The Other Shore: Two Stories of Love and Death

by Paul Hina

always seen the eyes of his mother staring back at him.

  He's spent all this time being angry at his father, and himself, for her. But now he's served his sentence, and he can't afford to be angry anymore.

  He sits on a bus stop bench and starts to weep. It's a different kind of weeping than he's experienced over the past several weeks. These tears aren't of some deep, generalized sadness. This feels like he's letting something profound go. These are the tears of a long needed goodbye.

  It's difficult to tell whether his dad is asleep or not. Claire, the evening nurse, takes care with his body as she gathers its information, and his body is easily compliant. Sy hardly even seems like he's in the room—seems elsewhere. And Simon just hangs back and watches the early evening light wash over his tired, sickly skin.

  Susannah is late. She called to warn him, but he had already arrived. Now, he's in the room with his father again, staring at him, seeing him for the first time in this completely drugged out phase of his day.

  Something doesn't seem right about being here with him as he is now. It feels somehow voyeuristic. He doesn't get the impression that his dad knows he's here. Would he be okay with Simon sitting here, watching him in this state of barely there? Simon doesn't know the answer, but the question itself gives him pause about remaining in the room.

  When Claire finishes taking his vitals, she gathers up her things, puts them in her pink plastic caddy and leaves the room. Simon decides to follow her out. His dad deserves the dignity of some privacy.

  As they walk into the living room, she seems aware that he's about to talk with her. Claire's a middle aged woman who has the look of someone who's been around this kind of thing more than a few times, looks practiced in the puzzles of families.

  "Have you been working in hospice care long?"

  "Almost twenty years," she answers, almost before he was done asking the question.

  "Tough work?"

  "It can be hard. But it's necessary."

  "Do you mind if I ask you something?"

  "Sure," she says, and she looks at him in a way that tells him she's heard all the questions before.

  "How much time does he have?"

  "That's a question for a doctor. And I'm not a doctor."

  "When is he going to see his doctor again?"

  She looks away for just a split second, but he immediately understands why.

  "When?" he asks again.

  "Next Monday."

  "But he won't make it to Monday, will he?"

  "I couldn't say. And, honestly, his doctor couldn't say, either. The best you can hope for is an educated guess."

  "You've been in this business twenty years, you must see this kind of thing all the time."

  "I do, but—"

  "I'd trust your guess is fairly educated."

  She looks at him with clear eyes. He knows that she's close, but she's still biting her tongue.

  "I won't hold you to it."

  "One day, maybe two."

  "Really?"

  "That's what I think," she says, and there is a warmth in her voice that accompanies her certainty. She understands the coldness of death's introduction. She's been to the deep end and back with too many families to make light of its presence. "I'm sorry."

  "Don't be. It's not as if it's a surprise, really," he says, though it did feel like a surprise. "I appreciate your honesty. And your work. You guys do good work."

  "Thank you. I appreciate that," she says, moving toward the kitchen.

  Simon walks to the window overlooking the driveway. Susannah's Volvo wagon is parked beside his rental car. She must have showed up while he was still back with his dad. Otherwise, he would've heard her pull in.

  She's still sitting in the car. He can see her well enough to know that she's crying. She's frantically dabbing at her eyes with a tissue and checking her face in the visor mirror. She must know there's a chance that he knows she's there, and yet she can't bring herself to come inside in the state she's in. He turns away from the window. Again, he thinks of the preservation of a person's dignity. He's spent his fair share of time crying in his car over the past few months, and he shudders to think anyone might have been watching him.

  Of course, under the circumstances, no one could blame Susannah for being an emotional wreck. Her husband is on death's door, and she's powerless to do anything about it. And, for the most part, she's been dealing with this on her own over the past year. It's hard, and seems somehow selfish, to allow the sick person in your life to see how much their illness is affecting you. There's an inherent need to be strong for the sick. It must be immeasurably taxing for her. That's probably one of the reasons she seemed so relieved when Simon agreed to come for dinner. It must be nice to have a companion to share in the pall of death's burden.

  He sits on the living room sofa and patiently waits for her.

  After several minutes, he hears the car door shut. He stands up. But he immediately sits back down, not wanting to greet her at the door. He doesn't want her to know that he knows she was out there crying.

  "Sorry I'm late," she says, opening the door.

  "It's alright," he says, standing up.

  "I hope lasagna is alright for dinner. I stopped and picked one up on the way home," she says, holding a large aluminum pan.

  "Sounds good to me."

  She stands just inside the door staring at him, holding the lasagna with the door wide open beside her. Time seems to stand still between them. He wants to speak, break the awkwardness, but he says nothing. Under normal circumstances, he might think these weird, seemingly absent stares of hers meant she was a vacant personality, but he can tell by the depth of her eyes that she's anything but vacant.

  Her eyes are still puffy and red from crying, but she's smiling through whatever pain she's feeling, and the smile doesn't seem forced. She seems sincerely happy to see him.

  "Let me help you with that," he says, moving past her to shut the door and take the lasagna from her hands.

  "Thank you," she says, moving toward the kitchen. "Would you like a glass of wine?"

  "Sure," he says, as he enters the kitchen behind her.

  This is the first time he's seen the kitchen. It's bigger than he expected it would be. There's a patio behind a set of large French doors that makes the room feel even bigger. Susannah opens up both the doors to the patio and pulls a screen like a curtain over the open space. The breeze moves in the room and fills the kitchen with the fresh smell of the beach. It's nice. The lake is right there, spread out in front of the patio. It's just about a perfect picture.

  Susannah sees him looking at the view. "It's nice, isn't it?"

  "Yes, very."

  "I thought I would eventually get used to it, and it would just become routine, but it never has. It still knocks me out," she says. "You can sit that on the table. I'll make us a quick salad."

  Simon sits the lasagna at the center of the table, which faces the patio.

  "Where's the nurse? I just saw her walk back here a couple minutes ago?" Simon asks.

  "She's probably in the basement," Susannah says, pointing at the door against the back wall. "We gave them the office down there for a workspace while they're here."

  She sits two wine glasses on the table and fills them. She takes one with her to the counter and grabs a big glass bowl from the strainer by the sink.

  "Take a seat," she says.

  He sits down at the head of the table where she placed his wine glass. She gave him the spot with the best view of the lake.

  "Do you mind if I put on some music?"

  "No, go ahead."

  She clicks a button on a speaker atop the counter, and he immediately recognizes the song that starts playing. Something clicks inside him, a knock of recognition sounds in his head. It's an old comfortable hum that he can't quite place. Then it comes to him. It's Oscar Peterson's piano leading its way to Ben Webster's low, slow breath of saxophone.

  "I remember this. Ben Webster,
'The Touch of Your Lips.'"

  "That's right," she says, sounding surprised.

  "This was on heavy rotation in Dad's car when I was growing up."

  "He still loves it, listens to it all the time. I do, too."

  "There's something so sad and profound about his playing. No one else quite plays with the same depth as Webster, I don't think."

  "I don't know. If you hear Chet Baker sing it, it's pretty profound."

  "Chet Baker. That's a name I haven't heard in years."

  "You don't listen anymore?"

  "I used to all the time, but I haven't in awhile. Not sure why."

  "This is just about all we listen to," she says, mixing the salad in the big bowl on the counter.

  Simon wonders why he stopped listening to jazz. He still listened once he was away from home. He listened all through college. Could it be that he made an unconscious choice to stop listening after his falling out with his dad? Had he so deeply identified the music with his dad that he tuned it out altogether?

  Susannah sits the salad on the table along with a couple salad bowls and two dinner plates. She peels the aluminum cover off the lasagna, and Simon watches the steam rise up like it were a fog lifting off the lake in front of him.

  She serves him his salad and some lasagna, and then serves some for herself. She serves much less to herself than she did to Simon, and he wonders how well she's been eating. She is awfully skinny already. He can't blame her, though. He can't imagine he'd have much of an appetite in her position.

  "Sorry, I didn't get any bread. I was in a hurry and it slipped my mind," she says.

  "Don't worry about it. Everything looks great."

  She walks over to the counter and grabs her wine,