The Remedy for Regret

by Susan Meissner

  I open my eyes and Corinthia is looking at me.

  “Tess?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you know now where this feeling of yours came from?”

  Tears that have the weight of many years slip down my cheeks as I finally understand.

  The guilt I have known every moment of my life did not spring to life inside of me, but from outside of me. It grew and flourished every day of my childhood as I spent it with a man who silently blamed me for the death of his wife.

  Nineteen

  Corinthia just lets me sit quietly for several long minutes as I try to readjust the weight of my woes. To realize my father wordlessly blamed me, all these years, for the death of the woman he loved hurts in a different way than having actually felt responsible for it. The ache is as deep but there is something attached to it, like a floater on a fishing line; something that keeps the pain from totally disappearing into the familiar depths of misery. I’m not entirely sure what to call it but it feels strangely like hope. No… pity. No. It feels like a weird combination of both.

  My surprised expression concerns Corinthia, I think. She asks me if I am angry with my father. But I’m still amazed by the bobbing floater and I don’t answer her.

  “It’s understandable if you are,” Corinthia continues. “But there’s no sense in getting angry at something you can’t change. And you can’t change him. You can only change you.”

  “I am not angry with him,” I manage to say. “I don’t think I can describe what I feel, but it’s not anger.”

  Corinthia reaches out to touch my hand. She waits for me to make the next move. And there is always a next move. But I don’t know how to make it.

  “What should I do now?” I say.

  “Well, what is your heart telling you?”

  I try to imagine living the rest of my life knowing what I now know and never saying a word to my father about it and I realize that’s a nightmare I have already lived. I must talk with him and he must talk with me. I cannot live this way any longer. The fortress is lying in rubble at my feet. I will not rebuild it. I refuse.

  “I must go to him,” I tell Corinthia. “We have to talk about this. Even if he will not listen.”

  Corinthia nods her head and strokes my hand.

  “I think you are right, but I want to encourage you, Tess, to thoroughly consider why your father did what he did. Why he held you accountable,” she says. “If you can understand why he did it, I think maybe it will be easier for you to forgive him. And while he may not deserve your forgiveness, you must offer it or your heart will grow bitter. I’ve seen it happen to a hundred hurting people. I don’t want to see it happen to you.”

  Fresh tears have formed in my eyes and now slip down my cheeks. I don’t want to see that happen to me, either.

  “Tess, why do you think your father blamed you? Think hard. Think like someone who has lost something very precious.”

  I wipe my eyes and try to imagine my father awash in grief. I see the waiting room the way I have always imagine it. I see Joey. I see the pull of the morning outside the windows of the hospital. I see my grieving father. My parents had been married less than two years. They were very much in love. They were going to have a child. Me. They were going to be a family. Then it was all snatched away from my dad and it surely seemed horribly unfair. He was angry and hurt and alone.

  “Because… because he had to blame somebody,” I say.

  “I think so, too, Tess. He had to blame somebody. Now who do we usually blame for things that happen to us that we can’t control?”

  The answer comes to me even as she poses the question.

  “God.”

  “Right. But let’s think about this for a moment. What does your father think about God, Tess?”

  “I don’t think he thinks about God at all. I’m not even sure my dad is convinced God exists.”

  “So all that bitterness and pain that he wanted to hurl at God he had to hold back. If he did blame God, he would have to admit God not only exists, He is powerful enough to have saved your mother but He chose not to. All that blame had to be shifted elsewhere.”

  “To me,” I whisper.

  “I am not saying he meant to hurt you, Tess,” Corinthia says gently. “I am just saying that’s what he did with the part of God he could not live with.”

  “What… What part?”

  “The part that God is powerful to save but sometimes doesn’t.”

  I am starting to feel sorry for my father in a way that surprises me. “I think there is a lot about God my father does not like.”

  “A lot of people are that way, Tess. What people don’t understand they usually don’t like. And what they don’t like they usually convince themselves they don’t need.”

  Corinthia is talking about my dad, but I think she is also talking about me.

  “You know, Tess, all of us are born knowing our need for God. Some of us recognize it from the get-go, but some of us refuse to acknowledge it our whole lives. I’ve thought about this for a lot of years, and I’m convinced that folks who refuse to surrender to God latch onto one of His wonderful characteristics, an attribute that they really identify with, and they make it their own. That way they can be their own little god.”

  Corinthia looks toward the house to make sure we are not being overheard and then turns back to me.

  “Take Blair, for example. What has she done for herself that God is good at? What does she like to do for others that God is good at?”

  “I don’t know.” I’m unsure where Corinthia is headed.

  “What does she like? What motivates her?”

  “She likes having money. She likes having things and buying things for other people.”

  “Good. Can you see how is that like God?”

  “Well…,” but I don’t know where to go with it.

  “Tess, God owns everything. He has everything. He has limitless resources. And He can meet any material need. That’s what Blair likes to do for herself and the people she cares about,” Corinthia says quietly but firmly. “What about your friend Simon? What does he do that reminds you of God, of something God would do?”

  My mind is starting to ache with the weight of so many thoughts but I try to picture Simon in my head. I picture him at his job at O’Hare, getting travelers safely to the ground. I picture him at home with me trying to soothe my hidden sorrows. I picture him standing at the wreckage of a little Mazda, bleeding and calling out to paramedics, “Are they okay? Are they okay?” It is starting to make sense.

  “He likes to rescue people,” I reply.

  Corinthia nods. “And your Dad?” she says.

  An outsider would assume my dad the doctor is motivated by a desire to heal people; as great an attribute as any, but the truth is my dad is not motivated by a desire to ease suffering. If he were, my own troubles would have evaporated years ago. My brilliant father is a problem-solver. He likes the challenge of solving a riddle. When someone needs his skills as a doctor, he says to himself, “Now, what is wrong here?” not “Now, how can I make you well?” It never really bothered me before and it doesn’t now. But it helps me understand him, like Corinthia knew it would.

  “He likes to solve problems,” I say.

  “That explains a lot,” she says simply. “He had a big problem. And he found a terrible way to solve it.” Corinthia squeezes the hand she has been holding. “And what about you, Tess?” Corinthia asks like she already knows. “What do you do that is like God?”

  I’m afraid that there is no holy attribute I have been displaying to fill that God-sized void in my life.

  “What do you do? Corinthia says again.

  Nothing comes to mind.

  “Think about why you came to Blair’s aid now and why you latched onto her when you first moved to Arkansas even though she was very different than you. Why have you worried so for Simon after his accident? Why did you want to meet that little baby’s every need all those years ago? Why is it th
at your first response to your father’s failure is to defend him?”

  “Because,” I say, slowly realizing what Corinthia has already figured out. “Because I am moved by the pain of others?”

  “Yes, I think you are,” Corinthia says gently. “And that’s one of the most wonderful things about God. It’s one of the most wonderful things about you.”

  I begin to slowly consider this, wondering what it means for me now that I know it.

  “And I have found that those things we did so well when we lived apart from God are the same things we do even better, and for His blessing, when we stop running from Him and start walking with Him,” Corinthia says, already thinking ahead to some future day.

  “But what does this mean right now, for me?” I ask her.

  “What I think it means is, you can be sure you will do the right thing when you talk to your father. I think you will say all the right things. Because you are moved by people’s pain, Tess. You have been moved by his. I think that is why it is not anger that you feel, but something kinder.”

  I lean back in the glider and try absorb the wealth of knowledge I now possess.

  “I think maybe you know now what you need to do to make things right,” Corinthia says, leaning back as well. “Not just between you and your dad but between you and God, too.”

  As I rest my back against the gently moving glider, I am aware that there is much I still do not know about the God Corinthia has been so patient to show me but I feel like perhaps I’m at last ready to learn, ready to admit He was not the one who was far away, it was me. But I also know that there is more to this than just saying to God, “Well, I’ve decided You’re all right after all.” I know part of it is realizing I am not all right and that in the middle of all of this there is the mysterious cross—something I have never contemplated long enough to even begin to understand.

  “It may take some time,” I say, but in reality I already know I won’t wait another minute to set things right between my dad and me. I have already decided I will go to Shelley’s party next Friday. I cannot think past anything else.

  “Don’t wait too long,” Corinthia says, eyeing me tenderly. “For either one.”

  “I won’t. I promise,” I reply.

  “Now, Tess,” Corinthia begins like there is more and I cannot imagine there being more. “Something has always troubled me. I haven’t thought about it in years, but seeing you now brings it back to my mind. And as long as you are making things right, I am thinking there is one more thing you can do. One more thing that needs to be done.”

  “There is?” I can’t imagine what else is unsettled.

  She turns her head toward me.

  “You told me once, a long time ago, that your mother had a brother,” Corinthia begins and then stops, letting me pick up the thought.

  “Martin,” I say, whispering the name I hardly ever say.

  “Do you remember when I asked you about your uncle, not long after you first moved next door to me, and you told me your dad never talks about your mother’s family in England?”

  “Yes.” Simon had asked me the same thing not long after we met.

  “Don’t you find that a bit odd, Tess?”

  I think back to the few times I asked about my mother’s side of the family and I remember my dad’s short, nervous answers. My parents had eloped after meeting and falling in love at RAF Upper Heyford near Oxford. My dad was stationed there and it was his first assignment after completing his residency. My mother worked at a flower shop on High Street in Oxford. He had gone to her shop to wire flowers to his mother for her birthday and they struck up a friendship that quickly blossomed into a romance. My mother’s brother Martin and her own mother didn’t want her to marry an American serviceman who would take her far away from them. So my parents eloped and eight months later my father was sent to Lajes Field in the Azores, hundreds of miles away from England on a little island in the middle of the Atlantic. My father’s relationship with his in-laws was already strained when a year later he called to them my mother had died shortly after giving birth. He’d been shunned at the funeral.

  This is all I know; it is the sum of the information I pieced together from my dad’s vague answers and my paternal grandmother’s infrequent commentaries on how her son had been mistreated. There were times I had wanted to ask if—before she died—my maternal grandmother ever asked to come to see me. But I was afraid. I was afraid if I asked my father would say, “No, she never did.”

  My father has said Martin’s name maybe twice in my lifetime and never in the context of me being his niece.

  “I think the two families parted on rather bad terms,” I finally say to Corinthia.

  “Now, that sounds to me like something that needs to be made right,” she says plainly.

  What she is suggesting fills me with all kinds of strange feelings I don‘t recognize.

  “Corinthia, Martin doesn’t even know me! And I can’t assume he will want to talk to me or see me after all these years.”

  “Just like you can’t assume that he won’t.”

  The thought of contacting my mother’s family in England has never been more than a fleeting thought, one I usually chased away with fears of being rejected. But what Corinthia is supposing makes perfect sense. I feel foolish for not having thought of it before.

  I suddenly feel like there has been placed in my hands a map; a map that was drawn before my eyes and perhaps even with my own hand—with tremendous help from Corinthia. It is what I have always wanted to do. To make a map that would lead me home.

  “Tess, my girl,” Corinthia says, saying my name with emphasis. “I think it is harvest time.”

  Twenty

  When Blair and I arrive back at The Peabody it is nearly nine o’clock at night and I am exhausted. It is hard to believe that when I woke up this morning I thought finding baby Tim would be the answer to all my problems; my beautiful gate. How different things look to me now at the close of the day. I’m fairly certain that I can see now where my beautiful gate stands. It is up the road far ahead of me but each step I take from this point on brings me that much closer to it.

  I’m both anxious and fearful for tomorrow to come. It will mean saying goodbye to Corinthia and Jewel, for at least awhile, though I plan on never again allowing thirteen years to pass between us without a visit. But it will also mark the beginning of my journey toward peace and a life free of regrets. I am convinced that at the end of it, regardless of what my dad says or does, and regardless of what Martin says or does, I will have done all that I possibly could to fix what was broken. That is all anyone can do. And when I return to Simon after my travels are over, I’m going to marry him.

  I have so much to tell Simon. I hardly know where to start. I take my phone out of my canvas bag and pace a few steps in the shared sitting room of our suite before calling him. Blair watches me and then announces she is going downstairs for a drink. I wouldn’t be surprised if she orders a bottle of champagne to celebrate her little truce with God. When she is gone I press the speed dial and anxiously await to hear Simon’s voice.

  “Tess!’ he exclaims when he answers. “Did you get to see him?”

  “Yeah, Simon. We did.” I sink into a thoroughly stuffed sofa. “It was great. I wish you could have seen Tim’s face. It was the right thing to do.”

  “So he’s doing okay?”

  “Yeah, I think he is. He has some hurdles in his life like we all do, but he seems like a very kind, compassionate person. He has two great parents.”

  “Blair must be feeling pretty good, huh?”

  “She has her vindication, you could say. I don’t think she’s ready to see things any other way.”

  “I’m glad you found him, Tess.”

  “Me, too.” I take a breath before plunging forward. I will tell him about my plan to go England first. For some reason I think he will be less shocked by this new development than that I have finally figured out the source of my troubles. “Simon, I
have made some other amazing discoveries since I have been here.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Um, yeah. I’ve decided I really need to go to England to meet my mother’s family. I know she has a brother there. And there could be cousins, too. I think if I do, I will be able to lay to rest some really old ghosts. I’m planning to go right after I get back to Chicago.”

  Simon is silent for a moment.

  “Wow, Tess,” he finally says. I sense that he thinks this is a very positive step for me but he also knows that it will prolong my absence. “That’s… that’s great. Do you want me to come with you? If you do, I’ll find a way to make it work.”

  It’s not that I don’t want Simon with me. It’s that I feel I need to do this alone.

  “Actually Simon, I want to do this by myself. And… And there’s something else I’ve discovered here.”

  “Yes? What is it?”

  “I have a pretty good idea what you and my Dad argued about.”

  “He told you?”

  “No, Simon, he didn’t. He did just what you said he would do. He never mentioned it. I just finally figured it out—with a lot of help from Corinthia.”

  “What did you figure out?”

  “That even though he probably didn’t mean to, my dad has always blamed me for what happened to my mom. It’s why I have always felt like it was my fault. All those times he wouldn’t talk about her I assumed he was protecting me from knowing the truth, that if I hadn’t been born she would have lived.”

  “He was protecting himself,” Simon says quickly.

  “I know it, Simon, but I also know that that’s what wounded people do. They find a way to insulate themselves from further injury. You and I both know this.”

  “He’s a grown man, Tess. He has had twenty-eight years to come to terms with this. He has married another woman!”