20 by John Edgar Wideman

onto himself. The Detective had failed his wife, failed to make her happy—as with Nan in the hospital, when in need, Sadie had turned to someone else. The Detective couldn't bear that; even now he wondered if he could bear the realization that she had been forced to go outside of him for comfort, that he hadn't been enough. And helpless, he saw her once again lying on her death bed: Sadie, his Sadie, her flesh stripped and eroded by a pain so insistent that it couldn't be dismissed—no false hopes, no lasting relief—the finality of its meaning undeniable. And he wondered about the other, earlier pains, the ones he might have eased, the aches and hurts hidden behind her silent, uncomplaining face, her plea-less pride. Too late now. He had failed to soothe those more subtle pains when it had been possible; he hadn't even been aware of their existence, hiding them from himself. If only he had known, if only he had forced himself to see, if only he had been aware when he could have made a difference…if only he could comfort her now, to make her happy now would bring him peace.
    He couldn't bear it; even now the Detective couldn't bear the thought of her in pain: Sadie on her death bed; Sadie's emaciated face; Sadie's eyes, frightened, searching his for peace. But there was no comfort for an agony so real, so unhypothetical—only an end. He couldn't help her, not now, not then; able only to watch, a dumb witness to the death of his happiness. It was painless in the end, the doctor had told him; it was painless in the end, the doctor had tried to console. Painless for whom, the Detective had wanted to scream as he watched Sally sob in her husband's arms, Nan clingingto her coat. I died, I died then, too, he had told himself time and time again; but he knew now that it wasn't true. You die alone.
    The Detective heard the phone ringing in the hallway. He opened his eyes, startled by its sound, an alarm retrieving him to another world, the present tense, the here and now. The call was for him, he suddenly knew with clairvoyant surety, Charlie Wriggins or the Chief; either way an inquiry into the case, pressure to decide whose side he would take. If you must, if you must know, Mrs. Klein had told him, come back. But would she really tell him? First degree or second degree; murder, suicide, or accidental death, they weren't the language of her version of the truth, but it was the only language that Charlie Wriggins and the Chief—that the law—could accept. The law, he had served it all his life; could he turn his back on it now by ignoring a solution? could he betray his allegiance to the lifelong cause, to his own self-image? The Detective wondered if the old ideas mattered to him anymore. People, though, he knew, did matter; loyalty to a man meant more than allegiance to an idea, and he felt bound to the Chief. To ignore the possibility of an answer was to betray the Chief—not literally, not legally perhaps, but in fact; there was no escaping that. Just as there was no escaping the bond he felt to Mrs. Klein, the marriage of their common grief, his desire, his need to comfort and protect.
    The Detective heard his daughter's footsteps in the hall and then (he imagined them in his mind just before they occurred) three sharp knocks on his study door. He closed his eyes when, after a pause, the door swung open.
    â€œDad,” he heard Sally call softly.
    He didn't move; he breathed through his nose; his belly rose and fell slowly as he sensed her drawing closer.
    â€œDad,” she said softly, “it's for you.”
    The Detective sat motionless, time suspended, body suspended; he didn't need to open his eyes to see his daughter now. They were so close, so interdependent, that he knew her face better than he knew his own: the pinched concern, the constant conflict between fear and caring; always the struggle to do the right thing, features flexed in perpetual moral crisis. She was at that age