Winter Garden

What was there to say, really?

Her father was dying. Nothing could change that. Words were like pennies, fallen into corners and down the cracks, not worth the effort of collecting.

Nina had spent a lot of time with injured or dying people, standing witness, revealing universal pain through individual suffering. She was good at it, too, able to somehow be both completely in the moment and detached enough to record it. As terrible as it had often been, her place beside makeshift hospital beds, watching people with catastrophic injuries, everything that came before paled in comparison to this moment, when she was suffering herself. On this day when her father came home from the hospital, she couldn’t hold back, couldn’t put her grief in a box and lock it shut.

She was standing in her parents’ bedroom, beside the big window that overlooked the winter garden and the orchard beyond. Outside, the sky was a bold cerulean blue; cloudless. A pale winter sun shone down, its warm breath melting the crusty layer of yellowing snow. Water dripped from the eaves, no doubt studding the snow along the porch rail below.

She brought the camera to her eye and focused on Meredith, who was looking down at Dad, trying to smile; Nina captured the frailty in her sister’s face, the sadness in her eyes. Next, she focused on her mother, who stood beside the bed, looking as regal as Lauren Bacall, as cold as Barbara Stanwyck.

From his place in the big bed, with stark white pillows and blankets piled around him, Dad looked thin and old and fading. He blinked slowly, his mottled eyelids falling like flags to half-mast and then lifting again. Through the viewfinder, Nina saw his rheumy brown eyes focus on her. The shock of it, of the directness of his gaze, surprised her.

“No cameras,” he said. His voice was frayed and tired, not his voice at all, and somehow that loss, the very sound of him, was worse than all the rest. She knew why he’d said that. He knew her, knew why the camera was important to her now.

Nina lowered the camera slowly, feeling naked suddenly, vulnerable. Without that thin layer of a glass lens, she was here instead of there, looking at her father, who was dying. She moved in toward the bed, stood beside Meredith. Mom was on the other side. All of them were tucked in close.

“I will be back in a moment,” Mom said.

Dad nodded at her. The look that passed between her parents was so intimate that Nina felt almost like an intruder.

As soon as Mom was gone, Dad looked at Meredith. “I know you’re afraid,” he said quietly.

“We don’t need to talk about it,” Meredith said.

“Unless you want to talk about it,” Nina said, reaching down for his hand. “You must be afraid, Dad . . . of dying. ”

“Oh, for God’s sake,” Meredith said, stepping back from the bed.

Nina didn’t want to explain to her sister, not now, but she’d lived alongside death for years. She knew there were peaceful passings and angry, desperate ones. As hard as it was for her to contemplate his dying, she wanted to help him. She brushed the white hair away from his age-spotted forehead, remembering suddenly how he’d looked as a younger man, when his face had been tanned from working in his orchard. All except for his forehead, which was always pale because of the hats he wore.

“Your mom,” he said, speaking with obvious effort. “She’ll break without me. . . . ”

“I’ll take care of her, Dad. I promise,” Meredith said unsteadily. “You know that. ”

“She can’t do it again . . . ,” Dad said. He closed his eyes and let out a tired sigh. His breathing became labored.

“Can’t do what again?” Nina asked.

“Who are you, Barbara Walters?” Meredith snapped. “Back off. Let him sleep. ”

“But he said—”

“He told us to take care of Mom. Like he even had to ask. ” Meredith busied herself with his blankets and fluffed his pillows. She was like an über-competent nurse. Nina understood; Meredith was so afraid that she had to keep busy. Next, she knew, her sister would run away.

“Stay,” Nina said. “We need to talk—”

“I can’t,” Meredith said. “The business doesn’t stop just because I want it to. I’ll be back in an hour. ”

And then she was gone.

Nina reached instinctively for her camera and started taking pictures; not to show anyone, just for herself. As she looked down at him, focused on his pale face, the tears she’d been fighting turned him into a gray and white smear in the midst of that huge four-poster wooden bed. She wanted to say, I love you, Dad, but the words had hooks that wouldn’t let go.

Quietly, she left his room and shut the door. In the hallway, she passed her mother, and for a split second, when their pain-filled gazes met, Nina reached out.

Mom lurched away from Nina’s hand and went into the bedroom, shutting the door behind her.

There it was. The whole of her childhood repeated in a too-quiet hallway. The worst part was, Nina knew better.

Her mother was not a woman one reached out to.