“JANE?” MY MOTHER CALLED to me. Her tone was urgent. Hopeful.
I could barely hear her on this bright summer morning. My eyes, all my attention, were caught by something else, one of the objects I feared most, something that simultaneously shattered my heart and reminded me of all the terrible things that had woven themselves into who I was and changed me.
A headstone.
It was small, rectangular, and a dark, dark gray.
It read: JOHN CALVETTI, DEVOTED FATHER, SON, AND POLICE with the dates of his birth and death. Those dates I couldn’t bear to look at, especially the second one, from this past February. A little sapling grew next to the grave. I felt the urge to go to it, run my fingers over its soft green leaves, so full of life even in this heat, but I couldn’t bring myself to move even an inch. I stood on a gentle incline a few yards away, close enough to see the words on the stone clearly, but far enough that I wasn’t really there yet. Big, blooming white lilies were pressed against my chest, both arms gripping them, their scent strong and their stems long and thick and green. My mother had already laid hers on the sparse grass in front of the headstone, the lines from the newly dug grave still visible even as the earth tried to knit itself back together. She kneeled down a moment, her mouth moving in whispers, reaching out to run her hand over my father’s name. Then she got up and turned to me.
“Jane,” she called out again. “Come here.”
But I shook my head. I couldn’t even respond. There were no tears in my eyes or sobs in my throat. There was just a sense that everything in me was frozen, struck still with fear—of going any closer, of finding out that what I saw before me was indeed real. Here lay my father, gone forever from this life, from my life. Because of me.
He was gone because of me.
I suddenly wished for Handel, wished for his presence, the way he could distract me from the difficult things in life. Feel the deliciousness of having a secret.
“Jane,” my mother called again. When I didn’t reply and didn’t move, she made her way to where I stood. “Oh, sweetheart,” she said, and touched one of my hands, trying to unpeel it from my side. But I couldn’t budge—nothing about me would. She slid the lilies out of my arms and pulled them close to take in their scent. “These are beautiful, aren’t they?”
“Hmm,” I managed, trying to remember to blink. My eyes had gone dry, unable to stop staring at the words on the stone, at my father’s name. I breathed deep, in and out, then once more. “Okay.”
“Okay?”
“Okay. I’m going to go put the flowers over there.”
My mother held them out to me. “All right, honey. Do you want me to hold your hand?”
“No,” I whispered, taking back the lilies.
“Are you sure?”
I nodded, the smell from the flowers so powerful it almost made me dizzy. I began to walk, tiny steps, all of them forward, first down the gentle slope of the hill and next along the side of the grave to the spot where my mother had been standing. I stopped there, staring at the ground, staring at the dirt in front of the carved stone, the way it was peppered with young blades of grass, all of them tender with the newness of life. The soil was that rich brown it always is when you are trying to grow something. It’s strange to think how, right above the dead, we plant trees and flowers and grass. Or maybe it’s not that strange at all. I couldn’t decide. The one thing I knew for sure was that no amount of trees and flowers and new blades of grass was going to change the fact that my father was lying underneath this plot in a wood coffin that my mother picked out herself.
My father.
I didn’t know what to do, what one was supposed to do when visiting a grave. I didn’t want to talk, didn’t feel like it, didn’t know what to say and was afraid of what I might say. I didn’t want to allow myself to cry, either, because if I started I might never stop, might never be able to leave this spot. I didn’t touch the stone like my mother had. I didn’t dare, because the cold rough slate under my hands was an unthinkable substitute for the real living body of my father, the arms that used to hug me and pick me up until I was too big and too old for him to carry me. I just stood there, still, unmoving, my eyes dry again from forgetting to blink, until finally, awkwardly, I bent just a little, enough to place the flowers alongside my mother’s, careful not to touch anything. Not the grass or the sapling or the gravestone.
Especially not the gravestone.
Then quickly, very quickly, I turned around and began to walk away. I went up the gentle slope, past my mother, not looking at her, trusting that she would know to follow me, and she did. I could hear her footsteps. I may not have said anything out loud during those moments, but just before I left my father’s grave, the words “Daddy” and “I’m so sorry” flashed through my mind.
I think it was okay that I didn’t say them out loud.
I chose to believe it was, at least.
• • •
When we got home, my mind was a whirl. The name “Patrick McCallen” drifted in and out of it, stirring up guilt—guilt and a new sense of responsibility. I’d thought about him so much lately. Tried to decide what his involvement was that night, if any. Tried to decide if the boots I saw were his, or if they were common, if maybe they belonged to someone else who shopped at the same store he did.
I wasn’t sure what I wanted the outcome of all this wondering to be. If I was hoping I’d find a reason to exonerate Patrick or if I was hoping to confirm he was involved.
But after this morning, I realized so clearly that his guilt wasn’t up to me to decide. That I was the guilty one for not telling Officer Connolly all that I knew. For mentioning the detail about the boots but omitting the detail about Patrick McCallen. This wasn’t a game. Not some cop show on television where they had to solve a random murder. This was about my father, who was lying dead at the bottom of a grave when he should be out and about in town, joking around with people on the wharf. Hounding me about going to mini-golf some night this summer.
I pulled open the top drawer of my bureau and started to dig around among the socks and underwear and bathing suits. At the bottom of it, underneath an old aqua-colored two-piece I wore the summer when I was twelve, I found the business card with Officer Connolly’s direct number on it. Then I went to the living room and picked up the phone, the landline I’d come to associate with news about the break-in.
I started to dial.
I waited, nervous, listening to it ring.
Officer Connolly didn’t pick up. I got his voice mail instead.
It was just as well, I decided. Easier to leave a message. I waited for the beep, the whole time tempted to hang up and try again later. I didn’t, though—I knew I wouldn’t try again later.
“Officer Connolly,” I began. Then I stopped for a breath. “It’s Jane Calvetti. I’m calling because I think I remembered something else important.” Breathe, Jane. “The night of the break-in, those metal-toed boots I told you about?” Breathe. Come on, Jane. “I’m pretty sure I’ve seen Patrick McCallen wearing the same exact ones. That’s all.”
I put the phone down.
Listened to the soft click of the call cutting off.
I stared at the ancient thing. Those big fat numbers that I used to beg my mother to let me press with my little fingers so we could call Daddy. I was still staring at the phone, remembering dialing up my father, when it started to ring. The loud, piercing sound and the fact that I was hovering directly over it made me jump. I didn’t answer. I waited until the call went through to the machine.
“Jane, it’s Officer Connolly here, Michaela’s dad,” he said onto the recording, like I had more than one Officer Connolly in my life. His voice filled our house. “I just listened to your message, and I wanted to thank you for it. I’m gonna look into what you just told me right away, see where it leads. You just sit tight, and if you think of anything else, you call me, you hear? All right. Regards to your mother. Bye now.”
There was a click as the call cut off.
I stared at the phone, like it might ring again. When it didn’t, I started grabbing the stuff I needed for the day. To meet the girls in town and then head off to the beach. I moved around so easily, so quickly, at first I thought I must be numb from what I’d just done. But when I went out into the sunshine at nearly a run, I realized there was a lightness in me that hadn’t been there before. I hadn’t realized how heavy it was, carrying around my suspicions about Patrick all on my own. Now that I’d handed them off to someone else, to the people whose job it was to take on those suspicions and look into them, a great burden had been lifted.
Well—no. Not lifted altogether.
But I didn’t have to carry it alone anymore. I’d take the relief, even if it was incomplete. A little bit was better than none.