Like Mother Like Son: Joel Kopplin

After a while he didn’t even call. Nothing ever changed. If his mother answered, there would be the usual obligations and conversational standbys: summaries of the latest Deepak Chopra or Eckhart Tolle book she’d been reading in her women’s group, vaguely amusing anecdotes about the lhaso apso she’d lovingly named Rufus, stunted explanations of the European literature class he was taking on campus, the status of his great uncle Martin’s progressing prostate cancer. Then he would have to listen to the same story she’d told for the past year and a half.

“Your dad wants me to get a job,” she said. He could see her as clearly as if they were talking to each other in the same room. Her crestfallen, pouting facial expressions translated so fluidly to the tone of her voice that he caught himself hoping that he’d kept his own reactions in check, so she wouldn’t see the exhausted manner in which he rolled his eyes. They’d actually had this conversation and many like it several times together over the past ten years, ever since he’d been old enough to express his desire to be a writer, his need to observe the world and relate it back as best he could through the written word. In this declaration she saw herself again as a young woman with the aching passion to be a painter, to define the world through oils and canvas. But when she lost her job at the bank nearly two years back, their dialogue always seemed to follow a similar pattern.

“He told me that I need to have a job by the end of March.” She sighed as she relayed this to her baffled son. After a beat of silence she laughed. “I don’t know what he’ll do if I don’t, so—” She paused before exhaling a whistling breath that crackled as it reverberated off of the mouthpiece. “I’m not gonna stress out about it. He’s the one all hung up on money. It’s always about money, you know.”

Jon rubbed his eyes with the palm of his hand, gritting his teeth as he listened to his mother’s redundant excuses, the inane prattle that somehow always placed the blame squarely on someone else’s shoulders. After he offered an obligatory mhmm to seem engaged in the call, she continued to rail against his father’s practicality, his aversion to poverty.

“Jon, he is so afraid. He’s so afraid. He’s been running his whole life. Everything’s about money. Everything.” This is where the conversation typically took on a self-righteous, indignant quality. “I just refuse to let my life be controlled by that fear. I refuse.” Her battle cry of personal virtue, standing above the desire for financial comfort.

“Sure.” Jon lit a cigarette and leaned back into the couch, hoping for the conversation to end. He exhaled through his nostrils and watched the smoke fill the space between him and the television, the glow of the screen illuminating the swirling wisps as they moved toward the ceiling of his poorly lit apartment. Letting the cigarette droop from the corner of his mouth, he brushed ash from his shoulder and searched his brain for the proper response to his mother’s crisis. Coming up empty handed, he simply let her continue.

“You know I had that job at Herberger’s this past Christmas. And they told me right off the bat that it was probably only going to be for the holidays, but it was steady money for a few months. That wasn’t good enough either, I guess.”

“You’re not working there now?”

“No, they let me go at the end of February.”

“So, you aren’t working anywhere right now.” He delicately tried to illustrate what this meant without spelling it out to her in overtly condescending terms.

“No,” she replied. He imagined her shrugging on the other end like a child.

“So—” He closed his eyes, trying to suppress his increasing frustration.

“Well, he wants me to get this teller job at Bremer, because it pays something like ten dollars an hour and it offers health benefits. But I don’t want to do banking anymore, you know? I’m going to be sixty years old and I don’t feel in the least bit fulfilled. I don’t feel any sense of purpose.” She paused, reflecting. “And I’m scared now.”

He remembered sitting with her in the living room as a child. The stack of coloring books with his favorite cartoon characters and the box of worn crayons. He remembered her sitting at a small, collapsible coffee table with wobbly metal legs, her canvases carefully laid out. The bottles of watercolors neatly lined up for easy access next to the container of cloudy water and the folded paper towel with blotches of pastel and moisture. The morning sunlight would slant through the windows and streak across his scribbled pages. If he grew bored of coloring he would watch her work and lay in the warmth of the sunlight until he fell asleep.

“I know, Mom. I know,” he said as he placed the phone in the crook of his neck. “Something will work out for you. You just have to keep at it.” He thought of the years after they’d moved to be closer to his father’s job. The most spacious room with the largest windows in the house had filled with clutter. Piles upon piles of magazines and boxes left unopened kept company with unread how-to books on painting still life. Packages of brushes and bottles with cellophane still wrapped around the caps sat upon dusty shelves and overrun countertops. Before long shirts on metal hangers hung from the doorway with the vacuum cleaner placed directly beneath, blocking the entrance like a stone rolled in front of a tomb. He remembered his mother sitting in the computer room, her tongue protruding from tightened lips as she concentrated on the game of solitaire that beckoned from the monitor. On the bottom left hand side, just below the screen was a little note card attached with scotch tape. All success starts with a decision to take action. There is nothing more motivating than accomplishment.

“Yeah, I just have to keep trying and keep looking, right?” She sounded tired, unconvinced.

“I guess that’s the idea.”

He heard her sigh on the other end, letting the conversation drop for a few moments. He was about to change the subject when she finally continued. “Well, all I can tell you is to pursue what you love, Jon. Because I’ve been doing what everyone else has told me to do for my entire life and now I don’t know what I want for myself.” Her voice was so earnest and thick with regret that it pained him to listen.

Advice of this sort always made him feel frightened, as if he was on the brink of falling into the same abyss, the sad fate of his mother staring back at him with hungry eyes. On that note, he ushered the conversation to a close, telling her that he intended to get some writing done. She told him that she loved him, that she’d talk to him soon and then she hung up.

He set the cordless phone down and made the decision that he wasn’t going to call any longer, knowing that he couldn’t have the same conversation again and again without losing his mind. He took the last drag of his Winston and crushed it out in the glass ashtray on the coffee table. He ran a hand through his hair and stared at the notebook on the floor—the pages blank, a ballpoint pen hooked inside of the spiral binding.

“Fuck me.”

Three days later his father was in town on business. He called and offered to take his son out for lunch to catch up.

“So, what’s new with you, kid?” He tossed his wide-brimmed hat into the corner of the booth before he sat down. Jon marveled at how old he looked. His thick, carefully combed hair had faded from a deep black to salt and pepper gray. The bags under his eyes were heavy. His jowls sagged. When he sat down, he slid slowly into the booth and let out a grunt of discomfort. Jon noticed that his right eye didn’t fixate on anything any longer, that it sat useless inside of his head due to diabetes.

“Not a whole lot.” Jon sat with his arms propped on the table. He slouched forward, trying to ignore the scrutiny of his father’s half-gaze. The waitress came and took their order.

“I’ll have a coffee and a bowl of your chicken noodle soup.” His father rubbed his face with the palm of his hand, the thick, stubby fingers roaming back and forth over his mid-day whiskers. He nodded to his son. “What would you like?”

He looked up at the smiling waitress. “Coffee’s fine for me, thanks.”

They both watched her walk back toward the kitchen, allowing silence to fill the space between them. Jon rapped his knuckles on the table and made a flapping noise with his lips. “So, what’ve the doctors told you about that eye?”

“Well, I guess they’ve done the most that they can do with it. I was hoping that surgery would have allowed me to get some sight back, but—” He trailed off and shook his head, removing his bifocals to clean the lenses with the bottom of his tie. “That doesn’t look like it’s going to happen.”

“I guess that means that you should keep your health in check so you don’t lose the other one, right?”

“Yeah.” His father nodded and yawned. “When the weather warms up here I’ll have to start walking and keeping my blood sugars on the level. I suppose I really should’ve started that years ago.”

Jon nodded, looking down at his hands as they rubbed themselves together. They started at the fingers, making their way toward the palms and the wrists, kneading and pulling the skin until they felt something more than the distant throb of pinpricks. He rolled the sleeves of his sweater back so that they could find his forearms as well. His dad looked out the window, drinking from a cloudy glass of water. He crushed the ice between his teeth and exhaled through his nostrils in two great bursts. The parking lot reflected in his bifocals. Jon suddenly became conscious of a cold sweat that was trickling down his back and settling in the elastic band of his boxer shorts. His hands had moved to his elbows when the waitress brought the coffee and soup.

“Thank you.” His father crushed saltines inside of their wrapper and tore off the corner to shake out the crumbs.

“You guys need anything else?” The waitress cocked her head.

“No, I think this is fine.” The old man filled his mug with steaming coffee and passed the pot over to his son.

“All right, enjoy.”

Jon poured the coffee and contemplated where he should take the conversation. He wrapped his hands around the mug, enjoying the warm sensation against his fingers. His father made the next move.

“So, have you had any luck looking for an extra job?”

“Ah—” He ran a hand through his messy hair and sighed. “No—I’ve been really busy with finishing up at State and trying to line up an internship for next semester. I can barely handle the twenty hours a week I get at Meyer’s.” He laughed. “I’ve never been so busy in all my life.” He knew this was a misstep. His father wasn’t impressed by the schedules of college students.

“Hm.” He nodded and pursed his lips. “I suppose that’s probably true. But what are you going to do this fall when you graduate and you don’t have any money? You want to stick around here?” He placed a large spoonful in his mouth and rested his chin on his folded hands, waiting for his son’s reply.

Jon smiled and examined a tear in the fabric of the seat. “No, I don’t.” He began poking at the tear, feeling the bunched polyester with the tip of his index finger. He wondered how much he would have to dig until he could fit his entire hand inside of the cushion.

“Well—” The old man gave him a disparaging look, both disbelief and condescension wrapped in the narrowed intensity of his left eye. Jon knew that his mother received the same look on a daily basis.

“Well what?” He tossed up his hands. “What do you want from me? When things quiet down at the beginning of May, I’ll find another job. I’ll get a job at some shithouse like McDonald’s or I’ll work sixty hours a week at that chicken factory on the north end of town.” His eyes were wide and pleading. He pressed his palms flat against the Formica table, his fingers stretched and tense. “I’ll be miserable. I’ll stack away money. Whatever you tell me to do, right?”

His father laughed and shook his head. “Kid, you don’t have a fucking clue. You have no idea what it’s like out there.” He wiped broth from his chin and used the spoon for punctuation. “You have the next nine months to get your shit straightened away before graduation. You have virtually no money saved. You’re living from paycheck to paycheck. You spend every dime you get and you have nothing to show for it. What are you going to do?” He paused and shrugged. “You know, it’d be a damn shame to be a twenty-four year old college graduate who has to come back home and pay rent with his folks because he didn’t have things figured out on time.”

Jon closed his eyes and felt them roll into the back of his skull. In the pale blur, he wasn’t having this conversation. He wasn’t sitting in the booth. He wasn’t even breathing. In that formless vision he ceased to exist. He stayed there for an extended moment before he opened his eyes. “I know. I know. I know. You’re not telling me anything I haven’t thought about already. I’m well aware of all of this.”

“Well then it’s time for you to get prepared.” He held his hands out in front of him. “I don’t take any joy in harping on you, Jon. I’m only trying to help you out. Because it’s going to be a hard knock when you’re on your own and you don’t have the resources to make it.” He paused and then his tone softened. “I just don’t want you to make the same mistakes your mother and I made, because they aren’t any fun. It’s a constant nightmare. We’re in our early sixties, saddled with over fifteen thousand in credit card debt. Your mom has no job and she hasn’t made any effort to find one. So now it’s all up to me to make all of this come together.” He shook his head and swallowed another spoonful. “I don’t know how it’s going to happen. I really don’t. But it’s up to me to find a way.”

Jon’s eyes fell and he rubbed the back of his neck. He didn’t want to ask, because he already knew the answer. But he did. “What’s she going to do?”

“The hell if I know. She doesn’t have the foggiest either. That woman’s in total la-la land.” He motioned with his hand, as if pointing to some tangible problem standing only a few feet away. “She’s been unemployed for almost two years and she’s done absolutely nothing in the way of finding a solid job. If I get on her ass and try to illustrate that we’re in hot water and that we need another income, she completely shuts off and turns to stone on me. So, I’ve just given up.” He blew his nose into a napkin.

Jon was reminded of evenings at his parents’ place. After dinner he would wash the dishes and stack them neatly in the bin to let them dry. Walking downstairs, he would find his mother in the computer room playing solitaire while his father sat in the family room watching CNN, intermittently dozing before a change of pitch on the television brought him back. Stacks of newspapers, randomly placed dishes and piles of laundry lay scattered about the room. His father’s armchair littered with orange peels. Mugs half-filled with coffee left from the morning and the mornings before.

Jon drank the last of his coffee and stared at the table, replaying the phone conversation in his head. “It’s too bad that she never stuck with painting. She had talent. She could’ve been good.”

“Sure. But there’s all sorts of could’ve-beens out there, Jon. It’s the ones who have a passion about it that become something. Anyone can have a pipe dream. But when it gets down to doing the work and making something of yourself, that’s a whole different ball-game. Your mother has never had that drive or ambition. Probably never will.” He raised his eyebrows and sighed, pushing his empty bowl away.

The old man left a check with the bill underneath a saucer of hard candies, and they made their way out into the parking lot. Jon followed behind his father’s slow hobble. In addition to the loss of his eye, diabetes had caused his feet to swell and his knees were nearly ruined. Jon had the faint impression that he was walking behind the elder of a tribe, an aged and crippled leader who would soon find it necessary to leave himself under a tree for the wolves while the rest traveled on. The sky was overcast and a slight mist fell over the parking lot. Windshields covered with a thin layer of ice. The old man aimed his keys at the giant Navigator and unlocked the doors with a unanimous thud. Jon stood a short ways back and watched the spectacle; a short, round, gimping man attempting to get into the driver’s seat. An aged sailor ineptly climbing aboard a whaling craft, the sea being the only life he understands. Finally situated, his father looked over his shoulder.

“Hop on in. I’ll drop you off at your apartment.”

Jon shook his head, pulling on a knit cap. “Thanks, Dad. I’m all right.”

“Are you sure? It’s raining.” He looked back and his mouth hung slack.

That’s okay. It’s only a couple of blocks from here and I could use the walk.” He held his hand up in a parting wave.

“All right. I’ll be in town next week for an appointment with Kurowski. I’ll give you a call and see if we can catch up again, okay?”

“Sounds good.”

“Okay. You take care, son.” He shut the door and turned the ignition.

Jon walked through the gravel parking lot and made his way back toward campus. While he was waiting at the crosswalk, he saw his old man drive west down University Avenue and disappear in the distance. He titled his head back and let the mist, which had turned to a steady drizzle mixed with flakes of snow, fall against his face.

Scott laughed and set his glass down. “Man, parents are just fucked. The sooner you accept that the better.”

They sat across from each other at a raised table in the corner of the bar. Jon stared at his beer, an unlit cigarette hanging from his mouth. Scott removed a pack of Marlboros and rapped the box against his knee.

“Yeah—” Jon thought about this, still looking at his glass. “But it’s an eye opener, finding out your parents are just as lost as you. They don’t have a goddamned thing figured out either. They’ve just been at it longer.” He moved his mouth from side to side, the cigarette gripped tightly between his lips, as he searched his pockets for a lighter.

Scott looked across the bar, seeking familiar faces. He grinned and tipped his head back when he made eye contact with a blonde girl in a cardigan sweater. He lit a cigarette and turned back to the conversation. “That shouldn’t bother you.” He slid the lighter across the table. “Nobody has it figured out. We’re all just wandering through this mess and we do the best we can. That’s the way I see it.”

Jon took a drag and ran the back of his hand across his chin. “It’s more than that. It’s like—” He paused. “It’s like I can see the very worst qualities of myself embodied in them both.” He laughed and tapped his ash into an empty glass. “My mother is this shell of a human being, constantly looking to something else to fill what she’s missing. She’s completely abandoned all of the things she used to hope for, because she never knew how to work for them. My dad is this scared miser, waiting for some inevitable poverty to destroy us all.” He shook his head and took a long gulp from his glass. “How am I supposed to turn out?” He felt his head swim and he looked over at the bar, considering whether he should stick to ice water.

“Come on. I don’t buy that shit. Just because your parents have their priorities all fucked up doesn’t mean that you do too.” Scott squinted and rubbed his eye. “I mean, if you want to talk about fucked up families, I could talk to you all night long about mine. My old man—fuck. The only shit he has together is his finances. Everything else is a wash. He split from my mom before my brother and I were in our teens. They hate each other. Never talk. He was never around, except when I was fucking up, and only then just to brow beat me.” He exhaled a deep drag and made a face, his voice cracking as the smoke billowed from his lips. “My mom. My mom’s fucking crazy. She’s this ridiculous neo Christian now. That’s neat.” He shook his head and ran a hand through his beard. “Nothing else made any sense in her life, so she clings to that to try and reconcile everything that happened. She spends the time we talk on the phone telling me what a horrible life I live. She judges everything I do and thinks I’m on this steady path to damnation.” He scrunched up his face, fluttered his eyes, and feigned a dopey expression. “ ‘Scott, all I can do is pray for you and hope you’ll find Jesus. It’s not too late, you know.’ ” His eyes grew wide with impatient disbelief. “Whatever, Mom. I didn’t want to talk to you more than once a month anyways. And sometimes that feels like way too much.” He drained half of his glass and gave a wet sigh. “My brother’s all fucked up on meth. In and out of jail all the time. Lives at home with Mom, who I’m sure is just beside herself.”

“Jesus,” Jon said. “I’m sorry.”

“Fuck it. I’m not. They don’t have any influence on how I live my life. I was stuck with that woman until I was twenty-one years old. Stuck in that madhouse with people who drove me crazy. I’m done with all that. That shit’s over.” He waved his arm, driving away the past. “This life is mine. Not theirs.” He nodded at Jon and folded his hands, the cigarette burning like incense between his entwined fingers. “I think you should start looking at it the same way.”

“Yeah,” Jon muttered.

The bar was beginning to fill. Conversation was lost in the volume of the crowd, the boisterous declarations of the drunk and lonely. Women fell into the arms of strangers. Men sat huddled in groups, eyeing their prospects. Glasses shattered. The jukebox played the Smashing Pumpkins and Nickleback on an endless loop. A sorority girl in tight, faded jeans shoved her way toward the back, sprinting for the bathroom in a failed attempt to contain her vomit.

“Hey!” Scott hollered over the din. “Two things before I forget.” He held up his middle and index fingers in a v and reached down into his knapsack. He pulled out a Ziploc baggy with a dozen white codeine pills. He rolled the baggy into a tight ball and placed it in Jon’s welcoming palm. “That’s the last of the bottle. Happy Kwanza.”

“O-ho, thank you, sir. Thank you, thank you.” Jon stuck the gift into the breast pocket of his flannel shirt, already planning on the nearest opportunity to indulge.

“No problem. And—” Scott wiped a small puddle of beer from the table with the sleeve of his striped sweater and set a manila folder down between them. Jon opened the folder and pulled out his short story. He leafed through the pages, scanning for comments written in ink.

“What did you think?”

Scott looked up, considering, nodding his head from side to side. He held up a wavy hand. “I think it’s a tad forced, but it’s an alright start. Have you been working on any revisions?”

Jon thought of his bedroom. The piles of clothes, the stacks of unread books, the miasmic clutter of old term papers, receipts, and empty cigarette packs. He thought of the textbooks, newspapers and magazines that had been shoved to the far side of his bed so that he had room enough to sleep. He thought of the leather portfolio that sat at the foot of his bed beneath the overdue library books on Derrida and deconstruction.

“No. I haven’t been writing much lately.”

At bar close the two staggered out into the street. The sidewalks were littered with expelled patrons who milled about without aim or reason. The night was cold and wet. The streets glistened in the orange glow of the streetlights. The world became a kaleidoscope and Jon propped himself on a broad windowpane to keep from falling over. Scott busied himself with a couple of girls from his democratic citizenship course. They laughed and flattered him with every broken phrase and crass joke he passed their way. Jon zipped up his coat and made his way through the crowd, the manila folder tucked under his arm. He looked back and saw Scott hailing a cab, a girl on each arm and a wide, inebriated grin on his face.

He rounded the corner in time to see a fight break out in front of the Red Carpet Night Club. The two barbarians wrestled each other to the ground, spitting, hissing, grunting. Primates establishing dominance. One was without a shirt, a large scrape on his back from where his skin had skid across pavement. Two police officers broke from the boundary line to settle things while the rest stood with folded arms and tired looks of boredom. Jon weaved his way through the spectacle, past the line of cops and onto the opposite side of the street. He walked by a short man in a jester’s hat playing the flute, who curtseyed as he passed. How very Chaucer, he thought as he looked over his shoulder and surveyed the scene in its entirety. Blue and red lights flashed. A young woman with a broken nose sat on her knees, her jeans riding low enough to expose her backside. Officers hauled off the two brawling men in handcuffs, whose vitriol had turned to passivity and bewilderment. All the while the flutist accompanied the crescendo of the crowd with a pervasive lilt. Jon stopped at the crosswalk and tossed the folder into a trash bin before loping across the street. When the rain started in again, he quickened his pace and the frenzy faded behind him.

Your dad had a stroke. The words echoed inside of his head like stones tossed in a well.

He had momentarily slipped off into a codeine dream with vast, open prairies and shimmering white horses when the phone rang. The distant sound of hoofs clapping against the earth was replaced by the joyless siren of the cordless phone that sat propped against the arm of the couch. He turned his head and opened his eyes. The living room revealed itself though a smeared and opaque lens. A florescent bulb burned from the kitchen, showering light over familiar objects from the living room. That’s my TV. That’s my coffee table. When the fractions of his vision finally came together, he realized he could still hear the phone ringing.

“Yeah, hello?”

“Jon?”

“Mom?” He rubbed his forehead and looked about the room. “What time is it? What do you want?”

“Your dad had a stroke. You need to come home.” Her voice was alarmed, panicked.

Jon’s ears began to hum. He sat up on the couch, knocking a glass off of the coffee table as he swung his legs. “What? When?”

“Last night after dinner. He was washing the dishes and he just dropped over.” His mother’s voice grew strained and she began to sob. “He just laid there on the floor and he couldn’t hear me. I didn’t know what to do. So I called the hospital and they came and got him.” She was crying now. “You need to come home.”

His mind raced and his heart hammered inside of his chest. His hand gripped the phone so tightly that he could hear the plastic casing begin to separate. “Where are you now, Mom? Help me out here.”

“I’m at the hospital in Brainerd.”

He got up from the couch and walked over to the kitchen. He checked the clock that hung above the stove. 5:15 a.m.

“All right, I’ll get my things together and I’ll head out the door. I’ll meet you at the hospital in a couple of hours.”

“Okay. I love you, Jon.” She hung up the phone.

He grabbed a change of clothes and a toothbrush, and jammed them inside of his backpack. He was locking the door in a matter of minutes.

The morning air was startling and frigid and it shook the last drowsy residue of sleep from his exhausted body. The campus was silent except for the familiar roar of a garbage truck making its daily rounds across the street. The usual clusters of students and pedestrians were nowhere to be found and daybreak was a little less than an hour away. He stepped off of the curb and hurried to his car where it was parked adjacent to the apartment complex. As he unlocked the driver’s side door and stepped inside, it occurred to him that he may never have the opportunity to speak to his father ever again, that he may in fact be rushing home only to be told that the man was dead and that funeral arrangements were now pending. He leaned forward in the seat and gripped the steering wheel, the same questions repeating themselves over and over again. What am I going to do? What is she going to do? What am I going to do? What am I going to do? What is she going to do?

He found her in the second floor Intensive Care unit. She sat in the waiting area across from the reception desk, her legs crossed at the ankles, swinging back and forth between the legs of the cushioned chair. Her hands were folded in her lap and a magazine lay open on her thighs. The doctor was crouched down next to her with his hand on the back of the chair. He looked directly into her eyes and his face was apologetic.

“The MRI scan showed some hemorrhaging in the frontal and parietal lobes.”

She nodded her head and wiped her nose with the back of her hand. “Okay. So what does that mean?”

The doctor took in a deep breath and sighed. “Well, it looks like we may be dealing with memory loss, which could include his ability to speak. It’s a bit too early to tell on that. He hasn’t been awake enough for us to really gage how that’s going. But when he has his strength back we’ll examine how he’s been affected in that area. And he should be well enough to give that a go in a couple of days.” He stopped.

“What else?”

“Ah—from what we can tell, there’s almost certain paralysis in the right side of his body.”

Her mouth dropped and she looked at her hands. “Well—what does that mean? Can he recover from that?”

The doctor pushed his glasses back onto the bridge of his nose and cleared his throat. “It’s not likely. I don’t want to say that there’s no hope, because that’s never quite the case, but the amount of damage done is fairly severe. We’ll be able to tell you more later today when the rest of the tests are done. He’s still got a CT scan that we’re waiting on right now, but you’ll hear from me as soon as we get the results. Okay?”

Tears rolled down her cheeks. “Okay.”

Jon placed a soft hand on his mother’s shoulder. She got up from her seat and grabbed him around the waist, burying her face in his shoulder. Jon wrapped his arms around her back. His head buzzed and tingled as if army ants were nesting in his cortex. The doctor got to his feet and Jon noticed his casual attire, a red sweater on top of a white collared shirt and khakis. It probably helps to be less imposing, he thought. The doctor gripped Jon’s hand in a firm handshake before walking down the hall to attend to other patients. Jon watched him round the corner. His mother wept and clung to his waist.

“I don’t know what we’re going to do.” They sat outside at the back of the hospital, eating packaged sandwiches from the cafeteria and smoking cigarettes at a cement table. His mother took a drink from a bottle of apple juice and licked her lips. Jon leaned forward, his elbows propped on his knees, watching the river beyond the cluster of trees at the bottom of the hill. The wind was heavy and persistent, rolling over the tall grass in waves. Snow lay in determined patches at the base of the trees. The sun peeked through the scattered clouds, casting off sharp and sporadic rays of light that were occasionally blocked off and curtained in gray.

“Yeah, I don’t know what to tell you.” He didn’t want her to talk. He wanted to sit and decompress without conversation. He looked over as an ambulance pulled into a parking space. Two medics hopped out of the vehicle looking worn and defeated, as if life itself had been chased out of them over the past ten hours of their shift. He imagined the amount of disconnect it would require to protect themselves from a daily exposure to death. He considered their family lives, their marriages, how often they might laugh. He wondered whether they had been hardened, whether the inevitability of dying had become a truth they no longer fought to avoid. They sat on the back bumper and drank coffee, the woman smoking a lucky and stretching her legs.

His mother took a drag from her Virginia Slim and rubbed her knees. “You look tired.”

“I am tired, Mom.” He offered a small smile through closed lips. “I’m really tired.”

“Me too.” She took another drag and ran a hand over her hair, smoothing it out and tucking it back behind her ears. She took a deep breath and watched her son, searching for something to say. “If your dad had only watched his diabetes—”

He offered no response. Instead he continued to gaze at the parking lot and the continual coming and going of ambulances, medics, doctors and nurses. They looked like actors in a stage show. Some were arriving backstage before the houselights dimmed and the curtains opened, muttering over their lines and trying to brush off their loaded nerves. Others were leaving exhausted, wearing the relief of a performer post curtain call. A nurse walked by, slipping her white coat around her shoulders and talking on her cell-phone. “Well, did you call your father? No, hon. I can’t tonight, I’m meeting with Darlene. Yeah. It’ll have to wait ‘til tomorrow when you get done with school.” She fumbled with her purse and removed her keys. She unlocked the metal door that read Staff Only and walked inside. “Well, I’m sorry, but if you’re dad isn’t going to be home—” Her voice faded and the door closed behind her.

Jon’s mother bit her lip. “Didn’t he think about this?” she asked. Jon said nothing. “I don’t know. I guess I’ll have to find a job for a while to make ends meet. Thank God for his health insurance, because I can’t even imagine what this would do to us.”

It’s always about money, you know.

“Hopefully my business will get going and I’ll be able to make some money from that.”

Jon turned. “Your what?”

“My business. Didn’t I tell you?”

He shook his head and lit a Winston.

She grabbed her purse from the table and pulled out a small catalogue. “I’m selling Lia Sophia jewelry and gifts.” She wiped at the smeared makeup on her cheeks with a tissue and handed him the catalogue. “My friend Sherry is hosting a show for me at her house in the beginning of May. Do you remember Sherry?”

Jon shook his head as he leafed through the glossy pages.

“I worked with her at Christmas Point a few summers ago. You’d probably remember her if you saw her.” She nodded, certain of this. “Her husband died last year from colon cancer and she quit her job at the school. We met for coffee a couple of weeks ago and she told me about how she was selling jewelry from Lia Sophia.” Her face brightened when she saw she had her son’s attention. “It’s this really pretty and affordable stuff. Look at those purses.” She pointed to the page he was on, tracing a polished fingernail over the leather handbags that were marked A, B, C and D for easy reference. Jon looked at the description for C. Spring Green Handbag – You’ll feel better just carrying this cheerful handbag! Adjustable straps, zippered closure and fun Butterfly lining. “Aren’t they cute?”

Jon took a drag from his cigarette and continued to leaf through the catalogue, glancing over pages of necklaces, earrings, ankle bracelets and watches. She rolled the tissue into a ball and set it in her lap. “So, sellers hold showings or parties at people’s houses so friends can come and look at the merchandise. They send me samples to use so they can check them out and try them on. I’ve already got nine people who are going to show up and I have twenty more invitations I’m sending out.”

Jon took in a deep breath and closed his eyes. He thought of his father on the second floor, sedated and withering on a gurney, waiting to be placed inside of an apparatus that will scan the shattered faculties of his brain. He thought of the hospital bills, the mortgage on the house, the phone calls from collectors, and the disconnected cable.

“So, hopefully I can get this going and make some money.”

He thought of his father’s office. The smell of coffee, the black metal filing cabinets, the copy machine which was over sixteen years old, the Ducks Unlimited calendars and the Frank Fofer wildlife paintings along the west wall, the picture of his mother from their senior year at college. The office would remain dark and gather dust until it was emptied. In time someone else would rent the space and make it his own, and it would be as if his father had never existed.

“Now more than ever women are leaving the workplace and entering into business for themselves. We don’t want to work for other people anymore.” Something she’d heard from one of her friends and repeated verbatim, making it the mission statement for the final chapters of her life.

He thought of the clothes she hadn’t yet paid for, the Jeep that sat in the driveway and leaked fluid. He thought of the few times they’d come to visit, how they’d meet up at the local coffee shop and how she’d plead like a child for his father to buy her a magazine on journaling that she couldn’t afford. He thought of the irritated way she’d spoken about him when he’d gone to use the restroom. He doesn’t even give me money for groceries.

Jon set the magazine on the table and stood, tossing the cigarette into the grass. “That’s great, Mom.” He walked toward the automatic doors and pulled the hood of his sweatshirt over his head.

His mother called after him. “Jon?”

He didn’t turn or even acknowledge that he’d heard. He walked past the cafeteria, stepping aside as a nurse wheeled along an elderly catatonic, whose shoulder was soaked with saliva as it spilled from his open mouth. He walked around groups of people who congregated in the hallway, families and friends of families who could do nothing but bide their time. He passed by the entrance of the sanctuary where a young woman sat with her knees pulled up to her chin, her arms wrapped around her legs and linked with one hand gripping the other by the wrist. Just above her was a placard quoting St. Francis of Assisi. Where there is charity and wisdom, there is neither fear nor ignorance.

He reached the front of the hospital and took a seat in the lobby, restless and unsure of what he was supposed to do with himself. The room was spacious and expansive, with wide windows that stretched to the ceiling. At the far end he could see the floral and gift shop, which was more of an elaborate kiosk than a store, like a newsstand for grief and illness. A small, round woman in sweatpants and a baggy t-shirt paced about straightening shelves filled with stuffed animals, boxed chocolates, paperback mysteries and romance novels, greeting cards and magazines. Along the wall behind the register, a wide cooler with glass doors held roses, baby’s breath, daffodils and mums. Next to the cooler stood a helium tank for shiny balloons, best wishes spelled out in elaborate and cheerful lettering. Get Well Soon. We’re All Thinking of You. Congratulations, Mom and Dad!

The woman worked diligently, ceaselessly. She gave a full, warm smile to everyone who passed by and they all responded in kind, some stopping a moment to chat before going on their way.

“Hi , you,” she cooed. She reached her short fingers out to hold the balled fist of a newborn, who laid against her father’s shoulder, eyes closed to the world. “She’s absolutely adorable.”

The father smiled and stroked the back of the girl’s head. “Yeah. She’s a bit pooped, but we’re gonna go see Mommy upstairs and have some lunch.” He set a white teddy bear on the counter. The bear sat clutching a chocolate heart in gold tinfoil, a docile smile on its soft face.

“There’s nothing quite like it, is there?” She smiled and held out the man’s change. He smiled back, looking down at the infant in his arms. “No. There really isn’t.” He took the change with his free hand and waved goodbye.

She turned back to the task of straightening and shelving, placing old magazines in boxes and setting new ones out for display. Jon became fascinated by the attentive care she afforded these temporary and fleeting items, many of which, he was sure, never even left the hospital. She handled them with great patience and deliberation, as if they were as vital as the medicines in the pharmacy. She had stooped down to begin dusting the lower shelves when he approached. She turned her head and gave him a broad, welcoming smile. Her voice was gentle and musical when she asked if there was anything she could help him find. Jon smiled back, picked a card from the shelf, and asked her if she could tell him about passion.