“This is the last time I am ever going to do something like this to you,” Casper says as he takes his mom’s hand and kisses it. It tastes like cardboard, and smells like sheetrock. It’s rough on his lips and has this unbearable consistency he can only compare to dried dates.
But she is beautiful, and everything about her is disgusting.
Per usual, she is really not here, but she’s smiling this kind of absent-minded smile, but not really at him. Not really at anything. He lets his lips linger just a little too long. Hears ambiguous beeping sounds of machines he doesn’t know exactly what they do, and the weird creaking sounds of other people like his mom being wheeled about the hallways. The scratching of his keys in his back pocket against the grainy plastic chair.
The hallways make it worse. This pale green linoleum that squawks as the nurses dawdle from one room to another.
At home, there is parquet, a thick lacquered maple-syrup-colored wood. A very nice floor, in a very empty home. He closes his eyes now, lips moving about the dorsal side of his mother’s hand, and begins to think: “How can it be empty if I’m there?” and then stops as the answer begins to build like a burp or a hiccup.
He pulls away, looks down at his mother. Her salt-peter hair. Her collar bones, almost elegant sticking out of the gray-blue robe they put her in.
Looking at her now, as she’s spent all this time on earth without even moving a muscle, it is as though she’s back to being innocent. Like all the times she yelled or lost her temper had simply atrophied, and now, she is just here again, like a brand new being, only different in the fact that she has no more future to receive beyond this.
But he doesn’t really have the words for this. And so he stares at her, says one more thing.
“I am not a bad person.”
The smile persists.
“Excuse me?” this little voice says.
He feels his heart get big against his chest, like he’d been seen, like the voice knows exactly what he’s done and exactly what he will do. The panicking feeling that she’d been there this whole time.
But then there’s squeaking, and he turns around, and this fat little nurse is standing beside him with a clipboard, kind of pushing by him.
“Excuse me,” she says, as she makes her way over to the ambiguous life machines and writes stuff down. Numbers.
He feels through his pockets and feels them filled with numbers. Paper with numbers. Unlucky paper filled with unlucky numbers.
The nurse writes quickly, then looks back at him, and says, “You know, she’s not as happy when you’re not around.”
Casper stares at her, then at Mom. His vision goes a little out of focus, and then he is staring at the parking lot. The sun is setting, and it’s snowing.
He takes a deep breath and says, “Okay,” then walks out.
A lot of people are in the hallway, in wheelchairs, in blankets. ‘Sleeping’ in that half-state. He begins to smile at the woman at the desk, who is real pretty, but it doesn’t really work.
His mom liked this place. Or more so, it had treated her well, and it made him happy. He doesn’t like leaving because he knows what he’s done, and he knows what he’s doing and feels like everyone can almost smell it on him as he walks out to the parking lot.
Outside, the snow falls lightly, slowly onto the frozen black asphalt. Some of it seems suspended in the air. The sunset is yellow, then orange, then red. It has freckles, he thinks, then laughs to himself, almost like he’s at the beginning of beginning to cry. He laughs to himself that right now, the sun is like a really cute girl, who’s looking at him with all this brightness and all these freckles. And she’s so there, and she’s so watching over him. And he walks through the snow towards his car, and as he gets in, a pile of unlucky paper falls out the side door and onto the parking lot.
He doesn’t pick it up, just sits down.
He looks back at the big concrete building into his mom’s window, but can’t see that much because of the glare. But he keeps trying to look until he gives up.
His feet are cramped because there is too much unlucky paper on the ground. It’s everywhere, and he doesn’t like it, and it feels overwhelming because he thought that it’d work. He thought that instead of using the rest of the money to pay for a little more time, he could turn it around and pay for a lot more time.
He knows he’s never been really all that bright, but he thought that the feeling was good enough for it to work anyway.
And then he’s staring at the glove box. And he’s thinking that he has to open it because he knows what’s inside, and he knows what to do.
He’s thinking it won’t be too bad because Mom will be there at some point soon. But he’s also scared because not that soon, like it could still be another year or two.
And he thinks of all that time of both of them alone in very weird places.
And the feeling of beginning to begin to cry turns into the feeling of trying.
And with trying comes failing and he just goes back to staring at the sunset.
And he reaches over for the glovebox without averting his gaze. Because it is too beautiful, and the snow is so light and kind. And he’s feeling around for the handle, and pulls it open. And he’s staring into the yellow part because it is his favorite. And he’s thinking to himself to not think about anything he’s done or done wrong. The thoughts just get suggested, then shut down as he feels it, all cold and harsh feeling, waiting there for him. But he doesn’t take it out, just wraps his hand around the part he thinks he’s supposed to and stares at the sun, until the tears come for one reason or another.
But they are there, and his eyes get filled with a whole bunch of shining, right when he starts really crying, right to the sun.
Then he hears knocking. Repeated fast knocking. And he’s not really looking at anything but the sun because he doesn’t want to and because he’s grateful it’s there. Like he couldn’t even begin to think about looking away.
But it keeps happening, and eventually, there is talking.
“Excuse me,” it says,
Then again.
And again.
Until eventually, it yells.
“EXCUSE ME.”
And without looking away from the sun, he yells, “WHAT?”
And the banging keeps up louder and says, “YOU LEFT YOUR KEYS IN YOUR MOM’S.”
And he remembers his mom. And he remembers the nurse, and he realizes it’s her. Because in some weird way, he wasn’t even really thinking about any of that. He was just sort of feeling. Feeling the sun, feeling the thing in the glovebox.
And he looks away, over at the nurse, standing at his window, looking real cold, holding his keys in his hand.
He didn’t really think he’d need them.
He looks at her, and there are all these spots in his vision, and she looks a lot bluer than she should be. But nothing is really processing, and he doesn’t really know what to say. And he’s still got his hand just fully in the glove box, wrapped around the thing. And so he looks at her, like as much as another person is capable of really truly looking at another, and says. “I’m sorry.”
She scurries and moves the passenger side door, and says, “SIR, I’M TRYING TO GIVE YOU YOUR KEYS.”
Then he takes the thing into his hand and goes back to the sun.
And he tells himself, staring into the beautiful picture in front of him, “that all my sadness will always end here.”
And she gets in, and she’s sitting beside him. And he feels her touching him, and he’s still not looking.
But he feels the thing become a different type of thing and he hears it rattle and then a loud sound. And a jangly one right after. And he can feel that the glove box is closed.
And he knows she’s there, and she’s so big and she’s here for him right now. And he’s really grateful for it, but is really far from beginning to begin how to know how to say it, because maybe there is no way to say something like that.
But she takes his hand and brings it to the ignition. And together, they kinda turn it over, going through all the clanking of the gears and that weird feeling so specific to starting a car.
And she says, “Are you cold? It’s cold in here.”
And he says, “Yes.”
Slowly, the heat comes on. And as the car begins to fill with that feeling of artificial warmth, he looks over at her, and she is smiling, and whether he is aware of it or not, he is too.
This is what he sees.