Vivian In Red by Kristina Riggle Page B

him up the stairs at night. Esme used to do that before he fell, even. There’s a bathroom up there, too.”
    The Bates lady is getting ready to speak, but Linda raises a slim hand to stop her. “He won’t be clomping up and down the steps all day. Just like before, he’d come down in the morning and only go up at night. His leg recovered quickly from the stroke, after all. We’re keeping him at home to keep him comfortable and in familiar surroundings. The hospital bed is overkill.” Linda looks down to address me. “And you won’t be trying these solitary journeys at night anymore, right, Pop?”
    I shake my head emphatically. Hell no, if this means I get to sleep in my own bed like a normal person.
    A slam of the front door telegraphs my son’s entrance. Paul is a slammer, always has been. He comes around through the door and I can’t believe he looks so old all of a sudden. He comes in and when he sees his wife he stops short, and something comes over him. It’s a rigid posture that looks unnatural, but most of all it’s the distance between them he chooses not to close.
    Ms. Bates takes her leave to look over the schedule for my “care.”
    Paul stares at his wife a moment. Linda stands without speaking, her hands loosely clasped, and her face a mask of passive waiting. It’s easy to imagine her in this posture in the wings, wearing her toe shoes, listening for her cue to come to life.
    Paul approaches me and pats my hand like he’s petting a snake and isn’t too sure I won’t bite him. Physical affection was never very much his thing. “You gave us quite a scare,” he says, parroting his wife’s words almost exactly.
    Linda interjects to explain how I want to go back to sleeping in my own room. “Oh, sure, fine, whatever you want,” Paul says, as if we’d asked for his permission.
    And I’m tired again, suddenly, though I’ve been sleeping for who knows how long. So I lie back down and close my eyes. The good part about being close to ninety is that no one cares if you nap at any given time, all the livelong day if you want. Like a housecat.
    I roll onto my side, too, on my left, which was the side I always slept on with my dear Bee in our big four-poster bed. I could see her sleeping form, rising and falling in the faint light from outside: the moon, city lights, lampposts, all of it, the constant seeping glow of the greatest city in the world.
    “He must be exhausted,” Paul says, but his voice has an absent quality to it. I bet he’s looking at his little electronic scheduler whatsit.
    “It’s so strange.” This from Linda.
    “What?”
    “How he seems to have recovered so well, in almost every way. He walks well now, his left hand can play the piano. His face isn’t droopy or anything like that. But even with all the therapy, he’s just made no progress. Not on writing or speaking.”
    “Well, he’s old.”
    “He didn’t seem so a few weeks ago. Are you listening to me? Can’t you put that gadget down for five minutes?”
    “Sure I’m listening, but what? What else am I supposed to do? We’re already hemorrhaging money for all this. I’m spending as fast as I can.”
    “God, Paul. That’s not what I meant.”
    “You’ll forgive me if I’ve got it on the brain. Pop always acted like Short Productions would go forever, but it’s not like magic, you know. We haven’t had a hit in too long, and this…” A pause. He’s probably waving his hand over me, this problem here , “… is taking a bite out of the one solution I had in mind.”
    “ The High Hat .”
    “Yes, The High Hat . Book and show, and what the hell? Maybe even movie. Can you see it? I wonder if Leonardo DiCaprio can dance.”
    “All our problems solved by a dancing DiCaprio? How convenient.”
    “You joke, but it would probably do the trick.”
    “You never talk like this in front of him.”
    “He won’t listen anyway, is why. Anyway, I’m not talking in front of him. He’s out like a light