by Curtis Bunn
“Sorry, Daddy, it’s me,” Danielle said.
“Oh, shit,” Elliott said. “This isn’t good. You’ve got to hide.”
“Are you crazy? I’m not hiding,” Tamara said. “You’d better let her in and face this or let her stay out there.”
Elliott’s head spun. This was the last thing he expected—or needed. “Hold on, Danielle,” he said toward the door. He turned to Tamara. “Sit down. And please don’t blow this whole thing up.”
He opened the door. “Hey, honey, how are you?” They hugged at the door. “Look who’s here.”
Danielle stepped in and stopped in her tracks when she saw Tamara.
“What the hell is she doing here? What are you doing here?” Danielle wanted to know.
“Danny, come on in,” Elliott said. “She came to see how I’m doing.”
“Why do you care how he’s doing?” Danielle said. “What’s going on?”
“Your father is my friend,” Tamara said. “I know he told you some story about trying to buy a car from him. But in reality, we’re friends.”
“Dad…” Danielle said, turning to Elliott.
He smiled and shook his head. This moment was one he feared would not happen. It was awkward. And it made Elliott nervous. All the ground gained over the previous week could be ruined.
“Yes, Tamara and I are friends,” Elliot said.
“But what’s that mean?” Danielle asked.
“It means—” Tamara started, but was cut off by Elliott.
“It means,” he said, “that we met and have seen each other a few times since then.”
“You’re dating her?” his daughter asked.
“I was,” Elliott said.
“What do you mean you were?” Tamara interjected.
“What did I tell you a few minutes ago?” Elliott said.
“Wait a minute,” Danielle said. “I want to make sure I’m hearing this right. Tamara, you’re dating my sixty-one-year-old father?”
“Yes, Danielle,” she said. “I didn’t know he was your father until we saw you at Vanquish.”
“And that wasn’t enough for you to stop seeing him?” Danielle said. She turned to her father. “That wasn’t enough for you to stop seeing her?”
Neither of them answered because Danielle already knew the answer. “Danielle, I want to talk to you in private, after Tamara leaves,” he said.
“Yeah, and I want to talk to you, too,” she said. Then she turned to Tamara. “It’s time for you to leave.”
“You don’t say when I leave,” Tamara shot back.
“Oh, yes, she does,” Elliott said. He was determined to leave no ambiguity with Danielle.
“I met your mother on Monday night at the hospital,” Tamara said.
“So what? What does that have to do with anything?” Danielle asked.
“She seems like a nice woman,” Tamara said. “She told me she’s in love with Elliott. She told me that in the bathroom. She sounded kind of desperate to me.”
“Desperate?” Danielle said. “My mother isn’t desperate for anything. And you shouldn’t be talking about my mother anyway. Just leave.”
“I’m leaving,” she said. “I came over to check on Elliott and let him know I got my passport so we can take my birthday trip he has planned.”
Elliott shook his head. Tamara was trying to bury him in his daughter’s eyes.
“I can go anytime other than next week, Elliott,” she said before leaving. “No hug and a goodbye kiss? I understand. See you tomorrow.”
“Dad, I can’t believe you,” Danielle said. She was close to crying but was too angry for tears to flow. “What are you doing running around with her?”
Elliott was busted. There was no wiggle room, no way to finesse the reality. So, he came with it. Danielle took a seat and listened intently.
“I met her and we went out a few times,” he said. “I didn’t stop seeing her after I knew you all were friends. I don’t know why, but I didn’t. I know the age difference is crazy, and, to be honest, that’s what the whole thing was about for me.
“I love your mother and I never stopped loving her. I dated women who were as far away from your mom as possible. I didn’t want to be reminded of her. That’s the truth.”
“What about all this passport stuff and taking her on a trip?” Danielle said.
“No, that was before I found out you and she were friends,” Elliott said. “She did show me her passport tonight, but I had already told her that it was over.”
“Dad, I heard what you said, but come on,” she said. “You dated a girl how many years younger than you? Thirty-six years younger than you? I’m so embarrassed.”
“Why are you embarrassed?”
“Why? She went to school with me, Dad. She knows some of my friends. How embarrassing it will be with her running her mouth about this. And wait until Daniel finds out. You think he’s angry now. He’ll be here any minute. He stopped at the bar at Drinkshop downstairs first.”
“What are you all doing here?” Elliott asked.
“Dad, you were just discharged from the hospital,” she said. “I called you and texted you that we were on our way. You didn’t get it?”
Elliott found his cell on the dresser in his bedroom. “Oh, man, I didn’t even know where my phone was,” he said, scanning his missed calls. “I see Daniel called, too. And Henry.”
“Yeah, Mr. Henry is another thing,” Danielle said. “What’s going on with him? Is he gay? You’re hanging with a girl a little older than me, and a gay man? I don’t know what to think.”
She pulled out her cell phone and called her brother.
“You’re not going to believe who was here,” Danielle said into the phone.
She told her father that Daniel ran into Tamara. Elliott yelled, “Tell Daniel not to do anything crazy.”
She nodded to her father and listened. “What? Do I need to come down there?”
On the lobby level, Daniel and Tamara were sparring. “So you’re trying to get money out of my father?” he charged. “You know what that makes you?”
“You’re just mad because I wasn’t checking for you,” she fired back.
“What? I never liked you,” Daniel said. “You trippin’.”
“No, I ain’t. We went to the Michigan game in Ann Arbor and were at that party that night at the Alpha fraternity house,” she said. “You asked me to dance and I said ‘Later.’ Ever since then you’ve tried me.”
“I asked you to dance because I felt sorry for you,” Daniel said.
“And don’t think I didn’t catch you calling me a ho,” she said. “I don’t appreciate that.”
“Hey, if the street corner fits…” he cracked. And even Tamara had to laugh.
“I should smack you, but that was funny,” she said. They looked at each other, and their eyes calmed them.
“Seriously, don’t be mad at me. And don’t be mad at your father,” Tamara said. Her buzz was fading and her true self stepped forward. “We are two adults who met and liked each other. Obviously, there’s a big age difference, but we both knew that.”
“What would you want to do with an old man?” Daniel said. “He’s my father and he’s cool, but he’s old.”
“He is old in age, but not in spirit,” she said. “Did you notice that I never dated anyone at school? I didn’t because they were too young for me. I’ve always liked much older men, even when I was in middle school and first started liking boys. It was the assistant principal, Mr. Hunter, that I felt drawn to.”
“So what’s my dad’s excuse?” Daniel said.
“To be honest, he was trying to fill a void,” she answered. “That’s what he told me and that’s what I believe. The problem is that I really like him and care about him.”
“Tamara, come on,” Daniel said. “Are you serious?”
“I am,” she said. “You don’t see all there is in your father?”
“What I see is someone who betrayed his wife—my mother�
��and broke up our family,” he said. “That’s why we haven’t really been in his life the last few years. He turned our world upside down.”
“But he’s your father,” she said. “You mean to tell me that you’re going to have this beef with your father the rest of your life? Remember my last year at school, when we went to Selena Saunders’ father’s funeral and how broken up she was? Well, I found out later that she was doing all that crying and carrying on because she felt guilty. She got into an argument with her father and had not spoken to him in six months. Then he died suddenly and she realized how petty it was to be that way with her dad.
“And you know why she stopped speaking to him? Because he wouldn’t let her take her car back to school after she crashed for the second time in one semester.”
Tamara got through to Daniel. They ended their conversation with nothing resolved, but with Daniel feeling like he had to harness his anger and contempt for Elliott. When he arrived upstairs, Danielle was at the door, on her way out.
“Let me ask you both this before you go,” Elliott said. “Are you upset that I have seen a twenty-five-year-old or because I have seen a twenty-five-year-old that you know?”
The brother and sister looked at each other. “For me, it’s the fact that she’s twenty-five,” Daniel said. “She’s too old for me, but not too young for you, and you’re sixty?”
“Sixty-one,” Danielle pointed out. “For me, it’s knowing her, too. I mean, she knows a lot of our friends in school. Think of how that makes us look.”
“Why does it have to make you look negative?” Elliott said.
“Ah, come on, Dad,” Daniel said. “It doesn’t make us look good. Our father is running around with a former classmate? Really? Seriously? We have to explain how bad that looks?”
“No, you don’t and I shouldn’t have asked that,” Elliott said. “It was a reflex. Well, obviously, like I told Danielle, I did not know she was your friend until that night at Vanquish. We could have ended it there, but we chose not to, and I take responsibility for that. My position at the time was I needed to live my life the way I want to live it. I needed to be distracted from how I feel about your mother.
“But the reality is that my actions, you know, impacted your life, too. And that’s where I should have drawn the line…and I didn’t.”
His kids looked at him with sad expressions, looks that sunk his spirits. They left without saying “goodbye.” They simply turned and walked away.
Elliott closed the door and wondered if he would see his children again. He hardly slept that night. And when the next day came and went with neither Daniel nor Danielle calling, he was devastated. Lucy was supposed to come by, but did not. Tamara did not call.
His escape usually was to go out to be around people. But this old man was bruised—more emotionally than physically—and unable to go anywhere. He was stuck at home alone with his thoughts and regrets.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Dawn Of A New Day
The morning came and Elliott felt no symptoms of a concussion. His ribs were much less tender. He felt fine…physically. Emotionally, he was drained and abandoned, like all the progress made to reconnect his family diminished into vapor.
It was a similar feeling to what he had when he was in prison. Lonely. Hopeless. Pitiful. Those feelings were only fleeting while locked up, though. He knew he could not survive carrying vulnerable emotions. So he would start each day with a prayer that he stopped reciting once he was freed.
He stopped praying the prayer because it was a reminder of his dozen years of hell. But that morning, as he showered, he realized the prayer was what helped him get through that hell. And so, he dropped to his knees right there in the shower, with the water funneling down his back.
“God, you know my heart, and that I am not supposed to be in this place. I ask You to bless and protect me through this day. Direct me away from danger. Keep my spirits up. And lead me on the path to redemption. In Jesus’ precious name, I pray, Amen.”
Afterward, he was mad at himself for a moment. He abandoned that prayer because it would remind him of prison, but it was just as needed in the free world. And in the case of his family, he was in a figurative place he did not belong and he needed direction for redemption. The prayer set him on that course.
He called Tamara. She was at her office, but stepped outside to take the call. “I’m sorry that I misled you,” he said. “You’re a special young lady. You deserve someone who can be there for you for the long haul.”
“If you liked me, how did you mislead me?” she asked.
“I needed you. I used you to fill a void in my life,” he said.
“Elliott, we all need someone to fill a void,” Tamara said. “That’s just how it is. But thank you for saying that. I had fun with you. I feel like I learned a lot and I got my passport. So I’m better for the experience.”
Elliott laughed. “You’re ahead of your time,” he said. “I will stay in touch.”
“You better,” she said. “Gotta get back to work. Take care.”
“You, too,” he said, smiling. There was relief that he and Tamara had ended their relationship, but mostly because it was amicable. He wanted her to feel good about him and their time together.
Still, making inroads with his children and ex-wife would be more difficult. He, in fact, hoped only that they would listen to him and in the end, be willing to start over, fresh, with open hearts and minds.
He called Lucy, who reluctantly answered. “Yes, Elliott.”
“This evening, I want to come over,” he said. “You and our kids are the most important people in my life. Period. Somehow I have allowed this to get out of hand. We might be divorced, but we still should be a family. So I want to call a family meeting.”
“A family meeting. Really, Elliott?”
“Call it whatever you like, Lucy. I’ll be there at seven. Can you make sure the kids are there, too?”
“They’ll be there,” she said. “I had already planned to cook dinner.”
“Good. I’ll come hungry,” he said.
“Who said there’ll be enough for you?”
“Bye, Lucy.”
He took a deep breath. His spirits soared. He next called Henry. He realized that it was the anniversary of the death of his son.
“I wanted to check on you,” he said. “Have you been to the cemetery yet?”
“Ah, man, you remembered?” Henry said, his voice low. “Yes, I was there pretty much at sunrise. It’s so quiet there, Elliott. The cemetery is the most peaceful place on earth. I was the only one there. I go about every week as it is. But, you know, today…I still miss him, man.”
“Of course, you do,” Elliott said.
“No, I mean like almost every day I wake up and I think he’s still with me. It takes me a few seconds, sometimes several seconds, to realize…to realize I had to bury my son. It’s still so crazy to me.”
Elliott did not know what to say, so he did not say anything.
“Before I left the cemetery this morning, Jarrod’s mother showed up. You know how our relationship has been. She was alone. LaWanda brought flowers, too. I waited on her to have her private time with him. The pain we have for losing our son is beyond description.
“When she was done, she came over. We didn’t say a word to each other. She walked right into my arms and we hugged and cried together.
“We stood for about two minutes. I walked her to her car. We looked at each other through the tears, hugged again, and then she left. I’m telling you this, Elliott, because you still have two children, and you’ve got to make peace with them.”
If Elliott was not inspired to do so before calling Henry, he was then. Elliott had intended on telling Henry that he would be a better friend to him, that his sexual preference would not be a subject of debate or a deterrent to how they functioned. Instead, he decided that the action would be more powerful than words.
“Next time you go to the cemetery, please let me
know,” he told his friend. “I want to go with you. In the meantime, when these staples come out of my head, see if Harold wants to roll out with us and let’s get some drinks.”
Elliott spent the rest of the day reading. Prison turned him into a bibliophile. He was so afraid his mind would rot if he did not read continuously. At one point, he went two years without a television in his cell.
After a late breakfast, he lay in bed and dug into DeVon Franklin’s Produced By Faith. One passage resonated with him. “There are times when I get fearful or upset about something that does not work out in my favor, and in those moments, I have to remind myself that God is working. He will ultimately provide…”
Elliott had failed to honor God by consistently going to church after he was released from prison, even though he believed God protected him and saw him through. His reason: God did not have to allow him to go to prison in the first place.
Clarity can be fleeting. In the storm, vision gets obstructed. That passage in Franklin’s book resonated with Elliott and gave him clarity to see what he could not see or was not prepared to see. But in those words, he believed God governed his life and would not allow his family to remain fractured.
So when he pulled up that evening at seven to the house he once called home, the fear he once had about what would transpire was not with him.
Remarkably, he had not been back to the house since Lucy demanded he leave; Daniel and his cousin had collected his remaining property and delivered it to him. So he felt awkward at the door, waiting for someone to answer his knocks.
But nothing could move him off his base. He was at peace with whatever the outcome of the night, which relieved him of the pressure of trying to convince anyone of anything.
“Hi,” Danielle said when she opened the door. The fact that she did not say “Daddy” let him know where her emotions were. But he didn’t care.
“Hi, honey.” He hugged her and kissed her on the side of her face.
She walked ahead of him, through the living room and dining room and into the kitchen. Elliott walked slowly and took in his old home. He saw art on the walls he had forgotten and noticed that new carpet was under his feet.
