Glass of Fashion

My mother touched the doctor’s hair—“Your hair—” she said. I was looking at the doc­tor’s eyes—black and as sad as any eyes I had ever looked at—doleful, mournful—but I thought she is hard-hearted too, this doctor. She must be hard­hearted. Hard-hearted is part of her job. It has to be.

The doctor’s hair was full and long and down, kinky and wavy and black. My mother’s hair is short and white and kinky and wavy and I could see why my mother was admiring her hair. I was admiring the doc­tor’s body in her jeans. She had what I thought was a girlish and perfect form in her jeans, an enviable form.

There were four of us backed up to the large window at the end of the hall, because I had said, “Let’s go over to the window to talk”—my mother, my sister, and me, and this very young woman doctor with black hair, black eyes, and jeans on.

We were at the window at the hospital, at the end of a hall, down from what was left of my father. We were getting the report on my father, because I had said to the doctor, “Tell us.”

Maybe the doctor was a little ashamed too, or bellig­erent, when she was telling us. Her eyes had such a film over them, so that they sparkled when she spoke of his cerebellum, about his brain stem, about the size of his cortical function. She said, “He doesn’t know who he is. He does not know who he once was. He does not feel grief or frustration. He does not know who you are.” What I was envying then were the doctor’s legs in her jeans. “Maybe—” I said, “you know, maybe—he had such a big brain before—it is just possible,” I said, “that even if his brain has been ravaged, he is still a smart enough person.”

The doctor did not say anything about that. No one did.

Chrissy, one of Dad’s day-shift nurses, was coming along then toward us. Her glasses are the kind my sister will not wear. She will not get glasses like that. My mother will not either. A serious person’s glasses—even if Chrissy is only just a nurse, even if she cannot explain very much about the brain, because she explained to me she has been out of school for too long—I can tell she is serious, that she is serious about me too. If she were a man, I would call what we have shared romantic love—we have shared so much, so often here—talking about my father with feeling. If she were a man—even if she couldn’t remember half of what she had learned about the brain—even if she had forgotten it all—no—if she had forgotten it all, totally, I don’t think I’d want to spend the time of day in her presence. She would disgust me if she were a man like that. So when she called us, when she said, “Your father—” and then when I called “Dad! Dad!” from the—and it sounded even to me as if I expected he would rise up—then I was ready for what I was feeling when I touched his forehead—which was still warm. His mouth was open. The front of the lower row of his teeth was showing. The teeth had never looked, each of them, so terribly small. Some of his teeth were the last things on my father that I ever touched.