The Returning

by Ann Tatlock

  In the other bed John was asleep now, breathing slowly, snoring lightly. Andrea was almost afraid to breathe herself, afraid to wake him. How strange it was to have him here. How strange all of it was: his coming home, his lying there beside her in the dark.

  How strange their marriage.

  If one could call it that.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Billy and Phoebe sat side by side on the glider, as they often did in the cool of the morning. He pushed lightly against the porch’s painted boards with the soles of his flat bare feet, rocking the two of them gently. Phoebe rested her head on his shoulder while he quietly sang a song he’d learned in Sunday school, something about God making all the birds in the sky and the fish in the sea. He couldn’t remember all the words, but when he got stuck, he filled in the blanks by humming. He often sang to Phoebe, because she asked him to and because he liked to sing. His one rule about singing, though, was that he would only sing happy songs, never sad songs.

  When he finished, Phoebe looked up at him with her blue eyes wide and whispered, “Billy, do you like that man?”

  Billy had to think a minute. Finally he asked, “What man?”

  “You know, the man that came here yesterday.”

  “You mean Dad?” He laughed lightly. He couldn’t help it. She stared at him, then nodded.

  “Phoebe,” he said, “that’s our dad. He’s . . . he’s—of course I like him. I love him. Don’t you?”

  She shook her head. “I’m scared of him.”

  “Oh, Phoebe, you’re scared of everything.”

  “No I’m not.”

  “Yes you are.”

  “I’m not scared of you.”

  “That doesn’t count.”

  Phoebe didn’t respond. For a moment the two of them sat quietly together, saying nothing. From the kitchen came the sounds of pots clanging; Mom was making oatmeal and sausage links for breakfast. Dad was at the sink in the bathroom, shaving. Beka, Billy figured, was probably still asleep.

  “Phoebe?”

  “Yeah, Billy?”

  “Give Dad a chance.”

  She didn’t say anything.

  “You’ll like him,” he went on, “when you know him.”

  “I don’t think so, Billy.”

  “You didn’t . . . you don’t remember him from before, do you, Phoeb?”

  She shook her head. “Do you?”

  “Sure I do.” He nodded proudly. “He was a good dad.”

  “Really?”

  “Really.”

  “Then how come he went to jail, where all the bad people go?”

  “It was an accident. Dad’s not a bad person. He had an accident.”

  “Mom said he was in a car wreck.”

  “That’s right.”

  “You can go to jail for having a car wreck?”

  “Yeah. If someone dies, you might go to jail.”

  Phoebe was quiet a long time. Then she said, “I don’t ever want to drive. I don’t want to go to jail.”

  “Well, I want to drive. Mom thinks I can’t. I drive the boat with her there, but I’ll never drive the car.”

  “Maybe you’re lucky, then.”

  “No, it’s not lucky. I want to do things by myself, not have people always driving me around like I’m a kid. I want . . .” He stopped, knowing if he kept on, he’d just make himself upset. He blinked a few times to chase away the bad thoughts, then smiled down at his little sister. “But anyway, Phoeb, you can’t always be scared of things. You’ll never be happy that way.”

  She shrugged her shoulders. “I can’t help it.”

  “Maybe you can.”

  “Aren’t you scared of anything, Billy?”

  Billy squinted as he considered that. Finally he said, “Yeah, I am. Scared I’m going to miss breakfast because I’m out here talking to you.” Phoebe giggled at that. He liked it when he could make her laugh.

  “Really, Billy. I guess you’re not scared of anything.”

  “No, that’s not true. I am sometimes. But then I just sing that song to myself.”

  “What song?”

  “You know, the one that says ‘angels watchin’ over me.’ ”

  “Oh yeah. I like that one.”

  She rested her head back against his shoulder.

  “Billy?”

  “Yeah?”

  “How long is he going to stay?”

  “Dad?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  Billy sniffed at that and shook his head. “He’s home, Phoebe. He’s home for good.”

  She looked away. “Oh,” she said. It was a small sound, like the squeal of a mouse.

  “Aren’t you glad? You don’t want a dad?”

  She shrugged her small shoulders. “I don’t know.”

  “You don’t know? Every kid wants a dad, Phoeb.”

  “But what do I need a dad for, Billy, as long as I’ve got you?”

  He found he didn’t have an answer to that. He smiled when he heard Phoege give off a small, contented sigh.

  “Billy, sing me that song.”

  “Which song?”

  “The one about angels watching over me.”

  “Okay.” He moistened his lips with his tongue. Then he lifted his chin and sang, “ ‘All night, all day, angels watching over me, my Lord. All night, all day, angels watching over me. . . .’ ”

  CHAPTER TEN

  John patted his face dry with a towel and slapped some aftershave on his reddened cheeks. Andrea had thought of everything: new pack of disposable razors, a can of shaving cream, a bottle of the brand of aftershave he’d always used. He hadn’t even had to ask, hadn’t even thought ahead to what he might need when he got home. But she had.

  He looked at his reflection in the mirror, the same mirror that had been throwing his image back at him since he was a kid perched on a step stool at the sink. In the interim he’d made a mess of things. He wanted to do things right this time.

  “God help me,” he said aloud, repeating his simple prayer of the night before. It was the overarching prayer of a desperate man, and he knew it.

  He slipped on a T-shirt and stepped into a pair of shorts. Both were brand-new. He’d found them, neatly folded, in a drawer of the dresser upstairs. “I picked you up some new clothes—not much, just some casual wear for the summer,” Andrea had told him. He zipped up the shorts and reached into the right-hand pocket. Sure enough. Same old Andrea. She’d tucked a handkerchief into the pocket, ironed and neatly folded. All the years of their marriage, whenever he’d complained that he didn’t like handkerchiefs and she shouldn’t bother, she came back saying, “Yes, well, you never know when you’re going to need one.”

  With a wry smile, he stuffed the handkerchief back into the pocket and then stepped hesitantly forward into his first full day at home. As he moved from the bathroom into the hallway that served as Billy’s bedroom, something shiny in the window caught his eye. He noticed now what he hadn’t noticed coming through—the row of Special Olympics medals Billy had laid out along the windowsill. John had forgotten all about that, had forgotten about watching his son’s triumphs in the water year after year. “A real fish, that one,” the coach had proclaimed of Billy Sheldon. “One of the best swimmers I’ve seen at the Specials.” And everyone had been proud of Billy, including Billy.

  Now here he was in the summer before his junior year of high school, working a job and earning money, attempting to take care of the cottage and to be the man of the house in his father’s absence. At one time John would never have believed it.

  Certainly he wouldn’t have foreseen it on the day the boy was born. Some hours after the birth the doctor came back to the room, looking solemn. “I’m sorry to say your son has Down syndrome,” he had told the new parents apologetically, as though the condition had somehow been his fault instead of a genetic mishap. Either way, the announcement put a damper on John’s hope that, with his son’s birth, something good had come of his mistake.

  John’s first though
t, and his first suggestion, was to put the child in an institution. That might be best for all of them, he said. But Andrea would have none of it. As she looked up from the face of her newborn son, John saw something in Andrea’s eyes that he’d never seen before, something fierce and tender at the same time.

  “I’m not giving my baby away,” she said firmly.

  John felt helpless. “I just don’t think I can deal with all this, Andrea.”

  “You don’t have to,” she shot back. “He’s mine and I’ll raise him.”

  And so she had. Raised him right into manhood. He’d be turning eighteen in another few weeks, and that made him an adult.

  John looked past the front room and out the window to where Billy sat on the glider with Phoebe. He felt a shiver run through him, a shiver that he recognized as fledgling pride for the son who had once so disappointed him. He walked to the porch door, and through the screen he greeted his children cheerfully. “Good morning, you two.”

  “Good morning, Dad!” Billy’s eyes shone at the sight of his father.

  Phoebe, though, only leaned closer to her brother and kept her eyes downcast.

  “Did you sleep good, Dad?” Billy asked.

  John thought it interesting that he hadn’t noticed yesterday what was so obvious today, what had nettled him for years. Billy always dropped the ends of his words so that his sentence came out sounding like, “Di you slee goo, Da?” John had once cringed constantly at how the boy’s tongue seemed to get in the way of everything. Though it wasn’t his tongue that was too big, but his mouth that was too small. Common in kids with Down syndrome. Billy’s mouth just couldn’t seem to fit around an entire word. He always had to bite off the end to get the bulk of the letters out.

  It doesn’t matter now, John told himself. I’m proud of my son. Aloud, he said, “I slept just fine, Billy. How about you?”

  “I slept good. I always do. I like to sleep.” I slep goo. I alway do. I li to slee.

  John nodded and smiled at Billy. Then he moved his gaze from his son to the little girl. “Hello, Phoebe.”

  She squirmed. She raised her eyes momentarily without lifting her head from Billy’s shoulder. Her mouth moved, and she might have said hello, but no sound came out.

  John waited but was met with a continuing silence. Finally he said, “Well, it smells like your mother is fixing breakfast.”

  “Yeah, and I’m hungry,” Billy said. “Tell her to call me when it’s ready.”

  John followed the aroma of frying sausages to the kitchen, where he found Andrea at the stove. She glanced up at him briefly. “Good morning. Sleep okay?”

  “Fine, thanks.”

  “Hungry?”

  He nodded. “Starving.”

  “Breakfast is almost ready. There’s coffee in the pot. Help yourself if you want some.”

  At that moment the door to the adjoining bedroom flew open, and Rebekah appeared on the threshold wearing a summer robe, her hair disheveled, her makeup smeared. She looked at her father as though he were a tree fallen across the very road she needed to travel. He was in the way.

  “You out of the bathroom?” she asked.

  “Yes. It’s free now.”

  “Finally.” As she stomped through the kitchen she announced loudly, “We’re never going to survive with five of us in this horrible little shack.”

  “Oh, Beka,” Andrea sighed. “Breakfast is almost ready,” she called after the girl.

  “I’m not hungry!” In another moment the pipes beneath the cottage groaned as Rebekah drew herself a bath.

  “This having one bathroom is going to be a problem,” John muttered.

  Andrea let go a small laugh. “Going to be? It’s been a problem since we got here. Especially since the toilet has a nasty habit of getting backed up. We’re living like sardines in a cottage that’s slowly falling apart, John.”

  And another fish just squeezed into the tin, he thought. “I’m sorry, Andrea. I know it’s not ideal. . . .”

  She dismissed his comment with a shrug. “You do what you have to do. At least there’s two things we can be thankful for—the place has been winterized, and better yet, we don’t have a mortgage.”

  “Yeah.” He nodded solemnly. “At least there’s that. Do we have anything left from the sale of the Virginia Beach house?”

  “Oh yes. Less every month, of course.”

  John fidgeted, thinking about what it would take to fix this place up a bit. He couldn’t afford to tear down and rebuild as so many around the lake had done in recent years. Some places weren’t cottages at all anymore but regular houses, with two stories, garages, and landscaping that rivaled the best backyards in Rochester. No, he couldn’t do that, but he was going to have to do something. Which made him think about bringing home a paycheck. “What time does Owen want me and Billy at the restaurant today?” he asked.

  “Eleven. That’s when the lunch rush starts.”

  “And you say Billy knows how to take the bus?”

  She nodded. “You can catch it right up across from the Steiners’ place. You know, six doors down.”

  “Yes, I remember.”

  “Not a whole lot of buses come along here, and the ones that do aren’t always reliable, but it’s better than nothing. It gets you there eventually.”

  “Okay, I just didn’t realize . . .” He stopped, momentarily lost in thought.

  “Realize what, John?” she prodded.

  He looked up. “It’s going to be real inconvenient not having a driver’s license.”

  “You’ll get one eventually.”

  “Yeah, a year from now. Not soon enough.” He shook his head, remembering how it felt yesterday to open the front door of the cottage and step outside. The wonder of such a simple act! But he knew now it wasn’t enough. Freedom wasn’t feeling the grass beneath your feet. It was having wheels under you, being able to go where you wanted to go. He wasn’t free yet.

  “Listen, you told Selene, right?” he asked. “You told her you won’t be working for her anymore?”

  “She’s known all along I wouldn’t be working once you got out of—” She stopped suddenly. John knew she didn’t want to say the word. She tried to smile. “You know,” she suggested, “I can drive you and Billy into town today if you want. I don’t mind.”

  “You can’t leave Phoebe here alone.”

  “She won’t be alone. Rebekah’s here till four, when she has to leave for work.”

  John looked out the window at the two old cars parked behind the cottage. “Where’d Rebekah get that beat-up old Jetta?”

  “Owen. Used to be Selene’s till they got her a better one.”

  “Uh-huh. You really think anyone should be driving that thing?”

  “It’s a clunker, but it runs.”

  “All right.” John sighed. He looked around the kitchen, cleared his throat, watched as Andrea turned the sausages one last time. His eyes settled on her face in profile. She looked pale, tired. A dark crescent moon hung beneath that one eye, and etched about the corner of her mouth was a certain sadness. He knew it was because of him, and he felt a pang of guilt and of regret. But he was going to make things right now that he was home. He was going to make it all up to her. Somehow.

  He stepped to the coffeemaker and poured some coffee into a waiting mug. He settled the carafe back onto the burner and stared into the lilting surface of the small black pool in the cup.

  He’d been sipping a cup of coffee just two evenings ago when Pastor Pete came to say good-bye. The two men chatted awhile before John suddenly confessed, “You know, Pete, I’m not sure I have the strength to go back to them, to be a husband and a father to my family.”

  “John,” Pete had said, holding John’s gaze, “you won’t have to be strong. You will have to be tender.”

  Remembering that, John turned to Andrea. He took a deep breath. “The kids,” he started, “they look good. They . . .”

  She didn’t seem to be listening. She was preoccupied with
getting the sausage links onto a serving plate.

  “I mean . . . thanks, Andrea, for keeping the family together while I was . . . away.”

  She froze momentarily, and he watched a streak of color rise up her neck and fan out across her cheeks. She lifted her eyes to him slowly.

  “You’re welcome, John,” she said quietly. She smiled briefly before dropping her eyes again. She settled the empty skillet on the stove and lifted her shoulders in a small shrug. “But what else could I do?”

  “Well, I—” He was flustered, searching for words. “I know it hasn’t been easy, but you’ve managed really well. I mean, look at Billy. He’s become a responsible young man. You’ve done a great job with him.”

  She seemed pleased even while she tried to wave off the compliment. “Billy has done well for himself. He’s always been extremely capable.”

  “But I don’t think he’d have come so far if you hadn’t worked with him all these years. I mean, you’ve done so much for him—more than most people would have, I think.”

  She shrugged again. “I don’t know, John. I’ve only done what any mother would do. Any decent mother anyway.”

  He wanted to say more, but he was interrupted when Billy hollered from the porch, “Is breakfast ready yet, Mom? I’m starving to death.”

  “Come and get it,” Andrea hollered back. “I can’t have anyone dying on me around here.”

  She gave John another brief smile and then carried the plate of sausages to the porch.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  John knew the story only too well, how Donovan’s Diner had became Laughter’s Luncheonette back in 1995 when Owen Laughter bought the restaurant in downtown Conesus from Stan Donovan. The name of the place was the biggest draw, Owen said, even though everybody pronounced it wrong, including Owen himself. The family name was Lau’-ter, but who thought of Lau’-ter when the sign said Laughter? No one! Wasn’t it great? Because, as Owen pointed out, who didn’t want to laugh? Of course, Harold Laughter, Owen and Andrea’s father, was initially reluctant to accept the butchering of the family name, but he eventually came around. Whenever he and Sylvia were vacationing at the lake, they ate almost every meal at Owen’s place. Seated at the table closest to the cash register, they could see for themselves that Owen was on to something. The equation of burgers, fries, and laughter totaled up to a tidy sum.