“He said, ‘Give me the next flight to Tucson. My brother is dying, and he asked for me. He has not asked for me in thirty one years.” Marisol, the woman at the airline counter, wrote it all out in a Facebook message that ran longer than a page. Nate read it to me on our back porch in Spokane, in the dim light of a citronella candle, while the rest of the neighborhood slept. He read slowly, his thumb moving down the screen, and every so often he stopped and took a deep breath, as though the words were heavy.
I knew who the brother was before Nate got to the name. Vernon Hale. I had not heard that name in years, and I had never wanted to hear it again. Vern was the younger brother of Dale, a handsome and charming man who sold used cars and old promises. In 1993, he had talked Dale into cosigning a loan for his business. Six months later, the business collapsed, Vern disappeared across the border to Mexico, and Dale and I were left with sixty one thousand dollars of debt and a house on the edge of foreclosure. It took us eleven years to pay it. I had made Dale swear, on the baby blanket of our son, that he would never speak to his brother again.
“Mom,” Nate said, “it says he took the red eye. He landed at Tucson at 3:40 in the morning. He rented a car and drove to a hospice on the east side. The man in the hospice is called Vernon Hale. He had liver failure.” Nate set the phone on his knee. “Dad did not tell us. He told us the flight was canceled. He let us think he was careless. He let me stand up at my own wedding and look at an empty chair, and all that time, he was sitting in a hospice room, holding the hand of the man who ruined him.”
A man whose flight had never been canceled quietly changed his ticket to sit beside a brother nobody was allowed to name.
I did not say anything for a long time. I could see in my mind the exact color of the kitchen in our old house, where Dale and I had sat for hours at night with a calculator and a stack of bills, and I remembered how I had cried when we finally made the last payment. I had never forgiven Vern. In thirty years, I never allowed the possibility. And my husband, who loved me, had stayed away from his brother all that time because I told him to, and in the end, when the call came, he had to choose between my anger and his blood. “He picked the one he could not take back,” I said finally. “He picked the last chance.”
Nate looked at me with those serious, searching eyes. “Mom, are you angry?” I thought about it honestly. I turned the question over like a stone in my hand. “I am angry that he lied,” I said slowly. “I am not angry that he went.” I stood up and walked to the railing and looked at the dark yard, the little crabapple tree, the shed Dale had built. “I made him choose, Nate. I made it so he could not tell me. I think I owe him an apology more than he owes me one.” My son came and stood beside me. He put an arm around my shoulders, and we stood like that for a while, listening to the crickets.
Dale came home on Tuesday. He walked into the kitchen in a wrinkled shirt, unshaven, with his eyes sunken, and he put his duffel bag on the floor and stood there like a man waiting for sentence. I had made coffee. I put a mug in his hand. “Dale,” I said, “Nate told me everything. Sit down.” He sat. He drank. He told me about the hospice, the yellow walls, the oxygen machine that hissed like a snake. He told me that when he came in, Vern did not recognize him at first. And then Vern said, “Dalie,” his boyhood name, and started to cry, and neither of them said anything for an hour.
“He gave me this,” Dale said, reaching into his jacket. It was an envelope, soft with age, the corners rubbed round. Inside was a cashier check, written out to me, in the amount of sixty one thousand dollars. It was dated that week. It was drawn on a bank in Tucson. “He sold everything,” Dale said. “His truck, his tools, a little piece of land he had out in the desert. He said he spent thirty years trying to scrape the money together to repay us. He said he wanted to see your face when he gave it to you, but he knew you would never allow it.” He pushed the envelope across the table, and I did not touch it.
I picked up the check, and I felt it, the weight of paper, the weight of years. I said, “Dale, I want to go to Tucson.” He stared at me. “Gwen, he may not last the week.” “Then we had better go today.” I called Nate, and he booked three seats, and we flew out that evening with one carry on bag each, the three of us in a row, my husband holding my hand across the armrest the whole way, with his knuckles white.
Vern was sleeping when we arrived. He looked impossibly small, gray and shrunken, with a plastic tube in his nose. I sat beside the bed and took his hand. The skin was dry as paper. He opened his eyes, slowly, and blinked at me, and a trembling smile crossed his face. “Gwennie,” he whispered. “I am so sorry.” I leaned over and kissed his forehead. “I know you are,” I said. “I forgive you.” I had not planned to say it. It came out on its own, from somewhere deeper than anger. And Vern closed his eyes and a tear slid out and ran down into his ear, and he squeezed my fingers once.
He died eleven days later, with Dale in the chair beside him, holding the radio on low to the oldies station. We buried him in a small cemetery under a mesquite tree. Nate gave the eulogy, to the surprise of everyone, and spoke about the uncle he had known for exactly two weeks. At the end, he said, “My wedding had an empty chair. I understand now whose it was.” I put the check into the collection plate of the little chapel, anonymously, for the hospice. Dale saw me do it. He said nothing. But on the plane home, he laid his head on my shoulder, and fell asleep like a boy.
