Being Christmas morning, and a Sunday at that, there was almost no traffic, and the sun shone warmly down on our little audience of five as we sat on Lester’s front steps and waited for the show to begin.
“This is more fun than a circus,” Dad chuckled.
“And there’s not even a safety net,” said Patrick. “The world’s most daring—” He stopped mid-sentence when we saw the first performer coming down the hill—Benjamin, his knees bent, face aglow. We clapped and cheered as he aimed his feet toward the lawn at the bottom and managed to stop just short of the maple tree.
But there was no time to comment because Sara was next, shrieking all the way down, followed by Hannah, the smallest, who didn’t make a sound till she got to the bottom and then split the air with a victory yell.
There seemed to be a rather lengthy intermission before the last performer appeared on the scene.
“Maybe he went out for coffee,” said Sylvia.
“Maybe he took the first bus out of town,” joked Dad.
“No, here he comes!” I said, leaning forward to get a better view as the triplets gathered at the bottom of the hill.
“Yay, Dad!” yelled Sara.
“Come on, Pop!” cried Benjamin.
“You can do it!” Hannah encouraged.
The hill seemed gentle enough to look at it, but Lester was picking up speed as he came down. The kids had been practicing for weeks on their friends’ skates, hoping they would get Rollerblades for Christmas, and had mastered a few of the finer points, but no one had taught Lester to stop.
Faster and faster he rolled, his arms flailing like windmills, eyes huge, legs unsteady, a terrified wail coming from his lips. Patrick leaped off the steps to run out and stop him, but he missed. Lester zoomed right past us toward the house at the curve of the road and, seconds later, had gone headfirst over a row of azalea bushes flanking the street.
It was all we wanted to talk about for the rest of the day.
“You should have seen your face!” I told him.
“If only I’d brought the camera!” said Stacy.
“I would have paid admission to see that show!” said Dad, laughing.
Later, as Lester was collecting the utensils for carving, I offered to hold the turkey steady while he worked.
“It’s really been a marvelous day, Les. I’m so glad you invited us here,” I said.
“Humph,” he mumbled, and gingerly laid some more slices on the platter.
I was trying not to laugh. “The triplets were over the moon with their skates, and I have to tell you, that was some performance from you.”
Les frowned at me, but I could tell he was holding back a smile. “I have only two words to say to you, Alice,” he said. “ ‘Bah’ and ‘humbug.’ ”
* * *
Two years later, three months before Dad’s eighty-eighth birthday, I got a call from Sylvia saying that he was in the intensive care unit at the hospital.
“Sylvia!” I cried. “What is it?”
“He’s been having some chest pain, Alice, and didn’t want to worry anyone. I didn’t even find out about it until last week. He was to see the doctor on Thursday, but obviously, he was sicker than we thought. They’re going to do a quadruple bypass in the morning.”
I didn’t even bother to lock up my office. I asked my secretary to cancel my last meeting of the day and drove ten miles over the speed limit to Holy Cross, yanked the ticket from the machine, and parked my car at an impossible angle.
He was lying amid a tangle of tubes and monitors, and I stood just inside the curtain, afraid I’d burst into tears if I went any farther. His body seemed so small under the blanket. Had his legs always been so short? I wondered. I sucked in my breath and heard him say, “Come on over, honey.”
Tears came in spite of myself. He put out one hand, and I went to his bedside, clasping his fingers.
“Dad . . . ,” I said.
“Just like an old car.” His lips were dry and stuck together.
“What?”
“One part wears out before the rest.”
A nurse came into the cubicle to check his IV and stopped to survey us. “You must be Alice,” she said.
“Yes.”
“Well, I know your dad would rather be anyplace but here, but I want to tell you, he’s my best patient.”
“He’s always the best,” I said, and squeezed his hand.
Dad didn’t take his eyes off me for a second. “I’ll be going in for surgery first thing tomorrow morning,” he said. “But you don’t have to be here, sweetheart.”
“Of course I’ll be here, Dad!”
“Dr. Rankin is one of the top doctors in his field,” the nurse told me. “Your dad will be in good hands.”
Dad and I chatted a bit more, and I left with the promise to return after dinner. We called Tyler in Ohio, and he said he’d take the first plane he could get. We couldn’t reach Patricia and Zack, who were skiing somewhere in Colorado, but I left a message on Patricia’s cell phone. Les and Stacy were fighting rush-hour traffic to get to the hospital, and Patrick met Tyler’s plane at the airport. By eight that evening, the six of us, including Sylvia, stood awkwardly around Dad’s bed, curtained off from the other beds in the ICU—no room for cards or flowers or balloons in here.
Dad repeated his joke about being like an old car. Lester put one hand on his shoulder and said, “Don’t knock it, Dad. I once had a car that made it to two hundred thousand miles. You’ve still got a lot of mileage in you.”
Dad maneuvered his hand around the tangle of tubes and put it over Lester’s, but he didn’t respond.
The nurse came in then and said they needed to do some prepping to get Dad ready for surgery the next day, so we began saying our good nights. I lingered in the room a minute after the others had said their good-byes, though, and tried to hold back tears.
“Dad, I wish I could go through this with you. I mean, really,” I said.
“Don’t say that, honey,” he told me. “We all have our own battles to fight, and sometimes we have to go it alone. I’m stronger than you think, you’d be surprised.”
“I hope so,” I whispered, memorizing every line of his face, every tiny mole, the deep-set eyes and the brows that grew more unruly with each passing year.
The nurse was waiting, so I leaned down and kissed him. Dad smiled up at me and whispered, “Like me?” Our corny old joke.
I smiled back. “Rivers,” I said. “And I love you oceans and oceans.”
Out in the waiting area we sat with Sylvia awhile before we drove her home. She looked tired, and I was conscious of the fact that her clothes did not fit her well anymore—her frame was no longer big enough to fill them out.
“How are you holding up?” Patrick asked her.
She leaned into a corner of the couch. “All right, I guess. I just wish . . . I wish I’d known sooner that he was having symptoms. Why didn’t he tell me?”
Les smiled. “It’s called ‘love,’ Sylvia. He didn’t want to worry you, and it’s possible he was also keeping it from himself. In any case, we’ll all be here tomorrow. Try to sleep. It’s the best thing you can do for both of you.”
* * *
Patricia called that evening to say that she had just got off the slopes and found my message. They’d be taking a red-eye flight to Washington that would get here early the next morning. Tyler said he’d meet them at the airport, and I knew how important it was for him to be helpful somehow.
“Mom,” Patricia said before we signed off, “it’s . . . it’s really serious, isn’t it?”
“Yes, but it’s not a rare operation anymore, sweetheart,” I said. “A lot of people have it. And your grandpa has all the family rooting for him. I’ll tell him you’re on your way.”
As Patrick and I drove to the hospital the next morning, I thought of all the things I wanted to say to my father, just in case. I felt I ought to apologize for everything I’d ever done that upset him, any grief I’d
caused—the time I’d dyed my hair green, the time Pamela ran away from home and I hid her in my room, the unkind things I’d said to Sylvia once after they were married. . . . There were so many things left unsaid.
Patrick seemed to know what I was feeling because he reached over and patted my hand.
But when we got up to Dad’s floor, we were not allowed in the ICU. A nurse got up from behind a desk and ushered us down the hall to the solarium at the end, where Sylvia was sitting white-faced between Les and Stacy.
“What is it?” I asked the nurse.
“Dr. Rankin will be with you shortly,” was all she said.
I hurried over to Sylvia.
“I don’t know,” she said. “We got here just a few minutes ago, and there’s all this commotion. . . .”
I sat down before my legs gave way. I remembered the day my wonderful teacher, Mrs. Plotkin, had died, the code blue, and the way the medical staff had congregated at the door of her room.
“Just tell us . . . has Mr. McKinley gone up for surgery already?” Sylvia asked the nurse. The nurse shook her head and held the door open for Dr. Rankin, who was coming out of the ICU.
I knew even before he told us. I seemed to hear the words before they were spoken: “I’m so terribly sorry.”
“No!” I cried, and felt Patrick’s arm tighten around me.
Sylvia, her eyes wild, reached out wordlessly toward the doctor, and he pulled up a chair. “About fifteen minutes ago Ben had a massive coronary. He had signed a Do Not Resuscitate order, so we honored that. And even if we’d tried to revive him, he wouldn’t have lived long or been the same.” He clasped Sylvia’s hands in his. “I wish for all the world I didn’t have to tell you this.”
It was as though I were going numb all over. Even my lungs felt paralyzed, and I didn’t think I could breathe. I turned toward Patrick, wanting him to breathe for me. Bring him back! I wanted to scream. Please, please try! I looked over at Lester. He sat with his elbows on his knees, face in his hands, his shoulders shaking. Sylvia leaned against Stacy and cried. I had honestly thought that as long as my dad was in a hospital, they wouldn’t let this happen. And when we went to see his body at last, I thought I knew what it would feel like if I were to die of a broken heart.
* * *
Outside in the parking lot I couldn’t stop crying. I vaguely remembered visiting Mom in the hospital not long before she died. I’d sat on her lap and she had sung to me, softly in my ear. I wanted to sit on Dad’s lap just one more time. I needed to feel his arms around me and his prickly cheek against mine. I wanted this. I needed this. As if thinking or saying this over and over would make it happen. Patrick didn’t tell me I was embarrassing him. He didn’t seem to care that people glanced at us warily as they hurried on by. He just held me in his arms beside our car, his face nuzzled against my neck, infusing his own strength into me.
“There were still things I wanted to tell him!” I wept. “There was so much more I had to say. Why didn’t I tell him before? Why did he have to die now?”
“Maybe there’s never a ‘good’ time to die, hon. There are always things we wish we’d said or done.” He guided me over to the passenger side of the car, then went around to the other door and got in. “Alice, when I watched you and your dad together,” he said, “you showed you loved each other in a hundred different ways. Whatever you might have said or done would only have been icing on the cake. He already knew whatever it was you had to say.”
I swallowed and tried to speak through my sobs. “Patrick, if . . . if I die before you . . . or if you die suddenly and I don’t have a chance to tell you . . .”
“I’ll know you loved me in a hundred ways you never said. Even if we’ve just had an argument and I get run over by a bread truck, I’ll always know I had your love. Okay?” He jostled my hand and coaxed a smile out of me.
“You’ll know that the argument was just on the surface? And that there was a river of . . . an ocean of love underneath?” I asked.
“Absolutely.”
We drove home slowly through the late-morning traffic. Patrick had phoned Tyler at the airport and left a message. Patricia’s plane would be arriving soon, and I knew that I was going to have to help her make peace with the knowledge that she had not been able to say good-bye to her grandfather. The fact that I had not said all the things I’d wanted to say would let her know that life goes on in spite of regrets, and that it’s not the things left unsaid that are so important but rather the feelings underneath, too deep for words.
* * *
Dad had asked that his body be cremated. “I don’t want it taking up precious space on a shrinking planet, and I especially don’t want something that you kids and Sylvia have to look after,” he had told me once.
So we held a memorial service at the church on Cedar Lane—the church where they’d been married. I sat staring at the ebony container holding his ashes, the remains of my father. How could that possibly contain all that he was—his kindness, his laughter, his music, his love?
I tried to comfort Patricia and Tyler before they went back to their own lives. They were emotional during the service, unable to hold back tears, and just watching them kept my eyes red and brimming.
“It will get easier, I promise,” I told them as Patricia sobbed first on my shoulder, then Zack’s.
“I know, but if I feel this bad for Gramps, how am I going to feel when it’s Dad?” Tyler told me.
“You’ll feel even worse, of course, but you’ll carry on, because happiness has a way of creeping in again. It really does,” I said.
A few days later, when Tyler and Patrick embraced at the airport, it was a long and tender hug.
The following afternoon I went over to Sylvia’s to keep her company. She was out in the yard in her jacket, looking over the remains of their garden to see if any mums could be rescued for inside the house. I simply fell in beside her as she traversed the yard, and we walked with our arms around each other’s waists.
“I didn’t get to tell Dad all my thank-yous, but I won’t make the same mistake with you,” I said. “Thank you for loving him, Sylvia. And thank you for coming into our lives and filling in for the mom I never had.”
“They were some of the happiest years for me, you know,” she said, and gave me a little hug. We walked in step around the garden, surveying the dry, crumpled stalks of flowers.
“I still wish I’d had a chance to tell Dad all the things I wanted to,” I said. “Apologize for some of the things I said to you. But really, you’re the one who should be hearing it. I really am ashamed and sorry.”
“Oh, I knew that, Alice. That was forgiven ages ago,” she said.
“Do you ever have regrets about your life, Sylvia? I’m asking in a general way. Is there anything you’d do differently, or something left undone?”
“Of course. That’s the human condition.” And then, reminiscing, she said, “I was in community theater for a while when I first began teaching, and I loved it. I always thought I’d like to combine the two. But teaching takes up all your spare time, it seems. It was just a choice I had to make, and no great sacrifice. And I was probably a better teacher than I was an actress. But still . . . that’s one of the things I left undone.”
“You were a wonderful teacher,” I told her. “The boys were all mad about you, and I think we girls were a little jealous.”
She laughed, but after a while she grew quiet again, and we stopped to sit on a wrought-iron bench at the back of the garden.
“And I wish I had made up my mind sooner about marrying Ben,” she said. “I regret I had to go to England for a year to even think about it. I miss him so much already.” Her lips trembled slightly.
“So do I,” I told her.
“And now . . . that’s a whole year we could have had together.” She shook her head. “Sometimes . . . when I used to think of how it would be if Ben died first, I figured if I could just remind myself of the things I didn’t like about him, I wouldn’t be
so sad. But I’m not so sure. Right now I’d give anything to have him sitting across the room from me, reading aloud parts of the newspaper and interrupting whatever I was reading.” She smiled at me through her tears.
I smiled back. “That used to drive Les nuts too, I remember.”
“And his moods . . .” Sylvia thought about it a minute. “The thing that nobody tells you about husbands, Alice, is that they don’t always react the way you think they will. Before we married, I used to imagine that when Ben was sad or worried, he’d tell me. Just come to me and say, ‘Sylvia, my stomach hurts’ or ‘I’m afraid I made a big mistake on the income tax.’ And I’d comfort or reassure him.”
I nodded.
“Instead, an ache somewhere just made him withdrawn and silent. A mistake might make him irritable and short-tempered. I might spend half the day trying to figure out what was wrong. Women are more likely to talk it out.”
“That’s why we live longer,” I told her, and squeezed her hand. After a while I asked, “Any thoughts on what you want to do now?”
“I’ve been thinking of inviting my sister to visit. She’s out west, and we’ve seen so little of each other. I’d really like to ask her to live here with me, but I thought if I just invited her for an extended stay, we could see how well we get on with each other before we take such a big step.”
“That sounds wise,” I told her.
She looked into my eyes. “Thank you for coming by today, Alice. I think I needed to talk even more than I knew.”
* * *
The year of our sixtieth birthdays, Patrick saw a notice in the county paper announcing the opening of a time capsule. It had been buried, the paper said, forty-eight years ago by a seventh-grade class at Colesville Junior High School, taught by Elmer Hensley, and former students were invited to attend the ceremony. According to instructions, the capsule was to be opened when the class reached their sixtieth year. Then it listed all the students who had taken seventh-grade history with Mr. Hensley that year: Pamela Jones, Mark Stedmeister, Alice McKinley, Elizabeth Price, Brian Brewster, Patrick Long. . . . I wondered why Gwen wasn’t mentioned, then realized that she had had a different teacher for history.