He held out a package he had brought. She seized it with the glee of a child and tore off the wrapping. She touched the brush delicately and then ran it through her hair very carefully.
“It’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.”
She said that about everything he brought her. Tissues, lipstick, a picture book. The most beautiful thing she had ever seen. Mike. Every time he came here, his brother scored brownie points. Fiske forced these thoughts away and spent a very pleasant hour with his mother. He loved her so much. He would rip from her the disease that had destroyed her brain if he could. Since he couldn’t, he would do anything to spend time with her. Even under another’s name.
* * *
Fiske left the rest home and drove to his father’s house. As he turned onto the familiar street, he looked around the disintegrating boundaries of his first eighteen years of life: dilapidated homes with peeling paint and crumbling porches, sagging wire fences, and dirt front yards running down to narrow, cracked streets where twin streams of ancient, battered Fords and Chevys docked. Fifty years ago, the neighborhood had been a typical starter community for the post–World War II masses filled with the unshakable confidence that life would only get better. For those who hadn’t crossed that bridge of prosperity, the most visible change in their worn-out lives was a wooden wheelchair ramp grafted over the front stoop. As he looked at one of the ramps, Fiske knew he would choose a wheelchair over the rot of his mother’s brain.
He pulled into the driveway of his father’s well-kept home. The more the neighborhood fell apart around him, the harder his old man worked to keep it at bay. Perhaps to keep the past alive a little longer. Maybe hoping his wife would come home twenty years old again with a fresh, healthy mind. The old Buick was in the driveway, its body rusted a little, but the engine in mint condition thanks to its owner’s skills as a master mechanic. Fiske saw his father in the garage, dressed in his usual outfit of white T-shirt and blue work pants, hunkered over some piece of equipment. Retired now, Ed Fiske was at his happiest with his fingers full of grease, the guts of some complex machinery strewn out helter-skelter in front of him.
“Cold beer’s in the fridge,” Ed said without looking up.
Fiske opened the old refrigerator his father kept in the garage and pulled out a Miller. He sat down on a rickety old kitchen chair and watched his father work, just as he had done as a young boy. He had always been fascinated with the skill of his father’s hands, the way the man confidently knew where every piece went.
“Saw Mom today.”
With a practiced roll of his tongue, Ed pushed the cigarette he was puffing on to the right side of his mouth. His muscular forearms flexed and then relaxed as he ratcheted a bolt tight.
“I’m going tomorrow. Thought I’d get all dressed up, bring some flowers, a little boxed dinner Ida is going to make up. Make it real special. Just me and her.”
Ida German was the next-door neighbor. She had lived in the neighborhood longer than anyone else. She had been good company to his father ever since his wife had gone away.
“She’ll love that.” Fiske sipped on his beer and smiled at the picture the two would make together.
Ed finished up what he was doing and took a minute to clean up, using gasoline and a rag to get the grease off his hands. He grabbed a beer and sat down on an old toolbox across from his son.
“Talked to Mike yesterday,” he said.
“Is that right?” Fiske said with no interest.
“He’s doing good up there at the Court. You know they asked him back for another year. He must be good.”
“I’m sure he’s the best they’ve ever had.” Fiske stood up and went over to the open doorway. He took a deep breath, letting his lungs fill with the scent of freshly cut grass. Every Saturday growing up, he and his brother would mow the lawn, do the chores and then the family would pile into the mammoth station wagon for the weekly trip to the A&P grocery store. If they had been really good, done all their chores correctly, not clipped the grass too short, they’d get a soda from the machine next to the paper box outside the A&P. To the boys it was liquid gold. Fiske and his brother would think all week about getting that cold soda. They had been so close growing up. Carried the morning Times Dispatch together, played sports together, though John was three years older than his brother. Mike was so gifted physically that he had played varsity sports as a freshman. The Fiske brothers. Everybody knew them, respected them. Those were happy times. Those times were over. He turned back and looked at his father.