Following Grandpa Jess

by TJ Baer

  I glanced at him nervously. “Um. Yeah, it took a really long time to make the envelopes, so I didn’t have time to make any letters, and, um…”

  Dad handed the envelope back to me and went back to staring out into the darkness. A few seconds passed in silence, and when I realized he wasn’t going to say anything else or look at me again, I turned around and went back into the house.

  It was stupid, just a stupid little thing, but for some reason I felt my lip wobbling and my eyes getting hot as I trudged through the hall, the torn envelope wrinkling in my fist. I didn’t notice Grandpa Jess at first, sitting silently in his chair near the door to the porch, but one look at his face and I knew he’d heard everything.

  I gulped in a breath and scrubbed my hand over my eyes. I tried to fight back the tears, but my voice still came out wobbly and weak when I said, “This one’s for you, Grandpa Jess,” and handed him the last envelope from the bag.

  He accepted it without a word, and before I knew what was happening, he’d swept me up into his arms and was holding me tight against his chest. I went stiff at first, not really used to this kind of behavior from any of the men in my family, then finally just gave in and snuggled up against him, crying quietly. He rocked me back and forth and walked me into the living room, rubbing my back gently while I cried, and finally set me down on the comfy green chair near Thomas’s playpen.

  “Listen, Jessie,” he said in a soft, gentle voice, his eyes close enough to mine that I could see the flecks of green and gold speckling the blue, “being a mailman is a tough job. Sometimes it rains, or it’s cold, or there are big, scary dogs out in front of the houses, or the people you give the mail to aren’t happy to get it. If you really want to be a mailman, you’re gonna have to deal with that kind of thing. You’re gonna have to deal with bad days and good days. You think you can do that?”

  I stared at him silently, my lip still wobbling, but managed to nod.

  He smiled, and there was so much warmth and love in it that I felt my tears melting away. He reached out and ruffled my hair. “Of course you can.”

  “Grandpa?”

  “What, Jessie?”

  “Do… Do you think Dad hates me?”

  He blinked at me, then poked his finger gently against my forehead so my head flopped back against the chair cushions. “’Course he doesn’t hate you.” He hesitated, then said more quietly, “Being a mailman is tough. But being a doctor, that’s one of the toughest jobs there is. If you make a mistake as a mailman, someone doesn’t get a letter, but if your dad makes a mistake, well, somebody might die.”

  I stared at him, wide-eyed. “Really?”

  “Really. And you remember how you felt when Maxie died last year?”

  I sniffled. “Really, really sad.”

  “That’s how your dad feels every day. He sees sick, sad, hurting people every day, and he tries to help them, but sometimes he can’t. Sometimes—like today—they die.”

  “But…” I sat up straighter in the chair, hands going to my knees with a soft slap. “But if it’s so hard to be a doctor and it makes him so sad, why does he do it? Why doesn’t he quit and do something else?”

  Grandpa Jess smiled, a faint, proud kind of smile that made me feel good just to look at it. “Because he’s a good man, your dad. However bad he is at showing it, he loves people, and he’ll do anything he can to help them. Even if it hurts him, he’ll do it. Because that’s the kind of person he is.”

  I thought of something suddenly, and stared up at Grandpa Jess with wide eyes. “I could help him! I could be a doctor when I grow up and help him, and he could take a break sometimes and not feel so bad all the time!”

  Grandpa Jess was silent for a long moment, then put his hand on my shoulder. The smile he gave me was soft and just a little sad. “That’s a real nice idea. But what about being a mailman? I thought that was your dream.”

  “Maybe I can be a mailman on the weekends. Or just in the summer or something.”

  “Doctor and mailman? That’ll be a lot of work.”

  I was already caught up in envisioning myself standing next to Dad in the hospital, a row of smiling, happy people filing by us and thanking us for saving them—and me for delivering their mail on the weekends, of course.

  “That’s okay,” I said. “I don’t mind.”

  The memory started fading then, and I found myself staring desperately at Grandpa Jess’s face, trying to memorize it, trying to make sure I never forgot how it had felt to sit there next to him, to hug him, to feel his callused hand ruffling my hair…

  At the last second before the memory faded altogether, he smiled at me, and I felt somehow like he was looking past the eight-year-old exterior and seeing me.

  “You’re doing good, Jessie,” he said, his voice seeming to echo inside me. “You’re doing real good. But we all need a little reminding sometimes.”

  And then he was gone.

  *

  I opened my eyes, not even remembering when I’d closed them. As reality poured back in, I realized I was still sitting on my cold, uncomfortable branch seat in the middle of the clearing, the crisp air thick with the smell of candles recently gone out. I felt strangely disoriented, not sure how much time had passed or what had happened while I was journeying down memory lane, and it took several seconds for me to realize that someone was softly crying.

  All my older brother instincts kicked in, sure it was Thomas, but when I turned my head, it was Dad.

  He was sitting on the ground in front of Grandma, his head in her lap as he cried. He was shaking his head, his hands clutching the fabric of Grandma’s dress in tight fistfuls, and through the quiet, ragged sobs I could hear him saying, over and over again, “I’m sorry…I’m sorry…I’m so sorry…”

  Grandma was looking at him with tears in her eyes, her hand smoothing gently over his hair. “I know, sweetheart,” she murmured. “I know.”

  He loves people, and he’ll do anything he can to help them. Even if it hurts him…

  God. He really had thought he was doing the right thing, hadn’t he?

  I watched Dad sitting there sobbing like a lost child, and it was like I’d never seen him before. Or like I’d seen him once, a very long time ago, thanks to some kind, insightful words from Grandpa Jess, but had forgotten.

  We all need a little reminding sometimes…

  He made decisions every day, hard ones, and sometimes they were right. Sometimes they weren’t. But they still had to be made, and he knew that. He knew how to ignore his feelings and make the tough choices, even when they tore him apart.

  And that was what he’d done with Grandma.

  He’d taken in the data, pushed aside his own feelings, and done what he’d had to do. Usually that was enough, and he was able to deal with the consequences if he got things wrong, but this was his mother, and as if he didn’t feel bad enough already, all three of his sons kept hounding him about what a terrible thing he’d done.

  And the worst thing was that he knew it was a terrible thing, but he didn’t know how to undo it.

  I felt a hand on my arm and turned to find Thomas standing next to me, looking at me with a soft, pained look in his dark eyes. But even through the pain, he was smiling.

  “Did you see him?” he asked.

  The pieces fell into place, and I knew that however impossible, however ridiculous, Grandpa Jess had been here, if only in our own memories.

  I got to my feet and wrapped my arm around Thomas’s shoulders. “I saw him.”

  “Do you think… Do you think Dad saw him, too?”

  Behind us, Dad was calming down, his sobs slowing.

  “Yeah,” I said. “I think he did.”

  Chapter Eleven

  When Dad lifted his face from Grandma’s lap, Thomas and I were standing there beside him, each of us holding out a tissue. He looked up at us, his face streaked with tears, his eyes red and his glasses crooked. Finally, he reached out with a shaking hand and took my tissue, then Thomas�
�s.

  “Thanks,” he said in a hoarse voice, and spent the next few seconds wiping at his face.

  Thomas and I stepped back, giving him room, and I noticed Daphne come up behind us and quietly take Thomas’s hand. He glanced back at her in surprise, his cheeks going a bit pink, then smiled and turned back to face Dad. His back was a little straighter after that, and that grown-up quality I’d been noticing in him lately was stronger than ever, as if it were flowing into him through their joined hands.

  When Dad finally got to his feet, the knees of his khaki pants were caked with dirt, but he didn’t seem to notice.

  “We should get back to the house,” he said, directing this remark at a nearby tree in the interest of not meeting any of our eyes. “It’s getting chilly.”

  That said, he stepped around Grandma’s chair and headed for the edge of the clearing in a slow, trudging kind of walk. Thomas and I exchanged glances.

  “I’ll talk to him,” I said. “You get Grandma back to the house.”

  Thomas nodded, and I hurried off after Dad. Not that I was in any danger of losing him, as a severely handicapped snail probably could’ve caught up to him at the pace he was going, but I hurried anyway. There was something vacant and confused about his expression, like he wasn’t entirely sure who he was or where, and I was half afraid he might take a wrong step and break his neck falling down the hill or something. At least if I was there walking with him I could grab him if he fell, and then we could both break our necks. Family solidarity and all that.

  I reached him a few steps later, falling into step beside him as best I could on the narrow trail. We walked in a leaf-crunching silence for a few moments before I found the courage to speak.

  “Dad…”

  He didn’t look at me, just shook his head a little and kept on moving forward like a sleepwalker. After a few seconds, he mumbled, “I never wanted things to be like this.”

  I blinked, and despite the fact that I was still moving at our slow-and-steady tortoise pace down the trail, I had the feeling of having gone completely still. “What?”

  Dad shook his head again, and the expression on his face was one I’d never seen there before. Instead of the usual dispassionate stone mask, I could see actual emotions there, sadness and guilt and regret.

  “Everything,” he said, his voice so quiet that I could barely make out the words over the rustle of our feet on the path. “Everything’s just gone so wrong. First Thomas. I never taught him how to ride that damned bike, and maybe if I had, he never would’ve… And I should’ve done the transfusion myself, damn the rules. I never would’ve let something like that happen to him.” He let out a breath. “And you. Being…the way you are. Is it because I never spent time with you? We never went to the park or played baseball or did father-son things, and maybe that’s why you’re…”

  I let out a shocked snort of laughter, and for the first time in years felt no anger, no resentment, nothing but an amused kind of compassion. “Dad. Believe me, that’s not why.”

  Dad shrugged this off in favor of continuing the litany of self-blame. “And now there’s your grandmother. I was so sure it was the right thing. I was so sure she needed to be there, that it was time. But was I wrong? Have I been wrong about everything for my entire life?”

  The words dribbled away into a miserable silence, during which time I found myself wondering what the hell Dad had seen up there in the clearing, what could possibly have had the power to make him suddenly start questioning everything.

  Or maybe it wasn’t sudden. Maybe he’d been questioning all along, holding the doubt and guilt and regret inside because he’d grown so used to standing alone that he didn’t know how to do anything else.

  “You know,” Dad went on, “I always wanted to be like him. He wasn’t a smart man, he never went to college or became anything great, but he was a good man, and he had this way of just making the people around him feel good. He could make friends with anyone, and he always knew what to do. He always knew the right thing to do, like he could feel it in his heart. I could never do that. I’ve never been that kind of person. I can’t feel my way through a problem. I have to think it through, be logical. Cold. Who could love a person like that?”

  I caught hold of his arm and pulled us to a stop, then stepped around so I was standing directly in front of him, so he had no choice but to meet my eyes.

  “Dad, listen to me. There’s nothing wrong with you. I mean, yeah, you haven’t handled everything perfectly, but who has? Nobody’s perfect, no matter how hard they try to be. We all just do the best we can with what we know. And sure, it hasn’t always been easy having you for a father, but that doesn’t change the fact that you’re my dad and I love you. And Grandpa Jess, he loved you too, and he was proud of you. And as for being cold and logical, well, in your job, you have to be like that sometimes, or you can’t make the hard decisions that need to be made. But I think that what you have to remember is you can’t be like that for everything. Being logical and using just your brain to make decisions is great when you’re at work, but when you’re at home, when you’re with your family and friends and people who care about you, you just…you can’t be like that.

  “It’s okay to make decisions with your heart sometimes,” I said, hearing the emotion in my voice and for once not worrying that I was making an ass out of myself. “If something feels right, you have to do it, or you’ll always regret it.”

  My sudden flare of passion faded into silence, and as the seconds ticked by, I found Dad staring at me with a look on his face that I almost wanted to call wonder. “God,” he whispered. “You’re so much like him. I never noticed before, but you are.”

  My eyes widened. Was that an actual compliment?

  But Dad wasn’t done. “He said the same thing to me. Your grandfather. It was a long time ago, and I’d almost forgotten, but…” He glanced back over his shoulder, toward the clearing, before continuing. “Your mother and I had been dating for about a year, and I got accepted into a medical school in England. Very prestigious, one of the best schools in the world. It was an incredible opportunity, but I knew that if I went, your mother and I couldn’t possibly stay together. So I broke up with her.”

  “You broke up with Mom?”

  He nodded, a faint smile coming to his lips. “She got so angry. She hit me so hard I had a bruise on my arm for days.” The smile faded. “It was the smart, rational thing to do, choosing my career over her. But I felt horrible—miserable. I thought I was hiding it well, immersing myself in my studies, but your grandfather knew. He always seemed to know. One day he sat me down and asked me if there was anything I wanted to talk about. I said there wasn’t, but he knew I was lying. And he said, ‘Craig, you’re a smart boy. Much smarter than I am. But just because your brain has so much to say, that doesn’t mean you should ignore your heart. It knows what the right thing to do is. It always knows. Your brain can make a list of reasons ten pages long, but none of those reasons matter if your heart is telling you something different.’ And then he said, ‘You’ve made a mistake here, with Susan. You know you have. And maybe you feel like it’s too late to fix it. But I’m here to tell you, it’s never too late to start trying to set things right.’”

  Realization flooded into me, cool and clear, and the tears up in the clearing suddenly made sense. “He was right,” I said. “And I guess Mom eventually forgave you?”

  “She did.”

  “And Grandma will, too.”

  His eyes met mine, and for the first time in our lives, I knew we were understanding each other perfectly.

  “I hope she will,” he said. He hesitated, then added, “And I hope you will, too.”

  Holy crap. Emotions, compliments, and now an apology? I’d seen Twilight Zone episodes that were less bizarre.

  I pushed past the weirdness in favor of answering. “I will. Provided you promise not to have any more religious interventions, I definitely will.”

  He laughed a little. “That
was your mother’s idea.”

  “Even so. I need you guys to stop trying to change me into something I’m not. This is who I am, this is what makes me happy, and it’s nothing to be ashamed of. I need you and Mom to be a little more supportive.”

  Once the words were out, I had a moment of shock as I realized that I’d actually said them. I’d never spoken so directly to him about how I felt before, maybe because past attempts to communicate emotions to my dad had ended in the words hitting a cold brick wall and never coming close to affecting him.

  This time, though, it seemed like he actually heard me—like he actually listened to the words and let them in, let them reach him.

  “Okay, son,” he said gently, and to my astonishment, he reached out and clapped his hand on my shoulder.

  It was at this moment that an out-of-breath AJ came jogging into view, boots thudding noisily on the trail. He took one look at us—Dad and I standing close together, Dad with his hand on my shoulder, me looking like someone had just hit me in the head with a cartoon hammer—and ground to a startled halt a few feet away.

  “Uh,’ he said. “Everything okay?”

  AJ’s abrupt appearance seemed to jar Dad back into reality somewhat; when I looked back at him, his face was composed, more like its usual calm self, but it wasn’t as closed, somehow. It was more like I was seeing his real face for once rather than the usual careful mask, and his hand, I couldn’t help noticing, still hadn’t moved from its place on my shoulder.

  “More than okay,” Dad said, a new warmth in his voice. “Everything’s wonderful.”

  Giving my shoulder one last pat, he walked over to AJ and gave him a soft smile. “You’re a good man, Aaron James,” he said. “You and Jess both. I’m sorry it’s taken me so long to realize it.”

  And while AJ was still staring at him with his mouth hanging open, Dad headed off down the path toward the house, actually whistling as he went. It was all very It’s a Wonderful Life, and just the tiniest bit disturbing.