I can’t get my father back on the phone. Nurse Greenhair doesn’t pick up, and André tells me a blatant lie (“five minutes”).
I return to the motel with a cold Wendy’s hamburger and a melting Frosty. It’s nighttime, but Jethra is still at the front desk. My face is red from blubbering. I’d like to slink through the lobby without interaction, but halfway between the lollipop topiary and the random spare conference table with six chairs, she acknowledges me.
“Everything okay?” she asks.
“Yeah,” I say, wiping my nose. “Guess I’m just feeling emotional that they don’t give us the little Best Western notepad and pen anymore.”
“What?”
“Nothing.”
“You want pen?” she asks, taking a pen from a cup of pens on the desk. “Here, here is pen.”
“That’s okay.”
“Take the pen!”
“Okay,” I say. “Thanks.”
I take the pen.
“My father is in the hospital,” I tell her.
She exhales drowsily, as if to say, Listen, Best Western cares, but not this much.
But I keep talking.
“He’s in the hospital in Los Angeles. He’s maybe dying. I feel like I should be there, but I don’t even know if he wants me there.”
She nods.
“When my father was in the hospital last year, right before he died, he didn’t want me there,” she says.
“Your dad died?”
She nods again.
“And he wanted to be alone?”
“He didn’t want me to see him like that. He was old-fashioned, Catholic Bulgarian. Very prideful dude. He was the father. He was not going to let me be the father.”
“Right.”
“You know about the five love languages?”
I live in LA; of course I know about the five love languages. But I shake my head no. I want to hear her tell me.
“So, people give and receive love in different ways: gifts, acts of service, physical touch, verbal, time spent.”
“I think I’m verbal,” I say, but she ignores me.
“My father,” she says. “Not big hugger, not big talker. Acts of service, providing, putting food on table, that was his language. But in hospital, he couldn’t do his language. Suddenly, I’m the one doing his language, taking care of him. And he doesn’t like it. He doesn’t want me to do his language. He wants to do his language! So, what, I’m expecting him to change languages? Like he is suddenly going to become physical touch language? When he is dying of all things? Pfffff, he’s not going to change languages! Nobody changes languages! It’s not like learning English! But I’m waiting for him to change languages. I’m waiting and waiting and it never comes.”
“Wow. Did you feel guilty for being upset? That he wouldn’t change languages?”
“Why guilty?”
“I don’t know. I feel like something is wrong with me for being upset.”
“Something is wrong with you. Your father is dying.”
“Maybe dying. Probably.”
“Your father is maybe probably dying! Of course you’re upset!”
“Good point.”
“That’s the problem with this country,” she says, motioning in the air. “All this space! No room for feeling. Have you ever been to Bulgarian funeral?”
I shake my head no.
“Oh! Well! Very different from American funeral. People are screaming, throwing dirt. People are trying to climb into the coffin!”
This is definitely better than having sex with her.
“Wow.”
“Yes, I recommend. Anyway. I waited. But he never changed languages. I never got my moment. Or so I thought. But looking back, I think my father not wanting me to see him like that, weak, was his way of showing love. I thought he was trying to get rid of me. Which, yes, he was. But he was trying to protect me. Acts of service. All the way to the end. He was doing his love language.”
“He was doing his love language!”
“Yep.”
“Wow,” I say. “Thank you.”
She flutters her nails at me, like, No big deal.
“Do you mind if I ask… what was your father’s name?”
“Oh,” she says, smiling.
She holds up her wrist, shows me the tattoo.
“His name was Viktor,” she says.