Read Online The Law of Loving Others by Kate Axelrod - Free Book Online

going, running into each other briefly at the hospital, trading duties, exchanging information about my mother, her moods, her medication. I’d say,
O
h they upped her Seroquel five milligrams today
and he’d tell me that she seemed more like herself, even asked for the Arts and Leisure section of the
Times
. But the reality was a little different. He was home a lot—spending a lot of time reading, sitting at the computer, engaged in something, though I wasn’t sure what.
    We had never spent this much time in the same place without my mother. Once, when I was in third grade, she went to visit her friend Andrea, who was living in San Francisco at the time. They had grown up together, and Andrea was the only person my mother still kept in touch with from elementary school. It was only a long weekend—three or four days at the most that she was gone—but I remember those days clearly, how much I missed my mother, how I could never quite loosen up in the presence of my father, and how, unless I was thoroughly distracted, I’d be on the brink of tears, and could have cried at any moment. My father had planned a lot of activities for us that weekend, mostly arts and crafts related; we built igloos out of sugar cubes and melted broken crayons together to make rainbows to draw with. But my mother had left me notes around the house, index cards cut in half where she’d written that she loved me and that she’d be home soon. They were tucked beneath my pillow or beside the breadbox in the kitchen. She traced her hand on a piece of purple construction paper and told me,
Whenever you miss me, you just hold on to my hand, okay, sweetheart?
Each time I was reminded of her, could feel the faint presence of her in the house, I would feel awash in longing again, overcome with despair.
    And now, being alone with my father, I was just as uneasy, but this time it felt different, as though it was some conscious decision on our part, as if we’d chosen to team up against her, chosen to leave her stranded in that strange, cold hospital.

    THE next morning, the sky was a pale open stretch of gray, the kind of day where it seemed like maybe it wouldn’t ever rain. Before we left for the hospital, my father asked me to help him pack a suitcase for my mother. He sounded annoyed. “We should have done this days ago,” he said, and he lifted a black rectangular suitcase from the top shelf of the closet.
    â€œHow long are we packing for?” I asked.
    â€œI don’t know, really. A few days?”
    He grabbed some bras and underwear from my mother’s dresser—one of those old, cherry wood sets of drawers, with antique brass handles. Something about watching my father, his callused hands fumbling around with those delicate bras, felt so uncomfortable. A small peek into a life that I didn’t want to see.
    â€œA pair of jeans?” I said. “And a sweater or two. That gray turtleneck, and the purple cardigan she always wears.”
    We packed more: a pair of Reeboks (in a plastic bag so that the soles wouldn’t dirty the rest of her clothing), a couple of books—a new Anne Tyler novel and
Best American Short Stories
—a little jar of face cream that she applied dutifully every morning, one set of flannel pajamas from the Gap.
    When we got to the hospital, a security guard stood beside the elevator on the psych floor. She had a long ponytail that trailed down the center of her back, rested just below her waist.
    â€œCome over to this table,” she said.
    My father set the suitcase down as she requested.
    â€œWell, firstly,” she said, “you know you can’t just come in here with a suitcase. We’ll open it up and go through each item one by one.” She unzipped the bag and opened the flap. “And no plastic bags, either.” She took the sneakers out of the bag and set them on the table. I stared at her nails as she sorted through my