The Incandescent Threads
Published in Issue #30(Excerpt from a Novel)
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Ethan
After my mother died, my father would sometimes stop in the middle of the street, tuck his head into his shoulders, and swivel around in a slow, suspicious circle, his eyes in search of imminent peril. Dad was seventy-six years old then – tiny, slender and fragile. My wife claimed she still spotted an optimistic bounce in his walk, and my nine-year-old son, George, trying equally hard to cheer me up, said that Grandpa looked like one of those amazing old guys who competed every year in the Boston Marathon.
As for me, every one of my strained and hesitant breaths seemed like a pledge to never accept the injustice of Mom leaving us when she was only sixty-four years old.
The morning after she passed away, Dad brought his clunky cassette player into the kitchen before making his coffee and started listening to an interview she’d done with a Sephardic singer from Istanbul whom she’d befriended. A few minutes later, he found me standing by the back fence of our garden. He’d brought me the bowl of oatmeal I’d left behind in my desperation to get away from my mother’s cheerful voice. As he handed it to me, he said, “I’m sorry, Eti, but I won’t be able to go on without hearing your mother every morning. So just be patient with me.”
Three days after Mom’s funeral, while my father and I were walking through the parking lot of his Chase branch, he stopped and peered...
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