by Orly Konig
How had T.J. caught so many nuances during one quick sweep?
A meeting-reminder chimes in my pocket. I silence the alarm on my phone. I have forty-five minutes. How did three rooms with almost nothing personal in them take me over an hour? On the bright side, that doesn’t leave much time to overthink the last two rooms.
I ignore the ghost standing in the entrance to the office and walk across the condo to the bedroom.
There’s no hesitation about where to start. I go straight for the photograph on the dresser.
The photographer had been standing behind Mom but enough to the side to catch her profile. Her hair cascades over her right shoulder, a ripple that could have been caused by movement or a breeze or my imagination.
I move my head, a slight toss to the right, conscious of the feeling of hair falling over my shoulder. Is that what it felt like, Mom?
I mimic the expression on her face. Were you smiling or saying something?
I raise my hand, a mirror of the wave from the young me. How far would I have gone before you’d come after me?
I pick up the frame and tilt it into the light coming from the window. A ray skids across the grass, hiding my mom from prying eyes. A slight movement of my wrist, and she’s back. If only.
I stare at the picture, my vision blurring with focus. But unlike those images that reveal a hidden picture the longer you study them, this one only reveals more questions.
“Where were you taken? Why don’t I remember?”
We didn’t take vacations.
My father went on business trips. Mom and I stayed home.
My father traveled all over the world. Mom and I went to Upstate New York. Once.
I slip the photograph out of the frame and flip it over, half hoping to find a note, half hoping to find nothing more than shiny white paper.
No date, no location, no clue.
“Helloooooo,” a sharp soprano vibrates through the condo. “Emma? The concierge said you were here. Hellooooo?”
“In here.”
It takes sixteen stiletto clicks for T.J. to arrive in the bedroom.
“I saw the trash bag by the door. You’re making progress. That’s fabulous. How’s it going in here?”
I replace the photograph in the frame and slip it into my bag.
She doesn’t wait for an answer but pulls open the top drawer of the dresser. My father’s socks, underwear, and belts are neatly placed, each grouping taking up exactly a third of the drawer. I wince and turn away.
“I’m sorry, Emma. I’m sure this must be very hard on you. I’ll take care of this if you’d like.”
I nod, not trusting my voice.
With T.J. in charge of the bedroom, I retrace my steps to my father’s home office.
Bookcase by bookcase, I follow the directions on the piece of paper. On the last shelf is a brown leather box wedged between medical textbooks. I pull it out and flip the lid, expecting his collection of fountain pens. It’s not pens.
For a moment I’m paralyzed. Inside the box are more letters. Years of letters. Who was this man who was sentimental about letters with a virtual stranger? A bubble of rage floats in my vision. He cared this much about his correspondence with Rena and she all but lied about it.
A phone chirps on the other side of the condo.
I empty the contents into my bag and replace the box between the books.
The desk chair swivels when I bump into it and an arm of the folded sweater flops loose. I lift it to refold. My fingers close around the soft fabric, bunching it in my fist. Like a crushed mint leaf, the sweater releases a hint of my father’s cologne.
I pull the sleeve to my nose and inhale. He could have just pulled it off and left the room to make a cup of coffee.
Dammit, it wasn’t supposed to happen this way.
We may not have been close, we may not have even liked each other, but you were all I had left.
I wanted you to be proud of me.
I wanted you to love me.
Because I loved you.
I take one last inhale of my father. It’s time to say good-bye.
The first potential buyer is due to arrive any minute. I survey the room one last time. This room is my father. This is where his passion was. Most of my memories of him are of him in his home office. I wish I could have seen him in this one.
Were you happy in here, Dad? Were you able to be yourself in this room?
I swallow the emotion. He’d expect that from me.
“Emma, do you need help with the boxes?” T.J.’s sharp clicks are a harsh reminder that I’ll never know.
As an afterthought, I grab the sweater from the back of his chair and stuff it into the bag with the letters.
That’s when I notice a charcoal-gray linen spine tucked between two medical reference books on his desk. Another sketch pad. I slide it into my bag, one more thing to discover about my father.
* * *
After leaving the condo, I spend two hours at the bank going over paperwork to close out my father’s accounts. By the time I pull into the Mountain Inn parking lot, all emotional energy has been syphoned out of me.
Lucy takes one look and sends me to the porch with a glass of wine and a plate of cheese and fruit.
The sun sinks, its orange glow melting into the hills. Evening sounds take over the woods in the distance.
Tiger cat saunters along the edge of the patio. The tip of his tail twitching, the only acknowledgment of my presence.
I reach into my bag and remove the newly discovered sketch pad, the stack of letters, and the photograph I’d found in my father’s bedroom.
I flip open the sketch pad, but where the previous ones were filled with people, this one doesn’t include a single human. This one is dedicated to horses. One horse actually. There are a few drawings of others, even the goat, but the majority of the pages are of Jack. My breath catches on a drawing of his head, the muzzle jutting out in a hello-whatchya-got-for-me, the knowing eyes that seem to see straight into my heart.
My father had captured the wistfulness, the fear, the longing in his human subjects. He captured the gentleness, sincerity, loyalty in Jack.
Who was this man who could see into people and horses with such clarity? This wasn’t the same man I grew up with.
I close the sketch pad and reach for the letters. They are all addressed to my father’s office, all in Rena’s slanted handwriting.
July 1994
Dear Edward,
You cannot continue to torture yourself with “what ifs.” Should you have guessed she wanted to return to the lake cabin because of her state of mind? Maybe. I won’t blow air and tell you there was nothing you could have done.
Maybe the signs were there. Maybe you could have gotten her help again.
Maybe. There are always maybes.
But, Edward, I cannot indulge this spiral into self-flagellation. You would never allow that from your patients.
Be strong, my friend. For yourself. For your daughter.
Yours,
R.
I slide the photo closer and trace my mom’s profile, the angle of her arm, the waving hand.
“You were saying good-bye to me, weren’t you?”
19
August 1993
Someone has propped open the front door of the house. Emma sits at the top of the stairs, the skirt tucked around her legs and anchored under her butt, arms circling her knees. There’s been a surprising number of people coming and going today. All of them wearing serious clothes and serious expressions, all of them shaking her dad’s hand and looking at her with pity.
She overhears one lady wonder what will become of “that poor child now that her mother is dead.” Another volunteers that Edward should consider an au pair or boarding school. Yet another whispers, “Did you hear what really happened?” at which point the gaggle of gossips works their way to the front porch.
The grinding of her teeth sounds louder than the hushed discussions around her. She
wants these strangers to leave, she wants to push each one out the door and slam the door behind them. She bites the edge of her left ring finger. No one will tell her not to. At least not today.
“Why are you sitting here?” Jillian takes the stairs two at a time, then nudges Emma’s shoulder with her butt until she scoots over.
“Because I’m out of the way here. I’m going to scream if one more person pats my back and tells me it’s going to be okay.”
“But it will be okay.” Jilli sounds so sure.
“Maybe. Someday. Today it’s not. Anyway, they’re just saying the words. None of them believe it.”
“Want to go to the stable and see Jack? He always makes us feel better.”
“Yeah.”
Jilli stands and clomps down the stairs before Emma’s answer has a chance to settle on the stairs between them.
She eases up and follows, hugging the wall so as not to be seen. Not that anyone would notice. Besides, they prefer talking about her in the abstract. Poor motherless Emma. It makes the adults uncomfortable having her in the room.
Does it matter that having them around makes her uncomfortable? That the more people stuff into their house, the more alone she feels? None of these people can bring her mom back.
She stops at the kitchen door when she hears her father’s voice. But he’s not talking to her. His back is to the door. Emma wants to run to him and pull him away, out of the house, far from these people who don’t mean what they say and don’t really care. But he’d just tell her to be polite and smooth the jacket where she’d grabbed it. Then he’d wave his hand, dismissing her. Like always.
Once outside, she breaks into a run and easily catches Jillian just in time to be swallowed by the woods.
They hustle to the tack room and tug on breeches and boots, discarding their skirts and fancy shoes in a heap.
Pogo shuffles to the door of his stall and Emma slips him a mint and a kiss on the muzzle before following her friend to the large stall at the end of the aisle. Inside, Cassie munches hay while three-month-old Jack Flash sprawls in the middle of her snack. Cassie nudges his front legs and snatches a mouthful before he moves again.
Emma and Jillian lean over the door to admire their foal. Because he is their foal. They’d been there when he was born, they’d named him Jack Flash, and they play with him every day.
Whenever the girls are nearby, Jack trots after them, the little brother wanting to play.
“Isn’t he gorgeous?” Emma asks, her voice more awed prayer than question.
“The most.”
“I could watch him forever.”
“Me too. But at some point we’d have to go the bathroom. And sleep. And eat.” Jilli grins and leans into her friend.
They’re silent for a few minutes, the only noise from Cassie chewing hay and the occasional stomp or bucket bump from another occupant somewhere in the barn.
“Who do you think will get to ride him first?” Emma asks.
“I bet Grandpa will have Kate train him. She’s good.”
“When do you think we’ll get to ride him?”
Jillian shrugs.
“I can’t wait to ride him. I bet he’ll be amazing.” Emma sighs, leaning her chin on her arms on top of the open half-door. When Jillian doesn’t respond immediately, she rolls her head. “What?”
“Are you moving in with us?”
“No. Why?” She snaps upright, startling the two horses.
Jillian gives an all-knowing eleven-year-old’s shrug. “Just wondering.”
“Of course not.” Except, she’s not nearly as confident as she wants to be. “Do you think?”
“I don’t know. It’s just that my room seems to be as much yours these days. And now with your mom dead and all…” Jilli lets the final words roll down the aisle into the silence.
The last few months, she’d been spending more and more nights with Jillian. Simon had moved a second twin bed into Jilli’s bedroom and the girls arranged them head-to-head. It made whispering late into the night without getting caught much easier.
“My dad will need me. I bet he’ll be around a lot more now.” She squares her shoulders and imitates the nod she saw those ladies in the house use as they declared what her future would, no doubt, look like.
“Probably. Although, I kinda hope you do actually.”
“You do? Why?”
“Think how much fun it would be. One big sleepover.”
“Except we’d still have homework and school and chores.”
“Yeah, but we’d be doing them together. I like it better when we’re together. I don’t feel like I’m the big bull’s-eye center of their universe, you know. When you’re here, I feel like a normal kid and like, for that time, they’re not worried I’m going to turn into my mom.”
Emma takes a half step sideways until their shoulders are touching again. “I like it better when we’re together, too. I don’t feel like I’m invisible.”
Jack wobbles to his legs and comes to nuzzle them. Thoughts of missing parents almost disappear.
Until that evening, when Emma’s father arrives at Jumping Frog Farm, looking tired and uncomfortable. He thanks Simon and Rena, then closes the door to the backseat after Emma gets in. He doesn’t say a word on the way home and the drive seems to take three times as long. She stares out the window, wishing she could jump out and canter along the path in the woods instead.
Her father pulls the car into the garage and turns the ignition off, but doesn’t make a move to get out. The garage feels empty.
She suddenly realizes why. “What happened to Mommy’s car?”
“We don’t need a second car anymore.”
She stares at the back of her father’s head. She wants to ask him when he sold the car, whom he sold it to, and if they would take good care of it, but by then he’s getting out. The dome light makes her squint and the sound of the car door closing makes her wince.
They walk into the house, two almost strangers. The kitchen counter is covered with casserole dishes and plates of food. Emma’s stomach growls.
“Are you hungry?” Her dad moves a glass dish, squaring it with the one next to it. Emma wonders why he looks even more out of place here than he had at the stable.
“No.” She pushes a fist into her stomach to keep it from arguing.
“Are you tired?”
“No.”
“Okay. How about a bath then?”
“Okay.”
She takes her boots off and clutches them to her chest. She knows she should leave them by the front door, but she also knows she has to keep them with her. She needs something that hasn’t changed, that won’t—can’t—be taken away. She needs the smell of horses, the comfort that she can only find at the stable.
She sits in the lukewarm tub, thighs pushing into her chest, chin digging into her knees, arms squeezing her shins tight. She hears sirens outside.
They sound the same.
Except then, they’d been loud, then louder. The noise had stopped when the ambulance stopped in their driveway. The lights had kept flashing though, around and around. It had been raining and Emma remembered the raindrops, clear, red, clear, red, pinging off the window.
A sob shudders through her body. She pushes the lever for the hot water and lets the burn of the water release her tears.
“I miss you, Mommy,” she whispers after the receding ambulance. “I will always miss you.”
20
I glance at my watch. The woman who answered the phone at Adler Law assured me Thomas would be in by noon. He had meetings all morning and was not reachable but she’d have him call me the moment he returned. I remind her to remind him to call and stress that I’ll probably be returning to Chicago sooner because of “office things.”
What those “office things” are, though, I have no idea. Only a pit at the bottom of my successful, corporate-executive gut.
I close my eyes, take in an imaginary breath of sweet horse smell, then call Howard. Wh
en the voice mail beeps for the message, I hang up and redial. My mind went into auto-listen mode the moment his nasally voice recited the various reasons he wasn’t able to answer my call. But something was off in the message. I wait for the five rings, mumbling “come on, come on” into the phone. There it is. That’s what was bothering me.
“Hi. You’ve reached Howard Kelly, communications manager. I’m in the office, but…”
I stab at the phone to end the call. I don’t care why he can’t come to the phone. I want to know when he became communications manager. A few days ago his title had been communications associate. Since I’m the communications VP and his manager, shouldn’t I have known about a promotion before it happened?
I stare out at the hills while the laptop whirs to life, imagining the feel of a horse cantering up a hill, the sound of hoofbeats pounding against the ground, the wind pricking my face as we pick up speed down the other side, seeing that perfect distance to the takeoff.
My imaginary horse gallops to the edge of the ravine and skids to a stop. I’m thrown back into the corporate world.
The first e-mail I read is from Bruce to Howard. I’m on copy along with the human resources director and Bruce’s assistant. He’s congratulating Howard on his promotion and “in Emma’s absence, you will be reporting directly to me.”
“Absence? What the hell? One lousy week.” And I’m due back in a couple of days.
I scroll through the rest of my inbox looking for a response from Howard.
Nothing.
At least the printer copied me. The revised brochures are being delivered today. There’s an invoice attached to the e-mail for the change, the reprint, the reprint of the reprint, and the rush. That will be a hit to the budget.
I pinch the bridge of my nose, trying to slow my streaming thoughts. I need to change my flight. I’m going back today. Whatever needs to be done here can be accomplished long distance. There’s a flight in the early afternoon and with the one-hour time difference, I can be in the office before the end of the day. Yet I can’t make my fingers click the buttons to confirm the change.
“You got back on a horse yesterday and survived. You can do this.” The pep talk does little to settle the galloping butterflies.