Dry_ A Memoir - Augusten Burroughs [68]
As we were walking, a man in a wheelchair, parked on the sidewalk in front of his brownstone building, said something to us. I ignored him, assumed he wanted money. I walked on, then noticed Hayden had turned around, stopped. They were talking. I didn’t hear what they were saying because I was further ahead, frowning back at him. I was annoyed that he was talking to an older man in a wheelchair. Hayden waved me over and said, “This gentleman needs our help. He’s been waiting for somebody strong to come along.”
I’m strong, so Hayden volunteered me. The man focused his attention on me. I looked between them, impatient and annoyed.
Finally, the man in the wheelchair said, “Thank you for offering your help. If you could just get me up the stairs and unlock my apartment door.”
He produced his keys, fumbling with them with his semiparalyzed hands, looking for the correct key among the many. I was thinking, You don’t need to show me the key now; you can show it to me at the door if I can’t immediately figure it out. Since I was now going to help him, I wanted to do it as quickly as possible. I wanted it to be over. “Just wait one minute while I park my wheelchair over there by the stairs,” he said.
After his wheelchair was in position he hit a switch and turned the motor off. Then he asked me to pull the chain out of the pack on the back and fasten it to the railing of the stairs.
I forced a smile, although I felt conned. I reached into the bag and found the chain, then I secured the chair. All the while he sat, watching me. “Careful,” he said. And “Be gentle, please.” I wanted to say Shut the fuck up.
When I was done he asked me to carry him. “Just pick me up under my knees while I . . .”
I couldn’t hear another word he said because suddenly I knew I would be holding this man, carrying him up the stairs to his apartment. I heard “Like a baby. Just like a baby,” and I felt ill. I felt like I was visiting my mother.
My mother had a stroke ten years ago that left the right side of her body paralyzed, left her in a wheelchair. I thought about how I can never bring myself to visit her. And when I did, last time must have been over a year and a half ago, I could never bring myself to stay long. From the moment I walked in the door to her apartment, the need hit me in the face, thick like an odor. Would I change a lightbulb? Then roll her across the bridge. Then buy canned tuna. Then unscrew something, affix something or bring something to her and set it in her lap. Always turning something on or off, moving something from one side to another. As if she needed me to do these things, me specifically. As if she had been saving them up for me to do. Like they were gifts. Love. Dead birds she had caught and killed with claws, saved while I was away and dropped, all together in a mound on my doorstep for me to appreciate. Of course, they were such small things to do, but they each felt so impossibly large and uncomfortable to me.
I feel dirty when I visit my mother. I feel that her intimacy is exposed. Her nightgowns are so thin that her flesh shows through them. Her need is like a vagina. And I do not like to see it.
Her apartment isn’t as clean as our home was growing up. When I was a child, our house was immaculate; one dust mote on the teak dining table would be cause for a complete spring cleaning.
Like holding this man tonight, I’ve had to hold my mother, not carry her but hold her. I guess it’s called hug her. Or help her into a restaurant, hot-faced in shame. Looking around at the other people in the restaurant. Ashamed that my mother alone required two people to do the activities of one.
Furious, underneath of course, for giving me away to her lunatic psychiatrist