32
LUKE
Seeing my mom on the front porch takes the edge off my heartbreak a bit.
Just a bit, though.
She looks as beautiful as ever. Her silvery blonde hair is coiffed in a Mary Tyler Moore bob, and she’s wearing a blue skirt and a white blouse. I know even if I wasn’t coming to visit, this is the outfit she’d choose.
I woke up this morning with the biggest emotional hangover of my life. I’m shocked I was able to sleep at all without Eleanor next to me, knowing that she holds the future of our relationship in her hands. That she could break it.
It would be her right.
Even if it would totally gut me.
So, I decided to head down to see my mom. I don’t know how or if I’ll broach the topic of the photo of Aunt Diane. Mom’s always been strong, even in the wake of losing Dad so unexpectedly, but that strength is a tenuous, thin film overtop the grief.
I don’t want to break it.
She meets me on the front steps, wrapping her arms around me from a step above so I’m at her height. It makes me feel like a little boy again.
Mom kisses the top of my head. “You need a haircut.”
I laugh and breathe in her perfume. She’s always worn Elizabeth Arden Red Door. I have my own bottle for when I get homesick.
Life has gotten to be too much. Working too hard, loving too hard. And now the picture. I don’t realize I’m crying until my mom chides me softly. “Now, why on earth are you crying?”
We go inside, and I tell her everything—well, regarding Eleanor. I'm not going to mention Dad. That would kill her. Giving her something to focus on outside herself has been invaluable to her grieving. Which is why she’s always having her friends over and going to book club and church functions. Consoling a crying thirty-five-year-old son fits the bill too, I suppose.
“You’ve fallen in love, and this is the first I’m hearing about it?” she asks. “Tsk, tsk. Luke .”
I laugh, rubbing my sleeve over my face to clear away the tears. “It’s still new.”
“Well, who cares if it’s new? Goodness gracious,” she says, then sips her cup of coffee. “What’s her name?”
“Eleanor.”
“Mm. And what did you do to make her mad?”
I hesitate. “I don’t . . . I told her a lie, and I thought it was, you know, a lie that would help and not hurt.”
“Mm . . . I know a man like that.”
Dad . How much does she know?
“You know, honesty is always the best policy, honey.”
I roll my eyes. “Yes, Mom.”
She giggles and pats her hand over mine. “You know I love my adages.”
“Yeah . . .” I sigh heavily. “I’m afraid she’s not going to give me a chance to make up for it.”
“Have you talked to her today?”
I shake my head. To my chagrin, she hasn’t reached out to me. Which isn’t shocking. And though I wanted to text her this morning, I thought giving her space would be the best Idea. I don’t want to look desperate, but that seems like an impossible task when I’ve laid myself at her feet over and over again.
“Give her time. She’ll come back around,” Mom says.
“But what if she doesn’t?”
She sighs, then grabs a cube of sugar and drops it into my coffee. “I wish your father were here to give you better advice. I can give you the woman’s perspective, but what to actually do about it . . .”
“What would you want Dad to do then?” I ask.
She looks at me. There’s a flash of something in the back of her gray eyes, a strike of lightning. She’s silent for a moment, then says, “Grovel.”
“I can do that.”
We both laugh. And once that’s off my chest, I let her talk my ear off for a while. There’s a lot to catch up on since I’ve been so busy with work and women. Time always passes so quickly that I’m shocked when I come back home and realize how long it’s been.
“So, did you come all the way out here just to cry about a girl?” she asks after she’s had her fill of chatting.
Not entirely. In fact, I didn’t even know that was going to come up. “I wanted to see if you were ready to go through Dad’s stuff.”
Her body jerks. “Oh, heavens, you should have warned me about that before you came.”
I try not to be sheepish. Boxes of Dad’s stuff sit in the attic. His clothes still hang in the closets. The way the house looks, you’d think he’s going to walk through the backdoor any minute, sweating his ass off from mowing the lawn. He’d chase her around the kitchen trying to give her a kiss, and she’d whack him with an oven mitt to get his sweaty face away from her.
Ah, the good old days.
“You would have told me no,” I say.
“I would have said ‘no, but come down anyway,’” she grumbles. Mom tinkles her manicured nails on her coffee cup. “I’m not ready for that, baby. I know you think I’m crazy, but—”
“Not crazy at all.” I think about the way I’ll have to mourn Eleanor if she walks away from me, and that’s only been a few months. How do you mourn a whole lifetime with someone?
However, I’m not leaving here without learning something about Diane and Dad.
“Could I poke around? Just find some things maybe to . . . to remember him by.”
Mom’s mouth turns from a hesitant smile into a full one. “Well, that’s a great idea.”
* * *
I go to the boxes in the back. The ones hidden and buried.
Because if there’s any evidence to what I think might be there, it’s hidden and buried.
I sort through boxes of newspaper clippings, old books, albums of people I don’t recognize, tchotchkes and other memories. Each item I touch feels charged with a memory of my father. Nothing specific, no images. Just him.
I miss him. I miss him so much.
And I’m afraid that when all is said and done, I’m going to be mad at him.
Eventually, I start coughing. The attic is a haven for allergies. It gets to the point I’m coughing more often than I’m not. I know I’ll need to stop soon.
One more box. One more box.
I keep saying that to myself. Just one more box.
And finally, one more box pays off.
This box is mostly packing material. Old newspaper, old grocery store ads. But there is something in here. All the way at the bottom.
A gray metal lockbox.
I stare at it. Innocuous enough to be nothing. However, the only thing hidden in a box of packing material at the back of the attic has to be something.
I cough into my arm and curse to myself. The cough is starting to cut up my lungs. I need to figure out how to open this thing as fast as possible because there’s no way Mom is going to let me walk out of here holding an unopened box without an explanation.
I grab an old pocketknife from one of the other boxes I just opened and use it to pop the lock without any regard to maintaining the box.
And there it is. A whole world in a single box.
Photos and letters.
Diane and my dad.
My stomach turns as the first photo comes into focus. The two of them in a darkened booth with my dad’s arm slung around Diane’s shoulder. She’s smiling at him the way a woman smiles at a man she adores.
The date is close to the one on Eleanor’s photo.
What the hell was going on? How did this happen?
I can’t bring myself to read the letters. I don’t know if I want to know the story. About a love gone wrong, or a love that could never be, or . . .
I find a cocktail napkin emblazoned with the logo of a bar that no longer exists.
There are words written in blue pen.
I might not get you tomorrow
But at least I have you today.
And when you see me tomorrow
That’s exactly what I’ll say.
There’s a kiss mark on the other side.
“Hyacinth” is about my dad. He’s the love that could never be.
This is awful. Worse than I could have imagined.
I remember what Eleanor said last night. The idea that a history you thought you knew could be rewritten—how painful that is.
I made her feel the way I feel right now.
I fucking suck.
I already knew that, though. From small glances here and there, I grip a timeline. Whatever it was, lasted a couple of months in 1991.
Except for a final envelope. One postmarked almost two years ago.
It was never opened.
“Luke!”
I shove the unopened letter in my back pocket, clap the lockbox shut, and throw it back into the packing material. “Yeah?!”
I hear her footsteps on the ladder. “You hungry?”
Shoving the box into the back where it belongs, I call out. “I could eat!”
Mom is moving slowly, so thankfully I’m able to head her off at the pass before she can climb into the attic. She smiles at me. “I just took a meatloaf out of the oven. Your favorite.”
Staring down into my mom’s face, the tears threaten to return. The story of our family—of my father—what is it really?
Do I even want to know?
Miraculously, I manage to push away the thoughts of my father and Diane while I enjoy lunch with my mother. It’s not until I climb into my car that they all hit me at once.
Still nothing from Eleanor. And maybe it’s for the best. Because my world just flipped upside down.
I don’t have it in me to remain silent, though. So, I send her a text.
I’m sorry I changed our history. It’s still the best thing that’s ever happened to me.