homemade breakfast.
As the casket was being lowered in the ground, Ariel whispered to me, almost imperceptibly, “Lucky you made it in time,” then added, “His one and only daughter.” Her whisper was so quiet I first misheard the second part for “His one-eyed daughter,” which didn’t make any sense, since I have both my eyes. As for ‘making it in time,’ she probably referred to me getting back to town one year previously, almost to the day, following seven years I had spent incommunicado in a place that was an eleven-hour flight away from where my father had lived. Indeed, I made it back in time for that final year I spent with him in and out of clinics, hospital wards, doctors’ offices, transfusion rooms and, in September, a few ambulances, though never with the siren on. And I considered telling Ariel how I first saw my father in the arrivals hall that night one year previously when he could still drive to the airport to pick me up. He was leaning against a column next to a news kiosk, immersed in a book, a paperback. And when he caught sight of me in the crowd of people and rolling suitcases he dipped his head back into the pages, he took his time finishing the paragraph he was reading and only then did he pocket the book and made his way slowly towards me. Despite her better judgement, Ariel would’ve remarked how sensitive I had always been.
