Free Five Minutes More by Darlene Ryan Page B

first door on the right. What looks like an elementary kid’s desk, stacked with brochures, is pushed against the door to keep it open.
    â€œYou want to come in?” he asks.
    There are about a dozen people in the room. Most of them are in wheelchairs like Andrew. There’s a woman with a walker and a man with two canes. No one is old. I thought they’d be old.
    A woman about my mom’s age squats next to a wheel-chair. The man in the chair is typing something on a laptopfastened to his chair. He can use only one finger, and it doesn’t always go where he wants it to. I can’t stop watching him. Andrew says something else to me, but I don’t know what it was. Is this what would have happened to my dad?
    The man finishes typing. The woman looks at the screen and starts to laugh, shaking her head. The man’s face twists into a grin but no sound comes out of his open mouth. Still laughing, she pulls a Kleenex out of her pocket and wipes the drool off the side of his mouth. And all of a sudden I don’t see two strangers. I see my father in that chair and myself crouched on the floor, wiping his chin.
    Did he think we wouldn’t love him like this? Or...or was it that he didn’t love us enough to face the wheelchair and the drooling?
    I turn and run for the entrance. I hear Andrew calling my name, but I can’t even look at him. I push my way through the people coming up the front steps. Then I’m doubled over at the side of the building next to the sign that says
Redborne Senior Citzens’ Center Parking
, palms of my hands jammed against my eyes to shut out the image of the man in the chair, of Dad in that chair.

    â€œI miss you,” Brendan says, his mouth on mine. His hand slides under my sweater, moves up my belly. His fingers slither beneath my bra. He makes a sound, almost like a growl in the back of his throat.
    I want to squirm out of his arm, out from under his hand.
    â€œI love you,” he whispers. “I just want you to feel good.”
    But I don’t. I don’t start to breathe faster when he kisses down the curve of my jaw to my mouth. There’s no rush of blood thumping in my ears when his tongue tangles with mine. I don’t feel anything.
    Maybe that doesn’t matter. I close my eyes, kiss the curve of his ear and start to slide my hand up his thigh.
    But I don’t feel anything.

    The movie’s already started, but I don’t care. I take a seat in the middle, one row from the back, and scrunch down until my knees are pressed against the back of the seat in front of me. There’s just enough space for my popcorn between my legs and my chest.
    I love the Majestic. Even the name sounds the way a movie theater should, as opposed to Megaplex—twelve theaters, a giant arcade, a food court and thirty-one different popcorn toppings. Stupid.
    The Majestic has black velvet curtains that make a rustling sound as they open to show the screen. There are red velour seats with lots of padding that you can squish right down into. The Majestic has real movie food—no nachos with low-sodium salsa. No cruditiés with fat-free dip. At the Majestic they sell popcorn with real butter and salt, jujubes, cool mints and licorice whips. And the usher wears a drum major’s redjacket with lots of braid and a little red hat like an organ-grinder’s monkey.
    The theater is about half full—mostly students from the university and old people. This is the fourth time I’ve been here in the middle of the day. I’ve been faking stomach pains to get out of gym class—I don’t want to play badminton or dodgeball. Getting pounded by a big, hard ball isn’t fun. It wasn’t fun in third grade, and it isn’t fun now.
    The nurse says my “gastric upset” is caused by stress. She tips her head to one side and pats my arm. Then she gives me two plastic soup spoons of Maalox, reminds me to do the nose