The Other Shore: Two Stories of Love and Death

He'd spent so much time escaping all the things that reminded him of his father—including poetry and jazz—that he'd forgotten how much he loved them.

  "If all goes as planned, I'm going to take the job," he says, saying out loud for the first time what he was merely thinking about, turning it into a certainty. "I'm ready for a new challenge in life and this really does seem like something I need right at the right time. And I'm not sure how you knew I needed it, but I have a feeling you did."

  He looks at his dad's gaunt face and tries to remember what he used to look like when he was more full of life. He has still images, frozen moments of memories trapped in the amber of his mind, but he can't animate that man—the man who's stood so large over his past.

  "Saw Laura again," he says, staring out the window now. "I can see why you like her so much. I can see from her eyes how smart she is. And she's playful, and that's a good trait for someone to have, especially since I'm going to be spending so much time with her in the future. It's also good to like someone enough to want to spend all that time with them, and that's the only problem I can see with taking the job. I want to spend time with her. I want to know her more. I crave it, actually. So, what you wanted for me is happening. I'm attracted to her. In fact, I think I could care a great deal for that woman."

  As Paul Desmond's sax blows itself away, a new song, a big band song, comes on the radio. Simon's jazz education is not as well-versed in big band jazz. His dad was always more of a post-war Bebop guy.

  "My attraction to her, which is clear to me already, is really the last stumbling block I can see before I formally accept the job. I mean, there are some contractural things that I think I can clear up pretty easily, but my attraction to her is not going to go away. And if she's not attracted to me, then…I don't know what I'd do, but I think I need to know before—"

  Sy raises a finger to stop Simon.

  Simon was sure he was still unconscious, and if he'd known he wasn't, he wouldn't have been speaking so freely.

  "Listen," Sy says, his voice barely more than a whisper.

  A smooth male voice from the radio sings, 'La-dee-da, dee-da-dee-dum, 'Tis autumn.'

  "Oh, that's nice," his dad says. "So perfect, yet so simple."

  "I didn't know you were awake."

  "We poets could learn something from that simplicity. Things are most beautiful at their most basic level. We complicate everything with our own neuroses," he says as he opens his eyes, looks at his son. "Can you describe a flower more beautifully than the sight of the flower itself? And if you think you can, would you be willing to surrender the sight of flowers for their descriptions alone? That first question always interested me. I used to believe—never lacking confidence—that I could describe a flower more beautifully than the sight of a flower. But the second question answers the first. I'd never surrender the sight of a flower for its most perfect description—no matter how beautiful. But we muck everything up. Sometimes seeing something beautiful and recognizing that it is right and beautiful, is all we need. We don't need to dress it up with psychology. We don't need to make things so complicated. If you feel something real, she probably feels it, too. It's already there. Don't complicate a very simple emotion. Enjoy it at its most basic level—a feeling."

  "You heard everything I said?"

  "I don't know," he says, closing his eyes again.

  "Dad?"

  "The water's nice today, don't you think?"

  "On the lake?"

  "Do you remember when I taught you how to swim?" he asks, squeezing his eyes tightly shut.

  "Not really."

  "Sure you do. You had that big, orange life jacket on, and you would jump from the dock into the water over and over again. I would paddle in the water waiting to gather you up after you landed. Remember?"

  "It's not ringing a bell."

  "You were pretty young, maybe four or five, and you were having such a great time until I made you take the jacket off. I'll never forget how you looked at me. You had those big, sad child's eyes and they were full of tears. I could tell you were wondering why I would do something so cruel to you. It seemed like I was taking away your fun and replacing it with something unnecessarily scary. You didn't understand. You thought you were fine with that jacket and having me there to gather you up. And I said, 'Wouldn't it be nice to still be able to jump off the dock and not have to worry about whether or not you're wearing the jacket, or if I'd be there to catch you? Wouldn't it be nice not to have to depend on anything or anyone else?' I remember your eyes changed then from fear to determination, and you spent the next several hours that day learning to swim. And by the end of the day, you were jumping off the dock all by yourself."

  "I've been swimming without a life jacket for a long time, Dad"

  "Yeah, but you never learned how to swim properly. You struggle too much. You never let yourself relax. Swimming is actually very easy and natural if you just learn to move with the water."

  Simon sits there for a second wondering if his dad is truly with it. Is he aware that the Simon that's sitting beside him is the present-day Simon, or is he confusing this moment for a moment from the past? Does it matter?

  "When did you stop struggling?" Simon asks him.

  "It took a long time—too long."

  "How'd you get there?"

  "Susannah showed me how."

  "How'd she do that?"

  "I wish I knew," he says, and opens his eyes as far as he can against the harsh light shining in through the window. "But one thing I've learned is that it's all water. Everything. Just let it move you. It knows where you're going."

  Susannah walks in with a cup of tea in her hands.

  "You're awake," she says to Sy.

  "Approximately."

  "How is he?" she asks Simon.

  "I'm not sure."

  "How's the water?" she asks Sy.

  "What's water?" he says, and turns toward Simon with a smile.

  Simon immediately knew what he was saying. There's that famous oft-told story about two fish passing each other in the water. Fish #1 says to fish #2, 'How's the water?', fish #2 replies, 'What's water?'

  "It's nice to see you smile," Susannah says. "What were you boys talking about?"

  "We were talking about the time he taught me to swim," Simon says.

  "Oh, that's nice," she says. "Well, I hate to interrupt your reminiscing, but Wendy needs to come in and get some vitals."

  "That's fine," Simon says. "I've been meaning to take a walk by the lake anyway, if that's alright."

  "Of course," she says.

  "I hope you'll still be up when I get back," Simon says to his dad.

  "I'll see what I can do," he says.

  Susannah stops Simon at the door. "How'd he seem? Did he seem like he was with it?"

  "He seemed to know what he was saying, I think. How can you tell?"

  "The more he talks about the water, the more the drugs are still affecting him."

  "There was certainly a lot of talk about water, but he seemed to be pretty clear about what he was trying to say."

  "Were there waves?"

  "Not today," he says, moving down the hallway, passing Wendy and her small, pink caddie of supplies on the way to the front door.

  Once he's outside, he takes a deep breath, puts his hands in his pockets and moves toward the back of the house. He thinks of his dad's conversation, tries to unpack all the baggage—psychologically compartmentalizing it all. But as he gets nearer to the lake, he finally hears what his dad was saying, and he allows all the subtext—real or imagined—to just evaporate.

  He picks up a stone—a nice, flat stone—and sidearms it over the water, watches it skip away.

  After about a half hour of walking by the lake, trying to clear his mind of the clutter and chaos that's been introduced into his life over the past several days, Simon turns back toward his dad's house. In the distance, he can see Maggie's car in the driveway. He wonders if his dad is still awake and how many more
waking hours they'll have with him.

  But he tries to push that thought away for now. He'll be facing the reality of that soon enough.

  There's another car in the driveway— one he doesn't recognize. It could be Laura's car. And just the thought of her being near makes his heart jump. He knew she was coming, and yet he's nervous to see her in this new element, away from the confines of the university. There's something about this place, and this moment, that's so much more raw than the seeming order of being at the university. There's something about the house—the quiet, his dad's empty room— that adds an extra layer of vulnerability to a situation that already feels like it's teetering on a knife's edge. Every moment, every gesture, and every word is fraught with emotion. And he's not sure he's ready to face all of this with her.

  He stops where he's at and looks out into the shimmering, sun-drenched water and wonders if Laura is just a distraction—another handy way for him to emotionally escape the truth of what's staring at him through his dad's eyes.

  He takes a seat on a large nearby rock and is aware of a hunger so intense that it feels like it's hollowed him out inside. Maybe it's the heat, or the fact that he'd forgotten to have lunch, but that all seems almost beside the point. This hunger doesn't feel like a hunger he can feed with food, and the heat and light just seem to make him more aware of the abyss that's waiting for him at their house.

  "You going to sit out here all day?" a voice asks from behind him. He turns and sees Maggie.

  "You have a better idea?" he says. "How'd you know I was out here?"

  "I saw you from the