Staring down the barrel of inevitable, Colonel Tom called Hospice. He ordered a hospital bed set up in the dining room and a Hospice worker to look after Ma’am. Then he demanded that he be left alone.
Day after day Colonel Tom ate little and said nothing. He was ready to call this world quits.
It was also about this time that Ma’am called alcohol quits. Percy and I stopped by and found our mother without a glass of something in her hand—which was a first. The liquor cabinet was empty, and there was no wine chilling in the frig. Ma’am had quit drinking with no fanfare and without the help of rehab, detox, or AA. We would have praised her, but calling attention to her quitting alcohol would intimate that she had once had a drinking problem. And, of course, Albemarles do not have problems—not ones that are mentioned.
I have no idea what happened to make Ma’am decide to quit drinking. It couldn’t have been an accident or an embarrassment. She had had many an accident and embarrassment, but that never seemed to make her feel the need to banish alcohol from her life. Perhaps she felt she needed all of her faculties to take care of The Colonel. Maybe she felt in control for the first time in her life, and that control gave her the power to quit drinking. Whatever the reason, we were happy and so very proud of our mother—even if we couldn’t tell her.
One day Percy asked me to ride over to the house with him to check in on Colonel Tom. Percy had been diligent about stopping by regularly, just to see how our parents were doing.
When we got to the dining room/sick ward, we found a very frail Colonel Tom lying in his hospital bed, staring into space. His breathing was ragged and his hands were shaking. We couldn’t tell if he were cold or if the shaking were part of the illness. We had stopped asking questions.
As I surveyed the room, the bile rose in my throat, and I thought, “I’ll never be able to eat another meal in this room without smelling piss and bedsores and vomit.”
And as I was swallowing the nausea, I heard Colonel Tom whisper through parched lips, “I’m proud of you, Son.”
I could not believe my ears. I was livid! How dare that bastard curse and belittle his son every minute of his life and think he could make it up to him in one sentence on his death bed? That just wasn’t going to happen. Percy had the upper hand now, and it was his turn to tell our arrogant, overbearing father just how much pain and anguish his abuse had caused him. Colonel Tom was spent. He couldn’t fight back.
As Percy approached The Colonel, the backs of my eyes burned with hot tears in anticipation of Percy’s tirade. I had waited my whole life to hear my brother stand up to our father.
When Percy reached the bed, he cupped Colonel Tom’s boney, shaking hand in his own callused mechanic’s hands. Then he leaned over and kissed The Colonel’s fevered forehead. When he straightened, Percy looked Colonel Tom squarely in the eye—something I had never seen my brother do.
Then he smiled tenderly at our father and said, “Thank you, Dad.”
All my life I had assumed what Percy wanted more than anything was a loving relationship with Colonel Tom. But I had been wrong. What Percy wanted was The Colonel’s acceptance. What he needed was a father who asked his son’s forgiveness and a chance to forgive him.
As I watched my brother holding our father’s hand as he slipped away, I realized what Vickie meant when she had said, “Percy gets the important things right.”
Epilogue
There came a knock at the door. Ted was on campus, and I had just nursed Sarah and put her down for a nap. Motherhood suited me. I loved the nursing, the diapering, the bathing, the little baby meals out of the jars. I especially loved the feeling I got when I held my child. She was beautiful, all blonde and blue eyed and chubby; and she adored cuddling with me. She’d smile into my face with so much love and trust. I’d never had that feeling for my parents, but, then, they’d never made me feel particularly secure or had given me reason to trust them.
But as much as I loved mothering Sarah, I missed adult companionship. So a knock on my door excited me. The visitor was apparently old enough to get up the steps to the porch and would, most likely, be able to carry on a conversation with me.
He was tall, well over six feet, strikingly handsome for a man in, I was guessing, his mid fifties. Salt-and-pepper crew cut, olive complexion, eyes so black the pupils looked non-existent. He stood erect in a military uniform, his cap under his left arm.
“Mrs. Chambers?”
“Yes?”
“I’m Colonel Sean Hart of the United States Army. I read of your father’s passing and have come to pay my respects.”
I found it touching that the Army had sent a representative to honor my father, but I found it strange, considering The Colonel’s abrupt departure from active duty so many years before.
I stepped aside and said, “Why, thank you, please come in. Could I offer you something to drink? Tea? Coffee?”
But Colonel Hart said, “No, thank you, ma’am. I’m fine. I won’t keep you long.”
I showed him into the living room and offered him a seat on the sofa. I sat in the chair opposite. He looked at the floor and fidgeted with his cap. I waited for him to speak.
“I was an enlisted man—a private—when I was assigned to chauffeur your father. I was with him for three years.”
He continued to look at the floor, to twist his cap uncomfortably. I, too, was beginning to feel uncomfortable, but I realized that talking about death can be difficult. So I allowed him to take his time, to say what it was he had come to say.
Then he straightened his back, took a deep breath, cleared his throat, looked me in the eye, and said, “Mrs. Chambers, I loved your father.”
“Well, thank you very much. That’s kind of you to say. When people lose loved ones, it’s comforting to hear that others respected them.”
“No, ma’am. I didn’t just love your father. I was in love with your father.”
Huh? Did I hear that right? I rewound what Colonel Hart had just said, and, sure enough, he had said that he had been in love with my father.
But just to be sure, I said, “Excuse me?”
“Ma’am, I was in love with your father.”
“Did my father know this?”
“Yes, ma’am, he did.”
I wasn’t sure I wanted to know how my father knew. What I was sure of was that I wanted to toss this man from my home and go back to not knowing that a man had been in love with my father, that my father knew it, and…and what? But I was in too deep. I had to go on, to hear the end of this story.
“And?”
“He loved me.”
The tears-anger-confusion caught in my throat.
“Nothing happened, Mrs. Chambers. We never acted on our feelings. When I told him I loved him, he just shook his head. Then he pulled this out of his desk drawer and handed it to me.”
Colonel Hart reached into his cap and pulled out a picture, leaned forward, and put it in my hand. It was a photo of a young, handsome army officer sitting on a park bench. He had his arms around two small children, a boy and a girl, and there was an infant on his lap. The little girl had something, a toy of some kind, in her hands, and she was holding it up to the man. He was smiling at her and staring into her eyes with so much love.
“Your father said, ‘I can’t let anything happen to them. They are the most important things in the world to me; they always will be.’ Then he said, ‘See that little blonde angel? She’s a pistol. Smart as a whip. And look at that face. Prettiest little thing I’ve ever seen. I call her Baby Girl. The day she was born, I cried like a baby. Sean, I love you, but she’s my heartstrings.’”
I was his heartstrings? I tried to contain my emotion, but it erupted from me in a raspy, searing pain.
Sean paused, looked up at me to make sure I was all right, took a deep breath, then continued, “The following day I left for two weeks R&R. When I returned, I went to Colonel Albemarle’s office just as I had for three years. It was bare. I asked where The Colonel was, and hi
s secretary told me that he had retired from active duty. No explanation. Just gone. I began looking through his desk drawers, hoping he’d left me some sort of message. He had. That picture.”
By now I was sobbing and clutching the picture to my heart. I wept as if I were alone, not bearing my soul in front of a stranger. I reached for the box of tissues on the table beside my chair, and, grabbing a handful, raked at my tear-stained cheeks and scrubbed at my eyes. Sean was silent until I composed myself.
When he was confident I wasn’t going to dissolve again, he said, “I’m so sorry I’ve upset you, Mrs. Chambers. I needed to let you know, though, how much your father loved you. The military was Colonel Albemarle’s life. But you were more important. He gave it up for you and your siblings. I’m sure he never told you that he had given you that gift. I wanted you to know.”
He rose to leave. I wanted him gone. I needed to be by myself to sort this out. He stood tall and placed his cap under his arm. He bowed slightly at the waist and walked briskly toward the front door. I didn’t move from my chair. He got my message and let himself out. I was relieved when I heard the front door click behind him.
I was still clutching the picture of Colonel Tom and his children. I looked closely at my father’s eyes, eyes that were trained on me, his Baby Girl, giving me his full attention. I didn’t remember ever seeing that love in his eyes. When had he stopped loving with his eyes? When he realized he was living a lie? When he had to give up the person he truly loved? When he felt he had no choice but to give up the military? When he was forced into a profession he found demeaning?
This new information might explain our father’s lack of emotion at the time of his youngest child’s death. Was Colonel Tom afraid to grieve for Oops for fear of showing weakness—a weakness that might expose his secret?
Questions tumbled around in my brain, making me weak with exhaustion and confusion. But as confused as I was, I just couldn’t imagine my father’s confusion.
What a conflict Colonel Tom must have felt, living a lie, pretending to be something he wasn’t. The conflict didn’t excuse his abusing my mother, belittling my brother, ignoring my little sister, manipulating me; but it helped explain his behavior. Confusion and conflict can make people do strange things. Strange behavior aside, The Colonel had given up the profession he loved to honor his commitment to his family, the family he loved, the children who needed him.
Did Ma’am know? Was this the root of her alcoholism? Did she numb herself to escape the pain of knowing?
I had so many questions, questions I knew I could never answer. I needed to talk to Percy. He was always my comfort and voice of reason when crisis struck. He’d know how to handle it. He’d help me sort through it. I went to the kitchen and grabbed the receiver from the wall phone hanging by the sink. I cradled it under my chin as I clutched the counter for support. My mind was reeling as I punched in 848-9….
Though I had given up on my father years before and pretended I could get along without him, I finally admitted as I held the receiver, waiting for my brother to answer my call, that I had always needed his love. It was late coming, but I held the proof of his love in my hand.
The Colonel had made his peace with Percy. He had told my brother he was proud of him, and Percy had accepted our father and had forgiven him.
Now it was my turn.
I hung up the phone.
Getting the Important Things Right Page 25