The Favorite Daughter

by Patti Callahan Henry

  Their laughter was forced and disjointed.

  “See?” he said. “I do know how to tell a joke.”

  “Yes, Dad, you do.” Colleen wiped her hands on the dish towel and swallowed her rising grief.

  “Grandy,” Rosie said with her wand in the air. “You already told that one.”

  Gavin looked at Rosie and tousled her hair without comment.

  Rosie turned her attention to her aunt. “Aunt Lena, stay here and play with us.”

  “I promised Grandy I would help at the pub.”

  “Please!” Rosie sidled near Colleen and pulled on the edges of her shorts. “Just until we have to go home.” Sadie, still not quite sure of this aunt who had suddenly showed up in their lives, backed away.

  “Let’s not go home.” Rosie fluffed her tutu. “I like it better here.”

  Hallie placed her hands on top of both blond heads. “Girls, Daddy is waiting at home.”

  “I have a joke.” Their dad’s voice filled the room in a bellowing voice.

  Silence fell. The LP hit the end of its recording, the swish-swish-swish of the needle.

  “Dad . . .” Shane walked toward Gavin standing with his palms set on the kitchen table and a smile on his face.

  Gavin continued. “Why did the physics teacher break up with the biology teacher? Because there was no chemistry.” He raised his arms in a V for victory because he’d just told the best joke of his life.

  No one laughed, the room quiet with discomfort and the record continuing to circle silently.

  “Why can’t I ever make my family laugh at my jokes?” Gavin smiled good-naturedly and ambled toward the door. “And you wonder why I take my jokes to the pub.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  Memory is a pulse passing through all created life.

  David Whyte, Consolations

  They couldn’t see her watching and for that reason it felt very much like a movie. The Family: that was what the movie would be called, Colleen surmised. She sat on the back stoop of the house, under the awning, covered in shadow and quiet. It was late morning and the day hadn’t heated up to its full potential and yet sweat trickled down her legs and between her shoulder blades. She held the morning newspaper, the one she’d once written for all those years ago, the one she’d meant to bring out to her dad. Now it was scrunched in her lap, the pages fluttering with the morning breeze.

  Her dad stood beside the shed on the left side of the backyard, handing boxes to a man in work khakis, T-shirt, baseball cap and muddy boots—Walter. The nieces were bouncing around like the ground was a trampoline, talking to them both. Walter took each box from Gavin and set it on the picnic table, then ripped it open. He took out objects one by one—a saw; a fishing reel; a hammer; a rusted knife—and laid them on the table. It was obvious they were sorting what to keep and what to toss.

  And they were laughing. Slowly their words floated toward Colleen.

  “Dad,” Walter said, “what about the fishing competition in November? We could enter that one. It’s a father-son one, but we can get away with it, don’t you think?”

  Gavin laughed and clapped his hand on Walter’s shoulder. “I think we’ve gotten away with it for quite some time.”

  The girls yanked on Walter’s hand, begging him to spin them around until they were dizzy. He grasped each girl in turn under the arms and spun and spun in a big circle, her legs flying out, until she begged to be put down. Afterward, the girls grabbed each other’s hands and walked tipsy through the grass until they both fell down, rolling together like puppies.

  The words they spoke started to overlap as Colleen understood that just because she’d ignored the growing family, just because she’d shut out any information about them at all, it hadn’t meant they weren’t close-knit and loving. To pretend otherwise had been consoling but foolish. Now reality played out on her childhood lawn, next to the dock where Walter had proposed.

  Shane was right—Walter seemed to be a good dad. He leaned down when he spoke to his daughters. He was gentle. His laugh was deep and real. He had taken time off work to help Dad clean out the shed, and he wasn’t doing it in a grudging manner.

  She pulled her knees up close to her chest and sat as quietly as she could, watching a family that belonged to her but wasn’t hers at all in any way that made sense. She cast the blame on Walter, on the man who stood in the sunshine calling Gavin “Dad.” If he hadn’t fallen in love with Hallie. If he hadn’t betrayed her. A conversation from long ago floated across the air of the past. Walter telling her how he had always wanted a family like the Donohues, how when he was a child he’d lain in the bunk bed in his dad’s apartment or in the pullout couch at his mom’s guest house behind her friend’s house, and dreamed of a family just like Lena’s. He’d made them up, he’d said, and then found them living on the banks of the May River in South Carolina. Now maybe, just maybe, none of this had anything to do with love but with Walter finding and needing what he’d missed in childhood, with believing in a fantasy.

  But then again, Colleen thought, as the heat of the morning mixed with the flame of anger, if that was true he would have just stuck with Colleen. So yes, love had something to do with it. He chose the second daughter. Her hands gripped the newspaper so tightly that it tore, the newsprint bleeding black on her damp palms.

  Regret, she discovered, tasted metallic and bright, like biting onto a piece of tinfoil. She wanted to cry but she didn’t dare—what if one of them looked over and saw her? She stood up quietly, wanting to sneak back into the house, back to her computer and her e-mails and her quiet world.

  It wasn’t fair, really. Walter and Hallie were the betrayers and yet they were the happy ones? It wasn’t supposed to work that way. But not much worked the way it was “supposed” to work, because if that were true, her dad would be sharp and bright, playing trivia games at the pub and bantering about local politics instead of being confused about day and time and place.

  “Aunt Lena,” Rosie’s voice called out just as Colleen stood to enter the house. The child ran full bore toward Colleen, her arms out for a hug that was half a lawn away.

  Escape was not an option.

  Colleen received Rosie’s hug with her own. “What’s up?” she asked.

  “Daddy is letting us skip art camp today and taking us to the water park in Savannah. Wanna come?”

  “Where’s your mom?” Colleen glanced around.

  Rosie lifted her first finger and crooked it, wiggling it to draw Colleen near. She whispered, “She’s doing things for that party that’s a secret.”

  “Ah!” Colleen brushed the loose hair from Rosie’s face, feeling again the childhood familiarity of her smile. “I won’t say a word.”

  Colleen stood up straight and turned toward the group, where Gavin and Walter glanced her way but didn’t move, not one inch, as if posing for a photo. Gavin smiled, but Walter’s face appeared warped as though half of it wanted to smile while the other half was unsure.

  Colleen wouldn’t make anyone participate in an awkward moment, least of all herself. She opened the back door and entered the kitchen, Rosie trailing behind wondering if Aunt Lena liked water parks and long slides.

  Safe inside, with the door closed, Colleen smiled at her niece. “I love long slides like you do. But I have to help with the secret party, too. Okay?”

  “Do you think it will be Grandy’s last party?”

  “What?” Colleen’s voice pitched high and Rosie stepped back at the change in tone.

  “I heard Mommy say that to Daddy. That maybe it was his last party, and she wants it to be so perfectly perfect. It’s not his last, right?”

  “Oh, Rosie, I don’t think so. Your mom just wants things to be good for this one. I know one thing for sure—it is his last sixtieth birthday!” Inside Colleen seethed at her sister’s carelessness. Yes, careless, that was what Hallie was. Wi
th hearts and sisterhood and love.

  Rosie nodded and jumped up and down on her tiptoes, reaching for something unseen. “Someday I’ll be tall as you, right?”

  “Most likely taller,” Colleen said and bent to face Rosie.

  “Because I want to look like you.” She touched the edge of Colleen’s shorts, pulled on a loose thread. “I hope I do.”

  “Oh, sweetie.” Colleen sat on a kitchen chair and faced Rosie. “You are going to be beautiful in your own way. Your own Rosie way.”

  “You think so?” Rosie pulled her shoulders back, stood taller.

  “You already are.”

  The footsteps and voices of Gavin, Walter and Sadie drew closer and Colleen kissed Rosie’s cheek and escaped to her bedroom, closing the door as quietly as she could.

  Shane’s voice joined them; he’d arrived to pick up Dad. And although she couldn’t hear the words, what was important were the sounds. Sounds of family. Laughter. Cross talk. Doors opening and closing.

  Colleen sat on her bed and took out her computer—she would focus on work, not on what was happening in the kitchen, not on what was happening in a life that wasn’t hers anymore. If she decided to walk in that kitchen right now, there would be awkward silence. And it would be her presence that caused the change—her appearance in her own family. She slammed her fist into the soft mattress and then flopped back in bed to stare at the white ceiling fan going around and around, dust darkening the edges of the blades and shadows flipping.

  She allowed her thoughts to ricochet from scene to scene, from memory to memory, without ever sticking on any of them; they would not go away or leave her alone, but she treated them lightly, easily—they were butterflies; they were fuzz from a blown dandelion; they were dust. How was she to continue avoiding and holding disdain for a man who was so kind to her beloved dad?

  A soft knock sounded on the door and she sat up. Please God, if you hear me at all anymore, do not let this be Walter.

  “Yes?” she called out.

  “Little lark, may I come in?”

  Colleen stood and opened the door to her dad. “Of course.” She swept her hand for him to enter the room. “What’s up?”

  “You ran away just now. I saw you there, right there on the stoop, and then you went inside and hid in your room.” He shook his head. “We can’t be this way, little lark. We cannot.”

  “I didn’t want to make it awkward while everyone was having fun. It’s okay for me to step away once in a while, especially when it’s weird.”

  He stared at her for a beat too long. Maybe he’d forgotten why it was weird. Maybe he wanted to say something that was stuck in his synapses. Maybe he was confused and had already forgotten why he was there. But no matter the reason, he finally spoke softly. “Your mom would not want this unforgiveness. She would not.”

  And he walked away.

  “Mother,” Colleen corrected, calling after her dad’s retreating back. “Mother would not have wanted this unforgiveness.”

  But he didn’t turn around; he didn’t say another word.

  * * *

  • • •

  That evening, the fiddle player was going strong, the strings singing, and Celtic music echoed across the room in strains of longing and melancholy—a specialty of the Irish. The room was almost full and it was only seven on a weekday evening. Colleen glanced around as she entered, having returned to the Lark after sharing dinner with Gavin and Shane. She watched as the historical preservation guy, Beckett, stood at the other end of the bar laughing with a cluster of men and women. He held a glass of water and his grin spread all the way to his eyes, maybe even to his forehead. Colleen looked away and headed to the back room with Shane.

  “You can’t be hurting for money. This place is hopping,” Colleen said.

  “Not hurting, but even one bad week could do damage. Dad mismanaged things badly before I got hold of the accounts. I’m still paying off the bills for supplies we didn’t need.”

  They were headed toward the back swinging door when two women waved at Colleen from the left side of the room. Colleen squinted, trying to adjust to the lighting. Ah! High school friends. What were their names? She dug far and fast. “Lena, Lena!” the blonde called and wound her way through the tables to reach her, giving Colleen a hug thick with the aroma of vanilla perfume. “It’s me, Marie, from Latin class.”

  “Yes, hello.” Colleen grabbed Shane’s arm in a motion not to leave her. “How are you?”

  “Oh, my God, I saw your article in Travel and Leisure. There I was right in the Savannah Airport and I thought, good Lord, that can’t be our Colleen Donohue, the one who left ten years ago and never spoke a word to anyone again. But damn straight, I looked it up and it was you.” She paused and glanced around the pub, checking if anyone could hear her. She twirled a flock of bleached hair at the side of her face and then tucked it behind her ear with a flirty tilt of the head. Yes, Shane stood a few feet away. Then she returned her attention to Colleen. “What a fascinating life you’ve had. Those stories were great. No wonder you left.”

  The other woman, with darker, shorter hair and wearing cutoff jeans with the ragged strings hanging down, had reached their side. “That’s not why she left.” She smiled almost savagely and Colleen spied orange lipstick on her teeth. “Do you remember me?”

  Colleen stared through the makeup and tight clothes and grinned. “Yes, we were in Ms. Sparks’s class together for calculus. Your brother, Jimbo, he was, what, a year younger?”

  “Yep. He married Merilee; they live up the road with four kids.”

  “Four.” Colleen shook her head.

  “And”—the woman leaned closer—“we were in the school play together—Annie, remember? I was Annie.”

  “Yes,” Colleen said. “I remember. Good times.” She glanced at Shane and then at the women. “I have to go now, but so good to see you both.” As she walked off with Shane she mumbled, “It’s true, there are ghosts in the Lark.”

  Shane laughed and pushed at the swinging doors to the back room. “They’re definitely not ghosts. Their happy hour drinking might be keeping the pub alive for another day. They are most definitely regulars.”

  “I believe they come here for you as much as for the drinks. I see how they look at you.”

  “Lost cause.”

  Colleen stepped through the open door he held for her and then stopped. “Shane, have I become a story?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I know how things are here—not only in the town but also at the pub. Stories are told and retold; town gossip and all that. You know, the sister left at the altar. Am I one of those town gossip stories? I must be, because that woman just—”

  “I don’t know. And even if you are, who cares?” He winked. “Might do the pub some good.”

  Colleen gave a light punch to her brother’s arm. “You’re so mean.” She nodded toward the main room. “Hey, there’s some guy out there who’s researching our pub for the state historical society. Have you talked to him?”

  “Yep. Good guy. He goes all around South Carolina to save buildings. He’s a real history buff and loves it here.”

  “Why does it do us any good for him to label this a historical site?”

  “Tax breaks.” Shane smiled. “We can use any break we can get.”

  “Break?” Hallie asked as she entered the back room to join them.

  Colleen glanced behind Hallie. “Where are your girls?”

  Hallie dropped her satchel onto the back counter. “Walter is putting them to bed at home, to much protest.” Her smile dropped and her face grew serious. “How are your photo stories coming?”

  “I did three more today. But I don’t know if we can do this—you know, make sense of a life that isn’t ours.” Colleen looked back and forth between her siblings.

  Shane made a dismissive g
esture. “We don’t have to make sense of it. We only have to record what we can so he can look at the book, see it and read. If there are blanks or inconsistencies in what someone tells you, you can casually ask Dad about what he remembers, too, until he can’t remember anything at all. Don’t push too hard or get him upset.”

  “Well, maybe digging up old memories isn’t such a great idea.” Colleen addressed her brother. “Everyone remembers things differently. Each memory goes on top of another memory, changing it all.”

  “That’s the point.” Shane clapped his hands together. “There are the facts of the photo and then the narrative of the photo. I want him to have both. Historical fact. Storytelling truth.”

  Colleen was silent for a moment, weighing words that might come out wrong as they often did. “But maybe it’s better if some things are forgotten.”

  “No!” Shane’s voice rang out louder than usual. “Memory forms us. What are we without it? We aren’t a biography. We aren’t a list of facts. We are memories. They are the shape of our souls.”

  The sisters stared at him, their baby brother spouting a philosophy that made him sound like their dad.

  Shane took a step toward them both. “We don’t get to choose which ones to give back to him either. Just because they confuse us doesn’t mean they aren’t important. They are all his and we will save them for him as best we can.”

  Hallie sat on a chair and exhaled. “The shape of our souls.”

  “Yes,” Shane said emphatically. “They are.”

  Out in the pub, the fiddle player was now playing “The Lark in the Clear Air.”

  “Has anyone ever asked Dad why he loves this song so much?” Hallie asked.

  Shane shook his head. “Weird that I’ve never thought to ask why.”

  Colleen felt the memory slip up on her like a warm blast of air. She and Hallie had been in the tree house playing jacks, the rubber ball bouncing as they grabbed the jacks into their palms. Mother and Dad were below on the lawn folding beach towels. Dad whistled the tune, the ever-present tune that infused their lives. Mother’s voice had risen. “Enough of that infernal song, Gavin. For God’s sake, enough.”