Homespun by Layla M. Wier

sat on the bed’s other side with her hands in her lap. The resemblance to Kerry was clear in her narrow, intelligent face. Neither she nor Kerry were looking at each other; the distance between them was palpably more than just the physical. Both were so lost in their own world, focused on the silent figure in the bed, that neither looked up until the attendant said, “Mr.
    Ruehling? Mrs. Harris? There’s a friend here to see you.”
    Owen couldn’t read the expression in Kerry’s light eyes.
    Startlement, certainly. Pleasure to see him? He couldn’t tell.
    “I’ll let you talk to your friend,” the woman—Kerry’s sister?—said in a voice Owen couldn’t read. There was a hesitation before “friend”; it sounded distasteful to him, but again, it was impossible to tell for sure. Like Kerry, she was very closed-off, a flat surface with deep waters beneath. She slid her thin body past him without touching.
    Owen found himself wishing he’d worn a hat, brought a cup of coffee, something so he’d be able to occupy his hands somehow. He stood in the doorway, feeling big and clumsy and useless.
    “What are you doing here?” Kerry asked.
    “I thought you might need me.”
    Kerry didn’t answer. Instead he looked back at the man in the bed. It felt like a dismissal.
    Homespun | Layla M. Wier
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    It’s my turn to take the lead, Owen told himself, and drew the door gently closed before approaching. The sickroom smell was stronger here, the memory of Nancy’s death an elephant in the corner he had to fight to hold at bay.
    “You asked why I’m here. It’s because I realized that Laura was right,” he said in a rush.
    Kerry glanced up at him, his face strained. He seemed to have aged five years since Owen had last seen him.
    “Laura? Right about what?”
    “Just something she said…. I’ve never followed you, Kerry. You’re always the one who leaves, and I always let you go. I thought I was giving you space. But instead, I was just putting all the work of the relationship onto you. I never thought about it that way.”
    “If it makes you feel any better,” Kerry said, “I never thought of it that way either. I don’t want to be clung to.”
    “If you want me to go, just tell me to leave.”
    Kerry’s pale eyes darted back down to the man in the bed. Like a compass needle pulling north, he couldn’t look away long before being drawn back. This time, Owen looked too.
    He’d expected to recognize Kerry in the lines of the older man’s face, as he’d seen Kerry in the blonde woman. But there was little of Kerry here—none of his vitality, his energy, the life brimming over in him. There was only paper-thin, sagging skin, a scalp naked of hair, dry lips parted for each labored, whistling breath.
    “I haven’t seen him since I was seventeen,” Kerry said.
    “He said I was going to die of AIDS and go to hell, and told me to get out. So I did.”
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    Silence, punctuated only by the old man’s harsh,
    staccato breathing.
    “I guess there was always a part of me that wanted him to…. I don’t even know what I wanted him to do. To apologize? For all of it? Because it wasn’t just that one day; it was everything ….” He drew a breath.
    Owen wanted, with a desperation bordering on physical distress, to reach across the old man’s bed and wipe the hurt away. As if any human being had that power.
    “I never figured out what I wanted, really,” Kerry continued softly. “I hated him and loved him, and by the time I got here, he’d stopped responding to anyone.”
    He dragged a hand across his eyes, though they were dry. “In a way, I suppose I got exactly what he wished on me.
    I did go to hell, except I didn’t die. New York City in the ’90s?
    Hell, Owen.”
    And in some sense, Kerry was still there. He’d never left.
    Owen recognized that now, as he never had before. And he wasn’t about to make the same mistakes he’d made earlier.
    I’m an old dog, but I