The Removed(43)

“Yes, yes,” I said.

“Although I think the doctor’s offices are closed for the day.”

I didn’t care. I pulled out my phone and called Dr. Patel’s number anyway. “This message is for Dr. Patel. This is Maria Echota. My husband is Ernest Echota, and something remarkable is happening with his memory. We think his Alzheimer’s is gone. He can suddenly remember things—can you believe it? I think—I think he’s been healed!” I hung up the phone, my hands trembling.

Wyatt came around the corner of the house, looking flushed and breathing heavy. “She found you,” he said. “Wow, you look like a new man.”

“I FEEL BETTER THAN EVER,” Ernest said a little later, back inside the house. “And look at this boy who’s blessed us with his presence.”

Wyatt came into the dining room, dressed in a collared shirt and khaki pants, his hair combed and wet from a shower. “I always feel better after a good day of work and a shower,” he said. “Smooth water, the smell of shampoo.”

I started sweeping the back deck while Ernest raked the leaves outside in preparation for the bonfire in two days. I decided to postpone dinner so I could enjoy the beautiful evening outside with him. I couldn’t believe his energy. He bagged what he raked, tied the trash bag, and carried it to the trash can by the side of the house. When he came back to the deck, we talked about our kids. We talked about Ray-Ray, too, Ernest laughing as he told the story about the time Ray-Ray dressed up as a ghost for Halloween when he was little. “Remember we just threw an old white bedsheet over him and cut two holes for eyes?”

I laughed hard at that memory. We were both laughing. Then Ernest wanted to go out for ice cream and celebrate how well he was feeling.

“I feel drunk,” he told me. “It’s like I’ve been drinking all day. I want dinner and ice cream. I want a good glass of wine.”

“You haven’t touched a drink in months and months,” I said.

“Not since April of last year,” he said. “It was the day I met Wes Studi downtown. He was in town for a funeral, I remember. He liked my hat.”

“Yes, I remember,” I said.

He was already putting on his shoes to go. So I quickly changed clothes and drove the three of us to a nice restaurant downtown for dinner. Ernest ordered a glass of rosé, which made me uneasy, but he held a finger up and said he didn’t want to hear it.

“Let me enjoy this while it lasts,” he said. “I haven’t felt like this in a long time. My energy is up. My back doesn’t hurt. I didn’t get winded walking from the car to the restaurant.”

“You’re healed,” Wyatt said.

“Your back is feeling better, too?” I asked.

He stood up then, with people around us, stretched his arms forward and did a knee bend. He jogged in placed. I was getting embarrassed and told him to sit down.

“Maybe our prayers are finally answered,” he said, settling back into his seat and taking a drink from his glass.

We enjoyed a long, unhurried dinner, then went for a walk downtown. We stopped in Morgan’s Bakery to buy Wyatt a cream puff, which made him happy. I was elated.

“If only Edgar was here,” Ernest said on the walk back to the car.

I immediately called Edgar and left a message. “Honey, please call us. We want you to come home for Ray-Ray’s bonfire, sweetheart. I’m not mad and Papa isn’t mad. We want you here. Please call me back.”

*

“Fear the beard,” Ernest said, back at the house. “Remember when the Thunder lost James Harden?”

“I’d like to grow a beard someday,” Wyatt said.

“You’re fifteen, so you can start trying.”

“Says who?”

“Says my smart wife.” Ernest winked at me. “She knows the good bearded ones in sports: Johnny Damon, James Harden. Right? You think I’m kidding, son, just ask her.”

“Ernest used to watch sports all the time,” I told Wyatt. “For years it’s all he watched, and I just started watching, too.”

“Kareem had a beard,” Ernest said.

I tried to remember the last time Ernest had even remembered an athlete’s name. It was as if the boy had showered him with some strange invisible angelic dust that reset his memory, if only temporarily. Ernest talked about a baseball game in Arlington, Texas, when the Rangers beat the Red Sox after clobbering Wakefield’s knuckleball. “Wakefield,” he kept saying. “That knuckleball either hissed or missed. Go watch the big league sometime. Of course in terms of Oklahoma sports, Jim Thorpe was the best athlete we’ve ever seen, just ask anyone.”

Wyatt wanted to hear more. Ernest was invigorating to listen to, and it occurred to me that Wyatt brought out an energy in Ernest that had been stagnant for months, even years. Listening to him talk now was like the Ernest thirty years earlier, before all his ailments, all his arthritis pain and high blood pressure, pre-Alzheimer’s, when he was more social. To be young again, to share stories, to laugh—how wonderful. To sit in lawn chairs in the backyard and look up at the fireworks in the sky. To drink lemonade on a humid summer evening. It would all be possible again, I realized.

“Maria,” he said, unable to conceal his excitement, “remember that old Chevy I had back in the seventies? The one with the bucket seats?”