Thumbprints

by Pamela Sargent

  The weather report had predicted rain and lower than normal temperatures for days, but daybreak brought sunshine and clear skies. Lillian spent the morning running errands for her mother in the nearby small town and part of the afternoon swimming. The weather held, and she might be able to spot the turtles if she rowed over to the cove.

  She found her mother weeding the flower bed at the side of the bungalow. “Think I’ll check out the turtles,” Lillian said.

  Laura looked up. “You go ahead, Lilly.” She leaned back on her heels. “I rowed over last month, just after opening the place. Never saw so many turtles before – they must be multiplying.”

  “Probably just part of the natural cycle,” Lillian said. She thought of the last time she had seen them, just before Brad called to tell her that their father had died.

  She went inside, pulled a T-shirt on over her swimsuit, then hurried down to the dock. By the time she had rowed out to the middle of the bay, the breeze had grown gentler and white clouds dotted the sky. She had seen the turtles before on days like this; she might get lucky. Somehow, it was important for her to see them.

  The turtles were out. Lillian saw them as she rowed closer to the stumps. Two of them had even climbed out onto the large rock that jutted from the water.

  “They always come out,” her father said, “especially when I’m around.” Her memory was playing tricks on her again, making her feel that he was alive. Lillian drew the oars inside the boat; when she looked up, her father was sitting on the rock.

  “I’ve been waiting for you to show up,” he said in his resonant baritone.

  Her fingers tightened around the oars. Her father’s graying hair was flat against his head, as if he had just come out of the water, and droplets of water glistened on his arms and chest. His stocky frame was naked. This was not the emaciated man resembling an El Greco who had died in a hospital bed, but the sturdy man he had once been, the one she saw in her dreams.

  “Dad,” she said.

  The boat drifted toward the rock, then floated motionless on the water, as though the current carrying it had suddenly ceased to flow. “What’s going on?” she said.

  “You shouldn’t be so shocked, Lilly. We’ve been having an ongoing discussion for the past year, haven’t we?”

  “I suppose we have. I usually can’t remember what you’ve said after I wake up.”

  “Maybe you’ll remember more if you talk to me while you’re conscious,” he said. “How long are you going to be here?”

  “Two weeks.”

  “Longer than usual.” There was a slight edge to his voice. She thought of all the excuses she had given in the past for not coming home, for not being able to stay for more than a few days. Work was piling up in her studio, she was busy with a new ad campaign, the apartment was being repainted and she had to be there to make sure the job was done right. They had all been sound excuses, and often she had been relieved that she had such excuses to offer.

  “I wish I’d made more time now,” she said.

  “It’s past. Don’t beat yourself up about it.”

  Oddly, she found herself accepting his presence, as she did when he appeared in her dreams. Even seeing him in the nude seemed natural enough; he had always preferred swimming without trunks whenever he could get away with it, and there was no reason for a spirit who had shed the material world to be clothed. The two turtles near him remained on the rock; those on the tree stumps were still. She was surprised that she could talk to her father without disturbing them.

  “Mom said she came over here last month,” Lillian said.

  “I know. I saw her.”

  “Did you try to talk to her?”

  “No, I didn’t. Laura did her mourning, most of it, while I was sick, especially during the last couple of months before I died. You probably don’t know this, but it nearly destroyed her. She’s accepted things now – I don’t have to say anything to her. Don’t have to talk to your brother, either. Celia and he are expecting, you know. I’ll finally be a grandpa.”

  How could he know that? Brad had told her only a week ago; even their mother didn’t know yet. But of course her father would know Celia was pregnant, because Lillian knew it, and the only logical explanation for her father’s presence here was that she was dreaming of him even though she felt awake.

  “I was glad when Brad told me,” she said.

  “He’s taking a leap into the unknown. No matter how much you think you know, nothing really prepares you for being a father or mother.”

  “Why are you here?” she asked. “How can this be happening?”

  “Persistence,” he replied.

  “You always were kind of stubborn.”

  “I didn’t mean that kind of persistence.” He leaned back on one elbow. She stretched a hand toward him, wanting to touch him and assure herself that he was real, but drew back. “I meant that I’m persisting somehow. Something pulled me here, as if this place is some kind of juncture. Maybe it’s just that I enjoyed this spot so much. So here I am, persisting. Probably happens to other folks after they’re dead – maybe that’s why people see strange things in different places.”

  It was like him to try to find a rational explanation. Someone as skeptical and pragmatic as her father would never believe that he was simply a ghost, a supernatural event with no natural cause.

  “And maybe,” he continued, “you’re holding me here. Laura’s made her peace with my death, and Brad’s bringing a new life into the world. You’re still hanging on to me, Lilly.”

  Before she could speak, he was on his feet. He leaped from the rock, and as his muscular body disappeared below the surface of the water, the turtles vanished in a series of splashes.

  She leaned over the side of the boat, but could see nothing except tree roots and grassy growth on the muddy lake bottom. The water was shallow here; the small turtles could conceal themselves in the mud, but her father should have been visible.

  The wind rose swiftly; the bay, so calm before, was growing choppy. She began to row across the bay, toward the dock.

  Lillian dreamed of her father that night. She recalled little of the dream when she woke, but felt uneasy, certain that he had been trying to tell her something important. He had spoken of being embedded in reality somehow, unable to move forward and powerless to step back.

  The clock on the kitchen wall told her that it was only six o’clock. She made some instant coffee, and was sitting at the kitchen table when she remembered part of her dream.

  He was afraid; that was what he was trying to tell her. At least that was part of it. “You’re holding me here, Lilly.” He had said that in the dream, too.

  She dressed quickly, without waking her mother, and went down to the dock. The cove across the bay was still dark, cloaked by the shadows of the trees lining the bank, but she knew that her father would be there.

  She spotted the turtles when her boat was twenty feet from the stumps. They were harder to see in the early morning light, but they were there, in spite of the lack of sunlight and the coolness of the air. As she watched, her father emerged from the water, shook himself, and settled on the rock.

  “Good morning, Lilly,” he said. “You usually aren’t up this early.”

  “You usually were, so I guessed I might find you here. I remembered what you told me last night, that you’re afraid.”

  “I am, Lilly. It’s why I keep going back and forth like this, coming here, going back. What I wanted was to stop suffering. That’s what I remember from the hospital, wanting the pain to be over. I thought that meant that I wanted to die. Now my pain’s gone, and I realize that I didn’t want to die after all, not then, not so soon.”

  She held out an arm, but was still a little too far from the rock to touch him. “What’s going to happen?” she asked.

  “Might persist for a while. I used to think, once I was dead, I’d have the answer about things. Know what I mean? Either I’d find out about the afterwards, or I’d know there
wasn’t any just before I winked out. I was wrong about that – I still don’t know, and I’m afraid to find out.”

  “I never thought you were afraid of much, Dad.”

  “Starting the business – that scared me. Keeping my job would have been safer. I was also afraid of getting old, which is how I ended up with Jenny, I suppose. And I was terrified of going back to your mother and asking her to forgive me.” He looked down at a turtle resting on the rock near him. “It would have been easier not to do that. I didn’t want to face her knowing she had every right to turn me away. It would have been a lot easier not to try to go back, not to take that risk. Same for Laura. She could have refused to take me back, and nobody would have criticized her for it. She could have kept her pride. I would have been dead by now anyway, and maybe she would have found somebody else in the meantime.”

  “Dad–” She was afraid to ask the question. “Did you know you were sick before you went back to Mom? Did you go back to her because you thought you were going to die?”

  “Is that what you think?”

  “I told Mom that even if it was true, it didn’t matter, that it would just mean you wanted to be with her at the end.”

  “As a matter of fact,” he said, “I didn’t know. I went back thinking I’d have time to make things up to her. I didn’t believe it even after the first tests came back. If I’d been religious, I would have thought God was punishing me. Ridiculous, isn’t it? He would have been punishing your mother just as much, and she didn’t deserve it.” He paused. “Frankly, that was one of the riskiest things I ever did, begging Laura to take me back. Ever stop to think what might have happened if she hadn’t?”

  “I guess not,” Lillian said.

  “She would have been tearing at herself now, thinking of how she’d let me die alone. And you kids would have been bitter and angry about the whole mess – no way to mend it, no way to settle things in your minds.”

  “I forgave you, Dad. I didn’t get a chance to say it before you died.”

  “I know. Thought that might be holding me here, giving you a chance to say that to me. Maybe that was part of it, but the rest of it’s my own fear.”

  “Maybe you wouldn’t be afraid,” she heard herself say, “if I could let go.”

  His brown eyes gazed steadily at her. “You still haven’t done anything about Martin. You’ll let him dangle until even he finally gives up, and then you can tell yourself it wouldn’t have worked out anyway. You’ll go back and forth, climbing out of the water for a little bit and then retreating below again.”

  “He loves me,” she said. “He’ll wait if that’s what I want.” For the first time, she was no longer so sure that Martin would wait.

  The turtles disappeared into the water. Her father slid from the rock, following them.

  Rain came later that day, continuing into the night. It was a soaking rain, and if the weather followed its usual pattern, the rain would fall steadily for the next day or two. Lillian would not be able to return to the cove. She felt relieved about that, and then guilty for feeling relieved.

  But the rain had stopped by morning, and Lillian knew that she would have to see her father again.

  He climbed out strongly onto the rock as soon as her boat was among the stumps; the turtles were out, even though there was no sun in the overcast sky to warm them. “Hello, Lilly,” he said. “Come to any decisions yet?”

  “About what?”

  “About your life.”

  “It’s none of your business what I do with my life.”

  “In a way, that’s true, especially now that I’m dead. I mean there’s not a whole lot a naked dead man can do for his daughter. You’re an adult, self-supporting, living in a city a thousand miles away. Probably thought you were making a leap into the unknown when you moved there.”

  “You always resented that,” she said. “You didn’t want me to move so far from home.”

  “That was true at first – I’ll admit it. Then I realized that was part of being a parent, letting your kids go. But you never really made the break into full adulthood. You had your life, but you still called home all the time when you needed something. You were independent, but you didn’t have any real responsibilities. You talked about doing your art and taking some chances, then got that job at the ad agency.”

  “It’s steady work.”

  “And that’s safer.” He glanced at a turtle as it crawled closer to him on the rock. “Not like what Martin has to deal with.” He gazed at her steadily. “Can’t be easy for him sometimes. He must feel the way I did when I was starting the business. I used to wake up with the sweats in the early days, terrified, thinking everything would go down the tubes and that I was an idiot to leave my job.”

  She had never understood why her father, a businessman with an engineering firm, got along so well with Martin, a free-lance artist with whom he had little in common. Now it seemed obvious. They had both rejected the safer path to go off on their own.

  “He hasn’t called since I got here,” Lillian said. “That’s unusual for him.”

  “Maybe he’s busy. Maybe he has some hard decisions to make.” Her father stood up on the rock. “I can’t stay here, Lilly. Are you going to keep on coming out here to ask me for advice? We could go on like this for years, assuming I keep showing up, that I just don’t fade away after a while.”

  She tensed, afraid of losing him again. “Does it bother you?” she asked. “Do you feel cold or uncomfortable or hungry–”

  “Caught,” he said. “That’s how I feel, stuck between one thing and something else. It isn’t unpleasant, it’s just–”

  “Stay,” she said fervently.

  “You’d like that, wouldn’t you? I’d still be around to give you advice. You wouldn’t have to get on with your life. You could just keep going back and forth between pretending you’re an adult and still being a child.”

  Before she could reply, he had slipped into the water and disappeared below the surface.

  If she knew what lay ahead for him, maybe she could have let him go. Lillian dozed, trapped between sleep and consciousness. But she didn’t know, and neither did he. He might leave the cove where he had managed to persist to encounter nothingness, to die completely, to vanish in every sense.

  “That’s what terrifies me,” he said in her dream. “Keep wondering if I’m better off hanging on to what I’ve got now, haunting the lake. Felt that way sometimes in the hospital, when the pain wasn’t so bad, felt that life might be worth hanging on to even if–”

  She was having trouble hearing him. “Dad,” she said, but he was fading; the sunny garden where he was sitting darkened. Lillian swam through the darkness, afraid.

  The telephone on the kitchen wall rang while Lillian was having her coffee. Her mother answered, murmured a few courtesies, then handed the receiver to her. “It’s Martin,” she said.

  Lillian had guessed that already. “Lilly?” Martin’s voice said in her ear. Her mother was retreating to the porch, to give her privacy. “How’s everything?”

  “Fine.”

  “Laura sounded good. Is she doing all right?”

  “Yes, she is.”

  “Listen – it came through, that job in Seattle.”

  Lillian’s hand tightened around the receiver. “You’re going to go, aren’t you.”

  “Not without you. I want you to come with me.”

  “I’ve got a job.”

  “You can find another one. Better still, you can use the time to do more of your own stuff. We’ll get a place together. I know some people out there who can help you get free-lance work.”

  “And what happens after your contract runs out?”

  “Guess we’ll see, won’t we? Nothing’s certain now anyway.”

  “I don’t know what to say,” Lillian said.

  “You don’t have to say anything right now, but you might as well think it over. I have to give them an answer by the time you’re back.”

  She c
ould talk him out of going. He wouldn’t want to go without her. Things could stay exactly as they were.

  She said, “I’ll think about it.”

  “I’d better go. Promised I’d get this illustration in first thing this morning. I love you, Lilly.”

  “I love you, too.”

  She hung up and went out to the porch. Her mother set down her cup of coffee and looked up at her. “Your father always liked Martin.”

  “I know,” Lillian responded. She was about to say that Martin’s job in Seattle had come through, then changed her mind. A fog hung over the lake below; the tree-covered hills across the bay were veiled by a misty curtain. “Think I’ll take the rowboat out.”

  “In this weather? It might be dangerous.”

  “I doubt it. The big boats don’t come into the bay, and nobody else’ll be out.” She had to go to the cove.

  She put on pants and a sweatshirt. The air was cold for this time of year, making her shiver. She rowed across the bay, thinking of what to tell her father, wondering what he would say to her.

  Despite the mists and cold, the turtles were out. Her father was already sitting on the rock, looking more like a Michelangelo painting than an El Greco. “I knew you’d come,” he said. “Martin had something important to tell you.”

  “How did you know?” she asked.

  “Because you know, and it means you have a hard decision to make, one that would change a lot of things. I knew you’d want to ask me what I thought. Can’t give you an answer, because it’s none of my damned business – it’s your problem.” He rested his arms on his knees. Despite his nakedness, he seemed unperturbed by the cool, damp air. “Anyway, I’ve got my own problems. I need some help from you.”

  “I can’t help you, Dad. What can I possibly do for you now?”

  “Bothers you, doesn’t it, having me ask you for help. Never asked my little girl for any help in my life, but now that I’m dead, I need it. Help me, Lilly – tell me you can go on without me. I might be able to head on to the next stage if you’ll just give me a push.”