99 Stories of God

90. Compline

Her unhappiness had a great deal of integrity to it. That is, it was pure. How could you fault it? Mom and Dad have Alzheimer’s. Her child, now fourteen, is autistic. If she could only teach him to pee without rolling his pants down to his ankles, she … it would be an accomplishment. There were no other accomplishments on the horizon.

The father was long gone. He’d promised to take the boy fishing, deep-sea fishing for marlin. You couldn’t find the sailfish anymore.

He doesn’t want to kill a marlin, she’d said, and that was pretty much the last conversation they’d had, though she remembered the father later saying something to the effect that you don’t kill fish, you catch them.

So there were two black whirlwinds (three if you counted the mother and father with the same affliction separately) barreling toward her from opposite directions as her own poor days lurched to and fro.

And all that people said to her, her friends and doctors, was:

You are entitled to some help.