Page 31 of The Cost of Forgetting You

Before he can protest, I disappear around the corner of the house.

Chapter Ten

Delilah

Mom

Package says it arrived at the post office yesterday.

Me

Thank you.

Me

I wasn’t sure if you’d gotten my call.

Mom

I was out with Debbie. Had a busy week. Available today if you have time for me.

I drop my toothbrush into the porcelain cup by the sink and spit. The faucet handle squeaks as I turn it. Toothpaste swirls down toward the drain, around and around, and I try to let it mesmerize me. Numb me. Mom’s words can cut if you let them. So you just have to be determined not to.

The rough fabric of a decades-old towel scratches my face dry. I catch a glimpse of myself in the mirror above the sink. My hair is dull and frizzy from the humidity, so I tie it back in a low bun. I stand tall, shoulders braced. No sense crying over spilled milk, my mom always insisted. I wonder sometimes if she knew she’d be the one tipping the carton over ninety percent of the time.

I gaze at the laminated chart I hung up by the mirror. A step-by-step guide to brushing your teeth with pictures, not words, so Dad can follow it even when reading becomes too difficult. It strikes me that my parents put up something similar when I was a child, new to caring for my body. Now here I am, putting little charts and graphs up around the house for my father. To preserve his dignity, so he doesn’t have to tell me when he’s forgotten the steps to things that were once second nature.

Gentle strums of the guitar fill the hall with music. No song in particular; it’s a melodic blend of so many I’ve heard my dad play through the years. Pieces of the chorus from “Heaven” by Los Lonely Boys. A random run from “In the Air Tonight” by Phil Collins. Finally it fades into the rhythmic tune of “Can’t Help Falling in Love.” Tears prick my eyes.

“Delilah?”

I pause in front of the gapped door to Dad’s study. “Yeah?”

“Can you come in?”

He’s sitting on the window seat, still playing the song absent-mindedly. The disorder from last week’s search for the laminator has been rectified. Bookshelves line the far wall from floor to ceiling. Trinkets and trophies decorate the space in front of the spines. To my right, various instruments are displayed on their respective stands. While Dad prefers piano most of all, he’s dabbled in so many other fields. There’s a violin case leaning against a filing cabinet full of music sheets from years teaching band classes. His keyboard is tucked against the wall behind his desk to my left, which separates the entry from the window.

He turns toward me, taking me in with a clouded gaze. “Come play with me.”

My chest tightens. Those tears are still present, threatening to fall. I shake my head slowly. “I can’t right now. Mom mailed some of my things. I’ve gotta go pick them up.”

“How is Kimberly?”

Hearing my mom’s name is always jarring. So often I forget that she has an identity outside of her relationship to me. She doesn’t date much, and I haven’t brought someone home in over a year. My circle of friends and my coworkers overlap perfectly, so I talk to them online but never in person. It’s just my mother and me in that big old house, an echo chamber that makes our reality feel like the only one.

“She’s very much the same.”

He frowns like he knows that’s not a ringing endorsement. Still, the next words out of his mouth are laced with nostalgia. “Did you know we danced to this song at our wedding?”

“I did.” A weak smile pulls at my lips. Every year on their anniversary, Dad would slip an Elvis CD into the living room stereo and press play. Then he’d ask my mom to dance. It’s one of the few times it looked like their love was on purpose rather than something they stumbled into. Then they’d fold me into their embrace, and we’d sway in circles around the living room. A complete family, albeit an imperfect one.

I want to ask him about it. About how he could give that up for Lucy. But upsetting him hardly seems worth answers that will do nothing to change what’s already happened.

“You will play with me sometime, though? On another day?”

He comes back into focus. His hands move nimbly over the chords. Years of practice and a whole lot of God-given talent are evident in the movement. He’s watching me with barely contained hope and something else. I recognize it, though I wish I didn’t. He’d wear the same expression when we walked into Nana’s room at the memory care facility when I was a child. The safely guarded expectation that the person in front of him might not be quite the same as he remembered.

It strikes me that I should be looking at him like that, not the other way around. But my decision to leave with Mom all those years ago—to stay away after my letter opened the chasm between us—has brought us here. A fact that lodges my reply in my throat.

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