The Language of Sisters (40 page)

The technician who accompanied me into the room was the antithesis of what I expected a morgue worker to be—all blond hair and surfer-boy good looks instead of brooding, pale-skin goth. He stood next to me, smelling of spearmint gum. I heard the gentle pop in his mouth before he spoke.

“Are you ready, Ms. West?”

“Yes,” I said. I was more than ready.

A dark-haired girl dressed in light blue scrubs stood by the refrigerator wall and opened one of the doors, pulling out a body beneath a white sheet. She stood back with her hands linked behind her in an at-ease stance. The blond technician reached and pulled back the sheet, folding it neatly across the dead man’s chest. I kept my eyes on the substantial rise of the man’s stomach.
This is a mistake
, I thought.
My father isn’t fat
. He could have gained weight, sure, but that was another one of the side effects that made him forgo his medications.

The technician stepped back from the gurney and turned his head to look at me. “Is it him?”

I forced my gaze upward to the man’s swollen, puffy face. His skin possessed a dusty pallor, as though someone had pulled gray cotton batting over every inch of his flesh. He had scraggly black eyebrows and a beard; his long hair was wet and brushed back from his face, falling in a spidery fan beneath the back of his skull. His eyes were closed.

“I’m not sure,” I said. “It might be. Maybe. I haven’t seen him for twenty years.” My heart fluttered in my chest as I spoke. I didn’t expect not to know. I thought I’d recognize him right away. Had my mind erased so much of him? “Can I see his wrists?”

“His wrists?” said the technician. The girl didn’t speak.

“Yes.”

The technician reached under the sheet and pulled out the man’s limp, beefy arm, hairy side up.

I swallowed hard. “Can you turn it over, please?”

The tech gave me a sidelong look but he did as I asked. I looked at the underside of the man’s wrist, poised and prepared for the sight of angry red and thickly knotted scars. I blinked a few times to make sure I wasn’t just seeing what I wanted to see. but the gray flesh was smooth and bare. If the man was my father, it wouldn’t have been. That much I knew for sure.

Relief collided messily with disappointment in the back of my throat. “No,” I said, releasing a breath it felt like I’d been holding since my cell phone woke me. “It’s not him.” A few errant tears edged their way down my cheeks.

“Are you sure? He fits the description. Except for the extra weight, but we figured maybe he’d gained it and you wouldn’t know.”

“I’m sure,” I said. “It isn’t him. but I can understand why you’d think it was.” I wiped my face with the back of my hand. “How did he die?” I asked, gesturing to the man on the gurney. The man who was not my father. I repeated this phrase silently in my mind to make sure I actually registered it. It wasn’t him. My father wasn’t dead. There was still a chance I could find him.

“Cardiac arrest,” the dark-haired girl said. “The medics brought him in from Pioneer Square. He was dead before they got to the ER.”

“Well, I hope you find out who he is,” I said.
He’s somebody’s son. Maybe even another person’s father
.

“It’s not likely,” said the technician. He snapped his gum, then looked guilty. “Sorry.”

“That’s okay.” Death was normal to him; he was accustomed to treating it casually. He spent more time with it than life.

“Let me walk you out,” the girl said.

“Oh, I’m fine,” I said.

“I’m due for a smoke break anyway,” she said, walking over to the door leading to the outside hallway and opening it for me. “It can get a little tricky down here with all the weird turns to get to the outside world. I think they make it that way so no one accidentally ends up down here if they don’t really need to come.”

“Okay.” I looked one more time upon the man who was not my father. “Good luck,” I whispered to him, and both of the technicians looked at me strangely. Let them look. The poor man obviously had a rough life; he deserved a few well wishes for wherever he ended up.

Moving along the dimly lit corridor with the girl, I noticed our footsteps quickly fell into the same pattern, her white hospital clogs squeaking along the linoleum. We didn’t speak.

“Can I ask you something?” she finally said when we turned a corner and arrived at the door to the hospital parking garage.

“Sure,” I said, holding the door open for her to step through. We walked a little farther, stopping twenty feet or so from the door. She pulled out a pack of cigarettes from the pocket of her scrubs. She shook one out of the pack and held it, regarding it thoughtfully before she spoke.

“So, I’m curious.” Her voice echoed a bit in the almost empty garage. “Why are you trying to find your dad if he’s been out of your life so long? I never knew mine and I couldn’t give a shit where he is. I mean, it’s cool and all that you want to, but don’t you think maybe he likes it better this way? Maybe he doesn’t want to be found.”

“He’s sick,” I said, shrugging as I scanned the garage for where I’d parked my car. “He doesn’t even know he’s lost.”

•  •  •

After I drove home from the hospital and took Jasper for a quiet, predawn stroll around Green Lake, I called my mother. It was our Friday morning ritual and God forbid I forgot or slept in past eight o’clock. Each week she sat at her kitchen table sipping green tea and tapping her fingers next to the phone, waiting for it to ring. She wouldn’t call me; I was the child. It was expected that I call to check in.

Our weekly call had irritated Ryan, my most recent boyfriend, beyond belief. “Can’t we have just one Friday morning where you don’t have to call your mother?” he pled with me. “You’re thirty-one, for Pete’s sake.”

“Did you just use the phrase ‘for Pete’s sake’?” I teased him, trying to lighten the air between us. It had become heavy during the last months of our relationship, bristling with unmet expectations. “What are you, fifty?”

“I’m serious, Eden. You’re tied way too tightly to your mother’s apron strings.”

I snorted. “Oh, so I should be like you, then, and talk to my mother only when I need another withdrawal from her bank account?”

If I remember correctly, that was one of the last arguments we had. Six months later my life returned to normal with Jasper in his rightful spot beside me in bed. It was easier that way.

“Good morning, honey,” my mother chirped when she answered her phone.

“Hey, Mom,” I said. I sat on my couch, a chocolate leather hand-me-down from my mother and stepfather’s last redecorating overhaul project. My mother changed her décor almost as often as some people change their bedsheets. She was a relentless bargain hunter and could completely change the look of a room without spending more than five hundred bucks. When they redid their living room, they gave me the couch, a teak coffee table, and a set of three wrought iron lamps. The only off-the-shelf piece of furniture I owned was the television, and that’s only because the flat-screen they had offered me was too large for the walls of my tiny box of a house.

“How are you this morning?” she asked. “Did you have to work last night?”

“Yep. A corporate event in bellevue. I’m wiped.” I worked as the head chef for a large catering company while I tried to build up enough capital and connections in the industry to launch my own restaurant. I dreamed of opening a small, classy café with a lengthy wine list, no more than ten tables, and a seasonal, eclectic menu. Unfortunately, unless I could find a ridiculously rich investor, this dream wouldn’t be realized any time soon.

“How late did you get in?” Mom asked.

“Only eleven, but I got a call from Seattle General around three thirty so I’ve been up since then.”

“Oh no,” said Mom. “What happened?”

I paused. I knew she wasn’t going to like what I was about to share, but I also knew she wouldn’t leave it alone until I told her. I took a deep breath. “They thought they had Dad in their morgue.”

As I suspected she would be, Mom was silent.

I went on. “It wasn’t him, though. It looked like him a little bit. The dark hair and the height were right, but this guy was really heavy and—”

“And what?” she said, interrupting. Her voice was sharp. She didn’t like talking about him. She’d rather have pretended he never existed—to tell herself the story that I’d simply appeared in her womb.

“And he didn’t have the scars Dad would have. On his wrists.”

She sighed. “I don’t get why you’re doing this to yourself.”

“I don’t know how to explain it to you. It’s just something I need to do.”

She didn’t understand. My search wasn’t about her—I knew she was done with him long ago. That last time, the time when the medics came, was the end for her. A week later she served him divorce papers in the state hospital and he signed them without dispute. but me, I wasn’t done. I wanted my father. When he didn’t come to see me, when he didn’t even try to call, I began conjuring him in the face of every man who crossed my path. Each of my breaths became a wish that the next corner I turned would be the one where he’d appear.

It only took a year for me to stop wishing. At eleven years old, I told myself I was done with him, too.
Screw him
, I thought.
He doesn’t want me. I don’t want him, either
. by that time my mother had married John and I told myself my new stepfather could fill the empty space in my heart. John was a good man, a fireman with a generous soul. but it didn’t matter how good he was or how hard he tried. He couldn’t fit in a space custom-built for another man.

My father did try to get in touch with me after I graduated high school, but after eight years of no contact from him my hurt had hardened into hatred and I refused to respond. He was staying on his meds, the two letters I received said. He was back in Seattle. He was holding down a job.
Back in Seattle?
I wondered.
Where did he go? Did something happen that kept him from coming to see me?
I told myself I didn’t care.
Too bad
, I thought.
Too little, too late
. I threw his letters away.

There were, of course, moments when I missed my dad. My black hair was just like his, as was my pale skin, narrow face, and vivid blue eyes. Looking in the mirror was a frequent, painful reminder that he was gone. Once, in my early twenties, I went to a friend’s wedding only to make a quick exit when her father walked her down the aisle. It was too much to stand, knowing my father would never do the same for me. As more time passed, I started to toy with the idea of trying to find him. Then, last fall, I sat by my mother in the hospital, holding her hand and watching poison drip into her veins in an attempt to annihilate the jagged cells that had already stolen her breasts. I suddenly realized how selfish I had been—how little time any of us are given with those we love. I started thinking more and more about my father, wondering where he was and if he was safe. His letters mentioned time he spent living on the streets. I worried that he was driven back to a homeless existence not only by his illness but by my lack of response. I worried I wouldn’t find him in time for him to forgive me.

“You need to find him even after everything he put you through?” My mother’s voice yanked me back to the present.

“He’s been through quite a bit himself, if you think about it,” I said. Jasper whimpered at my feet, where he was taking a much-needed nap after our Green Lake excursion. I rubbed his back with the tips of my toes and he quieted.

“That was his
choice
. Or have you forgotten?”

“I haven’t forgotten anything.” I sighed. “I don’t want to argue about this with you, okay? Can we just change the subject, please? How’s bryce? Is his competition this weekend or next?” My twenty-year-old half brother, bryce, was the reason my mother married John six months after my father disappeared from our lives. A successful high school wrestler, bryce had opted for a career in personal training and competitive bodybuilding instead of college.

“It’s tomorrow at two. Can you make it?”

“Maybe, but it depends on what time I have to work. I think we have a wedding, but I don’t remember for sure. I’ll check the schedule when I get in today.” I paused. “How’s John?”

“He’s fine. Down at the station on the tail end of a seventy-two-hour shift. He’ll be home tonight.”

“You’re feeling okay? Not overdoing it?”

“Yes, dear. I’m feeling fine. Dr. Freeland says my counts look great. My energy’s up. So you can stop mothering me.”

“I’ll stop if you do,” I teased.

“That’s impossible. When you have a baby you’ll understand.”

“I’d like to have a husband first,” I said, then wished I could pull the words back. I wasn’t up for one of her pep talks around finding a man.

She sighed. “Well, maybe if you went out a little more you’d meet someone.”

I stifled my own sigh. “I work weekends and I’m thirty-two years old with a decent IQ. I have zero interest in the club scene. Most of the men there are only interested in hooking up, anyway. They’re not looking for a wife.”

“What about the Internet? My friend Patty found her husband online. She said it was like shopping for a credenza!”

I laughed. “I don’t think so, Mom. I feel like it’ll happen if it’s supposed to.”

“Oh, fine. I just hope for you, sweetie. You have so much to give.”

We hung up a few minutes later and I continued to sit on the couch, thinking about my romantic past. Working in the restaurant industry, I’d dated plenty of men for one or two months. Even a year at a time. Only two relationships before my more recent one with Ryan turned into anything serious.

First was Wyatt, a fellow culinary student whose dark brown bedroom eyes and wicked smile never failed to make my heart do backflips in my chest. He had this effect on a lot of women and I counted myself lucky to have landed him. After a year of dating, filled with lots of great sex and what I thought was meaningful conversation about sharing our lives and someday opening a restaurant together, I realized that I wasn’t the only item on Wyatt’s daily menu. It turned out he had bigger appetites than that. A dishwasher one night, the hostess and then me the next. He dumped me unceremoniously for a line cook at Denny’s.