Chapter 33
CHAPTER 33
E lijah. Wednesday
I thought nothing could spoil the good mood that I had this week. It was the best I’d felt in too long a time. But at the midpoint of the week, that theory was about to be tested. My desk phone rang.
“You have a visitor,” Barbara said.
“Okay,” I said. “Who?”
In a lowered tone, Barbara answered, “It’s your father. He’s heard me talking to you. What do you want to do?”
I could have had Barbara tell him that I was too busy at the moment and ask him to come back later. I could even have had her put a return visit from Dad on my calendar. And yet…
Having my father make an appointment? In spite of everything, in spite of the kind of relationship we’d always had, he was my father. Was that really the kind of thing I wanted to do?
Besides that, I could count on one hand with fingers to spare the number of times my father had visited my place of business. Did I really want to send him away, even knowing what kind of conversation was likely to take place if I had Barbara send him in? Somehow…it didn’t seem right.
So, I bucked up my nerves and prepared myself for a test of just how good a mood I was in this week. If anything could show me how good I was feeling, it would be how well I dealt with a surprise visit from Dad.
I said, “Okay. Let him come in.”
A moment later, my office door opened. I tried to read his face and got nothing. I wondered whether I should be worried that I couldn’t suss out his attitude. He shut the door behind him and faced me again. He pulled up a chair and sat down across the desk from me.
“Hello, Dad,” I said.
My father replied, “Hello, son.”
His response, in and of itself, was interesting. Dad never called me “son.” In all the years of my life, I actually couldn’t remember the last time he addressed me that way. What would make him do it now? I wondered. A chilling thought scratched at the back of my mind. I remembered how I’d found him just lying in bed, having turned in early, the last time I went to the house to confront him. Was he sick? Was he dying?
Mentally preparing myself for anything, I calmly asked him, “What can I do for you, Dad?”
The one thing for which I was not prepared was what he said next.
“I’m sorry, Elijah.”
It was the most pure moment of disbelief I’d ever had. I went dead silent and felt as if I were in a movie, at one of those moments when the camera goes to a fish-eye lens and the background recedes and shrinks away behind an actor, one of those moments when the character questions or feels detached from his whole reality.
My father—telling me he was sorry? What world was I in?
“Uh…excuse me?” I reacted.
Dad paused and gulped, and then he said, “I apologize, son.”
“Sorry…” I muttered.
“That’s all I’m going to say,” he continued, sounding at least a little bit more like the Dad that I knew, “because I’m frankly not very good at these things. We’ve been so far apart about practically everything, it’s as if we’ve never lived in the same world. But, I think what you and I most have in common, Elijah, is that we’re both very proud men. We don’t apologize easily. So, I’m just going to tell you, plainly, that I’m sorry.”
Even if he didn’t want to say it, I knew exactly what my father was sorry for, every last damn bit of it. And seeing him standing in front of me, being big enough to apologize, made me sorry for everything that had ever come between us; sorry that I always went to anger with him first. Sorry that I never tried harder.
I was just able to find the voice to say, “Thank you, Dad.”
He stood up again, preparing to leave, and suddenly I found I didn’t want this moment to end. I wanted to live in it for a while longer; it was something so rare, so special, something that I never expected to have.
“Leaving already?” I asked. “I could order us something. We could…”
Dad raised a hand to stop me. “No, no, no. I shouldn’t even have bothered you while you’re at work. I just thought this was important.”
“You’re not bothering me,” I said, forcing my voice not to crack.
I saw a wistful little smile on his face, a sort of smile that I’d never seen him wear before. He headed back for the door, and just as he got his hand on the handle, he faced me one more time.
That was when my father said, “I am proud of you.”
And without another word, he let himself out.
I sat behind my desk in my quiet office, hearing those words echo, if not actually in the room, then in my head. I’m sorry. I’m sorry…
My eyes were actually getting wet. I put a hand to my mouth and continued sitting there, forgetting about the work that my father hadn’t wanted to interrupt. What had just happened was more important than any work, any piece of business, could ever be.
__________
The whole thing with Dad had definitely not spoiled either my mood or my day. But, it had put a whole different spin on everything. I still felt good, but it was a profound kind of good. One that came from my whole world having suddenly shifted in a way that I liked.
What relationship would Dad and I have from this day forward? Would we continue being able to talk the way a real father and son should talk to each other? Would we now be able to tell each other things, important things, about ourselves that we’d never been able to say before? I hoped so. I hoped this would be the beginning of Dad and me really being able to know who each other was. It really was like turning a new page in my life, and I liked it.
I took that feeling out of the office with me, wearing a contented smile. Barbara, arranging things on her desk for the next morning, looked up at me and said, flatly, “You went to lunch with Corinne.”
That stopped me in my tracks. I wasn’t angry. I was feeling too good about everything — both Corinne and Dad — to be upset.
Laughing, I said, “You’re really nosy, aren’t you?”
“I’m looking out for you,” she replied.
“Just like you always do,” I said. “I appreciate that. Always have.”
“Are you back together?”
Into my mind flashed the “long lunch” that Corinne and I had in my living room two days ago, but I wasn’t about to tell even my trustworthy and doting secretary any of the details of that.
Instead, I just walked away, saying to her, “You’ll have to ask Corinne.”
“That’s what I thought,” she said to my back, having caught my smile. I could hear in her tone that she’d done the math without my having to give her all the figures.
“Love ya, Barbara!” I called on my way out the door.