Cathleen Schine - They May Not Mean To, But They Do

“Of course it’s the money.”

“—then we can help you out, right, Molly? I mean as long as Ruby gets into a good public high school and Cora gets into a charter school for middle school and…”

“Take from my children?” Joy made a disgusted, dismissive sound. “Out of the question.”

“Well, then you could always sell Upstate,” Daniel said.

A horrified silence.

Then, “Never.”

Joy had inherited the little house Upstate when her mother died. She had fought to keep it safe from … well, from Aaron. There was no other way to put it, though she had tried at the time. We’re putting it in a trust, she had declared. A trust in my name. To keep it safe from creditors, she’d said repeatedly. But they all knew what she meant. Safe from Aaron. The house sat on a hill above a stream in Columbia County, New York. Upstate, Joy’s mother used to say. We’re going Upstate this weekend. Upstate was where the noise and worry of the city disappeared and the stream gurgled, where the birds sang. Upstate was the fruit of her father’s labors, that’s what he used to say when he stood on the porch and looked out at the maple tree and the three birch trees and the weeping willow by the stream. It was also the fruit of his frugality, and finally of his generosity. He had worked so hard, supporting every stray uncle or aunt or cousin who wandered through his door, and there had been a mob of them. Then the Depression ended and he was a manager, and then the war ended and he was a vice president. Spend a dollar, save a dollar, he said. And one day he announced that he had a surprise, and they drove out of town and into the country to the white-shingled house. He had saved and he had invested. Upstate was his reward, a reward he left to his wife and she left to Joy.

“I am not selling Upstate. It’s all I have. Do you want me to have nothing? Nothing?”

“Yeah, Daniel. Do you want her to have nothing?” Molly said.

“Of course I don’t want her to have nothing. I just want her to hire some help.”

“So do I. But we can’t sell the house. It’s our family house.”

Daniel noticed that Molly said “we” can’t sell the house. But it was their mother’s house, not theirs. Molly spent ten days a year in the house, if that. What difference did it make to her? Daniel spent every summer there with his wife and children. He loved the house. But love and sentimentality were two different things, or they ought to be.

“It’s part of who we are,” Molly was saying. It was true she no longer spent any time there, but she thought about the house all the time. It was an anchor of some kind, an East Coast anchor. It was there, stable and firm, even if she was not.

“Why are you fetishizing this house? Mom and Dad need help, they need money to pay for the help, the house is an asset that can be liquidated. Do you want them to live in squalor so you can idealize a house you never use?”

“Children! Stop it right now.”

Molly and Daniel were quiet. They looked at her sheepishly.

“You can argue about the house after I’m dead.”

“Mom…” they both said.

“You can squabble about it then. I need peace now.”

Daniel wondered if the house was even worth anything. But it had to be worth the salary of an underpaid health-care worker.

“We just want you to hire—”

“How can I hire? I have no money! Why are you talking about real estate when your father is so sick?”

Daniel left, wanted to get home before the girls went to bed, and Molly walked with her mother back to Aaron’s room. She knew she was being selfish about the house. She did not like to think of herself as selfish.

“You know,” she said, “whatever you have to do about the house, I’m fine with it.”

Joy said, “Enough, Molly.”

“Not that you have to consult me or anything,” Molly added. “Or ask my permission.”

“I’m not selling the house with or without your permission.”

“Well, good, good. But if Daniel is right and you need money…”

“I am leaving the house to both of you. It’s all I have, and I want to leave it to my children.”

“Oh, Mommy,” Molly said, her voice tearful. She took her mother’s hand and squeezed it. “You know you don’t have to leave Daniel and me anything.”

“So you do want me to die with nothing.”

They got back to Aaron’s room just as Aaron was being hoisted from the floor beside the bed, soaked and soiled. He had lowered the bed rail. “Get off me,” he was shouting at the nurse. White, shaking, he was maneuvered back into bed by Joy and the nurse. Joy wiped him down as gently as she could, but he was a mess.

“Stop bothering me,” he kept saying. “Leave me alone, all of you.”

Joy helped the nurse attach a clean pouch. When the nurse had gone, she smoothed the sheets and poured some water, which Aaron refused to drink.

“We’ll be safer with this.” The nurse reappeared with an armful of nylon webbing. She began calmly to strap Aaron to his bed.

“What are you doing to him?” Joy cried.

“Get away from me!” Aaron said.

“Get away from him!” Molly said.

Joy lunged for the netting, trying to pull it off Aaron, but the nurse blocked her and continued with her task, saying, in the same calm way, “It’s for your safety, Aaron.”

Aaron struggled against the restraints. “Get me out of this!” His eyes rolled like a frightened horse’s. “Help! Help!”

“Nurse, please, why are you doing this? I’ll stay with him every minute, I’ll watch him, I’ll hire someone to watch him.”

“Maybe if you had arranged that earlier,” the nurse said. “But it’s too late for tonight. This is for safety, Aaron,” she said again as she wrestled him into the restraints. “Your safety .”

Aaron thrashed and scratched at the orange netting. “You!” he said, poking out a finger and aiming it at Joy. “You can’t do anything right! You can’t do anything right!”

Joy pulled her hand back from the strap she had been trying to unbuckle. The soiled towels she had used to clean him fell from her other hand to the floor.

“You can’t do anything right!” Aaron yelled again. He kept yelling: “You can’t do anything right,” his face distorted with rage. “You never do anything right! Never!”

“Aaron…”

“You did this! You did this to me! It’s your fault!! You do everything wrong! Everything!” He twisted in the netting like a huge, dying fish. His voice was hard. Spit flew from his cracked lavender lips. “You can’t do anything right,” he roared. “You can’t take care of anything.”

“Daddy, stop it. For god’s sake…”

He sneered at Joy now as he struggled in his webbing. “You can’t take care of anything, you know that? You can’t do anything right . Nothing. You can’t do anything…”

Molly steered her mother out of the room. Her father’s enraged screams followed them down the hall. “Okay,” Molly said, holding her mother’s arm, feeling the bone of the skinny arm beneath Joy’s sweater. “Okay,” she said again, but her mother said nothing, and Molly found herself looking away, ashamed, almost as if she’d walked in on her parents having sex. Or something. “Okay.”

Her mother turned on her, yanking her arm free. “I’ve had it,” Joy said fiercely, as if Molly were going to argue with her.

“Yeah,” Molly said. “Yeah. Jesus.”

“Am I not flesh?”

“I know. He’s not himself.”

“If you prick me, do I not bleed?” her mother continued. She was crazy-eyed now and walking quickly, waving her arms.

“Mom…”

“Don’t Mom me. After everything I’ve done. Everything I’ve lived with all these years. Everything I’ve had to do. I am a human being!”