Bess snorts out a laugh. “I’ve seen your junk, you doofus,” she replies. “Remember the summer we were fifteen? Little Robbie pulled your pants down in front of everybody.”
“My dick has grown considerably since then, Bess,” he tosses back. “Considerably, I tell you.” He holds his hands about a foot apart, like he might if he was showing the size of a fish he caught.
“Girls talk, Aaron,” Bess says with a laugh. “That’s all I have to say about that.”
He jerks his gaze toward Bess. “Lynda talked about the size of my dick?”
“Only once. And after she cleaned up my puke, she never brought it up again.”
He chuckles, but it looks like it pains him so he stops. “Shower,” he says.
“I’ll help you.” Bess starts in that direction. But before she can get to the bedroom, he slams the door. To her credit, she doesn’t throw the door open. She knocks on it.
“Boundaries, Bess!” he calls back. “I do have some!”
She reaches to turn the knob, but I stop her. “Let him be, Bess,” I caution. She needs to leave the man his dignity.
“But what if he falls?” She looks at me. She really looks at me. She looks at me directly in the eye, which she hasn’t done in so long that I am almost immediately mesmerized.
I shake the thought away. “I’ll go help him.”
“You’ll help him get undressed?” she asks.
“If he needs me to.”
“You’ll help him get washed up?”
I stand a little taller. “If he needs me to.”
“Well, go on then.” She motions like she wants to shoo me forward. I turn the knob and step into the bedroom. I find Aaron in the bathroom, leaning heavily on the porcelain sink.
“Dude,” I say, “you need a hand?”
He shakes his head, still staring into the bowl of the sink. Then he straightens up. “Thought I was going to puke again. It passed.” He picks up a hand towel, wets it under the sink, pumps some soap onto it, and washes his face. Then he pulls his soiled shirt over his head and starts to scrub his chest. “You should have seen Bess’s face when I puked in the car. I thought she was going to heave her guts out. It was great.” He laughs weakly.
I smile too. I can just imagine how she reacted.
“You’re going to have to tell Bess about what’s really going on,” I say as I sit down on the closed toilet lid. I’m afraid if I leave he’ll fall and I won’t be close enough to catch him.
“After I tell Sam. I have to tell my daughter first. Then I’ll tell Bess.”
“Are you sure?” I’m not convinced it’s a good idea to let Bess think these chemo sessions are going to fix him.
“I’m not done working on Bess yet. I need a little more time.”
“Time for what?”
He turns to face me. He has a toothbrush hanging out of his mouth, his lips all foamy, and a drop of toothpaste foam falls from his lips to the floor. I kick a dirty towel over to smear it up. “She’s waking up, Eli,” he replies around the foam. “Can’t you see it?”
“She wasn’t asleep,” I retort. “She just hates my guts.”
“She doesn’t.”
My stomach does a little flip. What does he know that I don’t know? “She has told me enough times that she does. I believe her.”
He spits into the bowl and raises some water to his mouth in his cupped hand so he can swish. “She’s lying,” he finally says, and he wipes his mouth with the back of his hand.
What’s bad is that I desperately wish that what he’s saying could be the truth.
“I’m going to lie down for just a little bit,” he says.
“I think that’s a good idea.”
He pulls back the covers and falls onto the bed like a great big oak tree that has been felled. The bed rattles and the legs knock against the wooden floor.
“Can I come in now?” Bess jiggles the doorknob.
He’s only wearing his boxers since he washed, but he’s under the covers. “Do you want her to come in?” I ask him.
“What he wants doesn’t matter!” Bess yells through the crack in the door. “If I wasn’t worried about being permanently scarred by the sight of his junk, I’d already be in there!” She waits a beat. “And I have his meds! He needs to take them before he falls asleep.”
Aaron groans long and loud. “Let her in.”
The door wasn’t locked, but now that he’s given permission, she freely turns the knob. She walks to the bedside carrying a juice pouch and a handful of pills. She places the pills in his palm and stabs the straw into the juice, then hands it to him. He sits up a little to drink, and the covers fall down around his waist.
She stares at his lap. “Please tell me you’re not naked under there.”
“I’m not naked under there.”
“You’re a lying liar,” she says. But she climbs up on the side of the bed he’s not lying on anyway and stretches out beside him. She presses her face against the upper outside part of his arm, and he reaches up to tap her cheek with his other hand. She grabs his obnoxious hand and threads her fingers through his. “But I love you anyway.”
“I love you, too,” he replies. “But you’re in Lynda’s spot, so get out my bed.”
“This was my spot before it was Lynda’s,” she says.
“When we were five!” he tosses back. He gives her a weak but playful shove, and she rolls out of his bed. “I’m just going to sleep for a few minutes,” he murmurs as he rolls over and tucks his folded hands under his face. “Just a few minutes,” he says, and then he doesn’t say any more.
“Let’s go,” I whisper to her.
“Wait a minute,” she replies, as she holds up one finger.
“Why?”
“I’m counting his breaths,” she says.
I watch her lips as she counts to herself. “Why are you counting his breaths?”
She shrugs. “I don’t know. It’s something Lynda always did.”
“And you feel the need to do it too?”
She nods. “Right now I do.” Then when she gets to ten: “We can go now.”
We step out of the bedroom and I close the door behind us with a gentle click.
“There’s puke in Aaron’s car,” she says with a little whine to her voice.
I heave a sigh. “Do you want me to deal with it?”
“You don’t have to do that,” she says, but she looks at me askance as she says it.
I’ll clean up the puke, but I’m definitely not going to beg her to let me do it. “I’ll do it,” I say.
“Thank you so much.” She lays her hand on my forearm, which makes me freeze and do a double take. I stand absolutely still, afraid that if I move she’ll take it back. Suddenly, she realizes what she’s done, and she jerks her hand back. “Sorry, forgot where I was there for a second.”
“You can touch me any time you want, Bess,” I whisper to her, afraid that if I speak too loudly, she’ll bolt.
She shifts from foot to foot. “That’s not a good idea.”