London House, page 14
I nodded and we left, Mat carrying his messenger bag and small suitcase, and neither of us saying a word.
At the top, I showed him the apartment to the left of the large room and let him wander through it alone. After he placed his bag on the stand, he rejoined me and stepped toward the high table. Sunlight flooded this room as it had the kitchen and I didn’t want to leave. It felt warm and safe three floors from my dad.
“Are you going to be okay?” Mat asked.
“Most likely not.”
He looked down at the piles on the table. “You go talk to your dad. I’ll shower, get settled like your mom said, then come back down for food. I won’t touch a letter until you’re ready.”
“Thank you.” I headed back down the stairs, pausing in the hallway outside my room to send a text to Jason.
You traitor! This is my project and I chose to tell him exactly what I wanted him to know. Now he’s here. If he puts an end to this, we’ll never know the truth. Happy now?
The three dots for an impending reply popped up immediately. I checked the time. Eight o’clock in the morning in Boston. Jason had probably been at the hospital for hours already.
Very happy. I’m sorry you’re upset, but I’m trying to put fight in Dad. I want him to live, C. Not saying you don’t, but if I have to pit him against you—so be it. You first. Cancer next. Text me how it goes. I’ve got Sloan Kettering set for next Friday.
I sighed. How was I to reply to that?
I couldn’t, so I didn’t. I slid my phone into my back pocket and descended two more flights to the kitchen.
Dad sat alone, small and slumped, at the enormous table. He pointed behind him toward Mom’s mudroom and office nook. “She went to write down the address for our lunch reservations. I gather food will soften our conversation.”
“It’s her fix for everything it seems.” I pulled out the chair across from him. “How are you here so fast? Were you on Mat’s flight?”
“I caught the 10:00 p.m. United flight. I assume he was on the 11:30 p.m. American I also looked at. Your mom said I just missed you.”
I wondered what would have happened if he’d been early enough to catch me. Would I have stayed and sent Mat a text sending him straight back home? Would Dad have confiscated the letters and diaries? Could he still?
“There.” Mom’s overbright voice silenced us. “I had a reservation at a wonderful restaurant for Caroline and myself, but then Mat came . . . Well, it won’t go to waste. If you leave now, you’ll just make it.”
“But?” I pointed to the ceiling.
“I’ll take care of him.” Her decisive tone was new. Granted, I hadn’t been around my mom for years, but she had always been more of an “if you think so . . .” or an “if that’s what you want . . .” kind of person. An absent person who hadn’t cared enough—after telling me exactly where I fit in her world—to put up a defense or an offense ever again.
She started to clear the dishes from the table. “You need a proper meal, and talking in public might be the only way not to escalate this. There’s no point going any further if you two can’t get on the same page. Head out the front door, grab a cab, and here’s the address.” She handed me, not Dad, a slip of paper.
As we walked to the street corner, better to find a passing cab, I studied my dad. I’d always considered him a mild man. Salt-and-pepper hair—the most basic of spices, and used sparingly—with a disposition to match. His profession bolstered the image. Transactional law didn’t require a lot of emotion. It required knowledge and acumen, attention to detail.
But I was wrong. He wasn’t mild mannered. He was resigned. Fearful. Lost. It became clear in that tortured “no” moments earlier. Such a short word to carry so much power.
Margo’s Mrs. Dulles was right. The eyes are the windows to the soul and, now looking, really looking, I saw so much in my dad. I saw what I’d only heard and failed to understand years before—my mom yelling across our living room days before she walked out. “If you’d only talk to me. Give me something, Jack. Help me. I’m hurting like you, but we can’t live like this anymore.” I finally saw what Jason confronted every time he asked a colleague to consult on Dad’s diagnosis only to have our father back out. I saw why, after years of pushing and prodding to connect, I could never reach him. He simply wasn’t there.
How long had Mom, or anyone, tried to push this boulder uphill only to have him tuck tight and roll down again?
Now it was up to me? I was to be the juggernaut that got him fired up to feel, to fight, to live?
Jason certainly had high expectations.
Nineteen
All this churned within me as the cab drove north through Knightsbridge, around Green Park toward Regent’s Park. It dropped us off at a modern glass office and amphitheater complex along the canal.
“Down the ramp to the left.” The cabby pointed. “You can’t miss the Prince Regent.”
We wandered down the semicircular drive and, at the end, stopped. The London Shell Company’s Prince Regent restaurant sat before us. On the water.
“It’s a boat.” I stated the obvious.
We stood there staring and speechless. The Prince Regent was a long canal boat. I could see that the restaurant inside was light wood, large windows, and white tablecloths. If the idea of a boat leaving land and trapping me with Dad hadn’t felt so intimidating, I’d say the Prince Regent looked charming.
Dad scoffed. “I’m not in the mood for tourist food and a canal tour through the zoo to Camden. There is nothing enticing about this prospect.”
Dad digging in his heels made me dig in my own.
“We need to talk.” I pointed to the boat. “There’s our table for two.”
Dad’s eyes widened in surprise. I surprised myself. But I was mad—and beyond tired. I had come here to help, maybe not to start the fight Jason wanted, but to offer another option—hope—for all of us. And foolishly, I’d let it grow. Somewhere along the way, my desire to simply understand and offer a palatable comment morphed into vindicating my aunt, rewriting my family’s story, and saving my dad. The absurdity of it would have been laughable, if not so tragic. Especially as I was now cast as the villain in our story, the “Tresse” as Margo and Caro would have called me.
As we stepped down the boat’s four steep stairs into the dining area, I noted a map on the wall outlining our path and timeline through the canal. I chuckled as we waited by the stern’s galley kitchen to be seated.
“What’s amusing?”
“You. Me. Mom. This is what we’ve come to . . . a two-hour tour in hopes we’ll talk and, in public, in hopes we’ll behave.”
Dad chuckled too.
I watched the hostess seat the couple who entered before us at a four-top with another couple they clearly didn’t know. My eyes widened at the thought of trying to talk to my dad with another couple leaning and listening in.
“Are you the Paynes?” A woman about my age with flaming red hair gestured to Dad with a teasing smile. “You’re our last guests to arrive. We were going to raffle off your table in a minute.”
“That would have been a shame,” he murmured.
As we walked toward the boat’s bow, I noted the tables. Each was draped in white linen with a bouquet of fresh flowers in the center and antique cutlery flanking china plates. No setting matched. Each was unique and lovely. The glasses were old as well. Vintage with gold inlay. The 1930s type. This was no slipshod affair.
As we sat, a waiter came over with two delicate glasses, each a quarter full of brown liquid. “Here’s an apple cider brandy made in Somerset to start off your lunch.”
I enjoyed a sip while he laid the menus next to our plates.
“And here,” he continued, “is a map of our route and a menu. You don’t have a choice about either, but some find it nice to know where they are going and what they’ll eat along the way. If you have any questions, let us know.”
He stepped away and the boat pushed off the side of the canal.
“This is ridiculous,” Dad muttered. “What was your mother thinking?”
I couldn’t join in his disdain. I didn’t feel sour anymore. The atmosphere, the cider, everything about this situation was incongruent and surprising. I felt that darn ray of hope seep back within me. “A tasty time-out?”
Dad arched a brow, but before he decided what more to say, our first course arrived. A modern twist on fish and chips.
Glancing to the menu, I read aloud, “‘Torched Mackerel, Blood Orange, Monk’s Beard, Smoked Garlic and Anchovy Sauce with Straw Potatoes.’ I’m not sure how it will taste, but it sounds great.”
Dad took a bite and his features relaxed. “It’s surprisingly light.”
We ate the dish in silence and only after it was cleared did Dad speak. “I want you to stop this.”
I set down my glass. Mom had also ordered the wine pairings—this course featured a light Sauvignon Blanc—and I was very happy to have both the softening effects of a sip of good wine and the seconds of stall time it offered while I set down the glass.
“It’s not what you think, Dad, and Mat’s story isn’t what he thought either. We can find . . . well, I’m not sure what we’ll find, but it’s amazing so far. They were amazing. And it’s your family. Your history.”
“That’s my point. It is my history and you should respect my wishes. And what is this ‘we’?” He let the word linger. “You and this young man are not a we, Caroline. He has encroached into our lives, wants to expose us, and you align yourself with him?”
“You act like he’s an enemy, or that it’s you or him. What if you’re both wrong?” I shifted forward in my seat, glancing around to make sure no one was paying attention to us. “I said it was your history, but I’m your daughter. It’s just as much mine. I remember that day, Dad. I didn’t before, but I do now. Can you recall what you said to Grandmother? She said it happened before you were born and it didn’t affect you. You shot back that you felt the burden, the black void it created every day of your life. You said those words. Don’t you think I feel that way?”
I swirled the light liquid around my glass. “I came home to be with you. I live a few blocks away and you don’t see me. You see my failures, but do you see me? And if you—” I couldn’t say the word. “I don’t want what we’ve had to be all there will ever be.”
I felt a stillness around us. Despite my best efforts, in such a small space, with no soft surfaces to dampen the noise, my whisper had garnered attention.
“This will ruin even that, Caroline.”
“So be it. There isn’t much to ruin.” Tears pricked my eyes, but I refused to blink.
The two of us had leaned so far toward each other in our effort to talk quietly, we jumped back as the waiter, slightly flustered, lowered the next course between us.
“Here we have Fowey mussels and saffron potatoes in a curried cauliflower velouté.” He reached for a wine bottle sitting on the ledge running the length of the boat. “And Chef is pairing it today with a Viognier.”
“Thank you.” I pressed the linen napkin to my lips to gain my composure.
When the waiter stepped to the next table, I turned my attention back to Dad. “How can you not want answers?”
“‘Better the devil you know than the devil you don’t,’” he quoted with no humor.
“You can’t be serious.”
He was. His eyes rounded and there was a yearning within them, fleeting as it was, that rendered him young for a heartbeat. Young and so alone I felt myself sink into the chair.
“I’m sorry,” I said.
We sat in silence for several minutes. Then Dad picked up his spoon and ate a few bites. I followed.
As we finished the course and the boat entered a long tunnel running underneath the highway, he spoke again. It was a strange experience, hearing his words disembodied by the complete dark surrounding us.
“I lived my entire life believing a set of facts that made sense to me. My parents never loved each other, most likely didn’t love me much, yet perhaps just enough to push me out to find a new life when neither had more to offer. How it all started? I never knew. Perhaps the war. I remember growing up in its aftermath . . . Even born in 1950, I was ten before the city looked and felt whole again. So, you see, it didn’t matter what caused our pain. It simply was.”
We emerged from the tunnel. He sipped his wine. Then, eyes fixed on me, he resumed talking. “Then twenty years ago, you stumbled upon a letter and everything changed. There was a cause. A person. A secret. Shame got added to that brew. I simply want it all to go away.”
I stared at my plate. I had nothing to counteract that.
“I’m tired, Caroline. I’m seventy-one years old. I’ve lost enough. I’m too worn out for more.”
I tapped the stem of my wineglass. It was so delicate. My eyes traveled to the tablecloth, the flowers, the cutlery, and the tiny bits of saffron sauce still marking our white plates in yellow. One should enjoy this experience, I thought. I glanced to the tables around us. Couples smiling, tasting, laughing, and making friends with the others seated with them. I wondered how much my dad had missed, how much I had missed, by focusing on what was absent rather than what was in front of us.
“Jason hoped your coming here would be a good thing.”
Dad smiled something small, almost indulgent. “Jason hopes for a lot of things.”
“As do I, Dad, and respectfully, I can’t give up.” I raised my hand. “Please, before you say anything, let me tell you some things I’ve learned. First of all, your parents did love—they both loved Caro . . . Caro was Grandfather’s first love and Grandmother knew it. He held on to her memory, the hope of her return, for years.”
“Caro?” Dad shifted his gaze out the window.
“That’s what they called her. And she called your mom Margo,” I offered, then waited, unsure what he was thinking.
He nodded to himself, as if reliving a memory. “I hated him that day. It was right before I left for the States and they were arguing. I came to the stairs because I thought it was about me. I first heard Mother clearly. She said something about Father loving someone better than her. He spit back, ‘I did and she’s gone. When are you going to let her go . . . I can’t breathe here.’ He went on to say he’d once loved her. My mother. He used that word, ‘once.’”
Dad faced me again. “That’s when I figured out there was someone else. I thought she was still alive; that it was ongoing. I’ve always thought . . . It doesn’t matter what I thought.”
We sat still for a long time. Me digesting. Dad reliving.
The boat turned around and eventually we entered the tunnel again. Dad continued, “I thought he wanted to leave her. I almost wanted him to because then . . . then she might be happy. Someone could be happy.”
I bit my lip, wondering what to reveal and what to keep secret. There had already been too many secrets.
The boat pushed into the light as I spoke. “Your father first loved Caro. From Caro’s letters to Margaret, it’s clear he wanted to marry her. He waited a long time after she disappeared, maybe hoping she’d come back. I sense he married Grandmother to protect them—only she and her mom were left—but it soured because . . . because . . . your mom had always loved him. She had loved him best, and he had loved Caro best.”
“They lived with a ghost between them.” Dad sighed. “That’s worse than an affair. Ghosts never age and they never die.”
Memories overtook us again. They had to, as I expect we were both parsing through the ghosts and the losses between us.
“True.” I shrugged. “Their worlds revolved around Caro and, from what I’m reading, I suspect that never changed.” I dragged the tines of my fork through the bits of sauce from a light pasta course still dotting my plate. “There were some pretty passionate scenes Caro wrote about to Grandmother. She’d have had a hard time ever forgetting them.”
The heartache of the torn page settled over me. Years of diary entries and letters now sat between me and that first letter and I knew, with a deep certainty, Margo tore the page from despair, perhaps even envy, yet she returned to it again and again so as to never feel comfortable and let herself fully fall in love again. An odd and painful form of self-protection to which I could fully relate.
Yes, Dad was right: a ghost lived between them.
Dad kept his eyes trained out the window. I couldn’t tell if he was annoyed, disillusioned, or even listening anymore. The boat had already passed back through the London Zoo and was chugging through the outer circle of Regent’s Park. We ate our next course in silence, Cornish hake with Jerusalem artichokes, as we traveled the straightaway toward the landing.
Dad poked at his last bite of fish. “This was my father’s favorite fish. He liked it prepared just like this. He used to take me fishing when I was young. He loved to fish. He said Mother had once loved to go fishing, but she never joined us. I certainly can’t imagine my mother ever fishing. She was so dour and serious . . . I haven’t thought about that in years. I haven’t thought much good about either of them in years.”
“You should get to know her, Dad. She was feisty and bold. She fished, climbed trees, fought squirrels . . . You should read her stories.”
Dad’s eyes rounded in surprise. He looked again like a small boy before he banked his wonder. I could almost see the walls grow within his mind. He was stepping away once more. “I’ve buried her, Caroline. Both of them, and I can’t keep going back there. Please. No more.”
I tucked in my lips so as not to retort, plead, or even speak, as one waiter removed our plates and another set dessert before us.
Staring down at a Yorkshire rhubarb fool, and feeling like one myself, I risked a next step. “You spoke of ghosts, Dad. There are so many in our lives.” His eyes flickered with alarm. I continued, “We have to go back. We have to go back or we’ll never move forward. Maybe this is where it all began.”
“What began?”
“This holding on so tight that no one can breathe, no one can live.”
