The Other Shore: Two Stories of Love and Death

hope so, too," he says, and in the moment he means it. But he wonders how he'll feel about it as time passes. He is reticent to make future promises about his time. Things seem so uncertain at the moment, like the ground has suddenly shifted the last few days.

  They pull into the driveway of their dad's place. The light is different than it was yesterday. It's late afternoon and the late June sun is brightly shining, bouncing over the water of the lake like an animal wriggling under the horizon.

  When they get out of the car, the breeze off the water makes the heat feel more bearable, and the smell off the lake is crisp with memory. He thinks of those days their dad would bring them to the lake, and those thoughts carry with them a sense of youth and satisfaction that he seems to have forgotten ever existed.

  They don't knock on the door this time. Maggie says that the nurse is expecting them and that Susannah was going to be gone for another hour or so.

  "Hello?" Maggie calls as they stand just inside the front door. There's no answer. And it's quiet. "Why don't you go see him? I'll go see if I can find the nurse."

  "You sure?"

  "Yeah, I'll only be a second," she says, as she disappears into the kitchen on the left.

  Simon walks to the edge of the hallway, and stares into his father's room. The light from inside the room is severe and shines from the doorway in a pyramidal shape that seems to be pointing at Simon, beckoning him down the hall.

  And the light is even brighter once he enters the room. The window, which somehow seems larger today than yesterday, is swallowed by light—so is his dad. Sy looks like he's shining from within as he stares out the window. There is a stern look on his face as if he's thinking over some important problem, and Simon wonders how much time he's been spending wrestling with death.

  Sy turns his frail face—bold typed with features—toward Simon.

  "Where were you?" he asks in a slow, slurred drawl.

  "What?" Simon asks, coming closer to the bed—not sure he heard him right.

  "Your mom was worried."

  "Dad, I think you—"

  "I know you don't think about these things, but when your mom worries, she calls me at work, and when she calls, I worry. And when I worry, it disturbs my work. I don't like it when my work is disturbed," he says. His voice is cold and even, and his tone pushes a lot of old buttons in Simon's mind.

  "Dad, you're mistaken. I think this is a conversation that's about twenty years old."

  Sy stares at him for a minute, squints his eyes like he's trying to refocus them on Simon's face, and then he closes them. He slowly shakes his head from side to side and chews at his bottom lip.

  "Simon?" he asks.

  "I'm here."

  "I can see the waves. They're going by one after another, one race of foam disappearing into the next. They're so fast, and I can't catch them."

  "Sorry, Dad, I don't understand."

  "It's the truth, son. It's there, and I see it so clearly. But as soon as I reach for it, it's gone. And when a new one develops behind it, I'm too slow to catch that one, too."

  "To catch what?"

  "The truth. It's right there. I'm trying to steady it, make it slow down."

  "I'm confused."

  "Don't be confused, just close your eyes and imagine it with me."

  Simon closes his eyes, imagines the waves.

  "It's his medication," a voice says from behind him.

  Simon turns and the nurse is behind him. Maggie is behind her in the doorway. Simon moves back toward Maggie to make room for the nurse.

  "You see the waves again, Mr. Markham?"

  "They're right there, plain as day," Sy says, his eyes still tightly closed. "The foam and the clear—moving right by me."

  The nurse turns to them. "This usually happens when he's coming down from the medication," she says, turning back to Sy. "Is there anything I can get you?"

  "Are my kids here?"

  "They are."

  "That'll do just fine," he says, and a smile washes over his face, a smile made bigger by his emaciated appearance.

  The nurse walks back toward them. "He'll be fine in a couple minutes."

  "Is that kind of visualization normal when someone's coming down from their pain meds?" Simon asks.

  "I don't know. I've never heard anyone else describe it quite the way he does," she says. "If you need anything, just call out. I'll be in the kitchen, finishing some paperwork."

  "What was he saying?" Maggie asks Simon.

  "Nothing, really. He's just a bit hazy."

  "Should we give him a couple minutes?" Maggie asks.

  "You can if you want. I think I'll stay."

  "No, I'll stay, too," Maggie says.

  "You ever seen him like this?"

  "Caught it, Simon," Sy says, loud enough that it makes Simon and Maggie jump.

  "Christ," Maggie says.

  "I'm riding the wave now. I'm coming your way."

  "I'll be here waiting," Simon says, and he can't help but laugh.

  Maggie looks at Simon, almost accusingly, but then she starts laughing, too.

  "It's nice to hear you guys laughing," Sy says, still smiling. "I wish I could join you, but I —"

  "We understand, Dad," Maggie says.

  "How long are you guys staying?"

  "I've got a little while before Scott gets home."

  "And what about you?" Sy asks, opening his eyes for the first time to look at Simon, but then quickly closing them again.

  "You alright, Dad?"

  "Yeah, just a little woozy, that's all."

  "How you feeling today?"

  "Ask me in a few more minutes. I'm still a bit numb and loopy," he says. "Did you make it to the university this morning?"

  "I did."

  "And?"

  "I think it's something we'll need to talk about."

  "I thought you might say that."

  "It's just... I wasn't expecting—"

  "Wait. I'm going to step outside for a minute and let you guys talk about this privately," Maggie says, touching Simon's arm on the way out of the room.

  "I should've told you," Sy says.

  "That would've been nice."

  "Honestly, Simon, I didn't know how to say it. I didn't want you to feel obligated to do it, and I worried if I asked you personally that it might come off sounding like some dying wish or something."

  "Is it?"

  "You know, something I don't think I knew, or just didn't want to acknowledge before your mom and I split…" he says, stopping to try and maneuver in his bed, clearly in pain.

  "Anything I can do?" Simon asks, coming to his bedside.

  "Could you fold my pillow for me—double it up? I'd like to prop my head up a bit," Sy says, laboring to hold up his head.

  Simon folds the pillow in half and Sy rests his head on it at a slightly higher angle than before.

  "Boy, those are some powerful drugs," Sy says, slowly opening his eyes, trying to rest them on his son. He pats the edge of the bed. "Why don't you have a seat?"

  Simon sits and is as close to his dad as he's been in years, and there's power in this closeness. He can feel his dad's warmth, the rhythm of his labored breathing.

  "Now, what was I saying?"

  "You were talking about something you couldn't acknowledge before you and Mom split."

  "Right. I hate to admit it, but I saw my family life as something of a prison I needed to escape. And I never questioned the feeling. I never questioned the impulse to flee that part of my life. There's a lot of layers here, and I don't want to go through them all. But your mother was obviously a big reason for my feeling that way. I just couldn't take her pain. But the weight of that pain on you guys… I feel so guilty about it, and rightly so. I was too selfish to see it. I should've done more to pull you guys out from under the weight of her. Instead, I did my best to save myself. But I found out too late that I had it all wrong. I was a prisoner—just not in the way I thought I was. I was a prisoner of high expectat
ions.

  "We won't go into all the psycho-nonsense of my issues with my parents. My problems are my own, but some baggage is carried over generations rather we like it or not.

  "I ever tell you much about my father?" Sy asks.

  "Not that I remember."

  "My father worked hard, very hard, to be able to send me off to college. It wasn't easy for him. And I can't tell you how disappointed he was that I was studying to be a poet."

  "I didn't know that."

  "Why would you? Lord knows, we didn't have these kinds of discussions when you were younger," he says. "Before you were born, just before he, your grandfather, died, I was still struggling. My work wasn't getting off the ground, and your mother and I were barely getting by on my paltry part-time faculty salary."

  Sy stops and takes a deep breath as if he's been struggling to keep up, and he looks so tired.

  "Anyway, this is a long way of saying that I was trapped in a prison that my father had built for me. I don't think it was his intention, but nevertheless, it was there. But it takes two to make a prison: a captor and a captive. And I was the ready captive of that prison he built.

  "I was captive to his expectations—real or imagined. And it's so silly—a ridiculous notion. He was dead. Who was I trying to prove something to? But it didn't matter. I was working, operating on hereditary fuel. His father worked to make his kids' lives better. My father worked to make my life better. And, even though it wasn't something I was conscious of necessarily, I thought that's what a father did to make his children's lives better. You worked. And through your work, your kids were afforded a better life than your own.

  "But I knew the situation at home was terrible for you guys. I knew I should've been doing more. I knew how unhappy your mother was, and how she spread that misery over the house like a shadow. But I thought my duty was to work and work so that you guys