Going Back
By: Kayla Meyers
*Lyrics by Lifehouse-"Walking Away"
NEW HAVEN-NEXT LEFT
Jimmy flipped on his blinker, allowing a semi-truck to pass
him before merging into the north-bound lane. The low rumbling of the traffic
on the interstate highway hummed outside the window, tiny drops of rain
pattered softly against the windows. Usually when he drove, especially on long
trips such as this one, he would have been accompanied by Bob Dylan or The Who,
but not today. Today he had too much to think about. The early morning sky had
awoken in a bright, vibrant shade of blue, but as he moved closer to his
hometown it had flattened to a dull slate-gray. He barely noticed the change,
and it was almost subconsciously that he had turned on his windshield wipers as
the first droplets of rain began to fall. In fact, from the time he reached the
highway and began westward he had been driving on autopilot; every turn and
lane-change purely instinctual. His eyes stared, dark and pensive, at the
endless stretch of black road.
Finally, the white sign with the large black letters that
declared: YOU ARE NOW ENTERING NEW HAVEN came into view.
“Home, sweet home,” he murmured to himself, barely aware he
had spoken aloud.
He descended the off-ramp which led down to the first
four-way stop in town. It was just past 3:15,
so he had just managed to miss the 4:00
rush-hour when school let out and people started to get off work.
A sweeping nostalgia washed over him as he passed between
the Willow Branch Apartment complex and gas station at the edge of town.
Visually, it hardly resembled the place he had spent the first twenty-one years
of his life in; the town square of antique shops, bakeries, and family owned
restaurants had been replaced by a modernized strip mall of fast food chains,
swanky clothes boutiques, and corporate banks. Olson’s Food & Drug was now
replaced by a Safeway supermarket. A pang of regretful sadness ran through him.
Olson’s was run by an elderly couple, Ernest and Cecilia.
Mr. Olson was a thin, frail-looking man who stood at a mere five-foot-four.
Despite the fact that he came to America
with his family when he was only eight-years-old, his Germanic origin
was still quite evident, especially in the way his tongue rolled and trilled on
‘r’ and ‘l’ sounds. Bushy, black eyebrows drooped above his deep-set chocolate
eyes. His cheeks were sunken in with age and time, and were always a blazing,
feverish red on his high cheekbones. A mustache curled across his thin
upper-lip, always neatly trimmed. Not-so-neatly trimmed was his hair; Mrs.
Olson had been cutting it herself for the past fifty-two years, and due to her
increasingly bad eyesight and shaky hands, his bangs always fell on his
forehead in an uneven slant like fringe on a lamp-shade in his grandmother’s
house. Mr. Olson’s love and affection for his wife kept him from ever
complaining about it, and he always managed to seem eager when time came for
another trim.
Cecilia was a robust Italian woman who was considerably
taller and much sturdier than her husband. She wore brightly colored, flowered
dresses which she had designed herself, the hem of each one matched Mr. Olson’s
uneven hair. Her white hair was always pulled back in a tight bun and fastened
by a silver butterfly clip. She wore too much rouge and painted her hazel eyes
with powder blue eye shadow which flaked into her long eyelashes. She was in
every way the typical Italian woman, running the bakery in the store and always
insisting that you take a cinnamon roll or Danish on your way out. Her voice
was almost more masculine than her husband, and she was brazenly loud with a
hearty laugh. If she was irritated enough (which was usually only when the
neighborhood children would sneak in through the back door in the kitchen and
attempt to steal a loaf of freshly-baked French bread) she would grab a broom
from the storage closet and chase after them, waving it furiously in front of
her and yelling in Italian. Despite her tough exterior, she was a warm, loving
woman who was devoted to “Her Ernie” and treated every one as if they were her
own.
From the time he was old enough for his mother to let him
walk there by himself, every Tuesday he made a trip to Olson’s to pick up
groceries and medication for the week. On each of these trips, Mr. Olson would
slip him two Tootsie Rolls and a cream soda. Jimmy would boost himself up on
one of the stools at the long, white marble counter, his legs swinging six or
more inches above the black-and-white tiled floor. He waited in anticipation as
Mr. Olson took a tall, wide-mouthed glass from the stack on the back counter,
took it over to the fountain and pulled the handle of the tap up with a quick
jerk of his wrist. The soda flowed out of the nozzle in an amber-colored
waterfall, foaming and bubbling as it filled the glass. Just before the glass
looked in danger of overflowing, Mr. Olson snapped the tap back up and set the
glass next to Jimmy’s arm. His hand fumbled around in his apron as he pulled
out the two Tootsie Rolls and laid them next to the soda.
“Now remember,” he warned kindly, his eyes glinting beneath
his eyebrows. “Don’t tell your mother.” He gave Jimmy a sly wink and a playful
smile.
“Okay, I won’t!” Jimmy promised earnestly. Mr. Olson dropped
a red straw into the glass and Jimmy began to drink excitedly. Sometimes if the
store was particularly quiet, Mr. Olson would make himself a root beer float
and bring over the canister of red licorice ropes from near the candy rack,
then sit next to Jimmy and tell him stories of when he was in the army. Jimmy
stared up at him in fascination, listening intently at every word.
“Ernie!” Mrs. Olson would scold as she came over from behind
the cash register, her hands on her wide hips. “You stop scaring him! He’s
going to have nightmares for weeks!”
“Oh, hush up, woman. I’m in the middle of a story,” he would
say in annoyance, waving a hand at her.
“Ernest Arnold Olson!” She enunciated each word, narrowing
her eyes at him. Suddenly, he looked like a child being reprimanded by his
mother.
“Sorry, dear…” He mumbled quietly, staring down into his
root beer.
“That’s better,” she said, smiling in satisfaction. “And
you’ve had enough licorice,” she added pointedly before disappearing back into
the kitchen.
He furrowed his brow, but then sighed in resignation and
closed the canister before he stood up. “I suppose she’s right, I should let
you get home.” He glanced toward the door to make sure his wife wasn’t within
earshot, and then winked at Jimmy again, “Come see me later, then I’ll finish
the story.”
Jimmy would smile and nod agreeably, although he wished he
could sit and listen to Mr. Olson all day. He
watched as Mr. Olson put the licorice back in place, finished off his float,
washed and restacked the glass, then went back to work.
After the last drop of cream soda had been coaxed from the
bottom of the glass, Mr. Olson gave Jimmy the groceries and medication, and
Jimmy dropped two dollars into the old man’s hand.
“There you are, my boy,” Mr. Olson said, smiling warmly down
at the little boy.
“Thanks, Mr. Olson!” Jimmy grinned back at him. He gathered
the bags up in his hand and headed for the door. Just then, Mrs. Olson came out
of the kitchen carrying a tray of warm sticky buns and raspberry filled
doughnuts.
“We’ll see you again soon, Jimmy!” She called after him. “Tell
your mother I said hello!”
He walked out into the cool afternoon air, heading down Main
Street and then up the hill to Willow
Road. As he walked he peeled the wrapper off one
of the candies and put it in his mouth, then slipped the other into the back
pocket of his jeans.
Now he had to physically shake the memory from his mind and
realized he had been smiling. In his mind he could still smell the medicinal
scent that came from the pharmacy, mixed with lemony Lysol and the sweet aroma
of Mrs. Olson’s baking. He loved them both. Come to think of it, Mr. Olson was
the closest thing Jimmy had ever had to a real father. Even after he left, he
had sent them a Christmas card to them every single year, but last year it came
back with a ‘Return To Sender’ stamp. He figured they had probably finally retired
and moved.
A few blocks away, the library had also fallen into the
clutches of the beast that was reconstruction. The once conservatively tall,
two-story dark brick building was now sleek and white, and stretched out from
where the original structure had stood to the edge of Kasack Way where the out
post-office had been. He remembered on Fridays after school he would walk down
to the post office to drop off his mother’s bills, and then walk over to the
library. Aubrey Davis, the raven-haired nineteen-year-old that lived across
the street worked at the information desk on weekends, and Jimmy would sit in
the chairs by the Science Fiction section, pretending to read and watching her.
She was the prettiest girl he had ever seen, and in his nine-year-old heart he
was in love with her, the low-cut tops and denim skirts she wore. Every now and
then she would walk his way to re-stack a book, as she passed she gave him a
radiant smile, her hair falling around the curves of her face in soft waves. He
quickly averted his eyes, frantically reading the same sentence over and over,
his cheeks flaming red.
He laughed quietly to himself. Three weeks before school let
out for the summer, he overheard his mother talking to his aunt.
“Oh, did you hear the news? Aubrey Davis and David Witcham
are getting married this summer. He found a job in Tennessee,
they’ll be moving there after the wedding.”
That night, Jimmy was barely able to eat dinner, and for
weeks after that he avoided the library like the plague.
Finally, he turned down Cobalt Road
towards the elementary school. The playground stood empty, cast in dreary
bluish-gray light; a graveyard of his childhood, a graveyard filled with
phantoms. One of them was him, a
seven-year-old fair-haired boy with his eyes tightly shut and his arms
stretched out as he walked across the top of the monkey bars. His sister had
demonstrated how easy it was, and not to be outdone, he took her challenged
when she dared him to do it.
“I bet you won’t,” she goaded, her eyes glinting in the
high-noon sun.
“Will too,” he said with defiant ferocity, then turned and
walked valiantly toward the monkey bars.
The entire third and
fourth grade crowded around the jungle gym, watching with grim faces as if he
were Evel Knievel attempting to jump across the Grand Canyon with no safety
gear. He took his time climbing to the top, and then slowly brought himself to
a standing position between the first and second rungs. The ground below
swelled then receded beneath him like in the Road Runner cartoons he watched
every Saturday when the Coyote chased him to the edge of a cliff and Road
Runner found himself staring down a seventy-five foot drop, inches away from
plummeting to his death. His courage wavered and he crouched down to his knees,
grabbing onto the sidebars, his heart pounding in his ears. For a moment he
considered backing down. After all, enduring taunts from his sister and
classmates couldn’t be worse than breaking his neck, could it? He thought so
until he opened his eyes and saw his sister, front and center in the crowd, her
arms crossed over her chest expectantly and a knowing smile on her face. He let
out his breath; it billowed out in a white cloud like a thought bubble in a
comic strip. Steadily, he stood upright again and spread his arms out, closing
his eyes. He stepped carefully on the first four rungs, then as his confidence
heightened, his pace quickened. Almost sure he was near the end; he stuck his
foot out expecting to the last bar to descend the ladder to the bottom. However,
in reality he was little more than halfway across, and overstepping caused his
heel to slip against the next bar. He tumbled forward, the bars slamming into
his groin as he fell. It felt as if someone had driven a screwdriver into his
left thigh. Frantically he tried to grab onto the sidebar to catch himself, but
his hand slipped and he was left hanging there with his legs twisted around the
bars and his upper body dangling. The ground swelled and receded again. He was
stuck. Finally, he wriggled his left leg free and went plummeting to the ground
with a sickening thud. Jimmy landed on his stomach, the full force of his
bodyweight slammed down on his arm. A red-hot pain exploded from the wrist to
the elbow, as if someone had lit an M-80 and set it off inside his arm. The
bark dust scratched at his face, leaving tiny splinters in his cheeks and
eyelids. Warm, salty blood flooded his mouth, and he realized he had bitten
through his tongue. His bottom lip was swollen and throbbing. He began to spit,
and blood-soaked clumps of bark dust flew out of his mouth. Mrs. Klaussan’s
shrieking, panicked voice came from somewhere above.
“Jimmy Oversteen! What do you think you’re doing?! You other
kids, get back to class! Go on, get!” Her rough, strong hands were on his shoulders
then, turning him over on his back. The drilling pain shot through his groin
again and his arm screamed, protesting the sudden movement. He continued to
spit blood and splinters.
The next minute he was sitting on the bed in the nurse’s
office as she immobilized his arm, his mother standing over him, crying and
asking him what he was thinking over and over. His sister stood in the corner
of the room, her face pale with horror. He spent the next week with his arm in
a cast and a shiner.
He flexed his hand as a twinge runs down to his elbow, the
kind of aching pain that you feel when you dream you break your arm, then awake
to find it asleep and tingling; a phantom pain.
At last, his mother’s house came into view. He turned left
and pulled into the driveway, shutting off his engine. The house was exactly as
he left it when he was twenty; a cream and black trim, two-story, gable-faced
house with sunburst wooden décor and triple multi-pane fixed sash. The shallow
bay on the second floor had two double-hung multi-pane windows with an arched
center section. The first floor had a bay window with a center single-hung
window with art glass transom. A porch swing still sat by the door, swaying
lightly in the wind as if some unseen person was sitting there, rocking back
and forth. Even the basketball hoop he got for Christmas when he was fourteen
was still hanging above the garage. It was as if someone had pasted an old
photograph in the middle of a computerized, state-of-the-art 3D model; it
seemed completely out of place, yet a warm sense of comfort washed over him as
soon as he saw it. For the first time since he’d arrived, he finally felt like
he was really home.
As he began to climb out of the car, a voice came from the
porch. “Jimmy?”
He looked up, although he already knew it was his mother.
She came down the steps and walked toward him hesitantly, as if she wasn’t sure
if he was actually her son. She was wider in the hips than he remembered; her
blue dress seemed too snug around her midsection. As she came closer he saw her
hair, drawn up in a bun, was almost completely silver. It had been fifteen
years since he had been home, but he felt as if he were looking at a woman who
had aged an extra twenty-five; though she seemed grateful to see him, her eyes
looked at him with a tired dreariness of someone who has seen everything twice
over in her lifetime, the deep lines in her face a testament to each of her
long, hard years. She stopped in front of him, studying him closely.
After a moment, he smiled. “Hi, mom.”
She grinned then, her thin lips stretched out across her
tight skin, the crows-feet around her eyes crinkling. Then she was hugging him
then, squeezing him tightly. He wrapped his arms around her, hugging her just
as tight. When they stepped back again he saw her eyes were misty with tears.
She held him by the shoulders.
“Welcome home.”
“Thanks,” he said, and kissed her cheek. A few awkward
moments passed before he finally got his things from the trunk and followed her
wordlessly inside.
The inside was unchanged as well. Jimmy felt as if he had
stepped through a time portal and reappeared in the world of his childhood.
Smells of roasting chicken and baking bread rushed toward him, mixing in with
the slightly musty scents of time and age. A large poinsettia in a green,
hand-made pot stood between the entryway and the living room. The same
wallpaper of vertical green stripes and sunflowers covered the walls between
the baseboards. A chair, loveseat, and couch set formed a semi-circle around
the deep mahogany coffee table which his grandfather had given his mother as a
wedding present, all in the same white polyester slip-covers with blooming,
dusty pink roses. The grandfather clock stood in the corner near the fireplace,
the gold pendulum swinging back and forth. Pictures covered the walls leading
all the way down the hallway to the kitchen door.
His mother began to slip his jacket off his shoulders.
“Here, take this off, relax for a while. I made your favorite dinner. Your room
is all set up upstairs…”
He nodded, hearing but not really listening. Her voice
droned in the background as if coming from the end of a long tunnel in a dream.
He surveyed his childhood home, taking in every smell and sight. His eyes
settled on the banister leading up the staircase to the second floor. Suddenly,
a new memory flooded in; he and his sister, 9 and 11, left alone in the new
house after school. Their mother worked two jobs, so she usually got home
around dinnertime on weekdays. They decided it was time to ‘break in’ the new
staircase, and had gone down into the basement to retrieve the unpacked boxes
and their mother’s laundry basket. Once they were upstairs, they struggled to
get themselves into the boxes. Finally they decided they were never going to
fit together, so one at a time they crawled inside while the other pushed the
box or basket, while the other gave them a good, hard shove. The box tumbled
down the stairs to the first landing, crashing into the wall. The pusher would
chase after it, reposition it, and send it flying to the bottom. The one who
was inside the box would then crawl out, dizzy and giggling hysterically, and
they would run back up to the top and start over. On Jimmy’s fourth or fifth
turn, he crawled inside the laundry basket and sat Indian-style with his head
tucked between his knees, covered by his arms. Theresa crouched behind him and
pushed him to the edge, then shoved him down the stairs. The basket thudded
against the wall, and Jimmy realized mildly that a chunk of it fell into his lap,
leaving a black gash in the wall. She bounded down the stairs after him, set
him up against, then shoved him down the second flight, both of them red-faced with
tears squirting out of their eyes from laughter. Then, horrifically, the basket
hit against something else, although he knew he was nearly a foot away from the
front door. He lifted his head and found himself staring up at the shocked,
horrified face of his mother, eyes wide and mouth agape. He stopped laughing
immediately; Theresa had gone completely silent behind him.
After that they were both grounded for two weeks, and were
never allowed to stay home without a babysitter again. When they fussed and
questioned why their mother wouldn’t trust them, she looked at them with
dismay. “When you show me you’re both responsible enough to be by yourself,
then we’ll see.”
“…Jimmy, are you all right?” His mother’s voice pulled him
back from his thoughts. She gently touched his cheek, her eyes deep with
concern. “Maybe you should go up and lie down for a while. You’ve been driving
such a long time, I bet you’re exhausted.”
Well, that much was true, he had been driving a long time, but the truth was he didn’t feel the
least bit tired. He had reached the point of sleep deprivation when you try to
close your eyes only to find them wide open a moment later. He gave her a
reassuring smile and patted her hand away gently. “I’m fine, mom.”
She looked uncertain but didn’t argue; instead she took his
bags and started upstairs. Family portraits lined the wall; the first of him at
four with his left front tooth missing and his sister in pigtails, the one
slightly above it with him in braces at twelve… Each one marked the changes of
their family, but one thing remained constant; it was always just the three of
them.
The upstairs guest bedroom had a yellow-musty scent and the
air felt thick and un-breathed in the last ten years, but it was bright and
homely with its butter cream walls, white down comforter on the bed, and
antique lamps on the nightstand. She took the bags from him and set them on his
bed.
“I know what you’re thinking,” she said with a light laugh.
“My tastes are old-fashioned at best, but it should do for now, and you have
your own bathroom this way.”
“Does he know I’m coming?” Jimmy asked, still standing in
the doorway.
He saw his mother’s shoulders stiffen for a moment, then she
continued to take his things out one-by-one, fold them, and set them in the
drawers neatly. “I talked to Stacie today. Frank has to work and Abigail has
come down with a touch of the flu, but she said she’d be here either today or
Saturday.”
“Mom,” he said, now walking over to stand next to her. “Does
he know?”
She sighed, finally giving in, and looked up at him. She
suddenly looked very small, and very afraid. “Yes,” she told him reluctantly.
“He knows. I called him yesterday to tell him you’d be here. Jimmy, are you sure you want to do this?”
No, he wasn’t sure he wanted
to, but they knew he had come based on a need
to. When his mother had called him the previous week to tell him his
father’s lung cancer had returned and they weren’t sure how much longer he had,
there was no question in Jimmy’s mind that he had to see his father. There were things he needed to know,
questions that had gone unanswered for too long.
He didn’t answer now, but he didn’t need to. She dropped her
eyes again, folded and tucked away his last shirt, then straightened up.
“Dinner will be ready soon,” she said before she started to leave. “Get some
rest.”
“Actually, I thought I would go for a walk before dinner,”
he told her. “I’ve been sitting in that car for two days; I need some fresh
air.”
He saw her eyes clouded over with that worried fright, but
she nodded and went downstairs without a word.
It was raining a bit more heavily now, the drops collecting
in small pools on the street, but he left without a jacket anyway. The rain
felt cool and refreshing on his skin, he allowed the frigid air to fill his
lungs, glad to be out of the thick, still atmosphere inside the house. He
walked to the end of the street and turned left, heading down towards Tallulah
Street. A few years ago this was known as The Poor
Side, and from the looks of it, it still was; townhouses and run-down apartment
buildings that had been all but forgotten by the city and shunned by The
Up-Towners. People who lived in these neighborhoods were mostly ones with
low-paying jobs like janitors or waitresses or plumbers, or businessmen who
never fully recovered from the crash of the economy. The kids from these parts
were usually the ones most likely picked on at school; there was one girl in
Jimmy’s third grade class, Mallory, who was bullied so much by the school
cronies that before the year was over her mother, a cook at Ed’s Diner, had
pulled her out of school. During the last few years Jimmy lived here, as bigger
supermarkets started buying out the smaller business in town, the Olson’s store
began to suffer. Soon Mr. and Mrs. Olson had to sell the house they had lived
in for the past fifty-some years and move to The Poor Side. It broke Mr.
Olson’s heart, but he was a stubborn man with a great deal of pride, and
refused to ask for handouts.
Now Jimmy found himself standing in front of the dilapidated
townhouse where the Olson’s resided when he left home. The royal blue paint was
chipped, in a few spots there were large, angry splotches of rotted wood
siding. The gate squeaked loudly as he pushed it open and walked up to the
front door. He knocked three times and stood with hands stuffed in his pockets.
What am I doing here? Of course they
don’t still live here. I’ll just turn around and go back home…I’m leaving right
now. But instead, when there was no response the first time, he knocked
again four times. Finally he heard footsteps drawing closer and the lock click
open. A pretty, tall redheaded girl with blue-gray eyes appeared in front of
him. She eyed him suspiciously, keeping the door halfway closed.
“Yes?” She asked, her eyes apprehensive and, he thought,
slightly afraid.
“Oh, I’m sorry,” he said dumbly, shifting back and forth uncomfortably
on his feet. “I was – Well, I was looking for someone I used to know. A couple
– Mr. and Mrs. Olson?”
“They’re my mom and dad. Why are you looking for them?” She
frowned thoughtfully, studying his face, then suddenly her eyes brightened. “Jimmy? Jimmy Oversteen?”
“Hi, Sarah,” he said, smiling. My, if you would have told me ten years ago that the freckle-faced,
gangly little girl that used to chase me around the playground would turn out
to be such a beautiful woman… “Did your parents move? Where are they living
now?”
She looked at him apologetically. “Jimmy… I hate to have to
tell you like this, but mom and dad have been gone this past five years. Mom
had cancer and we lost Dad to a heart attack six months later.”
Despite how close he had been with them, he was surprised to
find a lump growing in his throat as she said this. His stomach tightened into
knots. He swallowed thickly and finally managed a barely audible, “Oh… I’m
sorry….” Should’ve just gone home…
Several agonizing moments of silence passed before them
before she spoke again. It couldn’t have been more than ten seconds, but to
Jimmy it felt like a millennium. She glanced at his wet clothes and dripping
hair. “Would you like to come in? I’ll make you some tea and you can warm up, you’re
soaked.”
He smiled at her again. “Like mother, like daughter.”
She pursed her lips in a tight smirk. “I’ll take that as a
compliment, now come in before you catch pneumonia.”
He laughed as she unlatched the screen door and let him
inside. There was a dank, swampy smell laced with the scent of tobacco. In the
days before people became aware of second-hand smoke it was normal for people
to smoke inside, and it wasn’t uncommon to see Mr. Olson in his beat up
armchair, puffing on a cigar or his pipe. His chair was still there, along with
the light yellow couch Mrs. Olson bought in Italy
on their honeymoon, a little coffee table and armoire with a small TV. A stack
of envelopes sat on the table, and as they passed to the kitchen, he saw the
red OVERDUE stamped letters across each one, which explained why she was so
wary of him when he first came to the door.
The kitchen was brightly lit, done all in light blues. She
waved him over to the kitchen table, then grabbed the teapot and started to
boil the water. He watched her out of the corner of his eye. She really had changed; her light blue jeans hugged
the soft, womanly of her hips snuggly, the blouse she was wearing showing off a
classy amount of cleavage, a sapphire cross necklace dangling above her breasts.
She made small-talk for a while – he told her about being an architect and
living in California – until she
brought the tea over and set a cup in front of him. He thanked her and took a
sip, the tea was overly sweet and burned his throat a bit, but it warmed him up
immediately.
“After Dad had to stop working he and Mom lost everything.
They did their best, but it was hard for them, then Mom got sick. Dad tried to
take care of her, but it was too much for him and he had to put her in a
nursing home. Without a pension and no income, he couldn’t afford to get by let
alone pay for all of her medical needs. My husband and I offered to help, but
you know how stubborn he was.”
“You’re married?” He asked, cocking an eyebrow at her. There
was no ring on her finger.
She smiled bitterly. “Divorced. Anyway, after Mom died I
eventually convinced him to come and stay with my husband and I, but he was
never the same. He just had no will to keep going, you know? Six months later
he had the heart attack. I’ve always thought maybe that wasn’t what really
killed him; it was a broken heart.”
She blinked and seemed to remember she was talking to him, and laughed softly.
“Sounds silly, I guess.”
“No,” he said. That excruciating silence fell between them
again. He sat forward, putting his chin on his hands and narrowing his eyes at
her thoughtfully. “So, divorced, huh? You got kids?”
“A little boy, Trevor, he’ll be eleven in March,” she said,
picking absentmindedly at the tablecloth. “He lives with his Dad during the
school-year, and then he stays with me during the summer. I think it’s easier
this way, while I stay here and try to sort out all of Mom and Dad’s debt.”
He nodded understandingly. “Makes sense,” he agreed.
“So, what about you, Mr. Hot-Shot? Did you ever get married?
Have kids?”
He stared down into his mug, fiddling with the handle. The
topic of relationships always made him uncomfortable for reasons even
unbeknownst to him. “No. I was seeing someone a while ago, but with work and
everything…” He trailed off, unsure of how to finish.
He thought she would make a joke, but she didn’t. Just
looked at him sympathetically and nodded. “I know what you mean. Mom and Dad
always made it look so easy to be
married. Fifty-three years and even near the end they still acted like they
were on their honeymoon. They were so lucky to find what they had with each
other.” She paused to take a sip of her tea and brush a piece of her hair
behind her ear. “They really loved you, you know. My dad thought of you like a
son. They kept every Christmas card you sent. Mom even bought all those
architectural magazines you were in when your career started to take off. How’s
your mom?”
“She’s doing pretty well, I think. Tired, but she’s all
right.”
“So, I guess that means you’re just passing through?”
“I came to see my dad. He’s dying.”
She sat forward, resting her chin on her hands, listening
intently.
“He has cancer and the doctors say it’s spread too far for
them to do anything about it. They really don’t know how long he has. And it’s…”
He sighed and brought his hands down hard on the table, causing the tea to
slosh around in his mug. “I’m almost thirty and I’ve never even talked to the
man. I know my mom doesn’t think it’s right but it’s something I feel I have to
do.”
She sat back smoothed out the rumples in the tablecloth. “I
think it’s a good idea.”
He looked at her, surprised. “You do?”
She seemed bewildered by his surprise. “Well, sure. You
know, I don’t know how I would have gotten through these past years without mom
and dad if I didn’t have my memories of them. Everyone deserves closure, and if
you feel like this is the way for you to get it, then you’re doing the right
thing. He is your father.”
It suddenly dawned on him that being here with her was the
first time he’d smiled since he got the phone call from his mom that his father
was dying. “I’ve really missed you, Sarah.”
“Well, maybe you oughta come around a little more often
then,” she said amiably, then laughed that sweet, throaty giggle.
“I should,” he agreed. He glanced at his watch. “I should
probably head back, Mom is probably wondering where I am.” He got up and began
to pick up the dishes.
She waved him away. “No, no. Don’t worry about this; I’ll
take care of it.” She followed him to the door. She leaned languidly against
the doorframe. “It’s good to see you again, Jimmy. Take care of yourself.”
He lightly pecked her cheek. “Thanks for the tea, and the
talk.”
“Anytime,” she told him, her cheeks slightly flushed.
He stuffed his hands in his pockets and walked down the
steps to the walkway and headed toward the road. Before he reached the gate she
spoke again.
“Jimmy?”
He turned to look at her.
“I hope you get what you’re looking for when you talk to
your dad.”
“Thanks,” he said quietly, then stepped onto the sidewalk.
When she called after him again he was halfway down the street and almost
didn’t hear her.
“Keep in touch, all right?”
“I will!” He called back, raising his hand to wave at her
before he rounded the corner.
That night he lay in bed, his eyes aching to close but
unable to sleep. Golden streaks of sunlight began to poke through the curtains
just as he managed to drift off into a restless, troubled sleep. An hour later,
he was awake again.
His mother was still asleep when he quietly treaded
downstairs and left the house. It was another gray morning with sheets of dark
clouds blanketing the sky. The houses in the neighborhood stood dark and quiet,
the thick curtains and blinds shutting out the early morning light. As he drove
by he noticed Sarah’s car was gone. He remembered she said she was a waitress,
and most mornings she had to get up with the sun to open. Just beyond her house
the road curved right and he followed it. He had one more stop to make on this
trip down Memory Lane
before confronting the reason he came.
Driving through the street he had
lived on until he was nine felt like sinking into the ocean; the memories swam
frantically through his mind, filling up his lungs until it was almost
impossible to draw in breath. It was only until after he passed and began down Main Street again that he realized his knuckles were white from
clutching the steering wheel. The house stood silent, shadowed by the
increasing pink light of sunrise. A pink and white playhouse stood in the front
yard next to a double swing-set, an abandoned tricycle was tipped over by the
garage. Inside he imagined the people living there; a blissfully married
husband and wife lying tangled up in each other’s arms and white sheets, while
a little girl and boy slept in the adjoining rooms, cozy and sleeping in
pleasant dreams. Inside his mind a new memory tried to break through,
struggling through the tide of his thoughts. He paddled away from it, holding
his breath to keep from drowning, but it crashed over him and pushed him
farther and farther down. This was a scenario he knew well; it was the scene
that always managed to find its way inside his dreams, the ones where he woke
up soaked in a cold sweat and fighting for air. Being only four years old at
the time of the event, part of him always wondered if it was an actual memory
that he had somehow managed to suppress over time, or something his own
imagination had created from stories from his mother and sister. A man – the
one in the black-and-white photo he had found in the attic as a teenager that
had remained the only image he ever had of his father – stumbling out of the
door and down the steps of the porch. A young woman – his mother – bursting out
behind him, tears streaming down her face. She ran after him, grabbed him by
the arms and yanked him back, screaming in desperation rather than anger. He
shoved her away roughly and continued to the Ford idling in the driveway.
Neither of them seemed to notice their young toddler standing in the doorway,
watching. The engine of the Ford roared as it revved and sped down the street. His
mother came back to the house, her face tear-stained with thick streaks of
mascara running down her face. She picked him up and crushed him tightly
against her body, squeezing him until his eyes watered. Theresa stood by the
door the rest of the day, staring out into the empty afternoon with the
occasional tear falling down her face. Neither of them ever saw their father
again. For the first three or four years afterwards he would receive a birthday
card with no return address and ten dollars inside, but after his eight
birthday when they moved to the new house, they stopped. His mother seemed
relieved when they did.
His eyes remained glued on the
house as it passed until he had to crane his neck to see it. Lost in thought,
he almost didn’t see the little boy that flew in front of his car on a bicycle,
just missing it by a few inches. He swerved quickly to the left and stopped at the
corner. In the rear-view-mirror the boy’s mother was hugging her son fiercely.
She shouted something angry at Jimmy before dragging the boy back across the
street, although he didn’t hear exactly what she said. Jimmy folded his arms
and leaned his head against the steering wheel as he tried to slow his racing
heart. Suddenly his stomach felt as if he had just ridden a Tilt-A-Whirl at an
amusement park about seventeen times, and for a moment he was sure he was going
to be sick. Finally, slowly, he raised his head and released the parking break,
pulled back onto the road and continued on.
The tall, sprawling building with
its endless banks of windows was the only place in town that was not associated
with any recollections for Jimmy. It conjured up no images of the past or
brought any old feelings bubbling up to the surface – probably because this was
the one place he had never been. After parking by the entrance he walked into
the large, open lobby. He passed by the information desk; he knew where he was
going. As with driving here, instinct was leading him. He found the bank of
elevators and took them up to the second floor. All was quiet on the adult ward
except for the quiet shuffle and hushed murmurs of nurses on their morning
shifts. Florescent panels of light washed over his face, casting him in
ghastly, exhausted shadows. Out of the corner of his eye he saw the nurses
whisper something in each other’s ear as they watched him cautiously, but none
of them came over. He walked to the last door at the end of the long hallway
and paused before pushing the door open without knocking.
The hospital room was small, with
a flowered border along the dusty pink walls, an uncomfortable, hard bed, and
TV suspended from the ceiling in the left corner. By the window a blue rocking
chair, facing out. A silhouette outlined by the light turned the chair slowly
toward the door, and he found himself face-to-face with his father. For a
minute Jimmy stood frozen, dumbfounded and unsure of what to do next. In his
mind he expected to see a cardboard cut-out of that old, grainy photograph he’d
stolen from the chest in the attic, but what he found was a full flesh and
blood man with gray, thinning hair and skin like the hide of a leather wallet.
A century seemed to pass between them, both of them unmoving and unvoiced. At
last, the man slowly got to his feet with the aid of a dark wooden cane with a
handle molded to his hand. Jimmy realized how small and frail he was, and for a
moment he was sure his legs would give out underneath him and he would have to
dart forward to catch him. He made it over, however, and stood in front of
Jimmy, studying his face closely.
“Hi, Jim,” his father spoke first,
his voice a gravelly, feeble croak.
“Hi, dad,” he answered, the words
came out in a cracked, hoarse whisper. He cleared his throat against the back
of his hand.
His father motioned for him to sit
down, then hobbled back to his rocking chair. Jimmy sat across from him and
once again they stared at each other in silence. Before this trip Jimmy never
realized how much he hated silence.
“Your mother said you were
coming.”
“I wanted to see you.”
Jimmy’s father sat forward and
poured himself a glass of water from a yellow pitcher sitting on the desk. He
raised an inquiring eye at Jimmy and Jimmy waved his hand ‘no’. He drew in a
deep breath and spoke: “Why?”
His father set the pitcher down
slowly and looked at him, his eyes uncomprehending. “’Why?’” He repeated the question, puzzled.
“Why did you leave?” He clarified,
not taking his eyes away from his father’s eyes. He hadn’t intended to blurt
the question out this way, but it tumbled out of his mouth before he had a
chance to stop it.
His father took his time sipping
his water, then set the glass beside him and looked back at Jimmy with his
hands folded. “You look good, Jimmy. Your mother tells me you’ve made quite a
name for yourself as a… uh, architect, is it? You’ve done real well.”
Jimmy narrowed his eyes. “Why did
you leave us, dad?”
“Jim…” His father sighed. He
always hated that nickname. “There are just some things you don’t understand, all
right? Sometimes a man does what he has to do.”
“No matter who gets hurt in the
process?” Jimmy snapped bitterly. “I’m a grown man, dad, so don’t treat me like
some naïve little boy. I asked you a question, and I want an answer; I think I deserve one, don’t you? Now, tell me. If
I don’t understand, then please, enlighten me.”
He saw something in his father’s
eyes then that he wasn’t anticipating; complete astonishment. Jimmy realized he
had caught his father totally off-guard. But, what was he expecting? Did he
sincerely expect Jimmy not to ask?
“Things were different when your
mother and I got married, Jim…”
“Stop calling me that,” he
interrupted sharply.
There was that look, the one of a
man who has been suddenly ambushed by a tribe of cannibals in the middle of the
jungle. He continued slowly, the ice in his glass clanking as he shook them
around. “We were just out of high school, and I wasn’t planning on having a
wife and family at 19 – neither of us were, to be fair. The town was going
through hard times, money was tight –“
“So, you took the easy way out and
ran away,” Jimmy finished darkly.
“As I said; I did what I had to
do,” he replied defensively, then sat back and gazed out the window passively.
“That’s no way for kids to grow up.”
“And growing up without a father
is?” He countered vehemently, his arms crossed over his chest. He knew he was
acting petty, but he didn’t care – He came all this way for answers, and he was
going to get them one way or another.
“You have a point,” his father admitted.
Jimmy thought for a moment he would continue, but he just sat there, twiddling
his thumbs idly.
“So, if you don’t want to answer
that, then I have another…” He said, trying to sound more diplomatic. “Why
didn’t you ever come and try to see Theresa and me? Even if you and Mom split
up, we were your children and we didn’t do anything wrong, so there was no
reason for you not to want to be a part of our
lives.”
“Your mother wouldn’t allow it,”
he replied simply, as if Jimmy should have known all along.
“That’s a cop-out and you know it.
She may have kept you from seeing us, but you never even tried.”
For the first time since they
began talking, his father smiled; it was a small, crooked smirk that Jimmy
didn’t like. “There’s a lot that your mother hasn’t told you.”
“Then why don’t you tell me?”
“Jim –“
“I told you not to call me that.”
“Jimmy,” he corrected himself,
then waited for Jimmy to nod his approval before he continued. “A year after
your mother and I finalized our divorce, when you were five, I filed for
custody of both you and your sister, but she refused and forced me into a
settlement outside of court, along with an order that I never try to contact
either of you ever again.”
Naturally, he didn’t believe him.
It was absurd; why would his mother try to keep his father from seeing him? To
protect him maybe, but she had to have known that for a boy, growing up without
his father could only hurt him in the long-run. He remained quiet this time.
“When you were thirteen I tried
again, even came back here so I could see you. But again, your mother refused
to even let me speak to you over the phone. Because of our agreement, her
lawyers told me that if I tried to contact you, I would have to give up my
parental rights to you completely. After I left, I tried to send you letters,
but your mother must have destroyed them, and I lost track of you completely
when you moved.”
Jimmy stared at his father,
stunned and speechless. Someone had just taken a hammer to everything he ever
believed, and he found himself frantically trying to discern the pieces and put
them all back together again. When he was a child, he discovered if he was
having a particularly terrible nightmare, all he had to do was shut his eyes
tightly and count to ten. A moment later he would find himself floating back to
consciousness, discovering he was in his bed, and the horror of his dream was
safely locked back into his subconscious mind; he was back in a world where
everything made sense. He wished he could do that now; he wished to close his
eyes and find himself back in his apartment in Los Angeles, the images that haunted his dreams far away on the shores
of imagination. He realized he actually had closed his eyes when the hospital
room and his father’s face swam back into focus.
“I know you don’t believe me,” his
father said, for the first time actually sounding apologetic. “You have no
reason to. There’s no excuse or reason I can give that would be good enough,
and there aren’t enough ways to tell you I’m sorry. But, whether you choose to
believe it or not, I did try and I wanted what was best for you and your
sister. I know it’s too late now, but you need to know that.”
Neither of them spoke for a long
time after that. Throughout the rest of the morning they rode on top of the
peeks of conversation before dropping off into even longer valleys of nothing.
Eventually he glanced up at the clock: 12:45.
“I should go,” he said quietly,
beginning to stand up.
“Before you leave, I have
something for you.” His father stood and walked to the small set of drawers
next to the bed, fumbled around until he found what he was looking for, then
shuffled over to where Jimmy stood by the door. The old man flattened his sons
hand, then laid a pocket-watch; the case was gold with small engraved designs
around the edges. On the back were his father’s initials: T.J.O.
“I know I should have been there,
so this is for you, so you’ll remember where you need to be before it’s too
late.”
“Thanks, dad,” he said. He put his
hand out and his father shook it firmly before Jimmy left.
With the two suitcases he brought
in the trunk and his father’s watch in the pocket of his jeans, jangling
against his side as he walked, he walked back through the hospital and out into
the brisk air afternoon breeze. Tall trees swayed and danced in the sunlight,
and everything suddenly seemed brighter. He left the window down as he drove
through town, taking everything in one last time as the cool air flowed around
his face. As he past beyond the town limits he glanced in the mirror, watching
as his childhood home receded farther and farther away.
An hour later he was back on the
freeway, heading toward California. The pocket-watch dangled from the rear-view-mirror,
glinting and winking in the sunlight. As he drove away he turned up the radio
and began to sing along.
The sun goes
down
As the city lights
Pave their way
Through the darkest nights
Raindrops fall
As an old man cries
Never thought to ever think twice
Of all he had
Of all he lost
A selfish life
I guess comes with a cost
Hey, remember me
I remember you walking away
Hey, remember me
I remember you walking away
The same old street
Just a different name
Same old house
Just the family's changed
Picket fence
The windows stained
Freedom spelled by a man in chains
The silence is all we have to give
And the memories of a life I wished we lived
Hey, remember me
I remember you walking away
Hey, remember me
I remember you walking away
From all that you made
That you lost
Or threw away
Trade it in for a brand new life
But I can't
Can't let go
Can't turn around
Hold my head high and walk away
Hey, remember me
I remember you walking away
Hey, remember me
I remember you walking away