A Perfect Day Read Online Free Page A

of color, unlike during my first trip to her home, last Christmas, when all was snow. Though the land was even more spectacular than Allyson had described it, her home was nothing like what I’d expected. It looked as if a trailer had taken root in the fertile Rogue Valley soil and grown rooms and steps and a porch with a mosquito screen.
    Carson was a handyman and he liked to fiddle with things, his residence being his most frequent victim. Allyson told me that the house had changed form every year for as long as she could remember. She grew up thinking that people just lived that way. She’d come home from school to find her father, hammer in hand, knocking out a wall or building an addition. He had been that way up until the last few months, when his sickness had sapped his strength as well as his ambition. But still he talked about the guest room he was going to build when he felt good enough to get out of bed. They both knew it would never happen, but it was a pleasant fiction all the same.
    The taxi’s meter read nine seventy-five. Through the open car window I handed the driver a folded ten-dollar bill. “Keep the change.”
    “Gee, thanks,” the driver said sarcastically, stashing the bill in his front pocket.
    The taxi’s back tires spun as the driver reversed out of the drive. I slung my duffel over my shoulder, climbed the wooden stairs of the front porch and knocked on the door.
    An elderly woman opened the door and welcomed me in. She was short and broad-hipped, with silver hair. She wore a pink hand-knit sweater. Her smile and her eyes were pleasant but appropriate for the circumstances. I could see the family resemblance.
    “You must be Robert.”
    “Yes, ma’am.”
    She reached out and touched my arm affectionately. “I’m Allyson’s aunt Denise.”
    Allyson had spoken of her many times. Allyson was very close to her. She had become Allyson’s surrogate mother after her own mother had passed away. I had not met her last December only because she had gone on an east coast trip with a few of her friends.
    “I’ve heard much about you,” I said. “Allyson thinks the world of you.”
    She smiled. “Allyson is my sweetheart. Please come in.”
    I stepped into the house, onto the umber shag carpet. I looked around for Allyson. There were a dozen or so people congregated inside, strangers, standing or sitting, speaking in somber tones like people in a hospital waiting room. In the center of the room was a coffee table with a plate of sugar cookies and a pot of coffee. The only person I recognized was Nancy, Allyson’s roommate. I turned back to Aunt Denise.
    “Is he still . . . ?”
    In the land of the dying, sentences go unfinished.
    She nodded. “He’s still with us.”
    “Do you know where Allyson is?”
    “She’s with her father. Down the hallway.”
    At that time Nancy crossed the room. I set down my bag, and without a word she put her arms around me in the way people do when words are not enough. Nancy had been here last Christmas when I flew out to meet Allyson’s father. Nothing was the same now.
    “How is he?” I asked.
    “He’s still hanging in there. The nurse told us that he was going to die yesterday. But he’s a tough old bird. He’s holding on.”
    “Is Ally alone with him?”
    She nodded. “She’s been in there for nearly six hours. I checked on her about an hour ago.”
    “How is she?”
    She frowned. “Not well. She asked if I had heard from you.”
    “Which room is it?”
    She pointed. “The room at the end.”
    I anxiously walked down the shadowy hallway, my footsteps falling softly in the corridor. I opened the door just enough to look in. The room was dark, illuminated only by the light stealing in from the partially opened blinds above the bed. When my eyes had adjusted, I saw Allyson curled up on the bed next to her father. It wasn’t hard to imagine that this had happened a million times before, on dark nights when a thunderstorm shook the mountain, a