This Time Tomorrow(70)
Sam laughed. “I mean, did I? I don’t know. We were so young. I did, of course I wanted to, here we are, it wasn’t against my will or anything. I love him. But I think that I was too young to really know what my choices were going to mean—there’s not really any way to find out what you need to find out, you know? Like, if someone is going to be a good parent, or they have some weird, fucked-up patriarchal bullshit that won’t surface until they’re forty, or if they’re terrible with money, or if they refuse to go to therapy. There should be an app for that.”
“Um, have you seen all the dating apps? It’s literally just penises. No one is talking about the patriarchy. And if someone is, you know it’s a front for all the penises that are about to follow.” Alice paused. “You and Josh are so good together, though.”
“We are. Most of the time. But we’re also both humans, you know, with different baggage about different shit. The things that drive me crazy about him might not drive someone else crazy. But it’s a choice—still. We’ve been married for fifteen years. But I still have to choose it. That doesn’t stop.”
Mavis came down the slide again, and this time, when she crunched into the leaves, she looked up and saw her mother, and took off across the lawn at top speed. Her small body flew into Sam’s arms, and Alice watched them giggle and hug. Josh was watching, too. She hadn’t thought of it as an ongoing choice, a perennial decision, and the idea of it made her both exhausted and glad. Glad that she wasn’t the only one who felt like she was always in the middle of planning her future, and exhausted that there was no way off the ride. It reminded her of when Serena’s parents—her grandparents, though she saw them so rarely that they hardly counted as such—had abruptly decided to stop vacationing in Mexico and bought a time-share in Arizona instead, where they could golf and eat Cobb salads and drink ice-cold lemonades all within the boundaries of their gated community. It had something to do with politics, but Serena didn’t like to talk about things like that, and so that was all she said, it was politics. Scottsdale is lovely all winter. And then, when Serena’s father was sick, her mother moved him into a facility with full-time care, and then Alice’s grandmother still went back to California. Did she call every day? Send postcards for the nurses to read to him? Who knew what went into people’s decisions after fifty years of marriage? Who knew what Serena’s parents’ relationship had done to their daughter’s vision of what her own should look like? Maybe Alice was alone because Leonard had always been alone.
“Come on,” Sam said. She stood up and patted Mavis on the top of the head. Alice winked at Mavis, who blinked back with her whole face. “Time to eat.”
56
Visiting hours were until 5:00, but when Alice passed London her ID at 4:45, he didn’t say a word, just slipped her a pass. Alice felt terrible. Not sick, not exactly, but slow and heavy, like she was wading through molasses. With a headache. It was disorienting—at least when she was in the guardhouse, Alice knew what to expect. She thought about it like making a mixtape the way she’d done in high school, rewinding until just the right spot and then adding something new. It had always felt so crucial to put things in the right order, to have this song after that one. But you couldn’t control how someone else would listen, whether they would care, whether they would play it over and over or whether the tape would get caught and spin out like a ball of Christmas tinsel. She could go back more easily than she could go forward. Going forward was scary, because anything could have happened. Anything could happen. Anything had been proven to be within a fairly narrow range, but still—Alice couldn’t control it.
The hospital was quieter than usual—the afternoon had turned cloudy and dark, and maybe most of the visitors had gone home early to beat the coming rain. Alice nodded polite greetings to the people she passed in the endless hallways, one leading to the next and the next, until she reached her father’s room. She expected the same scene she’d walked into so many times: her father, mostly asleep, eyes closed, and Debbie fussing about in the chair, the noise of television news blasting away in several neighboring rooms. But when Alice pulled aside the curtain, Leonard was alone and awake, his eyes open, with his head propped up on pillows. He looked at her and smiled.
“Finally.” Leonard opened his hands, like a magician revealing that something—a coin, a rabbit—had disappeared.
Alice stopped, still clutching the cheap nylon curtain. “Dad.”
Leonard smiled. “Were you expecting someone else?” His face was thin, and his stubble was gray. Leonard waved a hand in the direction of the chair. “Come into my tiny kingdom.”
“I just didn’t know you’d be up.” Alice swiftly ducked into the chair and held her arms tight across her lap like they were the safety bar on a roller coaster.
“Debbie just left. She was hoping to catch you, but you can call her later, right?” There were a few bags of fluid hanging behind him, one dripping slowly into his arm. The doctors’ and nurses’ names were on the whiteboard, and a list of all of Leonard’s medications. It was the same as it always was, only he was awake and talking and looking at her. “Good to see you, Al-pal.”
“Good to see you, too,” Alice said, which was an understatement.
“How was your day?” Leonard said. “You look a little tired.”