He says to me, with one eye ready to rupture – literally; his retina has detached once again and he describes his field of vision as a 16:9 shrouded by a precipitant grey curtain of nothing – in his paternally scolding tone, gentle though it is, “and so tell me. Since we last spoke, did you go get your iron checked?”
Can never lie. Can’t make excuses, either. I have not done what I’d promised to do, and this disappoints him. Despite the triviality of my predicament (which I’d never try to explain outright, as there’s no back pedalling on anything you’ve mentioned to a parent), and the ironic disparity between the columns of health on which we both rest in our gurneys, he chides me. It’s in my best interest to look after myself, he says. Reminding me always of the thinness of human paper; our scrolls could unravel well below our knees, or we would be blessedly scrawled upon by inky import, but we are all of us susceptible to dog-earing, to little irreparable tears if pulled at too quick. My known weak spot is my hemoglobin and, again, I see that parameter as a negligible one, but to my dad it’s the fulcrum entire. Or at least it’s a touchstone, and the only one the two of us can reference without shame (because never could we converse about stranger matters, the barometers that record shifts of mental winds). I tell him, tomorrow, I’ll do it, sure. I believe myself when I say it. The clinic is just past a coffee shop and that sweetens the deal in the pallid immortal brain I possess. As if the sun has to rise just peachy enough for me to draw blood, to make it worth the hassle of waiting at the clinic for a requisition, and then further finding the lab that will allow me to eat at all in the sixteen hours prior to testing. All the while I’m on the phone with him, thinking of his eyesight, the cancelled trip to Portugal which he’d been planning and looking forward to for months. I’d hoped to offer him suggestions of cliffs from which to gaze seaward, aged wine to drink in thoughtful moments, and instead I’m hearing his exhausted recount of procedure.
If they gas his eye tomorrow (don’t ask me what this means in medical terms) he can’t drive for three months. He can’t traverse elevation grades for that will cause the injected bubble behind his retina to expand or collapse and it hurts like all hell. He’s confined to his newish apartment which has been decked with the furniture of our old family house but I know can never provide the comfort that he needs, times like this. He’ll have to lie on his stomach to sleep with his head just a little off kilter for the pressure in his skull. His friends must be hailed like taxis when he needs groceries or a ride to the medical offices at the mall. Not sure what meals will be like for him. Want to cry at the idea of phone-ordered pizza or beef and broccoli noodles every night, while his cherished Paderno pans sit cold as granite behind plywood cupboards.
For all of this, he’s cheery, though he has choice words for the doctor that dawdled on his diagnosis. He says once he hangs up our phone call he’ll see if he can’t finish the movie on Netflix he started three nights ago. He tells me with excitement of the “near-meat” product he bought at the organic market on the block over from his place, how he was able to finesse it into a sauce for pasta and it hits the spot okay and he wouldn’t mind if that’s all he can muster reheating after his surgery tomorrow. For an instant I remember the bolognese he’d make for lasagna and how he would call me over, equally clandestine and proud, to implicate me in the addition of heavy cream to the sauces, whispering that I not tell my mother about the secret butterfat. The wonderful things he can do for one’s soul, however likely to pierce or rip or shred. Fortification through calories and through humble, tartan-splashed panache.
I tell him what I’m eating for dinner because he asks. We talk a little about the Volvo station wagon we might inherit. Idle catch-up for two people far too distant for the love between. Then a return to the tomorrow, the impending, as I struggle to find the placations to apply for his malaise. What do I say to him – hope your day goes good? I recognize my frailty as a well-wisher but he catches me before my own falter, as he would have when I was small, and reminds me that this is okay. This will be manageable. It’s his certainty on this that holds me aloft inches from sandpaper pavement. “I saw this guy at the hospital today,” he begins. “He had just had a stroke. His one hand was all gnarled and he walked with a limp.” So glad you’re not worse off. Can’t imagine not having you sentient; where would I go to learn the things that make me better. “And I knew when I saw him that that guy would trade places with me in a second.” Want to ball up and scrap-bin the page of me for his insight. Profundity I wish I could have inherited. For all the moping I’ve done in my silly life, for the total laziness of my privilege, there’s still a person here that believes I’m cogent enough to understand his lessons, and kind enough to hope that I’ll implement them.
We’ll aim to go on a make-up trip in the spring, we decide: New York, when things start to look green again. He’s long wanted to see a Broadway show, and I know that no matter his vision he’ll have the ears to catch harmonies that break hearts, rouse depressives from their self-mortared caves. Plan for it. Reaffirm that yes okay, I’ll actually go get my iron checked tomorrow. It’s a matter of living, is what he implies – not exactly life or death, but making beautiful the roll of paper you get. Even if it comes to you pockmarked or already scribbled on. I remember that he never wanted kids until he decided it might be selfish not to, and if I were to exist as the child of any other, I’d agree – how dare he conceal this wisdom from me, I a lowly, anemic, feeling-burdened girl, and he the person with limbs outstretched to turn my head to all the goodness in the world, regardless of how little of it I can see.