The Remedy for Regret

by Susan Meissner

  “Well, no,” Jewel answers quickly. “I thought you were the most confident person in the world. It used to amaze me because I saw the way your mother neglected you.”

  Blair looks up and a quirky mixture of apprehension and respect quickly replaces the cynicism.

  “Guess I had you fooled,” Blair says softly.

  “Guess we’re all a little smarter now,” Jewel replies and from the open screen door we can faintly hear Corinthia singing a lullaby to a child who refuses to yield to rest.

  Blair, Jewel and I arrive at the high school in Germantown about five minutes before the last bell is supposed to ring. We can’t help but feel a little out of place walking into the administration offices. We know no one there. We know John Penney’s name but not what he looks like.

  Blair approaches the reception desk and a woman in a lavender dress looks up from a computer screen.

  “May I help you?” she says.

  “We’re here to see Mr. John Penney. He may have told you we were coming.”

  “Oh, yes,” she says. “He just rang down here not too long ago. You can just go to his classroom. Here, I’ll show you where it is.”

  She pulls out a laminated map of the campus and points us in the direction of the science building. We thank her and begin walking toward John Penney’s classroom, dodging students who begin heading toward the exits as the bell rings. None of us say anything. Each of us, is hoping, wishing or praying that this goes well.

  When we get to his door, Blair pauses in front of it for a moment and then opens it, walking purposefully inside. Jewel and I follow.

  A man with a trim build, a slightly receding hairline and wire rim glasses looks up from a dry-erase board.

  “My goodness,” he says and he seems shocked, even though he knew we were coming. He walks toward us.

  Blair, standing next to me, speaks up first.

  “Mr. Penney,” she says. “I am Blair, this is Tess and this is Jewel.”

  We shake hands but his shock at seeing us doesn’t fade.

  “Well, I never thought we would ever meet. When we adopted Tim, the social worker in Blytheville gave us the article from the paper with your picture in it. I would know you three anywhere I think. How did you find us?”

  Blair looks to me and I just tell him we got lucky. Dumb answer. Jewel says nothing beside me.

  “Can… can I ask what made you suddenly decide to try and find Tim?” There is paternal caution in his voice.

  “Well,” Blair closes her eyes for just a moment to steady her world, I think. “Mr. Penney—”

  “Please call me John.”

  “John,” Blair begins and I can tell she is going to confess. “The reason we’ve come is, well, it’s really the reason I’ve come—my friends are just here for moral support—I have a couple things that belong to Tim. Things that were in the peach box when we found him. Things his birth mother meant for him to have.”

  John Penney’s face is impossible to read.

  “What kinds of things?”

  Blair reaches into her purse and pulls out the locket.

  He takes it from Blair and fingers the little heart. “Is… is there…?” But he does not finish.

  “No, the locket is empty,” Blair tells him. “But there is, this, too.” And she hands him the note that I have memorized down to the exact way Tim’s birth mother made her m’s.

  John reads the note and then leans against a lab table. His eyes grow glassy. I can see that he is reading it again. Several times. Like all of us have who have read this note.

  “John, it wasn’t right, but I kept these things because I wanted something to remember Tim by and because I… I was quite taken by the love this mother had for her baby,” Blair voice quavers. “I’m not proud of what I have done. And I’m very sorry. You don’t know how sorry I am. But I want to make it right. I want Tim to have these things. Please. Please let me give them to him.”

  John is looking at the note again, absorbing it all; the note, Blair’s confession, and the reality that fifteen years of history have jumped forward to the present.

  “I… I need time to think,” he says slowly, not looking at us, looking only at the note. “I… are you staying somewhere in Memphis?”

  Blair seems ready to crumple beside me.

  “Blair and I are staying at the Peabody. Jewel lives here in Memphis,” I say.

  “I… I am sorry, but I can’t just… I need to think.”

  Blair sighs and then reaches out her hand. She wants the note and the locket back. And I can’t say as I blame her. It is her peace offering.

  John Penney hesitates for a moment and then places the note and necklace in Blair’s open hand.

  “It would mean a great deal to me if I could give these to Tim myself,” she says to him but her voice starts to break. The muscles in her face begin to contort. She cannot control the tears that threaten to stream down her face. “Excuse me,” she says abruptly as they start to come. Blair begins to hastily walk away. Jewel follows her, reaching out to hold by her shoulders. As they burst through the door into the now-quiet hallway, I can hear Blair losing herself to sobs.

  “She… she just lost her husband,” I say to John Penney, feeling a need to explain Blair’s obsession with reuniting this boy with his mother’s last treasures. “She wants very much to make this right. She thinks God is punishing her for having kept them.”

  I feel I have said too much.

  “Thank you for seeing us today.” I start to follow my friends out the door and then I turn back to him. “We’re registered under Blair’s married name, Holbrook.”

  John Penney just nods. I can feel him watching us as Jewel and I usher Blair down the hallway.

  Seventeen

  When we get back to Jewel’s house and tell Corinthia what happened with John Penney, she promptly disappears into a back room where the boys are napping and begins praying. Jewel asks us to stay for supper, but Blair just shakes her head. She walks toward the front door, opens it, and steps outside.

  “Thanks anyway, Jewel,” I say. “I’ll take her back to the hotel. I don’t think she has been sleeping well. She’s probably exhausted.”

  “Come back over in the morning.” Jewel walks me to the front door. “We’ll find something to do to get her mind off her woes.”

  Blair lets me drive back to the Peabody. Traffic is snarly and very Chicago-like, but Blair doesn’t seem to notice. We ride in silence.

  When we get to the hotel, I convince Blair to give the twins a call. Her mood scares me a little. I am hoping chatting with Chloe and Leah will raise her spirits some, but she doesn’t talk to them for very long.

  Later, I talk Blair into walking down Beale Street, famed for being the birthplace of jazz, and we find a restaurant that features live music. But Blair just picks at her food. I don’t think she is very skilled at waiting. And that is precisely what she must do. As soon as we get back to the hotel, Blair rushes to the phone in our room to see if we have a message waiting, but we don’t. I make a quick call to Simon to fill him on where things are at in at in our quest.

  We sleep in the next morning and Blair orders room service for breakfast; something I have never done. We take our time showering and getting ready for the day. We wait for the phone to ring but. I offer to drive us over to Jewel’s or to a shopping center or anywhere, but Blair declines.

  “I am not leaving the room until he calls,” Blair announces.

  After lunch—room service again—I head to Jewel’s, hoping it is safe to leave Blair alone. But once I get there, I realize I, too, am not able to do anything but wait for John Penney to call. I stay for maybe an hour, but I am back at the Peabody long before rush hour starts.

  Blair and I are contemplating our third meal in our room when the phone rings. Blair waits for it to ring twice before summoning up enough courage to answer it.

  “Hello?” she says.

  Someone says something to her on the other end.

 
“Yes?”

  Then she closes her eyes and sinks into the chair next to the phone.

  “Thank you, thank you… ,” she says and she begins to cry.

  John Penney has made up his mind.

  We will see Tim.

  Blair and John Penney arrange to meet the following day at his school, at the end of the school day. From there the four of us will make our way to the Penney home on the eastern edge of Memphis.

  As soon as Blair gets off the phone with John Penney, we call Jewel’s house to let her and Corinthia know the good news. For all I know, Corinthia is still on her knees in the back bedroom.

  The rest of the evening is almost as difficult to fill as the day that lead up to it. More waiting. But at least this second round of waiting is a different kind. We eat out, which is a nice change, and do a little shopping. We are back in the hotel by nine PM and in bed by ten. Blair simply cannot wait for this day to be over.

  In the morning, we again sleep late and order breakfast in. By ten-thirty we are back at Jewel’s, hoping our visit with her will help the hours fly by.

  Our visit is wonderful of course, at least it is for me, but the hours slip by slowly. Finally at two-thirty, the three of us get into Blair’s car to drive to Germantown. Corinthia has again graciously agreed to watch her grandsons while their mother is out.

  “I’ll be praying for y’all,” she says as she waves goodbye to us.

  John meets us by the flagpole at the entrance to the high school. Most of the students are gone and the front of the school is fairly quiet. He looks a little tense. I wonder if he is having second thoughts.

  He greets us politely, but he is distracted and on edge. I start to feel tense, too, as I wait for him to say he has changed his mind.

  “We’ll be getting there right after Patricia gets home from the hospital. She’s a nurse. She usually gets home around four. She… she doesn’t know about this yet. Tim will be home by three-thirty,” he says as he starts to walk with us back to the parking lot.

  “Do you want us to talk to Patricia first before we talk to Tim?” Blair says. I can tell she really doesn’t want to. I am amazed she has asked.

  John looks quickly in Blair’s direction.

  “I don’t think that would be a good idea,” he says. “Patricia… Patricia has always been a little over-protective of Tim. She might… she might be a little ticked off about… about why you waited so long.”

  “Oh,” is all Blair can think of to say.

  “Will this cause trouble between you and your wife?” Jewel says calmly.

  “She will come around in time,” he said. “Besides, in the end she will see that this came at just the right time for Tim. She knows I am expecting some company today after school, she just doesn’t know it’s you.”

  John Penney stops as we reach Blair’s car and I can see that he is choosing his words carefully.

  “Tim is going through a tough time right now,” he says and I can tell it hurts him to say this. “He has always been kind of a quiet kid. You don’t always know what he is thinking. Sometimes kids still tease him about his leg. He has a—what am I saying? You know about his foot.

  “Anyway, as he has gotten older, kids remark about it less, but I know the smallest comment still bugs him. The thing is, he’s got lots of friends in baseball and in track. Every spring it is like this. He would give anything to be able to …”

  But John Penney cannot finish. Overcome with emotion, he looks away from us, seeking strength from some hidden place in his heart. It seems like many long minutes before he is able to continue.

  “In the past, Patricia and I have always been able to help through his sad times. We’ve been able to get his mind off his limitations and onto what he excels at.”

  John Penney looks back to us and his moist eyes are suddenly bright with pride. “He has a gift with animals. He has his own boarding kennels in our backyard. You should see him with the dogs people leave with him. Some of them are so starved for affection… some of them have never been taught to mind. Some of them have been abused.”

  He stops again and shakes his head, like he himself cannot believe what his son can do.

  “They are different when they leave our place. Most owners can’t get over it. And it’s amazing to me how much the dogs love Tim. They really do.” John Penney starts to laugh. “The dogs don’t see the limp.”

  My cheeks are wet and my eyes are stinging. I cannot look at Blair or Jewel. I am aching to see and hold that little boy who cried out to me from the peach box.

  “He really is an amazing boy,” John says.

  And then he looks at his watch.

  “I think if we leave now, we’ll be in good shape,” he says abruptly, like the amazing boy is in need of rescue.

  We follow John Penney from the parking lot to his home on the edge of Germantown, about fifteen minutes away. The house is set back from the road with a long sloping lawn and is shaded by a dozen mature trees. The house is creamy white brick with four stately pillars in front. The shutters are deepest green and tendrils of ivy grace their frames. Below the front windows are rows of pink, red and yellow tulips. They wave a greeting to us.

  “It’s a beautiful house,” Jewel remarks as we get out of the car.

  “It was my grandmother’s,” John says. “She died last year and left it to me. That’s why we moved here.”

  “I am sorry,” I say. “About your grandmother.”

  John nods his head and slings the strap of his brief case over his shoulder. “It was hard. Tim was very fond of her. He has such good memories at this place. So do I.”

  We approach the front door and just before he opens it, John turns to us.

  “If you don’t mind, just let me do the talking until you have a chance to sit down with Tim,” he cautions us.

  We just nod our heads and then follow him in.

  “Anybody home?” he calls out cheerfully from a cool, tiled entryway.

  “In the kitchen,” says a female voice from a couple rooms away.

  We follow John through a sitting room into a large kitchen that opens out onto a screened porch in the backyard. I hear a dog barking from beyond the screens.

  Patricia, wearing a set of purple scrubs and a hospital nametag, is sorting through the mail. She looks up when we come in. Her eyes betray her surprise.

  “Patricia, remember when I said I had some special guests coming home with me today? Well, you’ll never believe who these women are!” John says brightly, like we are princesses from a faraway country.

  Patricia attempts a polite smile but she is only slightly successful. She wants to think we are just former students of her husband, but something tells her we are not.

  “Patricia, these women are the girls that found Tim when he was just an infant. On the church doorstep back in Arkansas!”

  John makes it seem like it is all just a happy memory to be embraced like recollections of a wonderful trip to Disneyworld.

  Patricia looks stricken and John closes the distance between them.

  “Honey, they’ve gone to a lot of trouble to find us, to find Tim,” he says softly, but loud enough for us to hear. “They have something special they want to give him. I think he could use something special right now.”

  “John,” Patricia says but nothing else.

  “It will be all right,” he tells her.

  Patricia studies his face for a moment and then I guess she decides she will just have to trust him. She looks past him to us.

  “I am very pleased to meet you,” she says with effort. “I’m Patricia Penney, Tim’s mother.”

  We step forward and introduce ourselves and shake hands. Patricia Penney’s hand is cool and clammy.

  “Tim is out with the dogs,” she says, trying to sound at ease but I can tell she is not.

  “Why don’t we go outside onto the patio?” John says. “We can get situated there and I can go get Tim, prepare him a little bit, okay?”

  “Of course,
” Jewel says, the most at ease of all of us.

  We follow John and Patricia through the kitchen and the screened porch to an outside door that leads to a wooden deck and a set of patio furniture.

  “Here, let me just wipe these chairs,” Patricia grabs a little whiskbroom by the door to the porch. She begins to methodically tackle each chair cushion with gusto. But then our collective attention is quickly drawn to the sound of a barking dog and Patricia pauses, the broom in mid air. We look past a vegetable garden and a row of rose bushes to structures at the far end of the backyard. We can see a large yellow dog and a smaller black one jumping and skipping around the legs of a tall, young man with curly brown hair. In the distance we can see the young man pick up something and throw it and the two dogs bound away from him. The young man takes two steps forward and the hitch in his step is unmistakable.

  Tim. Our baby.

  “I’ll… I’ll go fetch Tim,” John says.

  “Please,” Patricia says, and for a moment I think she will finish the sentence with “Go away!” But she doesn’t. “Won’t you sit down?”

  We each take a chair and watch, riveted, to the little drama at the far end of the backyard. John has reached Tim and he is telling him something. He points in our direction and we see Tim turn his head to look at us. Blair and I nearly flinch in our seats. John talks to his son for another moment more. Tim leans down to pat one of the dogs that has come running back to him, but he is still looking at his dad. Then he looks down at the dog, like he is thinking. He stays that way for several seconds.

  It seems like everything is being weighed in a set of scales while Tim crouches down by the dog. I don’t know what Jewel is feeling, but I know for Blair and me, everything hinges on what Tim will do next. I am itching for my freedom, as she must be itching for hers.

  Finally, Tim stands and looks again in our direction. John says something to him. And then they begin walking toward us; John with a measured step that matches the slower pace of his limping son.