Lena and Jeremy tell him to sit down and hush up. I hold his hand. I pray. I have started praying, short little flares of petition and gratitude. It’s hard not to believe in something when your heart gets stuffed full. And then they go, one by one: Pennsylvania, Ohio, Florida, all for Obama. When he is declared the next president of the United States, we all leap up at the same time, as if someone has yanked us up, and fall into each other, arms tangled, and for that moment we are one organism, whole, bound in awe. I can barely believe this is our world. Jonathan holds me hard, long after the kids have let go, his body shaking, and even Jeremy doesn’t try to pry us apart. “It feels so good,” he moans. We are still crying, and I send up a flare of deepest thanks. I hold my husband. I feel so close to him, a part of him, and yet I feel, too, how separate our experience of this moment really is. I have become closer, and more apart, from him, from Lena and Jeremy, on this night.
The phone rings a few minutes later. I figure it’s Jonathan’s mother or one of his brothers, or Garvey, or Julie and Michael.
“You up?” His speech is better, as if he has just two marbles in his mouth instead of ten.
“We are definitely up.”
“Jonathan there?”
“Right here.”
“Kids too?”
“Yup.”
“Good. They should be.”
“It’s late.”
“Nearly eleven-thirty. I gotta get some sleep for chrissake. You stay out of trouble, okay?”
“You too, Dad.”
“I can’t get into trouble anymore.”
“That’s probably a good thing.”
“That Jeremy. You tell him he could be president one day.”
“Or Lena.”
He laughs. “Or Lena. Christ. Isn’t that something.”
“It is something, Dad. It really is.”
Three days later it’s Barbara who calls. Another stroke.
He was quiet when he went, she says. He didn’t make a sound.