Channel 3
On July 10th, his mother-in-law had died. That was five days ago. He was surprised at how her death had effected him. It had made him think about his own mother, how he hadn’t visited her in months, how he had tried not to think about her at all but couldn’t stop thinking about her since Becky died.
So this morning, on the way to work, he had pulled off the Interstate at Exit 4B and driven the extra ten miles out of his way to The Gables Assisted Living Center. He had pulled into a parking space and turned the car off. Sitting there behind the steering wheel, with the hot sun pounding on his chest, he had ached with a deep, sad guilt.
Now he stood looking down at his own mother, slumped in her wheelchair, her thin hands resting on her thighs. She was small, smaller than she had ever been in ‘real life’, back when she had been his mother, not this shrunken stranger, this head-hunter’s ornament.
“How you doing.”
“Same as always.”
“You feeling all right?”
“I’m 85. What do you think?”
The man stepped to the bed and sat stiffly on the edge like the visitor he was, the better to see her face.
“You look good.”
“Better than most of them in here.”
“That’s true.” He crossed his legs. “That’s true.”
The room was sparsely furnished, but the pieces were mostly her own, except for the bed which was a hospital bed, and the visitor’s chair which looked like a visitor’s chair from a hospital. He remembered the night stand beside the bed and the green and brown rug from when he was a child. The lamp, too, had been admitted with her. He uncrossed his legs and crossed his arms.
“I’ve got some bad news.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. Becky died last week.”
“Becky who?”
“Carol’s Mom.”
“Oh.”
“Thought you’d want to know.”
“Why? People die around here everyday. Nobody thinks I should know.”
“She was somebody you knew, that’s all. I thought you’d want to know.”
“How’d she die?”
“Heart attack.”
“She was a baby.”
“She was 78.”
“A baby.”
“Anyway it was all kind of sudden. Carol went into her room to wake her up and she wouldn’t wake up. Passed in her sleep, apparently.”
“That room you put her in, I’m surprised she lasted this long.”
“She didn’t want to go into a home. Besides, she could get around fine.”
“Lucky for me I got out of there.”
The man took a deep breath. The room was silent except for the low hum of the air conditioner which contested with the low hum of the TV coming from the Rec Room down the hall.
The old woman rolled her wheelchair over to the big window and pulled back the drape. With deadly accuracy, the morning sun hit her square in the face. The old woman pushed herself forward into its hot breath.
“Come away from the window. You’ll get overheated.”
“I’m cold. I’m always cold. It feels good.”
“Close your eyes at least. Don’t look directly into the sun. You’ll hurt your eyes.”
“I’m half blind anyways. What difference does it make? Besides, it feels good.”
The man stood up, shoved his hands in his pockets. There was a TV in the corner of the room, opposite the bed.
“Want me to turn the TV on for you?”
“Channel 3.”
The man found the remote on the night stand, clicked the set on, and punched in the channel. Static.
The old woman, magnetized by the hot white light, didn’t move.
“When’s the funeral?”
“What?”
“When’s the funeral?”
“Yesterday.”
“Where’d you put her?”
“Mt. Hope Cemetery. Nice place. Next to Carol’s Dad.”
“Never knew him.”
“How could you? He died before we even met.”
“Heart attack?”
“Yeah, I think.”
“You? Think? Hah!”
There was a dark patch in the brilliantly lit room behind the closet door. The man swiveled into it, drilled his chin into his collarbone and crossed his arms tight over his chest. After a while, he turned into the light again and squinted at the old woman’s back.
“There’s nothing on Channel 3.”
“What’s today?”
“Wednesday. The 15th.”
“So it must have been Friday.”
“What must have been Friday?”
“The day she died. Friday night. Late.”
“They aren’t sure. Sometime Friday night. Yes. Why?”
“Where were you?”
“Asleep.”
“Hmpf.”
“What’s ‘hmpf’?”
“You’ve been asleep since the minute you two got together.”
“Shit. Do we have to?”
“I don’t sleep anymore. That’s why I see and you don’t.”
“That’s funny. I thought you were half blind.”
“Half’s better than whole. I can still watch Channel 3.”
“There’s nothing on Channel 3. It’s nothing but static.”
“Hmph!”
The man swept the remote off the bed where he’d dropped it and pressed the power button. The screen clinked to black. He tossed the remote back onto the bed.
“Stop hmph-ing me and come away from that window before you burn your retinas out.”
He took the handles of her wheelchair and spun her around. Roughly, he propped her up in the seat from which she had nearly slipped off.
“Don’t let’s do this again, OK? Let’s just have a nice visit.”
The old woman patted her hair down and struggled to adjust her shawl. The man moved instinctively to help her, then caught himself.
“How did you know she died on Friday night? I didn’t tell you that.”
“You sleep. I watch.”
“What’s that mean?”
“I watch Channel 3.”
“Channel 3?”
“Channel 3.”
“There’s nothing on Channel 3. It’s all static. No wonder you’re half blind. What’s the matter with the people in this place? Doesn’t anybody ever check on you? How can they let you sit here watching static?”
“They’re sleepers, just like you. Sleepers see static.”
“Look, asleep or awake, it’s a channel with nothing on it. There’s nothing on it, do you understand? There’s nothing to see on Channel 3!”
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the old woman’s head swivel on her rickety neck and fix him with a mischievous smile.
“How’d I know then?”
“You guessed.”
“I watched the whole thing. I saw the room, that room you stuffed her into up there in the attic. I saw her asleep on that Army cot you call a bed. I saw that ratty old rocking chair you used to force me to sit in. I saw the wallpaper peeling off the walls. I even saw the mouse you said didn’t exist, it was only me hearing things. But I saw it. I saw it all.”
In the middle of the bed there was a depression like a sunken cheek where her body had slept all these months. The sun’s rays collected there in a hot white puddle of light that made the man squint. He sat back down on the edge of the bed, disturbing the puddle and spilling the light.
“It’s just static, don’t you understand? You’re not seeing anything on that stupid tube. It’s all in your head. Why do you think we decided to put you in this place? We had to! Because of just this kind of thing. You’ll do anything to come between us, me and Carol. Anything.”
“I saw something else, too.”
The man rubbed his eyes. When he took his hands away, his fingers were wet with tears.
“You didn’t see anything. You just imagined it.”
“I saw her come into the room.”
The man closed his eyes and buried his face in his palms.
“She tiptoed up to the bed and stood there, just looking, for a long, long time.”
The man began to rock back and forth slowly.
“Then she bent down and took the pillow from under the head.”
The man pushed himself upright with an effort. His face was wet.
“Stop!”
“Lucky I got out of there while I still had the chance.”
Unable to hold himself erect any longer, the man slumped down on the bed, exhausted. The sun had risen above the frame of the window, slicing him in two across the middle of his chest.
“Come home with me, Mom.”
The old woman rolled her wheelchair up to the bed and stretched out her ancient hand. For a moment, the man thought she was reaching for his left hand, collapsed palm upward on the bedspread beside him, soaked in tears and light. Instead, she hooked the remote in her claw-like fingers and scraped it off the bed into her lap.
“I like it here. I feel safe here.”
She pressed the power button. The set clinked on. Channel 3. Static.