“I love her, Kara.”
“Do you love me?”
Her eyes were getting wet, and the sight of it made mine a mirror image. “Of course I do. You know that.”
“But not enough?”
“It’s not that easy. I wish it was.”
The subject was too painful, I had to try to change it. “I had another dream last night.”
I could tell she wasn’t interested but she nodded for me to continue anyway.
“I was at the scene in Algonquin; people were searching the area for the boys. Someone found a toy car. I heard a voice and turned around, there were two young boys a ways away. When I walked up to them they told me ‘Thank you’.”
I could tell that Kara was intrigued, her lack of interest had given way to curiosity.
“Kara, what if I’m the one who killed Jeffries? I saw him and my father fighting, maybe my dad was losing and I plunged the knife into his back?”
“After having been beaten?”
“The autopsy said the stab wound went through his back, severed two ribs and cut through the heart. If my father had been underneath him, he wouldn’t have had enough strength to stab him through the back like that.”
“Maybe he stabbed him while he was on the ground, got on top of him or something.”
“I don’t know, I’d rather think he killed him in the heat of the fight rather than stabbing him while he lay on the ground.”
“You wouldn’t have been strong enough, Link. You were only eight and you had been beaten severely. A broken arm, wasn’t it?”
“Yeah, you’re right.”
“Your dreams are important, but who knows what it meant. You were obviously the last one Jeffries abducted, and your father stopped him. Maybe they’re thanking you for that, or maybe they’re thanking you for helping to find them. You know, putting their spirits to rest, the whole unfinished business thing.”
“Maybe you’re right.”
“Or maybe it’s about you, you’re putting your own memories to rest.”
“Yeah, maybe.” Though my memories still didn’t feel very rested.
Kara stood up from the couch. “I need to get going.”
I knew why she was leaving but I chose not to argue it. I felt even worse than when I had woken up. I had betrayed my wife and children and forced them halfway across the world. Now I had hurt the only person who was standing by me.
“Please, don’t go.” I tried to take her hand as she began to walk away.
“I have to. You want me here as a friend, I can’t be that to you right now. I’m not ready to go back to that.” She broke eye contact. “I may never be.”
All I could do was watch her leave, but I’d been getting good at that. I’d had a hell of a lot of practice. I was losing everything that meant anything to me. Ruining my life seemed to be my only competency.
The only person I had left to turn to didn’t even know who I was.
* * *
I made my way out to my car and put my crutches in the back seat. The roof supported me as I hopped into the driver’s seat. My right ankle was fine, driving would not be a problem. I reviewed the directions in my head then charted a course for somewhere I had avoided for far too long.
I backed out of the driveway and began my journey, arriving a little more than an hour later in the parking lot of my father’s nursing home in Chatham. The trip to the front door was easy once I worked out how to get out of the car and retrieve my crutches. I entered into the secure area between two set of doors. The clerk at the front desk saw me and unlocked the doors. They closed behind me and I heard them lock again.
But of course, the security was necessary. The facility was primarily for patients in the advanced stages of Alzheimer’s. The patients had a tendency to wander if left unattended and an errant patient would be a major liability for the home. I approached the desk and was pleasantly greeted by a young black woman.
“I’m here to see Lincoln Munroe,” I told her.
“And your name?”
“Lincoln Munroe.”
She looked confused for a moment before I added, “I’m his son.”
“He’s just finishing lunch. Do you want me to bring him here?”
I nodded and looked around at the beautiful lobby with its high glass ceiling and many trees, plants and flowers. A large aquarium sat between the lobby and a sitting area filled with colourful salt water fish. It was all very serene and I could feel myself beginning to relax.
“That would be great,” I said.
I took a seat in a leather chair, resting my crutches against the table to my left. I found myself mesmerized by the fish darting in and out of the coral and rocks. I was lost in their flashing colours when a nurse brought my father in.
He had changed so much since I last saw him. His hair was all gray now and longer than I recalled. I wondered if he wouldn’t let the nurses cut it, if he had lost the ability to comprehend what they were doing. Gray stubble covered his face, which was all but unrecognizable. He had lost a lot of weight, literally down to just skin and bones. It was most striking in his face, the gauntness of his appearance unnerved me.
His deep brown eyes had not changed, but there wasn’t much of him left in them. He looked like little more than a shell to me. My father’s body, propped up and made to move by invisible strings. I was surprised when he broke the silence.
“Hello.”
“Hi.”
I wanted to call him dad but I wasn’t sure how he would react.
“I love those fish too. You did a good job.”
Something new, I had never been the aquarium care person before.
“Glad you like them,” I said. The nurse eased him down in the chair beside me then left us to ourselves. “The little yellow ones have always been my favourite.” It didn’t matter what I said, I was just happy to carry on a conversation with him.
“Me too. Them and the blue ones.”
“I’ve missed you, dad.”
He looked confused but didn’t say anything, he just kept watching the fish.
I didn’t know what to say, there were so many questions I wanted to ask, but he wouldn’t have had the answers to any of them. There were so many things I wanted to tell him, but he wouldn’t understand. So we sat beside each other for two hours watching the fish swim by and back again, occasionally sharing some observation of them with each other.
Even if he didn’t know who I was, even if I couldn’t talk to him as my father I was happy just to sit with him, to share a simple moment. It was hard, but everything important always is. I had given up on him a long time ago, the first piece of my life that I had lost, and it was time to get him back. He would be the first step in regaining my life, in bringing back the things that meant so much to me. But it would be a victory I would revel in alone, spending time with a man who didn’t know me.
* * *
I returned to the nursing home every day for a week, just watching the fish with my father. Each day he gave me a new identity—a nurse, a gardener, a boyhood friend—but each day we sat together. As the days went by, we spoke more and more, branching out from the topic of the fish to other topics, the weather, the food at the home, the attractive nurses who happened by. My father had changed. As far as I had been aware, he never cast a glance in another woman’s direction while my mother was alive.
I laughed as he commented on the young woman who had let me in my first day here and said that a roving eye would cause no harm. Youth seemed to flow back into him as he watched her walk by, smiling coyly at her and winking at me as she smiled back. I felt sympathy for the nurses, dealing with amorous old men on a daily basis, but for the most part they didn’t seem to mind. My father, unlike some of the other residents, kept his hands to himself.
Once a gentleman, always a gentleman.
Every day for a week I came, the hour-long drive a time of reflection and meditation. I would arrive and sit with my father, alone but together. I brought DVDs on th
e last day, his favourite television show now compiled on a few mirrored discs. It was MacGyver and it was something he and I had always watched—the exploits of a man using brains over brawn. I commandeered the television from an old woman who had fallen asleep through a rerun of Murder, She Wrote and slid the DVD into the home’s ancient machine. Good thing I didn’t bring a BluRay.
As soon as the theme music started, my father’s eyes brightened and he turned to face the set. We sat on either side of a leather sofa, only an arm’s reach away but still so far apart.
“I love this show,” he said. “Didn’t know it was still on.”
MacGyver he remembered, his son he forgot. I tried to hide the tears, but there was nothing I could do to stop them as they trickled down my face from the opening theme until the show ended. His eyes stood in stark contrast to mine, wide open and glued to the television with the admiration and awe of a child.
“That was great,” he said when the credits rolled. His eyes met mine, his gaze reflected in the streaks of moisture on my cheeks.
“You all right, kid?”
I nodded and forced a smile.
“I’m fine. Just fine.”
“Good.” His hand moved to rest on my knee. “You seemed pretty upset.”
“Yeah. I’m good though. Not sure I can really talk about it.”
I wanted to but I saw no point. I would confuse him, I would scare him and I might lose what little we had together.
“Buck up, then,” he said.
It was a phrase he had always used when I was a kid. ‘Buck up’ when I fell out of a tree, ‘buck up’ to my first bee sting, ‘buck up’ to skinned knees and sprained ankles. It had always come with a tight and loving hug, a reminder of the duality of my father.
“It’s almost lunch anyway, shouldn’t you be getting to work?”
I was the kitchen help today.
“I guess so,” I said.
I stood up and excused myself then walked to the exit. Tears streamed down my face. I felt like I had been within sight of my destination only to have the road give out beneath me. No matter how close I got, he’d always be miles away.
* * *
I returned home that night mentally exhausted—the constant emotional pain was wearing me down and I found that I had little left to give. Link and Kasia had called in the morning—afternoon their time—and I was secretly thankful that they would not be calling again. As much joy as their little voices brought me, rest and relaxation were the only things on my itinerary.
The answering machine light was flashing when I walked into the kitchen, a red light blinking in the corner of the room. It required no investigation—it would be Kara wanting to talk, wanting to sort out what little remained of our relationship. I loved her, there was no denying that, but my wife and my family were my everything. If only I knew what to do to make things right.
These thoughts paired with thoughts of my father were too much to bear, and, for the first time in my life, I turned to help to drown them out. The first drink went down smooth and the rest slid down unabated, the path already lubricated.
The sun was still up when I finished the bottle, its near final lights pouring through the rear windows of our home.
My home.
I was alone here now, a single person in an empty house. The floors above and below were devoid of life, no one downstairs watching television in the finished basement, no children upstairs preparing for bed.
The bottle clanked as I set it down on the quartz countertop. The glass had made its way into the sink some time ago. I looked at the bottle and felt a slight pang of sorrow; it had been a birthday gift from Chen and was a bottle I only drank from on special occasions. There was nothing special about today, nothing to celebrate, and yet there I sat with a belly full of expensive single malt scotch lamenting the messes I had made.
The stairs were uneven as I took ginger steps up them, the handrail keeping me steady. The master bedroom was in a sad state of affairs—the bed unmade, sheets rumpled and piles of clothing lying on the floor. There was no reason to clean it, no one to complain about the clutter.
I made my way down the hall to the kids’ bedrooms and marveled at the contrast. Kat had cleaned before she left, tidied the rooms and made the beds. They sat in front of me like a hermetically sealed museum exhibit of years gone by; an unchanging glimpse of how life had once been.
I lay down on the floor and the unforgiving berber carpet began to leave patterns on my exposed skin. The view of their rooms held me fast as I imagined them sound asleep within. My mind had changed since returning home, and now speaking to them seemed like the only option. But it was the middle of the night there, and there were two things Kat hated: being woken up in the middle of the night and drunkenness. A combination would not be the way to win her back.
I fell asleep on the floor outside Link and Kasia’s rooms, awaking many hours later to the first rays of sun breaking through the darkness. A pounding headache was my reward for stupidity and self-contempt, and I did not wear it well.
A familiar feeling in my stomach brought me to the bathroom, staring into a porcelain bowl as the manifestation of my grief and pain flowed out of me in torrents.
—29—
That day I did little of anything. My father would have to wait for me to pull myself together. The fact that he wouldn’t miss me didn’t help. My body was devoid of energy and I left the couch only for washroom breaks, taking in a Mythbusters marathon on Discovery Channel. Sustenance came in the form of pizza delivered for lunch and Chinese delivered for dinner. I saw no reason to cook a meal fit for a king only to have it eaten by a jester.
The night brought clear skies and more stars than I knew existed. It had been years since I’d given the stars their due, the art of stargazing lost as time went on. The air was warm as I stepped out onto the deck, my bare foot feeling the wooden boards beneath them and the protruding nail I had been intending to hammer down. My hands were full of promise and responsibility, two cans of Coke and not a drop of alcohol.
I stood in the darkness, the lights out in the houses to my left and right and nothing but woods behind me. The moon had waned to nothingness and the stars found no competition as they shone down upon me, constellations I had long ago forgotten reappeared as I stared.
I draped a towel over the railing beside the hot tub that was rarely used for its intended purpose. The kids had commandeered it as a pool, and the lack of steam that greeted me as I opened it told me that they had last been in it. The water was warm but far from hot. I turned it up to a suitable temperature, preparing to never notice the change, a frog in a pot of water brought slowly to a boil.
I peeled away my shorts and t-shirt. A glance in all directions satisfied me that I was alone, and my boxers landed in a crumpled mass at my feet. I stood before the universe as I had been born, staring into the abyss of space for only a moment. My shyness then took hold of me and I climbed into the water, safe beneath the surface. If only they’d had waterproof casts when I was a kid, the summer of eighty-four would have been much more fun.
The lights of the hot tub always soothed me as they morphed from one colour into the next. Tonight I left them off, the glow they cast on my naked body left me unable to hide. Also, the stars shone brighter without the lights on—the faint colour would have hung in the steam that was beginning to form.
The phone rang inside but I had no intention of trying to reach it in time. I had found a place of peace at last, and no force on earth would cause me to leave before I was ready. The first can of Coke was empty and placed upon the side of the hot tub before I slid down deep. Bubbling water cascaded around my neck. I saw the stars in their entirety now, every single light in the sky visible to me from this vantage point.
A bolt of light shot across the sky above me and I thought of Link and the first time he saw a shooting star. I explained the science to him but it was beyond the cares of a then seven-year-old. All he was interested in was his wish.
br /> I had so much to wish for but I could not bring myself to do it, to utter what I wanted, what I needed. No miracle would bring my family back to me, no fire in the night had the power to erase what I had done. I was on my own, alone in a universe full of mistakes.
An hour or more later both Cokes were finished. Sweat beaded on my head and my feet and hands were wrinkled; it was time to get out. My eyes wandered all around me to ensure the coast was clear before I clambered out of the water and draped the towel around my dripping body. I closed the hot tub and secured the lid then went inside, my clothes left for another day.
—30—
Two days later I woke early and made the drive once more to Chatham. I arrived to a sad look from the object of my father’s affection. “He’s not doing so well today, Mr. Munroe. There’s a bit of a cold going through here. He’s up in his room if you still want to see him.”
I nodded and she gave me his room number. It saddened me to think that I had forgotten it. The hallway was simple, a straight line laid out in green carpet, lights on the walls guiding me until I found my father’s room. The door was open and a nurse stood beside his bed checking his temperature. I gave a soft knock.
“Oh, hello,” the nurse said. “I’ll just be a minute.”
He removed the thermometer from my father’s ear, looked at it, then trashed the probe and placed the device back in the pocket of his scrubs.
“He’s a little warm still, should be fine in a couple of days. Lincoln,” he said as he tapped my father on the shoulder, “you have a visitor.”
They never announced who was visiting. It would only confuse my father if he had said, “your son is here”. I pulled his armchair over to the side of the bed and sat down, my eyes never leaving his weakened body. He was a shadow of his former self—just over half the weight I remembered, half the man I saw in my dreams.
But despite the withered body, as I looked at him lying in the bed half awake, I found myself in awe of him once again. His strength had astounded me when I was a child, and now even as death, as implacable as it was, approached him, he did not seem to waver. This illness would not take him. He would stand fast and rise again, ready to fight another day like he had fought for me.