By Terri Lewis

If you’d asked Wesley about his life before he got sick, he’d have said he loved his family, but hated noise.

His office twitched with clicking, ringing, and beeping. Co-workers hollered from cube to cube, and at lunchtime, when everyone was out on the street grabbing a bite, the fax machine whirred. At home, his girls yelled, laughed, pounded down the stairs, turning up the volume wherever they went. His wife, Shirley, crashed about the kitchen, chopping, crushing, blending.

Wesley wished for a den. He’d read about gentlemen retiring to smoke a cigar, to read and think. His house had barely enough space for everyone to sleep; the older girls roomed together, and the youngest slept in an enclosed porch with the washing machine.

That girl, Lucy, had just hit puberty and was always wanting something–clothes seen on the internet, breasts, a boyfriend. She was wilder than her sisters, unruly and loud, but Wesley loved her even when she was cranky and shaking her bushy curls, but when he tried to talk to her, pointing out interesting stories in the newspaper or asking about her homework, things went awry. He’d suggest she should know who Napoleon was or forbid a tattoo. Often the conversations ended with “I hate you!”

Shirley said it was a phase, but his heart ached for his daddy’s girl: Lucy whispering yellow flowers smelled best or asking why bacon had stripes.

So, a normal life, and if you’d asked, he’d have said he enjoyed it.

Then on a Wednesday, he woke up covered with spots. Shirley took one look and said he had the measles. Hadn’t he been vaccinated? He couldn’t remember. As the day passed, he developed a tremendous fever, thrashing his speckled arms and moaning. He sank and rose, sank and rose. It wasn’t until the following Saturday that the red nightmares faded. When Shirley brought him a breakfast tray, he smiled and said, “Thank you, honey-bun,” only to realize he couldn’t hear a thing. The fever had burnt away the tiny hairs of his cochlea, leaving him inside a great stillness.

Such a relief.

~

If you’d asked him what his favorite color was before he got sick, he’d have said, “I’m not sure I thought much about it. Blue?” Now colors seemed insistent. He often laid out in his mind the thin green of autumn grass, the lacquered brown of Lucy’s curls, the white of mashed potatoes. He kept returning to blue–he never knew there could be so many shades. Watching the sky through an entire day, he counted six.

He took to sitting in the kitchen when afternoon grayed down and lights were turned on. The yellow glow was comforting, and his wife’s grace while cooking fascinated him. When she made coleslaw, pushing the cabbage into the top of the machine, the curve of her neck and the shape of her arm were beautiful, easier to see without noise. Sometimes his youngest ran into the room to grab a piece of tomato or ask a question. The jolted air made him smile.

One day, he came down the narrow stairs and saw Lucy and one of her sisters, face-to-face on the landing. From the way their arms and heads jerked, he could tell they were arguing. It struck him that they looked like the marionettes his teacher brought to school when he was in the second grade. The thought made him laugh. The girls looked up, startled; then Lucy began yelling. She ended with “I hate you!” and slammed out the door. The house shuddered.

He went into the kitchen and told his wife Lucy had run away.

Shirley faced him and exaggerated the movement of her lips. “Don’t worry. She’ll come back.”

“I don’t know why she hates me.”
“Wesley, honey, she doesn’t.” Then she said a string of things he didn’t understand, so she wrote them down: She feels bad you got sick. Her freind had the meesles, and she thinks it’s her fault.

He smiled. Shirley wasn’t much of a speller.

That night, his daughter still wasn’t home. Her cell phone had been left on top of the washing machine. Phone calls to her friends didn’t find her; the police could do nothing for twenty-four hours. Wesley walked the neighborhood with Shirley, calling into the dark, his words flying out silently in their cartoon bubbles. He couldn’t tell if Lucy answered, but Shirley kept shaking her head no. Wesley knew by the way she gripped his hand, she was crying.

At home, he gave her aspirin and rubbed her back. When she fell asleep, he laid down in his daughter’s bed, setting the phone to vibrate. The dark seemed like silence, a wall between him and Lucy. Eventually he, too, slept.

~

When he wakes alone, he believes he has lost her.

He goes out into the fresh light, gets into the car, and begins to drive up and down the streets. There are beautiful things to see–a bit of red rag hung on a black wrought-iron rail, the thin gray of frost on the tiny lawns–but not his daughter. He tries to remember if she was wearing a coat.

Ahead is the mall. He turns into the lot, driving over the litter left from the kids who parked there in the night, necking. As he gets closer to the slab of buildings, he sees her curled into the door of the Heart ‘n Hand Thrift Center. He presses lightly on the horn.

The sky flutters, pale and luminous blue.
As his daughter comes toward the car, Wesley recognizes sadness in her shoulders and confusion in the way her hands are stuffed into her jeans. His heart breaks. He hopes he will understand what she is going to say.