She arrives. His daughter, the writer with those sharp, gray eyes, always looking. He knows she’ll write about him. Look at his wreck of a body, can’t walk, can’t roll over, can’t swallow big chunks of food, can’t stay awake for more than a couple of hours. He’s a wasteland, he’s the desiccated Arizona desert out his window, that old saguaro, five arms grasping, grasping for anything.
She kisses him on the cheek, sits in the chair beside his bed. Like her mom, her straight body and black hair. She opens wide her eyes. He’s shocked, too. He was once uncontainable, spilling over with inexhaustible energy and ideas, a finance whizz. Whenever he sees himself in a mirror, he doesn’t recognize that old man, gray and pale.
The flight? he says.
How are you? she says.
Bored as hell. I never know what day it is. Could be Sunday. Or Friday.
You’re in other worlds, she says, smiling softly.
I wish.
The basketball game is on TV, playing nonstop, thank god. He loves the game. He remembers playing point guard in high school. Jimmy Happer was the guy he looked for because he was the best shooter with a beautiful outside shot. He remembers faces and facts and the gym, but not the feeling.
She’s already scribbling in her notepad. She’s filling up her inner private room, which is gigantic. Had it ever since she was a girl. Amazing to watch a living being change before your eyes, from babbling to drawing, to stuffing raisins in her mouth, to dating, to a grown woman, with composure and poise and a way with words. For him, words are to get things done, organize, plan, strategize, execute. But not for her. And here he is, splayed out and can’t escape her scrutiny. She hands him a protein bar. Like everyone who comes to see him, she’s trying to fatten him up because to the long list of what he’s lost, add appetite. Madeline, his lovely wife, if she were alive, she’d bring him his favorite, prime rib and a cup of tiramisu.
He wakes to find that his daughter roamed the desert like a hawk, collecting pieces of beauty. She shows him photos on her phone—a pinkish purple prickly pear, a barrel cactus with yellow blooms, an old saguaro, at least 80 years old, full of holes from the unrelenting woodpeckers. Oh, now, a beautiful vermillion flycatcher with a bright red crown and chest. He can’t remember the last time he saw one.
I wish I could take you out of here, she says. She opens the window and in blows the dry desert air. He can almost feel the sand under his feet.
A commercial about dandruff, a luxurious worry. Muffled coughs and restlessness from the hall drift in like carnage from a crash. America doesn’t like death. It’s tucked away in facilities and hospitals, fed dozens of pills. Madeline didn’t want to grow old. And she didn’t, dying at 63. She had a lovely voice, always singing with the radio.
He’s about to close his eyes, but his daughter pulls out a spiral sketchbook. Oh, the old game. Good, let’s get out of the clot of words. They used to do this in the early mornings; they were both early risers and found themselves, just the two of them, at the breakfast table. The house still asleep, Madeline in bed upstairs, the twins down the hall. She hands him the sketchbook, and he draws a stallion with a black cat riding on its back. Hands it to her. She inks a tall man carrying a huge pink seahorse. She’s inherited his drawing hands, hands always doodling during those office meetings. From him, a dolphin with a cup of coffee. Back and forth until the page is full of absurdity and they’ve made each other laugh, a laugh that builds on itself, a laugh that halts, momentarily, the dogged demise. He hasn’t felt this light in a long time. How alien, how wonderful.
The game is still on, but a quiet has settled in between them, as if they’ve sunk into another world. The light shifts, a golden hue in the room.
What’s it like? she says, her intense eyes shining. She was always direct, which made her mother squirm.
He looks down at his immobile body. Awful, he says.
She nods, bows her head.
Please don’t say anything, don’t say 89 years is a long time; don’t say, you’ve had a good run, do not, for the love of god say, you’re one of the lucky ones. When she’s mercifully silent, when he feels that invisible line that runs between him and her vibrate loudly, something revolts against that summation, that single word “awful,” as if that’s all he can hand her. A force knocks it aside, and he reaches out his arm and takes her hand and tells her about the fishing trip to Canada, throwing back a trout as old as time. He was in his thirties, fishing with Bobby, and who was I to kill that fish? On the plane ride to Brazil, a business trip, the plane bucked and rocked, and a part of the wing flew off, he was certain that was the end of him and vowed to take nothing for granted, a vow that came and went. The little white mouse he kept in his pocket when he was six years old. Frank, he called him. How much he loved playing basketball, the feel of the ball in his hand, the whoosh through the hoop; how much he loved Madeline, his children, you, my dear, you, and as he goes on, he feels himself feeling everything he thought was gone, love and joy, sorrow, doubt and bravado. On and on, he tells her stories, full of longing, laughter, deep sadness, and she’s writing, writing it all down. Sweetheart, he thinks, go ahead, make it grand because it was.
