How to Love an American Man Read Online Free Page B

make sure it’s lactose-free and latches her door for the night, Mom says, “You know, sometimes I don’t know if she needs a hug, noogies, or a smack upside the head.” Then she goes in to hold her father-in-law’s hand.
    Through the nights after Grandma has gone to bed, the rest of us take our posts. Whoever’s seated next to Grandpa at any given moment painfully observes that his breaths are growing more spread out and agitated. His gasps are hollow and cavernous, as though the River Styx is flooding his chest. During the hours when we most crave sleep, he is at his most listless. He shocks us with his new contempt for the nighttime, and frail as he his, it takes my dad, my uncle, and me to stop him from standing up and walking out of the room. When we finally get him settled down and tucked back in, we are too drained to cry . . . even though seeing this man, the hero of our family, in such a troubled state is enough to rip our weeping hearts open.
    Three nights pass. With the arrival of first morning light there is a detectable shift in spirit, a raw dichotomy of hope and horror that today, he could go. The smallest crack of light between the blinds delivers Grandpa’s cherubic troop of hospice nurses. As they scoot their snowy shoes off on the linoleum foyer floor and drift in a hushed pack to the guest room, there’s a stir among us tired watchdogs. The coffeepot starts, the face-washing sink runs, and our vigil reconvenes. We relieve each other effortlessly, in a seamless cycle of sitting, feeding, eating, and waiting. Comforting this beloved dying man is less a chore than it is a pleasure and an honor.
    Monday night I volunteer to sit up at Grandpa’s side. In an armchair in the corner, I doze between sleeping and waking, the same way he floats between earth and the supernatural. “I have to die today,” he says, plain as day, and I jolt awake. I stand to hover over him, stroking the smooth top of his head. He has to die today. For now, we are the only two who share this news. It makes me want to crawl in the bed with him and bawl. By the glow of the stained-glass night-light, I memorize his features—the mole on his eyelid, the pores across his nose, the precise Cupid’s bow curving across his top lip. When he stirs, I whisper to him.
    â€œGrandpa.”
    â€œWha . . .?” He is too exhausted to pronounce the t at the end of the word.
    â€œI have to tell you something. Lay down first though, okay? Come on, there we go. Good job.” I speak to him with steady encouragement. “There. Okay, listen.”
    â€œOkay.”
    I put my lips close to his ear. “I love you, Grandpa.”
    He opens his eyes. “I love you too.”
    My throat tightens. “I know.”
    â€œBoy, do I love you.”
    His eyes close again. I rest my head on the pillow next to him so his cheek hovers so soft against mine, and I can actually sense from him that it’s hurting him to put me through this pain. I look up at the colored shadows on the ceiling as endless tears stream past my cheeks, over my jaw, around the back of my neck. Nothing in my life, no struggle or victory or heartbreak, could hold as much significance as this single perfect moment. The person I treasure most in the world loves me back. I’ll never have to accept anything less from a man again.
    When morning arrives, Father Ed, our parish priest, follows the nurses into Grandpa’s room and they call us all in for a prayer. In our sweatsuits and our resolve to see this through to the finish, we gather around the bed smelling like breakfast burritos and dirty hair. The nurses have washed Grandpa down so he’s fragrant as an angel, warm soap and aloe and clean linens on the bed. Grandma and Ruth, the head nurse who’s also an old friend of our family, take seats at Grandpa’s side and when we pray the Our Father in unison, Grandpa finds the strength to take both their hands