I never stopped calling him. I scrutinized his voice to assess the progress of the illness. For a few months, he sounded fine. Then, the incoherence began. The virus had reached his brain, his sister told me. Sometimes, he didn’t know who he was. Other times, she said, he would ask for a hamburger from Mr. Henry’s.
“By the way, how did you two, who are so different, meet?”
“I was the one who brought him the hamburgers.”
“I’ve never heard of such a friendship between a senator and a hamburger delivery guy, but Ted had a life full of secrets. As his sister, I can tell you that I’m not okay. But you can’t fool me. When I told him that he was in New York and that Mr. Henry’s is a restaurant in D.C., he started crying. Sometimes, I felt like getting on a plane and bringing him that blessed hamburger. It must have been really good to bring him so much happiness.”
“Do you want to know a secret? I never tried one.
And many times, when I brought it to him, I would later see it in the trash.”
One day, the phone was disconnected. I called his sister. She was afraid that I could be infected and didn’t want to scare me. But I insisted and insisted.
“We always use protection,” I said to ease the tension.
“We didn’t want a Jewish and Baptist child.”