The Revised Fundamentals of Caregiving (33 page)

the hide-a-bed incident

B
ob's condo is off the Belt Route within rumbling distance of the airport. He occupies the bottom floor of a dirty gray duplex with a dead lawn.
Th
ere is a wire reindeer out front listing badly to one side.

“Gotta be Blitzen,” I say.

“Welcome to Casa Bob,” says Trev, whirring up the walkway, “where every day is Christmas.”

I'm proud of Trev. He's been surprisingly upbeat in the half hour since his good-bye kiss. Maybe because Dot's texted him twice already.

At the front steps, a sturdy access ramp of three-quarter-inch plywood has been erected, with twin strips of wide-grip tape running parallel up the center.
Th
e apartment is dark, inside and out. Stationed on either side of the front door is a large ceramic planter with a dead plant in it.

I ring the bell and wait. Ten seconds pass. I ring it again, clear my throat, wait. Still nothing.

“Try knocking,” says Trev.

I rap on the door. We wait.

“Maybe he ran to the store,” I say, rapping again.

“At one a.m.?”

“He's probably waiting up for us. So maybe he got thirsty or something.”

Trev fishes his phone out of his pouch and dials Bob. In a moment, we can hear the cell phone ringing from within.
Th
en, faintly, a groan. I rap harder on the door. Another groan.

“Bob, you in there?”
Th
e phone is still ringing. Now I'm knocking like a cop, with my fist. “Bob, open the door!”

A third groan, and then Bob's voice calling out something inaudible.

“What? ”

“Va doe if umucked!” Bob bellows.

“What did he say?”

Trev shrugs.

I press my ear to the door.

“Va doe if umucked!” Bob shouts again.

“Something about the door,” says Trev.

“If umucked!” proclaims Bob.

“Try the door,” says Trev.

Th
e door is unlocked. I push through, stepping into the darkened apartment. Before I can find a light, I hear Bob's voice again, still a little muffled.

“Va mights to va veft ova doe.”

I snap on the overhead light, and there's Bob mounting the sofa. His folding wheelchair is overturned halfway across the room. His good arm is wedged in the bowels of the couch, and his arm cast rests unnaturally against the side of his head. His face is buried between the couch cushions.

“What the hell?” says Trev, wheeling across the threshold.

I right Bob's wheelchair and kneel to assist him, very carefully extracting his good arm from the depths of the sofa bed. Once his arm is clear, I rotate his body, until he's looking up into my face. He smiles sheepishly and looks down toward his lap, which is soaked.

“Yeah,” he says. “Sorry about that.
Th
ink you can lift me back into the chair?”

Th
e instant I heft him three inches off the sofa, he hoots like a barred owl, and his eyes begin to water. I ease him back down against the sofa, where he looks like he might pass out. All the color has drained from him.

“You've got to support the leg,” he says, gasping for breath. “
Th
e leg.”

Th
is time, I get him under the leg cast with one arm and around the back and under the armpits with the other. I lift him slowly, looking down into his face for signs of discomfort. But for some grimacing and a few cringes, I manage to nest him in his chair without further incident.

“
Th
anks,” he says with a great sigh of relief.

“You okay?”

“I think so. Everything feels about the same. Face is kind of itchy.”

“What the hell were you doing, Dad?”

“Trying to fold out the hide-a-bed, make it up for you guys. Damned strap's way down on the inside, behind the cushions, and I got caught leaning too far.
Th
e chair slid out from under me. Got stuck, couldn't move.”

“How long ago was this?”

“I don't know. What time is it?”

“One ten.”

“About four hours ago.”

“Four hours!” says Trev.

“Why didn't you yell for your neighbor?” I say.

“He's deaf.”

“Oh, right.”

“What happened to you?” Bob says to me.

“He hurt his neck in Missoula,” Trev says.

Th
e apartment is dumpy but orderly. Despite the glaring overhead light and a menagerie of colors splashed about—from the pale blue carpet, to the dull yellow La-Z-Boy, to the custard-colored sofa bed—the place is dark. A murky fishbowl on the end table catches my eye. Inside, a lone tenant describes sluggish circles endlessly, his big mouth slowly opening and closing.

“
Th
at's Mr. Baxter,” says Bob, following my gaze.

“Why do you call him Mr. Baxter?”

“I dunno,” he says. Wheeling in a half circle, he nearly takes me off at the knees with his clunky leg cast. “Ope. Sorry. Keep forgetting the damn thing's there. Well, I better get out of these wet drawers.”

“You need help?” I say.

“Oh no. I can handle it.”

Bob tries to maneuver between Trev and me, but there's no room. Trev backs up, I slide over. Bob runs over my foot on his way past.

“Ope,” he says. “Sorry about that. Say, maybe you could give me a hand with that hide-a-bed.”

“Got it,” I say.

“Welcome to Utah, fellas.”

“
Th
anks, Dad. Sorry you peed your pants.”

Bob rolls off into the bedroom and with considerable effort manages to shut the door. Almost immediately, there's some bumbling with a stuck drawer, and something crashes to the floor.

“Nothing to worry about in here!” he calls out. “Bottle just fell off the bureau is all. It didn't break—no biggie!”

I turn my attention to the hide-a-bed and start feeling around for the strap. “So what do you think?” I say, fishing around behind the couch cushions. “You glad we came?”

Before Trev can answer, his phone beeps, and he breaks into a wide grin. Another text. He cranes his neck and bows his back, then lowers his arm like a backhoe, scooping his phone out of the pouch. Hoisting the screen to face level, he squints as he reads the text.

I locate the hide-a-bed strap, give it a tug.
Th
e folded mattress rears up on its spring base. I kick out the legs and smooth the mattress and unfold the clean bedding as Trev struggles fiercely to manipulate his tiny keypad.

“Look at you, Mr. Text.”

“Texting is the shiz,” he says just as the phone slips from his grasp, careens off his knee, and scurries across the floor.

Circling the hide-a-bed, I stoop and retrieve the phone and hand it back to Trev. “You want me to type something?”

“Nah. I got it.” He raises the phone and begins the agonizing business all over again. It's bad enough he doesn't have a flip phone.

Bob soon reemerges in a cloud of aftershave, clad in dry khaki Dockers and the shirt I gave him this summer. Wheeling past me into the living room, where the hide-a-bed allows for only a narrow passage, he jostles the end table, setting the fishbowl to wobbling.
Th
e water heaves and laps up over the rim, but Mr. Baxter doesn't seem to care. Nothing seems to stir Mr. Baxter. Even when Bob pauses to pepper a few precious flakes of krill into the water, Mr. Baxter just lets the food float on the surface. I'm guessing he's bat-shit crazy from turning circles in that murky little bowl his whole life, and that he doesn't care anymore whether he lives or dies.

“
Th
is is Mr. Baxter.”

“Yeah, we know,” says Trev.

Who can blame Bob for being nervous? He's been riding the pine for years, waiting for this opportunity to get back in the game with Trev. How many buckets of chicken and crummy motel beds has he endured with the hope of arriving at this moment? How many red-eye flights from Sea-Tac on the heels of defeat, knowing that he'd gladly do it all again for the opportunity to redeem himself? Now Bob's finally got that chance. What Bob doesn't know is that he can relax. His son is in love, and next to that vast awakening, there's nothing momentous about their reunion. Trev is willing to forgive anything as long as those texts keep coming.

“Hey, Dad,” he says, punching ponderously at his keypad, his head back. “You got anything to drink?”

“How about some root beer?”

“
Th
at'll work.”

“Ben?”

“Sure, what the heck.”

Bob spins, clipping the hide-a-bed with his chair, wheels over my foot again, and bumps the end table again, sloshing Mr. Baxter around in his bowl.

“Tell you what,” I say. “Let me grab that. You two can play catch-up. How 'bout you, Bob? Root beer?”

“Why not?”

I retire to the kitchen and start searching the cabinets for glasses.

“So, who you texting?” I hear Bob say.

“Just a girl,” says Trev.

I locate the glasses, a bachelor's assemblage, which includes a mason jar and a partially melted blue plastic tumbler.

“You mean like a girlfriend?” Bob says.

“Yeah, maybe. We haven't really gotten that far.”

Bob's next question is lost in the hum of the ice box as I'm greeted by an arctic blast of freezer-burned vapor. Excavating two bags of frozen peas, some hamburger, and a Lean Cuisine, I locate the ice near the back, buried beneath some link sausage and a turkey pot pie.
Th
e cubes in the half-empty tray have an opaque, shrunken aspect to them, and almost certainly they'll taste of frozen hamburger. But at least they're cold. Closing the freezer, I can hear Bob laughing.

“Well, that's what it looked like, seriously,” says Trev.

“
Th
at's bad,” Bob says. “I wish I could have seen it. What else? Tell me about Missoula.”

“Missoula. Oh man. I wouldn't even know where to begin.”

“Tell me everything.”

And as Trev begins telling his dad everything—Peaches, Elton, the Skylark, the Yeti, Scruggs, me streaking across the lot of the C'mon Inn, I linger in the kitchen, clinking the ice cubes in the glasses methodically, one at a time, refilling the tray, nice and level, clearing a spot among the frozen whatnot, reorganizing the goods as I go. When I can't stall any longer, I uncap the warm root beer gradually, letting it hiss, watching it froth up jubilantly, as though it's excited at finally being released.

the biggest pit in the world

T
rev and I are are rudely awakened at eight in the morning by an alarm. Not the mindless bleating of a digital alarm clock but the frantic squealing of a twelve-volt fire alarm. Shooting upright on the hide-a-bed, I hear the unmistakable hiss of scalding oil, the clang of cast iron on linoleum.
Th
en Bob.

“Ope! Uhhh—need an assist in here!”

I leap from the mattress, swing around the foot of the bed, past Mr. Baxter and into the kitchen, where black smoke billows from the range. An iron skillet is ablaze, a tongue of flames lapping at the hood. On the ground, another skillet smolders next to several broken eggs. Bob is in the middle of it all, clutching a spatula in his good hand. Even in the thick of the smoke, I can smell his spilled aftershave from last night. In a frenzy, he swings around to address me, nearly knocking me off my feet with his unwieldy cast. I sidle past him, snap a dish towel off the stove handle, wrap it around my hand, and dive in for the burning skillet. When I've got a firm hold of the handle, I swing the flaming skillet in a wide arc toward the sink, drop it in the basin, and slam the cold water on full throttle.
Th
e skillet chuffs and hisses like a steam engine as the flames fizzle and a new wave of smoke overwhelms the kitchen.

I snap off both burners, snatch the remaining skillet off the linoleum, and drop it in the sink with the other.

Bob's still clutching his spatula in the middle of the kitchen, an embarrassed grin tacked to his face. “Nice,” he says, loud enough that I can hear him over the squawking alarm. “
Th
at's what I call grace under pressure.”

“You too, Bob.” I throw the kitchen window wide open, and the smoke begins funneling out into the overcast day.

“So much for country breakfast,” he says.

“What's going on in there?” says Trev.

First I disarm the alarm.
Th
en I dress Trev.
Th
en I mop the kitchen floor and fan the room until the smoke clears. Following a breakfast of toast, I set Trev on the toilet and return to the kitchen to wash dishes as I await his call. When he beckons, I wipe him, lift him up, cradle him in my arms, hoist his pants, and set him in his chair, whereupon I give him two swipes of deodorant, set his electric razor out, squeeze a curlicue of toothpaste on his brush, and place it on the edge of the sink where he can reach it.
Th
en I retire to the living room, where I begin wrestling with the hide-a-bed.

Th
at's when disaster strikes. After feeding Mr. Baxter (who still hasn't touched his last measly flakes), Bob swings around abruptly.

“Oh, incidentally—” he says, grazing the fishbowl, which wobbles off the edge of the table, tips and shatters on the wood floor.

Mr. Baxter, whom I've sorely misjudged, is flopping furiously for his life on the nearby throw rug. For the second time this morning, I'm grace under pressure: I scoop Mr. Baxter up, hurdle one of Bob's outstretched legs, and dash to the kitchen with Mr. Baxter wiggling crazily in my clutches. I snatch the mason jar out of the cupboard, drop Mr. Baxter in, and fill it with water. He remains perfectly still for a few seconds, as though he's dead or in shock. I tap the glass.

“C'mon, Mr. Baxter. Move.”

Nothing.

I tap the glass again. “C'mon, let's go.”

Lifting the jar to my face, I look Mr. Baxter square in the eye. He looks at once stately and constipated, like Winston Churchill. He doesn't move, doesn't open his mouth, doesn't blink—but then he's got no eyelids. He just stares wall-eyed through the glass right past me. I tap the jar again. Still nothing. I give it a little shake. Nothing. I'm about fifteen seconds from flushing Mr. Baxter when Bob rolls into the kitchen and peers over my shoulder.

“Is he . . .?”

“I don't know.” I give the jar another shake, and Mr. Baxter splashes up against the side of the jar, lifelessly.

“Does he blink at all?”

“I don't think he has any eyelids.”

Now Trev wheels in with his electric razor in hand.

“Is he . . .?”

“We're not sure,” says Bob.

“It's looking that way,” I say.

Th
ough Mr. Baxter is showing no signs of life, he's not floating yet. I jiggle him again.

“
Th
is is my fault,” says Bob. “Everything I touch turns to shit.”

“Or breaks,” adds Trev.

Suddenly Mr. Baxter stirs, swimming a slow circle, then stops, staring right at me. He opens his mouth and closes it. Opens it again, closes it.

“Whoa,” I say, breathing easy. “Gave me a scare there, Bax.”

When I set the jar on the counter, I set it right up against the back-splash so Bob can't knock it over. Mr. Baxter is more active now, circling counterclockwise in a tight radius. But by the time he turns eight or nine circles in the mason jar, he looks disconsolate again, stops, and stares at the three of us grouped in the kitchen.

“I'm worried about Mr. Baxter,” I say.

“I think we can help him,” Bob says.

Within the hour, we're off to Bingham Canyon. I've buckled Trev in the van and strapped Bob in the backseat with his broken leg propped on the cooler.
Th
ough Bob has already seen the Biggest Pit in the World, he's nonetheless excited.

“
Th
at's the beauty of it. It just gets bigger,” he says.

On our way out of town, Bob directs me to the Wal-Mart Supercenter in South Jordan. In the rear of the store, he selects a five-gallon hooded glass aquarium with fluorescent lights and a bio filter. He adds a two-pound bag of glowing blue gravel, a colorful array of lily bulbs, and an underwater plant. And to top things off, a sparkly white castle.

We're navigating our way toward the checkout with our oversized cart, through a wilderness of egg beaters and baby clothes, picture frames and garden hoes, camping stoves and dinette sets, greeting cards and coverlets, when I suddenly decide there is something I simply must have.

“I've gotta grab a few things real quick,” I say. “I'll catch up with you guys at the van.”

Bob peels off three twenties. “For the aquarium,” he says.

When I arrive at the van, Trev and Bob are waiting at the foot of the ramp.
I stow the aquarium
in back.
Th
underheads are stacking up on the western horizon.
Th
e air is sticky. My neck brace is beginning to stink. Lucky for me, you can smell Bob's aftershave in Ogden, so I'm not likely to offend anyone.

Driving west through the thinning suburbs, we leave the valley behind and snake our way through the arid foothills, toward the Oquirrhs, broad-shouldered brown mountains, mottled with green like a skin rash. Bob tells us it won't be long before they're covered in snow. I can still see a narrow strip of the Salt Lake Valley in the rearview mirror.

What is now a pit was once a mountain, so arriving at the Bingham copper mine is something like arriving at the rim of a tremendous caldera. We pay our five bucks, park the van, and make our way across the dusty lot. We walk down the causeway toward the viewing area, where a placard informs us that at two and a half miles wide, and three quarters of a mile deep (and getting deeper by the day), the Bingham pit is the Biggest Pit in the World by a wide margin. Along with the Great Wall of China, the pit is one of only two feats of human engineering visible from outer space. If the Bingham pit were a stadium, the placard informs us, it would hold nine million people. Emerging from the causeway and rounding a corner, I catch my first glimpse of the copper mine, and indeed, the great yawning chasm resembles nothing more than a stupendous amphitheater, its striated walls descending steeply in countless rows toward the ever-deepening bottom, where even now the great loaders and crushers churn up a slow rising dust.

“Big hole,” says Trev.

“What did I tell you?” says Bob, wheeling closer to Trev. “It's something, huh?”

“Kinda scary.”

Deep in the pit, running a dusty line along a terraced wall, a parade of giant trucks, minuscule from our vantage near the rim, belch and heave their way toward the crusher.

“Glad you came,” says Bob, patting Trev on the back with his good arm.

“Yeah,” says Trev. “
Th
e pictures don't do it justice.”

“Out here, I mean. To see me.”

“Yeah, I know what you mean. So, do you think they'll just keep digging forever?”

“As long as there's copper. Look, I know I haven't been—”

“Dad, stop.”

“I was young. It really wasn't about—”

“Dad, stop. It's okay.”

“I'm gonna get a Coke,” I say.

I wander down past the visitor center, past the gift shop, past a line of viewfinders, and a gigantic truck tire with a placard. When I've left the crowd behind, I find a quiet stretch of rail, dig the hard pack out of my jean pocket, and strike it three times briskly against my palm. I twirl off the cellophane strip, remove the gold flap, and tap out a smoke.

Fuck it. I'm tired of wishing.

I light up, inhale, and lean on the rail. Exhaling slowly, I peer out over the ledge.
Th
ere it is, so deep you probably can't see out of it: the Biggest Pit in the World. It's so goddamn deep it's hard to fathom that there's anything anywhere but just a great big hole in the ground. And for the first time in what feels like an eternity, I'm not in it.

I fish my phone out and dial Forest. He answers on the second ring.

“Hey, buddy. It's me,” I say.

“Benji boy.”

“Look, I've got a couple of favors to ask.”