Second Chance Summer

“It came with the cake,” she said. “Henry insisted. He said it would bring out the flavor. Wasn’t that nice of him?”

“Yes,” I said, as I took the piece she gave me, which happened to have the T of my name, feeling the lump in my throat. “It really was.”

Chapter thirty-five

TIME WAS RUNNING OUT. THIS WAS CLEAR NOT ONLY IN HOW EACH day got a just a little shorter but also in what was happening to my dad. He was a little more confused every day, and his stretches of wakefulness and awareness of what was going on were getting shorter and shorter. It became difficult for him to talk, and somehow this was the hardest for me to see—my dad, who I’d watched command courtrooms with his deep, booming voice. Now, he struggled to speak, and to find the words he wanted to use.

We’d started taking turns spending time with him while he had his lucid periods. My sister talked a mile a minute, like she was trying to tell him everything she was ever going to want to, all at once. My brother would sit by his bedside and they would talk about, from what I could overhear, famous law cases, swapping their favorite facts, my brother usually talking more than my dad. My grandfather would sit next to him and read the paper out loud, usually the human interest section. His voice, so like my dad’s had been, could be heard across the house, as he’d say, “Now, you’ll like this, Robin. Listen to what happened yesterday in Harrisburg.”

My mother didn’t say much when they were together. Sometimes I’d hear them talking about financial things, making arrangements, plans. But mostly, she held his hand and just looked at his face, studying it, like she knew that she wasn’t going to be able to see it soon.

When it was my turn with my dad, we played our question game that had taken us through so many breakfasts. But now he didn’t seem to want to talk about himself. Now he seemed to want to know everything about me, while he still could. “Tell me,” he’d say, his voice as scratched as one of his old records, “my Taylor. When have you been the happiest?” And I’d try my best to answer, attempting to deflect the question, but he’d always have another one lined up. What was I thinking about in terms of college majors? Where were places I wanted to visit? What did I want to do with my life? What was the best meal I’d ever had?

Sometimes I wouldn’t be able to answer; I’d break down crying, and that’s when we’d listen to his records. I knew them all by now—Jackson Browne, Charlie Rich, Led Zeppelin, the Eagles—a lot of shaggy-haired guys that my grandfather still didn’t like, if his reaction when he came into the room and heard them was any indication. And the music, and the questions, would continue on, as I’d try to tell my father who I was and who I hoped to be, while we still had time.

Throughout all of this, the dog refused to leave his spot under my dad’s bed. We finally had to move his food and water bowl under there, even though Roberto, who was the most by-the-rules of the nurses, worried about germs. Davy still came by twice a day, and the dog let himself be pulled out from under the bed and taken for a very quick walk. But aside from that, he didn’t move from his spot.

I had finally given up and claimed the trundle bed as mine, since I was barely sleeping anyway. The night nurses were used to it by now, just giving me a nod as I crept out to the porch. Sometimes my grandfather was awake, and would sit with me while I looked up at the stars, needing to see something fixed and permanent while everything else in my life seemed to be breaking apart. When he was in bed, he left the telescope out and in position for me. There was a meteor shower that was expected at the end of the month, and according to my grandfather, things tended to get very interesting, stargazing-wise, before a meteor shower, so I was keeping an eye out.

The nights when my grandfather wasn’t there were the nights I cried. I was no longer even trying to stop myself. We were all more or less trying to keep it together for my dad and one another. But at night, alone, with all the moments of the day finally hitting me, I would let myself just sob, out on the porch. And though I knew it was a stupid, pointless reaction to what was happening, I also realized it was all I could do. I cried, I tried to think of puns that might make my father laugh one more time, and I looked at the stars.

I had just come in from a night without my grandfather, a night I’d finally found Sirius on my own, when I saw Paul standing over my dad. It felt like my heart stopped for a moment before it started beating much faster, in a panic. “Is he okay?” I whispered, looking down at my dad, suddenly more scared than I’d ever been in my entire life.

“He’s okay,” Paul said quietly back to me, and I could feel my panic start to recede. “He’s just having a hard night. Poor guy.”

I looked down at the hospital bed that now seemed like it had always been part of our living room. My dad, thin to the point of being emaciated, his skin yellowed and leathery-looking, was sleeping, his mouth open, looking so small in the big expanse of white bed. His breaths were labored and rasping, and I found myself listening for each one, then waiting for the next one.

It seemed wrong, somehow, to just go back to my own room and sleep my easy sleep. So I curled on the couch that was nearest to the hospital bed, and looked at my dad sleeping in the shaft of moonlight that was coming through the windows, falling across his face. As I listened to his breathing, my heart starting to pound whenever there was a pause, a break in the rhythm, I realized that this was what he had done for me, years ago, when I was a baby.

I wished that there was something I could do to make it better. But all I could do was to lie there and listen for each labored, rasping breath, counting them. I was aware that he didn’t have that many left, and somehow, to not pay attention to each one seemed like the worst kind of indifference. And so I lay there, just listening, knowing that each breath was another moment he was still here and, simultaneously, that meant that he had just moved a little closer to being gone.

I heard a door hinge squeak, and looked up to see Gelsey standing in the hallway. She was wearing an ancient, much-washed nightshirt that had once been mine. “You weren’t in bed,” she whispered. “Is everything okay?” I nodded, and then, without knowing I was going to, motioned her closer.

I expected her to go to one of the other couches, but she came right to mine, curling up against me. And I put my arms around my sister, smoothing back her soft, curly hair, and we lay there together in the dark, not speaking, just listening to our father breathe.