Chapter 29
CHAPTER 29
E lijah. Friday night
I didn’t know what was more incredible: the fact that Corinne told me how she felt about me, and meant it, or the fact that once I heard it, I didn’t pull her into my arms, kiss her, and fuck her on the spot.
Instead, we did something that somehow felt more meaningful than that. We relaxed together.
After all the fear and anxiety and tension — and honesty — the two of us put into that conversation, it somehow seemed to mean more that we both relaxed, as if the shared weight of the world were off our shoulders, and instead of stripping us naked and re-enacting that first time banging her on this couch, I just reached for her hand, and we sat back, holding hands. It seemed to symbolize the new understanding that I hoped we now shared.
It was one more honest moment when I said to Corinne, “I don’t know what I ever did to deserve a girl as special as you.”
She gave me a soft little smile. “You gave yourself a second chance at your life. You gave yourself another chance to get it right. Not everyone gets that, Elijah. Or, not everyone turns it around the way you did. And as angry as you are with your Dad, I think you should go and talk to him.
“You know, my mother passed away long ago. When I think of how it would have felt if we had been on bad terms when she died… You never know when someone you love might suddenly be out of your life forever. What if something happened to your father and the last words that you had between you were such angry ones? How would you live with that? You have to do something, Elijah, because you never know when it might be too late. You don’t want your last memories of him to be memories of regret. Don’t do that to yourself.”
No one had ever said anything more true than that to me in my life. Corinne’s words weren’t just true, they were profound. It was a truth I couldn’t have seen myself, the way things were then. Someone had to show it to me. That was what Corinne did for me. And to me, that made her even more precious than she already was.
“Promise me you’ll talk to him,” she said. “I don’t know exactly the last things you said to each other, but don’t leave it at that. At least try to get it to some better place. Please?”
“I will,” I promised her. And after all, I didn’t get to where I was by not keeping my word.
Corinne saw me to her door. I paused with her there, just to thank her and give her a kiss, a gentle, grateful kiss on the forehead. And I left her apartment with her words in my heart.
Her words — and her love, much as I couldn’t believe it. Her love.
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The surprise on my mother’s face when she opened the front door for me was something I’d never forget. She had a right to look surprised. After so many years of mostly harsh words with my father, I’d become a stranger in the home of my own parents. But tonight, I was a stranger with something to say.
“Where’s Dad?”
Finding her voice, Mom answered, “He’s…lying down.”
I checked my watch. “It’s only eight o’clock.”
“He’s been struggling since the last time you talked.”
The worry on her face made her look as if she’d aged ten years. It made me feel worse than anything that Dad had ever said to me, knowing she looked that way because he must have repeated to her my last words to him. Here was another thing I needed to make up for.
“Can I come in, please?” I asked her. “Can I see him?”
As if my mother would refuse to let me into my family’s home. She nodded and opened the door wider, lettingme step inside.
“He’s upstairs,” said Mom.
That meant their bedroom. I looked at the stairs, which seemed just now like a mountain that I had to climb. “Okay,” I said.
Along the upstairs hall were the doors to my room and Sarah’s, where the two of us dreamed our first dreams of what our futures would be. So many of mine were about how good it would be when I got the hell away from that house and away from my parents telling me what I could and couldn’t do, and I could finally be my own man.
Passing my bedroom door, I wished I could step through it and step back in time to face the kid that I once was as the man I was now. Listen, punk, I’d say to myself, this is who you’re going to be someday. Do you know what the hell you’re going to have to go through before you get to be this? Let me tell you a few things, smartass…
At the end of the hall was another door that I knew well: the door to the master bedroom. And on the other side of it was the master.
I knocked on that door, loudly, and didn’t wait for permission to open it and go in. Not waiting for or caring about my parents’ permission was, after all, one of the themes of my life.
He was fully dressed and lying with his head against a pillow and headboard on the bed. He glared at me that way he had done so many times before, and in his most unwelcoming voice, my father said, “Doesn’t a closed door mean you’re not supposed to come in?”
Shutting the door behind me, I answered, “Well, you know how I am about rules, Dad, don’t you?”
My father made a noise like a snorting horse at me. Well, he could snort and paw his hooves all he wanted , I thought. The old man was going to hear what I’d come to tell him tonight.
“Now hear this, Dad. I’m mad at you. I’m angry as hell because I want you to see I’ve changed. I’m not the rotten kid who left this house, and I’m not the screwed-up guy that you had to keep out of prison. That’s not who I am anymore, and I don’t know how to make you see that. You don’t listen, you don’t think. All you do is judge by what used to be. You’re a blind, stubborn bastard, and it kills me because I know I’m a lot like you.
“But, Dad, I’m a better man than I was. I built a damn successful business with Leo. I found a girl who’s a thousand times nicer than I deserve, the nicest human being I’ve ever met. And, I’m angry because you can’t see that I’m actually someone that a girl like that could love.
“I don’t know what I can do, what it will take, to make you proud of me. Maybe I can’t do it. Maybe it’s just not possible to make anyone feel something they just don’t feel. But, I’m here to tell you that no matter what kind of blind, stubborn bastard you are, I love you anyway. Maybe you’re not proud of me and maybe I can’t change that. We just have to accept the things we can’t change. But damnit, old man, you are my father and I love you. And, even if you’re not proud of me…I’m proud of you.”
I hadn’t let him get a word in edgewise, and I didn’t let him have the last word now. I just left my father there on his bed with his mouth hanging open. Maybe he was dredging up the words to say for some retort to what I’d just told him. Or, perhaps he was just speechless. I didn’t bother to stay and find out. Instead, I let myself out of my parents’ bedroom and marched back downstairs.
I found my mother, sitting anxiously on the cushioned bench in the hall, gazing up the stairs and clearly wondering what was going on up there. When I came down to where she was, I helped her to her feet, put my arms around her and gave her a kiss, and told her that I loved her, too. Then, I let myself out and went to my car to drive home.