He turns to me, fully rational and in control. “He knows what happened that night. If we assume my mother’s dead, he’s the only witness left. That’s another reason I called you. He’s losing it. Someone needs to get the truth out of him before it’s gone.”
So. His major concern when he called me in New York wasn’t the gun. The gun was an excuse. His worry is that the way things aregoing, my father’s mind will shrivel up and crush everything inside, just take it right away. He’s thinking Alzheimer’s, too, I know he is. And I want to discuss this with him. But we’re already in agreement here. He wants answers about his mother; I want answers about mine.
I try to think how to approach my father. “It’s a sensitive topic.”
“It needs to be done.”
“Anne is protective.”
“Anne is overprotective.”
Which means I need to work directly with Dad. “He puts up a wall when I’m around. I’m walking on eggshells.”
“It’s just asking questions.”
“He doesn’t like questions, especially intrusive ones.”
“Would you rather he take it all to the grave?”
“Of course not.” I want to know whether my father loved my mother, whether he lovedme,and if not, why not, and he’s the only one who can say. “I just have to figure out the best way to do it.”
“Time’s running out,” Jack warns.
“I know.”
“So do it. Isn’t that why you’re here?”
It isn’t why I’ve come. I’ve come for Joy. At least, that was the premise. But seeing Dad again, seeing this place, even being here on the beach where so many watershed moments occurred, I feel a deeper calling. Yes, it’s about retrieving the past.
“Mallory,” he says in the forceful way he always had.
“I will.”
I want to say I am resolved to act, but all I can think of as I walk back to the house is that confronting my father won’t be fun. I remind myself that I’m an adult now, a mother, and a professional. When it comes to this man, though, I’m still a child. And suddenly into that childhood moment comes a memory. It’s a recurring dream that I put behind me when I left Bay Bluff and haven’t allowed in for years.In it, my mother goes off somewhere, leaving us three alone with Dad, who keeps doubling his normal size. Margo and Anne don’t seem to see it, despite my yelling and pointing and jumping up and down. They’re not afraid. But I am. I don’t want my father to see me and attack. So I make myself invisible by becoming a butterfly—no, an ant—no, anowl,emerging only at night when everyone else is asleep.
Coming so soon after thinking myself an owl, I’m wide-awake when I reach the house. Anne’s car is back, but since she isn’t downstairs, I assume she’s in bed. I’m sorry for that. I would have liked to ease the awkwardness between us. We used to talk after dates. Not that I’ve been on a date. But she had. A date? A party? A sleeping-with sans sleep? Whatever, I want to know more about Billy Houseman.
Resigned for now to failure in that, I take my laptop from the kitchen and turn on a small lamp in the living room. After moving just enough books aside so that I can curl into a corner of the sofa, I pull up Margo’s latest column. She typically writes about family issues in response to correspondence from readers. Too often to be coincidental, I see our family in her words.
This one is a case in point. It is a poignant piece about the prospect of Father’s Day when one has no father to toast, and while the focus is on fathers who have died, I can easily guess she’s thinking of us. She talks about sadness, about the emptiness of the chair at the head of the table and the clothes gathering dust in the closet. She talks about celebrating the man a father once was and doing something to make him proud.Accept what you can’t change by changing what you can’t accept,she advises—and at first read, it sounds preposterous. A dead person is dead, right? When she launches into honoring memories by living the best of who that person was, though, I see where she’s headed. She isn’t thinking of Dad. She’s thinking of Mom. Having been to Margo’s house multiple times, I’ve seen how she keeps fresh peonies, year round, in a clear vase on her kitchen island. Mom did that, though where either of them found peonies in the middle of winter was anyone’s guess.
I’m not there yet with regard to Mom. With regard to Dad, though?Accept what you can’t change by changing what you can’t accept.
I cannot accept that I’ll never know the truths I seek. And while my solution is less honorable than Margo’s, she isn’t here, is she? That means I can avoid confrontation by becoming a snoop.
When I wake up Saturday morning, Joy is gone. A note lies on the pillow.Taking Papa down the hill for breakfast. Come when you wake up.
I will. First, though, I’m hunting for a gun.
Chapter 8
Feeling like a thief, I work quickly and with an ear out for anyone who might return. Since Dad spends most of his time in the living room, that’s where I start. But there’s no gun under a cushion, behind a book, or in a drawer. I blouse out the floor-to-ceiling drapes, hung so long ago by Mom, and find traces of dust that the vacuum missed but no gun, not even cleverly tucked into a wide hem. At the front hall closet, I grope through hats, scarves, and gloves above, in coat pockets and sleeves mid-level, and rubbers and boots below. The dining room, too, is a bust; neither the silver drawer nor any of the linen drawers hold a gun. I’m checking the last of my mother’s decorative vases when my phone vibrates.
Seeing Chrissie’s name, I feel an immediate lift. Chrissie Perez is one of those friends who doesn’t go ultra-far back in my life but whose friendship goes deep. We met seven years ago, sweating on adjacent stair climbers at the gym, and just… clicked. In the years since, Joy and I have been to her place for more Sunday brunchesthan I can count. Chrissie, her husband, and her three-year-old son are as close to family as we get in New York.
“Chrissie,” I breathe in relief.
“Just wondering how you’re doing.”
