Angels Unawares

Angels Unawares Page 6

by Jeffrey Anderson

Day Five

  At the stroke of midnight (the clock in the living room tolled the hour with a tone both distant and forlorn, the peals continuing for what seemed an eternity, as if the former day were reluctant to surrender its life to the new), Laura stood in the doorway to Josh’s bedroom. In the warm faint glow of the bedside lamp, the room offered forth a cave of safety and companionship against the dark and threatening loneliness of the rest of the house. Laura shivered once and hugged herself tightly, then entered the room.

  From the foot of the bed, she saw both her husband and her daughter peacefully asleep—Josh on his back with the covers pulled to his chest and his hands at his sides atop the covers; Devon slumped slightly to her right seated in the chair, her cheek resting on her loosely clenched fist, her elbow on the armrest. After her hard night (she didn’t remember the details of her dream but woke to the cellphone’s alarm in deep unease), these two companions in this warm close room seemed all she could’ve hoped for, the three of them in this bubble of peaceful and secure present devoid of the complexities of the past or the threats of the future. “Thank you,” she said aloud but in a whisper—to the night and the room and its two occupants—then added, “Just a few minutes more, please.” She stood at the foot of the bed and soaked the peace and reassurance in.

  Then she stepped to the side of the bed, barely squeezing between the mattress and Devon in the chair, and leaned over and lightly kissed Josh. His lips were dry but warm, and the whiff she got of his breath was earthy and rich, no hint of staleness or decay. She softly rubbed her cheek against the stubble of his chin and could’ve sworn he returned her greeting with a gentle pressure of his own. But when she looked up, his eyes were shut and his shallow quiet breathing unaltered. She pressed her mouth to his ear. “We’re not done yet,” she whispered.

  Then she turned in the tight space and looked down on her dozing daughter. The sight of Devon’s clean pale scalp in the part of her dark hair produced in Laura a depth of gratitude and wonder she’d never felt before. Imagine that, she thought, this full-grown issue of my body gone for all those years returned now to rest here beneath my gaze—what greater gift could God have offered? Then she realized—gift in return for my sacrifice. But what sacrifice? And offered for how long? She looked up at the dim ceiling and offered the room—her gift room—a wry smile and whispered her second prayer, “You keep the score.”

  When she looked down, Devon—clear-eyed and full awake, that fast—was looking up at her. “Who’s winning?” she asked.

  Laura leaned at the waist in a deep bow and kissed her daughter on the crown of her head. “We are,” she said. “Way ahead in this round.”

  Devon nodded. “I’ll take your word.” Then she looked at her father. “And Josh?”

  Laura replied confidently. “Him too.”

  “How do you know?”

  To Laura, Devon’s heart-felt question seemed a version of all the sincere questions she might’ve asked her while growing up, had she the chance. That she’d asked those questions of another woman caused a wince of pain in Laura’s heart. She pushed that pain down out of her throat. “Because I know,” she said and smiled down at her daughter.

  Devon nodded and stood. “I’ll try to believe that.”

  Laura said, “Don’t have to take my word on it. He’ll tell you himself.”

  Devon looked down at her unconscious father and doubted Laura’s prediction. But she said, “I’ll hope you’re right.” She leaned forward and hugged her mother. She took one step toward the door, then paused, turned suddenly, and bent at the waist and kissed her father. Then she left.

  An hour later Devon was drifting off to sleep in Angie’s soft bed when her cellphone’s surprisingly loud vibration purr jarred her awake. It took her a few seconds to gain her bearings in the dark, to recall where she was and why she was there. She spotted the backlit digital clock on the nightstand—1:12. Beside the clock, with its display screen glowing, her cellphone did a slow twirling dance on the tabletop with each cycle of vibration. She grabbed the phone between rings.

  The screen read encrypt where the number for the incoming call would normally appear. She opened the phone’s flip cover. “This is Devon.”

  “Devon who?” a woman’s voice asked with startling clarity, as if in the room.

  “Devon Atwater.”

  “Who is Devon Atwater?”

  “The person you called at 1:12 in the morning and woke from much needed sleep.”

  “Sorry for that. I’ve never quite figured out the time difference. Can I really be seven hours into your future?”

  “Where?”

  “In Iraq.”

  Devon sat bolt upright. “To whom am I speaking?”

  The woman laughed. “My father’d like you. He never could get me to use the objective pronoun after a preposition.” She paused. “At first it was ignorance on my part—I just didn’t get the difference. But at some point a line was crossed and it became defiance.”

  “You’re Angie,” Devon said, barely a whisper.

  “Most people now call me Angela. But I used to be Angie, still am in my own head.”

  “I’m in your room, Angela Earl. Your pictures are everywhere.” Though the room was dark, Devon had no trouble imagining the abundant photos that were everywhere—on the walls, the dresser, the nightstand. In her mind, she imagined vastly more than there were in reality.

  “What room? Where?”

  “The room you grew up in, in your father’s house in North Carolina.”

  “And just why are you in my childhood room in my father’s house at 1:12 in the morning, Devon Atwater?”

  “Didn’t they tell you?”

  “They told me to call this number. That’s all.”

  Devon took a deep breath. “Your father’s sick.”

  “I didn’t even know he was alive.”

  “He is alive but failing fast. He’s been unconscious since this morning.”

  “At the house?”

  “Yes—in his bed in his room, not twenty feet from me this minute.”

  Angie thought—you don’t have to tell me the location of my parents’ bed in relation to my old room. Then she recalled the last time she’d seen that bed, and who was in it. “Why not at the hospital?”

  “He was there but asked to be brought home. He wants to die here.”

  “And you’re his hospice nurse?”

  A long silence ensued before Devon finally spoke in slow deliberate words. “Not hospice. Not a nurse. I’m your half-sister, the daughter of your father and his first wife, Laura. Laura came here to care for your father in his last days; and I came to meet Laura and found my father—our father.”

  Accustomed as she’d become to shocks and surprises, Devon’s words nonetheless stunned Angie. She’d known that her father’d been married before but didn’t know the woman’s name and certainly had never heard about a daughter, a half-sister. In all her childhood years of longing for a sibling, she’d never dreamed that one might exist.

  Devon began to wonder if maybe Angie had fainted, or perhaps hung up (she always regretted that cellphones didn’t have dial tones for just that reason—never knowing if the one on the other end had hung up). “Angie? Are you O.K.? Are you still there?”

  “I’m here, I guess.”

  Devon laughed. “Me too, I guess.”

  “Me also,” Angie corrected her. “Hasn’t my father taught you anything?”

  “Our father.”

  Angie paused to consider that, then said, “You know, I’ve gotten used to the idea of a sniper’s bullet taking me out in an instant, of an I.E.D. blasting the Hummer I’m riding in a hundred feet into the air, or a mortar round annihilating our entire mess tent and everyone in it—but this ‘our father’ deal may take a little while.”

  “For us both. I’d only hoped to find my birth mother, never dreamed I’d get to meet my father in the process.”

  “Find your birth mother?”

  “Laura gave me
up for adoption at birth. I met her for the first time yesterday—well, two days ago to be exact.”

  “And now you’re caring for him in his last days?”

  “We’re caring for him—Laura, me, and the home nurse Sherri. And Sherri has access to a whole range of medical resources. Your father is being well cared for, given the situation.”

  Angie laughed. “Our father.”

  “Almost as new for me as for you.”

  “So, Devon Atwater, my new half-sister, what do you propose that I do?”

  “Get here quick as you can.”

  “Setting aside for a moment the daunting logistics of such a decision, why should I try?”

  “He needs you here.”

  “My father hasn’t needed me for years, if ever.” She knew the last clause was a lie, but said it anyway.

  “I think you’re wrong.”

  “How would you know?”

  “I don’t,” Devon said, but then contemplated her statement. “Then again, maybe I do.”

  Angie waited in silence.

  So Devon continued. “Twenty-four hours ago, I didn’t know you or my father existed. I certainly have no idea, beyond these photographs of the two of you smiling, the nature of your past relationship. But I well know the emptiness of a lifetime of not knowing my birth parents, of not being with them while I could. That’s not an emptiness I’d wish on anyone. Whatever happened between you and your father, you need to try to get here, and soon.”

  Opposite all the hurt that had flooded back into her heart on recalling the last time she’d seen her father, Angie couldn’t help but think of the Hispanic soldier whose hand she’d held yesterday as his eyes went blank and his taut grip slackened. Some loss was irrevocable. “I’ll see what I can work out and call you later.”

  “At a more reasonable hour?” Devon ventured.

  Angie laughed. “At a more reasonable hour,” then added as she signed off, “Damn this time thing.”

  Sitting beside Josh in the deepest quiet of that pause in the diurnal cycle too late to be night—the world preparing for rest—and too early to be dawn—the world preparing to rise—alert to that moment caught between ending and starting, Laura finally began the journal she’d intended when she bought the 6 x 9 book-keepers pad in the airport shop on the way here.

  April 28, 3:37 AM

  “Bedsitter people sit back and lament,

  Another day’s useless energy spent.”

  Don’t ask me why I remember that line from the poem that concludes the Moody Blues’ album/song “Nights in White Satin.” Talk about useless energy spent!

  But now serving as one of those bedsitter people for the first time in my life, I’ll do my best to keep from falling prey to the lost moments of wasted time. And since I left my knitting needles in California (wouldn’t have allowed them on the plane, anyway), I’ll try keeping this journal (another first) as an attempt to keep myself productive.

  But one might reasonably ask what I am now asking myself—productive to what end? Do I expect anyone to ever read this journal? No. Do I expect that I will one day wish to read it and visit again these moments? Again, no. As powerful as these days with Josh and now Devon have been (and, I assume, will be—no lessening of the emotional volume in what’s to come), I can’t imagine ever wanting to revisit this time or these notes in the future. I recall when the movie Saving Private Ryan was released with its vivid scenes of the landing on Omaha Beach, an interviewer asked a veteran of that landing if the movie accurately depicted the reality of that battle, and this old man stared at the camera and calmly replied, “Yes, but who’d choose to remember that?”

  And who’d choose to remember this? Not that it’s been all bad—far from it. Much, maybe most, of the experience thus far has been good, maybe even life-altering, certainly soul-redeeming. But the heart just gets so full it aches. I can’t imagine wanting to recall that ache, or that there would ever be a time when the ache would be diminished enough for the redemption to shine through.

  But maybe therein lies the reason why I’m writing, and hoping to continue to write, this journal—not for others or for posterity or for future reflection but simply to try to ease the ache, to hope that somehow someway in the physical act of writing the words and documenting these events, I might lessen the weight pressing me down.

  Or maybe not. As I said, I’ve never done this before. But it’s worth a try, and I might as well do something with this pretty notepad.

  So it’s the middle of the night and I’m sitting beside my ex-husband who looks to be sleeping peacefully but is really in a condition the doctor calls “unresponsive unconscious”—something short of a coma but pretty darned close. We’ve split into eight-hour shifts to be sure someone is with him at all times—in case he wakes, or things turn worse. I’ve got the overnight shift, Sherri the home nurse has the day shift, Devon has the evening shift.

  Of Devon, my newfound Devon, what can I say? I gave her away when she was four days old, freely released her to a world known more for cruelty (especially toward children) than kindness, let her go without hope or expectation of ever seeing her again. Then, through no effort on my part, my daughter I’d surrendered to the world all those years ago sought me out and contacted me and I met her for the first time (as an adult) just two days ago.

  And now, without my intending (what of any of this has been my intending?!), she’s been thrust into the center of caring for her dying birth father, who still doesn’t know she exists. Devon, I’m sorry; Devon, I’m sorry.

  Not sorry you found me. Oh, no, not sorry for that. How can I be? You are a wonderful woman—smart, sensitive, kind. You have your father’s beautiful eyes and quick intellect. And you clearly have the morals and grace and self-possession of a fine upbringing by your real parents, whom I one day hope to meet and thank.

  I’m tempted to insert here, in a self-deprecating vein, that I see none of myself in you. It’s true that I see nothing of myself in your face or bearing. Leave it to Josh’s DNA to shape all your features (and lucky for you, I might add, however much I’d like to see at least a fingernail’s worth of me in you). But in all honesty, I must admit to seeing a hint of my grit in you. In me, this grit is generally the result of the lack of good alternatives—when all else fails, I put my head down and plow forward or through or into whatever life has waiting for me. But in you, at least on early observation in heavy emotional weather, this doggedness seems but one of many options you have at ready summoning.

  What a beautiful person with just a tiny bit of my making (and nine months of carrying). What a gift for me, out of nowhere.

  Or maybe not out of nowhere. Devon began the process of seeking me before Josh reached out to me through the social worker. But it was only after I picked up my life and came across country to care for him that I felt entitled and ready to respond to that communication. I couldn’t have put these words to it then, but I think my initial hesitation to respond was tied to the fact that I’d never told Josh of her existence. For all these years, I’d somehow justified keeping my secret by telling myself that our daughter existed for me no more than she existed for Josh—an unfulfilled chance for us both.

  Unfulfilled, that is, until she contacted me. So what was I to do with that? Well, Josh solved that dilemma by calling me to his side and giving me the opportunity to confess my secret—which I did, aloud and in his hearing, though I don’t know if he heard; or, if so, at what level.

  No matter—I told you the best I could Josh, as early as I could manage. I told you, Josh, and now she’s here and now she’ll share the weight of your dying even as you share the weight, light as a feather, of her existence.

  One big happy family.

  Laura looked up at Josh and sighed, then shivered the length of her body. She set the notebook and pen on the nightstand, stood, peeled back a triangle of covers without uncovering any part of Josh’s body, and slid into bed beside her ex-husband. She noted his pale warmth that’d slightly raised t
he temperature of the sheets. She also felt the catheter tube running down between the sheets. She lay on her side facing away from Josh, toward the chair, and reached out and switched off the light. She pushed her butt gently against his bony pelvis, all the touch she could bear right now.

  The phone’s vibrating purr jerked Devon from a deep sleep. The room was softly lit by early morning light filtered by thin clouds. She sat up in Angie’s bed, instantly and fully awake. She grabbed the phone expecting to see the code for Angie’s number but instead saw a single letter lit on the screen—“J.” She flipped open the phone. “Hey, Bunkie.”

  “Sweety, I woke you,” Jocelyn said.

  “It is”—Devon checked the clock on the nightstand—“6:42 AM.”

  “Since when do you sleep in?”

  “It was a long night.”

  “Baby, I called soon as I signed on and saw your e-mail. Sounds bad. Tell me about it. Do I need to come up there? Do you need to get back here? What can I do? How can I help?”

  “Slow down, J. You’re wearing me out and I’ve only been up for”—she checked the clock—“two minutes.”

  “Sorry, Sweety; it’s just that your message scared me. Being away from you scares me bad enough.”

  “For you or for me?”

  “Us both, darling; but you’re the one in uncharted territory.”

  Devon nodded. “You can say that again.”

  “So what’s up? What’s changed?”

  “I met my birth mom.”

  “Yes—Laura. You told me the other night that went O.K.”

  “Well, yesterday, I got my birth dad thrown in for good measure.”

  “That’s a good thing, right. I mean, he’s not a convict or a terrorist or something, is he?”

  “Nothing so dramatic. He’s unconscious and dying and I’ve kind of been put on a team to help with his care.”

  “‘Been put?’ You could’ve declined, right?”

  Devon hadn’t even considered that. “I don’t know. I suppose I could’ve walked away. But then what would I have had? It would’ve been worse than nothing.”

  “I suppose. How sick is he?”

  “Sick. Some blood disorder or infection spread throughout his whole body. They’ve already amputated one leg—just a matter of time before he loses the whole battle.”

  “And he’s in a coma?”

  “Yes, sort of. The nurse says he has brain activity. They don’t really know what’s going on, just that he’s really sick and could die at any moment.”

  “Oh, baby, I’m so sorry.”

  “Me too, I guess. You know, I’ve thought all my life about the day I’d meet my mother but never once about meeting my father. I’d convinced myself that my father must’ve abandoned my mother before I was born, that that was the only possible explanation why my mother would’ve given me up. So I never thought about meeting my father, didn’t think it could ever happen, even when asking Laura for my father’s DNA. I figured she’d just say it was impossible and that would be the end of it.”

  “And now you’ve been asked to watch him die.”

  “Yes.”

  “Be careful what you wish for.”

  “I didn’t wish for this.”

  “I know. Do you think he’ll wake?”

  “Who knows? Laura said he will, but I think she was just trying to convince herself.”

  “Do you want him to?”

  Devon contemplated that central question head-on for the first time. “On first impulse, absolutely—I want him to know I exist, I want my face to register on his eyes, I want to meet him.”

  “Only to lose him.”

  “That’s the downside. I’d be meeting him—”

  “Only to lose him,” Jocelyn repeated.

  “Again.”

  “You never had him to lose before now.”

  “I guess not. But now that I’m here and have a face to put with the idea of a father, it starts to feel like I’ve had him all along, like he was there all the time and I just had to find him, or he just had to find me.”

  “What are you talking about, Dev? He didn’t find you, and you didn’t find him. You just stumbled on him, by accident.”

  “I know. I know. But here I am in his house, surrounded by pictures of him as a younger man, lying in his grown daughter’s bed, waiting—”

  “Wait a minute, wait a minute—he has another daughter?”

  “Yes.”

  “You have a half-sister?”

  “Yes. A nurse serving in Iraq.”

  “Holy shit.”

  “A version of my thoughts exactly.”

  “Any other siblings?”

  “None that I know of; but after these last two days, who’s to say?”

  “What about this other daughter, this half-sister?”

  “I spoke to her last night—actually, early this morning—and am waiting to hear if she can come here, and if she wants to.”

  “Sounds like more drama.”

  “No ‘sounds like’ about it.”

  “Guess not, and you in the middle of it all.”

  “It’s O.K., Jocelyn.”

  “Doesn’t sound O.K.”

  “No, it really is.”

  “Your e-mail didn’t sound O.K.”

  “That was last night, after a long day and feeling lonely at the end of my night watch by his bed. I feel better now.”

  “Should I come up there?”

  “Not yet. Let me see how this all shakes out, then maybe.”

  “You’re sure you’re all right?”

  “I’m sure now. Talking to you has helped a lot. You’re my rock, J.”

  “That’s my middle name—Rock of Gibraltar.”

  “Rock of Devon.”

  “That too.”

  “Then rock on.”

  Josh unconscious was again in the midst of the vast human migration only this time without the offer of a loftier perspective. He was now in the middle of the crowd that spread outward from him in every direction, people of every size and age and race and attire—infants cradled in their mothers’ arms, their fathers alongside, their brothers, sisters, old men helped along by young arms, by teens, by children each side, young adults, middle-aged, older, school children, adolescents, black-skinned, olive-skinned, honey-colored, weather-beaten, pale: all moving in one direction across the dry and barren land, the haze of dust raised by those who passed before settling over the crowd, clogging the eyes, ears, noses, mouths of those passing now, exhaled back to the sky, descending on those following, all moving, moving, moving one direction: forward.

  Through a valley now, then up a hill, down a slope, up another.

  And Josh walking with the hoard on two strong legs carrying him forward, no assistance needed, though he couldn’t feel his legs beneath him, couldn’t feel them moving, only felt his whole body carried forward in the crowd. From in their midst he was only able to see a little ways in each direction but he could see that they were all moving together, all on the same path.

  And moving in silence. How could so many move so far and make no sound? The question drifted across his consciousness then was gone. He puzzled over the question no more than he wondered how his legs could carry him forward even though he didn’t feel them, no more than he wondered where they were going or when they’d arrive, no more than he questioned perspective from above once granted, perspective denied. It was enough to be moving with them all and moving in the same direction.

  Then, partway up another rise in the terrain, a rise that might end in an instant or continue indefinitely, from ahead a sound that first arrived so faint that he wondered if it were a sound at all or simply the purr of blood strumming through the veins beside his eardrums. Then the sound, real sound, rolling resolutely over the multitude, a whisper rising to a rustle, rising, rising, rising, rising in volume to a rumble, rising to a roar, a roar like a gale in the face though there was no wind, a roar that lifted them up and moved them forward but into the sound not away
, a roar of arrival, a shout of victory.

  Josh reached the crest of the rise. Before him, far as he could see—straight ahead, to the left, to the right—the land sloped gently down to the sea. And the crowd surged forward, down the slope, to the water. Some played in the shallows, splashed one another, kicked up a spray. Others fell to their knees, their foreheads in the sand, and wept. And from everywhere and in all directions, the shout—pushing out to the sea, up to the sky, beyond.

  Josh opened his eyes on the dawn, spring dawn—something in the angle of light, its color, told of the season. Time to plant, he thought—hand to trowel, trowel to earth, seed to soil, then over to you, Creator one: all over to You.

  He silently rolled his head and his gaze away from the spring dawn and discovered the back of Laura’s head, her gray-flecked auburn hair just inches from his face. He was not surprised by the sight. It seemed to him a perfectly logical, a perfectly natural proximity—like that spring dawn, something he’d known long as he could remember but had discovered just now, again.

  He inhaled deeply the scent of his ex-wife—the oils of her hair, the fragrance of her shampoo, the earthiness of her skin, the pungency of her body. Time to plant, he thought—hand to trowel, trowel to earth, seed to soil, then over to you, Creator one.

  He rolled to his side toward her, his free arm extended over her shoulder, his hand found the hollow between her neck and shoulder, gently massaged that spot, felt the slow rise and fall of her breast, felt the beating of her heart, the pulse of blood in her veins. He rolled his torso toward her, tried to raise his leg to rest atop hers but couldn’t move his leg, was balked, stopped short of his intention. He waited for pain but none arose, only numbness from his waist down. So he waited. Time would sort this all out.

  Laura carefully rolled onto her back and turned her face toward Josh. Her broad smile more than compensated for his blocked intentions. “Welcome back.”

  “I never left.”

  She shook her head. “You went somewhere.”

  “Faraway?”

  “You tell me.”

  “I don’t remember. Doesn’t seem like far.”

  “Maybe not. Maybe just a little excursion.”

  “Like a walk in the Public Garden on a warm spring day.”

  Laura smiled at the memory. “The swan boats out for the first run of the season, all fresh scrubbed and brilliant white.”

  “School kids squealing along the shore.”

  “Lovers paused on the bridge for a kiss.”

  Josh leaned forward and kissed her lightly on the lips. “I remember that part.”

  “Long time ago,” Laura said but without sadness or loss.

  “Just yesterday.”

  “Yes.”

  Josh brushed away her one tear and gently cradled her cheek. This was the same skin as then, no matter the wrinkles, the same eyes, the same heart beating under his hand. He was deeply grateful for that continuity, that unsought gift.

  “Josh, you’ve been unconscious for over eighteen hours. Nobody could wake you. We didn’t know if you would wake again.”

  Josh contemplated that summary then said, “Here now.”

  “Stay for a while?”

  “Hope to.”

  Laura started to sit up but Josh gently held her down. “Stay.”

  She laughed. “If we keep this up, you’ll have to make an honest woman out of me.” She settled back into his loose embrace, nestled her head up under his stubbled chin.

  Josh thought about her words. “No more honest soul on the planet.”

  Laura suddenly remembered Devon, not twenty feet away down the hall.

  Josh felt her tense under his hand and said, “O.K. I’ll marry you. Bring on the preacher.”

  Laura carefully slid out of the bed, straightened her pajamas, pushed back her hair, rubbed her eyes once, and sat in the chair facing the startled but clearly awake Josh. The soft dawn light bathed the entire room in a delicate, almost ethereal glow, tinged in the green of new foliage just unfurled, paused here between the memory of death and the promise of new life. Laura swallowed hard then began. “Josh, remember when I went to Paris?”

  “How could I forget—maybe the biggest mistake of my life.”

  Laura pressed on. “I didn’t know it then but soon thereafter discovered I was pregnant.” She paused and looked up.

  Josh appeared confused.

  “You were the father—no other possibility. I carried the baby to term and gave birth in a convent in Mississippi. Four days later, they took the baby away for adoption.”

  “Was it a girl or a boy?”

  “A girl.”

  “I wish you’d told me.”

  “I’m telling you now.”

  “Late.”

  Laura nodded. “I know, Josh. I’m sorry—more sorry than I can ever say.”

  “Late.”

  “But not too late, Josh. This baby, our daughter, is a grown woman now. She contacted me out of the blue shortly before I came here. I responded. She called back. And she came, Josh—came to me, came to us. She’s down the hall right now, sleeping in the spare room.”

  “In Angie’s room?”

  “In Angie’s room, yes. I hope you don’t mind. I needed to put her somewhere.”

  Josh stared at the ceiling. In the dawn light, it seemed very far away, infinitely distant. Dizziness washed over him but then passed on. He looked back toward Laura. She was the one clearly defined object in the room—seated in the chair, sharply outlined, solid. And she was anxiously watching him. “What’s her name?”

  “Devon. Devon Atwater.”

  “I’d like to meet her, once she wakes.”

  Laura nodded. “O.K.” She stood and began to straighten the room in anticipation of Sherri’s imminent arrival, then paused in her actions, quickly bent over and kissed Josh softly on the forehead. “Thank you,” she said.

  “For what?”

  “For forgiving me.”

  He considered that for a moment then said, “Nothing to forgive.”

  Laura nodded another thanks. “Welcome back.”

  “Never left.”

  The warm water jetting from the showerhead and coursing over her skin confirmed for Devon that she was fully awake, in the midst of taking a shower in her half-sister’s former bath in her birth father’s house in central North Carolina on a bright April morning. A few minutes earlier, Laura had tapped lightly on the bedroom door, opened it part way, stuck her head through the crack, and said, “Josh is conscious again. He looks forward to meeting you whenever you’re ready.” Then she was gone.

  Devon had remained in bed for some minutes, wondering if what she’d seen and heard was real or imagined, the product of waking or sleeping. Finally convinced Laura’s brief appearance was real (Devon remembered vividly one pale foot holding the door open while Laura spoke—who would’ve dreamt a pale foot?), Devon nonetheless moved through her waking routines in a half-daze—rising from bed, peeing, and brushing her teeth without quite registering the actions fully on her consciousness.

  It was only now, with the water stimulating her scalp and her shoulders, that her mind began to shake off the fog of sleep, the disorientation of unfamiliar spaces, and the shocking revelations of the previous twenty-four hours. It was really happening—no dream, no turning back or pausing the forward march of events.

  She thought of Stevie. He was in her third-grade class, a loud tall black boy given to pulling her braids and ordering her around like she was his slave. And most times she’d obey his commands, though usually with an exclamation of protest or a shriek of exasperation. The irony of their relationship—a black boy ordering around a white girl in a southern public school—never dawned on her; but what did slowly develop inside was a childhood crush, her first, on this boisterous boy. She figured one day they’d get married. She’d dress up in her bedroom with a sheet for a gown and a veil made from a sheer linen napkin and pretend to walk down the aisle toward the altar that was her des
k where Stevie waited. She even asked her mom for a black Ken doll to replace Barbie’s white mate; and when her parents failed to produce the substitute, she turned Ken’s white face black with her crayons. Then the infatuation was brought to an abrupt end when Stevie moved away to live with his grandmother in New York City.

  Through this memory of Stevie, Devon’s hands found their unfailing way over her breasts, her stomach, across her waist, down over her inner thighs. Her fingers gently parted the lips of her sex, rubbed her soap-coated hand back and forth, back and forth. She leaned against the wall under the showerhead and let all the water strike her breasts and stomach and cascade in thick rivulets down over her sex. The orgasm rose so suddenly that it caused her knees to buckle and her lungs to release a massive but near silent moan. Her back slid downward against the tile wall in a slow-motion collapse till she sat on the tiled floor, warm water striking her head and her face in huge drops from high above, a blessed summer rain, the morning’s second sparkling gift.

  Angie sat on the sand with her head against the huge hard rubber tire of one armored personnel carrier staring at the mottled beige-yellow-brown paint of another personnel carrier parked less than three feet away. The U.S. Army was extremely proficient at providing for the bodily needs of its soldiers. There were plenty of toilets, each with an ample supply of the raspy toilet paper, hand sanitizer, and tampon dispensers. The mess tent had adequate seating even during the breakfast rush and food that was hot and nutritionally balanced if bland. They provided shower stalls with hot water that usually worked and soap and shampoo dispensers (if you didn’t mind your skin and your hair getting so dried out it began to flake away—she carried her own moisturizing soap and body-enhancing shampoo ordered from the States on Amazon). The cots and the sheets and the blankets they provided were clean and warm at least, if less than cushy and soft. They had an exercise tent with treadmills and barbells; and a recreation tent with Wi-Fi, video games, DVD players, and even a small paperback library-exchange. They even acknowledged the body’s need for sexual release, providing x-rated videos for play on those DVD players and even winking at the official ban on sexual congress by offering condoms to the men (and women) and birth-control pills to the women not interested in depending on condoms.

  But the one bodily need they didn’t provide for was solitude—and it was definitely a bodily need, for Angie at least. When lacking, she craved it like a nutritional deficiency, her body craving it like a sailor longing for the vitamin C of citrus, a desert traveler yearning for salt. She’d been in-country less than a week when she began to notice the first signs of solitude-deprivation—irritability, clouded thinking, hand tremors, fatigue, even dizziness. But everything about base regimen and security protocols worked against providing for solitude—a soldier’s whereabouts in a hostile environment needed to be known 24/7, otherwise that soldier was vulnerable to kidnapping or worse. And every square foot of the base needed to be mapped and monitored to prevent intrusion or ambush.

  So after a few weeks of solitude deprivation, Angie took matters into her own hands to survey every square foot of the inner base (nobody except recon went into the outer perimeter) to find the most private spot available to her. And, excepting the odiferous toilet stalls that provided cramped privacy at a steep price, the most private spot on the whole base was right here amidst the heavy armor parked lead-reinforced bumper to lead-reinforced bumper. Ironically, this spot was near the geographical center of the base, where most of the equipment was stored for monitoring and security. And it was here where Angie came when she needed to hide, when she needed a few minutes or longer to restock that essential nutrient the Army had neglected to supply, or was incapable of acknowledging let alone granting. Sitting against this one tire, facing another tire and its surrounding wall of mottled steel, Angie was not visible to any guard tower or camera or heat sensor or drone (which never flew over the center of the base). And if there was a security satellite parked twenty thousand miles up watching her sitting between these armored personnel carriers—well then, God bless the geek sitting at his monitor back at Langley spoiling her solitude: she’d done her best.

  She sat there breathing in solitude in long draughts like oxygen to a mountain climber, needing aloneness today more than in a long time. It’d been a quiet day, quieter than in weeks—no sirens wailing or helos whirring overhead or ambulances honking their horns. They’d tended to one mechanic who’d broken his leg when a Humvee slipped out of its hoist; other than that, the trauma unit was empty. Normally, Angie cherished these quiet days—for rest or reading or writing in her blog. But today, in the wake of the news from the woman who said she was her half-sister, Angie wished she had the distraction of her job. Lacking that, she’d sought out the solitude of the armor depot.

  She recalled thinking of her father for the first time in—what? years surely—just a few days before, and couldn’t help wondering if that’d been some sort of premonition. But she’d thought of him in conjunction with her mom, not alone in his deathbed, certainly not tended by a sibling she hadn’t known she had.

  But premonition or not, she searched her heart to discern what it meant to know her father was dying now. What did that mean to her, for whom her father’d been essentially dead for well over a decade? Could she, should she, make him alive again, only to watch him die again? And how much did she want to get to know this woman who claimed to be her half-sister, and the woman who was her father’s wife before her mom? How could all this be happening now, and why? Part of her wanted it all to go away, wished she’d been told who she was calling and why before making that phone call earlier this morning. This part of her knew that she could make it all go away simply by asking her CO to inform her half-sister that Lieutenant Earl could not be released from active deployment at this time. Angie looked up at the slice of Middle Eastern sky visible directly above, the dazzling blue just now turned to shimmering silver as the sun rose above the near carrier’s gun turret. She closed her eyes and let the sun’s brilliance claim her whole body, her whole being.

  Devon found Laura seated at the breakfast table reading the morning paper with a plate of toast and a cup of steaming coffee in front of her. She looked up from the paper, her eyes lively and alert as if she’d just risen from a good night’s sleep rather than a long night sitting beside Josh’s bed. “An official good morning,” she said as Devon entered the kitchen.

  “Official?”

  “My earlier greeting at the door to your bedroom caught you half-asleep. I’m sorry. I was excited about Josh’s return to consciousness and needed to share the good news with somebody.”

  “And that he wanted to see me, wants to see me?”

  “Very definitely.”

  “How’d you tell him?”

  “Once I was sure he was awake and clear-headed, I just told him. Couldn’t think of any gentler way, not after all these years, not with so little time.”

  “And how’d he respond?”

  “It’s always hard to tell with Josh, even without all these meds. He masks his emotions well. But my best guess is he was shocked for about ten seconds then began to be pleased. I’m sure it’s all a bit of a blur. It’s not every day you wake to discover you have a grown daughter.”

  “Or a real father.”

  Laura nodded. “Surprises for everyone.”

  “How’s he doing?”

  Laura shrugged. “He woke like normal, no sign of any problems from the protracted unconsciousness. Sherri says all his vitals are good. Doctor Joe’s supposed to come by later this morning.”

  “And what does Josh say?”

  “Says he feels fine, given everything—no new pain or weakness. He doesn’t like the catheter, but Sherri thinks he should leave it in for now—in case he lapses back into never-never land. She’s taken the other monitors off. It’s no big deal to hook them back up if we have to.”

  “Does he have any memory of what happened?”

  “Not a thing—says he was reading Angi
e’s blog one moment, woke beside me the next. Said he thinks he had some interesting dreams, but can’t remember those either.”

  “Not a whole lot to go on.”

  “Sherri says this is not unusual in these situations. His body is confronting a lot of unprecedented stresses. The body acts in weird ways when placed under those kinds of demands.”

  “So we don’t know what will come next?”

  Laura looked up at her—Devon still hadn’t sat—and nodded. “Why don’t you sit down? I’ll get you something to eat.”

  “I’d like to see him now, if that’s O.K.?”

  Laura nodded. “Sure.” She rose from her seat and they walked together to Josh’s room.

  The voice came out of the dazzling sun. “Found you.”

  Angie squinted into the brilliance. “What if I didn’t want to be found?”

  The sun’s light, which seemed to spin off its own almost audible roar, amply filled the long pause that followed. Then the voice said, “That’s not always your choice.” Doctor J sat opposite her against the tire of the neighboring carrier.

  Though his face was no longer consumed by the sun’s fire, it was now almost equally hidden in shadow, her eyes still blinded by the sun. She kept her gaze pointed skyward, not ready to be released from the sun’s enrapturing hold. “You’re either prescient or have access to my newest secrets.”

  “Can I be both?”

  “Sure—what the hell. I could use a guardian with all the answers.”

  “At your service.”

  Angie lowered her gaze and gave her eyes a minute to adjust to the dimness surrounding Jacob. Lingering flashes of red and gold and silver streaked across her retina, reinforcing the illusion that Jacob was a divine guardian come to her aid amidst much Heavenly fanfare. It was, after all, in a desert not far from this locale that such divine intrusions occurred on a regular basis not so long ago, at least in geological time (let alone divine time, or lack thereof).

  But then the visual bedazzling passed and it was just Doctor J sitting opposite her in the shade. “How much do you know?”

  “Jackson told me that you’d been contacted by your family and told that your father was dying.” Jackson was the sergeant in charge of all state-side communications.

  “Did he tell you I have a sister?”

  “I thought you were an only child?”

  “A half-sister, from my father’s first marriage.”

  “Did you know about her?”

  “Not a clue. I don’t think my father knew either, or else he would’ve told me during one of those hundreds of fits I pitched about having no brothers or sisters.”

  “Or maybe there was some reason he didn’t want to tell you.”

  “Could be. In any case, my newly revealed half-sister Devon is tending my dying father along with her mother, my father’s first wife, Laura.”

  “Sounds complicated.”

  “Probably sounds more complicated than it is. Dying is dying, whoever is in attendance.”

  “You?”

  “I don’t know, Jacob. If I’d received the call six months ago, I doubt I would’ve gone across town, let alone a third of the way around the globe, to be with my dying father. But now it seems to matter more. What do you think?”

  “I think you just answered your question.”

  She looked up and grinned across the divide of light and shade. “If that’s the best my divine guardian has to offer, I want my money back.”

  “Didn’t you read the fine print—no refunds.”

  She slid her butt on the sand till she was seated beside him in the shade. “Can I take it out in trade?” Her hand found its way into his lap.

  “I’ll have to ask my boss.”

  She rubbed her hand back and forth over his army fatigues. “Don’t take too long to find out.”

  “My boss just answered. He said yes.”

  “Good.”

  Laura tapped lightly on Josh’s slightly ajar door then quietly entered the room followed by Devon. Sherri glanced up from her word puzzles, nodded, marked the page she was on, and set the book of puzzles on the nightstand. After she stood to leave, she said, “He’s all bathed, from the waist up anyway—I’ll remove the catheter and bath him down there later— and shaved and in clean duds. He says he’s not hungry—probably the residual effects of the IV making him feel full. Maybe we’ll try some soft food later, if the doc thinks it’s O.K.”

  “No lobster tails drenched in butter?” Josh said from behind her.

  Sherri faced him and winked. “Maybe tonight, if you’re really good.” Then she turned and walked past the women. “Holler if you need me,” she said and disappeared, closing the door behind her.

  In her wake, Josh said, “Bring my dancing shoes when you come back.” He was sitting up against the headboard, two pillows supporting his head and neck. True to Sherri’s claim, his hair had been washed and dried and neatly combed, his face was clean-shaven and had good color, and the fresh pale-blue pajama top still showed ironing creases. Devon wondered who had ironed his pajamas as she looked over Laura’s shoulder.

  Laura walked to the bedside, bent at the waist, and kissed his clean forehead. He smelled like baby powder. “Good morning again.”

  “And again and again and again and again, far as the eye can see,” Josh replied.

  Laura nodded. “We can hope.”

  “Oh, we know,” Josh said. “It’s the one thing we can know for sure.” He smiled like a schoolboy who just answered the teacher’s toughest question.

  “Yes,” Laura agreed. “We know that much.” She turned to Devon. “Josh, I’d like to introduce you to your daughter—.” She hesitated. “Our daughter.” Her voice wavered. She looked down, closed her eyes, and took a deep breath. When she looked up again, her eyes were clear. “This is all so new,” she said to Devon. She again faced Josh and said simply, “Devon Atwater,” then stepped aside.

  Devon approached the bed with considerable trepidation. The room in daylight with a conscious Josh appeared totally unfamiliar, as did the man watching her approach with the eyes of a hawk—a fiercely independent hawk. Part of her saw him as a friendless man spiffed up by charitable strangers for a last hurrah before the inevitable. Another part of her saw him quite simply as God, resting confident and almighty on his throne, waiting to pass judgment on her. The one thing she didn’t see him as was father. Her father was back in Louisiana, probably preparing for nine holes of golf with his retiree buddies, oblivious to the current plight of his adopted daughter. She suddenly felt guilt pangs at the thought of her father who’d provided her unfaltering love and care for thirty-six years and counting. Her legs struck the side of the bed.

  “Devon, I’m Josh.” He smiled broadly and extended his right hand.

  She accepted his hand. It was warm, his grip firm. “I’m Devon. I believe I’m your daughter.”

  Josh nodded. “So I’m told.”

  They both looked to Laura, standing near the foot of the bed.

  “Don’t look at me. I just carried her for nine months.”

  They could all three laugh at that.

  Josh released Devon’s hand. “Would you please sit and talk a spell?”

  Devon smiled. “I think my schedule will allow that.” She sat in the chair beside the bed.

  Laura stepped forward. “Can I get either of you anything?”

  “Box of Kleenex,” Devon said with a grin, her eyes dry.

  “Used them all myself,” Laura said, but then nodded toward the open box behind the light on the nightstand.

  Devon grabbed one of the tissues and waved it like a flag of victory, or of surrender. “Just in case.”

  Laura looked to Josh.

  “I’m all set,” he said. “Sherri took care of all my needs.”

  “Then I’ll leave you two to talk, long as you want. Just remember that neither one of you has had breakfast—don’t need two hypoglycemic souls to care for.”

  The two said simultaneousl
y, “Yes, Mom,” then giggled at the coincidence.

  Laura touched Devon’s shoulder. Her hand lingered there for some seconds. She suddenly wanted to bend over and kiss Devon’s temples and eyelids and the crown of her head, wanted to kiss her and hug her and hold her tight, thirty-six years’ worth. Her legs almost buckled under the weight of the longing, the burden of her loss. Devon felt her mother’s hand press against her shoulder and lean against that support. Then the spasm passed and Laura stood of her own strength, on her own adequate legs. “I’ll go mix some blueberry muffins. They’ll be ready in forty-five minutes.”

  “Sounds great,” Devon said as Laura left the room and pulled the door shut behind her, the latch making a sharp click. Devon stared at the door.

  From behind her, Josh said, “Don’t worry, she didn’t lock us in.”

  Devon turned toward him, confronted her features in his face, gazed into that time-warp mirror fast-forwarded by more than two decades of wear at the hands of time and illness and more than a touch of regret. Maybe just now she could help reverse the regret part, if not the aging of time and illness. “I was thinking of locking the world out.”

  “That’s a thought. We could try.”

  “Let’s.”

  A long silence ensued—of awkwardness or new intimacy or both. Sharing the trait of watchfulness—perhaps of genetic origin or maybe just coincidental—neither felt the need to rush into the blur of emotion or disclosure.

  Josh finally said, “I wonder which of us is more surprised by this meeting.”

  “Well, I sort of met you yesterday. I spent all of last evening in this chair beside you.”

  “I’d like to think I felt your presence. Maybe at some level, I did. What was it like sitting there?”

  “Kind of awkward. I didn’t know whether to think of you as alive or dead.” She immediately regretted the words. “Sorry. That didn’t come out right.”

  “No need to apologize. I confront that dilemma every minute. Hell, half of me is dead; the rest soon to follow.” He frowned. “Sorry, that didn’t come out right either.”

  Devon laughed. “Guess we started down the wrong path.”

  “The path we’re on; the one we’ve been given.”

  “But you need to know—you’re very much alive and I’m very glad to be here with you, to be able to talk with you. Whatever ambivalence I felt last night is gone now that you’re awake.”

  “In the spirit of published corrections, you need to know that I feel no self-pity. I’m not totally at peace with the situation, but what unease I have is more curiosity and questions than anger or regret. Fifty-eight is young to die these days, but lots of folks have died younger. I’ll just keep seeking answers till the end, and maybe beyond the end—if questions are allowed.”

  “Am I a question or an answer?”

  “Most definitely both—a totally undeserved, unmerited, unexpected, grace-filled answer to decades of loss and error; at the same time, a looming question of how to respond to this wonderful gift, how to thank you and Laura and God, what to give back, if I have anything worthwhile to give.” He paused to consider that then shrugged. “What about me for you—question or answer?”

  Devon stared calmly at him. “I don’t usually think in those terms.”

  Josh smiled. “Sorry. I guess it’s the academic in me.”

  “But it’s an interesting viewpoint. I’d say you’re all question—endless questions. I never expected to meet my biological father, so I never thought about what it might mean. I guess it’s time to start thinking about what it means.”

  “Or not mean.”

  “True. Revelation works in both directions, doesn’t it?”

  “For the legions that are taken up, even greater numbers are sent down.”

  Devon looked confused.

  “An allusion to the Book of Revelation—the news, the understandings, are not always friendly or kind.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind.”

  “Me too. Tell me a little about yourself, Devon Atwater.”

  And Devon did, the Reader’s Digest version anyway. She told how she’d been raised in rural Louisiana by kind and generous parents—her father a tractor salesman and her mother a teacher’s aide once she was old enough to go to school; how her curiosity and will to learn had earned her a decent education despite the limits of the public schools she attended, and a scholarship to attend Louisiana State University; how she’d met the love of her life in her freshman roommate at LSU—a young black woman named Jocelyn Oates—and followed Jocelyn to Austin, Texas where Jocelyn earned a degree in public policy while she took a job as an EMS dispatcher for the City of Austin and had since worked her way up to supervisor while Joce got a job in the city’s Planning Department. And now they wanted to start a family, a goal that set them on a quest to trace Devon’s genetic origins. She ended her brief history of Devon with this observation—“Though it all started as a clinical search, I’ve discovered that DNA is a whole lot less important than the people that are carrying it.”

  “Did you ever doubt that?”

  “Not so much doubted as hid from it. Much as I wanted to know my birth mother—and, maybe somewhere deep down, my biological father—I could’ve never initiated the search if I’d fully contemplated the potential revelations.”

  “So you needed a nudge?”

  “More like a big old shove from Jocelyn.”

  “Whatever works.”

  “Whatever works.”

  “And now that you’re here, what do you think?”

  “Ask me in about ten years,” Devon said then winced at her words.

  Josh never missed a beat. “I’ll do that. Just be sure you’re listening.”

  “I will be,” she said, no pause or doubt, then added, “What about you—what do you think?”

  “I drove away the daughter I knew I had, then one I didn’t know about showed up. I drove away the wife I knew I had, then one I didn’t deserve returned to tend me. I can only conclude the universe is loving despite all my efforts to deny or undo that love.” He had not planned those words, not even known they existed inside his heart until they came out.

  Devon said, “I tried to reach Angie.”

  Josh looked up quickly.

  “Laura asked me to.”

  “And?”

  “You know she’s serving in Iraq?”

  “Yes. Laura showed me her website. I read some of her journal.”

  “Me too. I contacted the Defense Department. I’m waiting to hear back.” Devon thought to herself—that’s the first time I’ve lied to either of my birth parents. She quickly forgave herself on the grounds of trying to protect her father if Angie said no.

  The anticipation in Josh’s eyes and shoulders slumped slightly. “She probably won’t come. She may not even reply.”

  “Why?”

  “I betrayed her and her mother. I didn’t mean to. I certainly didn’t mean to hurt Angie. But I did, and she hasn’t spoken to me since.”

  “How long ago was that?”

  “More than ten years. Vicki, Angie’s mom, died about five years ago. Angie didn’t want me there—either for Vicki’s last days or for the funeral. I didn’t even hear about it till later.”

  “And no word since?”

  Josh shook his head.

  “Do you want to see her?”

  “Very definitely, if she wants to see me.”

  “Then I’ll hope for that, and do my best to make it happen.”

  “I’d have not thought it possible, but you might just pull it off.”

  “Somebody planted determination in me.”

  “Don’t look at me. Laura’s got the corner on that market.”

  “Then I’ll thank her for that.”

  “For us both.”

  The offer of scratch-made blueberry muffins was uncharacteristically impulsive of Laura. She hadn’t made blueberry muffins in years—hell, in decades. She didn’t know if she could remember the recipe. She had
no idea if Josh’s kitchen had all the ingredients. Add to all that the possibility that Devon didn’t like blueberries or muffins and the likelihood that Josh wouldn’t be allowed to eat them and you have the makings of a truly lame-brained promise.

  But opposite the impulsiveness were several genuine concerns. For one thing, Devon had not had any breakfast. If Laura had skipped breakfast like that, she’d be shaking by now and in danger of fainting. Further, Laura wanted to serve these two freshly found loved ones; but she didn’t know exactly how. Baked goodies had seemed a potentially rewarding—and at worst, harmless—channel for those energies. Finally, she desperately wanted to be there in the room with them—a kind of fly on the wall to watch their exchange unfold, see where she fit in—yet knew she couldn’t stay. Her promise of muffins ready at a specific time served as a reminder of her presence, and an implicit time limit to their exchange.

  But none of those legitimate needs made Laura feel very good as she rooted through Josh’s cupboards for the muffin ingredients—flour, sugar, baking powder, salt. In fact, it all made her feel downright awful, vulnerable and exposed to a degree unprecedented in her adult life. Even when she’d been carrying Brie—that is, Devon—at least she knew her future: carry the child, birth the child, surrender the child, get on with your life. However ignoble or selfish or cowardly those actions, at least they were a plan, at least they were a future. Today, at just this moment, she had no clue. Worse, she didn’t even know what she wanted, or where to find it. Hell, she couldn’t even find the god-damned baking powder. She slammed the cupboard door, sat heavily in one of the breakfast table chairs, and buried her face in trembling hands. I’m the one needing sugar, she thought briefly, as if that might solve it all. She pushed her face, her very soul, on deeper into the darkness that enshrouded her.

  Then out of that darkness arose not a light exactly but more a glow, a glimmer that grew steadily, steadily to embrace her gently, an embrace like two of the gentlest, kindest, loving arms—over her shoulders, across her chest, cradling her head: two perfect loving arms bearing her whole being, guaranteed never to fail. So tangible was this embrace that Laura wondered briefly if Sherri’d silently entered the kitchen and come around behind her. Yet she wouldn’t open her eyes, refused to break the spell.

  “I wondered when you’d come home.” It was Amy, the childhood playmate her parents had always called imaginary but she’d insisted was real, at least in the ways that mattered to her at the time—a voice and touch and consolation and companionship. They’d not talked in forever. Laura’d all but come around to her parents’ long-ago assessment, insofar as she’d thought about Amy at all.

  But Amy’s voice was insistent. “You never bothered to write or call or even wing a thought my way. But, you know, that’s O.K. I’ve grown used to that. I was never far away. The table was always set for your return.”

  “With tea?” Laura whispered.

  “And scones and clotted cream.”

  “Just the two of us.”

  “For now. But I’ve been thinking—maybe we should set a few more places.”

  “How many?”

  “Maybe two, to start. We’ll see.”

  “Why?”

  Amy sighed. “Laura my Laura, always the loner, always the self-sustainer. It isn’t enough, never was.”

  “I’ve got you.”

  Amy laughed. “Nice of you to remember.” Then she grew serious. “You’ll always have me. But that’s not enough, Laura. You’ve got so much more to give. And the others have so much they need to give you.”

  “Which others?”

  “Set the places—they’ll sit at them.”

  “Set them how?”

  “Come on, Laura. You know—fork left, knife and spoon right, napkin in the middle, saucer and cup at the tip of the knife.”

  “What to serve?”

  “What you’d planned all along.”

  “You’ll help me?”

  “Of course.”

  “How shall we begin?”

  “Get the baking powder from behind the box of brown sugar. The rest will follow.”

  Laura lowered her hands and opened her eyes. The kitchen was empty and still with warm spring sun streaming in the east-facing windows. The blueberry-muffin recipe she’d helped her mother mix countless times rose easily in her memory. And she found all the ingredients in Josh’s well-stocked kitchen, including frozen blueberries in a plastic bag buried deep in the freezer. She set herself to the task at hand, the task she’d assigned herself or been given.

  On her way from Josh’s room to the kitchen, Devon paused in the hallway and turned her phone back on. The screen alerted her to a waiting message which she quickly accessed.

  “This is Angela Earl. I’ll be returning stateside soon as possible, whenever they can find me a spot on a transport. Hang in there. Thank you.”

  Devon saved the message, flipped the phone shut, and breathed a sigh of relief on Josh’s behalf. But no sooner had she breathed that sigh than a knot of anxiety began to form in her stomach at the prospect of meeting her half-sister, one more family member she’d not known she possessed. She took the last few steps into the kitchen.

  Laura looked round from gazing out the window. “Two cardinals have a nest in that camellia bush.”

  Devon walked over to look.

  “Just there.” Laura pointed to a bush not five feet beyond the glass. As if on cue, a bright red cardinal appeared out of the leaves and flew off into the tree line at the edge of the lawn. “I think they’ve hatched. Either that, or he’s bringing food to the female while she sets.”

  Devon laughed. “Who says chivalry is dead?”

  “Probably food for the chicks.”

  “Probably.”

  “Speaking of food, the muffins will be ready in”—she checked the timer—“three minutes.”

  “Good. I’m suddenly starving.”

  “And Josh?”

  “He seemed fine. Sherri’s with him now.”

  “How’d it go?”

  “Oh, just your average everyday meet your gravely ill father for the first time at the age of thirty-six kind of encounter.”

  “That bad, huh?”

  Devon laughed. “No, that good. It went fine. He seems a kind and gentle man. In a different life, it would’ve been nice to know him sooner.”

  “He would’ve cherished you.”

  “I want to believe that,” Devon said. “But how do you know?”

  The oven timer dinged at just that moment. Both women jumped at the sound.

  Laura turned to the oven and used two potholders to remove the pan full of golden brown, perfectly shaped muffins. She set the pan on a cooling rack on the counter beside the oven then put the potholders back in their drawer.

  Devon watched her mother, waiting for her to finish her task. When Laura finally turned, Devon said, “The muffins look beautiful and smell great. I wouldn’t have guessed you were a baker.”

  “I’m not, anymore. This is a throw-back to a long, long time ago.”

  Devon nodded toward the muffins. “Looks like you haven’t lost your touch.”

  “We’ll give them a few minutes to cool.”

  “I can wait.”

  “And for an answer to your previous question?” Laura asked.

  “Preferably not another thirty-six years.”

  “Don’t worry about that. I doubt I’ll last that long.”

  “Then how about now?”

  Laura nodded. “Please sit, dear.” She pulled out a chair from the table. “Can I get you a cup of coffee?”

  “Coffee’d be great. It’s the fuel I run on at work.”

  Laura poured her a cup and brought it on a mismatched saucer. She brought milk in a small pottery pitcher, sugar in a shallow bowl, and a teaspoon for stirring. She then carefully pried three muffins out of the pan and set them on a bread plate and placed the plate in front of Devon. “Be careful. They’re still hot.”

  Devon said, “You
must think I have the appetite of a field hand.”

  “Don’t you—after the night and the morning you’ve had?”

  Devon thought about that. “I just might.” She stirred a little milk into her coffee then slowly sipped it. “Ahh, awake at last.”

  “From this long dream.”

  “Which the dream, which the reality?”

  Laura shrugged. “All a blur to me.”

  “You think it’ll ever come in focus again?”

  “If an infant has one weak eye, they cover the good one.”

  “And the blurry one learns to focus,” Devon finished.

  Laura shrugged. “We can hope.” She sat opposite Devon. She twirled her empty cup slowly on the table and stared at it as if it might hold the answers to all her questions, or at least sort out the current pain and uncertainty. “Josh was the ultimate romantic. If he’d got one look at you, newborn and helpless and cute as a button, he would have grabbed hold of you and never let go, defending you against all dangers, known and unknown.”

  “But the world would’ve won, worn him down?”

  “No, I don’t think so. Josh’s supply of romantic delusion was bottomless back then, at least far as I could tell. The world might’ve tried to wear him down, but the world had met few rivals as determined as Josh.”

  “Then why didn’t you let him have me?”

  “Early on, I thought it might be spite—that if I wasn’t strong enough to raise you, I didn’t want him to have the chance. He certainly would’ve accused me of that, had he known. But once I was fully clear of his deeply rooted influence, I realized that I didn’t want to put you—or, for that matter, Josh—through what he and I had paid such a high price to learn.”

  Devon looked confused.

  “The world doesn’t break Josh, never has. It’s the object of his obsession that gets worn down and ultimately rebels. Sooner or later, that would’ve happened to you. It would’ve been hard on you; it might’ve killed Josh.”

  “So you spared us both?”

  “That’s what I came to think, when I thought about it at all—which wasn’t often, for obvious reasons.”

  “Then I suppose I should thank you.”

  “Not for that, Devon.”

  “Then for these incredible muffins!” She had just finished her second and was taking the paper wrapper off the third.

  “Those thanks I’ll accept with joy.”

  “Good.” She nibbled on the still warm muffin. “Oh, Angie’s coming, left a message this morning.”

  “You talked to her?”

  “Late last night, then she left a follow-up message when I was in with Josh and had my phone off.”

  “When will she arrive?”

  “She doesn’t know—something about waiting for space on a transport plane. But she’s coming.”

  “Good.”

  “You think we should tell Josh?”

  “Why not?”

  “What if she changes her mind? I just don’t want him hurt.”

  Laura smiled. “I hope I’m lucky enough to have you guarding me when I’m old.”

  “Don’t worry. I will.”

  “Promise?”

  Devon raised her eyes from finishing off the final muffin and gazed straight at her new-found mother. “Of course.”

  The two women sat in the spreading light and growing warmth of the inexorable spring morning.

  Angie pulled out a paperback she kept handy for just such slow spells—Madame Bovary this time, her third reading of the novel. She sat beside an unconscious soldier on a gurney waiting for an evac chopper. He’d slipped while disembarking from a personnel carrier during a raid and his ankle got crushed as the ramp started to close. They’d immobilized his lower leg, pumped him full of morphine and antibiotics, and prepped him for transfer to Germany for possible reconstruction or amputation. Now all he needed was a chopper to carry him to the airport for the flight to Ramstein, but the choppers were all dispatched to a bombing site north of Baghdad. So Angie waited with the injured soldier in the quiet hospital tent, reading Madame Bovary.

  “She was doomed from the start,” he said.

  Angie jumped at the words. The soldier was staring at her, clear-eyed and clearly awake. “Who was doomed?”

  “Emma Bovary. She expected too much.”

  “Of whom? Charles? Rodolphe?”

  “Of life. It’s a dangerous thing.”

  Angie was now more confused than startled. “What’s dangerous—life?”

  “Expectations.”

  “Better to have none?”

  “Yes.”

  “But what of hopes? What of dreams?”

  “‘Smoke before wind’ at best, a terminal cancer at worst. Emma had the worst kind.”

  Angie lowered her book and studied her calm patient. She was amazed he was conscious, let alone coherent. She quickly checked his IV drips—they were all open and flowing. “Are you all right?”

  “My ankle’s been better.”

  “I mean pain. Are you in pain?”

  “Been through worse.”

  “Can I get you anything?”

  “I’m fine for now. Just don’t leave.”

  “We’re waiting for evac. I’m not going anywhere till they arrive.”

  “Good.” The soldier closed his eyes.

  Angie studied his face. He couldn’t have been older than nineteen or twenty—he still had an adolescent softness to his cheeks and chin. He might one day grow into handsomeness, if his face could negotiate the transition to adulthood. She took a towel from the gurney and gently wiped a drop of sweat from his left temple.

  He opened his eyes at the touch of the towel and nodded thanks. “This morning I still expected to be an Olympic skier.” He spoke the words with a clinical detachment.

  “Still could be.”

  He offered her a beautiful smile, the brightest thing in the room at that moment. “Thanks for saying so, but you and I know that Olympic skiing is not in my future anymore. Thing is, I now realize it was never a realistic expectation. But it took God to put the hammer down on that expectation this morning.”

  “God?”

  “How else do you explain this?” He nodded toward his leg elevated on pillows under the sheet.

  “An accident.”

  “Not this time. God needed to shake me free of futile expectation.”

  “To what end?”

  “Well, I guess that’s the fun part—now I need to figure that out.”

  “And just how do you do that?”

  “Pick up the pieces you’re given, put them together best you can.”

  “When’d you get so smart?”

  “This morning around 11:20 Baghdad time.”

  “Steep price to pay.”

  “Cheap, compared to years or decades chasing phantom dreams.”

  Angie gazed at his face that’d seemed to age under her watch.

  “Then again,” he added, “might just be these high-dollar drugs you’re pumping into me.” He again flashed that incredible smile.

  “Never worked like this on anyone else.”

  “First time for everything.” He closed his eyes and leaned back into the pillow. “Please don’t leave.”

  Angie said, “I won’t.”

  He slid his left hand out from under the sheet and to the edge of the gurney, just beneath the lowest side rail. She reached out and accepted his grasp, a mutual gift.

  “Don’t talk about the first thing that pops up,” Josh joked as Sherri began his sponge bath by focusing on his groin region. She’d finally removed that uncomfortable catheter and was taking full advantage of this renewed access to his penis and scrotum. She scrubbed gently but firmly with her sponge dipped in warm, soapy water. Drops of water leaked out of the sponge and trickled down over his inner thighs and testicles and anus to the thick towel she’d doubled up under his butt.

  “I’ll give it a workout, if you wish,” Sherri countered. “Probably could use the exercise.”<
br />
  “No ‘if you wish’ about it,” Josh said. “That soldier marches to the beat of his own drummer.”

  Sherri nodded. “So I’ve observed.”

  As if on cue, Josh’s half-tumescent penis flexed once and rolled to one side, then didn’t move again. Sherri sponged the spot it had vacated then continued her bathing gently down over his thighs and hips, every few seconds pausing to dip the sponge in the basin and squeezing out the excess water before continuing her scrubbing.

  Josh closed his eyes and seamlessly set his mind to drift on the prevailing breezes of semi-consciousness. Not surprisingly, those breezes carried his mind to the hands of all the women that had massaged his nakedness—whether in love or lust or a desperate need only they knew—over the course of his life. It wasn’t a particularly long list, at least for a man of his generation and socio-cultural background—perhaps twenty or so women in all, though he’d never tried to establish an exact tally. Some of the massages had been of the one-night-stand variety—little more (or less) than furious gropes and probes and releases in bar-room toilet stalls, house-party guestrooms, motel beds. Their fleeting images produced both the warmth of wonder (how could my body need anything that powerfully?) and the burn of shame (how profligate the act, its blatant ignorance of cost). But the images of these girls and women—some whose faces he couldn’t recall but whose touch and smell remained fresh in memory’s light—faded as quickly as they’d arisen.

  His mind settled on the protracted and more complex exchanges he’d shared with three women, exchanges where love had superseded lust in the actions of shared touch, where the stimulation of certain nerve endings was routed through the convoluted and ill-understood circuitry of trust, commitment, and responsibility. How could something as seemingly simple as contiguous flesh evolve into something as complex, as rewarding and risky, as love? What transformation happened there between touch and love’s tangle? Could someone, anyone document the instant of transition—as the millisecond when the sperm cell’s persistent bumping of the egg cell’s resistant membrane finally and ultimately results in the breach of that membrane and the consequent conception of a totally new entity. Was touch transformed to love like that—an instant’s change? Josh could smile at the apt metaphor. He wondered if it were original or if he’d encountered it in some long forgotten poem or story.

  But his mind quickly drifted past such idle speculation and settled on the hands and faces and hearts of the three sexual partners he’d truly loved—Laura, Vicki, and his partner in adultery, Joan. And as much as he would’ve wished to focus on the nearby Laura (and the product of their love, the nearby Devon) or the wronged and dearly departed Vicki (and the living product of their love, the long absent and longed for Angie), Josh could at that moment only picture Joan.

  She had, for him at least, an effervescence that was simply intoxicating—place her in a room with him, and all his senses became instantly more acute: the light grew brighter, sounds clearer, taste and smell heightened, and touch, oh, touch! If she were sitting across from him at a desk, his fingertips on the wood of the desktop knew every twist of grain, every finish-filled pore. Set her next to him at a dining table, and his fingers knew every swirl of filigree on the stainless, every drop of condensation on the water glass, every weave of linen on the tablecloth. His life in her presence became a new life—or, perhaps more accurately, became again the old life of his earliest childhood memories, when every sensation was unprecedented, every moment and action sparklingly intense.

  Poor Joan—caught up in a vortex not of her own making (but of his?), swirled around and around and around, dazzling dance, dancing dervish, then dropped. She didn’t deserve any of it. She’d loved Angie first, completely and without reservation, gladly becoming the big sister Angie’d longed for. Then she’d loved Vicki—half daughter, half confidant: she’d given Vicki something she’d needed and lacked for years. And finally, almost as an afterthought, she’d loved him. As was her way, she’d led with her heart and let her body follow with no apparent thought to cost or consequences. He’d seen that vulnerability, knew its risks, was too weak to resist.

  It seemed a well-worn tragic tale, all unfolding as prescribed down through the ages. All that was left was to place blame, and its place of residence had been clear and irrefutable since the moment of discovery—an instant of the undoing of love at least as explosive and irreversible as the doing of love in its transformation from simple touch: the withdrawal of sperm cell from egg, repair of the breach in the membrane, total rejection now of the sperm cell’s hapless tamping, the cell’s gradual slowing, shriveling, dying.

  So why, in the wake of that life-changing loss, could Josh taste Joan’s breath in his mouth just now, feel the textured brush of her tongue against his slick gums, sense the trickle of her saliva trickling down his throat? Where was the loss in the face of such powerful life? Where was the tragedy in the face of such persistent love?

  Those questions faded fast as they’d surfaced. It was enough to taste Joan in his mouth, smell her in his nostrils, feel the pulse of her life through his core. It was answer enough.

  Devon sat beside her unconscious—again—father. Both Sherri and Doctor Joe thought this episode more or less normal resting unconscious and not something more ominous, though they both acknowledged that they (and, more to the point, Josh’s body) were dealing with a lot of unknowns—unknown synergies and side-effects of powerful medications, unknown imbalances within Josh’s body (the bloodwork they’d sent out yesterday still hadn’t come back), and, most dangerous, the possibility of an unknown infection within one or more major organ systems. So while hardly reassuring, Devon thanked them for their honesty and attempt at full disclosure and chose to trust their combined best intuition and assumed that Josh was sleeping peacefully and comfortably behind his closed eyelids.

  After a beautiful spring morning, the sky had steadily clouded over and now in the late afternoon storm clouds threatened beyond the broad bedroom window. The room grew suddenly dim, unnaturally dark for the hour of the day, and gusts of wind pushed clouds of pine pollen in a yellow haze past the window as thunder rumbled in the distance. The weather conditions quickly eroded Devon’s thin confidence in the doctor’s guarded assessment of Josh’s condition and a small but persistent sense of foreboding took root in the pit of her stomach.

  She stood and leaned over Josh, putting the side of her face less than an inch above his mouth and nose. She felt his breath brush her cheek and heard his slow but easy inhalation and exhalation. While conscious, Josh had asked Sherri to remove the monitor’s sensors and leads—they were annoying and making him feel like he was in a hospital. But now Devon wished they’d left them connected—there was a certain comfort to be found in the steady patterned scroll of those colored lines on the monitor, a reassurance that he was alive despite his unresponsive body. Instead, the monitor’s screen was a blank gray, dark as the day. Reassurance would have to be found elsewhere, if it were to be found.

  Devon sat back in the chair, opened her laptop, and began a long e-mail to Jocelyn:

  Bunkie, why aren’t you here?

  Sorry, Dearest, I just had to say the words. I know why you’re not here and that you’d be here on the next flight if I asked. It’s just that I’m feeling lonely and blue sitting here beside Josh’s bed while he’s asleep—at least we hope he’s asleep and not something worse. The doctor and nurse seem to think it’s normal resting, but who knows? Not me, that’s for sure.

  Josh woke up earlier today—YAY! I actually got to meet and talk with my birth father! Funny thing is, it was like we’d known each other forever. It wasn’t awkward or emotional or confusing—just two people talking, more like old friends than father and daughter. That was a good thing, since I don’t think I could’ve handled the father-daughter dynamic. I mean, I already have a father, right? How can someone have two fathers? I mean, I know lots of people have a father and a step-father and manage just fine, but I’m not ready for
two fathers. So we just talked and I told him a little about myself and I told him all about you and our life in Austin and how we want to have a baby. He didn’t flinch a bit when I told him about you, just took it in stride (well, in bed flat on his back) and smiled and nodded. He seemed especially interested in our plans to have a baby and told me to take all the blood I needed for DNA testing.

  So he was glad to meet me, and I was glad to meet him.

  But now he’s unconscious and there’s a storm brewing outside and it makes me fear the worst. Just nerves, I guess.

  We always want more, don’t we? I wanted to meet my birth mom. Once I met her, I wanted to get to know her better. Once I got to know her better, I wanted to see my birth father. Once I got to see him, I wanted to talk to him. Once I got to talk to him, now I want to talk to him some more. I want him to live. I want him to get out of the bed and walk with me through his woods or in a park. I want him to bounce his grandson on his knee, see that he has his eyes, that funny lopsided grin.

  Odd how a quest to begin a life should put me beside a bed where a life is ending. It makes me all the more certain that I want to have a child, and that the baby should be from my egg, with my DNA. Josh may never know the baby but I’ll know him and see Josh in him every day.

  Why should I care so much about this, Bunkie? But I do. Two days ago, I didn’t know Josh existed; now I’d move heaven and earth to perpetuate his legacy. If Josh’s doctor could take me down the hall and plant that fertilized embryo with Josh’s DNA in my uterus right this minute, I’d do it. I’d do it.

  You’re O.K. with that, aren’t you? I know it was always you pushing to have a kid and me dragging my feet and dreaming up all sorts of excuses. But now I want it, Bunkie, want it for all sorts of reasons I didn’t know existed before but now that I know them they seem all that matters.

  I know that these feelings may pass or certainly fade some. I know that Marty-shrink will have plenty to say about it and lots of questions and advice. I’m O.K. with that. We need that input. But I’m going to have this baby.

  Is that O.K., Dearest? You’ll still love me, right? With a new mother and a new father and a new need to have a baby with their DNA that is my DNA—you’re O.K. with that, right? It’s all O.K., right? I need you to tell me these new developments won’t make you stop loving me.

  It’s all still me. Just more.

  Dev

  Devon paused just a fraction of a second, then hit send, then looked up at the sleeping Josh. The tears she’d shed a few minutes earlier had dried on the back of her hands. She felt a surprising new resolve, the resolve of guardianship. It was strength enough to endure the violent storm that broke outside the window, and the shafts of tentative late sunlight that extended themselves like golden fingers in the storm’s sudden wind-whipped aftermath.

  For Josh it was like falling through a cloud of white feathers—that soft and slow and blinding. One minute he was tasting Joan in his mouth, feeling her clutch of his revived penis; the next minute he was descending through this infinitely gentle, intimately proximate world of white, a white so bright with diffuse homogenized brilliant light that it should’ve been blinding but wasn’t, a light so powerful in its diffusion that Josh wondered if its source would be bearable, should he ever find it.

  But neither searching nor intention was available to him now. Gravity still worked, as he was falling downward, but gravity scaled back, like maybe the gravity on the moon (vividly recalled through the film of the Apollo astronauts bounding like slow-motion fluffy sheep across the lunarscape)—muted, more humane gravity. And breathing seemed to work also—his released exhalations and slow inhalations the only sound, no hint of panic from the falling, no sign of fear at the close press of brilliant white.

  Then Josh knew that this was a script written by someone else, something else, a script in which he was both willing participant and coerced conscript, where he went along willingly in a proceeding that would’ve claimed him, volunteer or not. Josh saw it too as an age-old, eons-old proceeding in a place and a process that knew no time—no ages, or eons, or epochs; no future, no past: just one permanent blur of blinding white.

  And this slow deliberate descent. It’d been going on long enough now (in a place that knew no time) that Josh began to wonder if it would ever end; and if so, where and when. Still, he had no fear; his breaths still came and went with the sleeping ease of a baby in the crib, the warm sunlight on his feathery blonde hair, delicate pink skin stretched over bones so new and supple they flexed like rubber, dimpled at the touch like dough. That was where he’d known this white before—there in the crib, all newness and wonder in waking and rest. And there the voice had spoken to him out of the white, the same voice that spoke to him now, with the same questions, the same answers:

  “So what do you think?”

  “Of what?” Josh asked, simultaneously petulant and passive.

  “Of all this?”

  At just that moment the white parted and complete blackness ensued; then, in an instant in a place that knew no time, the universe was created in a tiny brilliant flash far away in the blackness and then unfolded its full cosmological history in a dazzling parade of spinning galaxies, gooey nebulae, nascent stars, coalescing solar systems, plodding planets, comets streaking, all beginnings, all endings—the fullness of time compressed into an instant, the massiveness of the universe constrained to a flash, all in a word: this.

  “Gift,” Josh said, then and now.

  “Love,” the voice said.

  “Is there a difference?”

  The white returned, though without the descent. Sleep ensued, then and now.

 

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