Chapter 6: Sundays

Nate's hands were on the steering wheel at ten and two, and neither of us had said a word since the highway.

The nursing home in Dayton was a low brick building with a bird feeder by the door.

I had walked through that door on the first Saturday of every month for two years.

I had never once walked through it on a Wednesday.

The nurse at the front desk looked up from her screen.

"Oh, Sunday boy," she said to Nate, and she smiled.

Then she saw me and stopped smiling.

"Hi, Roxana. Is everything okay? It's not a visiting day."

"It's fine," I said. "I'm just early."

"Sunday boy," I said to Nate in the hallway.

"Don't."

"They have a name for you."

"I know."

"You're here every Sunday."

"Every one," he said. "Except two, when my father had me in Chicago."

My mother's door was open.

She sat in her chair by the window with a crocheted blanket across her knees and a library book in her lap.

She was thinner than she had been on my last visit.

I saw that straight away.

Her face had gone sharp at the cheekbones, and her lips had a faint blue edge.

There was an oxygen tube hooked over her ears.

It hadn't been there four weeks ago.

My mother looked at the door.

She looked at Nate, and then at me.

Then she put her book on the table, very calmly.

"Took you long enough," said Rita Larkin.

"Mom," I said.

"Two years. I made a bet with the night nurse. I said by the next election."

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