I was thinking of the river. It seemed emptier than that time last year, slower. Just a little track through the desert, barely wider than my thumb, with only a bit of grass, a few trees at its banks. When I was a kid, we took a trip there, with my mom and dad. We set up a tent in the forest, just north of the city. In the morning the air was full of light and mosquitos, green things, growing and dying. At night, I could hear the river. Everywhere. Like it was flowing around me, through me. 

They told me, in school, that the river was full of trash. Misshapen metal rods, fishhooks, cans, rust, plastic bags getting dirty in the wash. Fish lived by it and through it, they learned to eat, rest, and mate around its edges. There was poison in the water, from the factories in the industrial district. I’d only seen their smokestacks from a distance, seen the fumes. None of it could be true. There was the water. I went swimming in it with my father and sister, while mother watched behind her magazine and polka-dot hat. Shaking her head. But I knew the water was clean, in the river, that afternoon in the autumn. It had always been clean.

Soon the river was gone behind the clouds and the intercom was telling me to adjust my seat. Then only the sand out the window, and the hills. Trails that must be dirt roads. I always tried to remember where they might be—Placitas or Bernalillo.

The airport was the same as always, the same as last summer. Heat through an open door, the dust. Sun and the plate glass windows, making the terracotta floor shimmer. 

There was mom, waiting for me, and Eve. Standing next to one another, in the middle of the terminal. Looking almost confused. Hello, I said, and my sister fell on my shoulder. I missed you, Eve was saying, we missed you. Mother was wearing a white linen dress. She looked older. She must have stopped dyeing her hair. As Eve drew back and said, oh, but how are you, mom almost gave me a smile. 

On the way home, I let my head trail against the car window. Eve was driving, she was terrible. Every time the car in front of us slowed she’d slam on the brakes. A lurch. And mom would curse under her breath and say, hita, it’s okay. I really should have been driving but I couldn’t take my eyes off the houses. There was the base, where we’d lived in sixth, seventh grade. The little brick houses side by side, and the sound of planes on the runway. Then we were in the international district, those empty parking lots, the fair grounds. Where Eve and I had lived in college. Drunks banging on the window of our apartment, red walls, wrought-iron bars on its door. 

He isn’t leaving the bed much, these days, said mom.

You told me on the phone.

Jane isn’t doing well. You should talk to her.

I’ll go by today, I said. Tomorrow, if we don’t find time.

Then we were in the little neighborhood off the freeway that became theirs after I left: twenty or so houses backing up to a ditch. Eve lived two doors down from mom, identical houses with xeriscaped lawns. Mom’s had a plum tree. In the springtime it would be pink and soft and lovely. Eve’s had a desert willow. Across the street a neighbor’s apricots dripped over the gate. Dogs barked and fruit rotted on the blacktop. 

Inside it was cool and dark, there were curtains, it was very empty. I sat down on the leather couch with one of them on either side, head on Eve’s shoulder. Talking. About something silly. How my postdoc was coming along. Maybe I said, it’s slow. Eve had posters and prints on the walls, decorative tiles in blues and oranges. Succulents in little pots. All I could feel was the couch under me, cool, and Eve’s sweater. Under my cheek. Mother’s hand on my back, moving up and down. Just like when I was a kid.

 

I woke up when Jane came by to say hello. The boys were already home—from middle school, now—but they were quiet, already in their rooms. Jane, my older sister, was in the dining room. Still in her nurse’s scrubs.  

They say they might not let us in, she said, not tomorrow, not until Monday. And I told them that our sister just flew in. They said that they didn’t have any choice, just a matter of procedure. Something about cleaning the room. But I know it’s not standard procedure, I spent all day working downstairs and they know that. They’re making it up as they go. 

I stood up and felt a little pain beneath my forehead. And I heard, look, Rachel’s up. 

Can we try to go by? I asked. 

I just said, they’re closed. Something’s up if you ask me, it doesn’t seem right.

But I want to see him, I said. I want to see him tonight. 

 

I woke up with pale blue light through the window, bright, like the sky in the winter. I was lying on the couch in Eve’s front room. There was a throw blanket crumpled over my legs, I’d fallen asleep in my clothes. The house was still. I spent a long time looking out the windows, onto the street. A car went by. Once, a roadrunner perched on a neighbor’s brick wall. It had a lizard in its mouth.

I heard steps behind me. It was Eve, wearing slippers. We must look alike, right now, with our tangled hair. People always said we look alike.

Are the boys still asleep?

They sleep until ten on the weekends, if I let them.

We went to the kitchen. I helped her get started on the coffee. It was odd, doing something together that we probably do every morning, hundreds of miles apart. We each had our own rhythm. By the time I found the coffee, Eve had the mugs ready. Her coffee grinder was old, it belonged to an aunt or a cousin. Deafening. But nobody seemed to wake up.

Mom went home, Eve said. not long after you dropped off.

Right. And she’s doing okay.

Well, only as well as you can be. But better than Jane, you saw her.

Jane lived a mile away. She kept to herself. Now she came by, Eve told me, once or twice a day, before work when she could. At the hospital she gossiped with her patients about the doctors upstairs. One day, Eve told me, she came by a little drunk and talked about the diagnosis: Just a tremor, nothing serious. Not a cardiac event, nothing that would need, you know, a bypass or anything. And there you go. He was driving one evening, he said, and right there, on the left arm. Went right to the hospital. Only fifty-four.

I can’t stand it, said Eve. They’ll think we’re all like Jane. They’ll never let us in.

Well, I said, we just express things differently. 

She could express it a little bit more quietly. 

I’m not sure she could. That’s just Jane, I mean.

Maybe you’re right, said Eve. She pressed a button on the coffee maker. It was new, bright red, still shiny. Give me a chance, I said, I haven’t had a chance yet. To talk to them. Who knows if they would listen. I watched the coffee dribble down into a mug. It was too sharp when I tried it.

 

There was mom’s house. Off-white stucco, a shade of almost-violet. Cracked. I never noticed that before. The roses climbed up a rusting pole on the porch, all wilted, dried out with leaves brown at their edges. I don’t remember it like this, I said, and Eve said, but it hasn’t changed. It’s always been like this, since mom and dad bought it. Which was only five years ago now, or had it been six. When they retired, to help their daughters with their kids. I heard the news, first, from Eve: not next door but very close, was for sale. The old woman who lived there passed. A steal. The first time I saw the house for itself—not as the house two doors down, but as the house that could be parent’s—was the estate sale. Here, the relics of a life. Mostly brass trinkets, photo frames, fine glass bottles, ivory carved in simple yet fantastic shapes. A crocodile, an elephant. I ran my fingers over it, over the price tags. Five dollars, ten dollars, thirty dollars. There was a scent. Flowers and spoiled perfume. We opened all the windows on the first day, to air it out. The old woman used cotton sheets to block them up, block the light. Eve and I took them down and the sun came in like a knife. Revealed dirt on the walls and in the carpet. The smell stuck to our hands, even when we washed them, even when the house was empty. 

Eve rang the doorbell. Nothing. Oh well, she said, and dug the key from her pocket. We went inside. 

Two big chairs in the living room, and father’s blanket still tangled on his. It was only a week ago, when I’d gotten the first call. It seemed like he could stay home. I can come, I said. Eve said, there’s no need. It’s nothing to worry about. The next call came from Jane. An ambulance at three in the morning, screams, eyes rolled to the back of the head. Many of the details were exaggerated or, apparently, invented.

You should have told me earlier, I’d said.

I didn’t want you to worry. 

Mom was awake. She’d gotten over the habit of smoking her cigarettes in the kitchen. She was pacing, back and forth. God, Eve said, it’s only seven. We sat her down in the sitting room and opened a box of candy orange slices. She downed two and complained how bad they were for her teeth. Ah well, going to have them out soon anyway. Won’t even make that much of a difference. You get to my age and you learn to stop worrying. 

 

We got to the hospital at about two o’clock. We argued about it. It won’t make any difference, Eve said, you heard Jane. They won’t let us in. The hospital was like a different world, one where the carpets were new and the light never changed. Harsh, harsh fluorescents, reminding you that things can be clean. And those starched green scrubs on the nurses. Hello, I said at the desk, my father’s here. I think he’s on the first floor. He’s pretty sick, and I just got into town. I was hoping I could see him.

And your name is?

Rachel Gonzales. 

And your father’s?

Thomas Doyle. We have our mother’s name.

The nurse took us to the door of a room and left with a warning: try not to upset him too much. And there he was. Lying in a hospital bed, a tube sticking into him, a bag filled with liquid. Clear and bulging. He was asleep and had rings under his eyes. The blanket over him was thin, thin enough that I could see the bones in his legs. It was very cold. There was a small window looking out to a parking lot.

We sat in the two chairs and waited for him to wake up.

Just the eyes. Then a smile on his lip. Then I was on my knees taking his hand, my cheek against his hand until he said, get up off the floor. You don’t know what’s been down there.

How do you feel?

Well, not great.

For some reason he talked slowly. When he moved—especially the large box of his chest—you could see it in his face. The heart. An infection. But he talked. Mostly little things. My work, Eve’s sons. How hot it was this summer, warmer every year. The nurse came, checked his vitals, asked about his pain. Four. Maybe a five. The doctor was only here once a day. If that. He was a nice man but was very busy.

We agreed that one of us at least would spend the night. The nurse found a blanket. 

 

There’s a photograph of the five of us; it’s still on my wall. Dad in the bed, mom and me and my sisters on either side. How alike we all look, with our curly brown hair. Our thick round glasses. We’re smiling. It’s an oddly colored photograph, warm, almost brown-tinted. Even when we first had it printed, a few weeks after, it looked very old. 

I remember noise in the room. How full it could be with people. And sometimes quiet. The beeping. Wind outside the window. One day the boys were there. Eve had stepped outside with the older one, looking for food. The younger one was eleven; at one point he tapped me on the shoulder. Father was asleep, you could hear his breath. And the boy leaned towards me, as if to whisper. But he didn’t say anything.

How do you feel, I asked.

I don’t know.

That makes sense.

Sometimes, he started, I wish I weren’t even here. I know we need to be. But when I’m at home or at school I can forget.

Are you tired?

Yes.

That’s good. We can go to sleep.

We put together a makeshift bed from the two chairs and a sheet; I helped him settle down. Soon he was breathing easily. I looked at him every few minutes, or glanced at dad. He looked so much different from last year. So much older. Like he’d been replaced. Eve was taking a long time to get back, I started to get tired. I managed to prop myself up with my head against the hospital bed. The floor was cold. It was dark. With my eyes closed, it almost seemed like I was home. It almost seemed like any other place.