Reunion

REUNION

After she returned from Italy, my wife climbed into bed with me. I felt as if I hadn’t slept comfortably in years.

I said, “There was a rumor that I’d grown a tumor, but I killed it with humor.”

“How long have you been waiting to tell me that one?” she asked.

“Oh, probably since the first time some doctor put his fingers in my brain.”

We made love. We fell asleep. But, agitated by the steroids, I woke at 2, 3, 4, and 5 A.M. The bed was killing my back, so I lay flat on the floor. I wasn’t going to die anytime soon, at least not because of my little friend Tumor, but that didn’t make me feel any more comfortable or comforted. I felt distant from the world—from my wife and my sons, from my mother and my siblings, from all my friends. I felt closest to those who’d always had fingers in their brains.

I didn’t feel any closer to the world six months later, when another MRI revealed that my meningioma had not grown in size or changed its shape.

“You’re looking good,” my doctor said. “How’s your hearing?”

“I think I’ve got about ninety per cent of it back.”

“Well, then, the steroids worked. Good.”

And I didn’t feel any more intimate with the world nine months after that, when one more MRI made my doctor hypothesize that my meningioma might only be more scar tissue from the hydrocephalus.

“Frankly,” he said, “your brain is beautiful.”

“Thank you,” I said, though it was the oddest compliment I’d ever received.

I wanted to call my father and tell him that a white man thought my brain was beautiful. But I couldn’t tell him anything. He was dead. I told my wife and my sons that I was O.K. I told my mother and my siblings. I told my friends. But none of them laughed as hard about my beautiful brain as I knew my father—the drunk bastard—would have. ♦

Sherman Alexie

from his new book WAR DANCES
Posted over on The New Yorker