Heart and Home

by Jennifer Melzer

I looked to the left, into next row of pews and for the first time I spotted Troy Kepner. His mother’s walker was positioned at the end of the aisle beside him. He had one hand curled around the back of the pew in front of him, head slightly tilted, but I soon discovered his eyes were open when he lifted them to meet with mine. A flutter of nerves tickled from the inside out when his mouth drew slightly upward, and he shook his head. I grinned and shrugged my right shoulder just a little before I resumed proper prayer position just in time for my father to reach over and take my hand. The notion of being caught in the act of avoiding prayer widened my smile in reminiscence of my youth.

  Pastor Crane went into the Lord’s Prayer, and I mouthed over the words, “Our father, who art in heaven...” as everyone else, even my father beside me, seemed to speak them with conviction.

  I wondered then if Troy was praying too, and though a part of me wanted to sneak another glance at him over my shoulder, I didn’t dare. Not even as the service drew to a close, and the congregation began moving around to socialize, could I bring myself to look back at Troy. It wasn’t until Dad finally thanked the last well-wisher that we turned in Troy’s direction only to find that he and his mother disappeared. Inside, dismay mixed with relief as Dad looped his arm through mine and finally escorted me out of the church.

  We drove twenty-five minutes into Milton to have brunch at the truck stop there, something he explained he and my mother did almost regularly for the last five years. “It’s a nice place,” he noted, as our waitress navigated through the Sunday afternoon crowd with our order.

  I folded my hands and leaned across the table. “All right, Dad. I’m dying to know,” I started. “Since when did you start going to church?”

  His face lit up a little as he shrugged his left shoulder upward. “Oh, just after you went off to college,” he admitted. “Your mom didn’t like going off to service alone, so I started to tag along.”

  “And now?”

  Cheeks flushed as he shrugged in closer to himself. “I don’t know, habit?”

  I nodded, and leaned back into the booth. “I guess it’s good though, it’ll keep you involved.”

  “Yeah,” he agreed, “I suppose.”

  “It’s not going to be easy.” I’d really meant to think those words, rather than say them, but they’d already slipped out. “I mean, you know, now with Mom gone.”

  His head bobbed up and down, but I didn’t really think he processed my meaning. We were silent and thoughtful until the waitress reappeared with a steaming pot of coffee to pour into our upturned mugs. I immediately began shaking out sugar packets to pour into my mug, but Dad sipped at his black. As he replaced it to the saucer, he looked at me and then looked away again.

  “When do you plan on heading back to the city?”

  “I don’t know,” I admitted. “I should probably start back tonight, tomorrow morning at the latest. I can’t really put off work much longer, even under the circumstances.”

  “Well,” his voice was quiet as he stared down into his coffee like he was searching for answers in the surface. “It may not feel quite like it should, but I suppose life goes on.”

  I wanted to believe that, but the pain and shock still throbbed inside of me like a raw nerve, and I imagined it was the same for him too. He’d have to get up and go back to work tomorrow morning himself, follow a broken routine in hopes the pain he was feeling would heal itself in time.

  “If you want me to stay for a couple of weeks, just until—I don’t know whatever, just say the word. I can use my vacation time.”

  “No,” he shook his head. “No, you’ve got to go back to your life and live it, Jannie, and so do I. That’s what your mom would want us to do.”

  There was a momentary flashback to the night before when I’d been in the bath and the steam revealed those letters on the mirror. YATS... what if getting back to my life wasn’t really what my mother wanted for me at all?

  He started talking again, a short lecture on how doing her proud the way I’d always done would be what she’d want, and then he reached across the table and took my hand. “She was so very proud of you, Janice. Her daughter, the big shot journalist. Not a day went by that she didn’t brag about you to someone.”

  My eyes stung and I blinked rapidly to keep tears from falling. I’d managed to go the entire morning and all through the church service without crying, but the record shattered as a tear managed to escape down my cheek.

  “But who’s going to take care of everything now, Dad? Who’ll make you dinner and wash all your clothes?”

  An incredulous look spread over his face. “Is that what you’re worried about?” He chuckled a little. “Don’t worry about me. I’m a grown man more than capable of taking care of myself.”

  “So that’s it, is it? Now you’re trying to get rid of me,” I wrapped my fingers around the warm ceramic mug and brought the coffee to my lips.

  “You can stay around as long as you want,” he said. “In fact, if you decided tomorrow you wanted to move back home you’d be more than welcome, but don’t you toss out your life plans on my account. I’ll manage.”

  “But you’ll be lonely, Daddy.”

  “I’m sure I will from time to time,” he admitted. “Don’t you get lonely in that big city?”

  I twitched my shoulders just a little. “I don’t know. I keep busy, most of the time. I mean, if you wanted to come and stay with me. . .”

  “Now, that’s not even an option,” he shook his head. “I have spent my whole life in that town, and the better part of twenty-nine years living in that house with your mom. I belong here.”

  His certainty was comforting, but it also disturbed me just a little because for the first time since I’d left Sonesville I was starting question my own place in the world. I thought Pittsburgh was right for so long, but one conversation with my dad and I just wasn’t sure anymore. As I thought about my answer to his question, didn’t I get lonely in that big city, the truth rumbled dangerously under the surface of my reply.

  I did keep busy, and from time to time I went out with colleagues, but I hadn’t had a real friend since I’d become super-journalist and Erika went all Indiana Jones. The last guy I dated turned out to be incredibly hard to get close to, and it sometimes seemed like escaping my mundane existence took away any chance for real relationships and friendships.

  Dad was still holding my hand when the waitress brought our brunch to the table. As he withdrew, I forced a smile and tucked into my food, but in the end I mostly just pushed it around on the plate while I tried to make sense out of the course my life had suddenly taken upon my mother’s unexpected death.

  “I should probably head back tomorrow,” I sunk my fork down into the layers of pancake on my plate. “But if you don’t mind, Daddy, I think I’d like to stay another week.”

  “Like I said, you stay as long as you need. You’ll always have a place at home.”

  “Thanks, Dad,” I reached across the table and patted his arm.

  I was so wrapped up in that whole end of the conversation that I completely forgot about the face I’d seen in the window. By the time we reached home, the incident itself faded as I realized I would have to face my boss, Cal Rogers, and try to make him understand why I was taking another week off. He’d been on me all week, calling at least once a day to prod me for news on my return. Most of the time I let it go straight to voicemail and felt guilty when I listened to the message later. The last time I actually spoken to him, I’d all but guaranteed him that I would be back in the office by late Monday morning.

  I could already hear Cal’s patience with my situation evaporating before I dialed his cell phone. A week for parental death was already like asking for Christmas in July. Telling him I needed another week could be career suicide, but I had no choice. Something in me felt compelled to stay on another week.

  “Jan,” he picked up on the third ring. “You better be calling to ask me to pick you up at the airport or something.”
>
  “Hi Cal,” I stared out my bedroom window into the fog-laden afternoon. “I know it’s short notice, but I’m actually calling in vacation for this week.”

  “Wasn’t the funeral yesterday?”

  “Well, yes, but things have been a little off around here nevertheless, and I need to stay just a little longer.”

  “Don’t do this to me, Janice. Replacing you this last week hasn’t been easy, but week two might be enough to convince me that you are expendable.”

  I squeezed my eyes together tightly, a sick feeling between guilt and disgust roiling in my gut. “Cal, it’s not like I called in some lame excuse that my fifth grandmother twice removed died. This was my mother.”

  “And I understand that, Jan, but what’s it going to be next week? Getting back into the routine is therapeutic. You want to heal? Come back to work.”

  “I’ll get back into my routine next week,” I said. “I just need a little more time here.”

  “You’ve already made up your mind,” he noted.

  “Yes, I have.” I stood that plot of firm ground that usually made Cal praise how good I was at not taking no for an answer. My legs were shaking, but I didn’t budge, not even when I heard him sigh on the other end of the line.

  “Well then, there’s nothing else I can say. I just hope that by next week there’s still a place for you here.”

  I could feel my molars press down hard against each other as my jaw clenched tighter. “And if there’s not, it’ll be your loss when I take up a position at the Post-Gazette. Goodbye, Cal.”

  I turned my phone off before he had a chance to add another layer of guilt and confusion to my already frazzled mind. Of course, I’d never considered my mentor, Cal Rogers, a friend, but his callousness seemed to reaffirm everything I’d been thinking while having brunch with my father. It was like a void lifted away, exposing all the ways in which my life was either seriously lacking or completely damaged.

  I dropped my phone into the soft bottom of my purse, and then flopped back onto the bed. The headache from earlier that morning still throbbed in my temples, and called into question everything I felt. I turned onto my side and drew my legs up, then snuggled into the quilt. Maybe a nap would help me make sense of things again, but I doubted it. I closed my eyes and started to drift away, but several times before I actually fell asleep, I jerked awake due to the flash of that blurred face in the window of my mind.

  Chapter Seven

  After taking the entire week off of work, I had to convince myself the choice was the right one. As messed up as I felt inside about my mother’s death, part of me wondered if maybe Cal wasn’t right, and the real way to get over the grief was to just dive back into work.

  Since I’d already made the decisions, I planned to spend my time going through my mother’s things and packing them up for my father. I could almost hear my mother urging me on in the back of my head, insisting that there were women in need of her clothing and the library would be happy to have any books we might want to pass on to them. I woke up Monday morning determined to get straight to work, but as soon as I finished breakfast I didn’t even know where to begin.

  As organized as my mother was, the fact remained that no one is ever really prepared for their own death. Despite twenty years of paying life insurance, eating healthy, exercising regularly and maintaining a spotless driving record, death was probably the furthest thing from my mother’s mind. The evidence was in the aftermath, and my mother left behind a monument.

  Everywhere I turned there was some project left undone.

  There were needlepoint projects tucked into a basket on the left side of her chair, and a plastic tub full yarn and knitting needles rested on the right. Inside that tub were a half-knitted baby blanket and an assortment of hats and scarves she’d obviously started knitting for the homeless. The dining room was littered with piles of scrapbooking materials, articles and pictures half hanging out of the overstuffed scrapbooks. It was almost like she’d planted it all that way to make sure I didn’t forget about her.

  As if the world itself wasn’t already groaning from the great void she’d left behind her.

  I lifted the first scrapbook cover and studied the title page. “The History of Us” was spelled out in fancy, curling letters, and underneath them were two bedecked, black and white photographs. The photograph on the left was a little boy, his white blond hair in defiant tufts and his grin unforgettable. It was the same grin that still made my Daddy one of the most handsome men I’d ever known. On the right was a freckled little girl who looked like she was about to come twirling out of the photograph swinging the hem of her skirts with her hands. I walked through their youth page by page and into their teen years.

  I’d seen all those pictures before. My father’s senior prom, his date a toothsome brunette. On the opposite page was my own mother, starry eyed and gazing up at her incredibly tall prom escort. There were pictures of my father from his time in the military, and then their wedding photos. They traveled all over before I’d come along, and the following pages were a tribute to their carefree days in Venice, France, Ireland, Norway and Scotland. Near the end of their trip to Spain you could just see my mother’s pregnancy beginning to show.

  Funny how the furthest we’d ever traveled after I’d been born had been Canada. Even after I moved out they traveled within the states, but it seemed all of their great adventures were already taken. I closed the scrapbook and rested my hand on the cover. Did she ever miss the early freedom she and my father knew together? Had my coming along put a damper on their carefree days? She’d never said as much, but they spent many a dinner talking about the year my father spent stationed in Japan and the unforgettable trip they’d taken to the Orkney Islands.

  There were two other brimming books of memories tucked underneath it, and I remembered with an ache in the back of my throat what Becky said about having a couple of the projects Mom was working on still at her house. That she had taken great pride in collecting articles and clippings of my work. Maybe Becky might even like to have some of the loose scrapbooking odds and ends my mother left lying around.

  The more I thought about it, the more it felt like my mom’s life just stopped in mid-sentence. She’d left piles of laundry and ironing, and a grocery list on the refrigerator that she’d obviously spent about a week putting together. She had a personal calendar marking all of her functions, and there were to-do’s written on post-it notes stuck all over the house. As I started to sort through and try to organize things in the dining room, her system eluded me. She always held everything together so well, but how she managed it, I’d never know.

  I thought for years that my own meticulous need for order came from her, until one day she looked over my research system for a term paper I was writing in tenth grade. “I never thought I’d say this” she held a wooden spoon like a conductor’s baton,” but you’re too organized, Jan.”

  “That’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard, Mom. How can a person be too organized?”

  “Well, if you’ve got everything all planned out, where’s the room for spontaneity, or even worse, what happens when someone throws a wrench into the cogs?” Turning her attention to the pot on the stove, I stared at her back and squinted, as though trying to unearth the alien being lurking underneath.

  “That is what planning is for, Mom. It helps you prepare.”

  “You can’t prepare for everything.” She stretched up onto her tiptoes and into the cupboard for the chili powder. I watched her reach, her fingers working it forward until she finally managed to draw it out far enough to grasp it. She’d was barely 5’4” with shoes on, but she’d never let that stand in the way of her getting what she wanted. “No matter how much you prepare and organize, life has a way of seeing to its own design.”

  “Not my life.”

  Even from the side, the glance she shot me was both disbelieving and mischievous. “Not my life.” She clucked and shook her head. “And just what makes y
ou think you’re so special, Janice Claire McCarty?”

  I never answered her, but I realized as hot tears dampened my face, that it was her. She’d told me every day of my life, in one way or the other, that I was special. Even beyond that moment, I’d believed her. Her belief in me was what drove me out of Sonesville and into the city. I was special, different. I was too big for that crummy old town with its run down grocery store and nosey neighbors.

  “You can plan and prepare all you like,” she went on, “but none of it will matter in the end. You mark my words.”

  The ringing of the telephone brought me back to the moment, and I was almost grateful. I walked into the kitchen and checked the caller id, but didn’t recognize the name. It occurred to me during the third ring that my mother probably knew dozens of people I didn’t, so I picked up and said, “Hello?”

  “Oh, um, hi,” an uneasy voice started. “Is that you, Janice?”

  “This is Janice.”

  “Hi, Janice, it’s Becky.” Before I even had a chance to respond, she went on. “I wasn’t sure if you were still in town, but I wanted to call and leave a message for someone. Your mom, she ordered some stuff at my last scrapbooking party, and… well, it came in today. I wasn’t sure what I should so with it, so I thought I’d give a call.”

  More scrapbooking stuff? I looked to the boxes of supplies cluttering the hutch and shook my head.

  “It’s already paid for, so I thought you might want it.”

  At a loss for words, I tried to hide the sound of my sigh. “Yeah, I don’t know what to do with it, but I guess I can come and get it.”

  “Oh, good!” She said. “Then you can pick up the books I was telling you about and see what she was working on. She was so excited about it.”

  I had a hard time imagining anyone getting excited over a scrapbook, but it was getting easier by the minute with Becky. “I bet.”

  “Well, I have to take my son to the doctor at ten, but I’ll be home all afternoon.”

  “Yeah, okay.” I glanced at the clock and noted that it was only 8:30. “I have some work to do around here today, but I guess I can come over after lunch, if that’s okay.”