With Sara, her mother was never far from her thoughts, but in the fall, near the time of her passing, the memories of Kate always darkened and weighed her spirits, and during those times of unrest her moods fluctuated erratically. Sometimes she clung to Dad and me, and other times she kept us at a distance that worried us both. She drew and painted year round, but more obsessively each October, and in most cases produced her best work out of those difficult and confusing weeks.
When she was sixteen she began waitressing part-time at the Star Diner, both for the connection with Kate and for the income that bolstered her delicate sense of self-worth. She took over driving her mother’s old Jetta after Dad made some repairs, and it was almost ghostly to see her looking so much like Kate, dressed the same and working in the same diner. The majority of her customers were good and decent, and most all of her regulars became comfortable acquaintances. Some remembered Kate and went out of their way to be kind to Sara, which Dad and I always appreciated. But, as with apples, it takes only a few rotten ones to spoil the basket. She got phone numbers and messages scrolled on receipts and napkins, was grabbed and flirted with and made to feel bad when she wouldn’t go along, and as with Kate, she got little to no tips in such cases. Once, when someone pushed her too far, very calmly and coolly she emptied a pitcher of iced tea onto the guy’s lap. He jumped up and shoved her back hard, but thankfully two men from the next table saw the whole thing and got involved before it could escalate further. The guy was thrown out by the manager and told not to return, but Sara had to cover his unpaid bill as punishment for the tea trick.
Dad and I would hear those stories and absolutely fume. But there wasn’t a thing we could do stop her from working there—we knew better than to try—and we were warned not to go there with any intentions other than eating. After all that, Sara would sneak twenty-dollar bills into Dad’s coat pockets, the center console of his truck—anywhere she could think of, whenever she had the chance. Dad could only resist her to a certain point before she’d get upset and demand that he learned to receive in the manner he gave.
Although Sara had always known that he wanted nothing from her but her happiness, she could never fully accept the lack of new tricks for the old-dog scenario. Dad had never taken comfortably from anyone; in his early fifties he wasn’t about to start with Sara. In his eyes, she belonged enthroned in a shimmering palace, lavished with luxuries and around-the-clock adoration. The few times I referred to her as Princess Sara, as a joke, I received very unpleasant looks.
When Sara was seventeen, her senior art class took a weekend trip to New York to experience the museums. It was the first time she’d been away from us for that long since the first year. In spite of being two years removed from that temporary loss, neither of us handled it well. We saw her off with fake smiles on Friday, were grumpy and short at work, and quietly worried at home. Sunday afternoon she returned bubbling with excitement and wonder, but with her mind made up as to her future in the art world—she did not wish to ruin her love by attempting expensive art school or an unlikely career. This left the door ajar on her school plans, and Dad, after giving up his attempts at persuading me toward something other than building, was deeply concerned about her future.
Her prospective career choices consisted of, but were not limited to, interior decorating, fashion design, hair-and-makeup artist, singer, model, writer of magical stories, veterinarian, cheer coach, though she’d given up cheering herself. According to some of her favorite regulars from the Star, “professionally adorable,” and “bundle of sunshine,” were also viable options. And on and on.
As graduation neared, Sara seemed focused more on prom dresses than schools. She and two other girls—the giggling female stooges—had decided to attend the event as a trio, and Dad decided to keep quiet about his concerns until after prom. But from then on, the softly spoken battle raged for weeks, making for some very tense evenings around the house, until, hardly serious one day, Dad suggested she take accounting courses to help him with his dreaded taxes.
“Actually, that doesn’t sound bad,” Sara said. Her face brightened progressively with each word.
“Costs me an arm and a leg,” he grumbled.
“Would it actually save you money? Seriously?”
“Sure, in the long run. But I was mostly kidding when I said it.”
“Well, I’m not kidding. I’m pretty good with numbers.”
“My tax guy makes good money for keeping his hands clean all day.” He half glanced at me when he said it. “Not a bad field to get into, if you’re serious.”
“I’ll try it,” Sara said. “That would be a good skill for me to have, and I could help you both with it for years and years. Art and decorating I can always do on weekends.”
“Sleep on it a few nights,” Dad suggested.
“I don’t need to. I just made up my mind, like that.” She snapped her fingers.
“It’s cut in stone now,” I said.
“Good God,” my old man laughed low. “Why didn’t I think of this sooner?”
That fall Sara began an associates program at the tech school, commuting to classes, working Sundays and an occasional evening at the Star. For a short time she had considered living on campus, but at that point she was still too firmly anchored to home, and I believe hesitant about long-term nights away, though she’d never admit it in the light of day.
For the next few years there was a comfortable rhythm to our new lives, with a focus on the future. I believed that once Sara was finished with school and settled in a job, and I had gleaned a few more years of work experience, Dad might scale back his work ethic. Bucky and I could handle the hard stuff. Dad could oversee the projects, fish a little more often, tinker around the house, and in general enjoy the break he’d earned.
With regards to Sara and me, we were constant but for a few idiotic fights. We were a strange couple and a strange family, but appearances never mattered to me. Some details remain between the two of us, but suffice to say that by my early twenties, there still wasn’t another girl for me, even though Sara sometimes accused me of scoping out other girls while we were walking on the boardwalk, playing at the arcades or the mini golf course. I’m no monk, and I do look around from time to time—some of those summer girls wore some awfully tiny bikinis on the boardwalk. But really no one held my attention beyond a glance. I knew that, barring unforeseen circumstances, when the time was right and I had enough money saved, I would ask Sara to marry me. Aside from a few rocky stretches when I’d descended to far less than her “perfect to me” ideal, I was positive that that’s what she expected from me. So that was the plan I stuck to.
When Sara was twenty she landed part-time work in a tax office. Her plan was to get a few customers on the side, other contractors and such, to generate a comfortable income. Still, she would not give up her Sunday mornings at the Star. It was a comforting routine for her and, I suppose, would’ve been similar to expecting me to give up Sunday fishing with my father, even though a fish had never once mistreated me.
Sara’s father did make an effort to reconnect with her once. After nearly two years in prison for various charges, he came out a supposedly changed man. He called her one day and they spoke civilly, and when she made plans to see him, I accompanied her one spring day to a Dunkin’ Donuts, watching from my truck while they sipped coffee at a picnic table. The meeting showed promise for about half an hour, until something set him off. The instant he raised his voice to her I was out of the truck, heart thumping and a good forty pounds his senior. He declined our second go-around. Sara got in the truck, but would say little of it on the ride home. I didn’t press her. All I could do was hope that it was the last we’d see of him.
Later in that summer, the August before she turned twenty-two, Sara seemed restless and tense, like her autumn mood was setting in early. Most unusual was the fact that she refused to tell me what was bothering her, which bothered me more than anything. After speaking with my old man one day,
I took a drive and spent some money, and later called a hotel up north in the White Mountains for a reservation. We needed to get away. I suggested as much to Sara. She agreed, and Friday morning we packed up early, her lagging tiredly, and we hugged Dad on the way out. It was warm already, and I remember he smiled knowingly at me while he hugged Sara, because I was planning to propose. He believed firmly that there was no chance of her declining, no reason to fear losing her, that she would remain with us certainly.
“As to living arrangements,” he had said earlier in the week, “I’m thinking once you two are settled down, I’ll be moving over into the camp.”
“Bull,” I told him.
“I don’t need all that empty space around me. Don’t want it either.”
“You’re thinking too far ahead.”
“No.” He shook his head. “I’m just seeing the need. And when it’s time, that’s how I want it to go.”
“We’ll discuss it more later. Much later. She hasn’t even agreed yet.”
“Whatever you say, kid.”
***
On a warm Friday morning, nearly seven years to the day from when I first saw Sara, the three of us parted near the spot where I’d first seen her standing beside my father. If I had known then, that morning, that those few parting minutes would be the final moments the three of us would share together, certainly I would never have left that spot. But of course I had no way of knowing. No one ever does. And I was excited about our trip.
There was a mist over the lake that morning, the yard and the vehicles were soaked with dew, and the slow-falling browned pine needles were sticking to the wet truck. As we moved away under the dark awning of the pines, the damp pine-needled gravel was soft under the tires as, ahead of us, the hazy orange sun was starting through the trees. In the rearview mirror, I remember the dark shape of the house in the early light, the wet green of the yard and the lake mist beyond, all shrinking away. At the heart of the scene, Dad held up his heavy hand in a motionless wave, watching us off as I tapped the horn, his broad shape against the bay door of the shop. Beside me, Sara had her arm out the passenger window, her small hand waving lightly in the warm air. She was watching him in the side mirror. Her eyes remained fixed there until he was well out of sight.
48
In the mountains it was cooler and Sara seemed to brighten. Friday afternoon, after check-in, we walked leisurely on a hilly trail through the quiet woods. The trail was worn smooth and there were boards over the muddy sections, and at points it opened into small clearings along the way with benches for resting and taking in the views. Alone on a mountainside bench looking across a steep green valley toward the presidential range, I realized I could not wait until evening in the room. It was clumsy and Sara did not seem much surprised, but she appeared happy when I knelt down, her eyes moving back and forth from mine to the ring as I slipped it on her finger. She said yes, as the old man had expected her to.
Saturday morning Sara slept late while I explored the hotel with a tall cup of coffee. It was a beautiful old place, a bit fancy for me, with nicely kept grounds and views from every side. Standing on one of the long porches with a view of the golf course, the fairways were dewy and the greens recently mowed. I watched a group of men tee off and start down the cart path in a white cart. It made me wish I’d brought my clubs, and my old man to play a round.
We were out of the room by midday and took our time getting back to the highway, searching for views along the way and stopping often to linger in our mood. It was between two and three when we got on 93 South. The cellular service began working again and my phone went off. There was a missed call and a voice mail from Bucky. I shut off the phone and set it on the seat to let it wait. I was too relaxed to think of work at the time. We were both hungry, watching for a good place to get off the highway and eat.
In late afternoon we rolled up the drive. Buck’s truck was parked alongside Dad’s, and one of the shop’s bay doors was opened. The tractor looked to have been out. Sara and I got out of the truck, stretching away the stiffness from the long ride, and I looked around, noticing that the grass was only partially mowed. That’s when Buck came down off the porch. I made a joke about him missing me before I realized that he looked like absolute hell. He stopped halfway between the house and the driveway. There was a beer in his hand, I noticed, and thought maybe he was just drunk.
“What’s going on?” I asked, only half serious.
Buck shook his head. He would not look at me.
“What?”
“I’ve been trying to get ahold of you. Where the hell’s your phone?”
“It’s been off. What’s going on?”
“There was an accident, buddy. Goddamn it, I’m sorry, Jake.” His voice faded out at the end and he breathed hard.
Sara understood before me, and she stood frozen by the truck, her hands over her opened mouth. After her small initial startle, she didn’t make a sound.
“Where’s Dad?” I asked as the flutter—the old fear—began beating deep down in my gut.
“We worked half a day,” Buck said to his beer. “We were gonna have a few, and a swim and wait for you two to get back with the good news. He was so excited for you two.”
“You’re not funny,” I said. “Shut up, right now.”
“It was too hot,” he continued helplessly. “We shouldn’t have worked today, Jake.”
“Dad,” I shouted.
“He made it through the morning,” Buck said. “I found him when I got here with the cold beer and the fresh ice. You know how he is. Won’t ever quit. Had to get the grass cut before he’d relax.”
“Dad,” I shouted, as I started fast toward Buck. “Hey, Dad!”
“C’mon, man,” Buck pleaded as I neared him. His eyes were bloodshot. “I’m sorry, bud. I hate doing this. You know I loved your old man.”
I grabbed both of my hands full of Buck’s T-shirt and shook him hard. “Where is he?” I shook him until he lost his beer. I kept on shouting until he was crying, with his sunburned face wrinkled up right in front of me, and he felt limp like a heavy rag doll in my grip. Then I shoved him back away from me toward the porch.
“I’m sorry,” he kept saying with no wind behind his words and no beer to close his empty hand around.
I kept shoving him with my open hands hard against his chest until he was backed up against the lower rails of the porch. I wanted him to fight back. If he had fought back, it would have been all right. But he wouldn’t fight. He could barely hold up his head, and he was working hard to breathe. Finally he slumped down with his hands to his forehead, knees bending slowly under him, and kept shaking his head slowly from side to side.
“He’s gone,” poor Buck said. “I’m sorry, man. Goddamn, you know I hate this. The man was like a second father to me.”
I knew only rage and disbelief standing there over him, until Sara’s light touch fell on my shoulder and I heard her strained voice trying to calm me, and I felt the sickening irony of our old roles being revived and turned back in on me. My legs failed me as the weight of it set in on me. I sat back on the cut grass, trying to apologize to Buck, with him waving me off with one hand and his other hand over his eyes. Then Sara was kneeling beside me with her arms around me, my chest heaving and eyes glossing over, repeating in my ear that it would all be okay somehow.
Epitaph
“The good man brings good things out of the good stored up in his heart.”
~ Jesus of Nazareth
“I have often thought him since, like the steam-hammer that can crush a man or pat an egg-shell, in his combination of strength with gentleness.”
~ Charles Dickens
“All mankind is of one author, and is one volume; when one man dies, one chapter is not torn out of the book, but translated into a better language; and every chapter must be so translated.”
~ John Donne
That night I followed my father’s instructions. In the bottom right drawer of his desk I found a fo
lder with my name on it. The folder contained many papers—property deeds, lawyer’s papers, many bank papers with different account numbers, a few surprisingly large savings bonds, and a more recent account for Sara. The last two items were sealed envelopes with our names scrolled in his hand. My old man had fine penmanship, and I admired it for a moment before handing Sara her envelope. Inside we found handwritten letters dated January 1. After exchanging looks without words, we began reading.
Jake,
Each new year I update this letter to you. After all these years you might think I’d get better at it. But no, it only becomes more difficult, and I hate it this year as much as ever.
It goes without saying that I love you. You know that. What you may not realize is that I would have been awfully alone without you all these years. It took Mom and I so long to have you that when you finally came along, life going as it did, I was starting to feel too old, too set in my ways, and too alone to raise you as well as I had hoped to. Understand that I always did my very best to raise you as well as I knew how.
Now, as I write this newest letter, I’m glad to say that you’ve grown into a good and honest young man, and it makes me proud every day to watch you and to think that I had a part in that. Of all your progress, working and whatnot, I was never so proud of you as when I first saw you reaching out to Sara. People are what matter most, and I’m glad you discovered that fact early on. In Sara you have found a friend and a love that I hope you will treasure all of your life. Believe me when I say that not all men find that. Fewer still get to hold on to it. Treat her with great care, for my sake and yours, but mostly because that’s what she deserves. Encourage her with her art, but don’t push her. Be a good man to her and love her for all that she is. I think you’ll find that she’ll do the same in return.
All Things Different Page 23