Page 56 of Watching You
His father was looking at him now. He rarely made eye contact any more, so much so that some days Karl forgot he was alive at all. It was more like looking after a large and unwieldy houseplant.
‘All right, there, Dad?’ Karl asked. ‘Is the soup tasty? I made sure it wasn’t too hot. You just relax and let me do all the heavy lifting.’
Like I’ve done ever since Ma died, he thought, but he kept his smile in place and filled the spoon again. He could have sworn his father was trying to say something as he approached with the next spoonful, but his father hadn’t spoken a word for at least a year so those vocal cords weren’t going to be any use to him at that particular moment.
‘Here you go, Dad, in comes the aeroplane.’
His father’s mouth was stubborn, but it couldn’t resist for long. The soup went in, Karl wiped the dribble that escaped, and just like clockwork, his father began to choke. Karl gently but firmly held his nostrils closed with one hand and pushed his chin up to keep his mouth mostly sealed with the other. Not completely shut, because it helped to have his father pulling the soup down with some air, just as long as he couldn’t spit it back out.
On the television, a young couple was looking for a second home in Spain and were being shown a place that was more a hutch than an apartment, but nonetheless, they were playing their part and making all the right noises. His father was doing the same.
‘Oh no,’ Karl said softly. ‘Are you struggling with that, Dad? Try not to fight it. That would make it worse.’
He gave a bellowing sputter, then his stomach heaved and he swallowed. Karl released the pressure on his nose.
‘Got some of that one down the right hole, did you? Good for you. You’re not full yet though, surely.’
Karl got as much of the soup on the spoon as he could, pulled his father’s lips open and poured it in.
‘How would you feel about coming with me to see our mystery property?’ the presenter asked.
‘Yes please!’ Karl responded. He threw down the spoon, gripped his father’s cheeks with one hand and pinched his nose with the other and watched as he breathed in the life-threatening miniature chunks of carrot. ‘I’d like to see it. What do you think it’ll be like, Dad? I’m guessing, access to a slightly shitty pool, with a kitchen you couldn’t swing a cat in and a bedroom that only needs a bit of TLC to make it their dream home!’
His father’s body convulsed on the bed, heaving up and down, and Karl kept the liquid in his mouth. There was an odd gargling noise at the back of his throat, like that coffee advert his mother had hated with a passion, something to do with people in a kitchen pretending to make posh coffee with one of those machines but really making all the noises themself. That was it. His father was a posh coffee machine.
‘Won’t be a minute!’ Karl called in a falsetto, suitably posh English accent. ‘I’ll bring the coffee through in a jiffy!’
His father’s body was writhing now, moving more than it had for months. It was amazing what residual fight the human form could store. There was a time when it would all have been too much for him, too horrible and traumatic, but Karl wasn’t scared of dead bodies any more.
‘Did you not want to come and watch, Ma?’ he yelled in the general direction of the hallway. ‘This was your idea, after all! Bit squeamish, then. Not your usual cocky bitch self today!’
His father had stopped moving and Karl hadn’t even noticed. He released him gently, mindful that there couldn’t be any bruising or, God forbid, scratches. Nothing to arouse the suspicion of the paramedics.
‘You did ever so well,’ Karl told him. ‘Just one more little thing to do, then we’ll get you taken care of, and not by that monster, Waterfall. I won’t let anyone cut you open, don’t you worry. It just needs the cherry on the cake.’
Karl bit off a tiny section of bread and chewed it, making it both moist but claggy with his own saliva before inserting it into the end of the straw. He opened his father’s mouth, slid the straw oh-so-carefully into his throat, took the deepest breath he could, and blew hard. There was no way of knowing where the bread ball had ended up, but it was a nice touch.
‘Oh my God, we love it. It’s exactly what we’d dreamed of!’ the couple were exclaiming over the cockroach haven mystery property. ‘I just don’t know if we can afford it.’
‘You can’t, and you won’t,’ Karl said. ‘Right, let’s sit you up. Don’t want anyone thinking I fed you soup while you were on your back, do we?’
He got his father into a more seemly position, threw the soup and bread onto the floor as if they’d been spilled in the panic of the moment, then opened the curtains and unlocked the door once more. Finally, he turned down the television and made the call.
‘Please, it’s my father, he was choking and now he’s not breathing,’ he sobbed as the call handler asked him what his emergency was. ‘Ambulance. Please hurry. I’m all alone.’
He managed to actually cry as he gave out the address, which he hadn’t foreseen. Then an ambulance was on its way and he was to stay on the phone, as instructions were given to turn his father onto his side and so on and so forth.
Karl remembered to move the straw in the nick of time, shoving it into the dishwasher as the doorbell went. The paramedics hadn’t wasted any time, and he was glad he hadn’t called them earlier. Imagine if they actually managed to save the old man?
As they walked into the house and did all they could to revive his father, Karl noticed his mother plodding down the stairs and peering into the lounge with all the grace of a teenage boy trying to sneak a peek at his older brother’s porn stash.
It was just him then, he realised. No one else could see her. Her dressing gown was flapping open to reveal a filthy nightie that might have come straight out of the grave with her, crusted in filth and crawling with insects. No way could the paramedics have seen that and walked out of there with their sanity intact.
‘I’m so sorry,’ one of them said. ‘There’s nothing more we can do for your father. He died before we arrived and can’t be resuscitated. It looks like he’s been in physical decline for a while. Is that right?’
Karl nodded and pressed a shaking hand to his mouth. ‘Are you sure there’s nothing you can do?’
‘I’m afraid not. Do you have a family doctor?’
