by Marc Levy
“Lovely. Next, you’ll tell me it was you who flipped the switch to start the cremation.”
“No. But I did throw a handful of dirt on your coffin!”
“How very thoughtful.”
“I—I’m not feeling so well,” Adam confided, his face turning a funny shade of green.
“Well, then go on and sit down, instead of hovering there like a simpleton.”
He gestured to the sofa. Adam didn’t budge.
“You do still know how to sit down, don’t you? Simply rest your backside on the cushions. Or did all of your neurons burst and fizzle at the sight of me?”
At last, Adam gave in. He took a seat on the sofa—sitting down right on top of the remote control with the ominous white button.
All at once, Anthony froze and fell silent. His eyes snapped shut, and he dropped to the floor, stiff as a block of wood on the carpet right at Adam’s feet.
“You didn’t happen to bring back a photo of him, did you?” asked Stanley. “I’ve always wondered what he looked like. Sorry, I’m jabbering away like an idiot, but I just hate it when you’re this quiet.”
“Why is that?”
“Because I know there’s a whole lot going through your head right now, and I have no idea what it is.”
Suddenly, Gloria Gaynor belted out “I Will Survive” from inside Julia’s purse, cutting in on their conversation.
She grabbed her cell phone and showed Stanley the caller ID: Adam. Stanley shrugged. Julia answered, and was shocked by the sheer terror in her fiancé’s voice.
“Julia. We’ve got a lot to catch up on. Maybe, just maybe, there’s a thing or two you’d like to tell me? But all that will have to wait. Because your father is passed out on the ground in front of me.”
“Okay, under different circumstances, that might have been funny, but right now, it’s just bad taste.”
“I’m inside your apartment, Julia.”
“What are you doing there? You’re—you’re early!” she replied, tightening with fear.
“Your assistant called and said you wanted to meet earlier.”
“My assistant? What assistant?”
“God, who even cares? I’m calling to tell you your father collapsed and is lying motionless on the floor of your living room. Get the hell over here! I’m calling an ambulance.”
Julia shouted into the phone, giving Stanley a jolt.
“No! Whatever you do, don’t do that! I’m coming right now!”
“Have you totally lost it, Julia? I shook the guy—he’s not moving. I’m calling 911.”
“Don’t! Don’t you call anybody, you hear me? I’ll be there in five minutes,” she replied, bursting to her feet.
“Where are you?”
“Right across the street, at Pastis. I’m on my way. In the meantime, don’t do anything, don’t touch anything, especially not him!”
At a total loss, Stanley whispered to Julia that he’d get the check. As she bolted from the restaurant, he shouted after her to give him a call once the fire had been put out.
She raced up the stairs four at a time. Upon entering the apartment, she saw her father stretched out motionless in the middle of the living room floor.
“Where’s the remote control?” she said as she came crashing into the room.
“What?” asked Adam, utterly confused.
“It’s a little white box with one big button right in the center. It’s a remote control, for Christ’s sake!” she replied, urgently searching the room.
“Your father falls down, stiff as a board, and you want to watch TV? I’d better call more than one ambulance!”
“Did you touch anything? How did this happen?” asked Julia, rifling through every last drawer and cupboard.
“I didn’t do a thing! Aside from talking to your father, even though we buried him last week. Pretty surreal experience, I have to say . . .”
“Save the jokes for later, Adam! This is an emergency.”
“Oh, I wasn’t trying to be funny. Are you going to tell me what the hell is going on here? Or pinch me and we can both laugh about this nightmare I’m having.”
“I thought the exact same thing in the beginning, but no such luck. Damn it, where is it?”
“Oh my God, please! What are you talking about?”
“Daddy’s remote control!”
“That’s it, I’m making the call,” Adam swore, heading toward the kitchen phone.
Julia zipped over and blocked his path, arms spread wide.
“Don’t take another step. Tell me exactly what happened—exactly—starting from the moment you arrived.”
“It’s just like I told you,” Adam fumed. “Your father opened the door, I found myself actually apologizing for acting like I’d seen a ghost, then he invited me in with the promise of an explanation for all this. He kept insisting I sit down, so I sat on the couch, and he collapsed midsentence.”
“Wait—the couch!” shouted Julia, knocking Adam right off his feet as she made a beeline across the room to the couch.
She frantically searched under all the cushions and in every nook and cranny, sighing with relief when her hands wrapped around the precious remote.
“Okay, it’s official. You’ve gone completely insane,” grumbled Adam, clambering to his feet.
“Please, God, let this work, please let it work,” Julia prayed, clutching the little white remote like her life depended on it.
“Julia!” shouted Adam. “For the last time: What the hell is going on?”
“Shut up!” she replied, fighting back tears. “There’s no use trying to explain. You’ll see it with your own eyes in a few seconds. Assuming this actually works . . .”
She closed her eyes, prayed to the heavens . . . and pushed the button.
Anthony’s eyes snapped open, picking up right where he left off. “You see, Adam, old boy, one thing I can tell you about life is that it’s never quite what it seems. Just when you think you’re—” Anthony cut himself short when he realized he was lying on the ground in the middle of the room, with Julia standing frozen over him.
He coughed and rose to his feet, while Adam stumbled back and collapsed straight into the welcoming arms of the couch.
“Oh,” said Anthony, glancing at his watch. “Would you look at that? Seven o’clock already. I must’ve lost track of time.” He dusted himself off.
Julia gave him a scorching glare.
“Maybe I’ll just go ahead and leave you two alone. I think it’s better that way,” he went on. “You must have a lot to catch up on. Be sure to listen carefully to my daughter, Adam. Be attentive, and don’t interrupt. It all may sound a bit far-fetched at the start, but you’ll see. If you buckle down and concentrate, you’ll catch on in no time. I’ll just grab my coat and leave you to it.”
With that, Anthony plucked Adam’s raincoat off the coatrack, tiptoed across the room to retrieve the umbrella from the window, and walked straight out the door.
She chose the shipping crate in the middle of the room as the starting point for explaining the unbelievable truth. Soon, Julia herself was slumped over in a heap on the couch, with Adam pacing back and forth as she tried to reassure him.
“Even if you are my fiancé, how would telling you have changed anything?”
“I don’t know. I don’t even know if I am your fiancé anymore. I don’t know anything. You lied to me for an entire week, and now you come out with this elaborate fairy tale . . .”
“Adam. Imagine if your father knocked on your door, one day after his death, and if through a crazy twist of fate, you could suddenly spend a few more days with him? One week, and that’s all you get, to say everything left unsaid. You’re telling me you wouldn’t leap at that opportunity? As absurd as it seems?”
“Whatever happened to hating your father?”
“Maybe I did, once. But hard as it may be to believe, now I wish these six days could last longer. I spent most of the time talking about myself, and there are so many thing
s I still want to know about him. About his life. For the first time, I was able to see him through the eyes of an adult, free of all my childhood selfishness. My father had his flaws, but so do I. It doesn’t mean that I don’t love the man! On the way back, I thought to myself that if I could be sure that my own children would show the same type of acceptance of me, I’d be less afraid about becoming a parent myself . . . and even a bit more worthy of it, I guess.”
“My God, you can be naive. Your father never stopped playing maestro, orchestrating every little part of your life from the day you were born. Isn’t that what you told me, on the rare occasions you actually talked about the guy? And if I buy into this fantasy you’ve cooked up, it means he has somehow managed to do the unthinkable and has continued controlling everything from beyond the grave! You and that machine don’t have one thing in common. He’s not even human! Everything he said could have been some prerecording. How in the world could you let him play you like that? The whole thing wasn’t a conversation—it was a monologue.
“You earn a living dreaming up make-believe characters—but do you allow them to actually talk to the children? Of course not! It’s an anticipation game, where you rig up what they want to hear and have them spout out something reassuring, or entertaining. Well, with your father, it was the exact same thing. He managed to pull the wool over your eyes one more time. Your little week of traveling together was a total farce, a twisted parody of a reunion. I mean, the guy’s very presence was like a—like a mirage. Which I guess it sort of always was, just this time aided by technology. And you’re so desperate for the love he never gave you, you walked straight into his trap. To the point of ruining everything we had, first with the wedding, and now this!”
“Don’t be ridiculous, Adam. My father didn’t choose to die just to mess up our wedding.”
“Fine. But tell me, just where did the two of you go together, Julia?”
“What difference does it make?”
“Lucky you, you don’t even have to muster the courage to tell me. Stanley did that for you. Don’t hold it against him—he was fall-down drunk. You’re the one who told me he couldn’t say no to a good bottle of wine, and the one I brought him was flat-out irresistible. I can tell you I was ready to scour every last wine cellar in France to find out where you had gone, why you ran away from me, and what I could do to get you back. I would have waited a hundred years to marry you, Julia. But now? Emptiness, nothing but emptiness . . .”
“Adam. I can explain.”
“You can explain? Little late for that. Maybe you should have thought of that when you came to my office to announce you were going on a trip. Or when I just missed you in Montreal, maybe then. Or afterward, when I called you day after day, and you never even bothered to pick up or return a single voicemail. But, no. Instead, you run off to Berlin to seek out this man from your past, and you don’t tell me a word about it.
“What exactly was I for you? A segue between eras of your life, a footnote between chapters? A life raft you could cling to until you end up back in the arms of your one true love?”
“Please, you don’t understand . . . ,” begged Julia.
“If he knocked on the door right now, what would you do?”
Julia remained silent.
“You don’t know. You really don’t. How can I be sure, if you don’t even know?”
Adam headed to the door, swinging it open.
“Tell your father, or his robot, that he can keep my raincoat.”
The door closed and Adam was gone. Julia listened to his footsteps, every last one, until she heard the downstairs door slam shut behind him.
Anthony gave a hesitant knock on the door before entering. Julia was leaning on the windowsill, looking wistfully down at the street.
“Why, oh why, did you do that?” she murmured.
“Do what? The whole thing was accidental,” responded Anthony.
“Adam accidentally comes to my place two hours early, you accidentally let him in, he accidentally sits on your remote control, and you accidentally end up sprawled out on my living room floor?”
“I admit, as far as interpreting the signs, those do seem rather ominous . . . Maybe we can call a fortune-teller, get our palms read.”
“Cut the sarcasm. I’m not in the mood. I’ll ask you one more time: Why did you do that?”
“Just a little push, dear, to get you to admit the truth to him—and to yourself. Don’t tell me that right now you don’t feel a great weight has been lifted from your shoulders. You may be alone, now more than ever, but at least you can be at peace with yourself.”
“Okay, that covers the theatrics from earlier. What about the rest?”
Anthony took a deep breath.
“Your mother’s illness stripped her of the ability to recognize me in the time leading up to her death, but I’m sure that somewhere deep down, she never forgot how much we loved each other. I’ll never forget, that’s for certain. We weren’t perfect, nor were we model parents—far from it. We often had no clue about what to do next. No matter how much we fought, we never—and I mean never—had a shred of doubt about staying together, or about how much we loved you. Falling in love with your mother, winning her heart, and having a child together were the most important choices of my life . . . and which led to the most beautiful things any man could ask for. Even if it’s taken me so long to find the right words to tell you . . . it’s true.”
“So . . . all this chaos, all the damage, my whole life in shambles . . . that was out of love?”
“Do you remember those little pieces of paper I told you about during our trip? The type you always keep near you—in your wallet, in your pocket, or just in your head. Mine was the note your mother left in the tray, the night I couldn’t pay for our dinner on the Champs-Élysées. Maybe now, you can understand why I dreamed of dying in Paris. Maybe your little piece of paper was that old deutsche mark you kept in your purse or one of the letters from Thomas that you kept in your bedroom.”
“Did you read those letters?”
“I wouldn’t dream of it! But I noticed them when I slipped that last, fateful letter into your desk drawer. When I received the invitation to your wedding, I went up to your old bedroom. Standing in the middle of that little world made me feel closer to you, to all the things that I remember, that I’ll never forget. I couldn’t stop asking myself: What would you do when you discovered the letter? I thought about destroying it, or actually posting it to you, or if the best thing to do would be to give it to you the day of your wedding. Alas, I never had time to make the right decision. But just as you said—if you’re really paying attention, life can send you some astonishing signs. In Montreal, I got to see part of your reaction with my own two eyes, but only part of it. The rest is yours and yours only. The fact is, I might’ve actually just mailed you that letter, if you hadn’t so thoroughly burned the bridges that your own father didn’t even have your address. Would you have even opened a letter if you knew it was from me? Besides, it’s not like I had advance notice about dying!”
“You always have an answer to everything, don’t you?”
“Not everything. The decision before you is one you must face alone. It’s been that way for longer than you think. You could have turned me off at any time, remember? Just one push of a button. You could have said no to the trip to Berlin. You and you alone went to meet Thomas at the airport, and it was your own footsteps that brought you back to the spot where the two of you first met. I certainly wasn’t there when you brought him back to the hotel! Julia, you can blame everything on your childhood, hold your parents accountable for every little problem you encounter and all the trials and tribulations of your life, blame them for your weaknesses and fears, but in the end, you are solely responsible for all that you are, and the choice of what you will become. And don’t forget to keep your dramas in perspective—there are always families worse than ours.”
“Like whose?”
“Poor Thomas. His e
very last move betrayed by his own grandmother.”
“How do you know about that?”
“The point is: no parent can live their child’s life for them, but that doesn’t keep us from the worry and heartache of seeing you unhappy. Sometimes that can even push us to action, to try and show you the way. Sometimes it’s better to be wrong and tactless as a result of loving you too much than to sit idly by and watch you suffer.”
“If your intent was to show me the way, you did a hell of a job of it. I feel totally and utterly lost.”
“Lost as you may be, you’re no longer blind, now are you?”
“Adam was right. We never once had a real conversation during our entire week together.”
“Maybe he was, Julia. I’m not exactly your father—just what’s left of him. But this machine has hopefully done its part to help you find a way out of your problems. I can’t remember one time since we’ve been together that I haven’t had some idea to help you along on your way. Maybe it’s because I know you better than you think. Or maybe it’s that—regardless of how long it takes you to realize it—I simply love you far more than you think. And now that I’ve been able to tell you all this, I can at last go gently into that good night.”
Julia looked at her father for a long time, then went and sat down next to him. They stayed silent, like that, for a long time.
“Did you really mean those things you said about me earlier?” asked Anthony.
“When I was talking to Adam? What, were you listening through the door again?”
“No. Through the floor, up in your attic. I was worried the rain outside might cause a short circuit,” he said with a smile.
“Why couldn’t I have gotten to know you sooner?” she asked him.
“It can take ages for parents and children to really know each other.”
“I wish we had at least a few more days.”
“I believe we just had them, my dear Julia.”
“What happens tomorrow?”
“Not to worry. Consider yourself lucky. You’ve already dealt with your father dying once; you’re experienced.”
