The Light of Hidden Flowers

by Jennifer Handford

  The next day, Paul and I were presenting a plan to a new client when Jenny barged in. “Excuse me,” she said with a wobbly voice. “Missy?”

  When I met her in the hallway, she pointed to the phone. “Pick it up, Missy,” she gasped, pointing to the receiver with a shaky hand. “Pick up the phone!”

  As I reached for the receiver, I kept my eyes glued on Jenny, who had now covered her face with her finely manicured hands. Her little body bobbed. Paul had excused himself from the meeting, as well, and now stood next to Jenny.

  “This is the Alexandria Police Department,” the man said.

  “Where’s my father?”

  “Miss Fletcher, we think you need to come home. Can you drive, or should we send a car?”

  “I’m on my way,” I blurted, dropping the phone and grabbing for my purse. When I reached Jenny, I lunged into her arms.

  “I’ll drive you,” Paul said.

  “I don’t know what’s going on,” I said to Jenny. “I’ll call you when we get there.”

  Jenny nodded but didn’t speak, her worry rendering her catatonic.

  Ten minutes later we rolled into the driveway of my town house. An ambulance was parked on the curb and my front door was wide open. There was a gurney being guided through the door and my father was on it. I ran from the car, rushing toward Dad—kicking off my flats and running across the lawn. He had been on a similar gurney just months earlier, following his fall. Then he was thrashing, agitated. This time he was motionless.

  “Dad,” I hollered, collapsing onto his chest. “Dad!”

  My bare feet on the cool spring grass beside the sidewalk struck me as an omen. This was the season where life emerged from frozen soil. Dad loved the spring: the country club, the golf course.

  “I’m so sorry, ma’am,” a paramedic said. “We did everything we could.”

  I ignored this imbecile who was talking nonsense. I just needed to wake him up. Remember, Dad, I wanted to yell, how you told me about the seeds? How they need to shed their shells and nearly destruct before they begin to grow? It’s spring, Dad!

  “Dad!” I shook at his shoulders. “Dad!”

  The paramedic placed a hand on my shoulder and tried to turn me around.

  I tore away from him. “Dad, you have to feel the grass, Dad. It feels like spring! You’d love it. Dad, wake up. We need to get you out on the golf course!”

  “Ma’am,” he said, touching me again.

  “Don’t touch me!” I screamed, brandishing my fist at him like a knife. He held my gaze and when I saw in his eyes what I already knew to be the truth, I crumbled into the chest of this man I didn’t know.

  “I’m so sorry,” he said.

  “My father is dead?” I asked incredulously, because this wasn’t how it worked. Superman wasn’t supposed to die.

  “It’s okay, ma’am,” he said.

  I pulled away from him. “What happened?”

  “We’re not sure at this point,” the EMT said. “Could have been a heart attack. Could have been a stroke.”

  I reached my hands for my temples. “Will there be an autopsy?”

  “Most likely,” he said. “With your permission.”

  My father was dead. His beautiful mind, with its uncanny gift for chitchat and making everyone feel special, had turned on him. I spied the sluggish nurse, Dolly, in the back of the room, crying. Paul was talking to her. I charged toward her like a deranged bull. My fury must have frightened her. She backed into a corner, pulled her knees to her chest, and covered her face as though I were going to hit her.

  “What happened?” I asked her.

  “I was in the bathroom,” she said.

  “How long were you in the bathroom?” I asked, trying to calculate if it were even possible for a man to have a stroke or heart attack, or choke, or whatever, in the time that she had used the facilities.

  “We’re trying to piece that together,” Paul said.

  “I was taking my break,” she said. “I was watching my stories. I didn’t hear anything.”

  My cheeks burned with fire. “Did you help him?” I wailed. “Did you give him an aspirin, did you try CPR? What did you do?”

  “I didn’t see any of it,” she cried. “I was in the bathroom. I didn’t hear him.”

  “Are you telling me you found him dead? That you did nothing to save him?”

  “I’m sorry, I didn’t know anything was happening.”

  “We’ll figure this out,” Paul said. He steered me away from her.

  I slid my thumb across my phone. Five texts from Lucas: Can I come over tonight? Did you pay the deposit on the reception hall? Did you find a minister? Did you think about bridesmaids? I punched edit and, one by one, deleted every single message.

  And then, there it was, my text to myself: NEW NURSE FOR DAD. REASON TO REPLACE DOLLY.

  Had I not been such a coward—afraid of confrontation, fearful of offending Dolly—another nurse may have reacted differently to this situation. A better nurse might have saved his life.

  Left in my care, my father died.

  I killed my father. My cowardice made me a murderer.

  Frank Fletcher was dead.

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  Frank Fletcher was dead.

  My body was no longer whole—my limbs had been pulled from their joints, my oxygen stolen from me, my sight turned black. I was crippled, impotent, helpless. Just a second ago the sky was blindingly bright, the sun almost too much to bear without forming a visor out of my hand, the wet grass luscious between my toes. And then, like that, thunderclouds. Pure gray.

  My breath: nothing but crackling gasps of regret.

  The last words I had said to my father were the night before, urging him to use the toilet. “Do you understand, Dad? Dad, are you listening? The toilet, Dad.” Bitchy, pedantic, humiliating words pouring from my stupid mouth, like a superiority-complex mom scolding her disobedient toddler for picking his nose.

  The hate I felt for myself was teeming; the sight of my ugly face in the mirror nauseated me.

  Dad was delusional; Dad had Alzheimer’s; Dad was confused much of the time. But Dad wasn’t terminal. I had no idea we were there. I had no idea that I’d never have the chance to say good-bye to him properly. I had no idea that my last words would be a degrading critique of his bathroom habits.

  If I had known. Of course, if I had only known.

  “Dad,” I would have said. “All my life you’ve said I was the one with the beautiful mind, but Dad, you were the one with the beautiful heart. All my schooling—high school AP classes, college, business school—all the reading and studying I did, taught me nothing as valuable as what you instilled in me: to care about mankind, to be generous to others, to pay it forward. To love without conditions, to take a chance on true love, to give it your all, even though you might lose everything. You are my hero, Dad.”

  But instead of professing my love and gratitude to the man who’d raised me alone, I chided him like a child who had spilled his juice. I couldn’t hate my putrid self more.

  Take me, too, I cried into my pillow. Take me, too, because without Frank Fletcher I was nothing much, never had been. Was never created to be anything more than an extension of my father. I was his appendage. He was my life source, and now, cut off from its nourishment, I would die, too.

  I thought of Jenny, of how she loved to snip and transplant pieces of plants and flowers. She’d nestle them into the earth, then shrug. “Sometimes they take; sometimes they don’t.” I was just a snippet of Dad. Put me in the earth if you like, but I wouldn’t take. I didn’t stand a chance.

  Being Frank Fletcher’s daughter made me something, gave me value, validated my existence, but without him, I was just a girl too frightened to leave Virginia, too nervous to fire her father’s indolent nurse, too scared to stick her tongue out and ca
tch a drop of rain on the tip of it. I was Frank Fletcher’s daughter, and without him, I was nothing.

  Yet when I was his caregiver, when he was diminished and confused, and I was in charge, I’d felt important. The reality of this made me sick. I looked into the mirror and saw my disgusting self—stupid, scared me, who’d puffed up like a balloon as my father had been deflated. Dad knew it all along. He knew I could only be something in relation to him. If Death were a stock picker, if it profited from quality companies, then it just made a hell of an acquisition. And poor Life, forced to take the other side of the trade, was stuck with me. A speculative bet, at very best.

  Three days passed. Lucas called, Jenny called; they showed up at my doorstep. They pounded on my door. I plodded zombielike to the peephole. “I can’t,” I muttered, benumbed to time or space. “I need another day.” Still, the barrage continued: Lucas texting, Jenny forwarding e-mail condolences, cards slipped under my door.

  “Honey, I need you to give me two minutes of your attention,” Jenny pleaded. “I’m planning the service. I need to go through the details with you.”

  “You know what Dad wanted,” I said in my listless stupor. “Whatever you think.”

  On the fourth night of living in this sleepwalking haze, I slid out of bed and onto the floor. I crawled on my hands and knees to my computer. I logged on to Facebook. I cradled my swollen, battered face in my hands. I had to tell Joe. I had to tell him Dad was dead.

  “Dear Joe: Dad died.”

  Two words that had never shared space on a page before.

  And with that, without sending the message, I slogged back onto the floor and belly-crawled to the sofa, where I grabbed the afghan and pulled it over me—all of me, head and all—and bawled for the next several hours, and then I slept. Bloated with shame and fat with regrets, I prayed to no one in particular to give me just one more day with my father.

  I awoke beaded with sweat. I fished pieces of wool fibers from my mouth. I untangled myself, roused myself from my smog, and returned to the computer. I continued with my message to Joe.

  He had a stroke and died. It’s my fault. I should have taken care of him myself. Instead, I hired a nurse and she was negligent—maybe, she was negligent. I don’t know. I just know I could have done better. I should have done better. And now I’m stuck with myself, and I don’t want to be with me. I feel vile, and I don’t know how I’m going to crawl out of this hole.

  I hit “Send” and then returned to bed.

  A few hours later, I heard my phone issue an e-mail. I reached for it. It was a message from Joe.

  Missy, I’m so sorry to hear about Frank. I can’t believe he’s gone. How can this world survive without Frank Fletcher’s enthusiasm? What a guy. I’ll never forget the day he and I were out on the range, hitting balls. He bet me I couldn’t hit 250 yards and I told him I could. “Hundred bucks,” he said. He had seen me hit that far before, so his motives were a little transparent. It happened to be right before prom, and I had told him the week earlier that I wanted to take you to the Chart House, but that I’d have to work some overtime first. I have a feeling that that $100 would have ended up in my pocket, no matter what. Good ol’ Frank. I hit the ball, it sailed past the 250, and Frank just beamed, handing me the two fifties. “Forget it,” I said, patting him on the back. “I don’t want to take your money.” “You’re like a son to me, Joe,” he said. I can still hear those words.

  I smiled and cried at the same time because Joe remembered my father so well, he remembered him like I did, got him like I did. He knew that Frank was always in his corner. The memory of pre-Alzheimer’s Dad gripped at my heart with the pain and panic of holding my breath a second too long.

  There was more.

  Missy, I know I’m overstepping here, but you’re talking to a guy who has the blood of many men on his hands. I feel responsible for each of them, and I know that will never go away. They were in my charge. It took a while, but I now know that I can’t blame myself for every detail that precipitated each event. Just like you could not have predicted the events leading up to your father’s death. Grief is heavy enough. That’s all I’m saying. Take it from a guy who knows. You don’t need to carry around guilt on top of it.

  Oh my God. In my mind, Joe was still eighteen years old, idealistic, indomitable. In reality, he was a man who had been to war three times. He had the blood of men on his hands. He was a guy “who knew.” He carried his own heavy grief. This was for real. My dear, sweet teenage boyfriend who I held in such high regard wasn’t just a fantasy, he was flesh and blood, heavy-hearted, forever burdened, and weighted down.

  Thunder roiled through my chest and then my lungs were begging for air as the sobs came again. Only this time they weren’t for my father and the loss of him, or me and my negligence. I now cried for Joe and all that he carried.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  JOE

  Frank Fletcher was dead.

  I opened a search engine and combed through the pages until I found his obituary.

  Frank Fletcher passed away on May 29. Frank was born in Chicago, Illinois, in 1945, though he spent most of his life in Alexandria, Virginia. He graduated from West Potomac High School, earned a BS in finance from George Washington University, and served in the United States Army. He was married to his high school sweetheart and loving wife, Charlene Hayes.

  Frank had a distinguished career at his own firm, Fletcher Financial, for forty-five years. Frank was an active member and past president of the Association for Financial Professionals, and was selected as one of the Top Ten Businessmen of the Year by the Alexandria Times. He was also a member of the National Association of Insurance and Financial Advisors, and was honored by FINRA for his excellence in service.

  He is survived by his daughter, Melissa, two brothers, and other fond relatives and friends. In lieu of flowers, expressions of sympathy can be made on Frank’s behalf to the Wounded Warriors, a charity he supported and believed in.

  At the end it gave me the information I needed. Services would be held at Arlington National Cemetery on Saturday at one o’clock, with a reception following at Christ Church in Alexandria.

  I would go for just the night, to pay my condolences, to attend the funeral. I owed that to Missy and to Frank, a guy who treated me like a son. I needed to see Missy, to tell her again how instrumental her father was in my life. I would assure her she’d be okay, even if it might not seem that way—she could believe me, I knew this was how it worked. It was true: she would go on. She was strong enough to live without her father.

  I called my mom and told her I needed to go to DC this coming weekend. Just for the night. Could she watch the kids? After Lucy and I were married and had kids, Ma and Dad moved up north to be near us. Her kitchen in New Jersey was a replica of our kitchen when I was growing up: flowered wallpaper dotted with her collection of old-fashioned kitchen implements. I’d been staring at the handheld mixer and potato masher my entire life.

  “Where’s Lucy?” Ma wanted to know.

  “Out of town on business,” I said. “You know that, Ma.”

  Ma harrumphed, and I imagined her pacing in the kitchen, wiping down an already clean counter. “In my day, a mother didn’t up and leave just because she was tired of it.”

  “I know, Ma, I know,” I told her. “What about the kids, Ma? Could you watch them?”

  “Of course I can watch them,” she said indignantly. “I’d never turn my back on my precious angels.”

  That night, I told the kids I had a funeral to attend this weekend. I’d be gone for about twenty-four hours.

  “Unless you decide to stay longer,” Kate said in the sulky thirteen-year-old voice I never thought I’d hear from her. This was my kid who used to love everything, my daughter who couldn’t wait for tomorrow, the light of my life who would decorate our house with streamers and balloons and homemade posters for every occasion, even Arbor D
ay and Chinese New Year.

  “Kate,” I said, raising my eyebrows at her. “I’ll be back on Sunday morning.”

  “Whose funeral is it, anyway?” she asked. “Which of your buddies stepped on an IED this time?”

  “Enough, Kate,” I snapped, because her moping about her own life was one thing, but talking flippantly about the guys who put their lives on the line for our freedom was another.

  “Sorry,” she said. She looked up through her mop of hair, then pulled it back and twisted it into a bun. Through the click of my eye’s shutter, I saw her when she was five years old, all eyebrows and cherry lips, before her heart registered pain.

  “This guy was a soldier,” I said. “But not in this war. Vietnam, years ago. I went to school with his daughter. He was very nice to me back in high school. He helped me figure out what I wanted to be when I grew up.”

  “Do you mind if I say war sucks?” Kate looked up at me, smiled just a bit. “All of them.”

  We were all casualties of war, and she knew it.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  On the seventh day of my life in a world without Dad, I rose and showered and met Jenny for lunch. At Ellie’s, we ordered soup and salad.

  “Lucas has been calling the office,” Jenny said. “He said it’s been hard to get through to you.”

  “I don’t know what to say to him,” I said. I dipped my spoon into the mulligatawny and watched the steam bellow upward.

  “He’s concerned.”

  “I know,” I said, “but he’s pushing me too hard.” I returned the spoonful of soup to its container.

  “He’s just trying to help, don’t you think?”

  “I’m sure.”

  “I like him,” Jenny said. “You two are so much alike.”

  My eyes stung. My cheeks burned.

  “Oh, honey, what did I say?” Jenny reached for my hand, curled hers around my palm.