Always the Last to Know(19)

And meanwhile, John just wouldn’t die. No sir. He kept on keeping on, leaving his daughters in misery, leaving me to stare at him as he slept in the hospital bed. For fifty years, I’d accepted his flaws. I knew I wasn’t perfect. I knew I had to work at life, not one of those people like Sadie, who seemed to have people falling into her lap. Yes, I wanted to divorce him. I deserved a divorce.

John, on the other hand, had been sneaking around, becoming an athlete at seventy-five, having sex with another woman for God knew how long, all the while wearing me down with his neglect until I felt like a ghost in my own marriage.

How dare he find happiness with another woman? How dare he leave me in charge of him now, this brain-damaged old man with a catheter?

Honest to Pete, Caro was right. If I thought I could get away with it, I’d put a pillow over his face and smother the old fool.





CHAPTER SEVEN





John


Something is wrong with his wife’s face. It’s too soft. Saggy. Her eyes aren’t gentle anymore.

He thinks she might be . . . not sick, that’s not right, but something like that.

The years have rushed by in a river. There’s an old man living in his room. John isn’t sure who he is. His wife doesn’t notice. It’s not his grandfather, but he looks familiar. He’d ask his wife, but he can’t make words come out.

She smells nice. Not the way she used to, but the smell makes him feel safe, and safe is the best feeling, even if she doesn’t stay near him very long. Those ungentle eyes. Shark eyes, flat and cold when they should be . . . different. He wishes she would sit against him and put her head on his shoulder. He wishes she would let him hold her hand longer, but if he does manage to grab it, she gives it a firm pat and pulls away. If he had words, he would tell her he loves her, but words are gone now, and hearing comes and goes.

There is another woman who is here quite a lot. She talks and sits with him and sometimes gives him food. Her eyes are the same color as his wife’s but not flat. He knows her, but he can’t remember her. Some children come and go, but John doesn’t know them. They make a lot of noise and fling themselves around, and they’re scary . . . so fast and strong. Their mother is another someone he used to know. She talks to him in a brisk, kind way. Maybe she’s someone he works with at the . . . the . . . the place you go in the day to make money.

There is a big man here, too. John doesn’t know him, but the big man helps him and talks to him. John has been hurt somehow. He thinks it was a car accident. His legs must be broken, because walking is so hard, and his knees hurt.

John knows he’s been . . . changed. He’s not sure how.

Trying to figure these things out is too hard. If he thinks or listens too much, his head hurts, and he falls asleep. He just wants to be outside, working in the garden, but when he looks out the window, summer is gone. John doesn’t know what month it is or what he’s supposed to do today. The people who make him do things—the women, the big man, his wife—come and go. Maybe they tell him what to do, but he’s not sure.

Other people come and go. A man with strange words that John can’t understand, but who hugs him and smiles. Another person he should know. A woman with long hair twisted into ropes. She is not here for him, he knows, but she comes anyway because she is . . . she is that way of being when a person is kind for no reason. Her voice makes him happy and sleepy. Like warm rain.

There is the man who was a boy but isn’t a boy anymore who comes, first to the place for sick people, then to the other place where his warm-rain friend was, and now to his grandfather’s house. Sometimes, he brings a baby. He is a father, this boy who is grown up now. They have dark hair, father and son, and the young man lets John hold the baby, who laughs.

Images flash through his head too fast to make sense—a girl with blond hair and freckles with that dark-haired boy, and colors, and John once held her hand as they crossed a street in a place with many lights. Once she cried because of that dark-haired boy who’s now a man.

Then, there’s nothing. Nothing but emptiness and gray and the horrible feeling of loss. Time passes, swirling past him, knocking him down, pulling him out into the sea of puzzling memories, and there’s nothing he can hold on to, so he falls asleep, and sleep is what he likes best.



* * *



— —

His wife comes in. Her name is sure in his mind. Barbara. His Barb. He’s not sure why they’re not in the little red house anymore. She says words, and he looks at her, smelling her good smell, loving her, wishing she wasn’t always leaving. But she is. She does.



* * *



— —

Then it’s later, or another day, and John can’t remember where he is. But the boy is here again with his little one, and a toolbox—toolbox jumps right into his head, and he knows it’s the right word. John reaches out and the man puts the baby into his arms and sits there a minute, his hand on the baby’s head, making sure John knows how to hold him.

He does.

The baby looks up at him with dark eyes, then smiles. John feels his mouth move, and he looks at . . .

. . . the name is coming . . .

. . . Ned. Neil. Nick . . .

Noah!

And Noah smiles, then opens the toolbox and starts doing things. John is not sure what or why.