Chapter Twenty-Eight

 

Baltimore, Maryland

Saturday, October 7, 1995

 

“How’s my favorite patient this morning?” Lillianna looked forward to spending the morning alone with her father and arrived early, before anyone else.

“This could be it.”

“Be what, Dad?”

A slow grin spread across his face. “What did you just call me?”

“I called you Dad.”

“Would you mind saying it again?”

She did.

“Thanks.”

Lillianna couldn’t help but smile back. “Now tell me what you’re talking about. What could be it?”

“The way I got it figured, they could find that donor aorta thing, put me under the knife, and this could be the last day of my life.”

His tone was easy, almost merry, and Lillianna played along. “Well, if that’s the case, we’re gonna spend it eating chocolate.” She laughed, and for the first time in more years than she could remember, she planted a big kiss on his cheek, then handed him the box of soft-centered chocolates she’d purchased in the hospital gift shop. “Think we can finish this off before they kick me out of here tonight?”

“No doubt. If we can keep it hidden from Evie and Nellie.”

“We’ll put it in your bedside table.” She winked and pulled out the drawer. “It’ll be our secret.”

“Willingham was in before breakfast. They started the donor search.”

She scanned his face for a clue to how he really felt, but couldn’t find one. “It’ll be good to get it over with, don’t you think?”

“I guess so.” He shrugged. “Waiting isn’t much fun.”

“Who are you kidding? Presents, chicken and dumplings, coconut pie, your whole family catering to your every wish. Me waiting on you hand and foot. How bad has it really been?”

He grinned. “How ‘bout a piece of that candy?”

She unwrapped the box, checked the map in the lid for his favorite vanilla buttercream, and handed him one. While he ate, Lillianna jotted the telephone number of her hotel room in large digits and taped it to the table next to his phone. “In case they find a donor in the middle of the night or something, I want you to call me.”

“It can wait till morning. No need waking you up.”

His unexpected concern disarmed her, and she stared at him as he leaned back on his pillows, the new day’s sunlight spilling into the room.

“I want you to wake me, Dad. Promise. It’s important to me to be here. Okay?”

“All right. All right. I promise.” He watched her earnestly, his usually expressive features placid and sober, but his eyes burned into hers. “I’m glad you came, Em. It’s been really… really good to have you here.”

“I’m glad I came, too. And if you make me talk any more about it, I’m gonna start blubbering right here in your box of chocolates. You don’t want my boogers mixed in with your candy, do you?” She closed the box and put it inside the drawer.

“No, but I do want to say something to you.” He paused, lowered his gaze. “I been meaning to do it ever since you got here. Your brother told me you don’t think I love you. And that’s why you never came to see me after your mother died. That true, Em?”

He lifted his head and stared straight into her eyes as if searching hard to learn something about his daughter. In the process, his own face seemed to dissolve. Tears filled his eyes, and she had to look away, out into the courtyard under the trees.

She had blocked out all memory of that fragility in her father’s face until last week when she’d recalled him sitting next to her bed when she was a child. Then came the rest of it, the realization she may never see it there again.

“Yeah, I guess I didn’t think you loved me much.” Oh, man. She hadn’t expected this, had decided not to bring it up, decided she’d been wrong. And she never believed for an instant he would ask her that question.

Again, he diverged from her expectations in an inexplicable way. However much she knew and remembered of their past together, her father no longer added up the way she thought he would.

“How come you’d think something like that?”

“I guess because you never told me. Never sent me any Christmas presents or a card on my birthday. How was I supposed to know? It was like I stopped existing, too, after she died.”

“Jeez, Emma. I don’t even remember my own birthday.” He shrugged. “If Greg and Sarah didn’t make a fuss and my sisters didn’t call me that day, I swear to God, I’d never think of it.”

“I don’t guess you would, but I did. I thought about it a lot. It bothered me so much that when I had Zack and Cassy, I told them I loved them all the time. So much they probably got sick of it. And I still do.” She twisted her wedding band.

“I’m sorry. I depended on your mother for things like that. She was good at making a person feel special. Cassandra never forgot your birthday or Christmas, did she?”

“Not ever, and I really missed that after she died. I wasn’t anybody’s child. It was like no one loved me.”

“After she died, I didn’t want to think about holidays. They weren’t anything special without her. Even when we were dirt poor, she made them into something.”

“When I was little, I thought you hated Christmas. The way you got drunk and tore down the decorations.” She stared at him, watched his facial expression. This territory could be dangerous.

“I was a fool. A damn fool.” He shook his head. “Alcohol. After what my father put us through, I should have known better.” He seemed to shrivel in front of her, to forfeit some of his ground.

Lillianna wished for a way to stop the conversation. She didn’t need to see him hurt any more or be reminded of the enormous distance that had separated them, rendered it impossible to share the most important things in their lives.

She understood that he held his own grief over their estrangement. In that burst of insight, everything she’d been running from snatched her up, then almost knocked her down with the power of the blow. The past she’d spent so many years avoiding hit her right smack in the face.

She shifted her gaze to the room’s corner, looking for help, but eventually, she saw only her father. Like looking into a mirror, they stared at each other over all the lost years and over her mother’s death. After what seemed like minutes, he went on. “I should have remembered how I felt as a boy about my pa’s drinking and the holidays. I told you about him selling the toys I made, didn’t I?”

“You sure did.”

“Instead of learning from that, I went and did the same damn thing. I’m not trying to make excuses. I did wrong. And I wish to God I never laid a hand on you or Greg. Did you know I haven’t drunk a drop since your mother died?”

“Yeah. Greg told me, but I’m not sure I believed him until now. Besides, I thought it didn’t matter to me anymore. I’m sorry.” This apology was long overdue, and Lillianna prayed he could hear the sincerity in her voice.

“No need to be sorry. I didn’t believe my pa quit, either. Until I saw it with my own two eyes.”

Her father admitted something, and she knew she could hurt him if she said the wrong thing. What would be gained by it now? She knew exactly what he felt. As if the remorse and pain could rush out of his memory and into hers, she sensed something else behind his fatigue and fear about the surgery. Like mountains behind mountains, she recognized her father’s hope his children would never claim that family history for themselves.

Lillianna had her own confession to make. “I’m not proud of my behavior either, Dad. When things got rough with Jack, before the divorce, I was pretty damn dysfunctional, myself.” She wanted to finish the story she’d started and tell him everything about the depression, the drinking, Jack’s infidelities, but she couldn’t yet find all the words.

“He was too old for ya, Em. And there was something about him I didn’t trust. Your mother and I, we knew it wouldn’t work. At least that’s what we thought at first. Later, after the kids and all, she thought maybe we were wrong.”

“What did you think?”

He shifted on his pillows but didn’t take his eyes from Lillianna’s face. “He was twice your age. I thought you were looking for a father because I hadn’t been much of one. I felt bad. Still do. What was I supposed to think?”

“I don’t know,” Lillianna said, and she didn’t. “That was probably part of it, but the marriage did work for a long time. And I don’t think it was the age difference that came between us.”

“So what happened, then? Why did you and Jack break up?”

“If you’d asked me that years ago, I’d have taken the easy route and told you it was the other women. His affairs. Now, well... I know it’s more complicated than that.”

Viewed with distance and time, Lillianna saw that period of her life more clearly, in its entirety, like a landscape seen from miles above. The details paled in the shadows of the whole panorama, and she knew now that she’d played a role. During the sixteen months her mother spent dying, Lillianna had her own cancer scare, a hysterectomy, and discovered her husband had a lover. In her twenties, and far too young for so many losses grafted one on top of the other, it was easy to place the blame and take no responsibility. Who wouldn’t drink? she told herself.

But she understood something now she hadn’t back then. It wasn’t for orgasms that human beings huddled together in hotel rooms under crumpled sheets. It wasn’t for sex. It was for reassurance. Validation. The constant, urgent need to connect and find warmth led to Jack’s fondling the most private parts of other people when he had absolutely no desire to love or hold all of them.

“It was a tough time, Dad. And I’m not proud of how I handled any of it.”

“I hope you didn’t hurt Zack and Cassy the way I hurt you and Greg.”

Now’s the time, the voice in her head screamed. Do it. Tell him. “Well, I didn’t beat them, if that’s what you mean. But I’m sure I injured them in other ways.” Her breathing hurt and her eyes welled up.

Feeling so far from the self she’d once been, Lillianna wondered if anyone could ever go home. She’d run away from everything familiar. Attempting to become someone else, she merely discovered new ways to hide and to fail.

After she’d had children of her own, Zack and Cassy often carried her back into the memory of her child self. And she made progress healing herself through the childhoods of her children. No grown-up intimacy ever approximated, in either comfort or simplicity, the emotions she held for those small beings.

It wasn’t the same. She knew you didn’t really become, through your children, what you once were and could never be again. But they did bring her close enough to see how far away from her real self she’d grown. It opened her heart. And she came to understand the real difference between youth and middle age had less to do with years than the way in which you viewed the human spirit.

“I’m sorry, Emma. I hope you believe me.”

“I do, Dad. And I’ve got a few things to be sorry for myself. We can’t change anything now. So let’s put it behind us. Don’t you think it’s about time we did?”

“I reckon I do. Besides that, I still got things to tell you about that little house in Collins Park. How it was for your mother and me in the beginning.”

“You up to it now?”

“It passes the time while we’re waiting.”

“Does it make you sad to remember?”

“In a way. But it feels good too. Like those times aren’t gone. Like they still matter.”

“They matter a lot to me. Much more than I ever thought.” She pulled the chair closer to his bed.

He nodded, propped his chin on the heel of his hand. “It’s funny the way it happens. You get older, and the place where you started pulls you back. I seen it with my pa.”

“Well. Let’s go back then. I remember lots of things about Collins Park. And you know something, Pop? Some of them are good.”

“Your mother and I were so proud of that little house, you’d have thought it was a mansion. We worked on it all the time. It was the best looking one in the neighborhood back then.”