The chest heaved as fluids gushed from the lower extremities of his body. Granger froze. His large eyes stared at his father.
Margaret fell to her knees on the polished brick floor. “Our Father who art in Heaven, hallowed be Thy name, Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done, earth as it is in Heaven. Oh, God. No!” She reached over the dead body for Granger’s hand.
Granger pulled his hand away quickly to wipe them on his corduroy pants. “That’s right, Mom, Thy will be done in Heaven as done here.” Dark hair fell forward onto Granger’s forehead. Quickly he pushed it back.
Margaret screamed out, “No! Oh, no what have we done? We’ve sinned! We’re going to burn in hell for all eternity!” She struggled to stand, pushing the chair back away from her. “Granger, get him back, bring him back! What have we done?”
“Mom, you killed him. You chose to kill him and now he is dead. This is all yours. All of this is yours. I wash my hands of this completely.” Granger now stood. He reached down to pull the sheet over his father’s face. “You wanted him dead and dead he is.” Shadows played against the white wall as Granger hovered over the dead body.
“Not this way! Granger, not like this!” She hurried to him and grabbed his arms, “Do something! I can’t burn in hell. I have lived in hell all my life and I refuse to live in hell in the hereafter! Do something, damn you!” Her eyes flowed with tears. Her face was white and wrinkled.
“Mom, you asked me here to do this.” Granger used his calm voice, “Mom, you have already taken over his accounts, declared him incompetent, you are already spending his death insurance money. This was your personal choice, not mine.” Granger pulled away from her to lift his hands in a stance of being noncommittal. “The deed is done. Now you are the one who has to call the police and your daughter. Mom, this was your choice. It is done.”
Granger turned on his heel, rubbing his upper arms where she had held him. He opened the door, letting in the dark calico cat. The cat ran across the floor to jump on the high hospital bed.
“No, Granger, get the cat out of here. Get the cat!”
“Mom, this is your home, your house, your place of death. I leave all of this to you.”
Not caring what the neighbors would think now, Granger moved down the hall turning on the lights. His leather soled boots echoed as they hit the polished brick floors. Swinging around the corner into the living room, he pulled his heavy jacket from the coat rack by the front door. “Bye, Mom. Good luck with this.” He went out into the night, slamming the heavy wooden front door behind him. The glass in the front windows rattled.
Carefully, Granger drove down her driveway in his Mercedes with the lights off. It would not do for the neighbors to see him leaving his father’s death bed at one in the morning. Probably was not a good idea to slam the front door, but he did have a point to make. “That woman has lived to make my life a living hell.”
Margaret stood over her dead husband. “Are you really dead?” Her voice whispered out in the silence. The tree branches continued to scrape along the roof. “You must do something about those trees, dear. They are ruining the roof and we don’t want to spend money on the roof now do we?”
Quietly, Margaret moved to the dial phone that sat on her bedside table overflowing with magazines. She sat on the edge of the bed smoothing her skirt of grey wool over her knees. “No, I should get into my nightgown and set the stage for a natural death. Yes, I will set the stage. I am innocent, Sir, innocent of any wrong doing.”
Margaret moved to the walk-in closet, flipped on the light and disrobed. She pulled her nightgown of blue flannel over her head. Closing the door, she hurried around the hospital bed into the joining bathroom. There she brushed her shoulder length brown hair one hundred times. She brushed her teeth with the electric toothbrush and straightened all of her husband’s medicines on the shelf. Turning off the bathroom light she stated, “There, now everything is neat and tidy.”
She turned and stared at the hospital bed. “Oh, dear, you can’t be dead yet!” She hurried to her husband and took the sheet off of his face to fold it under his chin. “There, you aren’t really dead yet. We can pretend.” She picked up the cat and threw her out into the hall, closing the door quietly.
The heavy quilt was folded back, then the wool blanket and finally her pink sheets. Margaret crawled under the sheets pulling each layer over her. The pillows were plumped as she sat erect staring at the painting of her husband that hung opposite her bed. “Well, there you are at forty- tall, dark, and handsome in your medical coat. Sharp eyes, drop dead smile, women fawning all over you, but I was the one who caught you, you bastard! How many women did you impregnate while married to me? There must have been at least three and Sophia knows of two others who would be her sisters if I had not paid them to go away. So, now the famous doctor with the gorgeous looks has dropped dead! Hah!” Margaret pulled one of the pillows from behind her and threw it at the painting. The pillow fell short hitting the bureau and then falling to the floor.
A scream rang through the room. Margaret jumped a foot in the air, “My God, what?” The phone echoed its ring. Margaret cautiously reached for the phone of black plastic. It was cold as she placed it to her ear. “Hello?”
“Mom, it’s me Granger. Listen, Mom, Sophia will know what we did. She will figure this out and she will know. You have to wait until around six o’clock to call the police because if you call sooner than that, they will know what happened. Sophia will know, Mom, she will.” Granger’s voice was tight and tired.
Margaret took a calming breath, “Do you know that you almost gave me a heart attack?”
Granger smiled at the phone to mumble, “That will be the day.”
“What do you mean Sophia will know? What will she know?”
“Mom, Sophia will know that we caused Dad to aspirate. She will know.”
“She will not know, Granger, because no one will tell her! You are not to tell her and I certainly shan’t. No, Sophia will only guess and she will be wrong.” Margaret pulled the blanket up closer to her neck. “She will not know!”
There was a sigh on the other end of the phone, “All right, Mom, your concept of reality is different from mine. But don’t call the cops until almost daylight. You can tell them you were asleep and were awakened by a strong smell and found dad dead.”
Margaret sniffed the air, “Oh, you’re so right. This room stinks. I should open a window, but it is cold outside and the wind is blowing.” Margaret pulled the sheet over her head as she scrunched down under the covers. “Granger, it stinks in here. What should I do until then, that’s about three hours away?”
“Just deal with it, Mom. Deal with it. I’m going to fix myself a stiff drink and go to bed. Call me when you have the cops in the house. Good night.”
“Wait, Granger, we will have to deal with your sister.”
“Mom, what do you mean by ‘deal with her’?”
“Granger, she must not know. Sophia must not tell anyone. If she figures this out and she tells someone, she will put us in jeopardy. You know this?”
“Good night, it has been a long night. I can’t think anymore tonight. Just go to bed.”
Margaret held the phone as the dial tone hummed in her ear. “Good night,” she whispered. The radiator creaked beside the bureau. The air was heavy with body odor. Margaret pulled the pillow over her head and tried to sleep. Quietly, she whispered, “Sophia cannot know for if she does this will be the end of her!”
The wind softened into a breeze as the pink fingers of dawn rose over the Puerco Mountains. The horse in the barn began to kick the metal water trough for it was sealed with ice. Last night had been a cold, cold night for certain.
The bright sunrise reflected red and orange off the high clouds. This morning was a welcoming sight to Margaret as she held her mug of steaming tea in her left hand and used the phone to dial Granger’s