by Greg Fields
And so, one evening, the second of their stay at the usual cottage near Ellsworth on this last getaway, Glynnis came to absorb another quiet and unexpected lesson from the man at the center of her heart.
She had set off for a twilight walk. For as long as she could recall, this had been her habit here. She liked to walk along the craggy shoreline during the broad edge between daylight and nightfall, the day turning cold, the Maine ocean changing by shades to orange, to purple, and finally to nameless colors man’s eye sees too rarely to catalogue. Birds flew by, mostly seagulls, bleating at the vanishing light. Glynnis would walk for a mile or two, seeing no one, absorbing the shapes and hues and sounds that she would never be able to perceive elsewhere, that would forever elude her as she grew older. She would keep her gaze focused outward on the water. This shoreline, she would think, where Cabot sailed. It looked no different then.
Her father and the two boys had gone canoeing that day and were just returning as Glynnis stepped out of the door of the cottage. The boys, thoroughly chilled, dashed for shelter as soon as the canoes had been toted back to the shed. Their father, by contrast, moved slowly about his task of securing the canoes on their perches in the small shanty. The cold had not penetrated.
“Hey, lady,” he said as he fastened the final lash across one of the boats. “Going for a walk?”
Glynnis smiled at the sound of his voice, calm and casual. “As usual, Daddy. I’ll be back in time for dinner.”
“Do you want some company? I could protect you from the sand crabs. Vicious creatures, you know. Eat your toes right off.”
“But you must be cold. You’ve been out all day.”
“I don’t mind. I get too little time with my darling daughter these days.”
The air hung silent for a second or two. Glynnis loved her father’s company, but she feared in these waning days that he would attempt to do too much for her. She felt herself vulnerable to a dying man’s platitudes. She wanted no discussions about responsibility, about example, about being strong for the others, about whatever would rob her of the delicate poise she had crafted to confront this final cycle. Wasn’t it enough that she, more than the others, recognized his impending death? She would be able to handle it so much better because she had dispelled all illusions. Must she, even in light of such pragmatism, be subjected to a misbegotten effort to put things in order? His words would become memories; they would, all of them, react and carry on as their spirits allowed them. She had confronted the horrible reality from her own position. Must she confront it from his also?
The evening blustered around them as they walked. Wind blew a mist into their faces, and grey clouds moved in along the northern shoreline ahead of them. Glynnis, accustomed to the late-day bite, was wearing two sweaters and a windbreaker. Still, she felt the chill eat through her. Her father wore only a single hooded sweatshirt. For several hundred yards neither spoke. The surging ocean pounded against the rocks with a roar that would have made any conversation difficult anyway.
They stopped beside a projection of rocks, and Glynnis pondered the silence, seeking carefully a topic that might prove safe. At length she timidly brought one out. “How was canoeing today, Daddy?”
“Good. It was good. We followed that stream that crosses under the highway north of the town. I guess we must have paddled back about five miles or so. Long enough to wear me out.”
“The boys enjoyed it, no doubt?”
“No doubt. They’re strong, that’s for sure. Stronger than their old man. But that’s not saying much these days, is it?” He smiled gently, but Glynnis did not respond. Perceiving a tactical error, he backtracked shyly. “They’re big by anyone’s standards. I can see them winning some football scholarships before they’re through. And they’ll only get bigger.”
“I hope they realize that they can’t play games all their lives.”
“No. But they should take every opportunity to play them while they have the chance. I wish to Christ I had been more like them when I was their age.”
“Let’s go sit on the rocks, Daddy.” The formation of rocks jutted into the sea a considerable distance. Glynnis had been on these rocks before. She did not wait for her father to reply. The rocks, she hoped, might provide a breakwater from the inner storm now raging upward that had the power to dwarf the evening sea. She had not been wise to let her father come along tonight.
Glynnis hopped quickly to the rocks and began scaling delicately over the slippery boulders. Her father, with no real alternative, followed her lead, but more slowly. The incessant ocean spray slickened the rocks so that neither trusted a sense of balance. They propped themselves up with their arms as they crawled their way to the outer half of the formation.
“We look like two giant spiders,” he called out. “How much farther do you want to go?”
“Far enough to feel the spray from the waves,” yelled Glynnis over her shoulder. “A few more rocks. You can go back if you want.”
Glynnis stopped fifteen feet or so from the formation’s edge. Robert Mear slipped up behind her and they sat on adjacent boulders. The late evening waves tumbled in with no great speed, but they burst apart in spuming fury as they hit the rocks at the end of their run. Water shot high into the air and mist sprayed over the rocks toward shore. The grey clouds from the north moved closer.
Robert Mear looked at his daughter in the mist. Droplets of water clung to her temples, adhering the roots of her thick hair to her skin. Her rich brown eyes squinted through the moist air at the ocean ahead of her. The edge of a continent, butted angrily by the void that wanted to go on forever.
He closed his eyes and softly prayed, “God, she’s so beautiful, and so quiet, and so composed. Let her avoid the desolation of human error. Let there be some happiness still.”
Glynnis sat transfixed for several minutes. Both of them shifted on the rocks to find some comfortable position, and when stone pressed on bone too long, shifted again. What type of communion she had entered with the wind, the mist, the salt and the rocks, Robert Mear could not say, yet it seemed to be profound. He let her sit for uncountable minutes before he spoke.
“What are you thinking, lady?”
Glynnis turned to him, looking him fully in the eye to strip away whatever pretension he may have been holding. She spoke gently. “I was hoping that you’d spare me a parting testament. That’s what you have in mind, isn’t it?”
Robert Mear threw back his head and laughed, breathing in the wet salt that passed for air. God, how much he loved her! How he would love to be able to stay. She was just now beginning to hack through the constrictions of childhood, and the result was bound to be thrilling. God, how he would love to see it all happen.
“I suppose so,” he finally replied. “After a fashion, that is. You know, Glyn, we talk so little. I tend to think that that’s a function of temperaments. I know too that I can’t make up for all the things I haven’t said in one evening. I couldn’t begin to sort them out anyway, so it’s pointless to try. That would just make things awkward for both of us.
“If you’re looking for some statement, I have none,” he continued. “Only this: that you’re the sole author of your own future. Nothing I can tell you now, or ever, will do you any more good than that. The seeds of your character were sown long ago, and they’re indestructible. You can’t change that, no matter what threatens you or tempts you.
“So my ’testament’, as you call it, is just that there is no testament. There’s just you, as you were from the start and as you will always be. You’re my testament. It’s as simple as that.”
No sound, then, except for the seabirds’ complaints and the whoosh of spray over the rocks. No sound, until Glynnis slid over to her father’s side and wrapped her arms around his neck. She held him; they held each other, relishing the physicality, the heft and press of unbounded love. Glynnis tucked her head into the crook of her father’s neck.
“You know, lady,” he began again, “When I was your age I kn
ew exactly what I wanted to do with myself. I had wanted to be a doctor since I was about four. Even so, when I got to college I tried everything. Economics, history. Even art. I wasn’t impatient. I figured if I would be practicing medicine for the rest of my life, then I owed it to myself to sniff around the other things a bit.
“My second year in college I was forced to take almost all biology and chemistry courses, nothing else. I was bored to tears. I remember one test in particular, in late October, around midterms, and everyone in my dormitory was up all night for a week studying. But I was taking it easy. I think I was even doing some light reading, Fitzgerald or Dreiser or something like that. So everyone was amazed when I got the highest mark on that test. By far.”
“What does that have to do with anything, Daddy?”
“I’m not certain. It just occurred to me for some reason. It probably has something to do with self-confidence, or knowing who you are. Or faith, I don’t know.”
“Everything comes down to faith with you.”
“Do you find that odd?”
“I find it reassuring. Faith is a rare commodity these days.”
The mist thickened into a light rain. Ahead of them, out over the water and down the coastline, gulls invisibly screeched. Like banshees, thought the doctor, which he had heard before.
“I have faith in such a great many things. You have no idea how valuable that is, how much that sustains me. I want you to know that I have faith in all of you, in all my children. But I’ve got a bit more faith in you than in the others.”
“You flatter me, Daddy. There’s no need.”
“It’s not flattery. And it’s certainly not idle. You’ve got more depth, Glyn. More than the others.”
“I’m older. I should have more depth. They’ll follow.”
“To a point, I think, but not totally. You’re like your mother in so many ways. Sometimes she sees things or feels things that catch me completely off guard. And she can put things into perspective so quickly. She can make sense out of chaos better than anyone I’ve ever known. I think you’re the same way. You’re not a simple person, Glyn. I hope you’re wise enough to trust to patience. There are precious few revelations in this life. Everything worthwhile takes time.”
“You’re starting to pontificate,” Glynnis chided. “You promised not to do that.”
“Forgive me. One of the privileges of age is inconsistency. It’s getting hostile out here. What do you say we head back?”
Glynnis nodded and stood. She pulled up the collar of her windbreaker. The evening chill set in deeply. It penetrated their clothing, settled into their bones, dove into their lungs. They noticed the dampness in each other’s hair, the misty droplets hanging on their eyelashes. The wind picked up, waves grew more violent, spray rose higher. Nightfall in Maine.
Both father and daughter moved carefully back over the rocks from the promontory. In the cold their muscles reacted slowly. Upon reaching the sand, for the first time since she had entered the nebulous boundaries of young adulthood and for the last time in her life, Glynnis Mear took her father’s hand. In that way they returned to the cottage, and to dinner.
***
Of the death of Robert Mear little need be noted. It was the standard demise associated with that particular illness. Shortly after returning from Maine the headaches grew sharper and more frequent, the painkillers increased in strength and dosage. In time he resorted to morphine and became addicted. He ate little, grew thin, grew thinner, became emaciated. During the final stages he remained on morphine virtually each waking hour, growing less aware of the world around him, less aware of his family, yet ironically more aware of his decaying self, each limb, each membrane, each atom. His mental processes dulled, his memory lagged, he failed to recognize old friends and his wife’s relatives. He faded into a fog, an ever-blackening mist that suffocated his sight, his words, his very thoughts. At length even his self-awareness disappeared as the fog closed in. He entered the hospital where he had served so many years, knowing in his rare lucid moments that the final act had at last come to be played. One evening in February the suffocation became total, and Robert Mear passed from this earth in numbness, unaware that his wife sat next to him, stroking his forehead and weeping to herself in the timeless manner of new widows.
***
“Hello, Petey. How’s the boy this morning?”
The old man walked out of his bedroom into the apartment’s small central living area. He walked in slow, measured steps as if he were crossing a brook on wet stones. His thin frame was clad in faded red pajamas, covered by a blue plaid robe equally faded. Plain cloth slippers kept his feet warm. The chilly morning shot against his window, a roundhouse punch thrown by Lake Michigan not far away.
The old man’s apartment was not large, but it gave him all the room he needed. The place cast an aura of age. The walls, an off-white, in the dim light of morning seemed prison grey. A red carpet with a black design, as faded as the old man’s clothes and threadbare, covered the floor of the living room. The furniture was of a fashion long outdated, solid hardwood frames with unattractive floral designs. Against the window that looked down to the street sat a high-backed sofa, once dark red, with scrolled arms. In front of it stood a companion coffee table, scratched and begging for refinishing, with a small portable television. Across the room in the opposite corner was an easy chair, beige, with a slight tear in its cushion just large enough for its linty innards to seep out in a wispy bubble. Bookshelves filled with a few volumes and standard bric-a-brac filled the wall nearest the single bedroom.
“Hello, Petey boy,” repeated the old man as he arrived at the object of his attention, a canary whose cage adjoined the couch. The curtains, off-white like the walls, were closed so that little of the morning filtered through. The canary’s small brain recognized its benefactor and flapped its wings briskly.
“You got a song for me today, Petey?”
The walls were barren save for a crucifix near the entrance to the kitchen. The old man saw no need for adornment. There was but one picture in the room, sitting on the second shelf of the bookcase near the bedroom. The picture, framed, was of the old man and his wife. She smiled broadly while he, grinning rather impishly, wrapped his arm around her shoulders. The picture was many years old.
After greeting his companion, the old man moved to the kitchen to switch on the radio there. Within a few staticky seconds a news station crackled in. Always it was news; the old man had never cared much for the music this country produces. The kitchen had little more to offer than the living room: only a solitary table against the wall, with chairs at either end, broke the space. The old man went to the old stove, lifted the teakettle to make sure it was not empty, and put it down on one of the burners. He sat in one of the chairs to wait for the kettle to boil. When it did, its steam whistling shrilly, Petey started to twitter from the next room. It was shortly after eight o’clock.
The old man listened to half an hour of news while sipping his tea and eating two slices of buttered toast for his breakfast. After placing the cup next to the sink he returned to the living room.
“Well, Petey, it’s supposed to get pretty cold today. What do you think about that, boy??”
He checked the bird’s cage to see if there was enough seed and water. Satisfied, he made his way back to the bedroom to dress himself. The living room remained dark.
A desk, an old thing with three drawers on the right side only, occupied one corner of the bedroom. Along with the bed and the dresser it was the only furniture in the room. The same style of rug as in the living room covered the floor here as well. The curtains were closed, the room dim. The old man turned on no light. By habit he knew his way around the room, where to step and what to avoid. From the closet he pulled on his clothes for the day, the same as yesterday’s.
Three books were stacked in a pile atop the old man’s desk. One was the Bible, the other two literary books: James Joyce’s Dubliners, and Hard Times by Studs Terke
l. Some stationery lay on one corner aside a can of pens and pencils. In the top drawer the old man kept his correspondence. Despite his advanced years he still received letters and responded promptly to each piece of mail that came his way. He kept one letter in particular on top of the others, needing response:
Dear Dad,
I trust this finds you in good health. Your letter came last week and it was good to hear from you again, as it always is. I hope the cold isn’t slowing you down too much, but then you’ve always been pretty sturdy. I remember well how cold it gets there. I remember once when the furnace broke and we couldn’t get it fixed until the next day. Albert and I spent the whole day in bed under the covers. We didn’t even get up to eat as I recall. I think we only went to the bathroom once, and I remember running back to the bed afterwards and diving in, it was so cold.
We are all doing well here. Mother wants me to take some time off so we can get away for a few days. Maybe to San Francisco or down to San Diego, but I don’t know.
You asked about Conor. He sends his love. He’s gotten big, Dad, since the last time you saw him. You would barely recognize him. He’s beginning to remind me of you when I was just a boy. That’s strange, isn’t it? But he looks a lot like you. Strong body, big shoulders. When he gets angry his eyes look exactly like yours did before you grabbed the belt. I can’t really describe it. They burn almost, like he was looking right through you, and his jaw sets firm. When he’s angry he never raises his voice. Instead he speaks slow and low, like a priest winding up his sermon. Again, he reminds me of you when he’s angry. Fortunately, that’s very rare these days. He’s doing well. I wish you could see him.
You know Conor is going away to college next year. I told you that in my last letter. Rutgers, in New Jersey. Only the Good Lord knows why he’s going so damn far away, but I think he’ll do okay. He’s a good boy, Dad, and I think he’s smart enough and clever enough to get by without us. You’d probably understand him a lot better than I do in this regard.
