As for other matters, I do sometimes wish you’d give some thought to an easier trade, but that is your decision now and I’ll trust you in it. Do what you love. That’s what separates a job from making a good living, regardless of salary. And also do a few favors for me. Take good care of this old place. Manage the money well like I know you will. Hold on to the land. If the taxes get too bad, sell what you must, but hold on to the rest. Catch a few good fish on my fly rod so that old reel won’t rust. And keep old Buck out of trouble, if you can. But most importantly, remember how much you’ve meant to me. Know that with fathers and sons, a father can have no deeper satisfaction than a son who makes him proud. You have done that for me. Thanks, kid. Someday I hope you will experience that feeling for yourself. Whatever you do, do it right, and keep on making your old man proud.
I hope to update this letter for many years to come. If I’m not allowed, I hope you will remember me fondly.
Know that I love you,
Dad
We couldn’t eat that night. We barely slept. I passed most of the time flipping the channels from Dad’s broken-in recliner, while Sara tried to sleep on the couch. Though we never said it, I believe we were holding a vigil, like it was only a late night for him. Soon he would be home and we would hear his heavy steps on the porch. He’d walk through the doorway and make everything all right again.
I must have read that letter twenty times over through the night. I also read Sara’s, and she mine.
Sara,
I am too simple a man to express myself well with words. Forgive me where I am lacking and accept this letter as it is.
I never thought I’d love another woman after Jamie passed away. You weren’t quite yet a woman when you came to us, but you did what I thought no one could, and took my heart all the same that first day, with one smile. You remember. What a strange little family we’ve turned out to be. But having you join us was one of the best decisions I’ve ever made. You should know this already, but I’ll say it because I enjoy thinking of you and reminding you of what a bright, intelligent, talented young woman you are. You are all those and more, and for what it’s worth, I could not love you more if you were my own. Jamie always dreamed of having a daughter and she passed those dreams on to me during our early years together. These past few years it’s given me a sort of comfort to treat you as my own, and I trust that you haven’t minded my taking that liberty.
As for my boy, he could search this whole world for a heart like yours and I don’t believe he would find one to rival. But you and I both know he probably wouldn’t search too hard. *Wink* So that makes it even more of a miracle that you found him. It may have appeared at first that you needed him, but I think if you’re reading this, he might need you just as much. Life gives us people like that sometimes, if we’re very fortunate. It takes some away, and gives us others. In Jake you will find a heart full of good intentions, and loyal to no end. I’ve watched the two of you grow together, through a few ups and downs, and I’ve seen what you have become. Sara, my dear, you may not be of my blood, but I pray that someday you will take my last name. Nothing could make me prouder and happier for both of you.
A few other things I wish to say without pressing too hard. It would give me great relief for you to turn in your waitress apron and devote yourself full-time to your talents. Money has been set aside specifically for that purpose, but make the decision on your own, by your own heart. Do what you love and what brings you happiness. Do it for yourself and also for the rest of us who so enjoy your gifts. It is a gift. Don’t forget that. I’ll say no more but to ask that you take care of that kid of mine, and let him take care of you.
I hope to update this letter for many years to come. If I’m not allowed, I hope you will remember me fondly.
Know that I love you,
Dad
Very early in the morning I got up and made coffee. I couldn’t begin to eat. Sara woke soon after but wanted no coffee. She felt so badly that she went upstairs to bed. I went out on the porch with my coffee and sat in my old man’s rocker, and I sat rocking, thinking and staring for a long time, going back in my mind over the years and the times. It didn’t seem right that something as small as heat stroke could take so much away.
After my coffee I took the boat out for a row and drifted for a long time in the small waves, watching the water and the sky and the quiet activities of the life around me. There was life everywhere. I could see it and hear it from every direction, while inside me there was nothing but a mile-wide space with no appetite. It was Sunday, and I should have been fishing the inlets with my old man.
Around midmorning I rowed weakly home. Sara had finally come downstairs. She was slouched down low in a chair, her legs curled up and her arms wrapped around. I walked without energy up to the house.
“Doing okay?” I asked beside her.
She nodded unconvincingly. “You?”
“I miss him like crazy.”
“Me too,” she said softly. Then, after a pause, “Can we talk?”
“Make arrangements and all, I know.”
“Not that. I mean something about us.”
She said “us” strangely, and I began feeling nervous on top of everything else. “What’s wrong?” I asked, leaning toward her from my chair.
“Nothing is wrong.”
When she reached over and took my hand, it calmed me to see the ring on her finger.
It was awful timing, she admitted, apologetically, but she’d felt a change that she’d been keeping to herself for weeks. There was never a good or an easy time to discuss it, and she hadn’t known what to do. Then the proposal happened. Then Dad. Now she was overwhelmed to the point of sickness. She couldn’t keep it to herself any longer.
I felt the soft squeeze of her hand as she breathed in deep and exhaled slowly, and I watched the mixed emotions on her tired face as she carefully chose her words.
“Things could change,” she began weakly and slowly. “But if all goes well, by next summer, there will be three of us Thorntons again.”
The weight of her words passed into me slowly after she’d finished speaking, the message settling in lightly as it expelled some of the heaviness. In my mind, through a lifting fog mixing with a thousand memories, I began to see myself standing beside a boy with a fishing pole, coaching him as he casts and reels, carrying a long-haired little girl wearing a brightly colored dress, and teaching them to swim out to the big rock, to row the boat, pointing out to them the ducks floating by in their rows, the silly-sounding geese flying overhead in a V the colors of the fall reflecting on the water, the houses I’d built or worked on and the many more their grandfather had built. I could hear myself telling them about the man who built the beautiful house we lived in, sharing with them everything I had and everything I loved, emulating to the best of my abilities the man who so patiently and so kindly shared with me all that he had gleaned from an often difficult life.
“You’re sure?” I asked.
Sara nodded with shining eyes. “I go to the doctor on Wednesday. I wanted to wait to tell you. I just …”
When her voice cracked, I stood up. She rose up with me and released my hand, and I closed my arms around her. We were holding each other up.
“He wouldn’t want us miserable,” she told me.
“I know.”
“He’d give us hell for it, even without the news.”
“I’d gladly take a lecture right now.”
“Don’t stop listening. That’s how you handle it.”
“I know you’re right,” I said. “He’d be so excited about another Thornton, wouldn’t he?”
“Uh-huh. Excited and trying to play it off.”
“Always keeping his cool.”
“He thought he was cool. I was only fourteen and it took me ten seconds to figure him out.”
I was able to laugh a little, and I felt my mind clearing out. “I don’t know what happened to my old crib,” I said. “But I’ll build a new one. I
’ll build a nice crib with all sorts of little details. It’ll be nicer than a store-bought one, and you can paint it whatever color you think is best.”
“White with pink details,” Sara said. Her voice was muffled in my shirt. “I want my little girl.”
“We’ll need a boy later,” I said.
“If you get a boy, we’ll need another girl to even things out.”
“Wouldn’t he love to see his house overrun with mini versions of you?”
Sara sniffed and laughed lightly. “Could you see him with a baby girl crawling on him, or an older girl pestering him to play with dolls and watch cartoons?”
“Oh, God, I can just see it.”
“You’ll be a great dad,” she told me. “You’re so much like him.”
“You’re done waitressing,” I said for my old man, and I could picture his smile, his deep satisfaction in saying those words. I could almost hear him laughing under his breath.
“Done,” Sara said. “And you’re not working yourself into the ground.”
“No. I’ll play it safe. Make Bucky full partner and we won’t push so hard for deadlines.”
“Our kids won’t know anything like this.”
“No. We’ll hang around until they’re older and sick of us.”
“Can you believe I’ll have a belly soon?”
“I can’t wait to see you waddle, pushing a shopping cart down the diaper aisle.”
Sara laughed against my shirt. “That portrait I did of Dad in the boat,” she said. “Let’s take it out of his bedroom and hang it in the living room.”
“You’ll have to finish the other one too.”
“I will. And it will be even better than the boat one.”
“You can have prints made and sell them to the summer people.”
“If they’ll buy them.”
“They will. Hundreds of them. And you can design and decorate and do all the things you’re good at.”
“I’ll make him proud,” Sara said.
“Easily.”
“Very proud,” she said. “So will you. He’ll be more impressed with the crib you build than those big houses.”
“I don’t know. He’s a tough act to follow.”
“You will. Just keep listening to him. That’s how you’ll do it. Keep listening to everything he’s ever told to you.”
Standing there holding on to her, when I raised my eyes, I could practically see my father—the bulk of his shape as he stood in the doorway, his thumbs in his belt loops as he looked out at the water.
“Keep watching,” she said. Her face was still against my shirt. “That’s how you’ll keep him.”
“I will,” I said. Then I felt her eyes on me.
“It’s Sunday, Jake. He thinks we should be out in the boat. We’re wasting a beautiful day.”
“We won’t catch a damn thing.”
“It’s the tradition.”
“I know.”
“And it’s the start of a new tradition.”
I loosened my hold on her. Sara stepped back, wiping her pretty eyes. Then she took my hand, pulling gently at me, as from somewhere deep within her inner well, she summoned her resilient smile—the smile that had, years before, quietly captured my father’s heart. And then, in her not-so-deep voice, she uttered her sweet, almost childlike imitation of the man who had, in a thousand ways, gently shaped and generously filled our lives. Difficultly formed, softly spoken—to me they were the kindest words anyone could have spoken—a simple, fitting tribute, one that even my father would have accepted with a low laugh, a faint smile.
“C’mon, kid. Let’s get out there.”
All Things Different Page 24