“Mon, come here, love...Please come here.” Robert opened his arms and Monique hesitantly moved to her husband. “We didn’t raise her to do something stupid like that.” Robert cupped his hands around his wife’s face. “Love, if Jenny had known how much her friends were drinking that night, do you really think she would have let them drive?”
Monique’s eyes looked down and she whispered. “No, I know she wouldn’t. She would have thrown those keys in some sewer before she’d let that happen, but Bobby...”
“Shhh...shhh...” Robert smiled and gently kissed his wife’s forehead. “She has to start living again.”
“I know, I know but...Oh, Bobby, it scares me.”
“I know, love, it scares me too, but it scares me more to think she might never do what she truly loves.”
Monique hugged her husband tight. “Please...Bobby, just give her time, she’ll find her way. She’ll find it, Bobby. She will.”
Yet after eight months living in the quiet Sanchez household, Jenny seemed to wander deeper into depression. She came home right after work, sat in front of the TV and always found excuses not to return calls from friends. Robert knew he had to do something to help tear his daughter from this silent cocoon of grieving she seemed lost in. So, one Thursday night, Robert announced that it was time to have a father and daughter night at the gym like they had often had during Jenny’s teenage years.
Throughout the years, Robert would take his daughter out to rock climbing gyms, but after a couple of months, Monique told Robert she didn’t think it was a good idea. Jenny was always coming back with some minor scrapes or bruises and her mother said that maybe it was too dangerous. Monique asked Robert if he could find something else for them to do on these nights. Robert knew it wasn’t the minor aches or bruises Monique was worried about. In truth, she feared these climbing adventures might lead Jenny to follow her father onto one of his mountains.
Jenny cried and begged her father not to stop when Robert told his daughter they needed to do something else. So together, they came up with a little deceptive plan to ease Monique’s worry by telling her they were going to a movie. They always planned their alibi by reading a review of the film on the way to the gym so that they could tell Monique the plotline when she asked them about the film. Some nights they had more fun creating the stories they thought could be in the film than they did climbing. They would laugh and sometimes almost tear up as they told imaginary tales about some funny or touching moment that could have been in the film.
So, that night at the supper table, Robert tried to ignite the memory of their past glories and asked Jenny if she wanted to see a film with him.
“Come on, a father and daughter night again!”
“No,” Jenny replied instantly.
“Jenny, it will be good,” her mom pleaded. “Jen, remember all those movies you and your dad saw together. Oh, the two of you would come banging through that door all excited and full of life, telling me in so much detail I thought I’d seen the movie!”
Robert winked at Jenny. “Yeah, come on, Little Rock, let’s find a good one to tell your mom tonight!”
Jenny shook her head.
“Come on, there’s that new Tom-Cruise-saves-the-world-on-a-motorcycle movie. You know your mom won’t see it because of all the fighting. Please, Little Rock, it’ll be fun to tell mom all about it.”
Robert winked again. “Please!”
Jenny paused, looked at her father and then realized what he was up to. She gave in to him with a little smile. “Okay, but I’m picking the movie.”
Jenny giggled when she got in the car, opening her bag and showing her father the climbing shoes hidden inside. But just as they had fooled Monique for all those nights, this time Robert was planning to fool his daughter. He was about to try something that he prayed would pull his daughter out of her self-imposed, depressing silence. They drove for about ten minutes and entered a familiar parking lot where he had dropped her off and picked her up countless times before.
Jenny was just about to step out the car when she suddenly realized where they were.
“Daddy, what are we doing here?”
“I thought we’d—”
Jenny cut him off, “—No, Dad. I’m not going in there—And I thought you wanted to go climbi—Argh!” she screamed, startled by the sound of two hands hitting the passenger side window.
“Jenny? Jenny Sanchez?”
Jenny looked out the window. She could not make out the face as the lights from the lampposts cast a dark shadow over the hooded figure. The figure quickly pulled down his hoodie, revealing a young teenage boy.
“It’s great that you came!”
Jenny, still startled by the sudden slam of the hands on the window, looked to her dad. Like a dog that freezes and jerks its head the moment it hears a noise in the distance, Jenny did a double take to look at the dark figure outside the car.
“Gary? Oh my God! Dad, it’s Gary Light!”
Jenny opened the door, jumped out and spread her arms wide.
“Gary...Gary, it’s so great to see you!”
Gary moved towards Jenny and hugged her in an awkward teenage embrace.
“What are you doing here?” Jenny asked.
“You kiddin’, Jen?” Gary smiled. “I’ve been waiting for you.”
Jenny looked at her dad with a puzzled, almost angry stare. And at that moment she noticed the illuminated sign of Maggie’s Pub directly behind him: Playing tonight—Precipice.
A loud sound came from the pub. Screams, yelps and a crazy cheer filled the air.
“Damn—I gotta get in there. Hurry up, Jen, everyone’s waiting!” Gary said as he sprinted across the parking lot to the door.
“You get in there, Gary. We’ll be in soon,” Robert called out.
“Sure thing, Mr. S. See you, Jen.” Robert and Jenny watched Gary as he flung the door opened and yelled, “Hey Jen, you gotta sing a tune with us tonight, okay?” then quickly disappeared into Maggie’s.
Jenny was familiar with Precipice because two members from her old band were playing in it. What she didn’t know was that Gary took over as a drummer for his deceased brother, Bud Light.
Robert looked at his daughter and extended his hand towards her. “It’s time, Jenny; you have to get back to your life.”
Jenny didn’t budge. She just stared at the billboard.
“Baby, you have to get back to living your passion, Little Rock.”
Jenny turned around and opened the car door. “No, Dad, no! I don’t want—and if mom knew I was here...”
“Mom just wants to keep you safe, Jen. Look, she means well. She just doesn’t want you to get hurt again. She’s always trying to do the same to me. Do you know how many articles and things on YouTube she shows me to warn me before I go up a mountain? I look at them and I thank her for caring about me, but she never stops trying to warn me how dangerous it is. I guess, in that way, I know she never stops caring. And Jen, can you imagine what she’s showing me before I go to Everest next month? Every dead body she can find a picture of and let me tell you, there’s a lot of them!”
“But Daddy, I’m scared too. I don’t really want you to go up there either!” Jenny climbed back into the car.
“Hey, wait, this isn’t about me. You know I take every precaution, Jen. I know I have to do it. Don’t ask me why; it’s one of my reasons for living, just like singing is yours. We have to follow those reasons, Jen, or we just end up living with this question—a question that will just gnaw at you forever. Constantly asking you why you never tried.”
Jenny closed the car door and put her head down. Robert walked to her side window and pressed his face against the glass, distorting his face in a funny way, and said in a humorous voice, “You can’t hide in there forever!”
Robert had done this many times throughout their lives whenever Jenny was nervous about something she was about to do. The first time was on Jenny’s first day in kindergarten. She absolutely refused to co
me out of the car to join her class and Robert had tried everything to coax her out. At last, he got out of the car and closed his door, leaving her alone in the car. He then crawled around on his knees to her side of the window and popped up. “You can’t hide in there forever!” Even though she knew it was her father, it scared Jenny so much that she screamed for her daddy to help her.
Robert yelled to her, “But you have to open the door, Jenny!” Little Jenny struggled to open the door and jumped into her daddy’s arms. And as Robert held his young daughter and carried her into what he called the ‘safety of the school’, Jenny triumphantly cheered, “We did it! We did it, Daddy! We showed him, Daddy, didn’t we? We’re not scared of that crazy guy in the window!”
And later that day when he picked her up from school, she asked her father to repeat the episode and victorious triumph over the weird goblin-faced guy in the window. And so, throughout their lives, father and daughter played the fear-facing game together at Jenny’s piano exams, swimming tests and even on her graduation night when Jenny had to deliver her valedictorian speech about facing the fears of life after high school, but had refused to get out of the car because she had spilled ketchup all over the front of her beautiful white gown.
“You can’t hide in there forever!” her father cried out in a silly cartoon voice.
But tonight the crazy-faced goblin was ignored and Jenny kept her head down.
“Come on, Little Rock, please? Come on, let’s go in. Just watch your friends play and listen to them sing again and then, even after just a couple of songs, if you tell me that you don’t want to ever sing...ever sing again, I promise you, Jen, I’ll never say another word. Promise!” Robert pleaded softly.
Jenny looked upward, closed her eyes and whispered something. Robert looked up as well, right up into the street lamp that was shining a circle of light around the car. Into the night, he whispered a hopeful prayer that his daughter would come back, back into the wonderful passionate adventure of life she had been living before the accident. Robert smiled as he looked back into the car at his daughter. He held his smile so that, when Jenny opened her eyes, a smile would be the first thing she would see.
Jenny’s lips stopped moving. She opened her eyes and saw her father staring at her, smiling. She grimaced and shook her head as if she knew this was a mistake, but opened the car door anyway.
“Okay, you go, Daddy. I’ll follow you.”
“Are you sure?” Robert held his smile.
“Yes, but please you go first.”
She watched her father walk towards the building and then she called out to him, “And Daddy, stop smiling like that—you’ll freak everybody out.”
Robert let out a laugh and walked about twenty steps. Just when he was about to open the door, he turned around and saw Jenny still hadn’t moved. And then, this father who had taken his daughter on many rock-climbing trips, swung his hands over his head as if he had an imaginary rope and threw it over to his daughter. “Catch and tie on. I won’t let you fall.” Jenny kind of laughed, caught the imaginary rope and made a gesture as if she was securing it around her.
Jenny followed her father step for step, staying a good eight feet behind him. But with each step, the sounds of “Ordinary Day” grew louder. Robert stopped at the door and turned around. It was as if he was watching his daughter take her first steps. He held his arms open and she walked into them.
“I’m going to open the door now, okay?” he said and Jenny nodded.
Jenny placed her hand on the bar door, feeling the beat of the drums vibrating through the thick wooden door. Robert slowly opened the door to the pub. “Ready?”
She nodded with the beat, “Lead on.”
Jenny stood behind her father and closed her eyes. Robert could feel her hand on his back so he stopped and slowly looked over his shoulder. It was like she was meditating. Robert reached for her hand and started to turn around, when suddenly Jenny burst into joyful tears and wrapped her arms around her father, holding him as tight as she had as a little girl before her first day at school, and said, “Thank you, Daddy, thank you!”
Jenny let go of her father. And there she was, where she had been so many times before, belting out in full voice with everyone else in the room and with the guy who sounded so like Alan Doyle of the Great Big Sea. Jenny sang with every fibre of her being, “It’s all right, it’s all right, it’s all right...”
When they got home that night, Monique was sure Robert had taken Jenny rock climbing and accused him of it but Jenny sprang to his defence and said, “No, you’re wrong, Mom. It was better! He took me singing!” And just before her mother could say anything, Jenny sang to her mom, “It’s all right, it’s all right, it’s all right...” and she suddenly stopped, kissed her mom and said, “I am sorry, I know I’ve been—”
“—Don’t, honey. You don’t need to say anything. I’ve missed that sound so much...so much.” With Jenny tucked tightly in her mother’s arms, Monique looked at her husband and mouthed, “Thank you. Thank you. I love you.”
Four weeks later, Jenny still worked at the games and puzzle store but was also working four nights a week as a backup singer for two bands. And in only half a year, Jenny moved three hundred kilometres away when she found work teaching at an arts school that her high school music instructor had started. Jenny was teaching her joy and her passion full time and still sang whenever she could find work, always in search of another band.
This morning, while Jenny was warming up, singing Katy Perry’s “Firework,” she thought of her father and remembered when he first heard the song. He had actually pulled his car off the road to call her. “Hey, Little Rock, I found a song written just for you!”
What Jenny and her father had was unique. They had the closest thing to a friendship a daughter could ever have with her father. She was the only one he ever confided in about his concerns and even fears about climbing and it was on this day, in the middle of her warm up, that she found out just how much her father needed to talk.
As Jenny sang, the doorbell rang. It rang a few times before she heard it. She opened the door. There stood a UPS driver with a small brown package. Right away she saw her parents’ return address. She was sure that it was a book from her mom. Monique loved sending her daughter a book she had read, “so that we always have something in common, something to talk about.”
Jenny opened it right away. There was an envelope and a worn hardcover red book. Jenny recognized it immediately. Her mouth fell open and she couldn’t move. Suddenly, she almost felt like she would faint. What? she thought. This was her dad’s mountain journal. Why did he send it? Her father had always told her that this journal would be her inheritance after he died.
As she sat there, the song she was singing to played on, echoing the words: reasons...doors...searching...open one...
5. PRESENT DAY – ARRIVING AT THE HOTEL
Monique looked back at Robert, who had his eyes closed. She had not let his loud sigh discourage her. She couldn’t, not today. In the last fifteen silent minutes of the drive, Monique kept trying to convince herself that this was what Robert had to do. For the last six months, she had tried so many things to shake her husband back into the world of the living. She clung to the hope of what this day might bring, despite her close friends’ comments, saying things like “she was now living with a corpse” and there was probably no way she could “save her marriage.” Even some specialists had warned her of how even some of the strongest and healthiest relationships couldn’t withstand the changes they were about to face in their lives. Yet Monique kept telling herself, “I don’t care and I’m willing to lose the marriage...If I can just...If I can at least bring my best friend back to life...”
Lost in that thought, Monique suddenly realized she was about to pass the hotel entrance so she slammed on the brakes. The abrupt motion jolted them both from their shared silence.
“What the hell are you doing, Mo?” Robert shouted.
“Sorry, Bobb
y,” she apologized. “I almost missed the hotel.”
Monique backed up the minivan twenty feet or so until she was in front of the hotel’s main entrance. She looked at her watch—nine fifteen. This gave her forty-five minutes to set up. The hotel doorman, a very tall young man with a deep African accent came to the side window and asked if she needed help.
She pressed a button on the door and pointed to the back of the van. “Yes, please help my husband.”
The back door of the vehicle opened upwards. Distinctive sounds of mechanical movements filled the air as a platform raised up, protruded out and finally lowered down. The doorman waited at the side of the car. He smiled at Robert who was sitting in a sturdy, non-mechanical wheelchair.
“Hello sir, welcome to the—”
Robert cut the doorman off. “—Thanks, but I can see where we are.”
The doorman laughed. “Of course, sir. Sorry, but it is my job to greet everyone like that. It does seem quite silly though, since the sign is so large and you are standing right in front of it.”
“I’m not standing in front of anything,” Robert said gruffly.
“Of course, sir. I’m sorry.”
Monique interrupted the two of them with a nervous laugh. “Yes, the sign is right in front. Oh, it is truly crazy, isn’t it? The redundant things our employers have us do. Anyway, thank you for helping him.”
The doorman smiled. “Yes, and I am sorry, sir. I should have said the sign is standing in front of you. It was not a very good choice of words. I am sorry.”
Monique quickly interjected as she handed the keys to the doorman. “Here are the keys to the car. Where do I pick it up later?”
“I will show you, but please wait here for a moment. In order for you to get your car back, I need to get you a ticket first.” The doorman took the keys and walked away.
As the doorman passed in front of them, Monique saw Robert look up and then close his eyes as the cold wet flakes hit his face.
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