After Forever Ends (64 page)

“Get back to your bed! “ The friend said harshly, making a move toward me as if she was going to strike me, “Stop talking your nonsense! Leave your father alone!”

I spun and ran back to my room I accidentally slammed the door behind me. Lucy, four months old, howled for a moment. I heard my father go to her and the friend mumble something about damning me for my stupidity.

I hid under the duvet. That was when I understood what dead meant. That was the moment when I knew she was never coming back. That was the moment that the innocent little child that was me ceased to exist. It was the moment that I stopped trusting my dad. I knew to never ask about her again and I never did. His response to my question had made it very clear that she was a subject better left untouched. Anything I might have remembered as a child slowly faded from my mind.

But there were still traces of her. When I was eight I found a woman’s tortoise shell comb in his dresser as I was putting away his pants. He saw it in my hand and froze in the doorway. His face draw back as if he’d been stabbed. The silence that followed left me with a horrible sense of shame as if I’d done something terrible, yet I had no idea exactly what it was.

And so my mother became a stranger to me, someone who had left me before I had the chance to know her.

My own children were grown and gone. From time to time they’d phone me, each of them, and we’d chat. The whole time somewhere in the back of my heart there was an ache that hadn‘t been there when they were small. After all those years, after having raised my own children, I finally had time to realise what my mother and I had lost. It was each other. I finally had time to miss her and mourn her passing the way I should have when I was a child.

Time passed and I still said nothing to my father. It was Oliver who sat with me at night and listened to my frustration, who didn’t call me mad for crying over a woman who’d died so long ago that I couldn’t even remember her.

“You lost somebody, Sweetie,” He’d say as he smoothed back my hair, “You lost somebody you loved. Maybe it happened a long time ago, but it still happened. In a way, it’s good that you’re finally sad about it. I’m glad that there was enough of a bond there that you can feel that now, all these years later. It’s safe to feel it. You’re safe. It means that she loved you as well…more than you knew…so much that a part of you is still mourning her, yeah?”

Lucy and I went to visit our father in the spring he was turning seventy. He had rang her and asked us to. He said it was important. Both of us knew that something was occurring, but neither of us knew what. He was waiting in his house for us when we arrived in the afternoon. He looked frail, drawn. He seemed short of breath and had a woman who was flitting about the house. He had never mentioned her to either of us, so, naturally, Lucy asked if he had a girlfriend.

He laughed softly and shook his head, “No,” He smiled, “Felicity is my nurse.”

He explained much too calmly that he was in third stage kidney cancer. Lucy and I sat in our chairs in stunned silence as we listened to him prattle on. It was only the one kidney, he told us, and there was no evidence that any cancer had spread. There were plans to have it removed. With luck they’d get it all in one swoop. Without luck, he’d die quickly, possibly even on the table.

Lucy and I stared at each other. Finally, she spoke, “Daddy! What’s the odds you’ll have luck?”

He laughed again, oddly happily, “About 10%,” He told her. “Don’t look so frightened, Lucy! It’s certainly dismal, but I’m having it removed, so there’s at least a chance! If I didn’t, I’d be dead in a couple of months. I’m opting for the surgery!” He leaned back in his seat, “I’m a Scot, after all! I won’t go down without a fight!”

I phoned Oliver later and told him the news, too stunned to feel any emotion. He didn’t have much to offer on the subject. Oncology was not his speciality. We ended up talking about taking a trip to Paris later in the season, just for fun. Just the two of us. He made me laugh like he always did. How odd, I thought. I was fifty-one years old, lying in my old bed in my old bedroom, whispering to Oliver Dickinson on the telephone, covering my mouth so my giggles wouldn’t wake my father. Life truly does repeat itself.

As we said goodnight, he promised, “I’ll ring you up as soon as I’m done with work. At lunch, maybe, if I can.”

I thought of the boy who worked at the flour mill in Newtown who always rushed to phone me after work. I wished he were rushing to catch a train instead to see me just like he did then. But I didn’t say it. Instead I sighed, “I love you, Ollie.”

“I love you, Just Silvia. I’m glad you’re not hurt or ticked off.”

“No, Sweetie,” I laughed softly, “I’m just fine.”

Lucy and I stayed in Edinburgh, in the house we’d grown up in, while Daddy prepared for his operation. The day he had it we were at the hospital. It took several hours. Lucy cried here and there, paced the halls, phoned Alexander so often I thought he’d tell her to stop, but he never did. I didn’t feel quite so anxious. I sat on the couch in the waiting room and drank coffee from a paper cup while I read a book. On the surface I am sure that I appeared removed, but the truth was that I felt far from it. I wanted that man to live. Not so much because I loved him so much I couldn’t imagine life without him or because, like my sister, I valued life in general so highly. I wanted him to live because I still hadn’t gotten what I wanted out of him yet. He still hadn’t told me about Mum.

The doctor came out of the operating room at about six in the morning to tell us that Dad had come through his surgery successfully. “We got the kidney,” He said with a tired smile, “And it looks like we got all the cancer with it. It’s going to be a rough road, but this part is over.”

Lucy and I were exhausted. We took a taxi back to the house. It was still inside as we entered, like there was no life in there at all. It smelled faintly like pine needles and coffee. The boards creaked beneath my feet as I walked into the kitchen.

Lucy followed behind me. She stretched her arms over her head and yawned loudly. She shifted her weight from side to side, “Well, I reckon we should go to sleep.”

An idea had suddenly swept me. I turned to her and put my hands on my hips, more awake than I’d been all night. “You go ahead, Lucy,” I told her, “I’m going to go into the attic.”

“For what?” She made a face. Her nose twisted and her bottom lip poked out just a bit. Lucy had always been afraid of the attic.

“You don’t have to come,” I laughed, “But I want to have a look. There have to be… things there…” I trailed off, then said the rest quickly, “That I want to see.”

“Like what?” She blinked, looking at me as if I were out of my skull.

“Oh, Lucy!” I stamped my foot, “Things that were Mummy’s! You know he’s hidden them! I want to see!”

“Mum’s?” She looked confused.

“Lu, I know you were little and you don’t remember her, but I do! I think I do! I might! I think about her all the time lately and I wonder. I think I remember things, but I’m not sure and if I can find something…anything…that was hers maybe I’ll be able to remember more.”

My little sister nodded with sudden understanding, “All right,” She answered gently, “Do you want company?”

“That’s up to you. You’re tired, aren’t you?”

She grinned. Lucy was forty-six years old, but she was still beautiful, especially when she smiled. “Nothing coffee can’t fix!” She swore as she glanced at the machine on the counter, “You taught me that!”

My sister and I tore through that attic and searched for any remnants of our mother.

“I feel naughty," She told me as she flipped open a dusty hat box, “Like I’m not supposed to be doing this."

“He wouldn’t like it," I agreed, “But I don’t really care. She belongs to us, too, Sissy," I felt a ping of anger spread through my chest and run up my neck. Heat spread across my face, “She belongs to us as well. He can’t keep her to himself anymore. It’s not fair."

Lucy nodded and began to thumb through the contents of the box. After several minutes, she paused, “Oh, my,“ She said softly, running her fingers gently over a post card, “Have a look.“

She handed it to me. It was a glossy black post card with a picture of red wine and the words, “J’taime”. I flipped it over and read what was written on the back.

“Dear Philip, Paris is no good without you. I miss you. Hurry. Love forever, Sharon.“ I checked the post date. They were eighteen years old.

My father had told me once that they’d lived in Paris briefly after they were married. I read the words again, “Look at the date. It was right after they were married.”

Lucy took the card from my hand, read it and grinned, “Let’s see what else we can find.”

There wasn’t much else. Some old photos, many reminders of our childhoods, some of Gran’s gloves and hats, but not much of our mother. Not much at all.

Daddy came home a week later. Oliver and Alexander came on the weekends to help out. After two more weeks Daddy told us he was fine with his nurses and more or less tossed us out. Relieved, we returned to our lives and our husbands.

“Did you ask him about your mther?” Oliver asked me.

“No, I didn’t want to upset him, especially considering what he’d been through.”

Ollie didn’t ask anything else.

I put the post card I had stolen from him in a glass frame and I hung it in our bedroom on the wall beside photos of our children when they were little.

A year passed. I spoke to Dad maybe three or four times, but I asked him nothing. Lucy came to the wood one day all alone. Her eyes were wet and swollen. “I just spoke to a doctor, Sil," Her bottom lip quivered, “He was at a football game and he collapsed."

“Dad?" I felt my heart stop, “Is he all right?"

“Oh, Sil! He’s all right! Sort of! He’s home, but the cancer’s back!" She wailed, “It’s in his lungs this time! Stage three again! Oh, Sil…it’s bad! It‘s so bad! We have to go!”

The two of us drove again to Edinburgh. With no time to wait, he was in surgery when we arrived. Half of one lung was coming out and a quarter of another, plus he was going to have to undergo chemotherapy and radiation. Oliver and Alexander followed after the next evening, both of them uncharacteristically quiet, even as the four of us sat in Daddy‘s kitchen and played cards to pass the time while we waited for word from the hospital.

Of course I was upset about Dad having cancer again and I was worried about him having the operation, but I wasn’t thinking about that so much as I was that I hadn’t asked him what I wanted to know. Damn it! I decided that I wasn’t going to allow him to die without telling me everything he knew about her. He was going to give her back to me. He had to. I was going to make him and I didn’t care if he liked it or not.

Oliver was the only one who knew my plan. I woke up early eight days after his operation and left by myself for the hospital so I could see Daddy alone. He was in his bed, pale and weak, in a green gown with oxygen shoved up his nose. I had hardened myself to it before I got there. “Daddy?” I pulled a chair up to the bed, “How are you?”

“Silvia!” He did his best to smile, “You’re here!”

“I am,” I replied softly. “Tell me, Daddy, are you up for talking?”

“It’s not so easy to breathe,” He admitted, “But I can. What do you want to talk about?”

I was terrified. I felt exactly like I did that night in the kitchen when he’d glared at me and I’d been scolded and sent to my room. I felt stupid and small and ashamed. But I wasn’t a confused five year old child. I wasn’t small or stupid and I had no reason to be ashamed. I was angry. I knew I shouldn’t be. I knew it wasn’t proper, but there he was in his bed, half dead, doing what he could to smile, and all I could think of was the cold look he’d given me that night I’d wandered into the kitchen. Part of me wanted to cry. Part of me wanted to punch his face.

I wasn’t kind or gentle about asking him. I leaned forward and placed my hands squarely on my bare knees, looked him in the eye, and I came right out with it. “No more bullshit, Dad. I don’t want any excuses, I don’t want any lies. You’ve dodged cancer once and it doesn’t look like you’re going to have an easy time doing it the second. You have information I want.“

“What are you? Interpol?” I couldn’t tell if he was annoyed or trying to be funny. “What do you want to know? “

“I need you to tell me about my mother.”

He looked very confused, “What?”

“You’re dying,” I said coldly, “Whether you survive this and beat the cancer or not, you’ll die sooner or later and when you do, you’re going to take all that’s left of my mother with you and leave me without her forever. I’ve let you have her all to yourself all my life, now you’re going to give her back to me. Do you understand, Daddy?” I was shaking. I leaned forward some more, moved to the edge of my chair and hissed, “You’ve had her long enough! You’re not going to die and take her with you! I won’t allow it!”

My father looked older than I could ever have imagined someone looking. He slouched with a sigh. “Well, this is not what I expected. All right, Silvia. I’ll tell you all about her. What do you want to know?”

I was taken aback with how easily he’d agreed. “Everything,” I told him, remembering a conversation I’d had with Alexander’s first wife, Melissa, years ago, when she’d used the same words to get information from me, “I want to know everything.”

“All right,” Daddy’s voice was soft, shallow, short of power for lack of breath, “She was beautiful, Silvia. She looked like an angel, but she liked to break rules. Never anything bad, mind you, just little things. Like she’d chew gum in class, but keep it hidden in her cheek. She’d keep pens. She had thousands of pens. And shoes. The girl couldn’t get enough shoes.“

I vaguely remembered the closet in my father’s bedroom being filled with ladies shoes. When I was small I would go in there and slip my tiny feet into them and try to walk. I recalled stumbling around quite a bit and banging into a dressing table.

“She didn’t like to be inside much, especially in the summer,” He continued, “She never wanted to stay home if she could be someplace else. She liked to sneak out of her house at night to come and see me when we were dating. I worked at a meat shop. It was freezing in there. I was always covered in muck, but she‘d ride her bicycle all the way out there about five miles and sit on a stool and talk to me all night long. She was very bright,” He was looking at me, but I could tell he didn’t really see me at all, “She knew all sorts of things. She was never boring to listen to and even when she talked too much it was all right by me.”