Taking two at a time, the metal steps creaked underfoot. The omnipresent scent of cleaning agents and old people invaded my nostrils, and I did everything in my power to ignore it. This place was good to my mom, but the dying had a scent, and it wasn’t a pleasant one.
I shoved open the door for the third floor, barely managed a ‘hello’ to the nurses that greeted me, and continued to Mom’s room.
After a quick knock with no response, I pushed the door open and stepped inside.
Mom sat by the window with a pair of headphones around her graying black hair. She clutched a paintbrush in one hand, the edge of the easel with the other, craning in close to study each stroke with her shaking fingers. That was one thing she hadn’t lost with her illness. Her ability to focus applied to words, but not to paint.
I took a few steps in and gently tapped her shoulder.
She jolted, smudged the sunrise over the city on her canvas, and muttered a curse. Yanking off her earbuds, she said, “Damn you. I’ve told you all to wait until I take a break to—”
As our eyes met, her stiff expression softened. A smile edged up her lips as she tugged them the rest of the way off. “What’re you doing here, sweetie?” She glanced at her calendar. “It’s Monday.”
“It is. But I, uh…” Blurting out my theories, whatever they even were, didn’t seem like the best idea. My eyes slid toward the rising sun out the window. “Have you had breakfast? Do you want to go out and get some?”
Her smile spread wider. “I don’t think it’s my birthday yet.”
I tried to smile back, but all I managed was, “I need to talk to you about something.”
Slowly, her smile dwindled. She laid her paintbrush onto the paper plate below her easel. “What’s wrong?”
“It’s complicated,” I said. “But what do you think? Breakfast?”
* * *
“We don’t do this enough.” Mom sipped her coffee, eyes drifting over the river to our right. Her nursing home was in the city, only a few blocks from the little restaurant we were seated at. I’d wheeled her here, but since we’d settled in, I hadn’t been able to form the words.
I wasn’t sure what I thought. I wasn’t sure what my theory even was. The dream I’d had last night could’ve been no more than my imagination. Although, it’d felt more like a memory.
“Yeah, we should,” I said. “Maybe we’ll start going out to lunch on my visits.”
“That’d be fun. Gets stuffy in that place sometimes.” She spread some cream cheese over her bagel. Eyes finding mine, she gave a smile. “So what’d you wanna talk about, kid?”
I rubbed my scruff, tracing my tongue along my teeth. “What’s the part mum?”
Her face screwed up in confusion. She laughed. “The what?”
“I don’t know.” I massaged my tense forehead. “It was a story you told me when I was a kid. I couldn’t say it right. But maybe it wasn’t. Maybe it was a dream. I don’t know.”
She stared at me a moment longer, head tilting in confusion. “The par animarum? Is that what you’re talking about?”
My eyes popped. “That’s it. The par animarum.”
“Oh, yeah. You loved that one.” She smiled. “What about it?”
“What was it?” I asked. “I remember bits and pieces, but I don’t remember the whole thing.”
She huffed, spinning her spoon through her mug. “Shoulda known.”
“What?”
“You made me tell it to you every night, and now you don’t remember it.” She made atsk,tsk,tsksound, smiling. “Why am I not surprised?”
“What was it, Mom?” I repeated.
Her smile slowly dwindled. “Why do you ask?”
Because I fucked some girl, and then she felt me get shot from fifteen miles away. “I had a dream about it, and now I can’t get it out of my head. What was it about?”