“I think we need to sit, Jake-O.”
Ominous.
He led me to the sofa, gently pushed me down, and lowered himself next to me.
“Jake.” I waited. For a long time. Finally. “They do know me.”
“You’ve been here before, and I’m just now finding out?” I was pissed. Yep, this was going to be a working vacation. The whole new-Dad thing was a ruse. I knew it. He must be there to audit the hotel for Mr. Grayson. There was no way he would just want to hang out with me a few days.
“No,” he said, putting his hand on my arm. “No, no, no… I haven’t been here, but they do know me.”
I stared at him, challenging him with my eyes to let it all out.
“We’ve teleconferenced.”
Oh. That makes sense. But should I trust him?
Then another thirteen life-changing words. “You see, Jake-O, I’m going to be their new manager. I’m being transferred.”
“Transferred? A gazillion miles away from home?” I couldn’t help but flash to another time, four years before, the “I’m transferring to Philly” time. Dad really knows how to spoil a trip. A trip? A life. Yeah, I know the Philly move worked out okay, but this was Canada. He was traipsing off to a whole nother country.
“Now, it’s not as bad as you think. You can come visit. In another couple of years, you’ll be going to college. They have two great universities here with wonderful basketball programs. You might want to consider them. I’d bet you could get a scholarship to either school, the way you play. I’d love to have you here with me.”
“Oh great. What? Would I need to speak fucking French to get a degree? And I just can’t wait to be so far away from Mom.” She was a pain, but I did love her. “And Mal. That would just be awesome, Dad.” The sarcasm was like darts shooting from my mouth. I was being a royal shit, but I finally knew his secret, and I didn’t like it one bit. If nothing else, he could have prepared me for this.
“First of all, don’t use that word.” What word? Then I remembered. Like he cared how I talked, what I did. He was leaving me, for Christ’s sake. “I know you’ve noticed that Nova Scotia is an English-speaking province. And think of this. You have no idea what school Mallory is going to end up in. A swimming scholarship could take her any place, so you might be miles away from each other anyway. I know if you just give the idea a chance, you might like it. Your Mom could come visit, and you could visit her.”
I ignored all that. “Dad, why here? Why the frozen North?”
“This hotel needs me. Simms is an interim manager right now. The last guy almost ran this property into the ground. It’s just beginning to turn around, and Mr. Grayson personally tapped me to complete that transformation. It’s a big honor, son.”
I needed to talk to Mal, the only sane person in my life. Turning away from him, I jerked out my phone and then realized cell phone ban, swim camp.
I threw my phone across the room, raised my arms to God, or whoever, and shrieked.
“I’ll give you some time to process,” he said, standing. “I can go down and shake some hands.” I was coming apart, and he was his cool, calm hotel-manager self. I held my tongue as he left the room. There was no telling what I’d say that I’d regret if I spoke.
I seethed, working out a devilish murder plot against Mal’s swim coach. Damn Coach Truvy!
I got up and paced. Now what would I do? My best friend, the one person I could count on for advice, for sympathy, couldn’t help me. I picked up my cell from where it had landed. Thank God for OtterBox. Despite the crash against the wall, my cell still worked. In the interest of keeping my sanity, I instituted plan B, a very inferior plan B, but a plan nevertheless.
“Blessings.” Mom always answers her phone calls that way. It drives me up the wall, but that’s just Mom.
“Mom! Did you know—”
She cut me off. “Jakie! Are you in Halifax already? How was the trip?”
“Fine, Mom, fine,” I spat. “Dad is—”
“How’s your Dad? He didn’t drive you crazy during those long drives?” It seemed like she was on autopilot, not even registering the wrath I was spewing.
“Mom, cut the crap! I need to talk to you.”
There was a pause, a silence. “Okay, son, spill it.” Her voice was cold as steel. She didn’t like my using words like crap, but I was suddenly sure she felt trapped.
“You know, don’t you?”
“Know what, dear?” The sweetness and light again. But there was enough of an edge that those three little words told me what I already knew. She was trying to hide something. First Dad, now her.
“You know that Dad is moving to this godforsaken place.”
“Now, Jacob, no one, no place, no thing is forsaken by God.”
I screamed. “Spare me the preaching. You knew, didn’t you?”
“Well, he did mention it, but….” She stopped. I waited. She didn’t continue.
Finally, giving her every opportunity to come clean about what she knew about Dad and his plans, I said, “Why didn’t you warn me?”
The voice of steel again. “That was for your Dad to tell you—in his own time, in his own way.”
“My father is moving thousands more miles away from me—to another fuckin’ country—and you can’t bother to tell me.”
“Jacob Hardy! You know I hate that word.”
That really pissed me off. “Fucking, fucking, fucking,” I yelled into the phone.
“Jacob. You apologize to me and to God right now, young man.”
I stabbed End. She wasted no time calling back, but I let it go to voicemail.
I was megapissed. My own mother could have warned me about all this, and she didn’t even bother. She probably knew about everything. I bet that she had the 411 all along about the road trip, about the move—before I even left Houston. How could she keep something so big, so monumental from me? She probably sought Pastor Stillmore’s counsel, and that bastard told her to let Dad do his own dirty work.
I mean Dad was just being Dad… anything that Grayson International Hotels wanted was what he was going to do. Move across town, move across the world. It was all the same to him. He was a slave to Grayson Hotels.
But damn Mom. If she’d warned me, I could’ve talked him out of it. Surely, if I’d talked to him, told him how much I hated the idea of his moving to the frozen North, he would’ve finally bucked the Grayson system, talked them out of the idea of sending him away. From me. He would have done that. I know it.
That’s it. I was never forgiving Mom for this. And I damn sure was never forgiving Stillmore. He could go to hell. He had to be behind this. Mom did everything he told her to do. He was her spiritual advisor, as she said, time and again, and he knew best.
I sat there, stewing. This was the last straw for Mom and her beloved Bible-thumping preacher. It would be a cold day in Halifax before I called her again.
Then I decided Dad would get the silent treatment until I figured out just how I was going to deal with this latest thirteen-word revelation. After all, I was on my own here, no Mal and certainly no Mom I could get advice from. I had to make my own decisions about how to handle this. And at that point, trusting him and loving him for wanting to advance in his career didn’t enter my mind. Somewhere deep, I knew, as his son, I should be proud of his ambition. But right then I wasn’t. And I knew I couldn’t trust him. No, the silent treatment was the best I could come up with.
After about an hour, he came back up. He knocked on the door as he opened it. “Jake-O, you still mad at me?” he called before stepping into the suite.
I just looked at him. A blank stare. I can be such an ass sometimes. He’d been gone so long that I was mellowing on his moving. But no—I was still determined that not speaking to him was the best way to deal. Like not talking about a problem ever solved anything.
“Listen, it’s late, and we’re exhausted. Let’s just get some sleep, and then bright and early tomorrow, we can go to Fairview Lawn Ceme
tery.” How could he act like nothing had happened when he’d just bombed my life? That kinda made me feel the silence was a good thing.
Could a vacation get any better? First outing, the graves. I’ll look at them, even try to enjoy the beautiful day outside. But I’ll be damned if I’ll say a word to him.
With one simple announcement, I knew what he was keeping from me. And I didn’t like it. And I somehow thought his moving was something he needed my approval for. I made it all about me. Now I wish I could take back that reaction, but right then, I was wallowing in self-pity. He was leaving me dangling by a thread with a psychotic, God-loving maniac. I suffered a momentary pang of shame. I dearly loved both my parents, with all their many faults.
“Sure thing, Dad,” I said. “I’m going to bed now.” And I turned. As I closed the door to my bedroom, I heard him nervously whistling—“My Heart Will Go On.” He is ever the optimist, ever clinging to his obsession to make everything all right.
Maybe I could cut him a little slack. Not much. Just a tiny, wee bit.
Chapter 6
FAIRVIEW IS not far from downtown Halifax. After some wickedly great french toast at a place called Cora’s, Dad navigated the SUV north to Windsor Street. The morning was spectacularly beautiful. Right across from an ordinary-looking Ford dealership, we came to the entrance. The entrance itself was no more grand than that car lot was. We were entering hallowed ground, Dad quietly proclaimed. It just seemed like a regular old cemetery to me, but he was the Titanic-crazed pilgrim here.
“This is not the only resting place of the victims. There are a few in the Jewish cemetery and some in the Catholic cemetery. But this is where most of them lie.”
Besides murmuring “hallowed ground” as we turned in, Dad had spoken few words since we’d left the hotel. Usually he tried to end our arguments by out-talking me. His silence worried me. I was beginning to wonder if I knew him at all. He had always been predictable. But these last few months, these last days, he was an enigma. He ran hot and cold; he seemed uptight far more than ever; and he kept things from me. I remembered my resolve. The only way I would ever figure out what was going on was if I got him talking. And that wouldn’t happen unless I talked. So the silent treatment was discarded.
Who was I kidding, anyway? He infuriated me, but I still loved him. He could have cut all ties when he went off to Philly. He kept coming back. For me. I wanted to feel like an abandoned kid, and then he’d go and do something like find a Mexican restaurant in the middle of Maine, just for me. It was all so confusing. I guess it went all the way back to that kid I was. Divorce was so embarrassing, you know?
And then, very soon after the divorce, Dad was off to Pennsylvania. The abandonment issues got worse.
The therapy and meeting Mal cured me of the abandonment thing, thank God. That didn’t mean I didn’t feel the loss, though. I loved roaming around the Galleria Grayson in Houston, my dad’s hotel. That’s how I thought of it. Then he left. I was totally lost for a while. I didn’t have my dad, I didn’t have the hotel, and I had to deal with my mother. She was, and is, just not the kind of mom you see in all those TV reruns. Oh, she gives great hugs and makes sure I’m never hungry, but she often forgets mothering for churching. Mom is just my cross to bear. If I try not to dwell on her crazy cause issues, then everything is A-OK.
Dad, finally visiting a site that meant so much to him, didn’t deserve my nasty attitude. We’d deal with the move later. Maybe I could talk him out of it. Maybe I could accept it. But right then, I wanted him to be happy here, at this place. And maybe, just maybe, if I gave him the friendly treatment, he’d spill the beans about what was going on. So I finally spoke.
“How many are here?”
“One hundred and twenty-one,” he answered as he steered forward.
He seemed even more solemn now.
“There’s a sign.” I pointed to a sign across from a big Japanese maple tree. It was just black letters on a white background that read Titanic.
Dad parked, and we both got out. I had supposed there would be road noise. After all, there was a busy street right there. But what struck me was that I didn’t notice any sounds. It was quiet, reverent almost.
We walked down a path where we soon came to the graves.
The stones were mostly identical. Simple slabs of granite. Is this it? The biggest tragedy in cruise ship history and this is all there is to show for it?
On each stone was a number, then either a name or the word unknown. Some had other information, but they all bore the date “April 15, 1912.”
“What’s with the numbers?” I asked.
“That’s the order in which they were pulled from the water. And the ‘unknown’? That means that person was never identified.”
I looked over at Dad. There was profound sadness in his eyes. At that moment I realized this Titanic obsession was more than a game to him.
“You see how the graves are arranged?” he asked. “Just like the hull of the ship.” He pointed to the right side of the three rows. “See that gap, there? That’s where the iceberg hit, on the starboard side.”
“Wow,” I murmured. It was like I had never known anything about the Titanic before. I was hit in the gut by all this death around me.
“And the graves face northeast. The gravediggers did that. For whatever reason, it’s not clear. But when they found the hull on the ocean floor decades later? It faced northeast.”
“Amazing.” I looked to the front of the ship formed by the graves, and for a moment, I felt like I was on the bow, facing certain disaster, trembling in terror.
“Jake, you okay?”
I shook off the feeling. “Yeah. Just felt a chill there for a minute.”
He gave me a knowing look. There was definitely not a chill in the July air, not even this far north. He knew his words had touched me.
We moved from stone to stone, examining them. At one point it looked like Dad was praying over them. Pretty heavy for a man who isn’t even sure God exists.
“How did they identify the bodies?”
“There were a lot of things they used. Some had items on them that identified them. You know—papers, wallets, ticket stubs. Others had personal characteristics like moles, glasses. Still, it was very hard to match the bodies with what they knew of the people who were on the boat. At least some of them. The rich people? Yeah. Those in third class? Just nameless, faceless people to those who recovered the bodies.”
“So if they have names, why weren’t they claimed by their families?”
“Oh, the rich ones were. But these people here—well, in most cases, their families were too poor to have their bodies shipped back to England or Ireland or Italy or wherever they came from.”
How sad to be buried a zillion miles from the people who loved you.
He continued up the first row of graves while I moved to the last row. Dad was taking an eternity at each grave, and I was not that interested in staying glued to each one.
I came upon number 239, Earnest Edward Samuel Freeman. Unlike most of the graves, this one had a long inscription ending in “He remained at his post of duty, seeking to save others regardless of his own life and went down with the ship.” At the base of the stone, it read “Erected by Mr. J. Bruce Ismay. To commemorate a long and faithful service.”
“Hey, Dad.” I turned toward him. He was standing in front of the last monument in the front row.
“Yeah, son?” he said, wiping something from his cheek.
Something looked wrong, very wrong. I walked over to him. “What’s the matter?”
He wiped his cheek again, and just as I suspected, he was getting rid of tears.
“Dad? What’s going on here?”
He pointed at the stone. “This.”
I looked down. The inscription included “unknown child.” On the ground were small stuffed animals, gifts from others who had visited the graves. There was a name under that confused me, but still it was sad to think of a baby dying.
/> My dad, crying for a baby who died over a hundred years ago. I didn’t know he had it in him.
“How sad.” I felt a tear on my cheek. I guess I had my dad’s blood flowing through me after all.
“Why the name if the baby was unknown?” I asked.
“He was unknown then. The entire crew of the boat who picked up the dead,” he continued, “turned out for the funeral of this little one. Six of those sailors were the pallbearers. Most of the funerals were for multiple victims. But on that day, there was just one, this little boy, who was laid to rest. Afterward, that crew had this monument put up.”
Watching a movie designed for entertainment can never, ever make you feel what I was feeling at that moment. These were real people who dealt with this—not only the people on the Titanic, but all those people who had experienced what came after—the rescuers, those who picked up the dead, the undertakers, even the townspeople of Halifax. It shook me.
“All those years unknown,” I said, quietly. So many dead. A tragedy that was not supposed to happen, that couldn’t happen, according to the ship line that made the magnificent vessel. I stood there and told myself that, compared to this, my problems were minuscule.
“Actually, son, interesting story. They eventually identified him, or at least, they thought they did. They claimed he was two-year-old Gosta Paulson. Gosta’s mother is buried over there.” He pointed to the first row of graves. “But a few years back, someone—no one’s saying who—had the little boy’s body exhumed for DNA testing. They found out it couldn’t be Gosta…. The unknown child’s remains proved he was much younger than the Paulson boy. The DNA testers finally matched him to a family in England, hence the inscription is Sidney Leslie Goodwin. He was traveling third class with his parents.”
“So that’s why the name was added, I guess.”
“I guess.” And he bowed his head. I, too, bowed my head and waited for him to finish whatever ritual he was doing at each grave.
When he finished he looked at me and said, “Now, what was your question?”
Titanic Summer Page 6
