listening
I walk through the front room and find Riley and Josh hanging out on Zoom. I see Josh in profile on the screen, sitting sideways as though he’s right beside her; I can’t tell if he’s watching TV or playing a game on his phone. Riley bends over the table, riffling her fingers through a box of puzzle pieces. It amazes me how quickly she can work a jigsaw linearly, finding one specific piece at a time from thousands without doing any granular sorting to narrow the possibilities. The picture appears in diagonal across the frame, half of a splatter-painted dog in motion, a glittering, happy eye, a wind-ruffled ear.
“Is this a new puzzle or the same one,” I hear Josh murmur, the faintest hint of inquiry in his tone, see him glance briefly toward the screen.
“This is the same puzzle I was working on yesterday,” Riley says, and I smile, because words are precious, and she never speaks in shorthand. “I’ll show you what it looks like.” She lifts the computer, tilts it down toward the puzzle so he can see.
Josh lightly grunts assent, says something about how she always loves working puzzles, like it’s another detail about her that he treasures. For a moment they fall silent, like Kevin and I do sometimes, content just be together, to breathe in the same context. And then I hear Josh begin to speak about a life transition he’s working through, just slowly, like he’s unfolding a collage of thoughts, pressing them flat. I have nearly memorized the words of this conversation; they hash it out every day. Riley listens, occasionally asking questions (usually the same ones), but mostly just agreeing with his feelings. For Riley, processing changes feels like slowly walking down a long road with no view of the end. She chews thoughts repetitively, like a weed dangling from her lips. Sometimes she sifts ideas out loud until the rest of us begin to sag, exchanging weary looks; so, she understands his need to winnow.
I walk through to the kitchen, careful not to interrupt, thinking about all that I learn from their patience and compassion for one another. Every day, Riley asks Josh what he ate for breakfast, lunch, and what time. He answers patiently, sometimes commenting that she always wants to know these things, sometimes stating the obvious reason why. Not Autism. Not weakness in conversation. “You really love me a lot,” he says. And Riley never mentions that this topic they’re discussing has been on Josh’s mind for months, never says they talked about this yesterday, never asks him when he’ll find peace enough to move on. How ever long these words are the ones he needs to say, she’ll receive them and hold them carefully. I believe she would discuss the same pain with him for years, would grow gray just nodding her head, just saying, “Yea, probably so, Josh, probably so.” I wonder, stowing stray mugs in the dishwasher now, how this hard life would be if we listened and loved for as long as it takes.
Riley likes me to stop and say hello. She starts giggling when I walk back through the room, which I know is my que. I lean over her chair, bend my head down so Josh can see me in the camera. “Hi Josh,” I say, and he glances at me and grins, “Hello Mrs. Henegar,” sliding languidly across his lips. I tell him it’s good to see him and walk on, not wanting to intrude, feeling thankful Riley loves someone who is kind. They remind me of Jesus, the way they accept brokenness in each other, they way they admit their failures, all as details too small to interfere with love. They make Jesus visible to me, re-member him right in our front room, so it’s Jesus I conjure as I wander up the stairs. I imagine seeing him in profile when a lonely woman brings her jars to the well, listening as she riffles through the broken pieces of her life.
“He told me everything I ever did (John 4:39),”–he knows me–she later told every person she could find in town, and what she didn’t say—this broken, reclusive woman they all knew and shunned for her repeated sins–the corollary truth of it came out just as loud–and he loves me.
And that last wild bit was actually the reason they all had to come to see.
