It was a pretty enough place, its exterior painted a vibrant peach color with darker frames around the windows. The scent of freshly mown grass tasted like the approaching autumn, the large tree close to the entrance tingeing yellow and orange, a few leaves the exact color of Aaron’s hair as it caught the sun. Farther away were flower beds and ornate benches, where families sat with grandparents, children chasing each other around and laughing.
Grandparents. His father would never be one. He would never know the joy of running down a hallway with the child of his child on his back. He would never sit in a nursing home and wait for them to visit with a bag of chocolates he’d had the nurse go and buy from the mini-mart by her house. Oscar didn’t like the bitterness that assaulted him as the thought spread its blankets and made a home inside him, stinging.
“It’s freezing in here,” he mumbled as they passed through the front doors. At this time of the year, the air conditioning didn’t have to be that strong. Especially considering most of these people would be old and frail. What were these nurses thinking?
Nurses.
Oscar glanced at Aaron, who had given up his dream of nursing for the necessity of being who he was. He wondered now justwhenhe had decided that he would like to be one of these people walking around in pretty scrubs with flowers on them and comfortable clogs on their feet, smiling at the people they aided and wheeled, helping them. He wondered just how much this cruel disease had torn from him, whether he’d had to battle the ugliness and grief through the worst days of his dysphoria.
Oscar knew about grief. And he knew about dysphoria. He knew about carrying them both across his shoulders,about being hunched over by their weight until they got him on his knees, begging his therapist for an appointment.
He didn’t say anything, but he held Aaron’s hand as they walked up a flight of stairs and down a quieter carpeted corridor with pretty bright green doors and lots of children’s drawings on the walls, some of them faded with age. He wondered how many of these belonged to grandchildren who were now grown, who couldn’t remember painting them, whose grandparents had passed.
Aaron had been so young when his mother had come here. Not quite a child. But not quite grown either. His fingers twitched in Oscar’s as they approached a room with a decorated door spelling out GEMMA in colorful letters stuck to the wood, two painted sunflowers underneath.
Maybe if Oscar wanted to be motivational, he would have said something likego onoryou can do itto Aaron. But Oscar wasn’t too good at that part. And this was not the place for deflective humor. In any case, all traces of it were gone. The bright colors of this space immersed in low-volume upbeat music and laughter from the other rooms did nothing to lift the somber mood Oscar could feel jumping off Aaron’s skin like fleas Oscar had caught.
Let me have them, Oscar said. He knew as well as Aaron how to carry pain, and if all he could do was bear some of the load, Oscar would have it.
In the end, Aaron knew to walk in by himself, first knocking on the door, then passing through, Oscar following quietly behind him.
“Aaron!” Gemma was a beautiful woman, and of course she was; she made up half of him. It was the softness of her chin he had, the same blue eyes and pretty nose, the same curve of a smile that brightened Oscar’s days. She had blonde hair, straight and thick to her shoulders with bangs that brushed her eyebrows, and she was wearing comfortableloungewear, sitting on a chair in the corner of the room, watching a crime show on a TV in the corner. Oscar remembered seeing her in that picture in Aaron’s room. She didn’t look much older now.
“Hi, Mom,” Aaron said, his voice a little wobbly. “Here.”
The room wasn’t too big. In three steps, he’d reached her and was handing her the sunflowers. Gemma eyed them, smiling, fingers fiddling with the green wrap, but she wasted little time on them, turning again to Aaron.
“Come, lovely,” she said.
Aaron bent down to hug her, squashing the flowers between them, and she wrapped her arms around him, too, pressing kisses to his cheek.
Oscar lingered in the doorway, bouncing on his feet as he watched Aaron have the one thing he had always wanted: a mother. Aaron deserved it. He deserved every good thing. He deserved more than this, more than having the only person who loved him so out of his reach, so sick.
Not the only person.
“You brought a friend?” Gemma’s tone was suggestive enough to indicate she already suspected the nature of their friendship.
Oscar sucked in his lips, cheeks heating as he mustered a polite smile.
“Cookies, Aaron,” she said. “For your friend. And for me.”
Oscar approached, following her gesture to sit on the edge of the neatly made bed. He didn’t say anything while Aaron put the sunflowers in a vase, then rummaged around a cupboard and brought out a pack of rainbow-chip cookies, scattering them on a paper plate on the bedside table. He passed one to Oscar as he sat on the other side of him, facing his mother.
“This is Oscar,” Aaron said. “He’s my boyfriend.”
“Lovely, Oscar. To meet you,” Aaron’s mother said, her eyes a shock of aquamarine blue as her excitement spilled forth. “Work?” She glanced between him and Aaron, still smiling, reaching for a cookie.
“No. I met him at my top surgery appointment,” Aaron replied. “I…had that, too. Do you…I had that.”
“Right! How silly, of course I remember! How is it, my love?” she asked. Oscar had never met anyone with any type of dementia before, but it was clear as day to him that Gemma wasn’t entirely sure what Aaron was talking about.
“It’s going well, Mom. I’m okay. Better now.” Aaron tugged on his shirt, smiling down at his flat chest, then looked up at her. “See?”
“Lovely,” she said again, wrapping a hand around his.
She still wore her wedding ring. Oscar wondered if she loved Aaron’s dad, if she put up with him being an ass, or she just didn’t remember what he had been like. Aaron said he never visited much.
“You look good.” She glanced at Oscar then. “You too, dear. It sounds like the movies.”
