Life Drawing by Robin Black

long-lost love of a long-lost friend from a long-lost time.
    As they chatted, it crossed my mind to ask him the questions I never had.
What was it like going to war? What was it like being a Jew in Europe then? What was it like fearing death? Losing friends? Being so far away from home?
But I couldn’t bear the prospect of discovering that the memories had all fallen through the holes in his brain.
    “Betty!” A coughing fit followed my father’s proclamation. “That’s your name,” he said, his fist still up to his mouth, catching more sputters. “You’re Millie’s friend. Kenny’s girl. Betty.”
    “I knew you’d remember!” Alison said. “You were always good like that. So clever!”
    I had imagined they might find common ground as high school teachers. I had thought that was to be the surprise of the day: that she would be able to draw him out on those years when he taught, help me locate the father I could remember though he could not. I had thought briefly too that he might cast her as my mother; though the fantasy made me feel a flash of childlike shame. But no, she was to be Betty. Betty the British girl. Not some figure from my life with him, but flesh-and-blood evidence of a story that had nothing to do with me.
    As if on cue, as though he had caught a whiff of my melancholy, he turned and asked, “Were you there too?” his eyes rheumy and full of concern.
    “I wasn’t,” I said, standing up. “But how nice that the two of you can catch up.” I touched the back of his chair. “I just want to go speak to the … the …” I let it go unfinished, as I left the room.
    A t the nurses’ station, I peered over the counter, my head between the two enormous, unchanging displays of plastic flowers, and I asked if Lydia was available; but of course she’d gone home after working the night shift. I considered jotting something down, leaving her a message along the lines of:
It isn’t you … don’t feel bad … it isn’t you;
but what might be said casually in person felt clunky and presumptuous as a note.
    “Would you please tell her that I thanked her for her care of my father?” I said. “I know he hasn’t been the easiest … I know she got the brunt of it last night.”
    The duty nurse looked at me with genuine kindness. “Oh, we’re used to those things,” she said. “Your father’s a lamb. He can have a bad night once in a while. He’s no trouble at all.”
    “You called me this morning, didn’t you?” I asked.
    “That’s right,” she said. “We have to make the calls. But please don’t worry about us.”
    Looking at her, I thought Laine would have liked to paint her face. She was maybe ten years older than I, bright strawberry blonde hair, unusually dark brown eyes. Clipped, combed eyebrows. And her nose was asymmetrical, one nostril round, the other pinched—defying definition, just as the depth and gravel of her voice argued with the chipper sentences she spoke. Her face seemed like a collection of features hurriedly thrown together, not a coordinated expressive instrument. I could never capture that. But Laine, I knew, excelled at just such challenges.
    “He goes to lunch soon,” the nurse said. “Will you be staying? You and your friend?”
    I looked up at the big clock behind her, identical to the clocks that had graced every classroom I had ever been in. Every classroom in which my father had ever taught. It was past noon. “No,” I said. “We’ll be heading out now.” I thanked her again, and made my way back down the hall.
    M y departure from my father’s room was barely a footnote to “Betty’s” farewell. He seemed so sad to see her leave that I feared another deluge of tears, but her repeated promise to return soothed him enough that we could extricate ourselves without a flood.
    We were silent as we walked through the air-conditioned, fluorescently lit halls to the door, just murmuring a simultaneous
thank-you
to the guard who opened the