By Seph Murtagh.
It’s Christmas Day and they are gathered in the living room when Brother #3 asks what is that plant, the plant on the table, the plant with the brown leaves; and Tired Father says those leaves aren’t brown, they’re red, that’s a poinsettia, can you see the red asks Tired Father, turning to Brother #1; and Brother #1 says he can see that one part of the poinsettia is darker than the other, but looking at the leaves he can’t tell which part of the poinsettia is red, maybe it’s just a trick of the light; and Brother #2 says he thinks the darker leaves near the top of the poinsettia might be red even though honestly they look kind of brown to him; and Brother #3 says it’s easier to identify colors when he’s looking at things he already knows, like the stocking by the fireplace, he knows that’s red, or the blanket on the lap of the Mother Who is Dying of Liver Cancer, which has a red-and-black checkered pattern that is familiar to him even though he doesn’t know what to call it, it’s a kind of fall pattern, at any rate he knows that’s red, whereas with poinsettias, he’s really not familiar with them and he doesn’t know what color they’re supposed to be; which raises an interesting point says Brother #1, it’s not like he goes through life constantly asking himself is this green, is this red, is this orange, but then he’ll be in a situation where he’ll get a color wrong and people will learn he’s colorblind and they’ll start doing the thing where they point to random objects and ask what color is this, what color is this, and then all of a sudden he feels this terrible insecurity about colors, it’s not the colors themselves he hates, it’s the social pressure to classify them; although how often is it really a problem asks Brother #3, he wouldn’t go so far as to call it a disability, more like an occasional inconvenience; he’s not sure says Brother #2, it’s kind of a pain for him at work, the landscapers he sells to are finicky about their designs and he can’t tell the difference between purple and blue flowers; for hunting too it’s a problem says Brother #1, he can’t follow a blood trail to save his life; better make sure you have a good shot then says Brother #2; his problem is pink and gray says Brother #3; that’s a weird one says Brother #2; yes says the Mother Who is Dying of Liver Cancer, the first sign of a problem was when Brother #3 colored the walls of a castle in his coloring book pink, there was also the time Brother #1 claimed his teacher at school had green hair, do you remember that she says to Tired Father; but Tired Father has fallen asleep on the couch; someone nudge him please she says; deuteranopia that’s what it’s called says Brother #3; is what what’s called asks Brother #2; is what pink-grey colorblindness is called says Brother #3, he just googled it; whereupon Brother #2 asks is that different from the red-green kind because for him the grass is orange especially after it’s raining and the sunlight is shining on it; for him, too, the grass is orange says Brother #1, kind of rough playing soccer as a kid and he couldn’t see the orange sidelines and the whole team would be shouting at him while he tried to do a throw-in; what are the odds of all three of you says Tired Father (having been nudged awake now by Brother #2) they’ve got to be one in a million, maybe one in a billion; they say it’s a sign of intelligence says the Mother Who is Dying of Liver Cancer; maybe there is an evolutionary advantage to it says Brother #3, like isn’t that how evolution works, a mutation that turns into an advantage; hard to see what the advantage of colorblindness would be says Brother #2; best of all as a kid were the tests where he could see things the other kids couldn’t see says Brother #1, like a little figure eight would show up in the circle of dots and only he could see it; although those tests were the first time he knew something was wrong with him says Brother #2, before then he just saw colors and nobody asked for their names and the world was fine; and hearing this, Brother #1 looks at the Mother Who is Dying of Liver Cancer with her hair in the braids that the hospital has done up, and she’s holding a little plastic sippy cup that she’s drinking out of with a yellow straw, and in the low flickering light of the living room it gives her a childish appearance, and instantly his mind is rocketed back to his first memory of her, he was two, feeding the squirrels through the kitchen window of a rented bungalow in Vermont, and his mother’s hands were pressed against his shoulders to keep him from toppling backwards into the sink, and there were no names for things, no words even, just movements and sounds and flashes of light and bright colors, the small furry creatures poking their snouts through the window and sniffing at the breadcrumbs in his hands, and his mother pressing him forward, gently; this is the morning he remembers, suddenly, right then, looking at her, and even though all present circumstances would seem to deny it; even though the cancer has rampaged so thoroughly through her body that her time on earth is reckoned in weeks; even though his mind is stunned by the chilling presentiment that someday it will happen to him too, this decrepitude, this slide into darkness; even despite the ammonia in her liver and the failed chemotherapy treatments and the paralyzed limb that has immobilized her in a wheelchair; even despite the Sara Stedy sit-to-stand lift that took him and his father four hours to assemble, his father barking instructions at him the entire time, the Sara Stedy half-assembled on the floor beneath them and the sight of his father yelling and waving the instruction booklet in the air reminding him of how it was when he was a kid and he would help his father install drywall or rake leaves or stack firewood, and suddenly he has a premonition of how it will be when his mother is gone, the irony of striving his entire life to escape this figure who is standing beside him shouting that’s the wrong-sized screw, but it won’t matter, as soon as his mother is dead he will come crashing back into his father’s orbit, so that when he finally does locate the correct screw and tighten it into the Sara Stedy what he feels is not pleasure at completing the task but a sense that the screw is a metaphor for a metaphysical tightening that is binding him to his father forever; even despite the word commode his father keeps saying, as in, his mother needs her commode, it’s time for her to use her commode, so that finally, thinking his father is squeamish and using an archaic word as a euphemism, he bursts out laughing and asks him why he keeps saying that, and his father replies because that’s what it’s fucking called, and he googles it only to discover that, yes, that’s what it’s called; even though he knows it’s coming any day now, the moment when his phone will ring and he will answer and his father will break the news in a voice grown thin and tinny and high like he has sucked the helium out of a balloon, and not knowing what to say to his father, he’ll mutter sorry into the phone, stupidly, as if it’s a distant relative who has just died and not his own mother; even now at this late hour it does not seem impossible to him that he’ll be with her there again, in that morning of bright colors that have no names.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Seph Murtagh is a writer living in Ithaca, New York. His essays have appeared in Socrates on the Beach, the Missouri Review, and the Mid-American Review. You can find him on Twitter @sephmurtagh.
