Heart the Lover (47)

I try making eye contact with Yash, but Yash is still looking at the doorway. His phone lights up and he bends over it.

Every person in this room has a phone in their hand. Arlo is speaking into his loudly. ‘That is unacceptable period. Do not move forward exclamation point. Will discuss when I get back‘—he lowers his voice slightly—‘heart emoji.’

I look at Yash’s oxygen. It’s flashing between 89 and 91. I get up and reclaim my chair, push his cannula in further.

He says, ‘I want to tell you something.’

‘Tell me.’ I scootch my chair as close as possible to his bed and lean over the bedrail.

He laces his fingers through mine. ‘I want to tell you that I’m not angry at you anymore.’

I laugh. He’s serious. ‘Angry at me?’



‘For a long time I felt like you sort of enjoyed making me suffer, punishing me, stringing me’—he pauses to breathe—‘along and extracting more and more apologies without ever forgiving me.’

‘I remember an elephant poem. And a paragraph about Molly the prostitute—Céline was a Nazi sympathizer, by the way. I don’t remember an apology.’

‘I apologized so many times. In so many letters.’

Did he? I have no recollection of this. All I remember is other people’s writing, other people’s thoughts copied out in his hand.

‘You thought I was toying with you?’ I say.

‘I thought it was pretty immature that you wouldn’t talk to me for three years when we had been in what to my mind was a pretty serious relationship.’

‘Oh. A pretty serious relationship? But not serious enough to show up in New York. More of a drive-in-the-opposite-direction kind of serious.’

‘I worried we still couldn’t have this conversation.’

‘You’ve never tried to have this conversation.’

‘I’ve tried for years. You have never let me explain.’

‘What is there to explain? I was there. You weren’t.’

‘There were reasons for that.’

‘We had something kind of amazing.’

‘I know.’

‘And you threw it away.’



‘I didn’t. I didn’t mean to. I freaked out. Temporarily. I was twenty-three.’

‘I was twenty-three, too.’

There is a flurry of activity in the doorway and three women sweep into the room, sisters maybe, fluffy coats way too warm for Atlanta, their hair streaked blond in the exact same way, dark roots showing intentionally.

‘Oh, no way,’ Yash says to them.

‘Yes fucking way,’ the oldest one says.

They crowd around his bed. Big product and perfume smells. I get up and stand in the doorway with his mom.

Yash shakes his head. ‘You’ve come too far.’ He looks at me, asking for a truce. ‘It’s Marni and her girls, Hink.’

Marni. She and I hug, and marvel at her daughters, grown women now. Tears are already sending their mascara down their cheeks. She takes my chair and the girls lean against the bedrail.

‘Pigeons,’ Yash says reaching out his free hand. ‘No fussing about me. I’m fine. I’m really fine.’

This makes them cry harder.

I can’t make small talk right now. I feel like my lungs are on fire. I slip out of the room and look for Sam to find out what he talked to the nurse about. He’s not around so I keep walking to the bathroom. Yash’s posse is spread out over this whole floor. Brent and Aunt Bev are on their computers in the family room. EJ has found a little alcove for a work call, and Jared and Uncle Percy are in the kitchen eating ramen noodles beside the microwave.

In the bathroom stall I look at my phone. Silas has texted. All good here. Safe flight xo.

I look at the time. The numbers make no sense to me.

My noon flight has already left.

I call Silas’ phone.

‘Hello, Madre,’ Jack says.

The sound of his voice pushes everything else out of my mind. ‘Hello, sweet pea. How’s it going?’

‘Okay.’ He’s not in pain but something is preoccupying him.

‘What’s going on?’

‘Nothing.’

I wait.

‘I just. I just want to get this procedure over and done with.’ He says the word ‘procedure‘ the way the Houston doctor said it. Her procedure was a seven-hour surgery.

‘This will be the last one for a long time.’

‘I just—’

‘I know.’

‘No, I don’t think you do know.’

I wait.



‘I’m like a ghost in school. Just when I start to sort of be like a regularish kid who actually shows up, I have to leave again. Otis has a girlfriend.’

‘Really?’

‘Yeah.’

I wait.

‘She wears funny shoes.’

‘Yeah?’

‘Old-fashioned. They’re weird. I’m getting behind in everything.’

‘In girls, you mean.’

‘In girls, in sports, in Spanish. Alex used a word I didn’t know today. Pájaro. Do you know what it means?’

‘Bird.’