The first five years of George’s life had ranked among the happiest in Carol Anne’s life. He had been her little miracle after more than a year of trying. Her husband Ed was eager to be a father. Perhaps a little too eager on some days, but he was firing more blanks than a Hollywood western set. Although he told the boys down at the Lumberyard that it had been her fault. 

George really brought the house to life. She spent her nights rocking him, brushing the tassels of brown hair out of his little eyes, while Ed slept downstairs on the couch. “Hard to get any shut eye in this damn house,” he would complain. George was such a small thing she decided, a bit like a church mouse. “Lil Mouse,” she murmured affectionately.

They say time flies when you’re having fun, and those first few years seemed to skip at a blistering pace. George grew from a little baby to a precocious little boy, who would tug at his mama’s dress and follow her around the house. It was hard to get any chores done, much less supper on the stove, with the thousand questions he slung her way every day. Still, when Carol Anne tucked George in bed at night, her heart beamed. He was her little boy, her little miracle that could.

And then he wasn’t. The diagnosis struck them on a random day. When George appeared weak and collapsed while chasing the neighbor’s hound, Carol Anne thought he just had the flu. But the local clinic quickly sent her to the emergency room, and that hospital threw its arms up in defeat and transported George to the state hospital over three hours away. It would be several more months, countless more doctors visits, before a doctor finally told them the bad news. George had a degenerative neuromuscular disorder that was so rare that the nurse on call handed her a pamphlet and a copy of the New Testament. 

“Is there a cure?” Carol Anne asked, and when there wasn’t, the family stopped going to doctors altogether. Why bother trying to figure out exactly what it was if there was no fix for it? Carol Anne told George, “It’ll just break yours and your mama’s hearts.”

George’s legs were the first to go. By the time he was 10, he was wheelchair bound and couldn’t walk except for short distances. Those distances became shorter and shorter as he got older until they stopped altogether. At least then, he could still move his arms. He would spend afternoons alone in the garden painting blue jays and robins as they flew down to the bird feeder. His papa, Ed, built a wheelchair ramp with some leftover lumber his boss, Gerry, let him have instead of a bonus. George would stare up at the sky and wish that he could fly too. 

By the time he was 18, George couldn’t even feed himself anymore, much less push himself. They had fancy ones that would allow George to move around with his mouth. But Carol Anne explained to her son sadly. “We just don’t have that kind of money, George. Don’t your daddy work hard enough to keep this roof? Tell me where you want to go anyway?” She asked him.

“Nowhere, mama,” he’d reply. By that time, George depended on Carol Anne for everything, just like when he was a baby. Except she didn’t brush the curls out of his eyes and call him her pride and joy. Her angular face had only grown sharper and more creased with age. Her hair was now more silver than gray, and she had sacrificed the best years of her life for nothing, it would seem.

When George turned 23, he could no longer talk. Carol Anne told him that they couldn’t afford a digital soundboard that would give him back his voice. So he spoke with clicks of his tongue instead. His papa, Ed, had taught him Morse code, cracking open an old Army field manual. He hung a hand-carved wooden chart on the wall for George to study. George didn’t talk much when Carol Anne was around. She said he sounded like a rodent chewing on wires inside the wall and that it made her skin crawl.

So George didn’t talk much at all. They rarely had visitors. The family lived out past the kudzu line in a house that had been Ed’s daddy’s before, and the two had hoped that George might one day give it to his kids. But that hope seemed much too far gone these days. On most days, George sat in the wheelchair in his room, watching television. Or he would watch a mold spot slowly grow on the ceiling. It had started as a water droplet several months prior. “Leaky roof. God damn good for nothing Ed,” Carol Anne had sworn at her husband and to herself.

These days, his mama and papa didn’t take him downstairs much. “Far too much of a hassle,” she explained to him delicately. “You wouldn’t want your mama or daddy to break their necks, would you? Besides, where would you go? Got a hot date I don’t know about?” And then she would laugh until tears formed in her eyes. Then she would cry.

But one day, Carol Anne came dancing up the stairs. She was singing show tunes. Stopping in George’s room, it was the happiest he had ever seen her. “I have wonderful, wonderful news,” Carol Anne exclaimed to George. “A company reached out to us. Renovatio. And you’re going to walk again, my boy,” she told him through clenched breath. George felt his heart flutter for the first time in years. “We may be in debt up to our eyeballs. For the rest of our lives, but you’re going to walk, George.”

Carol Anne didn’t just put out a second mortgage on the house. She put out a triple mortgage and drained their bank account of every penny, including the rainy day fund in case Ed’s truck broke down. Renovatio’s slogan was simple: “You upgrade your phone. Why not your life?” A man with a funny accent and a white lab coat came to the house. George had expected there would be tests for a procedure like this. But the man simply drew some blood and patted George on the head. George clicked back, Thank you, but the man just shook his head.

The days building up to the big moment stretched achingly on. Carol Anne danced around in the house in a jubilee. Even Ed, usually stoic or downtrodden, managed a smile. And for George, he couldn’t wait to be dancing alongside his mama. The years spent in the chair had atrophied his muscles until his limbs were barely bigger than toothpicks. George imagined they would fix that with this miracle treatment.

But the big day arrived, and no one came and got George. He lay in bed that day in the darkness of his room with not even the TV to keep him company. George could hear his mama and papa walking past his room and down the stairs. He clicked his mouth, signaling that he was ready to go. But no one came and got him. Instead, they went out the door, and he heard the pickup truck start.

Did they forget him? Did something happen? Hours stretched by. George struggled to push his arms and legs to move. He strained, pushing his brain against his skull. Just barely, a couple of inches, George managed to move his hands before collapsing back in a pool of sweat.

Finally, as the sun was going down and George braced a night of darkness, he heard a truck pull up. His parents walked inside. Carol Anne’s voice was distinctive, and she was practically yelling to the attic. “Isn’t he so precious, Ed? Just like how I remember,” she cooed. “My little angel, my little mouse.”

What was she talking about? What was going on? Then the door creaked open, and Carol Anne flipped on the light. She was holding a bundle of blankets tightly in her hands. “George, we have a new member of our family I want you to meet,” Carol Anne told him.

George could just barely make out a baby asleep inside the blankets. It looked just like he did in the faded photos from when he was a baby. George clicked his tongue hastily, What is going on?

A shiver broke down Carol Anne’s back. “Don’t take that tone. Doesn’t he look just like you? I want you to meet Georgie,” she said, leaning down with the baby. “That Renovatio really is something else. They keep their word, I tell you that. He’s just like you, but better. They took out all the bad stuff. No more disabilities, no sir. I told you that you were going to walk.”

George frantically clicked his tongue, demanding to know what she meant. But he disturbed the baby, making it cry out. Carol Anne shook her head angrily and left in a huff. Please, George begged, but she turned out the lights. 

If George felt neglected before, then he was a downright ghost in the days, weeks, months, and years that followed. Carol Anne would leave him sitting for most of the day in his room, checking on him just periodically. That’s if he was lucky. On the unlucky days, she forgot to get him out of bed, forgot to turn the TV on, and he would just lie there. His catheter would overflow, spilling on the floor. The feces would stick his diaper to his thighs until they were raw.

When Carol Anne found him like this, she would cuss him out. “Don’t I have enough on my plate without you stinking the house up with shit?” she’d scream.

Once, his feeding tube got clogged, and Carol Anne didn’t feel like fixing it. “I’m sure you can go one night without supper. It will make a man out of you,” she told him. But it wasn’t just supper, it was breakfast and lunch too. George fell into a deep depression and dreamed frequently about flinging himself from the top steps. In his spare time, he worked to push his arms, which had hardened like stone. If he could just reach the wheels.

It’s something that his mother would egg on. “Aren’t you tired, George?” She would say. “20 long years is a long time to suffer like you have. Wouldn’t you be better just passing on to someplace much better? You don’t have to hold on any longer for your dear mama. I have Georgie now to keep me company.”

Once, she picked up a pillow and held it over George’s face. George thought that she would smother the life from his body. But she removed the pillow, collapsing in tears. “Can’t put a spot like that on my soul,” she said. 

Occasionally, Carol Anne would bring Georgie to visit with George. “Doesn’t he look just like you but better, George?” She asked. George frequently heard Georgie in the house. First, it was his cries throughout all hours of the day, and then his laughter. Years passed by like this, and Georgie grew into a little boy that ran through the house. He would tug at his mama’s dress and sing songs late in the evening and stand at the door waiting on his papa to come home from work at the Lumberyard.

It was on a summer day when Georgie was five that Carol Anne was cleaning the kitchen. Georgie was pretending to be a mountain climber. “Hiya, mama,” he yelled, running past her. She shook her head and smiled. Carol Anne was cleaning the dishes, listening to the sounds of Georgie run up and down the stairs.

That’s when it happened. A loud yelp and a crash. “Georgie!” Carol Anne yelled, running to see what had happened. She found him lying at the bottom. His neck was bent like a snapped magnolia limb, and his eyes were fluttering but open. George sat in his wheelchair at the top of the stairs. He was quiet, silently watching her as she screamed. 

The next few months passed by in a blur for Carol Anne. Georgie lived, but he severed his neck. Doctors broke the news to her that he was paralyzed from the neck down and would never walk again. They suggested a specialist in Birmingham for treatment. 

It was raining when Carol Anne brought Georgie home. Ed carried him up the stairs, placing him in a wheelchair. The young child had a feeding tube installed and glanced at George as Ed pushed him by. Carol Anne paused at the room of her eldest. George sat in the chair, his mouth agape. He clicked his tongue repeatedly at her. 

I see the resemblance now.