Cheating Gods of Death (Sequel to L: Find A GirLfriend)

Apples

She would talk like that for hours, while she did her work, talking all about everything. The house, Erica and I, all of them answers to questions silenced at her ears.

I pretended not to notice, but I was being eaten alive by paranoia.

We couldn't lose Mom.

I couldn't lose Mom.

But, life carried on. Dad was regaining fine motor skills and more strength, he was working harder at the files and therapy- we even met his therapist. It was a strong man of obvious native-American descent who asked us to call him Mr. Stevens, even though he was a licensed and acclaimed physical therapist. He buried my Father when they hugged, his usual skin tone of sickly fairness highlighted by the rich, dark, ambers of Mr. Stevens's complexion.

“He-ey! Good to see you! Is this your family?”

He was amazingly enthusiastic about it, and then found my mother.

“Dr. Lawliet! Hello! Do you need something?”

Dad looked back at her and she smiled before Mr. Stevens got it.

“Oh! Oh, I didn't make the connection. I'm sorry- Well, now I get to meet both of your families, in a way.”

It was the hospital she worked in for years before she got her private (ish) practice, after all.

We were introduced, and then led into his office chock-full of encouraging quotes, plaques, and posters.

“Even the tallest of trees has grown from a seedling.”

“Thank you, Mr. Lawliet, for staying with the program and... I want you to know, you shouldn't have been able to walk much again. Patients with a much better, eh, a much better outlook have settled to be less than they are, but you worked so hard. That is the fruit of your efforts.”

He put a hand on my father's shoulder, and looked him in the eyes like the Special Ed teacher would do with her students. Mom leaned over and said something to Mr. Stevens. I couldn't quite catch it 

“Thss ldetu oration havbenspance nyse beut tlk to him normally, he's just shy.”

“I see, I'm sorry. Please forgive it, I thought you had married a patient.”

“No, he's fine.”

And she planted a gentle kiss on his cheek, leaving a light print of vanilla lip balm.

With more congratulation and a schedule adjustment to appointments just on Thursdays, from nine to ten-thirty, we left.

“There are no limitations to the human mind.”

The ride home (with the game-changing addition of ice cream) was lighter than it had been in three months or so, Dad was engrossed in eating, a shy smile behind the ice cream painting his lips. Mom had swallowed hers, and looked content as she turned up “Breathing Underwater” on the car stereo. I was always a biter, and Erica was making her rounds of licking gobs of the melting mush into her mouth like a dog would drink.

Granddad loved dogs. Mom's whole family unit of three adored dogs.

They always had two or three laying around, mutts and strays. Patches, Blue, Jack, Summer, Frida, and Butters are the ones I remember, Butters dying when I was nine. He was a harrier beagle mix, yellowish and white with freckled skin. Freida was an obese heifer of a foxhound-hound mix, described as an androgynous potato by my mother. Summer was Mom's darling, the picture perfect golden retriever she was bullied for “stealing” (from a family that went on vacation and left her for naught). Jack was a mutt, an absolute mutt. Mom prided on his snake killing, and he died after an autumn of cancer alone with her and Granddad. Patches was cancer, too, after seven or so years living with Ramona as a toddler(the grand total of her lifespan being thirteen years), and dying before Mom's first week of summer camp when she was nine.