Lily King: Father of the Rain

“Thank you so much,” she whispers. I watch his arms go around her soft pink sweater. Somehow she understands that without Jonathan I would not be here, and she is grateful for his forgiveness. She bends down to greet the kids. They don’t know what to make of this hobbit face and the tears that slip along the wrinkles in her cheeks. “You two have come a long way. They have yummy pies in the cafeteria. Do you have a favorite kind of pie?”

They look up at me to answer.

I put my hand on Lena’s head. “Strawberry rhubarb or pecan,” I say, then move to Jeremy, “and blueberry.”

“Or apple. Or cherry in a pinch,” he adds. He is wearing a baseball cap backwards. In a pinch . My eyes fill.

Barbara smiles for the first time. “I think they have nearly all of those.” She looks at me and Jonathan. “May I take them down there while you two go in first?”

I’m not expecting this. I’m not ready to trust her with my children. My mind spins for an excuse. But before I have one, Jonathan says, “Sure,” and the kids bounce with pleasure. Pie at ten in the morning!

Jonathan and I go through the ICU doors alone. The man in the first cubicle raises his eyes briefly at Jonathan, thinking for a moment he has a visitor. Jonathan catches this and lifts up his hand to the man.

My father’s eyes are open. He looks at my husband for the first time.

“Good morning,” Jonathan says. Like our children, he has no name for my father. There is a guardedness to his face, a thin shield only I can see. He’s had his own tortured relationship with this man. He’s wrestled with him through me, with the wraith of my father that’s still inside me.

My father nods, makes a small sound, does not take his eyes off of Jonathan. He doesn’t appear scared, as he did when he was being lifted earlier, and he doesn’t appear angry or surprised. If anything, it’s a childlike curiosity I see in my father’s eyes. What’s going to happen next? he seems to be saying. And he seems to think Jonathan has the answer.

“Dad, this is my husband, Jonathan.”

Without looking at me my father nods. I know that, is what he means. His right arm twitches. “Ow do?”

“I’m fine, thanks,” Jonathan says. “How are you feeling today?”

“Ahm in pre gu shay.” I’m in pretty good shape. “Pre gu shay.”

“That’s good. You’ll be out of here soon, then.”

My father looks slightly to either side of Jonathan, seeing where he is. “Oh,” he says. “Ya.”

“They treating you well?”

“Oh, sur. Isa gu play.”

Jonathan takes something out of his coat pocket. “I wasn’t sure if I would be able to see you, so I got this just in case.” It is a card, a greeting card. On the front are puppies sleeping in a basket. Jonathan holds it up so my father can see it. I have no idea where this card came from.

My father makes a soft moan of pleasure.

“‘If you get lots of rest,’” Jonathan reads, then opens the card. From a microchip in the paper comes the sound of many puppies yelping. “‘You’ll be howling good in no time!’”

My father loves this. For the first time I see him lift both his bruised arms. He takes the card in his hand and shuts it and opens it for the barking and shuts it and opens it again. He looks up at Jonathan. “Ah lie tha,” he says.

“I’m glad.”

He points to Jonathan. “Av doe?”

“No dogs,” Jonathan says. This is because of me. “Two kids, but no dogs.”

“Ki? Wa they?”

“They’re eating pie with Barbara,” I say.

He looked confused. “Who Barbra?”

“Barbara Bridgeton. Your wife.”

“Ma wie!” He says and he laughs and then winces and grabs his stomach and then laughs again. He points at me. “Daley’s funny,” he says, clear as a bell.

The sound of my name startles me, shatters my illusion that I have been a generic figure, an everydaughter, in the room. And then, before I can respond, he is asleep with his mouth open, making his gagging sound.

Jonathan takes my hand and pulls me closer. We’ve been standing unnecessarily apart from each other. We laugh about it without saying a word.

A cart rattles by outside the cubicle. My father doesn’t wake up. We sit in the chairs.

“Every time he falls asleep,” I say quietly, “I worry that my reprieve is over, that he’ll wake up and remember he hates me.”

Then I hear the kids in the corridor, their small steps, their attempts at whispering.

Barbara pulls back the curtain. “They told me I could sneak them in, just for a few minutes, since he’s been so calm today. I’ve got to go down to the pharmacy in the basement anyway. These children are so polite .” She smiles at them. Would she have said that if they were white? “See you in a little bit.” She closes the curtain, closes us in with my father.

My father’s eyes open and my heart races. What if now is the moment he remembers everything? What if now, with my two children right here, is the moment his memory returns and he hollers, What the fuck are you people doing here? I wish the restraints were still on him.

He makes a small noise, not unhappy. Lena waves to him. He makes another sound, more high-pitched and affectionate. Hello there , he’s saying, not fake but real, a sound he might use on the dogs when he came home in the evening and they bounded around him at the door.

I gently urge the kids forward a few feet. I keep close behind them. Jonathan stays at the foot of the bed, equally vigilant. I don’t know if my father remembers meeting him, fifteen minutes ago. “This is Lena, and this is Jeremy, Dad. Our children.”

He stares at Lena hard. She has her hair pulled back in a polka-dot cloth headband. She looks a little like my mother in her kerchief. She has my narrow face but Jonathan’s smile. She is making eye contact. Then his head swivels quick as an owl’s to Jeremy, who leans back heavy against me. He’s wearing a Sixers T-shirt and my father says something about it that I can’t understand, but when I ask him to say it again he shakes his head. He tries to lift his hand but it doesn’t move very far. He looks back up at them apologetically.

Lena reaches down and touches his fingers. “It’s nice to meet you.”

“It’s nice to meet you,” Jeremy repeats.

“Ni to mit too,” my father manages. His eyes move from one to the other.

If my father notices the color of their skin — Lena’s a milky fawn, Jeremy’s a more concentrated brown — he doesn’t let on. He feels around for the card Jonathan has given him. It takes him a little bit but he grasps it and holds up the photo of the puppies in a basket.

“Ooooh,” my children coo at the same time.

My father nods happily. And then he opens the card and Lena and Jeremy burst out laughing at the sound.

One side of my father’s mouth flinches up high. He breathes heavily through his nose.

“Oo itl ragal.” Two little rascals.

He is looking at my children.

“Did he say something about The Little Rascals ?” Jonathan whispers as I walk with them to the lobby.

I laugh. I feel light. “Not the show. He just meant they were two little cutie-pies.”

“He isn’t mean, Mom,” Jeremy says. “Why have we never seen him before?”

Both my children watch me carefully. Was I wrong to have withheld him from them? Perhaps my father would have loved them, perhaps he would have been kind and generous with them. I could see him on the court with them, showing them how to hit a backhand. I could see them easily imitating his grace.

I don’t know what to tell them. I want to be fair: to him, to them, to myself.

“Some people you just have to love from afar,” Jonathan says.