The Light of Hidden Flowers

by Jennifer Handford

  The next month, I tried calling Dad, but he didn’t pick up. I hit redial for almost half an hour. Finally, I called the neighbor, Mr. Powell, and asked him to go over and check on Dad.

  “I’m worried,” I said.

  When Mr. Powell investigated, he found Dad on the bathroom floor, his head bleeding. In the five minutes it took me to get there, the EMTs were already on the scene.

  “Dad, what happened?” He was being loaded onto the gurney, and it was clear that he was confused, his eyes darting in every direction, his hands reaching for the gash above his eye.

  At the hospital, hours later, Dad regained lucidity. He fell asleep in the tub, he said. It disoriented him, and he rose too quickly. When he stepped out of the tub, he slipped, cracked his head on the porcelain sink.

  “Dad,” I cried. “You’re scaring me to death. What are we going to do?”

  “It’s not a ‘we,’ Missy; it’s a ‘me.’ I don’t want you involved in taking care of me. I don’t want to be a burden to you.”

  “Would you stop!?” I demanded. “I’m happy to take care of you. I want to take care of you.”

  “I know you do,” Dad said. “But it’s not what you should be doing. You should be living your life.”

  Even in Dad’s time of need, my desire—my choice—to care for him was somehow a reflection on my weak character. That Missy Fletcher could certainly be a nurse to her father, yes. But could she cultivate her relationship, get married, live a life of her own? Sadly, Dad thought not.

  Dad spent three days in the hospital. Seventeen stitches covered the side of his shaved head. I told him it was a good thing he was named Frank. “You look like Frankenstein.”

  In the early mornings I sat with him at the hospital. He was lucid and tender and 100 percent the Dad I loved beyond measure. I held his hand and sat with him at breakfast, and when I thought he was as receptive as he was going to get, I broached the subject.

  “So,” I said, staring him squarely in the eyes, drilling my best, no-nonsense look into him. “Are you moving in with me? Or am I moving in with you?”

  Dad slid the food tray away. “Daughter, I’m fine. Doc’s going to dial up the meds, give me an extra dose of brain juice.”

  “Dad,” I said, moving the tray to the side table.

  “And no more tubs for the old man,” he said. “Just the shower, with the handicap bar you had installed for me. I can’t get in too much trouble with that, right?”

  “Dad.”

  “You already turned off my stove, Missy. All I’ve got is my microwave oven. I’m fine.”

  “I want to take care of you,” I said.

  “I don’t want you to take care of me!” he said, pulling his hand away. “I’m a grown man.”

  “This has nothing to do with you being a man, Dad. You’re the strongest man I know! But your brain is playing tricks on you. I don’t want you to get hurt.”

  “I have a life, Missy,” he said. “A lifestyle I’m used to. An independence I’m used to.”

  “I understand that, Dad,” I countered. “But I don’t—”

  “—have anything better to do?” he finished.

  I shook my head no, brought desperately low by this jab at my stunted life, my spinsterhood. “That’s not what I was going to say. I was going to say that I don’t want you to get hurt.”

  “Come here, Missy,” Dad said, his voice as tender as newborn skin. I nestled myself into him as best I could on the narrow hospital bed. “I love you so much. I love that you want to take care of me. But a man’s got his pride, my love.”

  I started to cry. “I know, Dad,” I whispered.

  “I’m going home to my house, and you’re going home to yours. Case closed.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  That night, Lucas brought takeout salads from Wegmans. Before he arrived, I’d been sitting at my computer and keying notes into my Dad spreadsheet, looking for patterns and precedents that might’ve precipitated his incident, some hidden-image stereogram, Magic Eye art, that could explain the how and why of Dad’s brain degeneration. Was there a reason why the neurons spoke to each other at some moments, but not others?

  “He wants you to get on with your life,” Lucas said. “Let me help you.”

  I pushed around my food. For once, I was the one without an appetite. “What do you mean?”

  “Do you remember a while back, I asked to look at your tax return? I wanted to see how you itemized your deductions, remember?”

  “Okay . . . yes?” I said, confused. Why this, now?

  “I want to give you your return back,” he said. He reached into his computer satchel and pulled out my return.

  “I really don’t feel like discussing taxes now, Lucas.” I wiped at my eyes and drank from my wineglass. The Zinfandel was warm with notes of black cherry, and I wanted to slide down into it like a warm bath. I looked across at Lucas with his glass of tap water and unbuttered bread and pale iceberg lettuce salad. I pushed my salad aside, picked up a piece of bread, and soaked it in the blue cheese dressing before shoving it into my mouth.

  “I’m not planning to discuss taxes,” he said. “I have a gift for you. I have an idea for you.” He set my return aside, then reached back into his satchel and pulled from it a manila envelope, which he handed to me. “Open it.”

  I pried my fingernail under the metal tab and opened the top flap. Inside was a tax return. A 1040 in the top-left corner. “A tax return?”

  “Look at it,” he said.

  I read the first line: Lucas James Anderson. The second line: Melissa Ann Fletcher.

  “What’s this?”

  “It’s us. As a tax return. A pretend tax return. Jointly filed.”

  “What?”

  “We’re definitely better off. I compared our individual returns to this one, if we were to file jointly. It would be beneficial.” Lucas nodded vigorously.

  I looked at Lucas oddly. “That’s great, but I don’t get it.”

  “Let’s file jointly!” he said. “Let’s get married. I want to be ‘married filing jointly’ with you.”

  Though stunned, I had no choice but to laugh—a gigantic, from the bottom of my belly guffaw. I laughed and smiled because up until now I was certain I was the biggest nerd I’d ever met. In front of me was Lucas, a man—a boy going through life as a man—proposing to me by filling out a future tax return.

  And then it occurred to me that maybe my father was wrong. Maybe his assessment of my prospects was mistaken. I could have a life. A life as a jointly filed married couple.

  “We’re great together,” Lucas said. “We’re in the same field, practically. We have the same goals. Why not?”

  My head swam. I was in no position to think clearly—with the wine, with my father, with a tax-return proposal. But I did ponder this question: Was that why people got married? Because they were in the same field—because when he spoke of someone having a high-income level, I was able to say, “So it wouldn’t make sense to convert to a Roth IRA”? Because when I mentioned someone’s thriving small business, he was able to say, “Of course, she does need to pay both sides of FICA”? Was it enough that the essence of our “same goals” was to make no changes in our lives? And was that even true of me anymore? Was Lucas’s likeness to me a mirror, showing me everything that I didn’t care for in myself? Was I the safety, stay-put girl I claimed to be, or might witnessing Lucas living my same life be just what I needed to understand that I craved more than that?

  “You’re sweet, Lucas,” I said, and kissed him. “And I love your gift.” And I did. From a creative perspective, from a unique proposal standpoint, for originality, I gave his effort—whether intentional or not—a solid ten.

  “But . . . ?”

  “But I’m not sure about marriage.”

  “I wouldn’t expect you to give me an answer with
out thinking it over. Without charting out the pros and cons.”

  “Can you give me some time?”

  “Of course,” he said. “Absolutely. Do a Benjamin Franklin exercise: pros on one side, cons on the other.”

  What would Dad think about that? Of course I knew. He’d tell me that love and marriage were impulse purchases. That you bought in because you’d die if you couldn’t have the guy, the life you wanted. Dad would tell me that love meant risking it all, charging through doors with no certainty of what was on the other side, betting against 100-to-1 odds.

  “Where would we honeymoon?” I asked, testing him. “Italy?”

  “If that’s what you wanted,” he said. My heart fluttered. “Or we could drive to Yellowstone. Nothing wrong with staying in the States.”

  That night, after Lucas had gone home, I got in my car and drove the few blocks down to the waterfront. Outside, I stared into the inky darkness and thought of Lucas and Dad and Joe. As I stared over the Potomac, I reminded myself that Joe wasn’t mine. And Lucas was offering to be. And Lucas was everything I needed: steady, stable, risk averse. Good-looking, more than solvent, conscientious. And he would clean my car, every Saturday. And shine my pumps, even. And he would adore me. And never ask me to change. Lucas was lovely, and I was being foolish for not embracing him.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  Each day I picked up Dad and drove him to work. One morning we met with the Parkers. Toward the end of the meeting, Dad messed up the pronouns, twice calling Mr. Parker “she” rather than “he.” The clients grew visibly uncomfortable, and later, after I walked them out and apologized for Dad being “a little off,” I returned to Dad’s office and told him what he did. With each blunder, his shame grew like a cancer metastasizing. The man with an open-door policy was now in the habit of shutting himself behind closed doors.

  A few weeks later, Dad and I met with the Bradshaws. Dad admired the heck out of “Boomer” for his military service—two tours in World War II, and a later-in-life tour in Vietnam. Boomer was a pilot, and I was sure Dad would ask about the F-100 Super Sabres he flew. But today, Dad didn’t ask, and when Boomer made reference to the nightmare of the Middle East, Dad looked up from his yellow pad, grinned his off-white dentures at him, and asked, “Did you serve?” Boomer looked at me, and I offered him a sad smile. When I walked Boomer out, I told him the truth, because he was the type of guy who would take it to his grave.

  Lucas grew impatient. He wanted to know if I would marry him. Each time I saw him, he pleaded his case.

  “Don’t you want your father there?” he asked, pushing at my most sensitive button.

  “You know how quickly the country club fills up,” he said on another night, exploiting my need for advanced planning.

  “The sooner we get married, the sooner we can combine our living arrangement. Imagine the savings.”

  “Give me time,” I would implore. “With my dad being sick, it’s just such a hard thing to think about.”

  “But Missy,” he would press, “there’s no point to waiting.”

  Lucas’s pushiness and Dad’s illness and my own weariness bit at me like a million tiny ants.

  Every day I logged on to Facebook. Just to escape, just to stare at other versions of normalcy, just to see what people not affected by Alzheimer’s were engaged in. Today I began a message to Joe:

  Dale Carnegie wouldn’t be pleased with his once-top student, now Alzheimer’s patient. No longer the king of making friends and influencing people, Dad’s now making one mistake after another, forgetting people’s names, mixing up pronouns. I feel so bad for him, and I know how much he loves coming into the office, but it’s just so hard to watch him embarrass himself, addled so by this horrible disease. I just want to tell him to stay home or on the golf course. It hurts me to see him sounding foolish.

  I paused, felt guilty for taking up so much of Joe’s time, for sharing the intimate details of Dad’s illness, for talking to Joe when I should be confiding in Lucas. But I kept on.

  I hope everything is great with you and the family. I hope your wife (Lucy, right?) doesn’t mind that I write every now and then. Is it okay that I do? I saw from one of your recent posts that your daughter won a math award. That’s so awesome. Does she like games? I wonder if she’s ever played CrazyMath on her iPad. I have it on my phone. It’s pretty fun.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  JOE

  I was in my van, stopped at a light and scanning the radio for a good song, when Missy’s Facebook message chimed. I read it before the light changed. I read it again at the next red light.

  I hope your wife (Lucy, right?) doesn’t mind that I write every now and then.

  No, Missy, she doesn’t mind. First, she’d have to know. And second, in order to know, she’d have to be here. Last I heard, she was leading a reward trip for the lawyers with the most billable hours through New Zealand. And third, if she was here and she did know, I’d tell her that you were once my great friend and your father meant the world to me. But again, Lucy monitoring my FB account and questioning your message is kind of like worrying whether the kids are sneaking out at night to play laser tag with space aliens. Kind of irrelevant.

  And yes, Katherine won a math award. Thanks for noticing, I would say to Missy, because some adult affirmation could go a long way for my daughter who seemed to be in the fight of her life.

  I pulled around the back side of my office building into my marked parking spot right in front of the door, my name spray-painted onto the concrete. “Big shot with his own parking spot,” I joked, ignoring the giant handicapped symbol in the middle of it. Inside, I pushed the button for the freight elevator. Nobody used it and I preferred the empty box to the crowded, paneled-and-mirrored one. People in this building were nice, don’t get me wrong, but with Kate, Lucy, and all that was going on, I could use a few seconds of quiet.

  In my office, I reviewed and responded to at least fifty e-mails. I met with my superior and discussed the new “anticipated demands” logistical model that had been beta tested over the last six months. We reviewed the results and talked about the bugs that needed working out. If we could get the program up to acceptable margins for error, we could get it into the field.

  At eleven o’clock, I left the building and walked two blocks to Caribou Coffee. I was scheduled to meet Gunnery Sergeant Nate Reynolds there, one of the guys from my group last year. Up until his last deployment, Nate was a Scout Sniper Platoon Commander in the 1st Marine Division. Nate wasn’t like the other guys, full of remorse over losing a limb. He celebrated his Alive Day and was already a pro in his wheelchair, fitted for his fancy prosthetic, a copper-bottom running leg under construction in a lab in California. But Nate also suffered from a traumatic brain injury, the signature injury of the Afghanistan and Iraq wars, as common as coming home from summer camp with poison ivy.

  He was already sipping coffee in a corner chair next to a giant stuffed black bear, designed presumably to match the outdoorsy theme. “You and your friend been waiting long?” I said, signaling to the animal. Nate laughed, patted the bear. I shook his hand, and then went to the counter for a cup of my own.

  “You look great,” I said, slapping his back, sitting down across from him.

  “It’s a good trick,” he said wryly. “Looking normal.”

  I knew exactly what he meant; there wasn’t one of us that felt “normal” inside. There wasn’t one of us who didn’t wake up in the middle of the night, terrified and soaked with sweat. There wasn’t one of us who didn’t jump at the sound of a car backfiring.

  Nate fumbled with the top of his coffee cup. “I look at myself in the mirror and I appear totally fine, like a guy who would make rational decisions, have rational thoughts . . . like a guy someone would ask for help if they were lost or had a flat tire. But that’s the farthest thing from the truth.”

  “You’re handling this like a champ,�
� I said.

  “People see my legs—my lack of leg—and they think that it must be the worst thing in the world, but goddamn, not having a leg is nothing compared to the hell that’s going on in my head. It’s like a freaking pinball machine in there.”

  “Did something happen?” I asked, because this wasn’t usual talk for a guy with Nate’s great attitude.

  He took a swig of coffee. “My seventh grader needed help with pre-algebra the other night.”

  “Seventh grade pre-algebra is tricky business,” I said, “brain injury or not.”

  Nate granted me a smile. “The thing is, before this, I was all about math. That was my job. Making calculations, assessing the arc, doing the math. But now, I stare at my daughter’s math like it’s hieroglyphics.”

  “You’re no longer a sniper,” I said. “You no longer need to hit the mark.”

  “You know what my daughter said? She said, ‘It’s okay, Daddy. It’s okay that you’re slow now.’”

  I couldn’t help but wince. “She didn’t mean it like that.”

  “She’s right, though!” Nate pushed on his thighs. “I am slow. And you’re right: I’m no longer a sniper. I can barely figure out seventh-grade math. I don’t know what the hell I am, anymore.” Nate rubbed at his weary eyes.

  “Part of your recovery is believing that you’re more than a sniper. That you had a past, and now you’ll have a future.” Sometimes I heard the psychobabble spewing from me, and I wondered where it came from.