Free Riding Barranca by Laura Chester Page A

forehead in the shape of the cross. He opened a silver pyx that he had hanging around his neck. Like a large locket, it opened to reveal the host, a little cross stamped into the middle of each wafer. He put one on my father’s tongue and gave me one, too. Then, the three of us held hands and recited the Lord’s Prayer. But I heard Popi stop, and I knew he was crying. They say that the Holy Spirit is present when there are heartfelt tears. By the end of the prayer, Popi joined in again, but he was still feeling weak and weepy.
    â€œWhat do you think Christ meant by: My Father’s house has many mansions…I’m going to prepare a place for you?” Then he started to cry again. I stood up and put my hand on his shoulder.
    Reverend Lee responded, “I interpret that to mean that God has many rooms for many different kinds of people, space for all. It’s my own personal belief that no one will be turned away from God’s Love unless he out-and-out rejects God and His gifts.”
    I believed that no one would be turned away from God’s Love, period.
    When I told my sister Cia about this, she thought our father might have been concerned about the quality of his residence on the other side—would it be up to snuff? Would there be a mansion on that side, too?
    Popi was appreciative of everything I did—the posters I bought to hang on the hospital walls, the egg carton foam pad I got for the bed, the new scrapbook for his get-well cards. It was filling up quickly. I ordered a hospital bed for my parents’ apartment, then went out and bought food to stock their kitchen, ordered vitamins, which he would never take, antioxidant tea, which he would never drink, and shark fin powder, which he would return. But mainly, what I did was distract him.
    I wanted to do all I could, as if my efforts might make a difference in the final outcome. I wanted to get things set up before my mother came home. I dreaded that changing of the guard, for as much as she said she appreciated what I was doing, I knew underneath that she would be angry at me for doing what she could not.
    Finally, the conscience-buzzer went off in her brain, and she realized that maybe she should be in Milwaukee taking care of her critically ill husband. She was suddenly concerned about the cancer that had been detected in his lymph nodes and insisted that he could not get chemo. “Everyone who gets chemo dies.”
    My weepiness seemed to be an expression of my helplessness. I found myself sitting at a stop sign, waiting for the light to change until I realized—this was not a light: I could go. I felt as if some part of my brain was displaced, that I could easily forget where I was, where I was going, who I was calling on the telephone. I felt oddly removed, absent from myself.
    Then, I braced myself for my mother’s return. I had changed her sheets and made her bed. The apartment was immaculate. But on entering the apartment, she started moving bouquets around as if each one had been set down in the wrong place.
    She said how wonderful I had been to come and take care of her husband, but then, in the same breath, she went on to tell me how she had played golf on Tuesday and tennis on Wednesday. I was appalled.
    â€œThe doctors want Popi to come home on Friday,” I told her.
    â€œHe’s not coming here until Monday when I’m ready for him,” she snapped. I guess she needed four days to unpack her things. Wanda was being flown all the way from Arizona to help her rearrange her closet.
    The first day home, she had scheduled a hair appointment in Hartland, an hour away, and she wondered if I wanted to go along and have a massage. I declined.
    On arriving at the hospital, one of my cousins was visiting with his kids. Mom came in like a fury ordering everyone to leave, insisting that children should not be allowed to visit. He could catch pneumonia. Yes, and he could catch a lot of things spending an