Heart the Lover (51)

Yash’s mother perches on the edge of the chair Sam was sitting in. She’s so small and brittle now. Pain turns women into birds, I think. I don’t want to turn into a bird in a hospital hallway.

‘Jared has gotten Venezuelan for dinner.’

‘I just ate a sandwich.’

‘I can’t eat either. Can’t eat a thing.’

She keeps such a distance from Yash. Or he keeps her at a distance. Whenever she comes into his room, I offer her my chair but she rarely takes it. The few times she did, they hardly spoke. She took his hand one time and he extracted it quickly. She prefers the doorway, the hallway, flanked by her sisters and Paige. We are not the same species, Yash said once. I am a human being and she is a two-ton albatross. She wants things from me I cannot give, he said another time, hanging up from a phone call with her. Sam fills her in on what the doctors say. I’m not sure she absorbs everything he says. I know the feeling well, that fog of fear as you strain to listen to the doctor.

Aunt Mo delivers her a plate piled with arepas, rice, black beans, and plantains. Uncle Percy comes out of the family room with two plates, one for Aunt Mo. EJ comes next. They eat leaning against the wall facing us.

Yash’s mother pushes the fork through her rice but does not lift it to her mouth.

Brent and Bean come down the hallway.



‘We’re not playing sardines,’ Aunt Mo says, reluctantly moving over for them to fit in the alcove. ‘Peggy Lynn?’

Yash’s mother nods.

‘Do you remember when Alvin died, right here in this hospital?’

She grunts softly.

‘Do you remember a few days before, they brought in a tray of snacks, an enormous tray, full of cookies and the like? Where is that tray? We need a tray like that for all these people.’

Yash’s mother gets up and leaves without answering her and Aunt Mo turns her attention to me. ‘He waited too long, didn’t he? For someone so smart he could be awfully dumb, couldn’t he?’

‘I set him up with a girl once,’ Bean says. ‘Never again. She called me up the next day and said, “Who the fuck is Jordan?”’

EJ pushes himself off the wall and looms over me in my alcove. ‘What happened between you two? I can’t imagine any reason why you’d dump that guy. Heart of gold. Loyal as fuck.’

Aunt Mo takes the empty seat. ‘Yashie wasn’t easy to interpret, was he?’ She lowers her voice. ‘I think all that time he spent with Percy messed with him.’

‘His father suspected he was CIA,’ Paige says. ‘Do you think he was CIA?’



‘He gives me a book of yours every Christmas,’ Aunt Bev says behind me. ‘Every year. You’ve written so many.’

‘Only four.’

‘More than that. I get one every year.’

‘The book business? Talk about a dying market,’ Brent says. ‘I hope to God you’re transitioning to screen work. Now, streaming—that’s what we call shit-ton profit potential. Did you see Blood Force? No book better than that series. You’re hobbled by the lack of visuals. There’s no competition with a screen. Sorry, but no matter how hard you try your dick is always going to be limp. I’ve read a book or two of yours. Started them, anyway. You’re good at dialogue. You gotta go after it. Thank God Yash never tried to write books. You know that’s what he wanted to do, right? He wouldn’t have been happy doing that. It would have made him more of a recluse than he already was.’

I excuse myself and go back to Yash.

Arlo is alone with him, in a chair at the foot of his bed. He’s playing the guitar. He’s singing a song I know from a tape Yash made me when I was in grad school and we started talking again after Ivan died. It was a tape of gorgeous, depressing songs and I had it for years. Silas and I used to listen to it in his car when we were dating. This one was the best song on it. We always fast-forwarded to get to it.



I sit in my chair. Yash’s mask is on tight and his eyes are closed. I take his hand and he doesn’t respond.

‘They loaded him up with meds,’ Arlo says over his fingerpicking. ‘He was getting twitchy.’

I squeeze his hand hard. I want him to wake up. But he’s in a deep chemical sleep.

It’s 7:43.

‘Where’s Sam?’

‘On the phone with his kids.’

I kiss Yash’s hand and let it go. I get my suitcase, say goodnight to Arlo, and walk out.

At the Hyatt, they give me a room that is the mirror opposite of the one from the night before. I collapse on the bed. My phone swarms with fresh texts. Where is the orange sleeping bag, Harry wants to know, he and Eli are going to sleep in a tent tonight. Jack hijacked Silas’ phone and, in response to an earlier text to Silas asking about how Jack’s day went, he wrote: Jack is fine. If Jack had his own phone you could ask him directly and get many more details.

The phone vibrates. It’s Harry.

‘It’s not in the closet or the garage,’ he says.

‘Did you try the way-back of the car?’

‘The car?’

‘I keep it there in the winter. In case of a sudden blizzard on the highway.’



‘You are so weird. Passing you to Dad.’

‘Only one in the car?’ Silas says. ‘What about the rest of us?’