he cupped her neck in his palm “—didn’t I tell you?”
That’s as much as she would ever reveal about what happened that evening in the garden. My grandfather on the other hand was more forthcoming. He once told me how even though he had noticed the wedding band, even though she was just a slip of a girl with a bitter tongue and even though her face was twisted in contempt, he had still looped her up by the waist and pressed his mouth against hers. He was drunk, he was angry and he saw in her the same anger at everything. Perhaps it was an act of consolation or the comfort of two strangers who found in each other a sense of kinship. Perhaps I am being too sentimental. Perhaps it was only ever meant to be just a kiss.
Later, when her husband would decide to go home and start to look for her, she would appear next to the table with the punch bowl, and he would ask if she’d had enough and wanted to leave, and she would say, gladly.
On the ride home, my grandmother said, she wrestled with herself. She thought about Cal’s words while she twisted her wedding ring. She conjured the faces of her cousin and her family, of the last time she ever saw her mother and finally of the pink curtain she had slashed to ribbons. The weight of it all, of all she knew and hated and all she wanted and was too afraid of, made her sag in her seat. For once her husband seemed to notice. He leaned over as he steered the car down the thin tree-laden lanes and, holding her hand he said, “Are you okay, Anne-Marie?”
And just like that she broke.
When I think of a time when things could have been different and then when something happened to make it so that they could never be, I find myself back at that garden party. If it were possible to undo that one thing, then everything else in time would unravel with it and we’d be left clean and renewed with hope.
Before I went to bed that night I dialed Ava’s number. It was late but I didn’t care. In the end it was the answering machine that picked up. Usually I would not have left a message but this time was different. This time I said, “I’m going back. I thought … well someone has to look over things and I don’t want Mom’s stuff sold off to a pack of strangers or gossip-hungry neighbors. I was thinking … I don’t … I wondered if maybe you may want to come with me—just to see what stuff you’d want to keep to remember them by …. No, why would you, right? I know. But I am going. I just thought you should know.”
I put down the receiver and lay supine on my bed. I knew I would dream that night, but I did not care. In the silence behind my mouth I said to myself, Let them come.
As if they needed an invitation.
3
AT THE AGE OF SEVENTY-ONE, WALTER HATHAWAY had cancer of the colon. That was the only reason his eldest son had come back. He had been diagnosed in the office of an oncologist upstate, a specialist recommended to him by Lou Parks, who had gone to college with the man and had followed his career with a respect tinged with envy.
After a series of tests and weeks of waiting he had driven back up to the doctor’s office, where after a few minutes of chitchat and polite conversation, the doctor had told him that not only did he have cancer of the colon, but that there was also nothing they could do to save him.
“Bullshit,” said Walter.
He had picked up his hat and thanked the man, who, after taking a moment to recover, was still hastily trying to explain that with his symptoms Walter would be dead within a year. Despite the doctor’s protestations, Walter left him with little more than a curt nod of acknowledgment. He refused to believe that death would be coming for him so soon, and so when he came home and sat before the dinner his daughter had made for him, all he’d said when she asked him where he’d been was that he had spent the day in a meeting with a supplier.
But then four months later he had woken up in a pool of his own shit and blood and saw death beside him sitting in a wicker chair. So he had lain back into his pillow, sighed and said, “Okay, you win.”
It was then he began to talk about his eldest son and how to bring him home.
It was also the first time he had mentioned him in over sixteen years.
When he was laid up in his bed and the doctor had given him his medication, he gritted his teeth against the pain and curled his fingers into claws so that they dug tunnels in the sheets. Twisting in agony he beckoned to his daughter and told her, “Go find your brother.”
“Sure, Pa, I’ll go get him for you,” said Piper. A few minutes later and she came back with Leo, who winced when he saw the state his father had become.
Walter closed his eyes and sighed irritably.
“No, not him. I mean your brother Cal. Get Cal.”
Piper felt Leo stiffen beside her but she dared not look at him. She stared at her father but the old man had his gaze fixed to the ceiling, battling against the forces of his own body, and she saw then what she would become despite everything she was now and her back sank beneath the weight of her revelation.
“Pa?”
“Didn’t you hear me, girl? You making me talk when I got no energy to talk. Do as I say!” he shouted and then doubled over into himself. Piper went to help him but he smacked her hand away. She looked desperately for Leo but he’d already left the room.
When she went down the stairs she found Leo standing on the front porch, his fingers splayed against the fringe of the roof that hung over them. He was staring out onto the drive. Without looking away he asked, “Is he dead yet?”
“What the hell is wrong with you? Of course not,” said Piper.
He turned to face her.
“Well, by God I wish he were. I wish he’d hurry and up and go before he does something stupid.”
“I don’t want to hear you talk like that.”
“That man up there is not my father.”
“He may be more of your father than you’d like.”
Leo lurched himself forward down the porch steps.
“What do you want me to do?” Piper called after him. He turned around, and when he did his face was half in shadow.
“Get a gun and end it. If it were a horse you wouldn’t think twice.”
Piper leaned back and clasped her hands over her skirt.
“Well then, don’t ask me again,” he said, his profile throwing up long shadows as he walked home.
After a while it seemed that the medication began to take hold. Her father was weak but quiet, as if he had resigned himself to his fate. Sometimes as she passed the hall that led to his bedroom she would hear his voice and wonder to whom he was talking. She mentioned it once to Lou Parks, who said not to worry, one of the side effects of the treatment was hallucinations. He asked her if she wouldn’t want to move their father to some palliative care place that would help control his pain before he died, but Piper refused. She had nursed her mother in that same bed before she died and she felt it was only right to do the same for her father. Lou Parks shrugged and touched the rim of his hat as he left her. She went to the kitchen to prepare dinner.
But then a few days later, Lou came into the living room, where she was mending linen, and said gently, “Your pa is asking for Cal.”
“What?” she asked, startled.
He stepped gingerly into the room, cautious to avoid any mines. “Walter won’t stop talking about the boy. He wants to see him.”
“Could this be the effect of the medication?” Piper asked hopefully.
“No, more like the effect of dying and the regrets that come to you before you do.”
“Oh,” said Piper as she sat back in disappointment. “I see.”
“Do you know where he is?”
“Cal? Of course I do.”