Ann Patchett - Commonwealth

“Ask him to come in,” Teresa said, wondering how much time this was going to take and if she’d have to offer anyone a drink. That would not be possible.

Caroline shook her head. “We’ve been out all afternoon. We could never get him up the stairs.”

There were three short steps to the front door, a decorative wrought-iron handrail on either side that Albie had put in for her last year. If Teresa made it down the stairs she wouldn’t make it back up. “Tell him I said hello,” she said.

“Dad’s dying,” Franny said.

So am I, Teresa wanted to say. She looked from one girl to the other. Suddenly she could see they were tag-teaming her: good-cop daughter, bad-cop daughter. They weren’t going anywhere. Another wave of pain crested up from below her navel. She’d been standing there too long being nice. She closed her eyes and tried breathing through her mouth, her fingers digging deep into the back of the chair.

“I’ll get your purse and lock up,” Franny said. “Is your purse in the kitchen? Are all your insurance cards in your purse?”

Teresa moved her head a quarter inch in confirmation while the other one came and put her arms around her. She was gentle but she was undeniably holding her up.

“Are you ready to walk?” Caroline asked.

She had been up and down those steps countless thousands of times, and now she felt like Eva Marie Saint looking over the edge of Mount Rushmore in North by Northwest . A Keating girl stood on either side and lifted her up. She had never been a big woman, never tall like her children, even before she’d started shrinking. She didn’t feel like a burden to them. They were strong girls, obviously. They were her kidnappers, sailing her across the lawn and into the backseat of the car, lifting up her feet while pivoting her around in a way that was disturbingly professional, as if stealing old people was what they did. They clicked the seat belt to lock her into place and when she cried out briefly in pain because nothing should touch her stomach, they took it off again.

“Teresa Cousins,” Fix said from the front. “We meet again.”

“Dad,” Caroline said. “Tell me where I’m going.”

Teresa heard the urgency in Caroline’s voice. It wasn’t enough just to take her to the hospital, they had to get there immediately.

Fix gave her directions to Torrance Memorial Medical Center. He didn’t even pick up the Thomas Brothers guide. Every page was muscle memory.

The pain subsided a bit and Teresa took in the view. She sighed to be in the backseat of the car, to be moving away from her plan. Maybe dying hadn’t been her best idea. Look at this day, another beautiful Southern California day. “Happy birthday,” she said to Fix. “I’m sorry to hear about your health.”

“Cancer,” he said. “What about you?”

Franny was on her cell phone. “We’ve got your mother in the car. We’re going to the hospital now.”

“No idea,” Teresa said. “Ruptured appendix maybe?”

Caroline pressed the accelerator and the Crown Victoria sprung forward like a racehorse.

“Is that Albie on the phone?” Fix said. “Let me talk to him.”

“Dad,” Franny said. Her father was holding out his hand to the backseat. Teresa put her hand in Fix’s hand and squeezed very lightly.

“Albie, Dad wants to talk to you.”

“Your dad?” he asked.

Franny handed her father the phone.

“Son?” Fix said, somewhere he’d found some boom to add to his voice. “We’ve got your mother here with us. We’re going to get her taken care of so don’t worry.”

“Thank you,” Albie said. “You’ve saved me twice now.”

“We’ll stay with her until they get to the bottom of this thing. I don’t want you to think we’d just drop her off at the door.”

“That’s nice,” Teresa said, looking out the window as her neighbors’ houses flew by.

“Should I come down now?” Albie asked.

Fix looked at Teresa there in the backseat, like one of those little featherless birds that’s dropped out of the nest and onto the sidewalk, still breathing but completely translucent, everything at the wrong angle. “Why don’t we say we’ll see you in the morning, how’s that? We’ll call you again. How do I hang this thing up?” He said this last bit to all of them and then hit the red button.

“We have good children,” Teresa said to Fix. “After all the trouble they gave us they turned out okay.” She was shocked by how bad he looked. Cancer really was the devil’s handshake.

Caroline pulled the car into the emergency entrance. Franny went inside to get a wheelchair for Teresa while Caroline got the wheelchair out of the trunk for their father. Caroline and Franny worked together to get the two of them out of the car. Teresa was easier. She squinched up her eyes and pressed her lips together but she didn’t say anything. She was very light. Fix was in a good bit of pain now, his limbs so stiff it was hard to wedge him out. It had been a longer day than anyone had anticipated, and they hadn’t brought the Lortab. He was resting a hand on either rib the way he did when he was tired, like he was trying to hold himself together. Franny wondered if it would be possible to score a single pill from the emergency room so they could get him back to Santa Monica. Probably not. Caroline and Franny rolled Teresa and Fix up to the registration desk where a young Latin girl with heavy eyeliner and a low-cut T-shirt looked from one wheelchair to the other and then back again. The bottom of a gold crucifix dipped into the top of her extravagant cleavage.

“Both?” she asked.

“Her,” Franny said.

Caroline went out to park the car. “I’ll call Marjorie and tell her to put the cupcakes in the refrigerator.”

“Your birthday,” Teresa cried, remembering his wife. “I’ve ruined it.”

Fix laughed, a real laugh that none of them had heard in a while. “You’ve ruined my eighty-third birthday? Seriously, you can have it.”

“Insurance cards?”

Franny had Teresa’s purse, and she asked if it would be okay to go through her wallet. She dug past the balled-up Kleenex, the house keys, a roll of mints. In her wallet she found the Medicare card, supplemental Blue Cross Blue Shield, and her driver’s license. Did she still drive?

“Name?” the girl began, reading from the questions on her computer screen, having committed none of them to memory.

“I used to come here all the time when the kids were growing up,” Teresa said, looking around as if she was just that minute waking up from a dream. “Stitches, tonsils, earaches. But after the kids were gone I never came here anymore. No kids, no emergencies. I’d come to the hospital to have a mammogram or see a sick friend but I don’t think I’ve been to the emergency room even once.”

“It’s all on the cards,” Franny said to the girl.

“I brought Cal here when he was stung by a bee,” Teresa said.

“He was stung by a bee in Virginia,” Fix said, trying to be helpful.

“We’re supposed to ask the patient,” the girl said. “It helps us assess.”

Franny looked at her, then looked pointedly over to Teresa. The girl sighed and started typing.

“The first time he was stung we came here.”

“I guess I didn’t know he’d been stung another time,” Franny said. Bert had brought all of the children together in the living room in the house in Virginia on the morning of Cal’s funeral. He told them a bee sting was something Cal could not have survived. He’d said it to be comforting, so they wouldn’t think there was something they could have done to save him. Although, of course, they could have saved him. They could have stopped insisting that Cal feed all his Benadryl tablets to Albie whenever they wanted Albie to shut up, and they could have encouraged Cal to stop giving Albie the pills himself when none of them were around, just so he would have had a few left when he needed them. They could have gone to him when he fell instead of ignoring him for half an hour, thinking he was doing it for show.