He was crying more, not with any sound, just water moving down a face that hadn’t reacted to itself in a long time.
“Son.”
“Pop.”
“I can’t leave.”
“Why?”
He looked at the water and took a long breath in, and out.
“Because she’s here.”
“What?”
“She’s here. My Niecy. In this house. On this land. I sit on this porch with her every evening. Talk to her every day. I can’t leave her again. She’s here, Julian. Do you understand? Your mama is here.”
I opened my mouth to argue because I’d come up here ready for a man being stubborn and licking his wounds. A man I could reason backinto his life. I had not come ready for this. This was beyond grief and regret. This was something that had grown on top of it.
“She’s in Lennox Falls too, Pops,” I tried.
“No, Julian. She’s not. I tried. For months I tried. I sat in our bedroom and waited to feel her and she wasn’t there. This is where she was most herself. This is where she is now. This is where she talks to me.”
I sat there with him on the porch and I understood that the man I had driven hours to retrieve was not retrievable. He was not on a path back to himself. He was somewhere in his mind, with my mother. And he was not coming home.
I tried again anyway. “I came to bring you home.”
“Julian. Listen to me.”
“I’m sorry I’m not the man I was supposed to be. Who y’all need me to be. I failed your mama, and I failed y’all. I cannot come home, son. I love you all too much to come home not the man you need me to be. I love you too much to walk back into that house not the man your mama married. I cannot do that to you.”
“That is not your call, Pop. That is ours. We are saying come home. We are.”
“I know you are.”
“Then come.”
“I am asking you. Don’t come back here.”
“What?”
“Don’t come back, Julian. Driving up here. Don’t do this again. This is not good for you. Let me be.”
I shook my head.
“I died the day your mother left. What you see is just the box. There is nothing left inside. If I come home, what you get isn’t your father. What you get is a man leaving you in more pieces, over years. You and your brothers and your sister already grieved me once, four years ago. I’m asking you to let that be the only time.”
“No, Pop.”
“I don’t want y’all mourning me every day for the rest of your lives. Across the table from a man who isn’t your father, remembering every night that you used to have one. Let the grief you already did be enough. So that when I go, it isn’t a thing you have to do a second time.”
I couldn’t speak.
“Leave me here. I came here to be where she is. I came to wait. Let me wait here. Not in front of all of you. I’ve lived a long life.”
“You’re not old, Pops, there’s more life to live.”
“I lived the only life I was meant to. I had your mother. Over thirty years with her. Four children. A business together. I loved her with everything in me. Once she was gone my life was done too. I’ve done what I was put here to do. Now I wait.”
