CHAPTER 22 #3
I have washed hair before — my mother's, the last week of her life, in a hospital basin on a tray at her bedside — and I know to start at the scalp and work down to the ends, slow, even pressure, no scrape of the nail.
"Hold your eyes."
"They are held."
I rinse with the heavy crystal glass that lives on the rim of the tub.
I pour from the back of her hairline forward.
The water comes off her hair the color of weak tea.
I work conditioner through. I comb it through with the wide-tooth, from the ends up.
I rinse a second time. I lift her hair out of the water and wring it gently and pile it on the towel I have laid at the back of the tub.
She opens her eyes. She watches me.
"You have done this before."
"Once. For my mother. Twenty-three years ago. Not since."
"Why."
"Because no one I have wanted to do it for has been a person I could do it for. Until now."
Her silence is the answer. She reaches for the crystal glass on the rim. I lift it to her mouth. She drinks. Half. She closes her hand over my hand on the glass. I let her. The watch rests on the brass tray with the pencil. The gallery-glass key is on the strap.
I lift her out. I dry her. I am careful with the flank.
The pink ridge is darker after the bath, the way Stefan said it would be; the skin is supple and the healing is on schedule.
I press a fresh dressing. I tape the edges.
I put her in one of my white oxford shirts — the cuffs roll three times on her wrists — and I carry her to the bed.
She is asleep before I have her under the blanket.
Her hair fans on my pillow. I lay it out so the long ends are not under her cheek; it will dry overnight on the cotton and in the morning it will smell of the soap she likes.
The medallion sits at the hollow of her throat.
The chain catches the lamp once. The hairline crack across the angel's wing.
I sit in the chair by the window. Sleep can wait.
At 23:30, by the window, the late-night quiet gives my father back to me.
The foghorn calls.
I audit the room. The settled body, the quiet breathing, the watch on the bedside table. The numbers are already in my head; I check the dial anyway. The Patek's third strap. The two previous wore through.
I think of my father.
The ledger Q4 1989 is closed on the foyer console two floors below me.
It waits there for me to replace it in the gallery glass at dawn.
The wax dot on the blotter in the study has the chi seal pressed into it.
The closing of the quarter is the work I will do at five in the morning, and the treadmill run before it stays on the schedule.
The line I will write under tomorrow's date will be the line I write for every closed quarter and the line will have her name in it for the first time.
He died in Naples in June of two thousand and sixteen.
The body was never recovered. He was sixty-one.
He drank from the Baccarat carafe twice in his life that I know of and both times he was toasting a woman he did not deserve.
I drank from it last week. The toast was to the protocol.
The woman I was toasting deserves the carafe.
The foghorn calls again. The fog is thick on the bay tonight.
The boardwalk lights are blurred from the window where I sit.
The window is the window my father stood at the night he gave me, at sixteen, the watch I am still wearing.
He said, in substance, the strap will wear through.
You will replace it. Do not replace the watch.
I have replaced the strap twice. The third is on my wrist now.
Fear and I parted company at sixteen. Tonight it is back in a different shape — afraid not of losing her, which is the shape I would have predicted, but of being equal to her.
I think the words and keep them behind my teeth. Spasibo, otets.
Thank you, father. For the watch. For the ink.
For the volume on page nine. For as you arranged the foyer so that a woman who would walk into this house and read three pages would understand the column you started before you understood it.
For the column-three line I will write at five in the morning.
For the fact that you are not here to forbid me the word.
Mine.
I will save the third one for the gallery. The next vow is mine.
I check the watch. 23:34:00. I rise. I cross to the bed. I lay my hand on the back of her neck — three fingers at the hairline, my thumb on the chain.
She stays asleep under my touch. Her hair on the pillow is drying as I had hoped.
The shirt cuffs are at her wrists. Her left flank is supported by the pillow I put under it before I sat down at the window.
The room is the warmest room in the house and the radiator under the window is hissing low and the foghorn calls once more and the count of her breaths is even.
I sit on the edge of the bed, my weight on the rail of it.
Her body is quiet. Her breath is even.
Mine.