Room 9 was clean and small and smelled like lemon furniture polish. Two double beds with quilted bedspreads. A painting of a wheat field over the dresser. A little window air conditioner rattling in the wall.
Mark sat down on the edge of one of the beds.
He didn’t say anything.
I sat down next to him.
“Mark?”
He was looking at his hands.
“Jean doesn’t know her own husband,” he said finally. “Fifty-three years. She looked right at him and didn’t know who he was.”
“I know.”
Ezoic
“And he just… he stood there,” Mark said. “He just stood there and held her hand and walked her back to bed. Like it was nothing. Like it didn’t kill him.”
Ezoic
“It kills him,” I said. “You saw his face.”
Mark was quiet for a long time.
“My mom called me Dad’s name,” he said. “On the phone. Three weeks ago. She asked when I was coming home for pot roast. And I told her I was her son. And she said she didn’t have a son named Mark.”
