“I tried to do something nice for you today,” Roland said.
“You do something nice for me every day,” she said.
“I was going to finish the laundry you started yesterday,” he said. “I threw your jeans in with mine. This was in the back pocket.”
He held up a folded piece of paper. She didn’t have to look at it to know what it was. The note about Roland’s operation.
“Is that why you didn’t wake me up last night?” he asked. “You found that?”
“I needed time to think. Do you blame me?”
“You could have asked me about it,” he said.
“I wasn’t sure if you’d tell me the whole truth.”
Roland took the hit well. He nodded in agreement.
“The truth hurts sometimes.”
“It does, yeah,” she said. “But so do lies.”
She rolled over onto her side, facing him. His hand was there on the covers and she could reach out and take it if she wanted. She wanted, but she didn’t.
“I don’t think I lied to you,” he said. “Except by omission. It’s not easy to talk about...”
“What? Tell me. You told me you were in love with me, so I know you’re not a coward. I was with McQueen for six years and never told him I had real feelings for him.”
“This,” he said, holding up the page again with the notes on his surgery. “So, ah...when I was twenty, I met this girl in Astoria. We worked together. We went out on all of two dates, and I thought, yeah, she’s the one. Dad asked about her and I told him that. I thought he’d be happy. He was but he said he needed to tell me something. He said that what I had as a kid, that condition that made me violent, it could be genetic. And I needed to be really careful. He said...he said I shouldn’t have children. That is not an easy conversation for a twenty-year-old guy to have with his dad when he’s madly in love. Dad knew a doctor, he said. He...”
“Tell me, Roland. Just say it.”
“I had a vasectomy.”
“What?”
“This is not a comfortable conversation for a man to have with the woman he’s in love with, either. It’s humiliating. I know it shouldn’t be, but that doesn’t change that it is. So, you know, not the easiest thing in the world for me to talk about.”
Allison took a heavy breath. She hadn’t expected that, not at all.
“Is that why you joined the monastery?” she asked. “Because you can’t have biological children?”
“Terrible reason, right? I joined for a lot of bad reasons. I didn’t want to risk falling in love again. I felt tainted by what I’d done to Rachel. I felt like I maybe should go away for a long time. There were good reasons, too. I wanted to be forgiven. I wanted peace. I wanted to be a different person. But that doesn’t work. You’re still you no matter where you go.”
Allison touched his face, the scruff on his chin, pale as snow on sand.
“I remembered something else today,” she said.
“Like what?” Roland, she knew, was trying to sound normal but it wasn’t working. He sounded scared, and for Roland that wasn’t normal.
“The first time you and I made love upstairs in my room, which used to be your room, I remembered I tried to run my fingers through your hair. You pushed my arm down on the bed before I could. I thought you were being sexy...” Allison ran her hands through his hair and pulled the little black elastic band out of the short ponytail he always wore it in. Roland lowered his head. She dropped the elastic on the floor, and started stroking his hair. Under her fingers she felt a ridge of scar tissue under his hair. It was in the same place she felt the scar on Antonio’s scalp.
“How long were you going to keep it a secret from me?” she asked. “The surgery, I mean.”
“Which surgery?” He almost smiled, almost.
“Both.”
“It wasn’t a secret at first. Just private. Then I started falling in love with you. Then it was a secret because I knew you needed to know,” he said. “I was scared I’d lose you if you wanted to have kids of your own.”
“That’s why you didn’t tell me,” she said.
Roland lowered his head again, exhaled.
“Sometimes I remember things,” he said. “Awful things. Hurting Rachel. Doing terrible things to her.” He swallowed hard and she saw his Adam’s apple bob in his throat. “I used to try to talk to Dad about them, and he told me to forget it all. He said I hurt her sometimes but it wasn’t my fault—I had a condition. But I think I did more than hurt her. Sometimes I think I...sometimes I think I killed her. And I don’t think it was an accident, like Dad said.”
He looked at her with pleading eyes and she saw him as the Roland he’d once been years and years ago. The little boy. He looked scared and young and innocent and sweet, just the way she must have looked her first time at the house when he’d changed her life for the better by asking her to help him turn the pages in the book they were reading.
“You were a kid,” she said. “Whatever happened, you were just a kid.”
Allison covered his hand with hers, and he grabbed it, gripping it so tightly it hurt. She sat up and pulled his head to her stomach and held him in her lap. She ran her fingers through his hair over and over again, ignoring the scar because the scar was nothing, it was old news, it was part of him but it wasn’t him.
“It’s okay,” she whispered as she stroked his hair and his shoulders and his face. Her leg was damp with his tears. “I’m okay. Dad’s got crazy poison in his system and it made him lose it. That’s all. I’m fine and you’re fine and we’re fine.”
“I’m not fine,” Roland said with a shuddering breath.
“Why not?” she asked, smiling.
He looked up at her, his face open and honest and aching.
“Because my dad’s dying.”
Allison took his face in her hands.
“Mine, too,” she said. Then they held each other and wept together for a long time. They stopped when Deacon came to the door and knocked to get their attention. They wiped their faces and looked at him.
“You okay, sis?” Deacon asked. He looked pale and haggard and haunted.
“I’m all right. Just had a rough moment there,” Allison said. It was no time now to tell them the truth.
“I’m glad you’re okay,” Deacon said. He looked at Roland. “It’s, uh, it’s time.”
“Is he awake?” Allison asked.
Deacon nodded. “For now. They gave him some meds for pain so he’s calm. The EMTs said to hurry if you’re coming. He’s...he’s going.”
She looked at Roland and Roland looked at her. He stood up and held out his hand to her. She took it and let him help her to her feet. Allison found a light scarf in her suitcase and wound it around the bruises on her neck. When she was ready, they left the room and went upstairs. Outside Dr. Capello’s bedroom, Deacon stopped them.
“The EMTs are just going to wait downstairs,” Deacon said. “It won’t be long now.”
Roland and Deacon went inside. Allison stayed in the doorway, watching.
Dr. Capello lay on his bed, a blanket over him and his arms on top of the cover. His face was red from the pepper spray but he didn’t seem to be in pain. Thora sat at his side on the bed, clutching his hand in hers. The hands that had nearly killed her barely an hour ago now lay limp and trembling on the bedcovers. The attack on her had taken the life out of him, she saw. She’d survived it. He would not.
Allison took a step into the room. She sensed Death close, hovering near the bed. Allison could feel him breathing down her neck. His breath smelled sour like old milk, and she had to crack open the window to let in the cleansing scent of the ocean. Sea air wafted into the room and over the bed. Slowly Dr. Capello’s eyes fluttered. He must have sensed movement, felt the breeze on his face. Allison waited and he met her eyes and smiled.
“There’s my doll...” He sighed. His voice was as thin as a Bible page.
“I’m here, Dad,” Allison said.
It wasn’t easy to put a smile on her face and call him “Dad” but she did it. She did it for Roland and she did it for Deacon and she did it for Thora. But most of all, she did it for the seven-year-old girl she’d once been, the girl who’d loved this man with all her little heart, and for the little piece of her heart that loved him still.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t...”
“Don’t say anything,” Allison said to him. She crossed her arms over her chest and looked down at him in the bed. He seemed too small now, so terribly small and fragile and harmless. “You’re sick and you had a spell. That’s all.”
His head moved like he was trying to nod.
“A good girl,” he said.
He took a long shuddering breath, the sort of breath taken after a good long cry. It was excruciating watching him breathe like that, seizing up in momentary agony before relaxing again and going so still that Allison was afraid they’d lost him already. Yet he somehow managed to find the strength to speak again.
“Promise me, kids,” he said, and each word cost him a breath. The more he spoke, the quicker he would die, and yet he seemed to need to speak, anyway. “Promise me you’ll always love each other. Promise me you’ll always take care of each other.”
“I promise, Dad,” Deacon said. “Of course we’ll take care of each other. You taught us how.”
“Yes, Daddy,” Thora said. “I promise.”
“Roland? Allison?”
Roland said softly, “I promise, Dad.”
And Allison, too, made the promise. “I promise,” she said, though she wasn’t sure she could keep it.
Dr. Capello nodded a little and closed his eyes again. They all stared at his face, waiting for that moment it went utterly still and slack when the spark of life would finally go out.
“So quiet,” he said, and they all looked up in surprise. They’d thought he’d already spoken his last words. “Who died?”
He tried to laugh at his own joke, but the laugh quickly turned into a spasm of coughs. Thora soothed Dr. Capello with her hands on his chest.
“We’re all here,” Thora said. “I’m here and Deacon’s here and Roland’s here and Allison’s here.”
“My children,” he said. “Don’t grieve.”
“Your children can’t help it,” Roland said. His every word sounded strained, like it was being dragged out of him against its will.
“Rotten kids,” he breathed, then smiled again. “Dragons guard treasure.”
It was an odd thing to say, odd enough they all looked at each other in confusion until Dr. Capello spoke again.
“That’s you, kids,” he said. “My treasure.”
“Love you, Daddy,” Thora said. It seemed to take everything she had in her to push those three words past the blockage in her throat. Tears streamed from her eyes.
“Too quiet,” he said, and it was clear he was suffering in the silence. He was scared. He needed to hear his children’s voices, but his children were mute. Their throats were tight as a miser’s fists and their tongues heavy as sandbags. They loved him with their grown-up hearts and child’s hearts combined.
Why Allison did it, she would never know for certain, but in the silence she began to speak, tenderly, like a mother speaking an old rhyme to her child.
“In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure-dome decree:
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man
Down to a sunless sea.
So twice five miles of fertile ground
With walls and towers were girdled round;
And there were gardens bright with sinuous rills,
Where blossomed many an incense-bearing tree;
And here were forests ancient as the hills,
Enfolding spots of sunny greenery.”
“Ah,” Dr. Capello said, a sound of bliss. His pupils were fixed and dilated. “I see it all. The trees. The garden. The river. I see—” he took one more labored breath “—my Rachel.”
Roland’s head snapped up, his eyes wide open.
“Dad?” Roland leaned forward and put his hand on Dr. Capello’s face. “Dad?”
Allison placed her hand on Dr. Capello’s chest. She felt nothing.
“He’s gone,” she said in a whisper, but in the silence of the room it sounded like she’d shouted it.
Allison looked at Roland. He shook his head, not in disbelief but in protest against the unfairness of it all. His tongue was loosened then, and at last he said all the things he’d been meaning to say.
“Dad, it’s your son. It’s Roland. Listen to me. I love you, Dad. I’ll always love you. You loved me when no one else could. You loved me when no one else would. You took me in when no one wanted me. You didn’t just forgive me, you called me your son. When no one else would have me, you gave me a home. You made me who I am. You made me a good man. I owe you everything. I owe you my whole life and everything I am and everything I have and everyone I love. Dad? Do you hear me? Dad?”
Thora and Deacon sobbed in each other’s arms. They were lost in grief, drowning in it, choking on it. Roland had started his litany all over again.
“I love you, Dad. I’ll always love you. You loved me when no one else could. You loved me when no one else would. You didn’t just forgive me...”
Those words filled the room, filled it to the rafters and filled Allison to the ribs so that she thought they’d crack and splinter for how her heart swelled to bursting with love for Roland. Whatever sin Dr. Capello had committed against her, Allison vowed then never to hold it against Roland.
She reached for him, pulling him away from Dr. Capello’s corpse, guiding him to the chair. Outside the window the moon was high and round, and in the bed, Dr. Capello’s face went slack and his lips slightly parted in his death mask. And Allison knew she had to be the one to do it. Slowly Allison eased the covers down to free them from Dr. Capello’s arms and pulled them up, up and over his face.
Allison knew she should say something then. Something profound and poetic and merciful, something about this man who’d done beautiful things and ugly things and was now standing at the gates of heaven waiting to find out if the beauty outweighed the ugly in the eyes of God. But for the first time in Allison’s life, poetry failed her. She was left with only two words.
“Goodbye, Dad.”
Chapter 28
The next two days passed in a blur. Allison helped make the necessary phone calls. She cooked, she cleaned, she brewed pot after pot of coffee while Roland, Deacon and Thora walked around the house numb with shock, acting almost normal, which always seemed the most abnormal thing people did after a death. Every night Roland slept with her in her bed, holding her and sometimes kissing her but that was it. They didn’t make love or talk about their future together, if there was one. Nero might have fiddled while Rome burned, but not even he played in the ashes.
And there were ashes. Four glass urns that contained Dr. Capello’s last remains were delivered to the house on the morning of the third day after he’d passed away. There would be no funeral, no visitation. Dr. Capello wanted none of that. He found it maudlin and strange and religious, which he wasn’t. So the urns sat side by side by side by side on the floor of the sunroom next to the windows, waiting to be scattered. Allison caught Deacon staring at them. He stared so long and hard, Allison finally took a blanket off the couch and draped it over the urns.
“Thank you,” Deacon said, and swallowed.
“Not a problem.”
“I made them, you know.”
“Did you?” she asked.
“Do you have any idea how hard it is to make urns for your own father while he’s still alive?” Deacon asked.
“I can’t imagine.”
“I don’t recommend it.”
“You made four of them.”
“One for each of us,” he said. “But if you don’t want to—”