His First Wife

Finding His Way Back

Only a few months ago, whenever I got into my car, it was to go to the store to buy something for the house, my closet, or even Jamison’s closet. No doubt about it, I had to have my pocketbook and wallet with me every time, because plastic would be needed to complete the exchange. These things I’d buy made my world look nice and made me feel good. All of that changed in October when I left the house at five in the morning without my purse for the first time. Now I went where my needs, my dreams, my desires, my heart carried me, and with each new destination, I felt closer to touching who I really was. While my life had been steadily pulled apart since that drive to Coreen’s, a new one was being built up, and while it was scary and not yet what I completely wanted, I already felt better for the journey. And I hadn’t bought anything!

I woke up with my mind fixed on one thing. I’d always heard people in church say they’d woken up with their minds “stayed on Jesus.” Well, my mind was “stayed” on a man, but not Jesus; it was my father. Since I was young, I’d often thought of him in the morning, especially after having a dream from my childhood where he was either present or noticeably not present, but the thoughts would usually fade by the time I got to the breakfast table. So instead of sitting and thinking about my father, I decided to try to let it go by following my morning ritual: I showered and dressed myself quickly before Tyrian woke up, bathed and dressed him, and then headed down to the kitchen to meet Aunt Luchie for coffee and these homemade biscuits she made that were wreaking havoc on my hips. But there, at the table, my mind was still on my father. I kept remembering times we’d shared—when he insisted on putting together my first bicycle and it fell apart the moment I sat on it, the way he’d hugged me that afternoon, picking me up off the driveway and saying it would be okay. I also wondered what it was like to be in his mind, closed in from all sides. Earlier that year when I went to see him with my mother for his birthday, he didn’t even look at us. He just kept grunting and saying something about a deer in the woods he needed to find. He looked completely lost, worse that year than he’d been the year before, but then that was how it always was.

“You okay?” Aunt Luchie asked, putting another biscuit on my saucer that I didn’t need. “You seem upset.”

“I just had this dream about my dad. Can’t seem to get it out of my head.”

“I see,” she started. “He’s been on your mind then?”

“Yes. After the whole thing with Jamison, he’s been on my mind a lot.”

“Well, your brain must be calling on your body to do something.”

“What?”

“Only your know that. It’s not my brain that’s speaking.”

“It’s probably just me being upset about Jamison,” I said dismissively.

“Seems to me that if your brain was upset about Jamison, then you’d dream about him and not your father.”

“Fine,” I said, rolling my eyes at her game. “So you’re saying I had a dream about my father, because my brain wants me to go see him?”

“Well, if you think your brain said all that, then it’s fine with me,” she said innocently. “But if you do decide to do so I’ll—”

“. . . watch the baby for you,” we finished together.

“I know,” I said. “I know.”

He’d been staying in the same room, down the same dark hallway at the back of the Day Star Nursing Home. It was a lovely place really. While most of the residents were suffering from some form of Alzheimer’s or dementia and there was a clinic on-site, the place had a chic resort-feel with fresh flowers in vases, newly polished marble floors, and chrome nurse stations that resembled minibars. There were other nursing homes in the area, but my mother wanted no expense spared when she was selecting a place where she’d thought my father would stay only for a while until he somehow magically awoke and called her name to come pick him up. She hoped he’d see how much she cared when he found his mind, but that hope only lasted about nine months until it was clear that he wouldn’t be coming home anytime soon.

“Ms. Taylor?” a nurse called as I approached the station closest to his room. She was a short and round, middle-aged woman, who had a head full of dirty blond hair that was unfortunately showing at least two inches of black at the roots. I couldn’t remember her name, although I’d seen her many times as I walked down this hallway. She hadn’t looked as confused as I’d thought she would; in fact, she looked as if she’d been expecting me.

“Yes,” I said, holding the daisies I’d purchased to put in his room.

“I’m glad you finally got here,” she said. She came from around the station and began walking with me. “He’s much better now, but this morning—”

“What are you talking about?” I felt my heart beating.

“We’ve been calling your mother.”

“Something happened?” I began walking faster, nearly running.

“No, he just, well, he had a seizure,” she said, walking quickly beside me. “We left a message. I thought you knew.”

“No, no,” I said, counting the doors as I walked to be sure I went into the right one. I’d been doing this since I was a child. I hated walking into the wrong room, seeing some sick man I didn’t know connected to a bunch of machines, lonely and lost.

“But he’s okay now,” she went on. “Back to normal. We have it under control.”

I turned into the room to find my father sitting in a chair beside his bed, facing the window. I stopped on the threshold frozen in my tracks and put my hand over my heart in relief.

“See,” the nurse said nervously. I could tell she’d felt bad that I’d gotten the news from her.

“Oh, I just . . . I just thought,” I said.

“It’s okay,” she put her hand on my shoulder and I could see her nametag: PAT. “We just had to inform you.”