Alix Ohlin - Signs and Wonders

She had no idea whether her voice had finally woken him up, hating to think that if she’d only spoken sooner, instead of delegating all the responsibility to Shakespeare, she might have shortened his ordeal. And she was astonished to think that in spite of the bad years and all of the misery, he still needed to hear her voice. The intensity of the grievous emotion she’d felt that night in the hospital had thinned in the morning, but she couldn’t help wondering if all the divorce talk had been a mistake, if maybe, just possibly, they still loved each other after all.

But she didn’t talk to him about any of this, just helped him get through the days. She fed him and led him to the bathroom, his shrunken body leaning sharply against hers, more connected than they’d been in years. He slept almost fifteen hours a day, and the house was very quiet. When awake, he said little and asked for nothing. He seemed tranquilized. In the mornings he sat out in the backyard, a blanket covering his knees, and listened to the birds. Kathleen had strung up feeders and houses, something he had always discouraged, claiming the house would be swamped with bird feces and noise, but he wasn’t complaining now. He was peaceful in his recovery, though it was unclear if this peace was spiritual, related to his near-death experience, or material, a symptom of brain damage. The waiting game was still going on.

It was a still, humid day in July when she brought him outside and left him to sit there in the sunlight. She was almost back inside when she heard him say something. Turning, she saw the tears streaming down his face. She could remember the exact last time she’d seen him cry, at his mother’s funeral, ten years earlier. Now he was crying quietly, letting the tears come, his skinny arms resting by his sides. He was looking up at the sky, where she saw, following his gaze, a red-tailed hawk circling high above them. It soared and swung, strong and heavy winged, eyeing whatever prey it had spotted below.

Through his tears Terry spoke again. “Pterodactyl,” he said. “Fucking lunatic.”

· · ·

Gradually, he recovered his brain, his words, and was able to walk around the house, then around the block. Still, they never talked about what was going to happen between them, if their future was shared or separate. Kathleen wasn’t even sure how she felt about it anymore. Their shared project, for now, was his recovery, just as for years their son’s well-being had been their shared project, one so hulking and important that it had overshadowed everything else.

As soon as he could, Steve flew home to visit. Next to his father he seemed gigantic and healthy. He was loving California and told them all about the turtle habitat, his apartment close to the beach, what seemed to be a promising relationship with a girl who worked in the reptile house.

Across the table, Terry gave him a benevolent, post-coma smile. “That’s wonderful, kid,” he said. “Now listen. Your mother and I are getting divorced.”

Steve laughed, thinking it was a joke.

Kathleen stared at her husband. This was typical, pre-accident Terry, not to consult or even consider Steve’s reaction, or her own.

“Sorry,” he said to her. “It just came out.”

“What the hell?” Steve said, and turned to Kathleen. “Is this for real? Are you seriously leaving him right after his accident?”

“It’s not like that,” she said faintly. She felt dizzy, as if she were floating disassociated above the scene.

“Or you?” Steve said to his father. “Is this some midlife crisis thing after the coma? You’re going to date twenty-year-olds now, to prove you’re alive?”

Terry refused to be rattled. “We planned this long before the accident. It just set us back a little, that’s all. We know you want us both to be happy, and we think we’ll be happier living separately. It’s amicable. We’ll both always be here for you. Just in two houses instead of one.”

“Two houses. That’s all you think it is?” Steve said. The veneer of adulthood chipped off, leaving him an angry teenager, explosive and bereft. His chair scraped as he pushed it away from the table and stormed out of the house. Terry and Kathleen sat looking at each other across the table. She opened her mouth and found she had nothing, not one single thing, to say.

The following morning, Steve sat by himself in the backyard muttering angrily, an old habit Kathleen had hoped he’d outgrown. Terry was in the living room, reading and listening to music. He hadn’t turned on the television since he came home from the hospital. It was strange, but no more so than anything else, she supposed.

The doorbell rang, and it was Fleur. Since Terry was released she hadn’t visited, and Kathleen was pleased to see her. She actually hugged her, garnering a certain amount of satisfaction from Terry’s silent but unmistakable surprise. Fleur waved to him, and if Kathleen still had any lingering doubts about an affair, her casual, uncomplicated friendliness dispelled them.

“Welcome back, miracle man!” Fleur said cheerily. “You are arisen.”

“Uh,” Terry said.

“I’ve missed you,” Kathleen said to Fleur. “Thanks for coming by.”

Fleur smiled, as unruffled by this as she’d been by Kathleen’s rudeness in previous months, and allowed herself to be led into the kitchen. Kathleen gestured to where her son sat outside. The windows were open, and they could hear his mutterings.

“God grant me the strength to accept the things I cannot change,” he was saying. “But still, I mean, come on, what the hell?”

“Don’t you think that’s weird?” she said. “He’s twenty-five years old.”

Fleur shrugged. “Maybe I should go talk to him.”

“You? Why?”

“Why not?” Fleur said.

She walked outside without waiting for permission. She was wearing a flowery yellow shirtdress, like a housewife from a previous generation, and her wavy brown hair fluttered in the summer breeze. She sat down next to Steve and put her hand on his shoulder.

“Do you want to pray with me?” Fleur said, as Kathleen watched.

Her son nodded and bowed his head. So far as Kathleen could remember he’d never met Fleur, but he didn’t ask who she was or why she was there. The two of them held hands in the brilliant sunshine, bird-lover and turtle-keeper. She heard Fleur say, “Dear God,” and the rest of it was lost in the wind.

Dear God, Kathleen thought. Is this the game we’re playing now? The accident, the coma, Fleur’s visits, the pterodactyl? Are these signs and wonders? And if so, what do they mean? She couldn’t decipher them; she couldn’t read her life that way. Over the months to come, as her misery, so long-nurtured, ebbed; as the divorce was filed; as Steve announced he was marrying the reptile girl in California; as she and Fleur remained best friends; as Terry fell in love with a student and almost lost his job before recovering himself and his sanity; as she started to date her real estate agent, Bob, and eventually invited him to move in with her in the condo he’d helped her buy — she still didn’t learn the answers to these questions. But she could feel them all around her, the questions of her life, at times beating like wings, at times soaring cleanly through the air, and she could only wonder how it was that she had never felt them before.

Alan was lying facedown in Center Square, a squiggle of vomit on the pavement beside him, his one good leg folded sideways. He looked bad and smelled worse, and if he’d been anybody else I would’ve kept walking. But he was Stephanie’s brother, so we both bent down and I shook his shoulder. The classical music the city played to discourage loitering trilled around us, and on the other side of the square two homeless guys smoked their cigarettes and watched.