Everything Happens Today by Jesse Browner Read Free Book Online

wear to school; not make fun of her for talking too loud and too fast and losing her train of thought in mid-sentence; accompany her on her walk to school sometimes; have a serious talk with dad about the need to be a more conscientious parent to his preteen daughter. Barefoot, Wes padded across the hall to splash some water on his face in the bathroom. Staring at himself in the mirror, trying on a smile that only made his pale blue eyes look watery and weak, Wes thought that even if he couldn’t be strong enough to be a good person, he really might have it in him to be a better brother. As he looked at himself, he suddenly thought of Lucy and how horrified she would be to see how he lived, even for five minutes, and as he pictured that pretty face of hers distorted in disgust and incomprehension, with its Mustique tan and ski-jump nose and thick, dark scimitar eyebrows, he felt a mild twinge of triumph, as if he already were the good brother he aspired to be. She probably wouldn’t even like Nora.
    Wes dried his face and went downstairs and stood before the door to his mother’s room, its surface creamy and rippled with generations of white gloss enamel. He hesitated only a moment before rapping gently and pushing inwards, the door whispering benignly against the thick burgundy pile.
    He stood in the doorway, allowing his eyes to adjust to the dark, mitigated by the wan glow of the television. The new flat-screen LCD emitted a light far less lurid than that of the old cathode tube, but it was also less bright, and Wes had not yet accustomed himself to the change. It was an improvement, he thought, and the room now felt more like an aquarium for tropical fish than a laboratory in a science fiction movie, but he doubted that his mother, with her fading eyesight, had any great appreciation for the difference. The pervasive aroma of urine, buttered toast and topical antiseptic remained unchanged, and would do so as long as the windows, blinds and drapes sealed the room from the outside world. The natural reaction of anyone entering his mother’s room for the first time would be to throw it all open to the light and air, but Wes no longer even raised the issue with her. The light hurt her eyes, and the fresh air brought on uncontrolled trembling, even when it was warm. This was her natural habitat now, and it was for visitors to adapt or inure themselves to it, as Wes and Nora had. Wes lifted his nose for any hint of pus or necrosis in the air, but the bedsores seemed to have healed since she had recovered limited mobility after the last attack.
    â€œHi, mom. How you feeling?”
    â€œWes? Come over here, honey.”
    Wes crossed the room to the side of the bed, which was adjusted to raise her upper body for ease of viewing. The bedclothes were neat and folded at the top, which Nora must have done earlier, and her arms lay on top of them at her side, sleeved in the thin cheap cotton print of a hospital gown. Her head was nestled in a cradle of newly plumped pillows, hair so thin and colorless now that the white of the pillow cases showed through it. Wes propped himself at the edge of the bed, which was so high he was almost on tiptoes, and leaned in for a closer look.
    â€œHow are you feeling?”
    â€œI’m just dandy.” Her voice was whistling and reedy, as if she had to push it through a rattan sieve to get it out; still, it was quite a bit stronger than it had been a month earlier, and no longer slurred. “How are you, honey?”
    Wes was never quite sure what she meant when she asked him this. Sometimes, she was genuinely alert to what he had to say; more often, it was just the disease talking through her, as if she were a ventriloquist’s dummy, and what she was really saying was “Just pretend everything will be alright.” Usually these days, Wes was reluctant to test her, but now he let a note of equivocation creep into his voice.
    â€œI’m okay