When I Killed My Father

CHAPTERS 1-3

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PART ONE: Cheeks as Smooth as Ice

1. Stop That Man. He Stole My Teeth.

Edgewater Cares Retirement Community
Sixth Floor Memory Care Unit
Chicago
January 7, 2016
11:05 pm

Lamar Rose slipped a folded postcard between the strike plate and latch bolt of the sixth-floor stairwell door. He descended seventeen steps and—with two large paper clips—picked the lock of the janitor’s closet. Took him two minutes, way faster than on his dry run. 

No one would suspect that was something he would do, but it was easy, even for an amateur like him. He hated feeling so hard and cold, but that was how he had to be. 

In the corner of the closet, a rolling cart bulged with folding chairs. He unfolded one and sat. In November, when he’d done his first reconnaissance, the closet had been crammed with Christmas decorations—stockings, wreaths, strings of lights. Now they were on display, at the nurses’ stations, in the bingo room, by the elevators, even on the fifth and sixth floors, where the residents might never notice.

The small room had a pleasant lemon verbena smell, from a plastic tub of cleanser. Under that, the moldy odor of damp rug.

The wind growled outside, whipping across Lake Michigan, rattling the window. Lamar zipped his coat to his chin. Everyone was talking about the “polar vortex,” this rush of Arctic air sweeping over the Great Lakes. On TV, he’d seen a clip of brave souls walking on the frozen Chicago River—brave not because they were in danger of falling through the ice, but because of the subzero temperatures. 

Dread and duty duked it out in the pit of his stomach. He had never felt so alone in the world.

But he had promised.

After shivering in the closet for two hours, he walked up the seventeen steps, his legs creaky. He nudged the door open with his shoulder, slid the postcard into his pocket, peeked into the corridor. 

It was so quiet in the middle of the night. No wailing or cackling or crazy ranting. So quiet he heard his father snoring, two doors down.

He had charted out half an hour to take care of business, but it was not going to take that long. Once inside the room, he tiptoed past Clay Trapp, his father’s roommate, who was also snoring, and hid behind the gray plastic curtain between the beds, feeling the weight of the nitrogen tank in his shoulder bag. 

Robert Rose lay on his back, his hands open, crossing his chest. Peaceful. Deep in sleep. Lamar used to be able to sleep like that—“You could probably nod off on a fire engine with sirens blaring,” Janis once said, not hiding her resentment.

He couldn’t sleep like that any more.

Robert Rose would be eighty-four in two weeks. He wanted to be gone before his birthday.

And he expected his dutiful son Lamar make it happen. 

The talk was that people like Lamar’s father, who were occasionally lucid, had it worse because they understood their condition. Some days were better than others, but there was no recovering from dementia. He had bile duct cancer too, but it was taking its sweet time killing him—he had recently been kicked out of hospice for living longer than six months. The cancer was painful even with strong meds, but he didn’t complain about it. He had always been stoic in the face of physical pain.

Lamar stroked his father’s freshly shaven face. His cheeks were as smooth as ice. 

When he first moved into the memory care unit, his father had shaved himself, until he started forgetting what he was doing.

One humid night, the previous summer, Lamar flew in on the red-eye from Albuquerque to find his father in the bathroom, the faucet running, his face half-shaved, his eyes vacant. On one cheek was a dollop of shaving cream, the other a speck of blood.

When he saw Lamar in the mirror, approaching from behind, his eyes jumped to life, but they were filled with fear. He dropped the razor and it clattered on the floor. Then he cringed as if he were bracing for a beating.

Lamar turned away.

He couldn’t bear it, so how could his father?

Still standing at the sink, his father unleashed a torrent of profanity the likes of which Lamar had never heard, certainly never from him. Fuck, shit, damn, and more—first in an anguished mumble and building to a furious rant.

“You fucking parasites. We paid our premiums, and now you greedy bastards want to stick a fucking hose up my ass and suck out my insides. You’re hiding Celeste from me.”

“Dad, it’s me. Lamar. Your son. I love you.” His words sounded hollow.

”You’re bleeding me dry,” his father said, even louder, “Locking me up in this fucking shithole. Why can’t I go home? Where’s Celeste?” 

Lamar came closer, but not too close. “Dad, it’s going to be OK. Let’s get you back to your bed. Mom died, Dad. Six years ago. Remember? She had leukemia.”

His father blinked his eyes as if registering what Lamar said. Lamar felt a stab of sadness himself, for the loss of his mother. 

“She died? Well, I wish someone would have told me.”

Lamar waited until his father ran out of steam, and took another step toward him. Then, as gently as if he were holding a soap bubble, he caressed his father’s arm with his fingertips. “I’d like to help you,” he said. 

He retrieved the razor, rinsed it, and turned the faucet off. From behind, he reached around and clutched his father’s chest with his left forearm, his palm flat on his sternum. With his right hand, he shaved the cheek where the cream had dried. His father wrapped his fingers tight around the foam grips of his walker, locked his elbows, and held his head high. 

When Lamar finished wiping his father’s face with a warm washcloth, their eyes met again in the mirror, and then his father started crying. Lamar had never seen him shed a tear before.

Lamar needed a walker too—his legs were about to buckle under him. He grabbed the edge of the sink. 

Then he guided his whimpering father back to his bed, and sat with him, holding his hand, long after he fell asleep.

That had been such a solemn and heartbreaking moment in front of the mirror, their bodies close, their eyes locked in a rare embrace. Lamar hadn’t treasured it until later—he had been too distressed at the time. Looking back—it had been six months now—he realized it had been his most heartfelt connection ever with his father. Ever.

Was that sad or what? But it would have been far sadder if he had backed away. He ached from the memory, but it was the good kind of ache. 

Now the Edgewater staff shaved his father twice a week, after his shower. That was why Lamar picked Tuesday—so he would be clean and smooth. Also, the mask would seal better on a freshly shaved face. 

Lamar could see in the dark now. Shapes but no colors. Light drifted in from the streetlights on Lakeshore Drive, far below. Lamar could see his faint shadow on the wall.

His father had always managed everything, whatever life threw at him, even his wife’s death.

But the dementia broke him. 

Now he needed Lamar. His father, who had never played favorites, chose Lamar, who shuddered at the responsibility and yet . . . and yet, here he was, with an opportunity to give his father what he wanted.

It wasn’t that Lamar was uncomfortable with his father dying, or death in general. As a volunteer for the New Mexico Hospice Center, he had been present three times when someone died, and it had been more profound than tragic. But he had witnessed those deaths, not caused them. He wished his father would just die, and he wouldn’t have to do anything except let it happen. 

Drawing another deep breath, Lamar reached into his shoulder bag for the ten-pound tank of nitrogen, but it slipped out of his hands, and clanked on the floor. 

He froze. Held his breath.

His father continued to snore, but Clay Trapp bolted up and yelled. “Stop that man. He stole my teeth. He broke my arm. He took my money.”

His father’s roommate had advanced Alzheimer’s and Lamar had never heard him speak a complete sentence before. 

Rocking in his bed, the springs squeaking, Clay whimpered again. “Why is this man taking my teeth?”

Lamar heard footsteps in the corridor. He dropped to the floor and slid under his father’s bed, grabbing the nitrogen tank and nestling it to his side.

He recognized Pierre’s languorous gait and the clack of his boots as he came down the corridor. A dreadlocked nurse from Haiti, Pierre was one of the most grounded men Lamar had ever seen—he never let the urgency of others create urgency in him. He had always been kind to Lamar’s father. 

“Mr. Trapp, my man,” he said as he entered the room. “Did you have a bad dream? You’re going to wake Mr. Rose.” 

That was not likely. His father continued his raspy snoring.

“That man came back,” said Clay. “He took my teeth.”

“Hasn’t been no one here but Robert’s son, and he went home. No one is going to take your teeth, Mr. Trapp.” 

Pierre walked between the beds, the heels of his boots a foot from Lamar’s face. He hadn’t turned the light on when he came in, but even in the darkness, all he would have to do was look down to see Lamar sticking out from under the bed. 

“Take my hand, Mr. Trapp. We’re safe and warm inside. Put your finger here. See, your teeth are where they’ve always been. So damn cold only fools outside tonight.”

“He came back,” said Clay. “He left, but he came back for my teeth.”

Pierre’s boots were so close Lamar could pick out the smells—leather, foot odor, mildew, and—was that dog poop in the mix? 

His elbow was jammed under his torso, his funny bone like a sharp stick between his ribs, but he held still, taking silent breaths through his mouth. What would he say if he were caught? 

His practice run two weeks earlier had gone smoothly—Lamar had wrung himself dry, squeezed out his doubts and his fears, and he was as ready as he was ever going to be. 

But how dare his father put him in this intolerable position? He should have said no. He still could say no.

Clay stopped rocking as Pierre soothed him. 

“Time to sleep, Mr. Trapp.” Pierre sang a lullaby in a soft falsetto, and then stopped at the end of a verse and slipped out with barely a sound.

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2. Good Cop, Bad Cop, Savior

Edgewater Cares Retirement Community
Apartment 1603
Chicago
October 6, 2012

Lamar knocked on the door of his father’s apartment. Nothing. He knocked again. 

Andrea groaned in her wheezy, overwrought manner, fished out her key, unlocked the door. They found their father standing in the kitchen in his boxer shorts and one black sock. 

“What the hell are you doing here?” he barked. 

Three times Lamar had told him they were coming, at noon. He remembered at least three. 

He steered his father to his bedroom, helped him dress, led him back to the kitchen. By then Brigid had arrived, according to plan. 

Andrea positioned herself in front of the sink, folding her arms across her chest. She looked less haggard than the last time Lamar had come to town, but it wouldn’t have hurt if she smiled instead of scowled. He knew how conflicted she was—resolute that their father shouldn’t drive anymore, but reluctant to confront him. He felt sorry for her. She didn’t have it easy, and she always made everything harder than it had to be. She wasn’t depressed the way Janis had been, but she had this free-floating anxiety that touched down on anything and everything. 

“Dad, we have to talk,” she said.

Their father retreated into the corner, raising his hands to ward off the attack. 

I can take care of myself,” he said. “You’re ganging up on me.”

The kitchen smelled of ammonia. Brigid treated this apartment as if it were her own—cleaning, decorating, hanging large oil paintings on the walls, even in the kitchen.

Andrea was always complaining about the undue burden of having power of attorney for their father’s health. But when Lamar offered to take more responsibility, on his last visit, she bristled. “I live in town. You don’t. I did it for Mom. I know what to do.” 

Lamar pulled out the chair on his right, beckoned Brigid to sit. Then he spoke in a whisper, in the hope that his father might come closer. “Dad, of course you can take care of yourself. Of course you value your independence. We do too.”

Brigid slid into the chair, pushed aside cartons of prunes and oatmeal on the table. 

She lived in the same wing of Edgewater, four stories below, and slept with Lamar and Andrea’s father in his apartment several nights a week. He was adamant she keep her own place. Brigid had lived at Edgewater since before her husband died, and had encouraged Lamar’s parents to move here. They bought this spacious apartment on the top floor in 2006. His mother had been entranced by the glamorous Art Deco lobby and the spectacular views of downtown and the lakefront.

For a century, this sixteen-story yellow-brick apartment building, with five elbow-shaped wings, had been called Edgewater Towers, then it was retrofitted into the Edgewater Cares Retirement Community. The apartments on the top eight floors—for people who lived independently—were spare but elegant. So much nicer than the lower floors, which were more like a nursing home.

“Look, Dad,” Lamar said, “we’re being selfish because we want you around. We want to keep you safe.”

His father hissed. “You act as if I have a foot in the grave. 

Brigid jumped up. “I’m going to make coffee. Any takers?”

Lamar raised his hand. 

“Andrea?” asked Brigid.

She shook her head no. “Is it too early for a drink?”

“Your vodka’s in the freezer,” his father said. “I borrowed some last week when a friend came over.”

“If you’re trying to make me jealous,” Brigid said, “you’re going to have to work harder.” Lamar knew more than he wanted to know about his father’s wandering eye. 

Andrea poured a healthy shot of vodka in a glass, then a splash of orange juice. “We only want to discuss options, Dad. You can’t keep avoiding this conversation.”

“Want to put money on that?” he said. “Fifty bucks you can’t make me talk.”

Andrea pounded the cutting board on the kitchen counter, rattling everyone. “Dad, tell them what happened with the car?” 

“I forgot where I parked it.” He stared them down. “Don’t say this never happened to you. They towed it. Once. This is not a symptom of decline.”

“No, it’s not once.” Andrea turned to Lamar and Brigid, repeating what she had told them several times already. “He sideswiped a van in the parking lot. He left his front door wide open a week ago. He didn’t pay his Edgewater dues. Until they called me. I have a truckload of my own problems, thank you very much. I can’t always be around to catch him when he falls.”

“Why not?” Robert said.

“Why not?” snapped Andrea. “Why—” 

“I’m joking,” said Robert. “Jeez, you’re all so serious. The last thing I want to do is be a burden.”

“You’re not a burden,” Brigid said, then more gently, “Tell you what, Robbie. Next time you need to go anywhere—anywhere—let me know. I’ll drive you.”

Andrea drained her glass, then slammed it on the counter. She loved to make loud noises. “Brigid, you’re not dealing with the situation. What if he wants to woo one of his lady friends? He’s not going to call you to be his driver. You know that.”

They had scripted their opening gambit in the lobby before getting in the elevator—Lamar was the good cop, Andrea the bad, and Brigid the savior who would sweep onto the scene, chase away the cops, and talk sense to Robert. But Andrea loved her drama. And Brigid had her own agenda.

“Let’s stop pretending,” Andrea said. “We have to take away his car or he’s going to kill someone—”

Brigid stood again. “I said I’d drive him anytime, anywhere, and I meant it.”

Lamar jumped in before his sister went too far. “Andrea, imagine it was you backed into that corner.”

“He can take a cab,” she said, “and then there’s no problem with parking.”

Robert cleared his throat. “You’re talking about me as if I’m not in the room.”

“Not true, Dad,” Andrea said. “We are addressing you. You don’t want to listen.”

“I’m hungry,” said Brigid. “How about we head to Broadway and find some spot we haven’t been to before? Take a chance. Leave this discussion for another time.”

“I like that Vietnamese place on Argyle,” Lamar said. “Oh, right, we’re living dangerously. Trying somewhere new.”

“I have my phone with me all the time,” Robert said. “If by some—”

Andrea grumbled. “I’m not at your beck and call, Dad. I have a life, excuse me—”

“And Brigid is at the top of my favorites list,” he said.

“You put her before me?” said Andrea. Lamar hoped she was joking.

Brigid approached Robert and placed her hand on his shoulder. “Maybe it’s time for me to move in here,” she said, “like we’ve talked about.” 

Robert backed himself into the corner again, his fingers twitching by his side, a blank look in his eyes. 

No one said anything. Lamar caught Andrea’s eyes, then Brigid’s. Time stopped.

Then Robert snapped back into focus and strode toward the front door. Lamar followed behind and spoke quietly so Brigid and Andrea couldn’t hear. “It means a lot to you to drive, I understand, so let’s postpone this car question, but you know—”

“Are we going to eat or not?” Robert pulled open the front door and marched to the elevator.

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3. Don’t Have the Balls?

Edgewater Cares Retirement Community
Sixth Floor Memory Care Unit
Chicago
January 8, 2016
1:20 am

 

Lamar relaxed a little, as much as was possible for someone lying on a hospital floor, next to the nitrogen tank he was going to use to kill his father. He moved his elbow, then raised his knees so he could press his back to the floor. What a luxury to flatten his back. 

He meditated, knowing he had to wait until Clay was deep in sleep. What could be better practice than this? Whenever a thought settled in, he pushed it away, taking long inhalations and exhalations and counting to ten for each. He managed to clear his mind for at least two, three, maybe even four minutes. Not bad, all things considered.

After ten minutes or so, Clay was snoring. For a short stretch, his snores and Robert’s were synced, and they were snoring in harmony. And then they weren’t.

He waited another ten minutes, then stood up, wiggled his fingers, and pulled on the thin latex gloves he had taken from the nurse’s station on his dry run. He carefully lifted the nitrogen tank from the floor and wedged it in his shoulder bag so it wouldn’t fall again. He waited until his heart was as still as the night. 

Then he leaned in close to his father and whispered. “Hi Dad, this is it. The moment you’ve been waiting for and I’ve been dreading.”

He paused to listen to Clay snoring. “I’m giving your roomie another minute to sink into a deeper slumber,” he whispered, “then I’m going to turn on the nitrogen. Like we talked about. You’re going to keep on sleeping, but you’re not going to wake up. Then I fly home and well—I’ll get a call from Edgewater or Andrea or Brigid, I don’t know—and I’ll repack my suitcase, with my black wool suit, and head back. Then we celebrate you, your life. That’s our plan and I’m here to get it done.”

Lamar sounded bolder than he felt. He wasn’t sure if he was courageous because he was taking action or meek because he was obeying his father.

Even though his father was asleep, Lamar found it calming to tell him what he was going to do. 

Lamar had shared the plan several times with his father when he was awake and he had seemed comforted. Also acutely curious about the details, like how Lamar was going to slide the postcard between the strike plate and bolt of the stairwell door. He wanted to know what the picture on the postcard was. So Lamar bought one he knew his father would like—a picture of the two snow-dusted bronze green lions standing guard in front of the Art Institute on Michigan Avenue, red holiday wreaths around their necks. 

His father had also approved of the nitrogen, which Lamar had learned about from the web page of a man known as the Australian Dr. Death. The nitrogen was allegedly painless. Allegedly. And left no trace.

Lamar had purchased the nitrogen tank earlier in the day from a brewing supply store in Evanston. He had paid cash.

It seemed as if his father marshalled every functioning brain cell he had left to focus on this one final project. He and his father were plotting a caper together, like a bank heist in the movies. With the gauzy camaraderie of thieves. Lamar felt so connected to his father in these clandestine moments. Maybe because there was not going to be another caper. 

Lamar cringed from the sharp pang that ripped through him. For the brief conspiratorial connection with his father as much as for the loss of it. He was stalling. He didn’t have time to stall any more. 

“One more quick story, Dad,” said Lamar. “You’ll enjoy this. I heard this on a podcast, from Ram Dass. There was this old Chinese farmer who was too worn out to work in the fields, so he sits on the porch all day long while his children toil on the land. 

“One day, his eldest son lugs a wooden box to the porch and tells his father to get in. Too many mouths to feed, the son says. 

“The farmer gets in. The son puts a lid on the box and drags it toward the cliff at the edge of the farm. 

“He hears a knocking from inside the box. Takes off the lid.

“His father sits up and says, ‘Son, I understand what you’re doing and why, but I have a suggestion. Why don’t you lift me out of the box and throw me over the cliff? That way the box is there for your children when they need it.”

His father continued to snore. It was time. 

With sweat trickling down his back, Lamar placed the mask over his father’s mouth and turned the nozzle on the tank. The rush of gas whooshed into the quiet night. Noisier than he expected, though it quickly became part of the night sounds. The heating vents, the fierce wind, the pulse of medical machinery.

Then, with no warning, his father jerked awake, his hands open like claws, yanking the mask from his face. 

Lamar jumped back, dropped the mask, which bounced against his leg, dangling on rubber tubing from the valve of the tank.

Relief washed over Lamar, like a hot shower. He didn’t have to go through with this. He turned off the valve. The sudden silence startled him. 

His father opened his eyes, blinked them. He looked bewildered, tense. Then he relaxed. “Oh, you’re here. Get on with it.”

If his father was lucid, as he appeared to be, it would be no mystery what Lamar was doing there, with latex gloves on his hands and a nitrogen tank sticking out of his shoulder bag. 

“No, Dad, you just pushed me away. When I put the mask on. You don’t want to die.”

“What, are you chickening out? I’m as ready as ever.” 

Lamar leaned in close to his father, whispered, “Dad, quiet. We already woke Clay up once, and he made a fuss. You slept through it. But you didn’t sleep through me putting the mask on your face.”

“Don’t have the balls, is that it?”

“What the fuck, Dad, you could like…not be an asshole? Clearly there’s part of you that does not want to die. Why wouldn’t I listen to that part of you?”

Lamar bit his tongue. He was too loud. Too heated. But Clay continued his rhythmic snoring.

“You know, it wouldn’t hurt if you were a bit more solicitous. I don’t think you grasp how huge this is. For me.” 

His father had always been a man of few words, but he had become more loquacious and blunt in his later years, like a leash had been cut. 

Lamar suspected it was the dementia. But maybe his father knew exactly what he was saying. 

“I was waking up,” his father said, loudly. Not whispering. “You startled me. It took me a second to get my bearings.”

Lamar wondered if this was a test—his father measuring how far he could push his son, how much filial duty he could wring from him. A test from hell. 

He started again, in a soft, plaintive tone. “Dad, I haven’t been able to talk to Andrea about this. I bring it up, what you want, and she puts her hands over her ears. She’s going to be so distraught.” 

“She’ll get over it,” his father said.

Meaning, she should get over it. 

Lamar was shocked by how lucid his father was. That was what made this whole experience so wrenching—his father, an engineer, a thinker, was losing his mind, but he was capable of sharp and focused thinking, and all he talked about, during those increasingly rare moments, was how much he wanted to die. 

“It’s natural to have second thoughts,” Lamar said. “I mean, there’s no do-over.”

And then, his father changed his tone. Softer, calmer. “I don’t have second thoughts. None.”

His father did not sound like an angry man losing his mind.

“Yeah, well, I’m going to need a moment myself,” Lamar said. “I’m certainly not going to do this while you’re awake. We talked about that, remember?”

“Remember? I don’t even know who you are.” Now he was practically smiling. 

So inappropriate, his father. To joke at a time like this. 

“I’m not going anywhere,” his father said. “I’ll be asleep in five minutes. This is your chance to be my knight in shining armor.” 

“You make it sound like you’re doing me a favor,” Lamar said.

His skin itched, as if ants were marching down his arms. He felt like he was going to cry, but he squeezed back his tears. He would not let his father see him cry. His father would call him weak. 

He was here to help, so why was his father making what was already excruciating even harder. Even a hint of gratefulness would make a huge difference.

But he was harsh because he was in pain. How could he expect his father to be generous on his deathbed? Lamar felt like a rabbit, caught unaware, the coyote a leap away. 

But he was the coyote, and his father the rabbit. How could he be the one to do the deed, and still feel like he was the victim? 

“I’m closing my eyes. It’s your turn, son. Just do it.”