Margo? I re-angle the screen to make sure I’m seeing it right, but her name remains, which is worrisome. I’m usually the one who calls her, not the other way around, and the timing couldn’t be worse. If she’s calling, though, something may be wrong, so I answer.
“Hey. Everything okay?”
“Fine, great, actually, because I’m in the city. I thought I’d stop by.”
“In New York?” I ask in alarm and switch the phone to the far ear.
“Last minute girlfriend weekend. Joanie scored tickets to Hamilton, which I missed when it was in Chicago, so the three of us just took off. Are you free?”
Free? Omigod. If she could see me now, she wouldn’t be pleased. Nor would Dad, if he knew I was talking to my sister. Granted, he’s focused on the road, trudging along in his boat shoes, one foot striking pavement, then the next. There’s a deliberateness to it, like he wants to be sure he does it right. Trying not to watch, I wander toward the trio of mailboxes to give myself, my sister, and my phone more room.
“I’m not in the city,” I tell Margo softly. “I’m sorry. How long will you be there?”
“Just the weekend. Where are you?” she asks, indignant, like we’d had plans and I stood her up. Had it been anyone else, I’d be offended. But this is quintessential Margo, imperious to the core.
I get a mirror attitude in the other ear. Dad has followed me over. “Who is that?”
Rolling my eyes, as if the caller is no one special, I say into the phone, “You’re leaving Sunday?”
“Will you be back?”
“Before then? Noooo.” I drag out the word in honest regret. “I’m so sorry. I’d have loved to have you over.”
“Where are you?” she asks again.
“Who is that?” Dad repeats, this time in a voice that is too loud, too close, and too gruff.
Margo is silent for a beat. Finally, with dawning horror, she says, “I know that voice, and it isn’t one I want to hear. Where are you?”
I hesitate a minute too long.
“Mallory.” Her words come hard and fast. “Are you seriously at the Bluff? What are you doing there?”
“Can’t talk now,” I say, pressing the phone tight to my ear. “Can I call you later?”
“What’s going on?”
“Nothing. Really. Joy loves the beach.”
“That beach? You do know Mom would be turning over in her grave.”
“Actually, no,” I shoot back, furious to be put on the defensive when I am so trying to do the right thing, “I don’t know that, because we never had that particular discussion. It was always you saying it. I have my daughter to think of now. Please don’t pass judgment on me.” I’ve said too much already, but another thought comes and for the life of me I can’t hold it in. “‘Accept what you can’t change by changing what you can’t accept.’”
“What in the hell does that mean?”
“You tell me. You wrote it. This. Week.”
“See? That’s why you shouldn’t be there. You don’t sound like yourself. Go to that place, and you change. He’s a lawyer. He knows how to make his case.”
“It isn’t that.”
“Then what is it?”
His age, his mind, the house, the bluff, Anne, Jack, my memory, the truth—it is so many things that I don’t know where to begin, and that’s even apart from the issue of a gun. So I sigh, lower my eyes to the gravel road, and say a quiet, “It’s complicated.”
“You do know this will ruin my weekend.”
If it does, I think, that’s your doing. But saying it will only make things worse. The spoken word is like bleach. Use it with purple socks—as I mistakenly did once with Joy’s—and though the socks may be wearable, they are never the same.
I keep my mouth shut.
“Okay,” Margo concedes, because I hear voices on her end. “Talk later.”
I want to tell her to have fun, but I’d have to apologize if I say more, and I refuse to apologize. I’ve spent a lifetime apologizing. And I’m in the right here.
So I nod, which she can’t see, return the phone to my pocket, and try to put the discussion out of my head. It’s about compartmentalizing. I’m good at that in the city, where anonymity makes for easy diversion. Here, everywhere I look—now at the boulders off the road on the right, where my sisters and I used to sit finishing off our penny candy so that our parents didn’t know how much we’d bought—I see memories.
Dad stumbles. I reach out to steady him, but he catches himself. Has he actually pulled his arm away so that I don’t help?
“Your sister,” he growls.
I consider lying. He can’t have heard that clearly, and the truth will cause him distress. But a lie will cause me distress. “Yes. My sister.”
I prepare for him to attack her as he had so long ago. The words were angry and ugly in those awful days. I thought I’d buried them, but three break through. Traitor. Ingrate. Self-centered imbecile.
Words. Always words. Like knives coming from Jack and arrows from my dad.
But he doesn’t speak, just plods along, breathing heavily now. The road has started to climb, and he is leaning into it, shoulders rounded as they never used to do. The shape of him cries defeat. He seems very much alone.
Taking pity on him, I walk close enough so that he can’t miss me, far enough so that our arms don’t touch. He stops once, frowns at the path ahead, and, half to himself, says a breathy, “Is this right?”
It’s a minute before I realize that he is serious, several beats again before I accept that he is confused. More than anything else I’ve seen of him since we arrived, this is the most upsetting. Having lived on the bluff so long, he has taken this road thousands of times. It is the only way to the top of the bluff, hence the only one he could possibly take home. Confused is a serious problem.
Making light of it, I say, “The house is just ahead. Boy, is this road ever steep.”
He resumes his plodding, but I see that he is bracing the cast against his belt.
“Does your wrist hurt?”
He doesn’t respond. His mind is elsewhere. After several steps, he says under his breath, “Sometimes I think she sent her.”
My first thought is Margo, since my sister was our last touchpoint. But there is a gentleness to his voice that redirects me. “Elizabeth sent Lily?”
He shoots me an uncertain look, and I think of Jack asking the same, still wondering and wishing. As angry as I can be with either one of them for past attacks, my heart goes out to them both.
“Elizabeth is dead, Dad,” I say gently. “We agreed on that. Unless you know something we don’t?”
“Oh yeah,” he snorts, though his breathing is heavy, “I know lots that you don’t. But not about her.”
I wait for him to elaborate, perhaps to go off on something having to do, if not with Elizabeth, then with the law or my mother or even Margo.
We are nearing the top of the road. The house has appeared and grows taller with each step. But he has slowed even more. When he stops entirely, he straightens, puts his hands on his lower back and stretches. He is panting.
“Are you okay?” I ask.
“No. I am not.”
Now that I look, he is pale, and there’s that breathing. I reach for my phone. “I’ll call for help—”
“No.” Straightening, he starts walking again. His steps are slow, his eyes on the house like it’s the goal of his life. “I need to tell you.” He shoots me a glance to make sure I’m listening.
And I hear a confession coming.
Chapter 11
My pulse trips over the possibilities—Elizabeth, my mother, me—but I’ve left one out.
“I know what’s happening,” he says in short breaths. “To my mind. What I have.”
Quickly, I recalibrate. I’m not stricken; he is only confirming my suspicions. But his tone is the shocker. There is resignation even in his breathlessness, and resignation is so not my father. Belligerence, yes. Resentment, yes.
Defiance, yes. But not resignation.
“I can’t remember,” he goes on in his soft huffing. “Words. Names. Where to be. What to do.”
He shoots me another glance, but my childhood training is ingrained. I know not to speak, just to listen. That said, I could swear his glance held shame and as his daughter, as a human being, I’m heartsick.
I want to tell him that what he has isn’t his fault. But he is slogging on now, just that foot or two ahead of me, up the last of the hill to the crest. Once there, he points at the front steps. Veering in front of me so sharply that I have to stop short, he crosses the last distance and lowers himself to the wood.
Now that he’s stopped, the sound of his breathing is even louder. I’m not sure if it’s the hill, the heat, or the hell in his mind, but he is clearly in distress.
Dropping down on the step, I face him and urge softly, “Go on.”
He puts his forearms on his thighs, lean fingers tightly linked, and waits for his breathing to slow. That breathing scares me. But my first priority is his mind. Distract him with another problem, like shortness of breath, and I risk losing him.
“It won’t get better,” he finally says.
“There’s medication—”
“No drugs.”
“There are ways to slow it down.”
“I don’t want that.”
“Not to live longer?”
He shakes his head. “Not happening.”
“Living longer? It can. If drugs slow it down and then a cure is found—”
“It’s too late for me.”
“How do you know that? Listen to you now. You are totally coherent.”
His breathing is starting to level. He knows enough to give it a minute more, pulling air in and blowing it out. With the last, longer exhalation comes sadness. A tragic smile shapes his mouth, but it does nothing to cushion the words. “It comes and goes. Sometimes I’m good, other times I put a shoe on the wrong, uh, uh, side. I know it feels wrong, but I don’t know why.” He darts a look around, as if someone is listening, and speaks in a more confidential tone. “I can be at Anne’s and not know anyone there. It’s a foreign place. I can’t remember names.” He gives a humorless laugh. “Always that. Names are hard.”
“You knew Howard and Don.”
“You did. I repeated you.”
“You know about bluff retreat.”
“I do not. I know about law, and the law in this case is clear. The law dictates,” he declares, “that planting can only be done within twenty feet of a public building. For anything else, you petition the state for a variance. Do you have one of those?”
“Uh … uh…”
His voice lowers again. “Now you’re angry.”
“I’m not. I’m just trying to follow. It’s a lot to take in.” Afraid that he’s leaving me, I scramble for more. “Does Anne know about this?”
“About what?”
I tap my head.
His hand cuts a no.
“What about your doctor?”
He repeats the motion, but is suddenly up from the stairs and walking toward the ocean end of the house. I feel a moment’s panic, imagining him going down and walking into the sea, farther and farther, until it swallows him up.
Rather than head for the stairway, though, he rounds the house and enters the backyard. Friends were always amazed that we had one, since, technically, the ocean was our backyard. But not every day was a beach day, and we were kids. We used to have a swing set here, though it fared worse than the gnarled scrub pine on the road. The Hartleys would have to sand it each year when they groomed the paths.
Shrubs still bordered the house in beds that my mother carved out. They were salt-tolerant ones, like blue juniper, dark green holly, and silver thorn, and aside from the occasional large-scale replacement, when she stood over the Hartleys telling them exactly what to put where, the shrub beds were all hers. She also planted daisies, black-eyed Susans, and varieties of lilies and irises that could live near the sea.
Early mornings, late afternoons, mid-days when Dad was home and we were in each other’s hair, she escaped to the potting shed. It was her refuge. In the years since we left, especially since she died, I’ve often pictured her here.
I remember her humming as she unpotted new accent plants and repotted old ones. I remember how she would smile as she watched the sky lighten the windows in the greenhouse nook, and how she would gather us all in the backyard to oooh and ahhh over the fruits of her labor. I remember the pride Dad took in the landscaping when we had friends, colleagues, even clients here for cookouts.
Actually, no. I don’t. Remember, that is. These are wish-it-were memories, meaning, likely not true. My mother couldn’t hold a tune, she had us digging and lifting more than ooohing and ahhhing, and as for Dad showing pride? I do not recall that.
Yet here he is now, striding over the grass to the potting shed. It is small, little more than eight by ten feet, its wood frame a sea-worn gray and roughened by age, its windows streaked with sand. The greenhouse nook is a wall of glass that curves into the roof facing south for the most sun. The other walls have normal windows, albeit small ones to allow for storage inside. Even then, Dad complained that all the glass made the shed more vulnerable in high winds, but other than one hurricane when several broke, Mom’s guardian angel kept them safe.
This was her happy place. No wish-it-were memory this one. She may not have smiled at the sun or sung to her plants, but the potting shed was her domain. Dad did not step foot in it.
He doesn’t now, simply opens the full Dutch door, which moves with surprising ease given the neglect of the rest, and, holding himself straight, looks inside. What little I can see past him doesn’t appear to have been touched in years. But there is nothing warped about that door.
He’s been here before, I realize and feel a pang of sentiment. Missing my mother? I picture him standing here talking with her, asking about the iris she just planted or the loam she uses to bolster the soil. But of course, he didn’t do either.
Annoyed by that, I ask, “Why have you told me this, Dad?”
He shoots me a startled look. “What?”
“About your mind. You could have told Anne. Why me?”
He says nothing for a minute, just gazes into the shed. Finally, seeming wistful, he sighs. “She loved gardening.”
I’m not sure if I’ve lost him on the Alzheimer’s vein, but I do like this one. “Yes.”
“I come here sometimes,” he says. “It’s quiet.”
It was. The memory of that motivates me, and, slipping past him, I enter. I always marveled that wood and glass could mute the shore sounds this well without insulation. But it was like this place was of earth, and within these walls, earth overrode water, birds, even the guttural rumble of double outboards too close to shore.
Quiet. Yes. Here is the table on which my mother worked, the shelves of stacked pots and watering cans, the trowels and clippers and other hand tools on hooks. The wheelbarrow still holds remnants of dirt from her very last planting here, but on top of that are neatly folded knee pads and a hat. A stained aluminum ladder slants against the wall along with a lineup of shovels, rakes, and hoes. Cobwebs are everywhere, but they only add to the ethereality. There is something sacred about this place, as rightly there should be. My mother is here.
Tearing up, I hold my arms close to my sides.
“I come here sometimes,” my father repeats from the door.
I swallow. “I understand why,” I say, then realize that no, I do not understand why. He cheated on my mother for years, if not in body then in mind. He kept her tied to this life as his subordinate. He was the cause of her worst humiliation. For all these reasons, I need to understand more.
I turn to him to ask, but his blue eyes are moist. Tears? From Judge Thomas Aldiss, my very formal, detached, world-unto-himself father? I’m horrified. I don’t know how to deal with vulnerability in this man.
“I don’t want to forget her,�
� he says.
“Who?”
“Your mom.” He pauses. “My mom. You girls. Elizabeth.”
I could have done without the last, but even so, I hear an invitation. A dozen questions pop into my mind, and though I’m desperate to ask, I fear that peppering him will only drive him to silence again.
In that instant, though, I have a thought. It’s a brilliant one, actually. Returning to the door, I dare grasp his arms. “You don’t have to forget, Dad. I could write it all down.”
He pulls in his chin. “Write what down?”
“Your memories. Your story. People do this all the time now. I’ve read about it. Some even hire videographers, but I could video us myself.” He is staring at me, impossible to read. “Or not,” I relent to make it less threatening. “It could be just you and me talking, no video, maybe even here in this shed. You talk, I write. That way when you think you’re forgetting, you have a refresher. You can just pick up my notes and read.”
“I can’t read,” he mutters. “The words … mix up.”
Reminded, I take his glasses from my pocket and slip them into his alongside the pen. “We can have your prescription checked.”
“It isn’t my eyes,” he barks. “It’s my brain.”
“Then someone can read it to you,” I say without reacting to his remark. Of course, it’s his brain, and it won’t get better. That’s why my writing his life is a brilliant idea. “You don’t need to share it with anyone. You can just put it in the attic, but you’ll know it’s there in case you want to check on something.”
He is silent for a beat. “Check on something.”
“That’s right.”
“Check on what?”
“Whatever you want to tell me. You’ve lived a full life, Dad. You have stories in you. There are stories from your time in private practice, and stories from your time on the bench. Remember when you defended that man who concocted an elaborate scheme to steal his own mother’s inheritance—his own mother’s?”
“Elvin Anderson,” he says without missing a beat.
“Yes.” I’m thrilled that he remembers, at least when it comes to work. Anne is right about that. “People think law is boring, but it wasn’t for you. You handled interesting cases.”
A Week at the Shore Page 14