has his routines now,” she said. “You’re disrupting him. He needs this couch for the TV. Go up to your bed.” The room was dark, but a sliver of light filtered through the sliding door. He smelled coffee and the eggy sweetness of batter on a grill. “Just go upstairs.” A frown flashed across her face. “You didn’t have to come home.”

“What are you talking about? I’m getting up.”

“I need to know what I can expect from you while you’re here.”

“I’m here,” he said. “What do you need?”

“Can you stay with your father? I don’t want to leave him alone today.”

“Yeah,” he said.

She stood there for a second looking him over.

“Can I count on you?”

“Of course,” he said.

“Just stick around the house, make sure he eats, make sure he doesn’t get hurt. Sit with him awhile. Don’t sleep too late.”

“Okay,” he said.

“He’s excited to have you home.” She made it sound hopeful, but a sad note crept into her voice. “You’re all he asks about. ‘Where’s Connell? Where’s Connell?’ ”

His mother had dressed his father in a long-sleeved shirt and slacks. He looked as if he was about to go to work. One detail remained, though: his shirttail hung out. She undid his belt, then hiked his pants up high and rezipped them.

Connell passed through the kitchen. The pancake batter bowl was empty. She hadn’t made enough for him. He threw his thumb over his shoulder. “It’s all yours,” he said, not as gently as he could have.

His mother stopped him on the stairs.

“Are you going to be here?” she asked. “Tell me now. I’ll try to figure something else out. I can’t afford to have you acting irresponsibly.”

“Mom, relax,” he said. “I’ll take care of him. Go to work.”

At the top of the stairs he heard his mother tell his father she was putting on the television, and his father gurgle in response, and then he heard the volume rising, step by step. “If you need anything,” his mother shouted over the television, “Connell is upstairs.” If his father responded, he couldn’t hear it. “I love you,” his mother said. There was a pause. “Can you say it back, honey?” He didn’t know if his father hadn’t responded or if he simply hadn’t heard him over the loud volume, but after a while he heard the garage door opening.

• • •

He thought it important to let his father drink his own soda. His father grabbed the glass by the brim and pulled it toward him too quickly. The glass dropped to the bricks and shattered. Connell picked up the biggest chunks of glass by hand and got the dustpan and broom to sweep the slick shards into the garbage. He toweled the pool from the floor. So it had come to this: you couldn’t give him anything to drink by himself. He had to be in a bib, practically. You had to hold it up to his mouth. You had to give it to him in a plastic cup, maybe even a sippy cup. And he just sat there defenseless as you reached into his lap with a sponge to soak up the spillage. He didn’t even try to brush you away and say he would do it himself. He just sighed and offered himself up. And the fragile, helpless look on his face, the way he didn’t even try to argue that everyone made mistakes, made him seem like a whipped dog, complete with sad, soulful eyes and a desire to please.

“Don’t move an inch,” Connell said. “Not one inch.” But he didn’t know why he’d said it. He had cleaned up every bit of the glass.

• • •

His father was picking at his belt, trying to get it open. He was pumping the waistband up and down like he was trying to fan out a fire. Then Connell smelled it. He went to unbuckle the pants, but his father wouldn’t let him.

“No,” he screamed. “No! No!”

“Dad!” he said. “Calm down. We have to get you clean.”

His father was whimpering as he kept his hand on his backside, trying to hold the stuff in place. In the struggle, some crap soaked through his pants. Connell maneuvered him upstairs somehow and into the shower, still in his clothes, but when he tried unbuckling the belt, his father started yelling and keening again. He undid the button of his father’s pants, then stopped. This wasn’t the time to rush stupidly in. He would get the shoes off first; everything else would follow from that.

“Can you sit down? If you sit down this will go a lot easier.”

“Go away!” his father shouted. “Go away!”

Connell moved behind him and pulled his father down onto him, breaking his fall with his body. His father crashed an elbow into his chest and flailed around like a man on fire. He would have punched Connell in the face if he could have turned around.

Connell held him in a tight grip. “It’s okay,” he said, over and over. He had to slow everything down.

He climbed out from under him, cradling his head. He tugged off his father’s shoes, unzipped his pants, and started pulling them off. His father grabbed at them and kicked at him, but Connell got them past his butt and off his feet. Crap clung to his father’s legs and fell to the tub in clumps. Connell heard it splat and realized he could never be a nurse like his mother. His father was breathing hard and staring at him with an eerie intensity, as if to keep his gaze from drifting to his nakedness.

Connell dropped the pants in a heap on the floor. He didn’t have the heart to tackle the underwear yet, so he went after the button-down shirt. His father was slicked with crap all over and hard to grip, but Connell got the shirt off; only the socks and soiled briefs remained.

“Will you stop, Dad? Will you stop for a minute?”

“Go away!” his father shouted. “No more!”

“You are going to have to listen to me,” he said sharply.

“Leave me alone! Leave!”

As he took his father’s underwear off, Connell looked away, partly so as not to mortify his father and partly because he hadn’t seen his father’s penis since he was a little kid in the shower with him. The smell in the hot shower overpowered him, and he gagged. Some of the crap fell out of his father’s underwear, which Connell cupped like a diaper and dropped into the little trash bin with the grocery store bag in it. His father lay there naked. Connell would have to pick him up and wash him, but he would have to get the tub clean too, or they would both track it around the house. His own clothes were going to get sopping wet, so he quickly undressed. He left his underwear on. He needed all his strength to lift his father up. His father wasn’t resisting anymore, but he was dead weight. Once Connell got him standing, he closed the curtain and turned the water on. The crap stuck to the bathtub began to wash toward the drain. He grabbed a towel from the rack and started wiping the crap from his father’s legs and butt. It seemed that no amount of wiping could get him clean. His father’s head hung down and his shoulders slumped. His chest heaved in deep, mournful sighs. When the towel was too filthy to continue, Connell rolled it up and dumped it on the floor. He grabbed the bar of soap and another towel and made it into a giant washcloth with which he washed his father’s genitals and gave his legs and backside a good scrubbing. He had never touched his father so much in his life. He soaped up his hands and washed his father’s feet and his own. He washed his own arms and legs and scrubbed at his hands, then turned the water off. “We’re almost done,” he said, opening the curtain, taking his father’s hand, and helping him out into the steam-filled room. He ran to the closet and grabbed more towels. His first thought was to wrap one around his waist and remove his sopping underwear beneath it, but something told him it would be a great indignity for his father to be naked while his son was clothed, so he took his underwear off and stood exposed. He toweled his father down and they stood naked together. He wrapped a towel around each of them. He found his father’s cologne in the medicine cabinet, made a little well of it in his hand, and clapped it to his father’s neck. The smell rushed up at him, and he was reminded of when his father showed him how to shave. “Go with the grain,” his father had said into the mirror. “To avoid bumps. Take it easy. Take your time. Don’t go over the same spot twice if you can avoid it.” Afterward, he’d leaned down to let Connell pull at his cheeks and feel the cool, smooth skin of his face.