The Remedy for Regret (19 page)

Dayton, Ohio

M
y flight from St. Louis is early, landing in Dayton’s airport fifteen minutes before it’s expected. My dad will no doubt be a little late in coming to get me. It’s a habit of his to never allow quite enough time to get anywhere. But I don’t mind the few extra minutes I will have to collect my luggage and my thoughts.

The last few days have been incredibly meaningful to me in so many ways. On the drive back to St. Louis I told Blair more than I thought I would. I didn’t tell her everything, though. I knew if I did she would feel differently about my father and I didn’t want her to. I did tell her I felt like I needed to visit with my Dad about some things that had been bothering me for a long time. When Blair had asked, “What kind of things?” I had told her it had to do with my mother’s death and the fact that my father and I never talk about it. She didn’t say anymore after that. I think it seemed too personal a matter to inquire any more and I was glad for her insight. I didn’t want to tell her much more than that, anyway.

Then I told her of my plans to go to England to find whoever is left of my mother’s family and to resolve that broken relationship.

She was thoughtful for a moment and then she turned to me.

“Sort of like returning a note and a locket of your own, huh?” she said.

Yes, I had said. It will be very much like that.

I spent three days with Blair and the girls in St. Louis in their spacious house since I couldn’t leave for Dayton until the day of the party—my early presence would have surely have given something away and I didn’t want to spoil the surprise Zane had been planning for Shelley. I could’ve gone home to Chicago for those three days, and as much as I missed Simon, I felt anxious about breaking my momentum with a trip to the place where the rest of my life waits. I want to return to Chicago with everything behind me.

They were three very relaxing days, just what I needed to mentally prepare myself for my trip to Dayton. Dad was surprised, I think, when I called him from St. Louis after we got back to tell him I had changed my mind about coming to the party. He seemed pleased, though, and we made plans then for him to pick me up at the airport in Dayton this afternoon and to then drop me off at some friends’ house until the party.

I had hung up after talking with my Dad and I was sitting in that beautiful sunny room where I had found Blair the morning after Brad had died; that morning that now seems like ages in the past but in reality was only two weeks ago. I had heard the front door open and shut and then Blair had come into the room and I noticed she was holding a Federal Express envelope in her hand. She had a tight and nervous smile on her lips and she said nothing as she came to me and held out the envelope.

I didn’t take it right away because I wasn’t expecting anything from Federal Express and I thought maybe she had just gotten some startling news that she couldn’t tell me about in words.

“I want you to have this.” Blair nodded to the envelope in her hand.

“What is it?” I took the envelope from her.

“It’s my way of saying thanks for helping me put things back where they belong. And my way of helping you do the same.”

I had reached into the envelope and pulled out its contents. In my hand I held a round-trip, first class airline ticket to London, a British rail pass good for a month and confirmed reservations for a room at the Randolph Hotel in Oxford for thirty days.

I was very glad to already be sitting at that moment. I felt quite shaken and I could think of nothing to say or do except to just stare at those tickets.

“You can stay longer if you want,” Blair said. “Or less. I just thought a month would be about as long as you would want to be gone. We can change it if you want.”

“Blair.” My voice sounded breathy and weak. “This is too much! I don’t see how I can accept it.”

“It’s not too much.” Blair sat down next to me. “It’s nothing compared to what you did for me. You dropped everything for me when I asked you to. And you never complained once. About anything.”

I gazed at the tickets in my hand.

“Tess, let me do this for you, please?” Blair pleaded.

For a moment there I wondered how often Blair has the opportunity to plead for anything. But the thought of her spending thousands of dollars on me quickly re-consumed my thoughts.

“It is so much money.” I shook my head.

“That depends on who you talk to, Tess,” she said calmly, reminding me gently that she is a rich widow worth millions. “Please take them.”

I had turned to her and hugged her tight then, murmuring my thanks.

Even now, two days later, I’m still amazed by Blair’s generosity to me. And reminded that this ability of hers to see a material need and meet it is something I never understood or appreciated about Blair until now. I remember how quick she was to spend her allowance on a can of infant formula and a package of diapers that hot July morning that sealed our friendship. I’m awed that she was this way even before she had money.

From the bench in baggage claim where I’m seated I suddenly see my father weaving his way toward me. He looks the same as he did at Christmas, the last time I saw him. He is wearing khaki pants and a button-down chambray shirt with no collar. His hair is mostly gray these days and he still wears it cropped close to his head even though he hasn’t had to have a regulation hair cut in ten years. As he nears me I see he has the beginnings of a goatee. It will look nice on him when it is fully grown out.

I stand and he comes to me, breathless and smiling. A quick embrace, a peck on the cheek and then he reaches down to grab the handle of my suitcase.

“Sorry I am late!’ he says. “Traffic is already bad at three-thirty. Can you believe it?”

He starts to walk briskly back in the direction he came, toward the short term parking area

“It’s okay, Dad.” I rush to keep up with him.

“Flight okay?”

“Yes. Uneventful. The best kind.”

“Good,” he says, going through a set of doors that take us to the parking lot. “I’m still so surprised you are able to come after all.”

“Yeah. Funny how that worked out. Blair and I figured it would take several weeks or even months to find Tim. I never would have guessed it would only take a few days.”

“Well, that’s amazing really,” my dad says. “Must have been very nice for the three of you to see that boy again. And each other, too.”

We reach his BMW and my dad quickly places my suitcase in his trunk. We get in and make our way out of the parking lot and the airport itself and onto a busy divided highway. My dad asks me if I was able to see the inside of our old house when I was in Blytheville.

“No,” I answer. “No one is renting it right now and it is all locked up. Things are kind of different there with the air base gone, Dad. It’s not like it was when we lived there.”

“Yes. Well, life has a way of throwing surprises at you, doesn’t it?” my father says.

Oh yes. Life indeed has a way of doing that.

We head to his clinic about twenty minutes away so that my dad can finish some last details before the weekend. I try to sit quietly in his office and stay out of his way. I notice with a twinge of jealousy that there is a picture of my dad, Shelley and Zane sitting on the credenza behind his desk. It is recent, probably taken within the last year. It shouldn’t seem so odd to me. I have been out of the house for nearly ten years, except for those odd times when I moved back home for a time to sort things out in my head. But it still vexes me anyway and I am again reminded that I’m out of place despite being home. I am closer in age to my stepmother than I am to my half-brother. I look at that picture and it reminds me how abnormal that is. I can feel the courage that I came to Dayton with start to dissolve as I stare at the photo so I pick up a medical journal sitting on an end table to distract me. I am reading about new drug therapies for rheumatoid arthritis when my dad breezes in a few minutes after five and announces he’s ready to go.

“Okay, I think we can get out of here.” He turns off his desk lamp and grabs his keys. “Sorry I can’t bring you home right away with me, Tess.”

“No problem. I don’t want to spoil the surprise. Besides I haven’t seen Gerrit and Eva and the boys in a long time. It will be nice to see them again.”

Nice is kind of a generous word. Gerrit and Eva are my Dad’s and Shelley’s closest friends in Dayton and I guess I know them fairly well. But their kids are in Zane’s age group, not mine. I used to baby-sit their boys. I won’t mind spending a couple of hours with them until the party, but every hour I spend here in Dayton without doing what I came here to do seems like wasted time.

“Great. They’re excited to see you, too. We’re having the party at Cristobal’s. Did I tell you that?”

“Yes.”

Shelley’s favorite restaurant.

“You and the other guests are supposed to get there by seventy-twenty, so make sure Gerrit and Eva get out the door by seven.”

“Sure.” I mentally move very fast past the image of me being one of the other guests.

“Shel and Zane and I will get there about seven-thirty. All she is expecting is dinner for three tonight.”

I smile wanly, thinking of all the surprises that await debut. We start to walk through the darkened hallways of the clinic, which has been officially closed for half an hour already.

“Bye, Dr. Longren! Nice meeting you, Tess,” says Renee, the last front-office worker to leave. She is turning off computer monitors as we walk past her.

“Bye, Renee,” my dad calls out. “Have a nice weekend.”

“Nice to meet you,” I say, making sure our eyes meet.

“Have fun at the party!” she says, smiling broadly.

We step outside into the late afternoon sunshine and again head over to my dad’s car.

“So how many people are coming to the party?” I ask, getting into the car and purposely not saying how many other guests.

“Well, the guest list was Zane’s department. He wanted there to be forty guests for his mom’s fortieth birthday. So there you go.”

“Oh. But he wasn’t expecting me to come. I’ll make it forty-one.”

“Oh, Zane will be all right. I am sure he will just be glad you are here. I haven’t had a private moment alone with him to tell him you are coming. I’m sure he will thrilled you came.”

I suddenly wish I could just tell my Dad right now, at this moment, what I need to tell him—before the party—and then he can just take me back to the airport. I can then go about the business of rebuilding my life and he can do whatever he will do with my unrequested forgiveness. I don’t want to be the unplanned-for guest, the daughter from the other life, the daughter who is not in the family photo.

But I have already promised myself I will say nothing until after the party tonight, probably not until tomorrow so that my dad can never blame me for ruining Shelley’s birthday. And I won’t ever be able to blame myself.

When I arrive with Gerrit and Eva and their boys at the restaurant, my first impulse is to just find a quiet corner and wait out the evening. I know only a few of the other people in the room. Most of the guests are friends my Dad and Shelley made after I graduated and moved away. Eva sits by me, sensing my unease.

“It’s so wonderful that you were able to come!” she says and I just smile and nod.

Fifteen minutes later, a guest playing lookout shushes us into silence. A waiter leads my Dad and Shelley to the back room of the restaurant where we are all waiting. Shelley’s reaction to the room full of people yelling “Surprise!” is probably all that Zane had hoped it would be. He is beaming as he looks at her, measuring her response. When Shelley’s eyes meet mine, her face breaks into a wide smile and she makes her way to me. I feel an instant pang of guilt for coming to Dayton this weekend with ulterior motives. I can see that she is touched that I am here. Zane follows her with an equally amazed look on his face.

“Tess, this is so great! I can’t believe you are here.” She hugs me tight.

“Happy birthday, Shelley,” I say to her, returning the hug.

She is quickly drawn into another embrace from another guest and I turn to Zane. He doesn’t volunteer a hug—no nearly-thirteen-year-old boy usually does—but he warmly accepts one from me.

“I thought you couldn’t come!’ he whispers to me.

“I didn’t think I would be able to. But my plans changed,” I reply in a whisper. “Great job on the party, little brother.”

He cannot hide his expansive grin.

The evening passes quickly enough. We enjoy a nice meal, dessert and coffee and then a few guests put on a skit about growing old. It’s funny, I suppose, but a lot of the jokes are ones I don’t quite understand since they refer to funny things Shelley has said or done, and I haven’t been around to hear or see them.

When we finally leave the restaurant it is nearly ten o’clock. We get home and spend an hour or so chatting in the living room. I give Shelley a pair of summer pajamas I bought for her at the Peabody the morning we left Memphis. Zane tells me about his baseball games so far and lets me know there is a home game tomorrow. I tell everyone about how Blair, Jewel and I found Tim. Shelley asks about Simon and I make a concerted effort not to look in my dad’s direction as I tell her he is doing much better and has gone back to work.