Free Montreal Stories by Mavis Gallant

were trying to form a word. I bent close and heard, “Sponge.”
    “Did you say ‘sponge’? Is ‘sponge’ what you said?”
    “Sponge,” he agreed. He made an effort: “Bad night last night. Awful. Wiped everything with my sponge—blood, spit. Need new sponge.”
    There wasn’t a bed table, just a plastic bag that hung on the bedrail with his personal things in it. I got out the sponge. It needed to be thrown away, all right. I said, “What color?”
    “Eh?”
    “This,” I said, and held it up in front of him. “The new one. Any special color?”
    “Blue.” His voice broke out of a whisper all at once. His eyes were mocking me, like a kid seeing how far he can go. I thought he would thank me now, but then I said to myself, You can’t expect anything; he’s a sick man, and he was always like this.
    “Most people think it was pretty good of me to have come here,” I wanted to explain—not to boast or anything, but just for the sake of conversation. I was lonely there, and I had so much trouble understanding what anybody was saying.
    “Bad night,” my father whispered. “Need sedation.”
    “I know. I tried to tell the doctor. I guess he doesn’t understand my French.”
    He moved his head. “Tip the nurses.”
    “You don’t mean it!”
    “Don’t make me talk.” He seemed to be using a reserve of breath. “At least twenty dollars. The ward girls less.”
    I said, “Jesus God!” because this was new to me and I felt out of my depth. “They don’t bother much with you,” I said, talking myself into doing it. “Maybe you’re right. If I gave them a present, they’d look after you more. Wash you.Maybe they’d put a screen around you—you’d be more private then.”
    “No, thanks,” my father said. “No screen. Thanks all the same.”
    We had one more conversation after that. I’ve already said there were always women slopping around in the ward, in felt slippers, and bathrobes stained with medicine and tea. I came in and found one—quite young, this one was—combing my father’s hair. He could hardly lift his head from the pillow, and still she thought he was interesting. I thought, Kenny should see this.
    “She’s been telling me,” my father gasped when the woman had left. “About herself. Three children by different men. Met a North African. He adopts the children, all three. Gives them his name. She has two more by him, boys. But he won’t put up with a sick woman. One day he just doesn’t come. She’s been a month in another place; now they’ve brought her here. Man’s gone. Left the children. They’ve been put in all different homes, she doesn’t know where. Five kids. Imagine.”
    I thought, You left
us
. He had forgotten; he had just simply forgotten that he’d left his own.
    “Well, we can’t do anything about her, can we?” I said. “She’ll collect them when she gets out of here.”
    “If she gets out.”
    “That’s no way to talk,” I said. “Look at the way she was talking and walking around …” I could not bring myself to say “and combing your hair.” “Look at how
you
are,” I said. “You’ve just told me this long story.”
    “She’ll seem better, but she’ll get worse,” my father said. “She’s like me, getting worse. Do you think I don’t know what kind of ward I’m in? Every time they put the screen around a patient, it’s because he’s dying. If I had TB, like they tried to make me believe, I’d be in a TB hospital.”
    “That just isn’t true,” I said.
    “Can you swear I’ve got TB? You can’t.”
    I said without hesitating, “You’ve got a violent kind of TB. They had no place else to put you except here. The ward might be crummy, but the medicine … the medical care …” He closed his eyes. “I’m looking you straight in the face,” I said, “and I swear you have this unusual kind of TB, and you’re almost cured.” I watched, without minding it now, a new kind of bug crawling along the base of