The Folks - Addison Zeller
My parents are sick. I wheel them from window to window. They don’t want to sit by the same window. I leave one at one window, like a candle on a sill—an electric candle, on a timer—and wheel the other to another window. At which point the first parent is ready for a different window. They’re never satisfied with the familiar. The familiar is precisely their ailment. The second parent immediately, spitefully, requires a wheeling too. I deposit the first parent at the best window in reach, or else position them to face a wall. They mistake the wood knots for night vistas. They gaze and sigh at the separateness of stars. I creep up to the second parent. I tilt their chair back and shove a brick under the wheel so they’ll interpret the drywall ceiling as snow. These deceptions don’t work long—they’re only stopgaps: my parents are sick, but they aren’t stupid. I have to rearrange them, transpose them, timed so they don’t intersect. If I can’t, resentments stir. Mumblings fly out of the chairs. Fingers flick up and down. Chin hairs quiver in the lamp glare. Mealtimes are trickiest. They won’t look at each other across the table. I have to do the talking. How are you? a parent asks. I have to account for my day. They don’t like if I mention how I wheeled them, or the other parent. I’m confined to a list of visits to the bathroom, or, if I’m lucky, a description of grocery store outings, mealtime preparations, backyard smoke breaks. They scream from boredom. They knock the table with their fists. But they listen. They feign interest. Anything’s better than hearing the dry smack of the other parent’s lips. At night I hoist them by their armpits and slot them into metal beds—separate beds, in separate rooms. I alternate their bedtimes so I don’t appear to favor one over the other with a last pillow fluffing or goodnight murmur. I change and clean them. Wind sheets round their limbs. Turn the candles on with timers. When I’m done, I have a smoke. I feed myself. Unwind as I can. Try to read, or pace in the hallway, or read and pace. Listen for what happens in the night. Whatever accident. Whatever fall. Whatever dream they need uncoupling from.
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Originally published by SEPIA 2023
Addison Zeller’s fiction appears in 3:AM, Cincinnati Review, Pithead Chapel, trampset, minor literature[s], Ligeia, hex, ergot., and elsewhere. He lives in Wooster, Ohio, and edits fiction for The Dodge.
