My old man loves his wife, but you would never know it.
You wouldn’t know it from the way he never says her name, from the way she is always ‘Mama David’ or ‘Your Mum’, but never Anita, the name everyone else knows her by.
He hints at her presence, her existence, the shape and solidity of her presence, so constant he often knows which room of the house she is in without looking up from his newspaper.
When in need of her expertise, say to intervene in a vicious duel between his children in order to preserve his pretext of impartiality, he will lift his head and summon his lady with an “Ahhhh…?” filled with vowels. Like a clarion call. Like an incantation, sent out into the spiritual realm by a hopeful magician. It always works; each time, Mother emerges from the belly of the house in a tizzy.
You would not know it from the way they exist in subtle synergy with each other, Mother and Father, moving through and around the house with a togetherness that somehow manages to still be individual.
At breakfast they sit across from each other, the one fiddling with his novels, the other nursing her tea with a fond smile teasing her lips.
In the kitchen they are two passing ships; he brushes past her while she is peering, unimpressed, into a pot of sizzling onions, resting a fleeting hand on her waist before proceeding to the fridge. He will pause again on his way out, peering, hopeful, into the pot where morsels of juicy beef have been thrown, but Mother will grab him firmly and shoo him out of the kitchen.
In the corridors, they are shy teens, locking eyes, grinning, dancing awkwardly one way and then the other before accepting the inevitable brush of bodies. And then the sun dips, and they disappear into their bedroom, leaving only a trail of soft whispers.
Love? You would never know it.
But on the day Graham came to visit, on the day Mother’s old boyfriend stopped at our house for a visit, the truth of my father’s love could not be more plain.
Graham came over at around noon. His sharpshooters caught an errant ray of sunshine as he stepped out of a bright red Mercedes and threw it at us. He had one hand behind his back as he approached, a hand he soon presented to Mother, clutching a thick bouquet of elegant roses. He muttered something about being back from the U.S., something else about being in the neighbourhood, and more still about needing to catch up with an old friend he had not seen in ages.
Mother flushed, accepting the roses and the handshake after a quick glance at her husband.
But my old man only nodded, acknowledging Graham with a stiff handshake before ducking back into the house, where he located his favourite chair and sank heavily into it. He rustled his newspaper open and disappeared behind it, yet there was an odd stiffness in the way he sat, the way his hands gripped at the edges of the newspaper.
Graham could not be more different from my old man. My father had always possessed a subtle restraint, hoarding his words, communicating to us through an impressively varied range of grunts and gestures. Graham, on the other hand, had anecdotes that grew wings and threatened to fly into the sun. He spoke with an easy confidence, his voice warm and assured. His laughter rang through the house when he offered it, which was often.
I watched them sit primly across from each other. I heard his stories as they flitted with unrequited warmth back to the campus days he had shared with mother. His own stories were sprawling and filled with opulence. Did she still dream of going to Paris? He had been there countless times. Oh, Greece was even lovelier than they had imagined. Remember? Remember all those travel plans they had?
All along, I felt an odd tinge of guilt without fully understanding why. The woman I knew as Mother was not the one entertaining this strange man. She matched his voice, she rounded out his anecdotes. When he laughed, she ventured out her own trill, not as boisterous but perfectly in tune with his. They were in tandem, and I resented the fact that I had never seen her like that before.
I glanced over at my old man often, realising only later that he had not flipped a page of the newspaper even once. He was completely still, a marble silhouette in the corner of the room.
Graham only stayed an hour, but it felt much longer. He left in the same cloud of opulence he had arrived in. Coat tails swishing. His perfume leaving musky notes in the air as he marched through the room. The pocket of sunset, caught this time in dark sunglasses as he dropped into his car.
My old man waited for the car to disappear around the corner before rising. He walked over to the spot where Mother was standing by the door and grabbed her by the arm. The tension seemed to loosen his body. His jaw was taut, but his eyes held hers, and there was a tenderness in his expression that was unbearable to witness. I felt like an intruder, watching them, but I saw once more their ease with each other. Now, however, I understood it.
“That man knows nothing about you, Anita” he said to her. The name sat on his tongue with a distinct familiarity, like it shaped itself around its contours and they around it. It was intimate and heavy with affection.
She shook her head. “No, he doesn’t.” She sounded like she was holding back laughter.
He pulled her to his body and pecked at her cheek. “Paris, eh?”
“Or Greece.”
And then they were both laughing. Together, at each other, with each other. And I understood how particular the shade of their love was. How silent his affection was, and how much louder it was than I could ever have imagined.
*****
Photo: Claudio Schwarz Unsplash remixed