The flight attendant came on the intercom to announce we were about 30 minutes outside of LAX, and the crew would be coming around to collect any remaining items before landing. I stretched my arms over my head and pulled up the window shade. It was only mid-morning in California, one of the advantages of flying west.
The flight attendant leaned her head into the row. “Any trash I can take for you?”
I passed her an empty water bottle and stack of magazines and pushed my sunglasses down over my eyes.
“You’re lucky, this is the first time the sun’s been out in weeks,” she said stuffing the items into the trash bag.
“My sister told me about all the rain, although she felt guilty complaining since Southern California needed the water so badly.”
“You’re heading home then?”
“I grew up in Newport Beach but haven’t lived there in a long time. My sister lives in L.A. now.”
“I hope you have a nice visit. We’ll be landing shortly.”
After turning in my notice to Stephen, I realized I was suddenly out of excuses not to go out to California. I booked the first flight with availability, and let Merritt know my plans. Then, I called Emmy and Zosia to tell them I’d be in town for a couple of days. They were thrilled, immediately clearing their schedules so we could spend some time together.
Merritt was working on location, so I took an Uber from the airport to her new house in West Hollywood bordering Beverly Hills. Having lived most of her adult life in Culver City close to the studios, Merritt was reluctant to move at first, but Naomi convinced her the West Hollywood green aces, parks, and all the stroller friendly paths on the La Cienega trails would be better for Alec in the long term. Not to mention the high concentration of yoga studios, juice bars, shopping, and farmers markets all within walking distance.
They purchased a beautiful Spanish style home with a red terracotta roof, original stone tiles, graceful archways, and a stunning hand forged curved staircase last year for well above the asking price. They were currently doing massive renovations to update the kitchen and bathrooms. This was the first time I was seeing the house outside of Facetime since they moved in almost a year ago.
“Welcome to Casa Kitt,” Naomi said opening the huge carved mahogany doors with Alec on her hip. “Please excuse all the construction, we were supposed to be finished ages ago.”
Scaffolding lined the front halls along with paint cans and tarps. I carefully stepped over a bucket of plaster in the entranceway. “I thought you were just updating the kitchen and bathrooms? What’s all this?”
“We let the monster out the box. Once we decided to paint the kitchen cabinets, we realized it made the trim look terrible, so we repainted all the trim in the house. Once we painted the trim, the walls looked like shit, so we had to paint those. Once we painted the walls, we realized the floor color was too light, so we went ahead and stained the floor darker… and so it goes.”
I peeked down the hallway and into the great room. “Well, I’m loving everything I’m seeing so far,” I said.
“Thank you. Oh my god, how rude am I keeping you standing in the foyer? Come in come in,” she said closing the heavy doors behind me. “You must be so tired from the flight? I can make you a coffee or there’s a Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf just around the corner. Alec’s due for his nap, we can push the stroller over there and pray he falls asleep on the way.”
“I’m actually not too tired, it’ll probably hit me later, but you know me, I can never say no to an Original Ice Blended coffee when I’m on the West Coast. That, and an In and Out Burger, and I’m home.”
Naomi settled Alec into the stroller, and we pushed it a few blocks ’til we hit Melrose Avenue. The busy street was alive with restaurants, high end stores, cafes, exercise studios, and chic clothing boutiques. Naomi pointed to the Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf on the far corner up the block.
“Do you mind if we walk a little more, Alec’s just about asleep,” Naomi asked.
I peeked underneath the stroller top. Alec’s eyes were fluttering and his little legs scissor kicking, as he tried in vain to fight off his morning nap.
“Not at all. Looks like a bunch of new things opened up since the last time I was here?”
She nodded. “This boutique just opened,” she said pointing to a small shop across the way. “They have the best baby clothes, although it’s a little pricey. The Drybar’s new, and Peloton just opened an amazing two-story spin studio in the space that used to be that restaurant Ma Belle Ferme.”
“I forgot Ma Belle Ferme was on this side of Melrose,” I said.
“Did you ever eat there?”
“The year Merritt brought me as her date to the Emmy’s, Urban Healers held the after party at Ma Belle Ferme.”
“Well, it’s a beautiful space, I’m glad they finally found a tenant.”
“Funny enough, Ma Belle Ferme’s chef is now the chef at the resort I stayed at on Topsail Island.”
“The food must’ve been incredible then.”
“Yeah, he’s incredible,” I replied
She raised her eyebrows. “He’s incredible?”
“Sorry, what?”
She laughed. “You just said he’s incredible.”
“I was lucky enough to take a cooking class with him while I was there, that’s all.” I glanced down at the stroller. “Look, Alec’s asleep.”
“My sweet boy,” Naomi said, covering his feet with a baby blue cashmere blanket. “So, how long do you think you’ll be in town for?”
“I’m not totally sure. I thought I’d meet with some agents while I was here. Maybe see about acting classes?”
“I’m sure Stephen or Merritt can make some introductions, right?”
“I want to try to do this on my own. I have some savings, the money from the wedding deposits, and the sale of my dress to use as a small cushion while I figure this all out.”
“So, it’s really over between you and Sam?”
“It’s really over.”
“I didn’t know him as well as I wanted to, but I do know how much he meant to you.”
“He did. He does. He may always but, I’m really okay, I promise.”
“I’m glad. Merritt said you want to visit your Dad while you’re in town?”
“I haven’t spoken to him in almost four years, I’m not sure he even wants to see me.”
“He’s your father, of course he wants to see you.”
“I wish I knew that for sure.”
Naomi looked down at the stroller. “I’m not sure I understood this before I had Alec, but there is no greater love than what you feel for your child. There’s literally nothing he could ever do that would make me turn away from him. Your father loves you a lot. He’s been dealing with his own grief, but not a day goes by that he doesn’t ask Merritt how you are.”
“Thank you, Naomi.”
She smiled and put her arm around my waist. “Come on sis, let’s get you that Iced Blended coffee, my treat.”
The next day, Merritt took off work to drive me to Marina Del Rey. I hadn’t seen my father in almost four years, not since my mom died. Our last conversation was a pretty heated one. A week after my mother’s funeral, I thought I would be helpful and began to box up her belongings. I didn’t want Merritt to have to do it on her own after I’d gone back to New York.
My father found me in their bedroom sorting through my mother’s sweaters, and I don’t know if it was grief or exhaustion, but he completely unraveled. He called me selfish and unfeeling. He told me my mother didn’t die from cancer but a broken heart because I wouldn’t come to see her. We had it out, big time, and it was Sam who finally came in to play referee. I vowed on the flight back to New York, I wouldn’t see or talk to my father again until he apologized. Four years later, I’d kept to that promise, but at what cost?
Merritt turned the car into his gated community and gave our names at the entrance. The guard directed us into the parking lot, and we found a spot right in front of the building. Merritt got out of the car and pointed to a set of windows on the top floor.
“His apartment is that front one facing the marina,” she said.
“That’s nice. He always liked the water. Mom, too.”
“It’ll be really nice when Alec’s older. I’m sure he’ll love to sit and watch the boats leaving the dock. Oh, and down there,” she said pointed to a wrought iron gate, “they have a small playground and splash pad for kids.”
I could tell she was nervous. Merritt always talked too much when she got uncomfortable.
I smiled and squeezed her hand to try to put her at ease. “You’re right. Alec will love that.”
“Are you sure you don’t want me to come in with you?” she asked.
“I don’t know why you even drove me. I told you I was fine taking an Uber.”
“It’s hard to explain where the entrance to the building is unless you’ve been here before.”
“Mer, I appreciate you wanting to help, but I think I need to talk to Dad on my own. You told him I was coming right? And you’re sure he’s okay with it?”
“He wants to see you. I know he does.”
“Did he tell you that?”
“All that matters is he agreed to see you, right? Now give me a hug. I’ll be right out here if you need me.”
I took a deep breath and followed the manicured path up to the glass entranceway of the apartment building. I gave my name to the doorman who directed me to the third elevator and told me to press the button for the Penthouse. The elevator climbed slowly to the top floor and when it stopped, opened directly into his apartment.
I didn’t see my father at first. Instead, my eyes were drawn to the wall to wall glass windows facing the waterfront. It was a spectacular unobstructed view of the harbor’s main channel, and if you squinted really hard, you could make out the famous Santa Monica Pier Ferris Wheel.
“Hello, Jo,” he said, his deep voice more gravely than I remembered.
I turned around to face him. He’d aged quite a bit in the last four years, the lines in his face a little deeper, the grey hair on his head a little thinner.
“Hi Dad,” I replied.
He looked around. “Where’s Merritt?”
“She’s waiting outside. She thought it’d be better for you and me to talk alone.”
He walked towards his kitchen. “Can I get you something? Coffee? Tea? I don’t know if you’re drinking something stronger these days?”
I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. His comment was a direct swipe at my past bad behavior. It was hard to blame him though. I was drunk at my mother’s wake and most of the week that followed.
“Coffee’s fine,” I answered and sat down on a kitchen stool.
He turned on the Keurig and passed me a box of coffee flavors to choose from. I selected a Breakfast Blend and handed the pod to him. He placed the K-Cup into the machine and closed the lid.
“How long are you in town for?”
“I haven’t really decided yet. I don’t know what Merritt’s told you, but I quit my job at The Gerber Agency.”
“She told me. And Sam? Is that really over?”
I nodded.
“I’m sorry to hear it. He was a fine young man,” he said, passing me the steaming mug of coffee and container of half and half.
I sipped the coffee and noticed small glass vases scattered across the apartment filled with colorful teacup roses, brightening almost every corner of the room. “Where are all the roses from? Do you have them brought in?”
“A local florist delivers them weekly,” he answered.
I leaned forward and inhaled the small bouquet on the kitchen island. “Yellow teacups, my favorite,” I sighed.
He smiled. “They were your mother’s favorite also.”
I sat upright. “They were?”
“You know she loved all roses, but the yellow ones were her favorite. Did you know, every rose color has a meaning attached to it?” He picked a teacup rose out of a vase and rolled back and forth between his thumb and forefinger. “Yellow roses symbolize new beginnings, welcoming someone back, and wishing to be remembered. We covered your mother’s casket in them.”
I wracked my brain for the image. “I don’t remember that.”
“The florist kept insisting on white roses or deep crimson ones, but I’d promised her yellow.”
I shook my head. “I’m sorry, I really don’t remember much from that day.”
“It’s one of the things she asked for in those last weeks. That, and for you to come home.” He paused and then said, “At least I was able to give her the flowers she wanted.”
His words pierced through me like a raging dart. “Dad, I will never forgive myself for not coming out here and spending those last days with her.”
He sighed and slumped into a chair. “What does it really matter now?”
“You have to believe me. I didn’t know how bad she was. I didn’t know.”
He pounded his fist into the armrest. “You didn’t know because you didn’t want to know?”
My eyes welled with tears. “Maybe, but you kept me in the dark for so much of my life. What’s that thing people say? We’re only as sick as the secrets we keep. Mom may have been the one with the cancer, but we were all sick.”
His face crumpled into his hands. “You were a little girl, and we wanted to protect you from the worst of it,” he said, the edge in his voice now gone.
I kneeled down beside him. “But somewhere along the way, I stopped being a little girl and nobody seemed to notice. For a long time, it felt like Sam was the only person who did, and so I grabbed hold of him. I didn’t choose him over you and Mom. I thought he was the one person choosing me.”
He shook his head in understanding, tears forming in the corners of his corn blue eyes. “Is that really true? All your mom wanted was to get better and be able to be there for you and Merritt.”
I took his hands into my own. “I handled it all wrong. I know that now. But I loved her, very much. Do you know I lie in bed at night worrying she died believing I didn’t?”
“God baby no, of course not. She knew you loved her. She wanted you to live your life and not feel tied to home because she was sick. It’s why she downplayed everything, even in the end when I begged her not to. She was happy you were in New York pursuing your dreams. She didn’t want to get in the way of that.”
I paused for a beat and looked away. “Not too long ago someone told me forgiveness is the release of hope for a better past. I can’t make things right with Mom, but I need you to forgive me Dad. Please, say you forgive me,” my voice cracking on the last words. “Please…please…” I pleaded, turning back to him.
His face and eyes softened. He held his arms open and pulled me into his broad chest, cupping my chin in his hands. His lip quivered as he tried to get the words out. “Of course, I forgive you, but can you ever forgive me?”
I looked up and into his eyes. “Forgive you?”
“I let anger and grief overshadow everything. I’m your father, it was my job to make sure you were okay, and I didn’t do it. You know, I can’t even remember what we fought about that last time you were here. Isn’t that crazy?”
“I was trying to help Merritt box up mom’s things, but you weren’t ready to see them go. That’s what we fought about that day.”
He closed his eyes and nodded, the memory floating back to him.
“Mom was gone. After everything you did to try to save her, you couldn’t. But nobody could’ve done more for her. Nobody.”
He opened his eyes and moistened his lips. “I didn’t mean to hurt you, Jo. You were so young. I thought the best thing I could do was try to make sure you had a mother. I didn’t realize in trying to save her, I robbed you of yours.”
And with that admission, the dam I’d built over the years burst, and I broke down in sobs. We stood up and he wrapped his arms around me pulling me in close. We stood like that for what felt like hours, locked in a much needed, long overdue embrace, years of hurt and pain spilling out like a rain swelled river onto its banks. Both our cheeks damp with tears, he rocked me back and forth in his arms, smoothing my hair and telling me over and over it was okay. That it was going to be okay.
When we finally pulled apart, he took me by the hands and let me out to the terrace. Over the next two hours we laughed, cried and caught up on one another’s lives. There were too many mistakes, too many misunderstandings to retrace them all, so we didn’t, we started again from a more honest place.
We were so absorbed, neither one of us heard Merritt walk into the apartment. She set her coffee cup and keys on the counter in the foyer and called down the long hallway. “I was beginning to worry one of you killed the other one.”
I stood up to greet her. “I’m sorry I kept you waiting so long,”
“If it means you and Dad reconciled, then no need to apologize.”
I smiled. “We reconciled.”
A toothy grin erupted across Merritt’s face as she pulled me in for a hug.
My father reached into the glass vase on the coffee table and pulled out two yellow teacup roses.
“To new beginnings,” he said, giving the first rose to Merritt. Then, he turned to me and presented the second rose. “And to welcoming someone back.”
I leaned down and took a third rose from the vase and glanced over at a family photograph on the fireplace mantel. “And to wishing to be remembered,” I breathed.
Merritt picked up her keys, dangling them in the air. “We should go celebrate. How about the seafood place up the street?”
My father took the rose from my hand and held it close to his heart. “I have a better idea.”
We cleared the dried flowers from the top of my mother’s tombstone and set down the yellow teacup roses in their place. It’d been four years since she died, and yet a whole lifetime since I stood in this exact spot. I ran my hand over her name, Anne Walker Kitt, the stone, cold and smooth under my fingertips.
“Do you come here a lot?” I asked them.
“Not enough,” Merritt said.
I turned to my dad. “Maybe too much,” he answered.
The grounds were beautiful, with rolling green hills, meandering streams and giant Sequoia trees. “I’ve been dreading this for so long, and now that I’m here I’m not sure why I had,” I said.
“It’s peaceful, right? I always forget how peaceful cemeteries are.” Merritt stretched her neck to the right. “Come on Dad, let’s take a walk and give Joanna a few minutes on her own,” she said taking his arm.
They set down a cobblestone path encircling the cemetery, leaving me alone at the gravestone. I thought back to the day of my mother’s funeral. The cemetery was packed with mourners and Sam pushed me through the crowd and up to the front so I could stand with Merritt and my father. Merritt gave the most touching tribute, and Sam spoke too.
After the casket was lowered into the ground and the funeral ended, I thought I’d be able to stay behind and say goodbye. But black cars arrived, and we were ushered away before I had the chance.
I reached into my pocket and unfolded the letter I’d been holding onto since I walked the jetty with Dr. P. The letter I was finally able to write after my breakthrough session but wasn’t ready to part with at the end of the Boot Camp. The letter that had been meant for Sam, but when I finally put pen to paper, I ended up writing to my mother. I glanced down at the black and white lined paper, my hands trembling and read the first two words aloud, Dear Mom…
I ran my hands down the marble stone and took a seat on a grassy mound beside the grave where I recited the whole letter to her, every uncomfortable, painful, heartbreaking word, tears spilling down my face and onto the pages as I read off my list of transgressions, regrets, fears and finally, boundless love.
And when I finished reading, I felt lighter. The grief remained, and I knew it may always, but now it was just a bit more spread out, the burden less concentrated. First, scattered across words, sentences, and paragraphs on pages and now out into the world, finally filling the empty space in my heart that was left when she died.
Merritt and Dad turned up the walking path meeting me at the gravestone. I stood up brushing dirt and grass off my knees.
“Ready to go, Jo?” Merritt asked.
I tucked the letter back into my pocket. “Ready.”
We drove back to Marina Del Rey and had dinner at that seafood restaurant on the water Merritt liked so much. When we were finished, I went up to the bar and asked if they had any empty wine bottles I could have. The bartender passed me an empty bottle of Pinot Noir along with its cork.
I stepped out onto the dock reached into my pocket and pulled out the letter. I rolled the paper into a thin scroll and popped it into the neck of the bottle using the cork to push the letter into the base. I brought the bottle up my lips and kissed it gently before heaving it out into the Pacific. And while it bobbed up and down in the wake of the waves, I recited the same words Dr. P shared with me in Topsail. “May my past and my pain be like a message in a bottle, pitched out to sea, to be carried by the winds and tides, washing up on a distant shore, never to return home again.”