And maybe that’s when you toss the rag you’ve been using to scour the cupboard into its semi-scrubbed darkness and shut the door on it. And forget about it for, literally, the rest of your life. Maybe that is the first concession, Irene’s first fuck it. An acknowledgement. I’m alone and old and for god’s sake, I can’t keep this up.

And when your daughter calls, your daughter who was born with all her faculties intact, she will ask how things are going, and you will speak as if nothing has changed. Because, really, what has? As long as the rag is in the darkness, unseen, there’s no reason you should have to think about it. So your daughter will ask all the dutiful-daughter questions she always asks and you will hear, as you often hear, the tapping keys of her computer in the background every time you open your mouth to reply. And you will briskly swat her questions away just as you have a hundred times in the past. It has always been vital for you to demonstrate to your daughter, during these conversations, that what you do every day is not hard, is certainly no chore. It is work, yes. But it is a joy to do it. This life has been a gift and you are grateful. This is your side of a very old argument you and she are having. The argument, it seems, is the subtext of every conversation you ever have.

How’s your health? Fine. How’s Kelli doing? Fine. Do you need anything? No.

Maybe that’s how it goes. It gets difficult, but you are not going to tell her that. Maybe you don’t even tell it to yourself. The doctor’s appointments, the groceries, the house, the garden. The knee gives out. Going up and down the stairs is fraught. The back stiffens. The garden becomes impossible. A jar of pickles slips, the brine seeps beneath the fridge, where no one can see it.

Fuck it.

How are you? Fine.

Kelli gets you up five nights in a row.

How’s Kelli? Fine.

The gutters are overflowing. Now the roof is leaking. The ladder’s in the garage, but what is creaky-kneed, stiff-backed, old-boned Irene Petrie going to do with a ladder? Meanwhile, the home care worker has just brought Kelli back from her walk.

Normally, you, Irene, are a stickler for the rules. You have the utmost respect for the home care workers — the no-nonsense Margot, for example — because she is of your ilk. Competent and efficient, tirelessly working, being remunerated little to nothing for her efforts. This is care as you have always understood it. Selfless. Obedient. Obedience is key, your nursing school instructor always used to say. Because we don’t have time for any nonsense around here, ladies. A hospital is no place for foolish girls who think they know best.

But as the strapping, friendly home care worker (a man — so vital and useful and strong) ushers Kelli into the foyer, you, Irene, remember again that the nursing school instructor is long dead. There hasn’t been an instructor, or supervisor or head nurse looming over you for many years. The rag is in the cupboard, unseen, and you need your gutters cleaned. Or your garden weeded. Or your back deck painted. Who knows what you needed that day, Irene. You could’ve tried to do what you’d always done — take care of everything yourself. But you would have failed at that eventually, and you knew that day was drawing close. You must’ve felt it in your water, in your swollen septuagenarian joints — how close you were to falling short.