For Six Years I Drove My Mother to Dialysis. At the Will Reading, My Brothers Learned What She Left Me.

Part 4: The Porch

Danny flew in on a Saturday morning. He rented a car at the airport and drove straight to our house. He did not stop at Kevin’s. He did not stop at Mom’s, which was now, legally, mine.

He pulled into our driveway a little after eleven.

I watched him get out of the car through the front window. He looked older than I remembered. He’d flown in for the funeral three weeks ago and he already looked five years older than that. His hair was doing something gray at the temples that hadn’t been doing it before.

I opened the door before he knocked.

“Hi,” he said.

“Hi.”

We stood there for a second. Then he said, “Can we sit outside? I don’t think I can do this at a table.”

We sat on the porch. David had, very deliberately, taken our son to a movie. The house was ours.

Danny sat forward with his elbows on his knees. He didn’t look at me.

“I watched the video,” he said.

I hadn’t sent it.

“Kevin’s wife,” he said. “She was in his office when Halloran’s paralegal called to confirm receipt of something. She saw the file name. She asked Kevin what it was. He said it didn’t matter. She, uh. She kept asking. And eventually he showed her, because she wouldn’t let it go.”

“Kevin has the video.”

“Halloran sent it to his lawyer as part of the evidence package. In case it went to court.”

Oh.

I hadn’t thought about that. Of course. Mr. Halloran would have had to disclose it.

“Kevin watched it alone,” Danny said. “Then he called me. He didn’t say anything. He just played it into the phone.”

He finally looked up at me.

His eyes were red.

“Em. I am so sorry.”

“Danny.”

“No. Let me. Let me just say it.”

He put his hands over his face for a second. Then he took them away.

“I told myself you had it under control. That’s what I told myself for six years. Emily’s got it. Emily lives close. Emily’s good at this stuff. And it wasn’t true. It was just what I needed to be true so I could keep, keep doing my life. And I’m sorry. That’s, that’s the whole thing. That’s what I flew out here to say.”

I didn’t answer right away.

I want to tell you that I forgave him on the spot, that we hugged, that the music swelled. That’s not what happened.

What happened is I sat there and I felt six years of tired come up my throat and I said, “Do you know I stopped painting?”

He shook his head slowly.

“I used to paint. I had a little studio in the garage. I sold pieces at the farmer’s market. Nothing big. It was mine. I stopped in 2020 because I didn’t have the hours. The paints are still in a box out there. I haven’t opened them in five years.”

“Em.”

“I’m not telling you to make you feel bad. I’m telling you because you asked what I gave up, and that’s one of the things. There are others. I’m not going to list them.”

“Okay.”

“You said you’re sorry. I heard you. I’m not ready to say it’s okay. Because it’s not. Not yet.”

He nodded. He kept nodding, small nods, looking at the porch boards.

“That’s fair.”

“I’m not going to fight you on the will,” I said. “I mean, I’m not going to give the money back, because Mom made her choice and I’m going to respect it. But I’m not going to make it weird. If you want to come see us, you can come see us. If you want to see the house, you can see the house. It’s still Mom’s house to me. I haven’t changed anything.”

“I don’t want the money, Em. That’s not why I came.”

“I know.”

We sat in the quiet for a while. A neighbor’s dog was barking two houses down. The mail truck went by.

Danny said, “Kevin’s not going to come.”

“I figured.”

“He can’t, um. He can’t hold both things at once. That Mom loved him and that she was disappointed in him. It’s breaking him and he’s making it your fault because that’s easier.”

“I know.”

“He might come around. He might not. I don’t know.”

“That’s up to him.”

Danny looked at me sideways. “You’ve gotten hard, Em.”

“I’ve gotten honest. It looks like hard from the outside.”

He almost smiled at that.

We sat there another minute. Then he said, “Can I ask you something.”

“Sure.”

“The autoimmune thing Mom mentioned. In the video.”

“What about it.”

“Are you okay.”

Nobody had asked me that in six years. Nobody who wasn’t David.

I felt my throat go tight and I made it stop.

“I’m managing it,” I said. “I’ve got a good rheumatologist. It’s better now that I’m sleeping again.”

“Okay.”

“Okay.”

He stood up eventually. He looked at his rental car like he’d forgotten how it worked.

“Em.”

“Yeah.”

“Can I come back. Not, like, tomorrow. But in a few months. Can I come back and, and see you. Bring the kids maybe.”

I thought about it. I actually thought about it, I didn’t just say yes to be nice.

“Yes. In a few months. Call first.”

“Okay.”

He walked to the car. He got halfway there and he turned around.

“The paints,” he said. “In the garage. Would you, would you maybe start again.”

“Maybe.”

“I’d like that.”

“We’ll see.”

He got in the car and he drove away.

—

I did not open the paints that week. Or the next.

I did drive out to Mom’s house on a Tuesday, because Tuesday used to be dialysis day and my body still didn’t know what to do with itself.

I sat on her couch. The afghan was still folded over the arm of the recliner where she’d been sitting in the video.

I looked at it for a long time.

Then I got up and I went out to the garage, my garage now, and I found the box in the corner behind the Christmas decorations. It was heavier than I remembered. The lid was dusty.

I brought it inside and I set it on Mom’s kitchen table.

I didn’t open it.

Not yet.

I made a cup of tea in her kitchen with her kettle and I sat at her table with the unopened box in front of me, and I let myself think about her.

Not the sick her. Not the dialysis her.

The her from 1994, at Lake Norman, teaching Kevin and Danny to swim while I sat on the dock in a floaty because I was too little. She’d looked up at me between the boys and she’d waved, and I’d waved back, and the sun had been on the water.

I sat with that for a while.

Then I opened the box.

The paints were dried out. Most of them. A few of the tubes were still soft.

I picked up a brush. The bristles were stiff but not ruined. I turned it in my fingers.

Outside the kitchen window, a cardinal landed on the bird feeder Mom had kept full for twenty years. Danny had refilled it, I realized, the morning of the funeral. Before he asked me anything else. Before he’d said a word to me. He’d gone out back and refilled the feeder.

I hadn’t noticed at the time.

I noticed now.

I set the brush down on the table, next to the box, and I looked at it there in the afternoon light.

I didn’t paint anything that day.

But I left the brush out on the table where I could see it.

And I locked up the house, and I drove home.