Final Stroke by Michael Beres

there,” Marjorie had said. “Him name’s gone and she’s still in there,” she had repeated, even after Georgiana tried to correct the pronoun.
    The word case came to mind again, conjuring up something. Not memories, but a feeling, a sense of what has to be done, a sense that things have to be examined, a sense that within him there is a passion to perform this examination. It wasn’t so much in his mind. It was in his soul. Perhaps he was Don Quixote. For some reason this idea of him being a Hispanic idealist intrigued him. Yes, a man destined to right wrongs.
    He turned on the light in Marjorie’s room only after closing the door behind him. The bed was made, a pink spread pulled up over the pillow. He began searching the room before he knew what he was looking for. Her wheelchair was there, backed against the window wall. On the deep windowsill were several framed photographs. The largest photograph was of an older man with a thick nose and bald head. The man wore a dark suit and held an award up before him. “Vietnam Veterans” was printed on the award. The man seemed on the verge of winking and Steve recalled Marjorie mimicking this look when she spoke of her husband Antonio.
    Another photograph was of the man—Antonio—and Marjorie together. A studio shot taken decades earlier, Antonio with more hair in this photograph, the faces smooth and flawless as if taken through gauze. Next to this photograph in the foldout frame was another old photo, this one of Marjorie holding a baby while Antonio touches the baby’s forehead with his thick finger. The last set of photographs were of Marjorie’s son. He could tell it was her son because of the chrono logical collage.
    A toddler in shorts who’d gotten more of his looks from his mother than his father. A little boy with a puppy. An adolescent boy playing the piano. A handsome high school boy holding a National Honor Society ribbon. A fine young man in cap and gown. A young man in shirtsleeves stooped on the ground planting a tree. No photos of him playing baseball or football. No photos of him with his father except the one in which his father touches his forehead with a thick finger while … yes, while in the process of either beginning or ending a wink. The father wanting his son to emulate him, but the rest of the photographs implying the son did not do this.
    Something Marjorie once said about father and son. Something about the good old days before the son realized who his father was. But also something else, an aside, an indication—”Antonio never able know,”—that at least some good came of her husband’s death, that she was glad her husband had died before finding out something. Something.
    In the closet Steve recognized many of the dresses Marjorie had worn to rehab. Whereas most nursing home residents wore sweats, Marjorie insisted on dresses. If she was so formal, what made her go down to the hallway outside the activity room in her nightclothes? Along with the rumor that she’d fallen because of someone’s “acci dent,” he’d heard she was in nightclothes.
    There were several pairs of shoes, but no slippers. He searched the entire closet, inside dresser drawers, and even crawled down from his wheelchair to search beneath the bed, but could find no slippers. They were furry and pink. He’d never seen them but could visualize them because Marjorie had said in rehab that she never wore her furry pink slippers outside her room because they were too informal and too slip pery to be trusted in a waxed tile hallway once you let go of the hand rail. “Like crossing ice on butter feet,” she’d said.
    A good metaphor, according to Georgiana. Buttered feet on ice. It had been a happy session, all three of them laughing it up that day. And then something turned off Marjorie’s laughter. A word. A single word had turned off Marjorie’s laughter like turning off a faucet.
    He looked to the photographs on the windowsill. The son. Some thing