Page 11 of The Things We Never Say

After a moment someone moved into the room, and when the person came into view Artie saw that it was his son.

“Dad?”

His son sat down in a plastic chair next to his bed.

“Robbie.” Artie said this with what he thought was enthusiasm, but his voice was not that strong; he could hear this in his voice. Evie stood and said, “Let me go to the cafeteria and find something to eat, I haven’t eaten anything since I heard about you.”

Rob said, “Yeah, go eat, Mom.”

So they were alone, father and son.

Rob looked above the bed at the machines that were blinking and making beeping sounds. He pulled his chair closer to his father. Now his face was very close. “Dad.” Rob’s voice was low. “Dad, did you do it on purpose?”

Artie didn’t speak for a moment, and then he said, “Do what on purpose, son?”

“Did you fall into the water on purpose?”

“No.” Artie looked at his son and then at the ceiling. “No, I don’t think so.”

“You don’t think so?”

“No, son. I couldn’t get into the boat. I slipped. What are you asking me?”

“I’m asking you if you were trying to die.”

“Why would you ask me that?”

“You haven’t been yourself for a while,” Rob said. He still did not sit back.

“Is that what your mother said?”

“No. No, no, she didn’t say anything like that. I just wondered…” Rob put his face even closer to Artie’s. “Look, Dad. You and I have—” He glanced up at the ceiling for a long moment and then back at Artie. “We’ve always had—I don’t know—some kind of understanding between us, ever since, you know…Heather.”

“No, son. I wasn’t trying to kill myself.” Artie looked straight at Rob as he said this.

“Because, Dad—” Tears filled his son’s eyes. Rob reached and took Artie’s hand in his own. “Because, Dad? You can’t do that. You can never ever do that. Because you’re like my explorer. Remember when they sent those men to the Moon, they sent up robots years ahead to explore so they knew they’d be safe when they got there? That’s what you’re like for me, Dad. You’re my explorer, so if you ever did that it would mean that I could do it too, and so you can’t.”

Artie gazed into this poor boy’s anguished face. “I will never do that,” he said.

And Rob sat back, wiping his face with his sleeve. “Good. Okay. Good.”

That first night in the hospital Artie woke and thought of how he had had his tonsils out when he was a kid. This was back when people still smoked in hospitals. He had seen a patient, an old woman (she had looked old to him, though as he recalled this he thought that she had probably been the same age then as he was now), and she was weeping. Back and forth she walked in the hospital’s corridor past his room in her bathrobe, weeping and smoking her cigarettes. Her story was this: She had tongue cancer, half her tongue had been removed, and she lived alone, and she was scared.

It was Artie’s father who had found that out. And Artie remembered his father speaking kindly to that woman, asking her about what arrangements she might have when she went home (she had no arrangements and no money either), and she was so grateful to Artie’s father as she stood there in her hospital gown, weeping and smoking.

As Artie recalled this now, he felt a stirring of a feeling he had had often in his youth, which he had never been able to describe to anyone, and had never tried, but it was a feeling (almost) of a divine presence. It was not a God who stood above the Earth like a father figure, not at all. But it was a presence that was very large and, for Artie, always comforting, as it was now thinking of that poor smoking woman who was going home alone. By now she would have been dead many years, and he was glad—as he lay in his own hospital bed—to think that her suffering was over.

And that his father had been so kind to her.

—

Artie’s mind seemed to go blank for a while, but then more memories began. He remembered clearly the first night he had heard Francesca perform as a concert pianist. It was at Carnegie Hall in New York City. This was almost two years ago now, right before Christmas—Evie had ended up getting a bad cough and so Artie had gone to the concert of his new daughter-in-law with only Rob.

Entering the hall, Artie felt a sense of wonder; he had been there before but years ago, and it seemed different to him. It was smaller than he remembered, and yet with its balconies there were many seats, and he watched them slowly fill. Their seats were in the second tier, Artie could see Francesca perfectly from where they sat, he could see her face, her black slacks and black top and her red shoes on the pedals, it was only Francesca and the piano—alone. She had looked tremendously lonely to him as she walked onto the stage with its well-lit wooden floor and sat down. People applauded, but not the woman who sat next to Artie, a very tall woman, older than Artie, rather severe, he thought.

But what he saw that night was how much Francesca was giving to the audience, to the large-stomached men who sat in the front rows, to the tall, awful woman who sat beside him. Francesca was playing her heart out: When she reached for a high note, he saw her hand cupping itself after she played it, and the audience responded politely (the woman next to him never clapping once). And then, after the intermission, Francesca returned to the stage and gave them hell. This is what Artie thought now, and he had thought it then, he had leaned forward in his seat, she had played with tremendous strength in her fingers, and by the end of that first piece after the intermission, the audience was wild about her. Rob had sat there with what Artie thought was great calmness; now Artie understood that Rob had believed in her totally. At the end of the concert, people even stood (though not all of them, not the tall, awful woman sitting beside him), and Francesca came back for three encores. But Artie had been concerned about her.

Rob had told Artie not to go see her after the concert, that she would “be a wreck, always is afterward,” not even to text her, to wait a day, though Rob himself had disappeared to go find her backstage. And so Artie waited a day and then he texted Francesca something stupid—he felt it was stupid—about her outstanding performance, and she had texted back only “Thanks, Artie.”