Coming Home

by David Lewis

  He tried to smooth over the moment. “I didn’t mean …”

  She nodded softly, forcing a smile. Andy felt terrible. Another awkward moment passed.

  “I … uh … need to …” Jessie searched the restaurant, seemingly lost for how to excuse herself to the rest room.

  He reached for her hand, but she was already getting up.

  Chapter Fifteen

  “YOU OKAY?” Susan McCormick asked her husband. John had been peeling potatoes over the garbage disposal. Now motionless as a trapped mouse, he stared out the window at their mini aspen grove, which seemed like a forest right in the middle of suburban Denver. He was holding the peeler in his left hand and a halffinished potato in his right.

  “Sorry?”

  Susan came over and scratched his back. “You’re getting old, hon. You were peeling potatoes. Remember?”

  John looked down at the potato in his hand. His face remained serious. “Andy called earlier,” he said quietly.

  Susan was confused. “Oh. So?”

  He grabbed the towel and wiped his hands. He turned to face his wife, who gave him another look of impatient curiosity.

  “He said he was meeting that … Lehman girl, the one we were talking about yesterday.”

  Susan was surprised. “You’re serious? She’s in town? Oh my.”

  “I doubt she’s foaming at the mouth, dear,” John said as if reading her mind. “Apparently she just graduated from college. According to Betty Robinette, you wouldn’t recognize her.”

  “I imagine not.”

  John met her eyes with that hesitant look she knew so well and positively despised—that confidential doctor look that said he couldn’t automatically tell her everything.

  She tried anyway. “What is it, John?”

  He tossed the towel onto the ceramic-tiled countertop. “After Andy called, I got to thinking about everything… .” His voice trailed off. Once again, he disappeared into his overanalytical brain.

  Susan frowned. “I’m going to need a few more smidgens.” But John was already heading for his office. Removing her apron, she trailed him to his main-floor office, toward the back of the house. When she reached the room, he was already typing at the computer.

  “For mercy’s sake, John. What’s going on?”

  “You remember Olivia, right?”

  She paused. “Jessica’s mother? Sure. So?” Her husband clicked away.

  “John, please, toss me a bone or something.”

  He leaned back in his chair. “I read about this a while back. It has only recently become documented.”

  “What?”

  “Just a hunch, dear… .” He leaned forward again. More clicking.

  “John, please …” She put her hands on her hips.

  Hello-o? It was useless. When her husband plunged into research, he became oblivious to everything else. Nothing short of a fire could get his attention.

  Susan sighed and left the room. Her husband would be back in a few hours. She could only hope.

  Jessie stared into the mirror in the ladies’ room, her face streaked with tears. It didn’t take much to reduce her anymore. Just the mention of her mother’s death. Click. Whirr. Boom. Oh my, look at that poor woman… .

  She leaned against the sink. Her eyes were puffing up again, and her mascara, albeit minimal, was streaked. She tried using a paper towel to repair the damage, with mixed results. Andy would think she was a mental case. Poor guy. She tried to smile at the mirror. Pathetic.

  What a difference twelve years makes, she thought. Why do I keep doing these things to myself? she asked her reflected image, her eyes watering again. She blinked them hard, almost angrily. Enough!

  When she finally emerged, Andy stood up, looking worried.

  Jessie forced a smile. “I haven’t been back, you know… . It just hits me sometimes. The memories …”

  “I understand perfectly.”

  He was terribly gracious, but as sure as the sun rose in the east, she’d already lost him. From now on he would view her differently.

  They walked two blocks up the street to Betty’s white bungalow. Betty had left nearly a half hour earlier to begin preparing. The house had a small yard surrounded by a chain-link fence, and a gravel driveway led to a garage behind the house. Betty opened the door for them when they arrived. Andy held it for Jessie.

  Stepping into the living room, Jessie was assaulted by the familiar scent—musty, but not unpleasant. Directly ahead was a small dining room and the kitchen beyond that. On her right were a bedroom and a bathroom. Moving slowly with her cane, Betty took them on a little tour and they both commented that the place hadn’t changed much. Framed photos and wooden shelves cluttered the walls of the living room, and knickknacks were shoved into every conceivable nook and cranny. Jessie smiled. Mrs. Robinette always was a pack rat. An outdated flowery couch stood to the far left, with matching chairs and end tables. The hallway walls were covered with more photos—some framed, a few tacked to corkboard. In some ways, the small house resembled a photographer’s studio. In other ways, it resembled a disorganized garage.

  With their help, Betty set the table with an array of covered stainless-steel pots and pans, ceramic dishes, and a large salad bowl.

  “There we are,” she said, eyeing the table. “Would you give the blessing, Andy?”

  Jessie bowed her head as Andy gave a formal prayer.

  There was seemingly enough food for an army. “Don’t want you to go hungry.” Betty surveyed the fixings again. Then she frowned. “Oh dear, I forgot the serving spoon for the—”

  Jessie rose quickly.

  “It’s on the counter, sweetie.”

  They ate and laughed and reminisced, more of the same nostalgic meandering, memories that, this time, included Betty. She seemed ecstatic when Jessie indicated she was staying with her grandmother for a few days, and thankfully no one followed up on the topic. By now Jessie had noticed Andy’s bare ring finger, recalling also that Andy had made no mention of a fiancée.

  Finally, Betty blurted out, “Are you still engaged, Andy?”

  He grinned, reaching for a plate of celery and carrots. “I’m afraid I’ve been thrown back into the sea, Miss Betty.”

  Jessie smiled at Betty, trying to pretend utter disinterest in his answer. “The rice is wonderful,” Jessie said.

  The subjects changed rapid fire, and at one point Betty laughed so hard that she began to cough, and just when she seemed to recover, her cough returned. She nodded while she struggled, napkin to her mouth, a gesture that seemed to imply everything was okay. But it persisted, and then it became worrisome. Andy fetched a cup of water from the kitchen, but Betty only shook her head, giving a final big cough, and then it passed. They all pretended nothing had happened.

  Betty clucked. “Andy, you have become quite the handsome young man.”

  He blushed and then Betty turned to Jessie. “And what do you think of my grown-up Jessica?”

  “C’mon, Mrs. Robinette, you’re embarrassing us!” Jessie exclaimed, pointing to the bowl on Andy’s right, hoping to move the conversation along. “Pass the rice, please.”

  He only grinned.

  “Andy?” Jessie smiled. “The rice?”

  “The rice isn’t going to save you anymore.”

  “What?”

  “You always were good at changing the subject, weren’t you?” he said, chuckling. “Some things don’t change.” He turned to their hostess. “She hates compliments, you know.”

  Mrs. Robinette nodded. “That she does.”

  Andy shook his head humorously. Mrs. Robinette touched Jessie’s hand. “Fact of the matter is, sweetie, we all thought—”

  “Betty!” Jessie stammered.

  Andy laughed. “Ah … it’s all coming back to me now.”

  “Yes …” Jessie agreed, relieved that the tables had turned. They peered at Mrs. Robinette.

  “What?” Mrs. Robinette said with an affected innocent expression.

  �
��It took us this long, but we finally figured it out,” Jessie said. Andy was nodding, playing along.

  “Mrs. Robinette …” Jessie began.

  “Yes, deary.” She said the word deary with an unconcerned British tone.

  “You are a troublemaker.”

  Betty bit her lip guiltily and they all laughed. Their playful sparring continued and all too soon, dusk was upon them. The evening was coming to a close, but an unspoken realization lingered. None of them wanted it to end.

  Mrs. Robinette broached the subject of the Renaissance Festival. “For a while it wasn’t much of a family place, but they’ve cleaned things up quite a bit. I took little Laura last year and she had a wonderful time!” she announced. Betty told Andy about her young friend, and Jessie weighed in with her own first meeting.

  Andy seemed intrigued. “Laura lives in my old house?” He looked at Jessie. “I can get off work tomorrow… .”

  Betty jumped in, “The two of you should go. You’ll have a marvelous time!”

  “Actually,” he said, “I was thinking the four of us should go. It would be fun to meet the girl who lives in my old house.”

  “I’m afraid I just can’t walk like I used to. You three go,” Betty urged.

  “They have wheelchairs, don’t they?” Jessie suggested, turning to Betty.

  Betty hedged, but they convinced her, saying, “It simply wouldn’t be the same without you.” And Betty finally agreed.

  “I’ll call Laura’s mother right now.”

  Betty made the phone call while Jessie and Andy cleared the table. It was obvious from Betty’s end of the conversation that the answer was yes. They encouraged Betty to relax while they washed the larger pans and loaded the dishwasher. Jessie and Andy talked incessantly, falling easily into a long-forgotten pattern, as if nothing had changed. Like rediscovering a dormant part of herself, then accessing it like a computer file and continuing the program where she’d left off. In some ways it felt good; in other ways, it reminded her of living with the constant awareness of her mother’s impending death. She found her mind drifting to the old house, feeling guilty because her mother was all alone at home. In the next moment, her spine shivered at the strange illusion.

  At one point, during a humorous exchange, Andy and Jessie’s eyes had met. “You can’t fool me, Jess. I know you!” She’d been surprised, and yet touched, by his somewhat presumptuous remark. You can’t know me. Nobody knew her anymore, not even the boy who’d grown up in the house next to hers. No matter what Andy thought he remembered, too many things had changed.

  Soon it became obvious to them they were nearly overhauling the entire kitchen in an effort to extend the evening. Andy even found the trace of a leak beneath the sink and went to work fixing it.

  In the living room Betty brought out an assortment of old photo albums. After her initial reluctant feelings, Jessie was surprised to find herself enjoying another walk down memory lane through the lens of the town’s official photographer.

  When they came upon a photo of her father, Jessie cringed. Frank Lehman was leaning against the refrigerator, a stark, almost vacant, look in his eyes.

  “That’s Dad, all right,” Jessie whispered.

  “He was working,” Mrs. Robinette countered gently.

  “He was always working.”

  They found another photo of him in his shop with the same vacant stare. “Didn’t he know it’s customary to smile for pictures?” Jessie asked, feeling the old bitterness that seemed to bite at her ankles whenever she thought of her father.

  “He wasn’t himself, Jess. Not those final years.”

  “How could he be? He drank from the moment he got up to the moment he went to bed. Nobody knew but me, because he hid it so well.”

  Betty sighed softly. “Well, I suspected …”

  A clang sounded from the kitchen, where Andy was still working under the sink. Jessie continued, “Dad put me in charge, you know. Wasn’t just my idea. Sometimes he slept on the couch when he couldn’t even bear to be in the same bed with Mom. She cried herself to sleep a lot. I could hear her. And it wasn’t just the illness. She was lonely.”

  Betty nodded slowly, her eyes sympathetic, understanding. “Losing her was the worst possible thing that could have happened to him,” she supplied as if she had some kind of information Jessie wasn’t privy to. “Grief overwhelmed your dad—wasn’t an easy time for any of us.”

  Jessie felt she might lose her composure. Drop it, she thought.

  Let her think of him however she wants. But she couldn’t. I was there, too.

  “He abandoned my mother and then he left me. It doesn’t get any plainer than that. He took the easiest route possible.”

  “What do you mean?” Betty seemed genuinely confused. “Do you mean … he killed himself? Oh, honey, that wasn’t your father. I remember a different man. He wouldn’t have …” She paused, unable to say the words again. “I can’t imagine that he would have …”

  “Why is that so hard to believe?”

  Betty shook her head sadly. “It just doesn’t seem—”

  “But he did. He did. It’s not your fault and it’s not mine. Just when we needed him the most, he checked out.”

  Betty’s eyes filled with tears, and Jessie felt sorry for being so determined to force her opinion. Betty touched her hand. “Well … if he did such a thing, could you forgive him, Jessica?”

  No fair, Jessie thought. Forgiving or not forgiving was her prerogative, wasn’t it? If she decided never to forgive him that didn’t make her a terrible person, did it? She looked down at her hands, shaking her head. “Maybe for me, yes. But not for Mom.”

  Betty had obviously engaged in tremendous personal historical revisionism. She simply didn’t, or couldn’t, or refused, to remember how things had truly been.

  Betty appeared to be collecting her thoughts, seemingly unable to conjure something safe to say. She lapsed into more recollections, and slowly her conversation became more religious in tone.

  “The church in Monument hasn’t changed much. Pastor Tom retired a few years ago, but we have a wonderful new man of God. My, oh my, he can preach the Word.”

  Betty continued on about church folk Jessie scarcely remembered, and it reminded her of how Darlene, too, had sprinkled her faith into every conversation. Annoying at best, but Jessie had grown accustomed to it. It occurred to her now that the specter of what comes after death must be especially troubling for an older person. Betty’s religion was the simplifying filter through which all of life’s complicated events could be reduced into manageable bits and pieces. I wish it was that easy, Jessie thought.

  “I’ve never stopped missing your mother,” Betty sighed, shaking her head. “But I praise God she’s with Him now.”

  Jessie cringed inwardly.

  Betty sighed again. “It all happened so quickly. But before I knew it, your mother, your father, and then you … gone, just like that!”

  Like a story without an ending, Jessie thought lamely. Hadn’t she tried to end it for years? Mostly, it was memories of the last days she’d tried to bury within the darkest corner of her mind.

  They never buried your mother, did they? The same strange thought—out of nowhere again. Jessie hugged herself, shivering.

  “Are you okay, honey?” Betty asked.

  Jessie forced a smile, taking another sip of iced tea. “I’m fine.” Betty leaned back in her chair, closing her eyes. Her face suddenly seemed serene. “Your mother and I would talk about our Savior for hours. She had such faith. I still remember the day when she found out about you.” She nodded proudly. “I was the first one she told. You were their miracle child, you know. Your mother was only twenty-nine, but they’d all but given up.”

  “So what a cruel joke, then,” Jessie replied.

  Betty looked confused.

  “All she wanted was a child,” Jessie said. “I was her entire life. What kind of miracle was that? God pulls the football out like Lucy always did to Charlie Br
own. ‘Oops! I was just kidding! I only meant to torture you!”’

  Betty’s expression spelled sorrow again.

  “I’m sorry,” Jessie said immediately. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean—”

  “You just get it out, sweetie,” Betty insisted. “God isn’t scared of your anger.”

  Well, He should be, she thought angrily.

  Mrs. Robinette leaned forward, and her eyes took on a curious expression. “Jessie, how could God make it up to you?”

  Jessie frowned, then answered petulantly, without thinking. “God isn’t in the making-it-up-to-us business, is He?”

  “Just humor me.” Her eyes were serious.

  “I can’t answer that,” Jessie finally replied.

  “Will you think about it?”

  “Oh, Mrs. Robinette …” Jessie smiled. “It’s not even worth thinking about.”

  “Really?” Betty was suddenly sitting at the edge of the couch, perched like a bird, her eyes intense.

  Jessie changed the subject. “Where was my mother buried?”

  Betty’s eyebrows rose. She cleared her throat. “Let’s see … I think the urn was placed in a gravesite … in Colorado Springs.”

  Of course, Jessie thought, wondering how she could have forgotten. “You know, I don’t even remember the service. It’s all so blurry.”

  “Yes, very quick. Terribly short,” Betty said, shaking her head. She looked down at her arthritic fingers, laced together.

  Andy came in, wiping his hands on a towel triumphantly. “Finished.”

  Betty rose stiffly from the couch, a sudden smile lighting her face. “Oh, let me get a photo of the two of you together! A new one for the wall!” In a moment she was back, camera in hand, and in cheerful awkwardness, Andy and Jessie posed for a few pictures.

  Afterward Andy turned to Jessie and said, “I know you’ve already driven past your old house, but I’d like to see mine again. Are you up for a short drive?”

  Betty grasped Jessie’s arm. “What did Doris say about the house?”

  “I haven’t asked yet,” Jessie said.

  “So … what do you think?” Andy asked again.