Page 2 of Every Sweet Thing Is Bitter

Gil starts to walk toward the prairie, but I steer him toward the passenger seat. I’m about to head to his house on Maple Street when I notice the wristbands. Yellow:FALL RISK. Blue:ALLERGY, AUGMENTIN.White:CREEKSIDE NURSING HOME.

The drive to Tyre lasts twenty excruciating minutes. Gil monologues about a cherrywood table he’s building for my father, which he really built years ago. (My father never paid him for his work. Instead, he agreed to stop hurling racial abuse at him every time their paths crossed at the Tyre poolhall. The Crawfords were the only Black family in Annesville. If my father had it hisway, the town would be lily white.) Cherrywood, but strong as an oak, ha ha, little carpenter’s joke. Gil thinks I’m a teenager. He asks how school is going this year, if that old fossil Mr. Keaton is still teaching American history. I smile and nod at all the right beats, ignoring the knot my stomach has contorted itself into.

A sheriff’s cruiser is parked in front of the nursing facility. I don’t recognize the deputy chatting with the nurses, half a dozen women lined up in a gradient of scrubs from navy to robin’s egg blue, but I thank my lucky stars it’s not the sheriff. Two nurses rush to my side and guide Gil into a wheelchair. They whisk him into the building before I can say goodbye.

“Where’d you find him?” asks the deputy. His lower lip juts with chewing tobacco. When the scent wafts toward me, my craving for a cigarette intensifies, an ache in the back of my mouth like a rotten tooth ready to be pulled.

“The church in Annesville.”

“He took someone’s car,” offers a nurse with a matronly bob. The words are directed at the deputy, not me, but her defensiveness sets my teeth on edge. “It’s not the first time he’s made his way up to Annesville. Most of us,” she says, glaring at a young, curly-haired nurse, “know better than to leave our keys where Mr. Crawford can find them.”

“I’ve never had a patientstealmy car before!” the other nurse protests.

The deputy lowers himself into the cruiser. “We’ll have your car back shortly, miss. And as for the rest of you—eleven silver alerts in the county this year and they’ve all been from Creekside. Don’t make me come out here again.”

The remaining nurses nod their heads before ducking inside the building. The deputy’s threat is a feeble one. Like most of the healthcare facilities in Tillman County, Creekside has a skeleton staff with dubious qualifications. You can’t be picky out in the boondocks. Better to have an undertrained nurse than no nurse at all.

At the very least, my small act of heroism has earned me a visit with Gil. The nurse at the front desk cradles a phone against her ear with one shoulder, her fingers dancing across the keyboard in front of her. When I show her my ID, she takes a cursory glance before waving me down the hall. Her inattentiveness is welcome. I hate showing people my ID. I live in constant fear of an eagle-eyed store clerk or bartender recognizing my name. Around here, the name Providence Byrd only means trouble.

As I walk down the hallway, one of the nurses from outside recognizes me. She’s petite, brunette, cute. There’s something familiar about her—perhaps the younger sibling of a friend from school. She chews on a wad of cinnamon gum. “Did you want to check in on Gil, honey?”

I bristle at a girl younger than I am calling me honey. “He was kind of a surrogate father to me growing up.”

“Of course, honey. Let me pop in and ask his son if it’s all right.”

“His son?”

But the nurse hurries out of earshot, peeking into a room at the end of the hall. She leans through the doorway on one foot, the other extended behind her like a figure skater who has landed a perfect jump. She turns back to say something to me, but Connor comes out before her words can.

He has finally grown into his long, lean body, a far cry from the lanky teenager who invited me to his house every day after school because he knew I wasn’t safe at home. His hair is styled into cornrows and gathered into a small bun, leaving nowhere for the acne scars pocked along his cheeks and chin to hide. Last I remember, he wanted to be a teacher. With a button-up shirt and horn-rimmed glasses, he certainly looks the part now. My heart swells with pride. My childhood dreams have long slipped away, but it comforts me to know Connor didn’t suffer similar misfortune.

He offers me the greeting I least expect: a hug. I am not a hugger. Hugs are chokeholds masquerading as gestures of affection. But I power through my unease and reciprocate, allowing a fragment of my resentment to melt away. While his father showed me extraordinary kindness during my stint in prison, Connor sent me just two letters before heading to Indiana for college, at which point frat parties and football games took precedence over an incarcerated childhood friend. I understand it and, at the same time, selfishly, I don’t. I’ve never been able to cope with the pain of being forgotten.

“It’s the third time this summer he’s gotten up to Annesville,” says Connor when we separate, like we’re picking up a conversation from five minutes ago. He takes off his glasses and scrubs his hands over his eyes. “Like he always used to say, the lunatics are running the asylum here.”

The nurse who fetched Connor glares at him from behind a cart of medical supplies. She brushes past him a little too close, just near enough to bump his shoulder.

“What is it?” I ask.

“Alzheimer’s.”

“But’s he’s only …”

“Sixty-seven,” he supplies. “It’s early onset.”

“God, I’m so sorry, Connor.”

We peer into the room at the same time. Without the handful of photos arrayed across the dresser, you could never tell who lived there. The room is all but devoid of personal touches. My heart breaks to think Gil will die in this husk, his only child the last family left to help him cross over to the other side. Gil sits upright in his bed with a plate of ketchup-soaked meatloaf before him, carving the meat with a spoon instead of the plastic knife they’ve provided. Something inside of me breaks, real as a snapped rib. My resolve to visit him breaks with it.

Connor leans against the wall. “I came to visit at Christmas. I knew something wasn’t right. It got worse so fast. Damn nearcut his hand off with his old carpentry saw while I was getting groceries one day. I had to move him in here, then I moved back so I can …”

“I’m sorry,” I say again.

“I’m sorry too.”

“For what?”

“Your mom.”

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