Family Matters by Rohinton Mistry

forgotten door moaning in the wind.
    They took away the soiled sheets and surveyed the mess. Coomy said it would have been less severe if only she had remembered the rubber sheet. “We still have it. I should have put it under him, the way Mamma used to do for Roxana when she was a baby.”
    “The mattress must be removed,” said Jal. “We’ll give him the one from Mamma’s room.”
    It was hung over the balcony railing and given a brief wash, then left in the sun, while Jal muttered it was obvious: this extra trouble was the result of the commode.
    “What do you mean?”
    “Pappa’s pain is so intense when he gets up for the commode, he preferred taking a chance with his gas.”
    “I don’t believe it. A little bit might slip out with gas, not such a huge puddle.”
    The next instant, she broke down weeping, saying it was too much for her, she no longer knew what to do, how to take care of Pappa, and now with Phoola gone, the burden of the housework was on her head as well. Looking after Pappa had been hard enough when he was not bedridden, and the things she had to deal with, the spatters in the toilet bowl, the mess in the bathroom sink, his dentures staring at her every morning and every night.
    “No one has helped me all this time, not you, not Roxana, not Yezad. Now … I don’t know … it’s so depressing, and difficult …”
    Her sobbing frightened Jal. She was supposed to be the solid pillar, he the crumbling type. He tried to correct the reversal right away.
    “You’re just tired, Coomy,” he soothed her. “Come, sit down.” He took her hand and led her to the sofa. “This work is new to us, and new for Pappa too. But it will get easier as we get used to it.”
    She listened gratefully to his comforting words; they were restoring her. She agreed to go to the commode shop tomorrow morning. “I’ll get a bedpan in exchange.”
    He suggested she stop by the Chenoy place too, tell Roxana about the accident. Perhaps she and Yezad would be of some help if they knew.
    She dismissed the idea. The help they’d give would be no help – just useless advice and criticism. She didn’t want a rush of Chenoys here, spending evening after evening telling her how to nurse Pappa, especially that Yezad. Besides, she had no energy to be their hostess, offering tea and cold drinks between bedpan and basin.

    Jal missed another morning at the share bazaar. He spent the time praying Pappa would hold tight till Coomy returned. And when she did, he welcomed the bedpan and urinal as though they were the vessels of salvation.
    But the optimism mustered around these new utensils was a meagre thing, ending abruptly at their first trial. While the back-breaking labour of lifting Nariman to the commode was eliminated, the rest remained as repelling as before.
    It was ridiculous, said Coomy, that with so much technology, scientists and engineers still hadn’t invented a less disgusting thing than a bedpan. “Who needs mobile phones and Internet and all that rubbish? How about a high-tech gadget for doing number two in bed?”
    They continued to cope, poorly, with the excretions and secretions of their stepfather’s body, moving from revulsion to pity to anger, and back to revulsion. They were bewildered, and indignant, that a human creature of blood and bone, so efficient in good health, could suddenly become so messy. Neither Nariman’s age nor his previous illnesses had served to warn them. Sometimes they took it personally, as though their stepfather had reduced himself to this state to harass them. And by nightfall, the air was again fraught with tension, thick with reproaches spoken and silent.
    They took him his dinner on a tray and handed him his dentures in the glass. “Can you do one thing for me?” asked Nariman.
    “We’re doing everything we can for you,” said Coomy.
    “Yes,” he smiled appeasingly. “My dentures are smelling, I haven’t been able to clean them for five days.”
    Snatching