Flower of Heaven

by Julien Ayotte

  Charlie’s eyes met Dick’s and for once he knew that Alice was right. He loved his son more dearly than anything. Don’t you protect the ones you love, he thought? Was he so wrong in wanting to keep his son by his side, even for just a little while longer? Why couldn’t things stay the same? Why did Dick have to grow up? It isn’t fair, he thought, the world’s taking him away from me and I can’t stop it.

  “Son,” Charlie said as he reached across the table and placed his hand on Dick’s. “I should have known your heart wasn’t in this place, I should have seen it, Son, but I didn’t want to. You’re all we have and we won’t lose you over this. If you really got your mind set on trying more schooling, then it’s done. There’s no way you couldn’t make us proud of you. I’m sorry it took so long for me to see it,” Charlie said as he gently stroked Alice’s cheek, wiping her tears away with his other hand. She smiled and grabbed his hand and kissed it and reached out to Dick’s arm as the three of them just sat there for what seemed like hours.

  Graduation came fast and the months seemed to fly by that summer of 1944. For his eighteenth birthday, Dick had been given a complete set of new clothes and an old pickup truck to use to travel the distance to and from Plymouth Teachers College.

  Plymouth Teachers College was an old school founded in 1839 and focused on educating future teachers. It was located in the center of town, with about four thousand residents year-round and a vacation spot for thousands more. Plymouth’s beautiful valley setting had made it an ideal place for summer vacations and for travelers visiting the White Mountains. As the area grew in popularity and traffic, there sprouted more and more restaurants, lodges, and inns to accommodate them. All of these hospitality facilities offered meals and the local products sold under the Merrill name were a natural.

  Dick’s first year at Plymouth was a difficult one. Although he commuted to Plymouth each day from home, he had never been involved in an atmosphere with so many people before and, to suddenly be in the midst of it all, was awkward. He became conscious of his appearance, new wardrobe or not, and had to work very hard at opening up in his new surroundings. Dick had decided to major in History and was planning on teaching young children when he graduated. While volunteering for work at St. Barnaby’s over the last few years, Dick had grown fond of assisting Father Gavin in his religion classes to the youngsters every Saturday morning during the school year. He found the Bible stories that the children were read to be a peaceful but effective way to teach them about God and the other saints. It was from these sessions that Dick felt most at ease in talking to people and, as he participated more and more in the religion classes, he gained confidence in speaking before other groups as well.

  On Sundays, Dick now served as a lector at Mass at St. Barnaby’s and, to tourists, it was hard to tell that Dick was not a priest when he wore his cassock. In May of 1945, at the end of his first year of college, Dick had matured into a well-spoken and handsome man. He had mushroomed to well over six feet tall and had the physique of an athlete, although he had never found any great interest in participating in sports. He enjoyed swimming and hiking, and still went off on his long treks up the mountain on weekends, oftentimes taking a few schoolbooks with him. He would find a picturesque spot at the top of the mountain and plop himself against a tree and read for hours. It was solace for Dick since the conversation at home with his father was strained as Charlie still believed that Dick was better off on the farm than at school. Dinners at home were fairly quiet, almost as if Charlie resented the fact that Dick had won this battle.

  Dick was returning from his mountain on an afternoon in May when he noticed a great deal of commotion as he appeared from the trail leading back to the farm at the rear of their property. The swirling red lights at the side of the house, at this time of day as the sun began to set, could be seen for miles. His heart started to beat faster as his instincts told him immediately that something was wrong. “Oh, my God, no, please, no, not Mom,” he thought out loud as he began to run faster and faster to reach home. “She must be hurt, she burned herself at the stoves, she’s been working too hard lately, I knew it,” he ranted as he kept on running, faster and faster, until he reached the ambulance that signaled fright and pain.

  “It’s your father, Dick,” Alice spoke as he rushed through the kitchen door. “He was just sitting here with me talking about how things seemed to have worked out so well and talking about retiring soon. Then, all of a sudden, his face grew pale, like he was mad, and he grabbed his chest with both hands like a knife had been put to him,” Alice continued, gripping tightly on Dick’s arm as if to hang on. “I didn’t know what to do; I called Doc Hinkson and he’s with him now.”

  Almost in the same motion as his mother finished speaking, Dick was heading for the sofa in the parlor where Doc Hinkson and two other men were huddled over Charlie. One man was pumping furiously over Charlie while the doctor was rubbing his elbow with rubbing alcohol on a gauze, preparing to inject Charlie with some solution.

  Alice held her son back, “You can’t do anything for him, Dick, it’s up to somebody else now,” she moaned, staring into her son’s drawn face. They held each other tightly and Dick cried uncontrollably as Alice cradled him in her arms.

  Charlie had suffered a massive heart attack and never regained consciousness. He was to be buried three days later under an elm tree in a grove on the farm near the trail leading up the mountain.

  Father Gavin was to perform the service at St. Barnaby’s and his mother asked Dick if he would say the eulogy for his father. Father Gavin knew that Dick had become a good speaker in front of groups, but this would be different. The church was filled with friends, relatives, and acquaintances of the Merrills and this would be his father he was going to talk about. Dick had not left his mother’s side since Charlie had been stricken. Two nights before the funeral, Alice asked Dick to sit with her in the parlor; she had something important to discuss with him.

  “Your father had been doing a lot of thinking in the last few months,” she began, “and he was getting tired a lot lately. He wanted to slow down and maybe even do a little traveling this summer. Charlie hadn’t seen his brother, your uncle Sean, in almost ten years when he came up last summer to see us on his vacation. Your uncle Sean never liked the cold weather and, with his arthritis, always was glad he had moved to Florida. When your father realized that you weren’t about to take over the business in a couple of years, he talked about selling it all, the farm too, to a big bakery in Nashua. They made an offer that he was really thinking about, more money than we’d ever seen in our entire lives.” Alice walked over to the desk in the adjoining office area and reached for some papers on Charlie’s desk. As she approached Dick, Alice said, “Your father signed the agreement three days ago and told me about it the day before he died. He was going to tell you that night at supper. I could see a sense of relief when he told me, like a big load had been taken off him. He even smiled when he told me,” Alice continued, “if only I’d known, but Doc Hinkson said there was no way I could’ve known, Charlie hardly ever complained about anything.”

  Dick started reading the papers his mother had just given him and looked up at her in a daze. “What are you going to do, Mom, where are you going to go? I’m still here; I’ll run the business if you want to stay.” uttered Dick as he rose to his feet.

  “No, Son, you’re gonna go back to school where you belong, except now you’re gonna live in Plymouth at the school and, come vacation time, you can come down to Florida to live with me.”

  “Florida? You’re moving to Florida, who are you going to know down there, except Uncle Sean?”

  “Your Uncle Sean and Aunt Jean were planning on opening their own little restaurant in Boca Raton, right near the ocean, and your father and I had sort of agreed to go in with them. I called Sean yesterday and he’ll be here tomorrow to help me get some of these things straightened out,” Alice went on, “and your uncle Sean doesn’t need any money. He just wants me to come d
own there, live with them for a while until I find my own place and then, maybe do some cooking at the restaurant if I want.”

  “I’m nearly sixty-five years old and I can’t take care of this place by myself, nor do I want to. And I don’t want you here either. I’m tired of pushing and pushing to make a bigger business. It’s time for me to slow down and see some of the world out there. I haven’t been out of New Hampshire in over twenty years. “Your father once told me he probably wouldn’t get to see the sun set anywhere but here before he died. I didn’t know then just how true that statement would turn out to be.”

  As expected, on the day of Charlie’s funeral, St. Barnaby’s was packed with mourners who had known Charlie Merrill for nearly fifty years. Whether it was out of mere business courtesy or genuine sorrow for the loss of a dear friend, they all came. Father Gavin had paid particular attention to all the details personally. Somehow the attachment to his young pupil for several years compelled him to reach for that extra ounce of energy to show his compassion for Dick’s father in the only way he could.

  The pews were lined with a delegation from the Knights of Columbus dressed in their navy blue uniforms complete with feathered hats. There were bouquets of flowers surrounding the entire vestibule. Father Gavin had summoned all of the altar boys from the local school to attend, dressed in full cassocks as they stood in rows near the church choir to the left of the sacristy. The altar was draped with rich white cloth and more flowers. It looked more like a royal wedding than a funeral.

  The time soon came for Dick to deliver the eulogy. He had not discussed it nor allowed anyone to read it. It was to be his thoughts about his father and he was going to say them as he wrote them. As he approached the lectern, he glanced at Father Gavin seated behind the altar. Father Gavin was clutching the crucifix hanging around his neck with his left hand while, at the same time, signaled a sign of the cross toward Dick with his right hand.

  As Dick placed his prepared talk on the lectern, he noticed a simple message taped to the facing. It read: I am with you, Dick, do not despair.

  “Most of you,” Dick began, “have known my father much longer than I have, for my mother and he gave birth to me when they were both already forty-five years old. Before I was born, I am told that my father would spend his mornings making his egg deliveries and, the afternoons he would spend at the bar of the Plymouth Bar & Grille talking about his dreams of someday being rich and famous. My mother,” Dick continued as he looked down toward Alice’s teary-eyed face, “she never complained, so the story goes, when he stumbled in each night, sometimes too drunk to even sit for the meal she had worked hard to prepare for him. This went on for nearly ten years, I am told, ten years. And then on April 25, 1925, it stopped. That’s the day I was born. From that day on until today, I have never seen my father take a drink anywhere. I am told that he had a purpose in life now that he had a son. My mother and father had been married for twenty years when I was born, and I was the first and only child. It seems, so the story goes, that my father had made a promise to God that, if Charlie and Alice Merrill could have a child, he would change.” He smiled at his mother as he continued.

  “I tell you this today because the father I knew is the one I will always remember. The Charlie Merrill you have known is the one who proved to you that faith in God can do pretty wonderful things. I never knew Charlie Merrill, the drinker, and I probably would never have known about my father’s depressing past until someone sat me down last June and told me all about it. It was something I had to know. You’re better off hearing it from me, my father told me, than from somebody who’s only going to give you pieces of the story. So, Charlie Merrill sat me down on my graduation day under an elm tree in a grove at the foot of his mountain and told me what a bum he had been for years until I was born.”

  “God sent me to them and now He’s taken him back,” Dick went on with sorrow in his voice, “I thank God for letting me have such wonderful parents. As much as I will miss my father, it is my mother who has suffered more over the years, the good ones and the very bad ones, than anyone else. And now, comes the cruelest blow of them all, just when they were both to begin enjoying their retirement, he has been taken from her. My father once told me, expect nothing and you’ll never be disappointed. My mother will survive because she is strong, strong in faith that God’s will must be done. I will miss you, Dad, more than you know and more than I could ever tell you when you were alive. I won’t see you for a while,” his voice began to crack and his emotion was overtaking him now, “but someday we’ll all be together again. So long, Dad, until we meet again.”

  Silence. Not a sound could be heard throughout the church, not a cough, not a whimper, only to be broken by the sound of noses blowing throughout. Dick caressed the casket as he descended from the lectern to return to his mother’s side. Alice cradled her arms around Dick’s and gently leaned her head to rest on his shoulder.

  At that moment she knew. Mothers have a way of knowing. Call it a sixth sense, ESP, or clairvoyance, whatever, but when it comes to mothers and their children, there is something there that telegraphs messages on things that others can’t pick up. Alice knew her son. She had seen the torment on his face on more than one occasion and she saw it again this day. This was to be no ordinary man who sat beside her. How could she have not seen it before? There was her son, majestic as could be, standing over his audience and speaking with such eloquence that people were moved to tears. It was then that Alice realized that Dick would someday become a priest, a man of God; it was just a matter of time. Dick would not return to Plymouth Teachers College.

  CHAPTER 5

  The agreement between the Merrills and Nashua Foods was finalized several weeks later. Sean Merrill had called in an attorney from Boston to consummate the transaction and to set up various bank accounts and investments as Alice had requested. Alice’s accounts would be held at the First Bank & Trust in Boston. She would have a checking account set up to draw against her funds at will and would receive a monthly accounting statement at Sean’s address in Florida.

  The farm and the business had been sold for $150,000. Alice had placed $50,000 in the bank account and had set up a special trust fund for the remaining $100,000, with the provision that the account be in her name until her death or Dick’s twenty-fifth birthday, whichever came first. Alice knew that with modest, conservative interest added to the account each year, Dick would never need worry about money again. She did not tell Dick about the trust account, choosing instead to merely relate to him that she was financially stable enough to afford living very comfortable for the rest of her life and still have enough to allow Dick to complete his college years.

  The day finally came that July morning when Dick and his mother were set to leave the Merrill farm for the last time. Dick had already made arrangements to keep his pick-up truck at St. Barnaby’s over the remaining summer months until he returned for his second year at Plymouth Teachers College. By noon, most of the furniture and personal belongings had been packed and loaded in the moving van. Except for the kitchen stoves and refrigerator and some of Charlie’s office furniture, which was included in the sale of the farm, the house resembled any other home in transition. Nashua Foods had decided to convert the farm into a regional office, serving not only the Merrill brand of pastries and eggs, but using the remainder of the property to erect a distribution center for the company’s other line of products.

  Alice had insisted that the contract with Nashua include a clause requiring Nashua to preserve and isolate the grave site area where Charlie was buried and to allow the site to also be her own grave site alongside her husband. The plot was particularly special to Dick whose frequent treks up the mountain led him that way. And so it was, that early afternoon, that Alice and Dick stood together for one last time at Charlie’s grave, placing lilacs at the foot of his head stone.

  Flight 349 from Boston was to arrive at 6:35 p.m. the operator had informed Sean Merrill. Sean’s wife, Jean, had pre
pared the spare room for Alice and had set up a folding bed for Dick as a temporary set up, knowing that Dick would be visiting for only a month or less if Alice found her own place before Dick returned to school. Jean Merrill was much younger than Alice and, at fifty-two, had spent most of her life in the warmer climates of the South. She had met Sean in the early ’30s when he moved to Florida and began making deliveries to The Boca Beach Motel, a family business owned by Jean’s father. Sean worked for a towel and linen supply company covering the resorts and businesses from West Palm Beach to Pompano. Boca Raton was in between the two more popular cities and was considered quite unknown in the 1930s. Plush resorts were mostly in the Palm Beach area but more and more retirees were moving into the Boca area where real estate prices were less expensive.

  Sean had never liked the cold weather and the New Hampshire climate was one he very seldom talked about. He had made his move to Florida and firmly believed that this part of the country, with its beaches and tropical climate, would someday be the retirement haven for many of the country’s workforce. Jean’s father had seen the growth of the Boca area into the 1940s and had recommended to Sean that he put his money into coastal real estate properties before anything else. “It’s just a matter of time, Sean, my boy, before that waterfront property will turn to gold,” he would tell Sean. Believing that his advice was wise, Sean began by buying a small beach house and, a few years later, an acre of land on the coastal waterway that flowed for miles between the beach properties and those more inland. Sean believed that this property would be more valuable to boat owners as an alternative to the more expensive costs of keeping boats at a marina. “Why not park your boat at your own dock, in your backyard,” he would say.