Page 79 of His First Wife

We were talking loud enough for him to hear; he was maybe only ten paces from the doorway, but he didn’t move. He simply kept his eyes on the window.

“What happened?” I whispered, looking at him. Hi

s chestnut skin had developed a permanent pale ash over it. He was thin, as thin as a man who’d spent his life on the streets begging for food. His cheeks were sunken and his hair had begun to fall out in patches on the top.

“We really don’t know. He’s never had a seizure before. But last night when Emma and I tried to put him to bed, he resisted and then he started seizing. The doctors don’t know what it means or why it happened. They’re still running tests.”

“Will he be all right?”

“We have no reason to believe otherwise,” she said. “He woke up this morning like it was any other morning. Put on his robe and went to sit by the window.”

I took a step toward him and placed the flowers on a table by the bed.

“I’ll be at my station in case you need me,” Pat said behind me.

“Thank you,” I said, walking closer.

“Oh,” she said, although I thought she was gone. “There was one thing.”

I turned to look at her.

“And it was the oddest thing. Emma and I didn’t even make much of it until the seizure.”

“What happened?”

“When we were getting him to bed, he looked Emma right in her eyes and called her Jane or Janie. Is that what he called your mother? I noticed when I called that her name is Thirjane.”

“Yes,” I said. I hadn’t heard him call my mother’s nickname in over fifteen years.

“Well, we didn’t make much of it then. He says things a lot, you know,” she said. “But never really anything specific. And he never looks us in the eye. Not once in all these years. But yesterday he did.”

She nodded and turned to walk out of the room, leaving me there alone with my father for the first time. I didn’t know what to say. Where to go. I kept thinking of being rude or overstepping my bounds. It was an odd feeling. Like I was visiting someone I’d always known but had never met. I decided to sit on the bed, facing his chair.

“Dad,” I said. I tried to see if he would look at me when I said it. But he just kept his eyes on a shaking tree bark that was tapping at the window. How could he see that, hear that, but not see or hear me? I exhaled and felt tears coming. Earlier, I’d wanted so badly to be there, like I’d change something, but I already felt like I was failing. I caught a tear with my thumb as it rolled down my cheek. “I’m sorry,” I said. “I just wanted to come see you. And I bought you flowers. Daisies. They’re right over there. You can see them . . .” I sounded like a fool. What was I saying? What was I there to say? I bent over and rested my face in my hands. Here beside me was the man who gave me life. And now that everything in my life was changing, I needed to hear something from him. I didn’t need to hear that it would all be okay, but that I was making the right decisions and that this was all a part of life . . . that it was going somewhere, leading me somewhere that I needed to be.

“Christmas is the season for miracles,” I heard. I looked up to see that his face hadn’t changed. He hadn’t said a word. “I’m here,” I heard and turned to find Jamison standing in the doorway.

I turned back to my father.

“What are you doing here?”

“Tuesday,” he said. “Watermelon Jell-O. It’s his favorite.”

I wiped a tear from my eye.

“So this is the day you come?” I asked dryly.

“Well, not every week, but mostly I come on Tuesday, when I get to see him eat that Jell-O.” He came over and sat next to me on the bed. “Now, he doesn’t even look at Keisha, the nurse that brings the food, but when she places the Jell-O on his tray and steps back, he digs in like he’d been waiting on that Jell-O all week.” He looked at my father. “It’s great to see . . . see him react to something like that.” “Great,” I said, moving away from Jamison on the bed.

“I’m sorry,” he said without looking at me. “I didn’t know how to tell you about this.”

“You could’ve tried words.”

“I came for the first time before I asked you to marry me,” he continued. “I was so nervous and I just wanted someone to talk to, so I remembered where you said he was and I came over here and lied and said we were already married.” He paused and turned to me. “I asked him for permission to marry you and he said nothing. Not a word. So I just sat there and sat there and pretty soon the sun went down. Then I realized that I’d sat here all day thinking. Just like him, I was in my mind, thinking about everything that was going on in my life. I was so unsure about everything. The business. Going to med school. But when I left that night, everything was clear. I was focused. I tried to tell you I’d been here when I got home that night, but when I brought him up, you said you didn’t want to talk about it. I left it alone, but then every time I wanted to think or needed to think, I came here.”

“How do you deal with it? I mean, that he doesn’t say anything back.”

“I don’t think I come for that. I think he knows I’m here, and that means a lot to me. With my father being dead and never having had the chance to just sit and be in his presence, it’s nice to have that . . .” he stopped talking, obviously choked up, “support you need.”

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