Were we.
The two of us, Jill and non-Jill, now one, mutually resolved to fall silent and listen.
—
First, okay, she wanted him to know he’d been the best daddy ever. She’d been crazy about him ever since her earliest days, when he’d come in smelling of cigarettes and the road and cheeseburgers and motor oil and pick her up over his head and fly her around the room while Momma kept saying, The lamp, the lamp, K.J., mind her little-bitty head!
Second: she understood that his early life had been hard and that was why he’d sometimes been a little harsh. And demanding. And sometimes—Daddy, she had to say it—rude. Rude to her friends, rude to her prom date, Randy, that one time.
That had been—she had to say it—rough.
But the thing was: she forgave it. Forgave it all. She wanted him to know that. He’d made her strong. Yes he had. By being so difficult. And often unfair. Because look at her now: she took no bull-hockey from anybody, and if a person was being rude to her or trying to bully her?
She kicked butt, took names later.
So, thank you.
Thank you, Daddy, for that.
Daddy, if you can hear me?
Thank you.
What she wanted to say, what she’dcomehere to say? What she truly believed? Was: Good job, you! Well done! Thou hast been a great warrior and accomplisher and hath—Daddy, you did great things, I mean it. You started low, out there in cowboy country, for Lord’s sake, then went forth and won big while opening up many, many cans of whoop-butt on all who would oppose you.
And gave us agreatlife. You did. Truly. We traveled all over the world, always first-class, did things none of my friends at school ever got to—well, most of them, anyway, given that some of my friends at school were also, like us, doing pretty darn well—but, Daddy: London, Moscow, Kenya, Bethlehem, all before I was twenty?
Although, yes, true, she’d taken some guff in high school from some of the liberal kids, because of his job, which—Lordy, don’t get her wrong, she was not now, and never had been, a lib. She didn’t want him thinking that. She believed in this country, and in positive values and taking responsibility for oneself, like he’d taught her, and saw zero use in complaining or looking only at the negative side of things or pissing and moaning aboutevery little hardship the way the libdopes tended to do, as if nothing in life was fun or beautiful or a cause for joy and everything was a terrible dang guilty burden to bear. (And, yes, Daddy: she and her church friends used “libdope” now, not “libtard,” not because of p.c. but because “libdope” seemed somehow kinder, more in keeping with the teachings.)
Anyway: her worldview was solid. She wanted him to know that. She’d recovered from her brief, friend-induced flirtation with libtarditude. Dopitude, rather. Especially after that batshit gal at the country club had implied she was a racist. Too much!
Just because a person mistook one black waitress for another, did that make her a racist?
It was too much, libdopes.
Back it on down.
She loved everybody just the same, like he’d taught her: white people, brown people, red people, gay folks, those two indistinguishable black (or Black, she guessed you had to say now) waitresses, even the young white-trash/trailer-girl waitress who’d called her racist, although, as far as that lowlife, she had to admit she was going to have to really work at loving that dipshit, or even letting her wait on her ever again, because, when you really thought about it, wasn’t that white girl being racist herself, against whites, by coming after her the way she had, literally pulling her into the coat-check closet, just seething with self-righteousness, wearing way too much makeup, with a nose ring like an enraged baby bull and one of her blocky ugly waitress shoes untied? Coming after her so hard that the Black waitress she’d mistaken for that other Black waitress had to come racing in and pull that White biotch off her?
Anyway.
(Oh, he loved listening to her. Always had. The two of themwould stay at the table after dinner and she’d talk and talk, about things at school, world events, which trees she liked more than others, and so on. Smart kid. Knew her own mind.)
Look, she was just going to say it: he was dying. Okay? Sometimes, dying people got trapped in denial. And denial? Takes a lot of energy. This friend of hers at church? Did hospice. She said that if a loved one present could sort of sound the gong, you know, saying, in effect: It’s happening, really happening, toyou,now? That was good. A good thing.
According to Cara.
Her friend from church who did hospice.
Was she making things worse? By being so frank? She could stop. If it bothered him. But one thing she’d learned (through counseling, yes, but also at Bible study) was:
God does not likeclosed.
God does not dodenial.
You know who opened up big-time there at the end? Our Lord. Jesus Christ. Dying, He’d called out to His Father to forgive His enemies, who were, literally, at that moment, up there on Golgotha, killing Him. He knew He was dying and had the presence of mind to wonder: How might I, even in this dreadful moment, continue to serve? While there, below, at the foot of His cross, stood His enemies, the terrible Romans, leering up at Him with their big old pikes and swords and horrid strappy sandals and pointy helmets and whatnot. Could he, her daddy, do that, here and now? Forgive his many enemies? The many enemies who had, over the years, opposed him, including those mysterious dumbasses who’d left a buttload ofdead seagullson their lawn once, during the wholeGalateaspill crisis thingamabob when she was in junior high, which, by the way, had been just super for her social life, and thanks y’all protesters for that,and could he forgive, also, those morons in the media, and those trolls who’d sent, over the years, just an endless stream ofterribleletters, calling him, among other things, “corporate pig,” “godless seeker of Mammon,” and “tone-deaf monster,” when really what he was, was not a monster at all, but just a tiny sweet little old thing (always the smallest of all the other daddies), who’d (crabbily, but still) taught her how to change a flat out there in their garage and had shown up, unannounced, when she was eight, at her Junior Miss Bowling class, and bought every single girl there a Coke, and insisted that every last girl finish hers, so as not to be wasteful, even, unfortunately, that one girl, Lydia, who, it turned out, was diabetic?
Maybe they should pray.
