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“Is that right? Haven’t heard anything from her. Not for years and years. She didn’t write, not a word, so neither did I. So where is she, then? If she wanted to bring you here, why isn’t she here?”
His manner makes me less afraid to tell him.
“She had a stroke, last year. She wasn’t sick; it was sudden.” For the first time, I wonder if my mother’s stroke, which was so unexpected, was a long time coming, if burying her past took its toll.
“She’s in hospital, then?”
“No, she isn’t. Um, she died.”
He juts out his lower lip, moves it right and left. Looks away from me and starts coughing lightly, and then harder. He wheezesand gasps. I turn to the nurse. She pitches him forward, thumps on his back. Pushes the button to move his bed so he’s more vertical.
“Is he okay?” I ask.
The nurse sighs. “Some days are harder than others.” To my grandfather, she says, “There we go now, pet. You’re fine.”
He doesn’t look fine. He looks pained.
“She didn’t suffer,” I say. “It happened very fast.”
“My girl,” he whispers. He’s not looking at me. “Sukie.”
Is he crying? This isn’t what I wanted. I was going to be angry and strong. Why isn’t my mother here? Why is this left to me, to tell him what’s happened to his own daughter? I don’t want to cry here but can’t stop the tears. I wipe my nose with the back of my hand. This is all wrong, all of it. I have so many questions: How could he send away his own daughter? Why didn’t he write to her? Why did she stay away for so long? But I can’t bring myself to ask.
“In the drawer,” he says, waving a hand toward his night table. “My wallet.”
What the hell? Is he going to give me money?
“I don’t need—”
“Get my wallet,” he croaks.
I find the wallet, cracked leather, and give it to him. His hands are shaking. It takes him a while to slide something out. It’s a photograph, frayed on the edges and crinkled, like it’s been in there for a long time, maybe since shortly after it was taken. A family in front of a small stone house. George, with a full head of hair and a muscular body, his arm around Ann, who’s leaning against his shoulder and smiling at the camera. Her hair is swept back off her face, but I can tell it is thick, like mine. She’s holding the hand of a little girl in a sleeveless shirt and shorts.
It’s a beautiful picture and it is horrifying. A portrait of all that was lost.
“Take it,” he says. His eyes are watery, his lips quivering.
“I can take a photograph of it with my phone, and you can keep it,” I say.
“I want you to have it.” He watches me put the photograph in my bag. “She was better off there. Cheeky thing. She was better off.”
“I don’t know,” I say. “I know nothing about it.”
As I’m trying to figure out what to say, he rests his head on the pillow and closes his eyes. His breathing slows into a steady rhythm.
“He tires easily,” the nurse says. “Do you want to come back later?”
“I don’t think so.”
I tear off a blank edge of the racing form and take a pen from my bag. I write down my name and address and phone number. I can’t imagine that we’ll talk again, but it seems the right thing to do. In large letters, I add, “It was nice to visit with you.” Maybe not what my mother would do, but like Germaine said, she’s not here. It’s only me.
I hand the slip of paper to the nurse.
“Can you make sure he sees this?”
“Of course,” she says.
In the car, Germaine says, “So?”