CHAPTER 22

I walked Liz from the Sinai cafeteria to the parking lot. I was freezing without a coat. We hugged before she got into her car. I didn’t want to let go. “The sun’s going down so early,” I said, and both of us realized at once it was the shortest day of the year, December 21st. When Liz and I were twelve, my father enlisted us to help him make a papier mâché sun to celebrate the Winter Solstice. We papered over a supersized balloon, attached cones of newspaper for rays, painted the whole thing orange and yellow, slathered it in shellac, and hung it from the rafters in the living room over the objection of my mother who felt it clashed with the room’s décor. Eventually, she relented and allowed the sun to stay until the spring equinox. This was in 1967, and my father hung it up every year thereafter until he married Brenda, because at that point he could justify having the real thing, the originally coveted, enticingly taboo thing, which was a Christmas tree. Until then we stacked our Hanukkah presents under the sun. I finally let go of Liz and she got into her car and drove away.

My father’s room was dark. He was sleeping, covered in two white cotton blankets. I didn’t want to disturb him. I figured we could talk about the MRI results in the morning. But he liked to know when I was leaving for the day, so I reached over and touched his hand curled by his cheek on the pillow.

“Brenda?” he said.

“Joanna.”

“You’re still here?” He turned onto his back and felt for the button to raise the bed. Only his left eye was open. His right eye had stopped moving completely. His eyelid was shut and bulging like a frog’s.

“Yeah, I’m still here. But I’m about to go. I’m sleeping over at Mom’s tonight.”

“Brenda gets lonely, too, you know.”

“It doesn’t seem like it.”

“Well, she does. You could sleep there once in a while.”

“Guess what? Today’s Winter Solstice.”

“I know, kiddo. I know. Happier times.”

I kept the overhead light off and opened the curtains. The street lamps in the parking lot splashed silvery rectangles over his covers like moonlight.

“Don’t go,” he said.

I sat on the windowsill. “I’m not going. Not yet.”

“That Heidenheimer was in here.”

“Yeah. I spoke to him, too.” I swung my legs and kicked at the heating vent with my boot heels.

“So you heard. They found something.”

“Yeah, but they don’t know what it is,” I said. “Could be TB or something else benign.”

“Joanna, listen. Come closer. Don’t sit way over there. Pull up the blue chair.”

I hopped off the windowsill and pushed the recliner across the floor and right up to his bed. I sat down and reached across the covers to hold his hand.

“Listen, I’ve got to ask you something.” He gently squeezed my fingers. From somewhere far away a female voice repeated a doctor’s name, and we both looked up at the ceiling and listened. She spoke so softly over the intercom she could have been whispering to her lover. Then it was completely quiet. He let go of my hand and met my eyes with his one eye. “Tell me something, Joanna,” he said. “Seriously. Am I going to come out on the other end of this thing well—or am I going to die?”

A cart rolled by, wheels clicking. My heart thumped.

“You’re the only one I can ask,” he said. “You’re the only one I trust.”

On the camping trip the woods and lake were dark, water lapping at the shore. In the morning Nola was wearing his jacket with floppy sleeves too long for her. “I can’t trust Joanna,” he had said to my mother when we got home. “I’ll never be able to trust her again.” I was stunned. It was the opposite. How could he lie like that? I was shocked. And yet, he wasn’t entirely wrong. You couldn’t trust someone if you knew she couldn’t trust you.

“Me?” I said in the silvery light of his hospital room. “I’m the one you trust?”

“Yeah, you. Who else?”

I sat there and blinked the way he blinked when he was thinking. Again, he wasn’t wrong. For whatever messed up reason, or perfectly good reason, no one was more loyal to him, not even Harry.