Ariel's Crossing - Bradford Morrow [167]
She was led out of the building and back to the infirmary, down a corridor until they came to his door. After unlocking it, the MP stood aside. When she entered Kip’s room, father’s and daughter’s eyes met, and what they saw was so familiar yet singular that it was as if they glimpsed for the first time their own reflections in a mirror. Each was overwhelmed by the resemblance, yes, but also by the intense, actual presence of the other. For some inconceivable reason, Ariel thought of her best childhood pal, Buddha. Buddy?
“Ariel,” Kip said, and she walked to him.
“Dad,” the impossible word coming through so readily.
The warmth of their embrace, the ease of it. Kip whispered her name again, and she laid her head on his paltry shoulder and said his full name, both perhaps by way of convincing themselves they were really here.
Thin as a shade the man was, and smelled somehow of juniper vanilla, smelled like a newborn. Maybe she was weeping; the room was suddenly a blur. For minutes neither spoke. When Ariel finally stepped back, holding Kip’s hands and looking deeper into his ravaged and sunken eyes, she heard him say—did he truly?—“I love you,” as if these were the simplest words he ever articulated, whereas in fact he never expressed them to anyone other than Jessica Rankin, long ago. Ariel voiced the same three words to him. Then again. And once more. Each time uttered so dissimilarly that the phrase seemed to mean three different things.
Later she would view this as the moment when she decided to forgo an abortion, to take her developing progeny to term, her girl or boy, and let the rest of the world set whatever course it wished. She helped Kip onto the bed and sat beside him there, holding his narrow hand. What could they say? Everything, nothing.
They glowed in each other’s company. Kip was reminded of Emma Inez, Ariel of that tattered photograph of a young man with his closest friend, arms over shoulders with Shiprock looming in the distance. Rarer than love at first sight, it felt to each of them like they had solved an irresolvable problem, or found they could suddenly speak Chinese or play virtuoso violin. While Ariel looked the worse for wear, and Kip worse yet, neither recalled ever having witnessed another person so full of spirit.
“You should lie down,” she said. “Here, let me help you.”
Kip allowed her to arrange his pillows, then took her hand as he eased himself back on the bed. Without asking, she dipped a washcloth into the pitcher of ice water on his bedside table and daubed his forehead. Not at all used to the touch of another—or was it simply the cold?—he flinched a little, then relinquished his fear. It was not the cold. This was his daughter, trying to tend to a sick, face it, dying, man. Would he presume, after every single thing he’d denied her, to take that away from her now? From himself, as well? He would not.
Ariel wondered if he was feeling well enough to tell her some stories, the most provisional memoir, some images for her as she began to paint for herself a picture of his life. “Tell me anything—the least things about yourself would be more interesting than you can imagine. I’m here to listen.”
And at that he did gather some memories and began to describe them, leaving out the invented stuff about being a lighthouse keeper and driving stolen cars across the border. He was only amazed by his lack of fear, not to mention of that inveterate will to run away. Why had he run in the first place? he had to wonder, as he tried to tell Ariel what his life had been like after he left her mother.
“Do I have any sisters or brothers? “Ariel asked, remembering her conversation on the subject with Granna.
“No blood kin.”
“You have no family?”
Kip shook his head. “No, not really. No, in fact.”
“Just me, then.”
“Just you.”
They smiled at the revelation, then Kip turned the focus on her.
“And