A father's heart

Literary Review, Spring, 1995 by Ellen Cooney

One night, in a strange voice, Harry Paulson said, "I have to go to the bathroom really bad." He put his cards on the table face up. Patty knew that this was a terrible thing to do, and quickly turned them over for him. Then Harry Paulson pushed back his chair-slowly, slowly. "Oh, my gut," he said. He had clear gray kind eyes. But instead of getting up, he just sat there and looked at Patty. Their eyes, with him sitting and Patty standing, were exactly level. When he blinked, it was exactly like a light going out. The men at the table were jumping up, crying out; Patty knew, solemnly and calmly, without being told, what had happened to him. She also knew that she would now forever have a claim on him. She was only a child, but she knew that she was the last human being Harry Paulson laid eyes on.

She must have been allowed to watch the ambulance take Harry away. She remembers standing on the porch with her mother and father, with cold, white winter stars overhead. She remembers the way the ambulance light lit their faces and clothes, and what it had felt like to stand between parents who were as solid to her as two fence posts. "I saw Harry Paulson's soul, just before it went out of his body," Patty had told them.

Now, more than thirty years later, in the yellow light of a summer morning, he inclines his ear to Patty to hear what she wants to tell him. She tells him, "You can't have him, Harry." Then she looks again at her father and feels that her own heart might be stopping in her chest, as still as a fist; she adds, "Whatever's happening with him and my mom, make it go away, please." Her own voice inside her feels just like the voice of a ten-year-old girl. She doesn't expect Harry to answer her, of course, and in the manner of ghosts, he does not. He just stares at her. His eyes remain as gray as the buds of a pussywillow branch. and as bright as a cat's. Harry Paulson! Patty must have always known that she would see him again.

When he vanishes, it's as simple and natural as if a cloud had covered the sun. Bill Murcher is leaning against his truck. "I'm fine, I'm fine," he's saying to Brian.

"IF YOU DON'T GO SEE A DOCTOR RIGHT NOW YOU ARE NEVER COMING BACK ON MY PROPERTY, DAD:" Patty screams. From the back of her house she hears the barking of her dog. She knows he's running toward the front, and will appear any moment, bounding and yelping and happy to see her; and then the world will be back to normal again, just spinning again in its usual way.

Later that morning, on an early lunch hour, Patty drives into town to the A.N.I.C. house. It's run by the county. It's a two-story, faded green-shingled building off Main Street, not far from the downtown shops. The road is a dead end, and the only other thing on it, sprawling the length of the block, is an auto body shop. "Anick" is what it's called, for "Association of Non-Independent Citizens." The day supervisor is Ann Murcher, Patty's mom, who's been living for the last half year in the spare room of a social worker she knows.