She said: I don’t want to cause trouble between you.
I said: you’re not causing anything.
She said: he said it was important. The game.
She said: I didn’t want to be the reason for a fight.
I said: you are never the reason for the fight, Mom.
She said: I’m not sure Gabriel sees it that way.
I said: yes.
I said: I’m aware.
She finished the tea.
She was tired in the specific way she was tired after any exertion now, the tiredness that settled into her quickly and completely.
She said: Sara.
I said: yes.
She said: I’m sorry you came home to this.
I said: I’m glad I came home early.
She said: I would have been fine.
I said: Mom.
She said: I would have managed.
I said: I know you would have.
I said: that’s not the point.
She looked at me.
I said: you don’t have to manage things alone anymore. You are here and I am here and you are allowed to not manage things alone.
She said: it’s hard.
I said: I know.
She said: it feels like weakness.
I said: it’s not weakness.
She said: what is it then?
I said: it’s letting someone love you.
She was quiet.
She said: your father always said I was terrible at that.
I said: yes.
She said: he was right.
I said: yes.
She said: I’m trying.
I said: I know.
She closed her eyes.
I sat until she was asleep.
Then I went to find Gabriel.
He was in the kitchen.
He had cleaned up some of the bottles, not all of them, the partial cleaning of someone managing an appearance.
He said: Sara, before you say anything.
I said: Gabriel.
He said: Danny called and wanted to come over. I didn’t know you were coming back early.
I said: I know you didn’t.
He said: I would have set things up differently if.
I said: I know.
I said: that’s the problem.
He said: what is?
I said: that you would have done it differently if you knew I was watching.
He said: that’s not what I.
I said: yes it is. You moved my seventy-year-old mother who is on chemotherapy from her room to an air mattress in the basement because your brother wanted to watch a football game and you thought I wasn’t going to find out for four days.
He said: she was fine down there.
I said: she was not fine down there.
He said: she didn’t complain.
I said: Gabriel. She has spent seventy years not complaining. She would not complain if you put her outside. That is the specific tragedy of who she is, not evidence that the basement was acceptable.
He said: I’m the man of the house.
He said it again.
The second time with the specific reduced conviction of someone who knows the phrase is not landing as it should.
I said: Gabriel.
I said: you are my husband. Not the man of the house.
I said: there is no man of the house in the sense you mean. There is a house that we bought together with our combined income and that we both own and that has my mother staying in it because she has cancer.
He said: I know she has cancer.
I said: then act like it.
He said: I do everything for this family.
I said: you moved a sick woman to a basement floor while I was away.
He said: I needed the room.
I said: for football.
He said: Danny.
I said: for football.
He said nothing.
I said: do you understand what I’m telling you?
He said: you’re angry.
I said: yes. I am angry.
