by Jim Sano
As the man lowered himself slowly into his chair, a smile made its way to the man’s face as his eyes radiated the love and joy he felt seeing his long-lost son. A tear rolled down Gianni’s cheek as he continued to gaze at David with nothing but love in his eyes. It took a moment for David to compose himself, and he pointed to the phone so that they could talk. David spoke to his father for the first time in thirty-one years. “Hello, Pop. I’m sorry it took so long.”
Gianni shook his head as tears freely fell down his cheeks. “David, we’ve waited so long, much too long. I can’t tell you how happy I am to see you.” Gianni’s right hand was facing towards David with the palm side up and moving back and forth as he said, “I can’t believe my eyes that this is the young boy I left behind. I’m so sorry for all the days, all the years, we have missed. I’ve missed you each and every one of them.”
“All these years, I thought it was only me who missed you, Pop. It was such a shock, believing that you were dead and to find out that you’ve been alive, after all this time.” David smiled. “I have to admit I was expecting that time had stood still, and you were still about the age I am now, but you look good and it’s so good to hear your voice. I can’t believe we are this close, but we still have a wall between us.”
“There are walls and bars everywhere here, but you learn to see past them.”
There was an awkward moment of silence. “David, when I first went to prison, I don’t know if you knew this, but your mother did come down to visit. She was so devastated and hurt about Jimmy. I could see she was angry and had lost trust in me. She was using her resentment and maybe even hate to deal with the pain. When she left, I think she was convinced I was responsible for Jimmy’s death and in one way she was right. Your brother died trying to save my life. Whether or not I had actually pulled the trigger, I was responsible, and I don’t think your mother could handle the death of her firstborn after losing her only sister as a young girl. I couldn’t blame her for how she was feeling. I was devastated myself. I couldn’t find a way to convince her that I still loved you all. As one letter after another came back unopened, I knew our bond of trust had been broken. What I’m trying to say, David, is if you lost faith in me or felt abandoned, I can understand why. I’m so sorry for any pain this caused you and even more sorry for not being there for you when you were growing up.”
Tears welled in David’s eyes. “Pop, thanks for saying that, but you’re the one who’s been wronged. We should never have lost faith in you. I should’ve trusted in the man you were.”
“How old did you say your son James is?”
“Seven, going on eight soon.”
“About the same age you were when all this happened. Would you expect James to be able to figure out all these conflicting things going on at his age?”
David understood his question and just shook his head in response.
“Tell me more about your life.”
“What would you like to know, Pop?”
“Well, can I ask about your family? You mentioned Amy and James, tell me about their mother.”
“Their mother’s name is Kathleen, and you’d like her quite a bit. She has a strong devotion to her faith and family.”
“That’s so good to hear. I hope your faith has served you well too. What about Amy and James? You told me a little in your letter.”
David told Gianni about things the kids were involved in and about their personalities, and about things he had been doing with them over the past month. David didn’t mention he had divorced Kathleen and that he hadn’t been living with them for the past six years. He talked about volunteering at the food kitchen, coaching, and about how well things were going for him work-wise. David figured leaving work until last would show his father a good sense of priorities. He asked about how Gianni had been coping with prison life and the injustice of his conviction. Gianni displayed remarkable perspective and ability to make the best of a difficult situation.
“My biggest regret is losing my family for so long. The other two regrets are not feeling the sunshine and ocean breeze on my face and not having some real Italian cooking once in a while.”
David laughed at the last one and the conversation flowed more naturally until the five-minute signal light came on all too soon. When the guard came to get Gianni, he silently stood up placing his palm on the window, and David did the same as they said goodbye.
Walking back out into the sunshine, David was surprised that his emotions had been more under control than he had anticipated, almost to the point of not feeling much emotion at all. It wasn’t apparent to him what mechanisms were in play, but he had expected more volcanic emotions at seeing his father. He hadn’t gone into the visiting room as the eight-year-old David, but the managed thirty-nine-year-old self-made man. He felt more as if he had dodged a bullet of disappointing his father instead of emotionally resting in a loving father’s embrace, and that this feeling was coming solely from himself and not from anything his father had done. Had he expected too much? Was he holding back to avoid taking an emotional risk? Was he even fully recognizing that this was actually his father he had just met with? He couldn’t answer any of his own questions and wasn’t sure, at the moment, if he even wanted to.
When David exited the gangway at Logan Airport, he noticed someone sitting there waiting—Tom. David shook his head in disbelief. “What the heck are you doing here?”
“I was thinking of a tropical vacation, but I couldn’t decide which island to fly to, so I’ve just been sitting here frozen in Boston.”
David sat down next to him. “Sure. Sure. And I have a sure bet at the track for you. So, what are you really doing here?”
“I know how much you hate riding in those limos, so I thought I’d offer you the ride you really deserve, in your favorite broken-down Honda hatchback.”
David laughed. “I hope you’re not expecting a big tip.”
On the way home, David told Tom all about his visit with his father and his observations about his own unexpected feelings. Tom listened and let David talk his feelings out. Within twenty minutes they were in front of David’s Beacon Street apartment. He thanked Tom for the luxury ride and grabbed his bag.
Tom rolled down the passenger side window. “Thanks for the company, but you weren’t much help with my tropical island dilemma.”
“I will see what I can come up with. Thanks for the ride and for listening.”
Tom leaned towards the passenger window. “It’s a start, David. Let the relationship and your feelings unfold naturally.” David smiled before unlocking the door to his apartment.
Chapter 40
James had asked to have Thanksgiving “leftovers” together, so David drove to Hingham on Sunday to be with his family. David forgot how much he missed Kathleen’s knack for making simple foods taste great. The turkey was tasty, as were the stuffing, potatoes, peas, bread, and homemade eggnog. By the time the squash pie was attacked and conquered, everyone leaned back stuffed and happy.
When they were alone, David talked to Kathleen about the shocking news and his visit to see his father on Saturday. Kathleen sat quietly for a minute then tears welled in her eyes and rolled down her cheeks. David put his arm around her before calling Amy and James down to share the story of the grandfather they never knew. Neither David nor Kathleen had ever talked to the kids about their grandfather’s conviction and assumed death.
As Amy and James sat on the couch, David could tell that Amy knew something was up as she obviously noticed that her mother had been crying. “Amy, James, I have some news to share with you that I only learned of myself a short time ago. You probably noticed that I’ve never really spoken before about your grandfather, my father, other than that he was no longer alive. I found out this fall that he is actually alive. I visited him yesterday, and we talked about both of you, which made him very happy.”
Amy froze in open-mouthed shock. James jumped up. “I have two grandfathers!”
David laughed.<
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Amy said, “How could you not know your father was alive? Was he missing from the war?”
“It’s a long story,” David said as began to tell them about his family life as a young boy and the events that changed the course of his life when he was eight and finally how he came to know the truth.
“Wow,” James said, “that is so cool! Can I tell my friends?”
Amy said, “That’s unbelievable! If he’s innocent, when can he get out? When can we meet him?”
Kathleen placed a hand on her shoulder. “Amy, we know the truth about Grandpa Fidele’s innocence, but there may not be any living witnesses that could testify to it in court.”
“That’s not fair!” Amy cried at the injustice. “How can you keep an innocent man in prison? There must be something we can do?”
David replied, “We will do everything possible, Amy. Everything.”
“Why did you call him Grandpa Fidele instead of Kelly?” Amy asked.
“That was his name. My mother had our last names legally changed to her maiden name after the conviction, and I’ve been a Kelly for so long that—”
“My name is really Amy Fidele?”
James said, “Maybe we can have two last names!”
After dinner, David helped Kathleen with the dishes. As they stood side by side at the kitchen sink, David stared out the window and then caught Kathleen gazing at him as she had when they first married.
Suddenly, in that look, David saw their history; destruction of the most important relationship in her life, breaking an important commitment to the children, and losing someone she loved for a reason she still did not truly understand. It had all been devastating to Kathleen, and yet, she’d never displayed anger or resentment towards David, only pity for someone she still cared deeply about. During the years of their marriage, he had slowly pulled back from the discomfort of closeness, that invasion of his managed self. In response, she got busier with the kids, Church, and the community, but that had led him to feel quite alone at times, an aloneness he sought and feared at the same time.
Normally, on the way home, David felt a subconscious sense of relief, but this evening he felt lonely. Once in his apartment, the feeling of emptiness was only broken by Trooper. Once in his chair, he thought back to dating Kathleen in college. Things seemed simpler then. He was focused on college, working at a small restaurant in town, and at odd jobs in Lynn cutting lawns in the summer and shoveling snow in the winter, playing basketball, and seeing Kathleen as much as possible. Her parents wished he had a foundation in faith, but they liked him and knew Kathleen believed in him and loved him deeply. He began working internships when IMG was a start-up and did so well at his inside sales assignments that he became an assistant sales rep before finishing his senior year, making more money than his mother did full-time at the General Electric in Lynn. Things seemed to be finally going well for David.
Although he and Kathleen had been dating for over four years, David hadn’t been thinking about getting married at this point in his life, but after sharing Thanksgiving dinner with Kathleen’s family in 1984, he decided that he wanted to ask Kathleen for her hand. He owned an old Chevy Malibu car by then, and on December 13, kidnapped Kathleen out of her Art History class to take her for a ride up the winding North Shore roads through the old towns of Beverly, Essex, and then Manchester-by-the-Sea until they parked at a beautiful beach called Singing Beach. Despite the time of year, the temperature was in the mid-sixties, and it was a perfect break from the shorter, colder and more intense days of study. The small half-mile beach was in the shape of a horseshoe, with rugged Maine-like rocks acting as protection on either end and sand in between that made a bird-like singing sound with each slide of their feet. David had never taken Kathleen there, but he knew she’d love it. They bought ice cream cones at a small shop up the road and walked barefoot with arms around each other’s waist while enjoying their cones and the sounds of the waves beside them.
David loved making Kathleen smile, and as she took deep breaths of the ocean air and let the sun rest on her grinning face with her eyes closed, he knew she was happy. As they walked, David said, “You know, Kat, there’s a legend that dangerous pirates from the Barbary Coast landed on this very beach several hundred years ago and buried their treasure here to escape their hunters.”
Kathleen laughed. “I’ll bet there’s as much chance of there being pirate’s treasure on this beach as there is that you even know where the Barbary Coast is!”
David didn’t answer but stopped in his tracks, putting his arm out to stop Kathleen from walking further. David stared down at a spot in the sand.
“David, what is it?”
David dropped to his knees, and said in a serious tone, “I don’t know.” His hand started to brush aside the sand, and he finally said, “I guess it was nothing. I thought I saw something. Wait, hold on a second.” David brushed the coarse sand very gently. Kathleen squatted down next to him, waiting for David to show her what he found. David had his right knee in the sand as he uncovered something. He gazed up into Kathleen’s eyes and lifted his hand eye-height. “Would a most incredible and beautiful young woman named Kathleen O’Shea ever consider spending the rest of her life with a poor, shy boy who will try his very best to love her, honor her, and be by her side?”
Breathless, Kathleen’s eyes filled with tears as he held up the diamond ring in his sandy hand. She put her arms around him. “Yes! Kathleen O’Shea would very much love to spend every day of her life with David Kelly.” She held David, kissed him and held him some more. “I don’t know if I ever imagined being this happy. I love you, David.”
David knew Kathleen had always dreamed of a September wedding, and they set the date for September 14, 1985. He was kept in the dark about where they were going for their honeymoon, which was the prime source of joking during the reception. Kathleen paid for the tickets and friends of her parents helped with a timeshare they had in the Bahamas. Kathleen even bought clothes for warm beach weather and packed for David. With a six-hour flight that was delayed and the heavy rains when they finally got to their destination in the pitch black, both David and Kathleen were dead tired and fell soundly to sleep on their wedding bed without their first anticipated moments of physical intimacy. Waiting for marriage was something that meant a great deal to Kathleen that David didn’t fully understand but honored during their courting. As the bright morning sunlight made its way into their honeymoon suite, David woke up on a large, comfortable bed in a bamboo hut with a thatched roof. The sunshine was streaming in through the bamboo doors, showing glimpses of a palm tree and the tropical ocean water outside. As he turned his head, Kathleen’s side of the bed was empty, and he quickly tried to collect his thoughts about last night. He opened the door to what could only be described as a private island oasis, but this didn’t match the sight of his young bride at the end of the hut’s private dock.
As incredibly beautiful as everything was surrounding him on the tropical island, nothing compared to seeing Kathleen’s feminine body for the first time. The sun on her long brown hair and shoulders, the curve of her back, the perfect symmetry of her form and her shapely bare legs made for a moment that David could have melted into for eternity.
Kathleen playfully dove into the clear emerald water and came up turning towards David with an invitation to join. It didn’t take David more than a fraction of a second to dive off the pier. She wrapped her arms around David’s shoulders, kissed him passionately, and they made love for the first time in the tropical morning waters of their own private beach and then again when they got back into their small bamboo bungalow hut. Kathleen was as in love as she had ever hoped for, and David felt the hope of more than he had ever thought possible for himself as they began their life journey together.
David sat back in his chair trying to follow what could take him from that moment to walking out the door ten years later. He had become more involved in his work and driven by success. Kathleen was more inv
olved with the kids and the community. Later nights and weekends, frequent trips and work becoming more of the priority in his life, all seemed justified to David as he provided a safe future for his family. Any conversations or arguments over his logic with Kathleen led to David putting a quick end to the discussions. As he became less and less involved and spent less and less time at home, David became a stranger to the kids, and they became strangers to him.
On their tenth anniversary, David came home after midnight due to negotiating a large customer deal, which didn’t lead to a loving conversation that night. David ended up driving back into town to spend the night at a hotel, and then the next night until he came home to tell Kathleen that he was going to live in town for a while. Most of his sales team had gone through divorces of their own and only helped to convince David that he needed to separate from Kathleen. Within six months, David purchased his Beacon Street apartment and offered Kathleen a very comfortable settlement of divorce she didn’t accept, not for more money but because she didn’t believe in divorce or that their marriage was over. She was more worried about David than angry because, as much as she believed in David, she knew him well enough to understand that he was running away from life, not towards it.
David’s thoughts shifted to visiting his father and why there was more of a level of discomfort than joy in finally seeing him. David thought about the things he should be doing as a man. Telling his dad he left a woman like Kathleen for no good reason other than selfishness and a long list of meaningless priorities left David with a feeling of shame and failure. He couldn’t justify what he had done to Kathleen, Amy, and James in exchange for success, power, pleasure, and possessions.
Somewhere in his train of thought, Tom’s words about Kathleen believing they were still married finally hit him. It wasn’t only that Kathleen believed they were still married, but that Tom was also saying he was too. How could this concept have slipped by him so easily? David’s instincts from his years in business quickly led him to look at identifying the problem and the best solutions based on the best inputs. What would my father tell me to do next? What would God want me to do? David was surprised by those first two new sources of direction. He finally thought, What would an authentic man of honor do?