After Forever Ends

by Melodie Ramone

  She lobbed the serviette back at me, but I deflected it with the back of my hand and it sailed into the sink, “Shut up! Just shut up! He did what he thought was best for you! You were so bright, Silvia! So bright that your teachers didn't know what to do with you! Put you up a year? He gave you professors when all you had before were dimwits!”

  “I didn't have to live there!”

  “Maybe you didn't! But maybe he didn't want you wasting away here where you weren't being raised properly!”

  “It doesn't matter! I needed him! And what about when he moved us all to Wales so we could all be close? He never sent for me!”

  “You were always with Oliver!”

  “He could have stopped me!”

  She was silent for just one second, her eyes wide with disbelief, “Do you really mean that? He could have stopped you? Really? Do you think he wanted you at Oliver’s constantly? Do you?” She demanded, “He hated it! He told me he hated it. He worried! He worried that you’d wind up pregnant! He used to tell me to go along when you'd invite me to keep an eye on you!” She drew a sharp breath, “But when I told him you weren't having sex...and believe me, I left a whole lot out in the area of details!” She laughed out loud, quickly shaking her head, “And I mean a WHOLE lot out...then he saw you were finally happy. You were always so sad, so fucking MISERABLE and there wasn't anything anybody could do to ever make you happy! So he let you go. You never listened to a thing he told you anyway! You‘d just run off, I told him, and you and Oliver were right and proper. No worries, I told him. I had to tell him because you never listened to anything he said and if you fucked up, it was me who was going to have to listen to it because I was the one he always dumped his shit on!”

  I'd never thought of it from her perspective. She was telling the truth. It was her that always caught the brunt of it when things would go wrong. It was her because she was the one who always ended up going home and I was the one who was always leaving and doing all she could to not come back. But I wasn't ready to slow down. I wasn't ready to see that. I was so angry at him, still so angry at him just because he hadn't been a good father to me and I had wanted one so very, very much.

  “He never said anything!” I found myself yelling at my sister as if I were speaking to my father, “He never said a word! He let me go without a word! He even gave me money to do it, to get me out of his way! He didn’t give a damn about me! He never stopped me! He could have!”

  “Is that so?” She screamed back, “If that’s so then you tell me why he rang Eddie and Ana every time you went to make sure you were there safe! Or why he took a day and drove all the way to Welshpool to sit down with your boyfriend and find out exactly what his intentions were!”

  That stopped me in my tracks. “He did that?”

  “Damn right he did! He rang Eddie and told him he didn’t like what was going on. He was worried about you and he told him he wanted to speak to Oliver man to man! Eddie had him come down!” She was shaking, her hands in tiny fists, stuck together like she were squeezing my head between them, which is what I know she wanted to do, “I was there, Silvia! He literally grabbed Ollie by the collar and sat him in that chair in corner of the sitting room, the red one, the wing chair, and prodded him! He had him pinned! Ollie couldn't have left if he wanted! And if Oliver hadn’t answered exactly the way he had, if hadn’t been so honest and so sincere…if he had been anything at all like his brother, Alexander…well, Dad was going to send you back to school in Scotland! And that would have been the end of it!”

  Oliver had never told me that. Never. I stood there, silenced, stunned.

  Lucy continued, “And, besides, he sent you to Bennington to be closer to him! He really did! He was planning on having us both home every weekend! He was going to marry that woman and try to make a real family, but you…you never wanted to come! You met her...what? Twice. And as I recall you were a stone! And after you started Bennington, you asked him not to come and get you! Or do you forget that? You had to study, you told him, but then it was Oliver, wasn't it? You always wanted to stay at the school or go to the Dickinson’s because of Oliver! You never asked if Oliver could come here! Not once! Not for more than ten minutes to come and take you away! Dad wouldn’t have let him, you know? He missed you, Silvia! He missed you! He loved you and you just shoved him off!”

  I couldn't say anything to defend myself. Every word of what she'd said was true. I'd always blamed him for abandoning me, but I had abandoned him, too.

  “I didn’t want to stay in Scotland after I graduated high school!” She was losing her resolve. She sank back into her chair and covered her face with her hands, “I didn’t want to come home, but I did! Don’t you know what you did to me? I did it for him! I had to! He was all alone and you left him! You were so selfish! I did it for him because I didn’t want him to be alone and you had shoved him so far away!”

  I was so ashamed of myself. I’d always thought of my father as being the cold fish, but maybe he hadn’t been. I had shoved him away. Maybe it had been me all along. Maybe I had been the one who left him all alone and not the other way around. Lord knows I was selfish when it came to Oliver. He was all I wanted, the only thing that mattered. That was true. I had cast my father…everybody, really, aside for him and only him. And at what cost to poor Lucy? She'd become not only Dad’s spy and his link to me, but his emotional caretaker.

  I shook my head, trying desperately to clear the rush of thoughts that were invading my brain. Had Daddy really reached out for me and I’d been too blind to see it? How many times? How many different ways had I been too caught up in my own pursuits to notice? Had I rejected him over and over until one day he’d just finally given up?

  I knew the truth was that I had. I knew as well that he was the parent and he never should have allowed it. He never should have quit on me. He should have kept after me until I saw it. I would have accepted him eventually. He was my father. My daddy. I loved my daddy and I spent so many years wanting him to want me. Oh, God, I would have taken his love if I’d known he was giving it. It was all I ever wanted from him…his love, to be his little girl. I had wanted so desperately for my Daddy to want me all my life.

  And he had. He had. I just couldn't see it for all my anger.

  “Oh, God,” I felt the sadness and regret building up inside of me, spilling out my eyes, “Oh, God…what have I done?”

  I was so selfish. So blind. I had shoved him away, gone through the motions of being a daughter instead of really being one. And now it was too late. My father was dead. I wouldn’t ever have another chance to try again. “Oh, God,” I repeated, “I’m so sorry…I am so sorry…”

  Lucy found me. She slipped her arms around me, “He loved you, Silvia,” She rested her head top of mine, “Don’t you ever think for a second he didn’t and don’t you ever think for a second that he loved me more. He loved us differently, because he knew us differently, that’s all. But he loved us. He loved the both of us with all his heart.”

  “Oh, Lucy, it's too late!” I wailed, “It's just too late!”

  And it was. In too many ways to count for Daddy and I. We'd both lost. Lost because of pride and because neither of us knew the words we needed to get back to each other. And now it was over. No second chances. No take backs, no returns.

  It was the deepest emptiness I had ever felt.

  About a year later, when all of my father’s worldly belongings had been dispersed and his house was sold, Oliver took me at my request back to the cemetery where he lie beside my mother. I sat on his grave and I closed my eyes and I waited for him. I begged him to come to me, to become part of me the way I had chosen not to let him in life. I begged him to let me need him and to need me in return. I sat and I cried and I felt no touch at all.

  And so I left him there to rest forever in Scotland, buried in the soil of his fathers. I left him and I went to Wales, the place he had sent me when I was fifteen and the place where he had left me when I was twenty, when he had given u
p on me ever needing his hand. I left him there and I went home.

  Lucy took the photo albums from his house. Those memories meant more to her than me. If you want the truth, I wasn’t in very many of the pictures. The majority of them were taken without me there at all. I wondered how many of them I might have been in if I'd chosen to. Later, she left one in a silver frame on the mantle at my house. It was of young Philip Cotton and a red haired baby girl in a pale blue dress with yellow bees on the hem. He was holding this child under one arm, facing her toward the camera, but she was peering up at him, her blue eyes wide with wonder, and he was looking down at her the way a father looks at his daughter, with promises to love and protect her forever.

  “You gave me away,” I whispered, “But I know you thought it was best. It’s just a shame, Daddy. I miss you, but it’s OK. I always missed you, even when you were here. That’s my fault. I just wish I‘d known that I had a choice. You should have told me. That’s your fault. We both lose, but we love each other just the same, don’t we? I’m here, Daddy, if you ever need me or you just want to say hello.”

  I left the picture where Lucy had set it, but I didn’t look at it much. Hardly ever. And eventually it, like the sting of my father’s death, faded from my mind, to a place where when I thought of him I found only reasons to smile. Eventually, all the anger was gone and I was thankful for him.

  I had a daddy, didn’t I? He wasn’t perfect and he certainly wasn’t the one’d dreamed he would have been, but I had one all the same. And I'd love him as much as I’d hated him, hadn’t I? All that distance, all that time wasted, but the fact that he’d inspired such passion in me meant something in itself. I can honestly say now that I think that's special. Screwed up and turned inside out, we were special him and me, and I am so thankful that I can say that I had a daddy and that he mattered. All his faults and failures mean nothing to me now.

  He mattered and I take him with me now every place I go.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  We got the greatest gift that next winter when everyone made it home for Christmas. Carolena had just arrived with Adam, when the snow began to gather on the ground.

  “Mummy!” She hugged me tight, “We’re in for a white Christmas!”

  That was an understatement when we woke up the next morning to two feet of snow.

  “No one’s going anywhere for a while! More snow is coming! This is the best Christmas gift ever!” Ana came bounding down the steps clapping her hands, “Hooray! All of us together under one roof! Eddie,” She snapped her fingers at her husband, “Light a fire! We’ll pop some corn!” She turned to Oliver and Alexander, who were sitting on either side of draughts, “Ollie and Xan, you can finish your game later! Put on your Wellies and walk down to the grocer for me! I need more potatoes, more sausages and more sugar!” She spoke to her sons as if they were teens still under her command. “Come on now! Hurry up!”

  They looked at each other and grinned.

  “Yes, Mum,” Alexander stood and kissed her cheek.

  “Straight away, Mum,” Oliver kissed her on the other side.

  “Would you shovel the garden path?” She asked.

  “Absolutely not!” Oliver told her seriously.

  Her mouth fell open and she clamped it shut promptly giving him a stern look.

  “That’s why we have sons!” Alexander finished for him, “Lads, get your boots on! Shovel the way for your grandmother!”

  “An’ what’ll the girls do?” Gryffin pretended to complain. He picked up a Wellie, realised it was not his and handed it to Warren.

  “We’ll sit here all warm and look pretty while you work,” Carolena smiled. She was plaiting Natalie’s long hair, “Like girls are supposed to!”

  “Oh, aye!” Nigel laughed, “Well, bake something at least then!”

  Bess chucked a hair pin at him. “Shut up!”

  “Come on then, Adam,” Oliver wasn’t about to let Caro’s man off the hook, “Come with Alex and me. You can carry the potatoes.”

  “All right,” He agreed with a good natured grin.

  “I like him,” Lucy told Caro after the men had left the house, “He‘s one to hang on to.”

  “Hee’s very handsome,” Bess added. “He has lovely eyes.”

  “I like the way he smiles,” Nattie handed Caro a hair pin, “He’s got the best smile.”

  “He has a nice arse, too” Annie said.

  “Annie!” Caro giggled.

  “It’s true! I just want to grab it and bite it!”

  “Aye, me, too!” Ana nodded as she poked at the fire.

  Caro’s face was as red as her hair, but she laughed with the rest of us. “Grandmum! I can’t believe you said that!”

  “What? I’m a woman! I have eyes! I still have warm blood in my veins!” She looked from me to Lucy and the three of us exchanged knowing giggles. “You don’t forget to notice a handsome man with a fine body with your first grey hair, Girls!”

  “Auntie Sil, why isn’t Lakshmi here?” Natalie was trying to keep her head still while Caro pulled her hair to finish the plait.

  “She’s spending the holiday with her grandparents,” Lakshmi was Gryffin’s girlfriend. He’d met her in Edinburgh and before I knew it they’d moved in together. I hadn’t had the chance to meet her yet, which bothered me a bit, but she was lovely on the phone and Gryffin adored her, “They don’t know she and Gryff live together because they wouldn’t approve, so they wouldn’t like him coming there for anything overnight. They’re very religious, I’m told.” I peeked out the window to see all of the men chasing each other through street, lobbing snowballs in all directions. Even Edmond was in on it. I watched him slip and fall in the road. He waited a second for Nigel to come close and see if he was all right, then popped up and beamed him straight in the chest. At the same moment Gryffin and Warren assaulted Nigel from two other sides and he caught it in the back of the head and the shoulder respectively. I watched him chase after Warren, but Alexander caught him and wrestled him to the ground. He was busy shoving snow down the neck of his son’s coat when Oliver knocked him over and everyone piled on top. There they were in a heap in the middle of the street, all the Dickinson men and Adam Maldovan, stuffing snow down each other’s collars. “Girls! Quick! You have to see this!”

  Everyone hurried to a window facing the street and we all stood laughing at the boys.

  “Have I forgotten at all to tell any of you how very much I love you?” I asked.

  “No,” They replied more or less together followed by a chorus of we-love-you-too.

  We made such a masterpiece in the kitchen that holiday. It was wonderful, as Ana had said, having everyone under one roof again. No one fought, no one got angry, no one complained or took anything personally. We just sat snowed in at Grandmum and Granddad’s house and enjoyed the company of the people we loved the most. We were there for three days and two nights. What an absolute blessing that was.

  Oliver and I slept in his old bedroom in his old bed. It was really too small for two people, but it didn’t matter. I liked having to be too close to him. He lay there on the second night awake and much too quiet. I waited for him to tell me what he was thinking, but after an hour or so when he didn’t I couldn’t stand it anymore. “Ollie, what’s up?” I rolled over and put my hand on his chest, “Talk to me.”

  “I’m just thinking.”

  “About what?”

  He drew a breath, hesitated, and then spoke, “Did you notice Adam pull me aside after we had supper?”

  “No. Was I in the kitchen?”

  “I think so.” He answered quietly, and then said, “He wants to marry our daughter.”

  “Really?”

  “Oh, yes,” I couldn’t see him in the dark, but I could tell he was staring at the ceiling, “He loves her. I could see it in his eyes. It was in his voice. He asked me for my blessing. Can you believe that?”

  “Wow. Old fashioned of him.” I said. Ollie nodded. He said nothing. I moved closer a
nd laid my head on his shoulder, “She loves him, too. She has for a long, long time. He’s good to her. Do you see the way they look at each other?”

  “She looks at him the way you look at me,” He answered.

  “I know. It’s a dead giveaway, isn’t it? I’ve always tried to pretend that I’m not mad about you.”

  “Yes, me, too. Wouldn’t want anyone to know, yeah?” He pulled me close, “God, I’m glad I’m married to you.”

  “Me, too, Sweetie. Me, too.”

  It was a week later when Carolena called and told us on speakerphone that she was getting married. Oliver stood with an odd grin on his face and listened to her tell the story of how Adam had proposed to her spontaneously in the middle of Trafalgar Square. “We were just walking through and suddenly he stopped and dropped to his knees. You know how nasty Trafalgar Square is with all the birds. I honestly thought he’d fallen down or something, but what had happened was he’d been fingering the ring and he’d dropped it! So he was on his hands and knees crawling around and I was standing in front of him asking him if he was all right and he looked up suddenly and said, ‘Carolena Mariana Dickinson, I love you! Will you be my wife?’ He was holding out the ring! I was a bit surprised, but I said yes, of course! And the moment I did a group of tourists came the square from the other side and they sent the pigeons into flight! They came right at us and we had to run!” She giggled, “It was so unromantic! It was terrible! One of them shit right on my coat!”

  “Well,” Oliver consoled, “You won’t ever forget it, will you?”

  “No, I won’t! You know, I’ve thought about it and I don’t want a big wedding. Adam doesn’t have a large family and most of our friends are just casual. It seems like a lot of work and a lot of money for one day having a big fancy do. We can keep it small and simple, I reckon, if we keep our wits about us.”