“I got your message,” Aubrey said. “Of course I’m here.”
They hadn’t seen each other since the wedding. Every time they talked on the phone, Nadia tried to convince Aubrey to visit her in Chicago. It would be easier seeing her that way. She couldn’t imagine spending the night in Aubrey and Luke’s guest room, surrounded by all the pictures from their new life. But Aubrey always gave an excuse for why she couldn’t make the trip: she was too busy, she had just started at KinderCare and couldn’t ask for time off yet, she had promised Mrs. Sheppard she would help her with the Women Who Care conference, the children’s church play, the annual picnic. Maybe she was too busy or maybe she didn’t want to leave Luke behind. Maybe she had become that type of wife, the ones who couldn’t go anywhere apart from their husband, who kept calling him to check in and spent the whole time feeling guilty and displaced, like an organ that had managed to exist outside of the body. Who wanted to be that type of wife? Afraid to leave her married home, like if she left her life for a few days, it might not remain once she returned. Or maybe it wasn’t fear, but something else. A deep satisfaction. Maybe she just didn’t want to be apart from Luke. Maybe he just made her that happy.
“I’m sorry,” Nadia said. “I didn’t mean—”
“Shh.” Aubrey pulled her into a hug. “How is he?”
“Stable. That’s what they’re saying. I don’t know, the doctor hasn’t been by yet. How long have you been here?”
“Don’t worry about me. Do you want coffee? Let me get you coffee.”
Aubrey returned ten minutes later holding cups from a café that Nadia didn’t recognize. She accepted it anyway, even though the smell, wafting through the lid, reminded her of libraries and textbooks and exams. She was already anxious, a cup of coffee couldn’t make her feel worse. She and Aubrey sat in the waiting room, while the doctor examined her father’s chest for any sign of infection. Her father couldn’t sit up by himself yet. He was still struggling to breathe.
“They said—” Nadia paused. “If he hadn’t been in such good shape, he probably wouldn’t have made it.”
“Don’t think about that,” Aubrey said. “He made it. That’s all that matters.”
But Nadia couldn’t stop imagining her father pinned under his barbell in the backyard, trapped and alone. If one of the neighbors hadn’t been grilling in his yard, if he hadn’t heard a scream, her father might have died there. And she, so concerned with studying for the bar exam and having noncommittal sex with white boys, might not have called home for weeks. She wouldn’t even have known that her father was gone. Would anyone have? She rested her head on Aubrey’s shoulder. She smelled like Luke, like she had unwrapped herself from his arms and driven straight to the hospital, and Nadia closed her eyes, breathing in his familiar scent.
—
AFTER A WEEK, her father was finally released from the hospital. Nadia was relieved to go home after a week of living out of her haphazardly packed suitcase, a week of barely sleeping on the hard cot, a week of sipping watery coffee while her father underwent chest scans and breathing tests. A week in which an endless parade of Upper Room members filtered in and out of her father’s room: Sister Marjorie, carrying a slice of her homemade pound cake; First John, bringing a Miles Davis biography that he’d just finished; the Mothers, fussing and fawning with the socks they’d knitted because hospitals just got so cold and you could never have too many pairs of thick socks; even the pastor, who’d come by one morning to pray, laying a palm on her father’s forehead. Everyone seemed a bit surprised to see Nadia there, like Third John, who’d jolted when he saw her in the doorway.
“Look who’s here,” he said, with a grin, as if he had fully expected her not to be.
Of course she was there. Of course she had flown home to visit her father in the hospital. How could anyone think that she wouldn’t? Was that why the congregation had flocked to see him? Everyone had been so convinced that she wouldn’t visit her sick father, that she would leave him there all alone, so they’d all made sure to visit him themselves. She could imagine them already, whispering about her after Sunday service. How they would pity her father with his dead wife and his daughter too busy to visit home. How they would feel noble, honorable even, for standing in the gap and serving as the family he ought to have.
On the cab ride home, her father turned toward the window, like he was grateful to see sunshine again. He still couldn’t walk on his own, so she helped him into the house, grabbing him the way the nurse had taught her. She realized, lowering him into bed, that she hadn’t been in her father’s room since it had become his room only. He still slept on the left side of bed like he used to, the other half untouched as if her mother had just rolled out of bed to get a glass of water.
“Go rest,” he said. “I’ll be fine.”
She hesitated before finally slipping out his door. What good could she do him half asleep? She showered and crawled into her bed, drifting off to sleep, when she heard the doorbell ring. When she opened the door, she found Luke Sheppard on her steps. He held a red Tupperware container under one arm, his other arm leaning against his wooden cane.
“I’m with the sick and shut-in ministry,” he said. “Can I come in?”
Marriage hung on Luke’s body. He looked older and fuller now, not fat, just satisfied. He filled out a baby blue sweater that Aubrey had obviously bought him—the soft color he never would have chosen, the careful stitching he wouldn’t have noticed—with the satisfaction of a man who no longer had big decisions to make, who relied on a woman to buy his sweaters. He slowly wandered into her kitchen, leaning on his cane, and asked where he should put the food.
“I don’t need your food,” she said.
“It’s not from me,” he said. “It’s from Upper Room.”
He’d stopped shaving too. She imagined him abandoning his razor in front of the bathroom sink—he was satisfied, why groom?—and Aubrey teasing him when she passed to brush her teeth. Maybe she loved his beard, the way his hair tickled her when they kissed. Maybe he only did things that she loved.
“You told your parents,” she said.
“What?”
He looked confused, then his face washed over and his shoulders slumped. He stared at her tiled floor.
“I needed the money,” he said.
“Then make up a reason!”
“They would’ve said no.” He stepped toward her. “It had to be a really good reason.”
“So that’s the best reason,” she said. “That I was having your baby.”
“It’s not like that—”
“I bet your mother skipped all the way to the bank—”
“You needed the money,” he said. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you, I just thought—it seemed easier that way. You would’ve worried.”
“Just go,” she said.
He let himself out, not meeting her eyes. He wouldn’t care that he’d hurt her. He had a good life now and she’d done nothing but drag him back into the past. During long lulls in the afternoon, she thought about him, how peaceful he seemed. This had always frightened her about marriage: how satisfied married people seemed, how unable they were to ask for more. She couldn’t imagine feeling satisfied. She was always searching for the next challenge, the next job, the next city. In law school, she’d become prickly and analytical, gaining a sharpness while Luke had rounded and filled. She felt hungry all the time—always wanting, needing more—but Luke had pushed away from the table already, patting his full stomach.
—
I MADE AN appointment with the doctor, Aubrey typed. She waited a moment, then a reply arrived from rmiller86: