My kitchen garbage bag leans against the back door, lumpy and smelly. Something inside shifts and the white bag tips over, settling onto my doormat like a large distended balloon. I’ve dithered around my back door for almost thirty minutes. It's not that I don't want to take the garbage out. It's that I can see through the slatted blinds that all four of my immediate neighbors are taking their garbage out. On a warm Tuesday evening in late July, weekly garbage disposal can be a semi-social event in my suburban Baltimore neighborhood. I've avoided my neighbors for weeks, skulking about my house like Miss Havisham minus the yellowed wedding dress. 

Sharon, to my left, is a retired Bethlehem Steel employee and a talker. She'll yap about anything and everything in a volume that goes up to eleven. Her words reverberate throughout the alley.

Paula, directly across, is a nurse with measured and efficient tones. She once gave me a cutting of her lush blue hydrangea that never made it into the ground, forgotten in my shed until its stems turned white from rot.

Melissa, on my right, is the gossip. In our little enclave she knows exactly what happens and to whom. 

Dave, the bearded hipster mailman, I've never quite warmed up to. He moved in next to Paula, two, possibly three, years ago. He asks intrusive questions and, when poked in the ribs by his grimacing wife, justifies his nosiness by saying I just want to get to know my neighbor. He tells bad jokes and thinks he's funnier than he actually is. He's a hearty backslapper and handshaker who spends a lot of time with the families that have kids. I suspect this comes from a place of longing, having none of his own.

This July, Dave, with the help of his contractor father, has been installing a pool in his backyard. My Jeep is repeatedly blocked in by pickup trucks and graders, forcing me to interact by either beeping my horn or flagging him down. When Dave tries to give me the day's update on the pool installation as the vehicles disperse, I cut him off with an Oh, sorry, running late! What I really want to say is Get the hell out of my way, I have somewhere to be.

Because my father has contracted the second worst staph infection in existence. It entered his bloodstream and settled around the titanium parts of his recently replaced right knee. His recovery is slowed by persistent allergic reactions to the only antibiotic that kills this particular strain. My father has had many illnesses, but this is the first time I thought he might die. 

My mother and I take turns keeping my father company at the rehab facility where he's receiving intravenous antibiotic twice a day, along with physical therapy. My mother prefers the mornings, in case a doctor or nurse practitioner drops in. I go in the afternoons, after he's eaten lunch. I stay for the 3 p.m. shift change and the dispensing of evening medications so the staff knows that someone is there, someone is watching.

Before walking to the front entrance, I often sit in my parked car taking deep breaths to buck myself up for the dreaded performance. Nick at the front desk knows me by name. We chit chat about the weather or how he saw my father walking on his own to the therapy room. He hands me a pink visitor's badge to clip to my shirt. I walk down the beige halls, taking the two rights needed to get to my father's room, smiling and saying Hi to everyone I see. Aides. Nurses. Patients. 

My father's room is near the nurses' station and I make a point to stop and say Hello, how's it going today? Richard is my favorite aide. He speaks with a Caribbean accent and regularly laments his inability to wear "short pants" at work during the brutal Maryland summers. He knows my father likes extra milk with his dinner and brings it to him without us asking. Out of the corner of my eye, I see him peek in the door as he walks up and down the hall accounting for each of his charges every time he passes by.

My favorite nurse is Donna. She corrals her abundant hair in brightly patterned scarves that rise from her head like painted clouds. She flirts with my father and teases him when he gets distracted by the Orioles game on TV while trying to swallow his meds. When there are problems—delays with the IV treatments or the wrong blood tests are run—she's the only one who seems able to fix them. On my way out, at the end of visiting hours, I stop by the nurses' station again and tell Richard and Donna to have a good night and to keep out of trouble. Donna laughs. I like you, she says. You always speak.

When August rolls around, we tentatively start counting the days until my father is released. One Tuesday I put my trash out in the afternoon, before seeing my father. My neighbor Melissa comes out of her shed as I pull the can to the alley. We joke about how we never see each other anymore. And though I know it will soon be all over the block, I finally tell her that my father has been ill, that it's been difficult, that I've been tired. She says to let her know if there's anything she can do. Oh, I'm fine, I say. The next morning, I see out the back window that my empty garbage can has already been put back in its place. A small thing, to be sure, but one less thing I have to do. The next week will be the same. And it will be the same the weeks after that. 

By early September my father is finally home. With back-to-school schedules into effect, the back alley is less congested on trash day. I notice that Dave covered his new pool early, even with plenty of warm weather left.

One Tuesday when Melissa and I pull out our cans, she tells me Dave's father has just been diagnosed with a brain tumor. He had emergency surgery at Hopkins and there will be months of radiation to come. I wake at 5 a.m. the next morning to the clang and rattle of steel cans being emptied as the garbage truck slowly rumbles down the alley. Restless, I get up, slide my feet into a pair of flip-flops, and toss on a sweatshirt over my pajamas. Going out the back door, my house alone blazes in the darkness. I cross the alley, now littered with discarded lids and empty garbage cans, to clink the lid back on Dave's can before setting it gently behind his fence into his backyard.

__________

Michele Corrigan completed her Masters in Creative Writing at Towson University, where she was a recipient of the Good Contrivance Fellowship. Her work is forthcoming in Half and One. She lives, works, and writes in Baltimore, MD.