authority of the man was such that she gave way.
The dead skin was gently cut away and he was slathered in salve—
the same salve Mother had used on Luke’s leg years before—from his
waist to the tip of his head, then bandaged. Mother gave him ice cubes
to suck on, hoping to hydrate him, but the inside of his mouth and
throat were so badly burned, they absorbed no liquid, and without lips
or muscles he couldn’t hold the ice in his mouth. It would slide down
his throat and choke him.
They nearly lost him many times that first night. His breathing
would slow, then stop, and my mother—and the heavenly host of
women who worked for her—would fly about, adjusting chakras and
tapping pressure points, anything to coax his brittle lungs to resume
their rattle.
That morning was when Audrey called me.* His heart had stopped
twice during the night, she told me. It would probably be his heart that
killed him, assuming his lungs didn’t give out first. Either way, Audrey
was sure he’d be dead by midday.
I called Nick. I told him I had to go to Idaho for a few days, for a
family thing, nothing serious. He knew I wasn’t telling him something
—I could hear the hurt in his voice that I wouldn’t confide in him—but
I put him out of my mind the moment I hung up the phone.
I stood, keys in hand, hand on the doorknob, and hesitated. The
strep. What if I gave it to Dad? I had been taking the penicillin for
nearly three days. The doctor had said that after twenty-four hours I
would no longer be contagious, but then he was a doctor, and I didn’t
trust him.
I waited a day. I took several times the prescribed dose of penicillin,
then called Mother and asked what I should do.
“You should come home,” she said, and her voice broke. “I don’t
think the strep will matter tomorrow.”
I don’t recall the scenery from the drive. My eyes barely registered
the patchwork of corn and potato fields, or the dark hills covered in
pine. Instead I saw my father, the way he’d looked the last time I’d
seen him, that twisted expression. I remembered the searing pitch of
my voice as I’d screamed at him.
Like Kylie, I don’t remember what I saw when I first looked at my