• • • •

With the shades drawn, the house is quiet and cool inside. It’s different from what he remembers. It feels empty and unoccupied. He washes the windows and scrubs the sinks. He has to fill his days with work. There’s grass to be watered, a garden to be grown, a hornet’s nest to be smoked out. He spends his time outside in a ten-foot perimeter of lawn. He paints the deck and puts a timer on the barbecue to measure the hours. The hours outdoors are temporary and staccato.

Inside, he stares at the list stuck to the fridge door. It is the list of scenarios. His mother’s body, cancer eating her from the inside out, needs to be fed properly. Every week, he stocks the cupboards with different foods. Last week’s oranges shrivel and green in the fridge’s door, tiny crystals form on the salt box in the pantry, bluish-white fuzz sprouts on the whole wheat bread.

White rice, cottage cheese, skinless turkey. The less colour, the better. It seems easy.

Autumn is coming. The air is getting damp and the house smells old. Even with all the windows closed, the dehumidifier needs emptying once a day. Gallons of water are siphoned from the air. The ounces of sticky glue that cling to her lungs’ walls are coughed up. It keeps him awake at night, and he wants to stuff his head under the pillows. Every two hours, he visits her room with a glass of water and a bowl of cereal, cold, lumpy, and soft on gum tissue.

Yogurt. Creamed wheat.

The kitchen counter is getting crowded. Litres of ginger ale sit opened and warmed. The blender whirls constantly, mashing bananas and mushing overboiled sweet potatoes. Tupperware filled with applesauce, sugarless liquefying Jell-O, puréed carrot, take the place where the toaster and coffee machine once where. The timer beeps its hourly schedule. He hears it clearly, wherever he is. He starts eating on a schedule, too. The motionless house and the bland, warm food keep his stomach rumbling.

The skin is loose and wrinkled, barely clinging to what’s left. The oranges and apricots last only so long at room temperature. He considers time and quantity at the grocery store, hefting the weight of fruit in each hand. He eats what is about to go bad at home.

Mouth sores. The list suggests one tablespoon salt, one cup warm water. Scrambled egg whites. Morning sickness demands toast; weight loss, calories. He coats the pan with knifeloads of butter and whisks it into the eggs and milk. All melted and yellow, the egg whites turn golden. He sprinkles milk on the toast.

Garbanzo and black and red beans. Parsley is mild enough when there’s only a little bit. No salt or pepper. The pantry is getting colder with each snowfall and the olive oil has congealed. The house is quiet again. He is sure not to let her know he’s intentionally trying to wake her up anymore. But he makes noise when he walks, shifting his weight on the creaky floorboards outside his mother’s room, letting the wind slam the front door shut. He paces the length of the hallway and thinks about having the carpet removed as he shuffles up puffs of dust. Even the vacuum cleaner doesn’t make a loud enough noise.

He shovels the driveway after every storm. There’s nowhere to go, but the car must have a clear path. The walkway must be salted and the front door free of the heavy drifts. He listens to the radio quietly in the evenings, anticipating the weather reports, eager for the excuse to spend hours outside. Every centimetre means guiltless minutes of numb fingertips, lungs heaving with exertion and the shock of cold. It hurts to take a breath at first, but the throat contracts and adjusts to the temperature and torture of the wind.

Five, six meals prepared daily. Granola and prunes some days, baby food, milk with honey, or ice cream and popcorn. He spends hours in the kitchen, preparing and blending and straining and warming. He sears steaks on the good days, boils broccoli and cabbage on the quiet ones. His calendar is the list. It has accumulated pages and pages over the months, and it slowly drags the magnet down the fridge door. His reflexes are quick now; his hand pushes it back up to eye level with an automatic gesture.

Bran flakes, almonds, dried apples. These will last forever.

That spring, he picks me up for her funeral. It’s the first time I’ve seen him in months.

“I never used to eat garlic on the weekends,” he tells me. His car is filled with it. The steering wheel, the seats, the radio buttons.

“Good rule to live by.”

“It made sense. I tripled the number of cloves in the pesto tonight.” He shows his bandaged thumb. The knife had slipped and grinded up against bone.

“How many stitches was that?”

“Six. Even my bones stink now.”