Jodi Compton - Sympathy Between Humans

The oldest Hennessy did nothing that troubled me; he also did nothing that particularly reassured me. He was unusually quiet for a teenage boy of his size; I rarely heard him enter a room, or leave it. He sneaked cigarettes sometimes behind the freestanding garage; other times I’d see him smoking under the magnolia tree. Once or twice I saw him looking at me, but what he was thinking, I couldn’t tell. The second time I said, “What?” but he merely shook his head and said, “Nothing.”

On the job, my week was equally uneventful. The stocking-mask bandits knocked over their fourth business, this time a liquor store in St. Paul. I didn’t have to do any investigating, but I got a heads-up call from a St. Paul detective, and I faxed my notes on the prior cases over to him.

Saturday dawned hot, and was expected to break temperature records. I slept until we were well into the heat, when there was a knock at the door and Marlinchen stuck her head in.

“Are you hungry?” she said. “We’re making waffles downstairs,” she said.

“I could eat,” I said.

Marlinchen nodded. “I wanted to ask you for a favor, later in the day.”

I rolled onto my side. “You want to ask later, or the favor is for later?” I asked.

“Dad’s getting a lot better,” she said, ignoring my teasing, “and I wanted to take everyone to see him. In the hospital.”

“Everyone?” I said. “You guys won’t all fit in my car.”

“I know,” Marlinchen said, “but there’s Dad’s ride.”

The Suburban in the garage. I shook my head. “No,” I said. “I shouldn’t be driving your father’s SUV.”

“It’ll be okay,” she said. “It’s insured through the end of August.”

“Well, if it’s insured, ” I said.

Marlinchen, missing the sarcasm, seemed happy. She came to sit on the end of the bed.

“It probably needs to be started up anyway,” I said, “or pretty soon you won’t be able to.” I thought of Cicero, the van he told me about that he sent the neighbor boys down to start up, and that thought led to another. “Hey,” I said, “what’s the story with the BMW out in the detached garage?”

“Oh, that,” she said. “It was Mom and Dad’s a long time ago. It stopped running, and Dad put it away. He said he was going to fix it up someday, but he never did. I guess it has sentimental value. He absolutely will not sell it.”

“He was going to fix it up?” I said. “I thought your father was worthless with tools.”

Marlinchen looked rueful. “He is,” she said. “But you know guys and their cars. It’s a love thing.” She extended a hand to me. “Anyway, get up, lazybones. The guys are downstairs burning all the waffles.”

I let her pull me up. “Tell you what,” I said. “I’ll go to the hospital, but you can do the driving honors. You need to keep practicing.”

Typically, she hedged. “I don’t know,” she said. “I’ve never driven the Suburban before.”

“You’d never driven my Nova before, either,” I pointed out. “There’s a first time for everything.”

“He’s madea lot of progress in his physical therapy. Speech, not as much.”

Freddy, the serene male nurse I remembered from my first visit to the convalescent hospital, was leading us back to a visiting room in the rehab facility.

“He can hear you fine, so don’t talk too loud. But it’s best if you keep your statements open-ended and don’t ask him any questions he’d feel obligated to try to answer. We’re keeping the pressure off.”

The visiting room was pleasantly crowded with green plants and lit by wide glass windows. Near them, in a padded rocking chair with a quad cane at his side, was Hugh Hennessy.

Only Marlinchen seemed truly comfortable in this environment. She entered first, the rest of us following her. Freddy pulled up a chair by Hugh’s rocker; Marlinchen stood on its other side. Colm, Liam, and Donal took a nearby couch, and Aidan and I stood, just beside the couch.

Moments earlier, in the parking lot of the hospital, the twins had shared a quick, quiet conversation.

“You can stay out here,” Marlinchen had told Aidan. She was holding a potted ivy grown along a frame in the shape of a heart; we’d stopped for it on the way over. “Everyone will understand.”

The same thing had occurred to me; I’d thought it odd that the son who called his father Hugh was intent on accompanying his sister and brothers on this charitable visit.

“It’s okay,” Aidan said. “I’ll go in.”

“Are you sure?” Marlinchen said, wanting, as always, to avoid unpleasantness of any kind.

“I’m not afraid to see him, Linch,” Aidan said, and the note of iron did a lot to explain his determination to be here, not to shy away from the man who’d exiled him years ago.

“That’s not what I meant,” she’d said, looking down, sunlight flashing off one of her earrings. But they’d discussed it no further.

“Hi, Dad,” Marlinchen said now, brightly. “We’re all here. It’s not just a visit, it’s an invasion.”

Hugh, in his rocker, looked improved from the last time I’d seen him. His color was better, as was his posture. Marlinchen set the ivy at his side, and leaned over. “Can you give me a kiss?”

Hugh leaned close to her, one hand steadying himself on the arm of the rocker, and obeyed. The doctors were right; he did understand what those around him were saying.

But he didn’t, or couldn’t, speak. Marlinchen carried the conversation, with Colm and Liam adding their comments sporadically. Hugh was clearly listening, but his voice came out as an unsteady rumble, or telegramlike half sentences that didn’t make immediate sense. He seemed to understand he wasn’t making sense, either, embarrassment lighting his blue eyes.

Something else: Hugh seemed focused only on Marlinchen and the three boys on the couch. After about five minutes, Freddy leaned over to speak to him. “Mr. Hennessy, remember what we’ve been talking about, turning your head to scan the whole room?”

He was coaching his patient to compensate for the neglect, the tendency of some stroke patients to ignore stimuli from the side affected by the stroke. Hugh did as instructed. He turned his head, looking past the boys on the couch, and stopped. For the first time, he saw Aidan. A muscle jumped under his left eye. There was nothing impaired about his vision or his memory.

Marlinchen’s smile became even more set. She seemed to realize what had happened, but said nothing to acknowledge Aidan’s presence.

“I’ve been saving The New York Review of Books for you,” she told her father. “I didn’t throw any of them out. I’ll read the better articles to you.”

Hugh’s attention had not shifted. The muscles of his face were working, and a small bubble of saliva had appeared at the corner of his mouth. The sound he was making took shape. “What is,” he said. “What is. What is she. She is…”

Marlinchen shot me a nervous glance. “Oh,” she said. “Dad, this is Sarah Pribek. A friend of ours.”

But Hugh clearly wasn’t looking at me. He was staring at Aidan, and I remembered what Marlinchen said, that Hugh was confusing his pronouns. Hugh didn’t mean to say she ; he meant he. Hugh’s blue eyes were narrow, and trained on his oldest son.

Beside me, Aidan shifted on his feet. “Maybe I should take a little walk,” he said.

Marlinchen, forced to acknowledge what was happening, looked pained. “I don’t know,” she said.

On the couch, Colm seemed to have recused himself psychologically from the situation, examining a small callus on one of his weightlifter’s hands. Liam looked from his father to his sister. His eyes were intent, but he said nothing.