His First Wife (24 page)

O
nly a few months ago, whenever I got into my car, it was to go to the store to buy something for the house, my closet, or even Jamison's closet. No doubt about it, I had to have my pocketbook and wallet with me every time, because plastic would be needed to complete the exchange. These things I'd buy made my world look nice and made me feel good. All of that changed in October when I left the house at five in the morning without my purse for the first time. Now I went where my needs, my dreams, my desires, my heart carried me, and with each new destination, I felt closer to touching who I really was. While my life had been steadily pulled apart since that drive to Coreen's, a new one was being built up, and while it was scary and not yet what I completely wanted, I already felt better for the journey. And I hadn't bought anything!

I woke up with my mind fixed on one thing. I'd always heard people in church say they'd woken up with their minds “stayed on Jesus.” Well, my mind was “stayed” on a man, but not Jesus; it was my father. Since I was young, I'd often thought of him in the morning, especially after having a dream from my childhood where he was either present or noticeably not present, but the thoughts would usually fade by the time I got to the breakfast table. So instead of sitting and thinking about my father, I decided to try to let it go by following my morning ritual: I showered and dressed myself quickly before Tyrian woke up, bathed and dressed him, and then headed down to the kitchen to meet Aunt Luchie for coffee and these homemade biscuits she made that were wreaking havoc on my hips. But there, at the table, my mind was still on my father. I kept remembering times we'd shared—when he insisted on putting together my first bicycle and it fell apart the moment I sat on it, the way he'd hugged me that afternoon, picking me up off the driveway and saying it would be okay. I also wondered what it was like to be in his mind, closed in from all sides. Earlier that year when I went to see him with my mother for his birthday, he didn't even look at us. He just kept grunting and saying something about a deer in the woods he needed to find. He looked completely lost, worse that year than he'd been the year before, but then that was how it always was.

“You okay?” Aunt Luchie asked, putting another biscuit on my saucer that I didn't need. “You seem upset.”

“I just had this dream about my dad. Can't seem to get it out of my head.”

“I see,” she started. “He's been on your mind then?”

“Yes. After the whole thing with Jamison, he's been on my mind a lot.”

“Well, your brain must be calling on your body to do something.”

“What?”

“Only your know that. It's not my brain that's speaking.”

“It's probably just me being upset about Jamison,” I said dismissively.

“Seems to me that if your brain was upset about Jamison, then you'd dream about him and not your father.”

“Fine,” I said, rolling my eyes at her game. “So you're saying I had a dream about my father, because my brain wants me to go see him?”

“Well, if you think your brain said all that, then it's fine with me,” she said innocently. “But if you do decide to do so I'll—”

“. . . watch the baby for you,” we finished together.

“I know,” I said. “I know.”

 

 

He'd been staying in the same room, down the same dark hallway at the back of the Day Star Nursing Home. It was a lovely place really. While most of the residents were suffering from some form of Alzheimer's or dementia and there was a clinic on-site, the place had a chic resort-feel with fresh flowers in vases, newly polished marble floors, and chrome nurse stations that resembled minibars. There were other nursing homes in the area, but my mother wanted no expense spared when she was selecting a place where she'd thought my father would stay only for a while until he somehow magically awoke and called her name to come pick him up. She hoped he'd see how much she cared when he found his mind, but that hope only lasted about nine months until it was clear that he wouldn't be coming home anytime soon.

“Ms. Taylor?” a nurse called as I approached the station closest to his room. She was a short and round, middle-aged woman, who had a head full of dirty blond hair that was unfortunately showing at least two inches of black at the roots. I couldn't remember her name, although I'd seen her many times as I walked down this hallway. She hadn't looked as confused as I'd thought she would; in fact, she looked as if she'd been expecting me.

“Yes,” I said, holding the daisies I'd purchased to put in his room.

“I'm glad you finally got here,” she said. She came from around the station and began walking with me. “He's much better now, but this morning—”

“What are you talking about?” I felt my heart beating.

“We've been calling your mother.”

“Something happened?” I began walking faster, nearly running.

“No, he just, well, he had a seizure,” she said, walking quickly beside me. “We left a message. I thought you knew.”

“No, no,” I said, counting the doors as I walked to be sure I went into the right one. I'd been doing this since I was a child. I hated walking into the wrong room, seeing some sick man I didn't know connected to a bunch of machines, lonely and lost.

“But he's okay now,” she went on. “Back to normal. We have it under control.”

I turned into the room to find my father sitting in a chair beside his bed, facing the window. I stopped on the threshold frozen in my tracks and put my hand over my heart in relief.

“See,” the nurse said nervously. I could tell she'd felt bad that I'd gotten the news from her.

“Oh, I just . . . I just thought,” I said.

“It's okay,” she put her hand on my shoulder and I could see her nametag: PAT. “We just had to inform you.”

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. His 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.”

I wanted so badly to hold him and hug him, but something in me wouldn't let that happen. I just looked back at my father and we sat there in silence, all three of us, together for about thirty minutes. It was one of those moments where I couldn't, didn't, want to say anything. I was tired of being sad and angry and just done with everything that was going on. Jamison. My father. There was nothing else to be said. I just needed more time to think. I wondered what I'd done wrong in all these years. I was just now realizing that I'd abandoned my father, denied my true feelings about being without him for so long. What else was I hiding from myself?

Jamison and I left the nursing home together. I kissed my father and promised I'd be back the next day for what Jamison called Granola Wednesday. Then, he said, it was funny to watch my father refuse to eat granola. He'd put it in his mouth himself and then spit it out.

“Can I come see Tyrian to night?” Jamison asked after walking me to my car.

“Sure,” I replied. “I don't think he has any plans.”

“Great.”

“And can you bring my thick bathrobe from the bathroom,” I asked. It was getting colder outside and Aunt Luchie's old house had an icy draft.

“No,” he said surprising me.

“Excuse me?” I asked, getting into the car.

“I said, ‘No.'”

“Jamison,” I said, “I don't have time to play games with you.” I tried to close the car door but he wouldn't let me.

“I need you to understand that I fully intend on getting you back, Kerry,” he said. “Whatever you want. Whatever you need. I'm going to give it to you. But I want you back. I want you home.”

“You can't have that. You already made your decision.”

“Yeah,” he said, “and it was on a cold February morning when I agreed to distract a girl at a Spelman dance for my best friend.”

“Stop it,” I said, pulling at the car door.

“I fucked it up. I know I fucked it up, but I didn't do this all by myself,” he said. And then we were both crying. I still had my hands on the door, but my fingers unraveled slowly.

“There's so much shit we deal with every day . . . from everyone around us that sometimes it seems impossible for us to just be. To just be in love.” He pulled me out of the car and into his arms. “I wonder sometimes, Kerry, that if we'd met in another lifetime without all of the stuff would we be okay. If I could love you as much as I could and you could do the same and no one could come between us. You know what I'm talking about?”