The Remedy for Regret (20 page)

Zane starts to yawn and we take the cue from him that it’s time to call it a night. We head upstairs, Zane to his bedroom, my Dad and Shelley to theirs, and me to my old room which is now the guest room and I can’t help feeling like nothing has really changed.

I fall asleep wondering who am I to think I can start changing things now.

I
n the morning when I awaken, I lie in the bed that used to be mine and consider when I should talk with my dad. The later in the day, the better, I think. I don’t want to have to fill the hours between the time I talk with him and the time I leave with ordinary small talk. I have a gnawing suspicion that we will both feel a little uncomfortable afterward. Maybe more than a little. Perhaps I should tell him just before I get on the plane. Maybe we can leave a little early for the airport tomorrow. I can offer to take him out to breakfast. We can find a place that has seating outside, a place where there is relative privacy—where there is just enough outside world around it such that neither one of us will say or do something we will later wish we had not.

When I come downstairs, Dad is gulping down a glass of orange juice. He has a stubby racquet in his hands and is obviously dressed for a game of racquetball. Shelley is standing next to him holding out a toasted English muffin.

“’Morning, Tess.” He sets his glass down and takes the muffin from Shelley.

“Sleep well?” Shelley says to me, smiling.

“Yes. Fine.” I watch my dad rushing to get out of the kitchen.

“I’ll be home in time to take everyone to Zane’s baseball game,” he says, giving me a peck on the cheek like he did in the airport. Short, sweet and obligatory.

“Okay,” Shelley says and I can tell she senses it, too: My dad is anxious to get away. I am sure she doesn’t know why. She is obviously confused as to why her husband seems leery of being in the same room with his only daughter. I am not confused. My dad is afraid any prolonged conversation with me will lead to the one he had with Simon. Better to avoid deep conversation altogether. My eyes follow him out the door. And Shelley’s eyes are on me.

“Are you going to visit any of your friends today?” she says, clearing her throat. Clearing the air.

“No, I don’t think so.” I walk to the coffee pot and pour myself a cup. “Most of my closest friends have all moved away. And I am only here until tomorrow morning. I’ll just spend it here with you guys. If that’s okay.”

“Of course it’s okay. Why don’t you and Zane and I go to the mall this morning. He needs some new summer clothes and we can have lunch out. Sound like fun?”

“Sure.” I am only biding time anyway.

It actually ends up being a very enjoyable morning with Shelley and my brother. Zane doesn’t seem to mind shopping for clothes with me and his mom, which surprises me, and he and I have a great time picking out some outrageous summer outfits he has no intention of buying or wearing. The stiff, constricted air that seemed to fill the kitchen is not present as we shop and later enjoy Chinese food in the food court.

As we eat I realize that the older I get the more I like Shelley. I wish I could think of her as a mother figure, but that feeling has always eluded me. Even when she was planning her wedding, back when I was fourteen and she, twenty-six, I had wanted to see her constant attempts to draw me into the planning—like making me a bridesmaid instead of a junior bridesmaid—as the beginnings of a mother-daughter relationship. But it felt more like the beginnings of a girl-to-girl friendship. And I didn’t want another friend. I wanted a mother. No. I wanted my mother—the one who bore me, the one whose body sheltered mine, the one whose face resembled my own.

I even tried to manufacture the feeling but it backfired in my face. About a month after the wedding, after Shelley had moved in and her things began to lie around the house like mine and my dad’s, I got caught looking in her purse. I didn’t hear my Dad and Shelley came into the kitchen from the garage where they had been staining a dresser. I looked up from my snooping to see them staring at me.

My father was appalled, embarrassed that his fourteen-year-old daughter would invade someone’s privacy like that, or worse, that I might actually steal from his new wife. I was merely satisfying my own curiosity about Shelley, trying to clothe her with motherliness by checking out the contents of her purse. Shelley, I think, must have known that I wasn’t thinking of stealing anything from her, that I was trying to get to know her better but in a rather tactless way. She looked surprised, but not offended.

“What do you think you are doing?” my dad had demanded and I remember thinking then, as I still do, that that was a very thoughtless question.

My face was afire with shame and I could not answer him.

“Maybe you were just looking for a tissue or some gum?” Shelley had said, trying to soften the heavy air around us.

I could not tell either one of them what I thought I was doing. It barely made any sense to me.

“I was just looking for some lip balm,” I said, wishing my face didn’t feel so hot and that my feelings didn’t feel so raw.

“You should have asked first,” my father had said, his eyes still shining with anger. Or maybe just ordinary shame. I was his daughter after all.

“It’s okay, Mark,” Shelley had said. “I think I have an extra Chap-Stick I can give you, Tess. It hasn’t even been opened yet. Okay?”

She had motioned for me to follow her into the room she now shared with my dad. And I followed her, walking past my dad and willing him to look upon me with eyes that said, “I understand why you did it. It’s okay.”

But he didn’t look at me at all.

I didn’t speak to him the rest of the day. Or maybe it was that he didn’t speak to me.

After lunch at the food court, Zane announces he wants to go to a music store but he tells Shelley and me that he really wants to go in alone. This I can completely understand, and I think Shelley does, too. We sit under a fake potted palm to wait for him as he goes inside the store.

“Tess, is there anything I can do for you?” Shelley says as soon as Zane is out of earshot. “You seem like you have a lot on your mind.”

I smile weakly as I tell her she is pretty smart. I do have a lot on my mind.

“I know I can never replace your mother, and I have stopped trying to, but if there is anything I can do…”

She stops there because what else can she say?

“It’s not your fault, Shelley,” I say quickly. My throat feels thick and weighted.

“What’s not my fault?”

“You have always been wonderful to me. And you’ve been wonderful for my dad. He’s as happy now as I have ever seen him.”

She can see that something is coming and she simply looks at me and waits for it.

“There is something wrong, but it has nothing to do with you. And no matter what happens, I want you to know that.”

A look of alarms splashes across her face. “What do you mean, ‘no matter what happens’?”

I take a big breath to help control my racing thoughts and it occurs to me that she may be able to help me after all.

“I need to talk my dad about something we should’ve talked about years ago. We should’ve talked about it before he even met you. He’s probably not going to want to and he might even be really angry with me afterward.”

Shelley’s eyes are wide with concern.

“But I can’t live the way I have been living anymore, Shelley. I have to talk to him. Even if he won’t listen, I have to talk to him.”

“This is about your mother, isn’t it?” she whispers, and her eyes look misty. The way mine feel.

“I think he blames me for what happened to her,” I say. “I don’t think he wants to or ever intended to, but he does.”

Two tears slip down her cheeks. “I think he does, too,” she whispers.

Two tears slip down mine.

“Tess, what are you going to do?”

Despite her empathy for me as the wounded, she is concerned for the man she loves. She is afraid I will wound him back.

“I am going to tell him I forgive him. I won’t live with bitterness. Not after seeing what it did to him. What it did to me.”

She wipes her eyes and nods.

“All these years I wanted to say something, do something,” she says, not looking at me. “And I never did. I thought he hid it so well. If I had known you knew—”

“I didn’t. I didn’t know until a week ago that I felt the way I did because of him. Up until then I really thought it was my fault.”

“Oh, God,” Shelley says, shock filling her eyes.

“But it wasn’t,” I tell her, and I take her hand because her pain moves me, just like Corinthia said was true of me. “It wasn’t my fault. I didn’t kill my mother. It wasn’t my fault.”

There are people walking past us in every direction and a few of them can’t help but look at the two women crying and talking in quiet voices in the middle of a shopping mall.

We dry our eyes and try to gain back our composure.

“When are you going to talk to him?” Shelley says.

“Tomorrow morning I want to leave early for the airport. I want to take him out to breakfast. I may need your help with this. When I suggest it, he may want you and Zane to come, too, and you will have to decline. Can you think of a way to do that?’

Shelley nods her head.

“We’ll find a place where we can talk but it won’t be so private that it will make him uncomfortable. I’ll arrange it so we will only have twenty minutes to talk. If we are both wishing we had more time when it is time to get me to the airport, I will call the airline and ask for a later flight out. But… I don’t think that will happen.”

Again Shelley nods her head.

“He might be upset or distracted when he gets home,” I continue. “He may not want to talk about it. He may say absolutely nothing at all. I don‘t know if you can think a certain way for twenty-eight years and then just change your mind about it in twenty minutes. Especially when you’ve been in the wrong.”

Shelley is rubbing her forehead and shaking her head.

“I’m afraid for you, Tess,” she finally says. “I mean, I am incredibly proud of you for not reacting in anger or resentment, but I am afraid he will not accept it.”

“I know,” I say. “But that will be his burden to live with if that is what he chooses. I am done living with it.”

“You are very brave,” she says, looking at me intently.

But I say nothing to this. I don’t feel brave. I feel desperate.

“I wish you could stay a little longer,” Shelley continues.

“I think it’s better to leave for a while. Besides, I want to mend some other fences. I am leaving for England on Monday. I am going to try and find my mother’s brother and his family.”

Shelley looks wide-eyed at me. “You are?”

“I’ve never even met them, Shelley. It was all a part of that dark thing called bitterness that I grew up with. Dad never talked about my mother’s family, never called them or wrote to them and whenever I would ask about my British relatives he would always tell me to leave lifeless things buried.”

“I am so sorry, Tess,” Shelley says. “I should’ve intervened. I could tell something wasn’t right.”

“It wasn’t your responsibility. He probably never wanted to talk with you about it either.”

There are a few moments of silence between us.

“So do you have an address for Martin? Do you know where to go?”

“No. I am hoping I can get a little information out of Dad before I tell him all that other stuff.”

“So he doesn’t know you are going?”

“Not yet.”

“I know where Martin’s address is,” Shelley says softly, looking down at her shoes. “I can get it to you later today. It is old, I don’t know if Martin still lives there. But I know where in the desk I have seen it. You might want it just in case, Tess. In case he pretends he has no idea where Martin is.”

I sit in stunned silence and Shelley raises her head to look at me.

“Thank you,” I say, wanting to say more, but unable to.

“You are welcome,” she says and the care and concern on her face reminds me very much of what I used to imagine a mother’s face would look like, looking down at me. I see her purse resting by her feet and I can’t help but remember that long ago day.

“Shelley?”

“Yes.”

“Do you remember that day, after you and Dad were married, and you guys caught me looking in your purse?”

“Yes.”

“I wasn’t looking for lip balm.”

She pauses a moment and then asks, “What were you looking for?”

“I was just looking to see what was important to you. When I was little I used to think a mother’s purse was like an extension of her; that it carried all her wonderfully scented secrets and treasures. I just couldn’t explain it to you then.”

Shelley smiles at me as she understands what I am trying to say. She reaches down, picks up her purse and places it in my lap. Her eyes say Have at it!

I start to giggle and so does she. Zane comes out of the store to find us laughing and wiping our eyes and with his mother’s purse on my lap.

“What are you guys laughing at?” he says.

But neither Shelley nor I have a clue how to answer him.

We spend the afternoon at Zane’s baseball game. He plays well, earning four RBIs but his team loses in the final inning. Zane takes the loss well. I think he is just pleased I saw him play and that he didn’t make any errors. After the game we go to a pizza restaurant Zane is fond of and when we return home, Shelley challenges Zane and I and my dad—who declines—to a game of Monopoly. I have the feeling she is keeping Zane up late on purpose. It is nearly midnight when we all start yawning. Shelley and I declare Zane the winner and she asks my Dad to tuck him in while she and I put the game away.

As soon as they are upstairs, Shelley gets to her feet and tells me to keep putting the game pieces away, that she will be right back. When she returns a few minutes later, she hands me a small piece of paper. I glance at it quickly before I put it in my pants pocket. It reads:
Martin Bowker, 14 Tanglewood Close, Oxford.

S
unday morning dawns bright and sunny. I wake with the sun but I do not get up right away. I lie under the covers and contemplate what the day holds for me and I attempt a prayer for help. Corinthia would think it’s the smartest thing I have done in a long time. But I’m not seasoned at it and I am not sure I am making any sense. I think it must be enough to simply say “Help me say it, help him hear it,” because that is about all that escapes in whispers off my lips.

At seven-thirty, I get up. The house is quiet. I shower, dress, dry my hair and head downstairs. Shelley is in the kitchen in her robe making coffee.

“He’s coming downstairs in a few minutes,” she says quietly. “He suggested I make pancakes.”

Shelley says nothing more and starts to load dishes from the ice cream we ate last night into the dishwasher.

I hear my Dad coming down the stairs. He seems startled to see me.

“Well, you’re up in plenty of time,” he says, smiling. But it is a nervous smile.

Shelley keeps her back to us, fiddling with dishes in the sink.

“I’d like to take you out to breakfast before I have to leave, Dad,” I say.

“Oh. You don’t have to do that, Tess. We can eat here.”

“Yeah, I know we can. But I just thought it would be nice for you and me to do this together. I am sure Shelley doesn’t mind.”

“Me?” Shelley says. “Not at all. Sounds like a great idea.”

She turns back to the sink.

“Well, maybe we should all go,” my Dad says.

Shelley turns slowly around like she is pretending it might be a good idea but she then she acts like she is quickly changing her mind. It is all part of the ruse.

“Actually, I don’t think Zane will want to get up this early. We kept him up pretty late last night. You two go. I’d rather stay here and read the Sunday paper in my pajamas anyway.”

She turns again to the sink.

“Then it’s all settled then,” I say. “I’ll just quickly go and give Zane a kiss goodbye and then tell him to go back to sleep.”

“Oh, I’m sure that would mean a lot to him,” Shelley says cheerfully. “Mark, do you want to go get Tess’s suitcase? I’ll put some coffee in a travel mug for you.”

Shelley turns to the coffee pot and I leave the room before my Dad can say or do anything different. As I take the stairs to go to Zane’s room I hear him ask Shelley if she’s sure she wouldn’t like to come also.

I head to Zane’s bedroom door and listen for a few seconds. There is no sound. I slowly open the door. He is sound asleep, his face toward me in the bluish light of his room. I walk over to his bed and brush a few stray hairs off his forehead. I cannot think of anything that has happened in his life that would bring him the kind of sadness I have known. And I am glad. It is funny that I have never really been jealous of Zane in a pathetic kind of way. It has been more like I have always envied his easy happiness, but I don’t wish he didn’t have it and that I did. I lean down and press my lips to his forehead. He opens one eye.

“Hey,” he says sleepily.

“Hey yourself,” I say back. “I gotta go. I just wanted to say goodbye.”

“What time is it?”

“A little after eight. You should go back to sleep, okay? I just didn’t want to leave without saying goodbye.”

“Mmmm,” he says.

“Bye, Zany Zane.”

“Bye, Testy Tess,” he says lazily, eyes closed. But his mouth is upturned slightly as we exchange these names we have for each other.

“I love you,” I whisper, wondering if I said it loud enough for him to hear.

“Yep,” he says back. He heard me. And answered back in his own way that he loves me, too.

My dad is waiting impatiently at the door to the garage when I come back into the kitchen. Shelley pretends not to notice and comes to me, folding me into her embrace.

“Thanks for coming to my birthday party!” she says. “And thanks for the Peabody Hotel PJ’s. I can’t wait until it warms up enough so I can wear them.”

“You’re welcome.” I return the hug and whisper, “Thanks,” in her ear.

I start to follow my Dad out to the car.

“Say hi to Simon for us!” Shelley says as she stands at the door and watches us get into my dad’s car.

“I will! Bye, Shelley.” I give her a look that my father can’t see. A look that says, “Wish me luck!”

She smiles back at me and nods. Shelley watches as we back out of the garage and make our way onto the street. She waves until I can no longer see her.

“So where do want to go?” my dad says, looking at the road, not at me.

I suddenly decide I want to be at the airport when I tell him what I came here to tell him. Despite what Shelley thinks, I’m not brave. I want to be able to just walk away when I need to go. I don’t want to get back in the car and ride in strained silence to the airport.

“You know what, Dad? Let’s just get some doughnuts and coffee to go and eat at the airport. Then we won’t have to rush.”

“Fine with me,” he says.

Traffic is light but we are both quiet as we run through the nearest Dunkin Donuts and then on to the airport. I make a few comments about Zane’s game and Shelley’s party. I am tempted to tell him I plan to marry Simon later this summer, but that will lead us too quickly down a road I am not ready to travel just yet.

We arrive at the airport and my Dad finds a parking space in the short-term lot. Inside the terminal, I check my suitcase and then we walk to a seating area near the security checkpoint. A few other travelers are seated nearby.

We sit down and I open our little bag of doughnuts. I watch as my dad reaches in for the maple Long John he picked out. I have no appetite.

I have forty-five minutes before my flight leaves and there is no line at the security checkpoint. So far so good.

“Tastes pretty good,” my Dad says, taking a bite and then a sip from his cup.

I fidget in my seat.
Help me say it. Help him hear it.

“You’re not eating,” my dad says, his own mouth full.

“I will,” I attempt a sip of coffee. It is too hot for me. It burns my tongue.

“So you must be anxious to get back your job.”

“Yes,” I absently reply. “No. I mean, I am not going back to work right away.”

“Oh?”

“I wanted to share a couple of things with you Dad, before I left. That’s why I wanted to have breakfast with you. Alone.”

He just looks at me.

“I am not going back to work right away because I am taking a little trip.”

“Another one?”

“I’ve decided to go to England. I am leaving tomorrow. I want to see where Mom grew up, where you and Mom met. I… I want to see if she still has family there.”

“What are you talking about?” He leans back in his chair. It almost sounds like he is saying, “What do you think you are doing?”

“I want to see where Mom grew up, Dad. And I want to see my uncle Martin.”

“This is the craziest thing I have ever heard,” he says, half-smiling. “Are you telling me you are just going to get on a plane tomorrow and go to England? Just like that? Have you even
talked
to Martin?”

“No, I haven’t —”

“Yeah, and you know why you haven’t? Because he wrote you off a long time ago, Tess.”

He must be angry. Or afraid. I’m sure he can’t know how much what he just said hurts me.

“Maybe he did at one time, but people sometimes do things they later regret.”

“Well, why hasn’t he tried to contact you then?”

“Why haven’t I?” I reply right back.

“I’m telling you right now, Tess, you are setting yourself up for heartache.”

I am used to it,
I think in my head. But I don’t say this.

“What if he’s like me?” I say instead. “What if he’s thinking that he has been mistaken all these years? What if he wishes he could go back and do it all over again and this time do it differently? What if he wishes he had stayed in contact with you? With me? What if he wonders all the time what ever became of his sister’s child?”

“Well, why hasn’t he done anything about it?”

“Maybe for the same reason I haven’t. I have been afraid to. I let myself think all these years that because he never did try he never wanted to. I know now you can want something without being brave enough to attempt to have it.”

“You don’t even know where he lives.”

“Do you?” I ask, giving him the opportunity to help me.

“Tess, I haven’t talked to the man in nearly three decades!”

He says nothing about the address I carry in my pocket.

“I’ll manage,” I say.

“This is absurd.” He puts the end of his doughnut down on the table next to him. “Supposing you do find him. What are you going to do if he slams his door in your face?”

“I’ll try again the next day and the next until I have to come home. And there are other things I want to do while I am there.”

“Like what?” my dad says thoroughly perturbed.

“Like visit her grave.”

I don’t have to say whose grave. He knows. He says nothing but his face softens a bit like he almost wishes he could come with me and visit my mother’s grave, too.

“I never got to say hello or goodbye to her, Dad. I want to see the place where she rests. I want to just sit there on the grass and tell her I am there. Tell her what I am like. Tell her I miss her.”

My dad looks away. A vein in his neck is twitching. He looks at his watch. He wants our encounter to be over. But I am not finished.

“Dad—” I begin, but he interrupts me.

“I don’t want to talk about this
here
,” he says curtly.

“You
never
want to talk about this! And you don’t have to do the talking this time. I will.”

“Not
here
,” he says evenly.

“Yes, here.” I match his tone. “I’ll make it brief. I promise you. And when I’m done saying what I have to say, I’m going to get on the plane and go back to Chicago. You don’t have to say anything.”

“Simon told you,” he says, in an almost child-like voice.

“Simon told me nothing. I finally just figured it out.”

“Figured out what?” That vein is twitching away like mad.

“Figured out how hurt you were when Mom died. How you needed to blame someone and you didn’t mean to, but you blamed me. And still do.”

He stiffens and his nostrils flare the tiniest bit. I imagine he must feel a tiny bit like he got just caught—after years of deception—with his hand in a cookie jar.

Or in a purse that doesn’t belong to him.

“You don’t know what you are talking about,” he says, looking away from me.

“Isn’t that why you didn’t talk to me about it when I called you from St. Louis? Simon begged you to ask me about it, didn’t he? He knew the guilt was tearing me up inside. He told you it was destroying me. He begged you to talk to me, to tell me it wasn’t my fault, didn’t he? But you didn’t.”

“It’s none of Simon’s business!”

“But it’s
our
business, Dad. It has always been our business. And you refuse to talk to me about it.”

He looks at me then, and the pain on his face startles me.

“I never
once
told you it was your fault,” he says, his voice breaking on every other word.

Oh, God. This is harder than I thought it would be. He doesn’t understand.

“You didn’t have to say it. I
felt
it,” I say, imploring him with my eyes to search his heart. “With every unspoken word I felt responsible. When you wouldn’t tell me how she died I went looking for the answers. I know how she died! I know it was an embolism. I know pieces of my hair and skin got into her lungs! I know the doctors couldn’t save her.”

“Stop it!’ he whispers and his voice is raspy and uneven.

“Yes, Dad. I want to stop it. That’s exactly what I want to do. I want to stop feeling guilty and I want you to stop feeling bitter. It was no one’s fault, Dad. No one’s. And you and I are just going to have to learn to live with that.”

He looks away, blinking back tears that I’ve never seen my Dad shed. One droplet escapes, though, and he reaches up and flicks it away like it is an annoying mosquito.

“Dad, I want you to know that I understand why you did it. And that you didn’t mean for me to feel this way. I am not angry with you. And I forgive you.”

Another tear forms in his eye and I can see him willing it to stay put.

“You’re going to miss your flight,” he says calmly.

“No, I’m not.”

He swallows and looks down at the table. “Can’t we
please
be done with this?”

When he says this, I feel a deep longing rise to the surface of my soul. “That’s all I have ever wanted, Dad.”

I know he will not apologize. I know he will not say something like, “Oh, Tess! I had no idea you felt like this all these years! I am so sorry. I never meant to hurt you!” But I think the look on his face is communicating something close to this. At least, I can imagine it is. And that gives me the strength I need to rise from the table, gather my things and say goodbye. I expect him to rise, too, but he does not.

“Does Shelley know about this?” he says quietly. His voice sounds like his own again.

“Shelley has always known about this,” I say gently, hoping I have not caused trouble for her.

“I’ll call you when I get back from England,” I continue. “I’ll let you know how it went.”

“I still don’t think it’s a good idea,” he says, slowly rising from his chair.

He looks suddenly aged to me; far more than his fifty-four years.

“I meant what I said. I am not angry with you. And I do forgive you.”

I reach for him and put my arms around his neck. His return embrace is weak and effortless. I wait for the peck on the cheek but it does not come. I give him one instead.

“I love you,” I whisper.

I know how hard it is for him to say the same thing back to me. He doesn’t say it very often. So I am not surprised when the words don’t come.

“Sometimes you remind me so much of her,” he says instead and his return embrace is strengthened just for a second. But he quickly breaks away. As do I. He has never said that to me before.

“Bye, Dad,” I whisper.

He just nods in a sad kind of way and puts his hands in his pockets.

I walk away toward the security checkpoint, stopping to look back at him. He is watching me with that sad look on his face. I wave and he nods and I can’t help but notice that my doughnut and coffee sit untouched on the chair next to mine.

Moments later, as I wait for my plane to begin boarding, I reach into my canvas bag and pull out the photo of my mother that I always carry with me, the one where she is sitting on the steps of their home on Terceira. I have often thought I looked like her and Blair, Jewel and Corinthia all said I favored my mother when I showed them this picture. But Dad had never said anything about it before today. As I gaze at the photo I begin to understand a little more about the man who loved my mother; the man who raised their child after she died and who had to look at that child’s face every day and pretend it did not move him.