The Appointment

I step over jagged faults wrinkling the surface of my parents’ driveway.

"Step on a crack,
Break your mother’s back."

A spiked brown welcome mat collects grit on the top of a crumbling, cement veranda. The doorbell bongs, bringing Dad into view through three squares of windowpane.

“Hi Squirt,” he says.

He raises a folded cheek for a kiss. I’m fifty-five years old and still he calls me, Squirt.

“Hey Dad. How are ya?”

The shutting door banishes a spring morning from a stuffy hallway.

“Good. Can’t complain. Might as well sit. Mum’s not ready.”

The ritual. Enter, wait and listen for clues of Mum’s progress to descend six stairs from the upper floor. Dad sways to his chair close to the picture window, positioned two feet from the TV. He feels around for the remote, brings it close to his face and clicks the off button. I sit on the couch.

“Mum said you and Ben went to a wing-ding after golf on Saturday.”

“No, Dad. That was Elaine and Rob.”

We untangle confusing tidbits Mum has mixed up after talking to Elaine, my sister, and I on the phone. From upstairs, the splashing sound of tap water stops, then a doorknob cranks. Mum peers down the stairs.

“Oh Mary, I didn’t hear you come in.”

She halts at the top of the handrail. Down, or back to her bedroom? I watch and Dad listens. Swollen ankles step out quarter turns and trudge back to find what is forgotten. I relax my shoulders and Dad and I resume a debate about the coming elections. Mum reappears, steadied by her cane. She grabs the handrail. Down she comes. From a silent world of turned off hearing aids, she interrupts us.

“I’m sorry I’m late, dear. I was doing real good this morning, but then, I don’t know. I had such a struggle with these darned stockings.”

I picture the bedside combat between tough white support hose and Mum’s arthritic fingers.

“That’s okay, Mum,” I yell. “I was early anyway. What time is your appointment?”

Mum braces herself between the hall and her favourite chair. She holds open a black purse.

“I have the doctor’s card in my purse. No. Now where did I put it? I had it this morning. Maybe in the kitchen.”

Stilted quarter turns, hobble-steps to the kitchen, rustling papers.

“Not there. Oh don’t tell me it’s upstairs.”

The gaping stairway looms like Mount Everest. Dad offers an out.

“Ten o’clock. You told me it was ten o’clock, Vera. What time is it now, Squirt?”

“Nine-thirty. We’ve got half an hour, Mum. Are you nearly ready?”

My voice sounds loud in the room. No answer. I watch Mum through the doorway. She fiddles her ear for tiny controls she winces at over tuning. Purse clamped under her arm, she sifts papers on the counter. The cane thumps a tempo back to the living room chair.

“Oomph," she exhales, a duet with the seat cushion.

Next, a switch from wedge-heeled, velveteen slippers to lumpy orthopedic shoes she hates and says so every time she puts them on in front of me. She thanks me for sealing the Velcro tabs and I pull her out of the chair. We hold hands and look down at the anchors on her feet.

“Now what did I do with Baby Nate’s birthday card?”

Off again, foraging for her great grandson’s greeting at the sideboard.

“Ah, here it is!”

Triumphant. She’s struck gold. I check my concerns under bouts of conversation with Dad.

Mum says, “You know I nearly forgot Baby Nate’s birthday, but Elaine mentioned it so when she took us to the drugstore on Seniors Day, we got a card. Oh, I forgot to put on a stamp.”

Mum’s voice trails to the kitchen. I keep an eye on my watch. When she fumbles for Kleenex and cough drops, I rise off the couch. She walks to the hall cupboard. Dad follows.

“Which jacket do you want, Mum?”

“Is it cold today?”

Cold is the enemy. Damp air and bone-chilling draughts swell painful joints to immobility.

“It’s a little cool.”

I fib about the warm sunshine to make sure she wears enough layers so she can’t complain later.

“I’ve got a sweater on. Maybe the beige jacket will do.”

Relieved, I wrap a sagging jacket around sagging shoulders.

Dad asks, “Do you have Baby Nate’s card?”

“I don’t know why you keep asking me, Bob. I told you I have it.”

Dad risks again.

“Have you got my prescription?”

Mum raises her eyes to the ceiling, heads to a pile of papers in the kitchen.

“I’ve got it, Bob. You’re always on at me. If you’d just let me be, I’d have everything ready myself. But with you, it’s always push, push, push.”

She looks to me for commiseration, but I turn toward the door because I know it’s coming.

“I’m not pushing, Vera. I can’t see or I’d do it myself. I just don’t want to get there and find we don’t have it. That’s happened before.”

I hate the skirmishes. I open the door.

Going ahead, I start the car. Even with a strong April sun warming the dashboard, I turn on the heater. Releasing the emergency brake, I grip the wheel and watch.

Dad holds open the glass door and peers blindly back into the hallway. There is a hitch as Mum turns back inside to find her cane. She emerges and drops an awkward step onto the porch. The couple jockey. Mum’s right hand grips the railing. At the same time, the purse shoulder strap drops from her left shoulder and slaps against her cane. Dad tries to help, but she isn’t clear about what is needed, and he can’t see. He gives up and walks ahead to wait by the passenger side door. Mum halts barely past the door when he yanks it open, nearly hitting her face. She grumpily dismisses him, saying she can shut the door herself. The little woman plops backwards onto the front seat. Janice gestures to help but her mother is busy lifting her legs, like sacks, over the frame, purse and cane dragging behind. A frail hand reaches to close the door. She leans back, exhausted.

I remind Mum to buckle her seat belt before Dad has the chance.

When it comes from him, Mum registers jaw-clenching annoyance, saying, “All right, Bob. I know, I know. I usually think of it by the time we get to the corner.”

I steer the conversation to an appreciation of a cloudless blue sky.

“Won’t be long before the tulips,” Dad says.

After a few minutes of talk about what needs doing for their spring garden, I shift gears.

“Mum, are you going to ask Dr. Newman about the tiredness?”

There is so much more to ask Dr. Newman.

“He knows about it,” she explains. “He says I can expect that with these kidneys. You tell him things and he puts it in the computer right then. He says I’m doing real good for eighty-four. Last time we joked about how young I look.”

Dad isn’t allowed to go with her to discuss the disease with the doctor. He suggests it, but his offer is considered interfering. Mum complains to Janice that she’s certain Dad will embarrass her by asking questions to put the doctor on the spot. He’ll want answers, directives and schedules. All the things Mum doesn’t want.

I retreat and steer the talk to Baby Nate’s birthday party. Tensions relax.

But a new worry dissolves the calm.

“I haven’t bought the baby a present yet. I don’t know when we can get to the stores with these legs. Mary, do you think we could give him a cheque? I’d rather buy a proper present, but maybe they need the money more.”

“Sure Mum. They can buy him something he needs with the money. Or if you like, when I get something for him, I’ll look for you too.”

That settled, Dad asks, “What kind of mileage do you get with this car?”

I don’t know. I can’t even guess. I feel I’ve let him down.

“It’s a smooth ride,” he continues. “Good springs.”

“And it’s so easy to get in,” Mum adds.

I wait for Mum to exit the car at the curb outside the hospital clinic. Dad holds the cane as she fumbles with her purse and pumps off the seat. I drive to the car park and bring the ticket to be stamped by Frieda, the doctor’s friendly receptionist. I find them in Dr. Newman’s five-cubicle rotation, and sit on a chrome chair between them. Dad and I talk about news stories and music we like. We gossip about neighbours and the next church outing, and then whisper about Frieda, the friendly receptionist, and her imminent nuptials, something he seems to know a lot about. We don’t include Mum who peacefully leafs the pages of a magazine. She has complained to me that Dad is easily bored and she is too tired to distract him from the inactivity brought on by his blindness. I give her some peace. After forty-five minutes, Mum is called to a cubicle.

“Dad, do you think Mum will get to the bottom of things? She seems to be worse lately.”

“I tell her to keep a list of complaints so she can review them with the doctor, but she won’t. If I say anything to her, she balks. I’d like to go with her, but it’s not welcome.

I can’t comment on why Mum resents Dad’s needed protections.

He stands and announces, “I’m going across the hall to get my lottery tickets.”

I pick up a magazine. I play smiling games with a three-year old girl waiting for a turn with Dr. Newman. Dad comes back and holds up two tickets, one for me to pick.

“I’ll call you from Bora Bora,” I say.

He laughs at our shared lottery joke.

Thirty minutes later, Mum returns. She stops in the centre of the room to watch the dancing antics of the three-year-old girl. Diagnostic suspense heightens.

“Well, what did he say, Mum?”

“My blood’s kinda low. I’m to come back every week for a shot. He says I’m okay, but I’m anemic. That’s why I’m fuddled in the brain,” she grins.

“What about the tiredness?”

“I told you. My blood’s low.”

Then she pulls the pin and lobs a grenade.

“We have to make an appointment for the dialysis tube operation. The peritoneal kind, at home, four times a day. He said training starts about a month after the operation for the tube.”

I stiffen with shock. Mum turns to Dad, preferring to tell him about Dr. Newman’s funnier banter. The doctor wants to know the secret of how a couple stays married for sixty years. She thinks this worth retelling to Frieda, the friendly receptionist, who giggles. Mum likes it when Dad flirts with Frieda. And Frieda flirts back. Mum said Dad wasn’t much good to her if other women didn’t find him attractive. Frieda books the next appointment and stamps the parking ticket for the discount. We leave. I sneak glances at their faces. I can’t tell what they are thinking.

The process reverses. I collect them at the curb, ask leading questions about the diagnosis, pick up a prescription, mail Baby Nate’s birthday card and steady Mum on the crumbling steps. I hang up their coats, make tea and put out a plate of cookies. We sit at the kitchen table.

“Mum, do you want to do groceries on Thursday?”

“Oh, I hate to keep asking you kids to do that for us. I should be getting them to deliver. But they need the list by Tuesday and I never seem to get it done.”

Mum is convinced the store will fob them off with bruised produce and day-old bread.

“Well Mum, why don’t you get them to deliver the heavy packaged stuff and I can pick up fresh stuff for you?”

Mum looks forlornly out the window, saying, “I know. I should.”

Most days Dad walks alone to the plaza, picks up bits of what they have to buy, handles prescriptions, does banking, mails letters. I worry about him crossing the street. Trusted store clerks pick money out of the palm of his hand. Once I saw her him return from one of these excursions, collapsing into Mum’s chair closest to the door. He said his feet hurt. No mention of a weak heart recently stabilized by a pacemaker.

There are appointments for audiologists, ophthalmologists, urologists, kidney specialists and heart specialists. Doctor appointments are booked amongst low vision clinics, dentists, and after Mum’s hip replacement, physiotherapy.

Creeping markers invade their house; stale food in the fridge, messy splotches on floors, dust balls, and stacks of papers not filed. They refuse to consider a cleaning service - strangers in their home.

“Things don’t look too bad, do they?” Mum asks me. “I’m very particular about the bathrooms. Anyway I can’t have anyone here ‘til I get this place cleared out.”

Generations of memorabilia fester in moldy boxes.

“Dad likes washing the floors,” Mum enthuses. “And vacuuming. It makes him feel useful.”

I want to scream, “He’s blind for God’s sake.”

Even Dad supports his role and closes the subject. But his suggestion to throw out the junk that is Mum’s precious hoard upsets the little woman.

“It needs sorting, Bob. There are things the girls will want.”

He escapes to his radio and talking books.

“Mum, if you did a bit every day, I could take it to the Goodwill. It’s better for someone to use it.”

“I know. I should, she says, forlorn again.”

But Mum is too sick to sort out heaping closets, and too private to accept help. I’m not sure how much of this predicament Dad can see.

After tea, I attempt to scrub oily splatters from the walls around the stove, but Mum tells me she will do it herself after lunch. I back off.

I hug my shrinking parents at the front door. They thank me. Sometimes Dad slips me twenty dollars for gas money. They say they are lucky to have such good kids. When they get feeling better, things will be different. Don’t worry about us. Take care of yourself, Mary. Give Baby Nate a big hug for us. See you on Thursday. Bye.

In winter Mum and Dad stand together inside the glass door and wave. Today, a warm April sun brings them arm in arm to the railing. But for how much longer, I wonder. I raise my arm in a quick wave. Tears blur my eyes and I blink to clear them, yank the car into reverse and back out the cracked driveway.