Looking for Cassandra Jane (The Second Chances Novels)

by Melody Carlson

Although nothing fancy, I found the exterior of the apartment building in fairly good repair and decided it might be worth a look even if I decided not to stay. When I opened the door to his apartment, I felt mildly surprised. I’m not entirely sure what I’d expected to find—probably something reminiscent of the shabby dives we used to inhabit during my childhood—but this little place was nothing like that. The rooms were neat and clean and orderly, yet almost painfully frugal, without the least sign of extravagance.

  Now, this seemed highly curious to me, especially because I remembered how my daddy had always had this habit of spending his earnings wastefully on things like fancy clothes or expensive gimmicks in addition to alcohol. As a result, it never failed that we’d run short on the common necessities. We’d be all out of things like food or laundry soap or toilet paper, but my daddy would walk into the house wearing a fine new pair of leather shoes or a sharp new hat. It seemed that somewhere over the last ten years (probably when he gave up drinking) my daddy figured these things out.

  As promised, I stayed in my daddy’s little apartment for the next couple days, spending most of my time at the hospital, visiting with him or his friends from work or AA or church (he seemed to have a fair number of good friends). I’d converse with his caregivers and get the latest details of his prognosis, and it seemed his health was improving steadily.

  On the third day, he was moved from ICU to a room he shared with a cantankerous old railroad man who smoked about two packs a day (those were the days when they still let patients smoke in the hospital). But since my daddy had given up smoking a few years back I knew he found the smell offensive (although I could tell he didn’t like to make a fuss). So I went ahead and asked the head nurse if there was any hope of changing his room, but she said not for a day or two. Then I asked how soon he could be released to go home, and she said she’d check with his physician. Later she told me he could be released by Saturday morning if he had someone to stay with him.

  I knew it would be a tight squeeze with both of us sharing his little one-bedroom apartment, but I offered to stay there and sleep on the couch if he wanted to come home from the hospital, that is, unless he had someone else he’d prefer to stay with him. But he said he didn’t think any of his friends would be able to help out that much, and desperately wanting out of the hospital, he seemed to sincerely appreciate my offer. Although I’m sure it made him nervous. And I could understand that because I felt uneasy myself.

  So far we hadn’t talked too much about the past. He’d told me about his job selling new, not used, Volvos at the dealership, and how he’d been there long enough, and performed well enough, that he’d made it up into a managerial position (and I could see he was proud of this accomplishment). He also told me about the little church he attended that was only four blocks away, but how he felt he’d never really gotten to know the people there too well and admitted to being slightly surprised when a couple of them paid him a visit.

  Then he talked a bit about his AA friends, and his face lit up. He explained how they had been instrumental in overcoming his “addiction.” That’s what he called his drinking problem—he either referred to it as his “addiction” or his “illness,” and it didn’t seem to bother him to call it such.

  I’d heard these terms before in school, but they sounded strange coming from my daddy’s lips. Still, I appreciated that he didn’t try to bury his past problems or pretend like these things had never happened. His approach seemed truly humble and fairly straightforward, and he was always the first one to admit that it was alcoholism that had, for the most part, ruined his life. And mine. Although I tried to make it clear to him that I had survived and was doing just fine.

  Anyway it was decided that on Saturday, I would drive my daddy home to his little apartment (which thankfully was on the first floor so there were no steps for him to climb). So in the meantime, I changed sheets on the bed, did laundry, got a few groceries, and generally freshened things up. But as I was straightening the counter in the kitchen, I noticed a small stack of recent mail, and found it interesting that my daddy had a bank account in the very same bank that I used, the same bank I’d been using since going to community college in California.

  And suddenly I knew, I’m not even sure how, but I just knew. My daddy had to have been my secret benefactor. I wondered if I should mention it to him, or might that make him uncomfortable since for whatever reason he’d asked Joey to keep this information private? So for the time being I decided to just hide it away in my heart. But I have to admit I was starting to see my daddy in a whole new light.

  I helped my daddy into my little car and then drove carefully across town, making small talk about the weather and the traffic. As I helped him from the car and up the walk to his apartment, I suddenly felt worried and apprehensive. What had I gotten myself into? But as one slow step followed the next, I tried to give these anxieties to God, and when we finally made it inside I felt better. I helped him to take off his slippers and get settled into his own bed, and I could tell the familiarity of his own things brought him some comfort as he leaned back into the pillows.

  “I’m sure you must be all worn out now, Daddy,” I said as I stood up and pushed a strand of hair from my face. “I think you should get some rest.”

  “Do you know how much I hate being a burden to you, Cassandra?” he said sadly as I pulled the thin blue blanket up over him.

  “Daddy,” I said with real conviction, “you’re not a burden to me. You’re my own flesh and blood. And as Grandma used to say, blood is thicker than water!”

  He smiled. “Yeah, but I never did get that one. Who cares about thick blood anyway?”

  “Well, I think it just means that family comes first,” I said as I closed the curtains. “Now, I want you to get some rest and then maybe you’ll be able to get up in time for a light dinner.”

  Fighting off feelings of strangeness, I went into the little kitchen and began making preparations for dinner. It seemed like a hundred years since I’d cooked dinner for my daddy, and I hoped he’d think my skills had improved some since then. I hadn’t told him about my stay on the Funny Farm yet and didn’t even know if I could. But for some reason I wanted to. For some reason I felt he needed to know. Although for the life of me I wondered how someone of his generation could possibly understand such craziness.

  I’d already told him of going to college (not realizing at the time how he probably had a lot to do with that). And then I’d told him about my teaching job back in Brookdale, trying to paint a cheerful, happy picture. I almost convinced myself that my life was perfectly wonderful—and maybe it wasn’t that bad, all things considered. Besides, hadn’t this whole episode with my daddy really jerked me out of my rut, at least for the time being?

  That night, we sat down together at his little table and ate dinner. Following doctor’s orders, I’d prepared a plain, low-salt meal of white fish and rice and a green salad with light dressing, but I’d taken care to arrange everything just so and had even placed a couple of pink geraniums (snipped from a planter by the parking lot) into a water glass for decoration.

  “This is just lovely, Cassandra.” My daddy looked approvingly at everything, then bowed his head and said a short blessing.

  We ate quietly, making small talk about whether Carter would win again, the general deplorable state of our country, and the world at large. And then I served us each a small bowl of orange sherbet along with some of the instant Yuban coffee I’d found in his cupboard.

  “Cassandra, when I got that heart attack last week, I was so worried that I’d never get a chance to talk to you—to tell you things…” His voice trailed off slightly.

  “Tell me things?” Suddenly I wondered if he was about to tell me about the trust fund, and part of me longed for him to keep this a secret. Just the same I waited for him to continue.

  He took a sip of coffee. “Yes, I had put some things together to give to you. Some time back, I’d asked Joey to act as my attorney if an
ything were to happen to me.” He set down his cup. “You see, I’d had these twinges of chest pains a few times, off and on, during the past year, and well, I just had this feeling…”

  I nodded. “You knew you were going to have a heart attack?”

  “Not exactly. But I felt uneasy, somehow. Anyway I had some things for you—things that belonged to your mother.”

  “My mama?”

  “Yes. Long ago, I’d put some things in a storage place at Masterson Motors. It had been ages, and I’d almost forgotten about them. But then Mr. Masterson got ahold of me and I drove on over and picked them up. A lot of it was just junk. But there were a few things I thought that you should have. And—” He stopped himself.

  “And?”

  He sighed heavily. “Oh, I don’t know how to rightly say this, Cassandra, but I suppose there’s some things you should know about. I’m just not sure you’re ready to hear them yet, or if I’m even ready to say them. And seeing as how you’ve only just barely forgiven me, well, I just hate to put too much on you all at once.”

  I picked up the empty dishes and took them into the kitchen. “Oh, Daddy,” I said, hoping to sound light. “You’d probably be surprised to find out that I’ve been through some rather hard things during my lifetime. And I don’t break very easily. In fact, I think I’m made of some pretty tough stuff.”

  His brow grew concerned. “I know you’ve been through a lot, Cassandra. I must’ve put you through some horrible nightmares—”

  “Oh, you can’t take all the credit; I’ve put myself through some nightmares too.”

  “Yes, Joey told me about some of the crazy stuff you went through in California. But believe me, Cassandra, I blame all that on me. You wouldn’t have done what you did if I hadn’t made so many stupid mistakes back when you were a kid.”

  “But I made my own choices, Daddy.”

  He shook his head. “I had a lot to do with those choices, Cassandra. In fact, I’ll bet I could take the blame for every single bad thing that’s ever happened to you.”

  I blinked. “Well, that’s a whole lot of blame to heap on yourself.”

  “Nothing more than what I deserve.”

  I sat back down and laid my hands on the table. “Look, Daddy, I don’t claim to know too much about these things, but I’m learning more all the time. And the thing is, I think you need to give all that blame stuff to God.”

  He nodded. “I know. And I try to.”

  “And I think you need to forgive yourself.”

  He pressed his lips together. “I know you’re right, Cassandra, but I guess I just don’t rightly know how to do that.”

  “To be honest, I don’t completely know how to either, but I’m working on it. And I think if God can forgive us for all the crud we do to ourselves and to others, well, then we ought to be able to forgive ourselves too.”

  He didn’t say anything after that, and I began to suspect he was getting a little worn out. And so I helped him back to his room and then returned to clean up in the kitchen. But just as I finished drying the last dish, he came back out, this time wearing a dark red flannel bathrobe. “Cassie,” he said as he eased himself down onto the sofa, “there’s something I need to tell you—just in case.”

  “In case what?”

  “Well…” He touched his chest. “I’m not sure how long this ticker is going to last me. Even the doc said he couldn’t give me any guarantees. And who knows, I might just up and go in my sleep tonight. But there’s something I’ve never told you—or anyone else, for that matter—and it has to do with your mother.”

  Interested, I sat down in a chair across from him, the dishtowel still in my hand. “What is it?”

  He exhaled slowly. “This isn’t an easy thing to tell, and there was a time when I thought I’d take this to the grave with me. But since then I’ve learned a few things that make me think otherwise. And now I feel that since you’re her daughter, and all grown-up, you have a right to know the truth. And knowing all that you’ve been through, Cassandra, I reckon you can probably handle it now.”

  “Sure, go ahead,” I leaned forward, eager to listen to anything he could tell me about my mama. In my mind, she’d always been just a step away from sainthood, and anything I could find out about her was of the utmost interest to me.

  “Well, right after you were born, your mama, well, she wasn’t quite herself.” He rubbed his chin. “Always before, she’d been cheerful and happy and a real go-getter. And…” He paused and studied me. “A lot like you.”

  I smiled.

  “In fact, you remind me of her in so many ways.”

  “Thank you.”

  He nodded. “Your mama was a good woman. And what I’m about to tell you, I don’t want it to diminish in any way how you think of her, because your mama was fine and decent. She was smart and pretty and kind, the pick of the crop, really and truly. All these years later, I still can’t believe she agreed to marry me. I didn’t think I had anything to offer her—except my undying love, that is. Oh, I loved her with my whole heart, Cassandra. Believe me, I did. And you may not know it, but I didn’t have a drinking problem back then—that only came later, afterwards. And anyway I promised your mama that I’d make her proud of me, and that I’d work real hard and make us rich someday. And I think I would’ve, too…”

  “But what happened?”

  “Well, right after you were born, your mama got what you might call the blues. Only in a real bad way. She would just cry and cry and cry. And I couldn’t understand why, because you were a fine, healthy, beautiful baby. But your mama was just plain miserable. I tried to do everything I could think of to help her. Why, I even fed you and changed your diapers during those first couple of days, thinking your mama was just worn-out. But on that third day, I had to go back to work, if we were going to eat.” He sighed. “And well, when I got back home that night, I found her.”

  “But I thought you’d been out drinking.” The words came out of my mouth before I could even stop them, but instantly I regretted them. Not because I thought they were untrue, but because of my daddy’s delicate heart condition just then. But to my relief, he took no offense. He just nodded sadly.

  “I know that’s what you were told, Cassandra. But that story only came along later—after I started turning to the bottle for relief. You know how stories go. Sometimes they change and get worse with the passing of time.”

  I nodded, although I wasn’t entirely sure.

  “Anyway, when I got home, I could hear you crying in your crib and I ran in there to see what was wrong. I could tell that you’d probably been neglected most of the day. And when I went to find your mother—” He stopped now and wiped his hand over his brow as if the memory were still fresh in his mind. “Well, she was in the bedroom, in a pool of blood and already dead.” He looked across the room at me, straight into my eyes. “But she didn’t die in the way that I told everyone, from complications of the birthing. No, your mama had been so distraught and depressed that she’d slit her own wrists with a razor blade.” He looked down at his lap and sighed heavily.

  “No!” I gasped. “No, she couldn’t have done that. She wouldn’t have—”

  “I’m sorry, Cassandra. I hated to have to tell you, but I’ve done some reading up on this whole thing and I know—”

  “No,” I said, standing now, tears filling my eyes. “No, I can’t believe it, Daddy. Are you honestly saying my mama killed herself?”

  He nodded. “I never would’ve told you this before, Cassandra, but I talked to someone who knows about such things, and then I did some reading up, and I’ve learned that your mama had an illness that affected the way she was thinking…”

  I sank back down into the chair, trying to take in his words, trying not to appear so skeptical, so confrontational. But at the same time, I wondered if he was making all this up—just to make himself look better.

  “I can’t think of the name of it just now, but your mama had a kind of depression that some wom
en get after giving birth.”

  “You mean postpartum depression?”

  He looked at me in surprise. “Yes, that’s it. That’s what the book called it.”

  Well, I remembered that name from the natural childbirth book as well as my psychology classes. “Yes, Daddy, that’s a real condition, brought on by hormonal imbalances after giving birth, but women don’t usually kill themselves.” I studied his face carefully, suspiciously.

  “No, I don’t expect they usually do.” He sadly shook his head. “And for years I blamed myself for her death, and well, to be honest I guess I blamed you too.” He looked up at me. “I’m sorry, Cassie. I know it was completely unfair, and it makes no earthly sense. It was nothing but pure craziness on my part. But, the fact is, I was crazy back then. Losing your mama like that just pushed me right over the edge. And even though I’d try and try to get back again, and sometimes I’d even think I’d made it, well, then off I’d go—back to the bottle.” He leaned over and buried his head in his hands. “It shames me to remember those years, and yet, to be perfectly honest, I’m sometimes still thankful that the alcohol’s poison blurred a lot of those bad memories for me.”

  “But why are you telling me this?” I still didn’t know if I believed him or not. I still couldn’t imagine that my sweet mama would’ve killed herself when she had a dependent little baby girl who needed her—needed her badly!

  “Well, in the box I saved, there’s a note written by her—on that day—the very day she did it. And I didn’t want you to read it and not understand what she meant. She couldn’t help how she felt. She wanted to be a good mother. She loved you, she really did. But she was just so sad and hopeless that she couldn’t hold on. She just gave up. And I was afraid that if I died, then you’d get that box and you’d read that letter, and well, you’d be so shocked and hurt that, and oh, I don’t know…”

  He was right. I did feel shocked and hurt—and now more abandoned than before. “But why didn’t you just throw that letter away, Daddy?”

  He sighed again. “You know, I considered doing that. And the truth is, I’d never intended to tell you at all. But lately, I’d come to think that you had the right to know about these things. You know how I grew up not knowing a thing about my own real family. And I used to pretend that it didn’t matter none, that I didn’t care. But the truth is, Cassie, it does matter. And I felt you had the right to know what really happened to your mother, not to diminish her memory in any way, but just so that you could have all the pieces to your puzzle—so you could figure things out for yourself. That’s why I didn’t throw the letter away.”