“I just know that your mother got it into her head that there was something she needed to find – an answer to her questions – and she searched for it endlessly until the realization that there was none shattered her.”
“I’m not my mother, Karl,” I said.
“I think you’re more like her than you care to believe.”
He broke off the discussion, taking with it the last bit of my good mood, and we spent the rest of the drive to the airport in silence. He parked in a short-term space and took the lone suitcase from the trunk before walking me inside to the check-in counter.
“I’ve requested a wheelchair to pick you up when you land,” he said. “They’ll take you to the baggage claim. I'm sure you and your father have made plans on what to do from there.”
“Right.”
“And this is an international track phone, so you’ll be able to call me from Europe if you have any trouble. I’ve written the instructions on how to use it; they’re in your wallet.”
“Alright.”
“And if your flight is delayed or canceled, or you have any problems, call me and I’ll sort it out.”
“I will.”
“And if anything happens –”
“I’ll call you,” I said. “But don’t worry, Karl. I’ll be fine.”
He shifted in his spot, looking as unsure as I was certain that I wouldn’t be coming home in just over a week, but saw no use in voicing it aloud again.
“Right. Well, goodbye, Enim. I’ll see you when you get back.”
“Right. See you then.”
I approached the counter alone and handed over the passport. The woman behind the desk glanced up at me before hurriedly typing in the information to print the ticket.
“Amsterdam is your final destination?” she asked, absentmindedly scanning the passport and peeling a luggage tag to stick onto the suitcase. “Terminal One, gate C4: all the way to the end and make a left. You’ll be going through security, so you should say goodbye to your father now.”
She nodded at something behind me; I didn’t need to turn around to know that she was indicating to Karl.
“He’s not my father.”
“No? You two look so much alike.”
I thanked her for the ticket and sidled away from the counter, slipping the passport back into my pocket as I did so, and turned in the direction of the gate. Karl was still waiting by the door even though he hardly expected me to say a more proper goodbye. The idea that he thought he would see me in a week and the fact that I knew he would not pulled at me unexpectedly, and at the end of the hallway where the escalators stood to take me upstairs I paused and turned back to him.
He was as poised as ever, standing in his work clothes in the middle of the floor as dozens of people with suitcases swerved and rolled around him. It was hardly a wonder that my mother had latched onto him the way that she had, so desperate for something stable when everything about her was the opposite. As I squinted back at him, I imagined the way he would press his face into his hands and pull at his neat hair when he got the call from my father about what I had done. For a moment I regretted it, thinking that he, for the most part, didn’t deserve the stress I put onto him, but then I pushed the thought away and continued on my way.
When I had made it through security and boarded the plane, the pain in my leg had become so intense that it shot from the shin up to my neck. I grappled beneath the seat belt to pull one of the prescription bottles from my pocket and, though I had already taken the dosage for the day, poured out an extra one and quickly downed it. The medicine did little to ease the whirring thoughts in my head, though, and I wished that I could play the music from Rusalka. The disk in my pocket pressed sharply against my leg.
They had the wheelchair waiting on the jet bridge when I stepped off the plane. I sank into it and dropped my head into my hand, exhausted from the lack of sleep on the flight, and drifted off just as they brought me to the customs counter. I handed my passport over wordlessly and waited while the guard checked it over, finally stamping it and sliding it back beneath the glass to me.
As I sat at the baggage claim waiting for my bag to come around the carousel, I pulled out my wallet and phone. Apart from the number that Karl had given me, there was the one for my father's office. It was as long as ever, and I needed to dial it twice before I could get the extension correct.
“Goedenavond.”
The secretary’s voice was the same high, pleasant one from the previous year. I wondered if she had any memory of me.
“Hi, this is Enim Lund. I'm – I'm calling about my father.”
“Mr. Lund?” The secretary paused for a moment. “So sorry, Mr. Lund is not in the office today.”
“No, I know.” I had known that he wouldn't be working on a weekend. Shifting the phone against my ear to hear it over the airport announcements, I quickly continued. “I'm supposed to be visiting him, actually, but the airport lost the bag with his address in it.”
“I see, yes. I will transfer you to his home phone now?”
“No, I – I already called him there. He's not in.” I spotted my suitcase on the carousel and pointed it out to the man assisting me. He stepped forward to grab it off before it passed. “So I was wondering if you could just give it to me so I could head over there. I'd rather not have to wait at the airport all day.”
“Oh, I see,” the secretary said, her high-pitched voice filled with paid understanding. “Yes, it is just, we are not usually giving out our employers' home addresses, for security purposes, you see.”
“Right, but I'm his son. I've – I've called him here before.”
“Yes.”
“So … could you give me his address, please?”
I nodded to the man pushing the wheelchair to indicate that he could bring me outside, still holding the phone closely to hear what the woman would say. Showing up at my father's house would greatly decrease the chance that he would find an excuse to turn me away; if I called him and asked him if he would pick me up and bring me there, I was certain that he wouldn't be quite as willing to do so.
I could hear her clicking her fingernails against the plastic office phone, the sound of it hammering against my skull as I waited for her to make the decision. Her hesitation was hardly surprising, and I made a note not to tell my father who had given me the address; there was no reason for her to lose her job over the matter.
“Do you have a pen?” she said at last.
“Yes.”
I flipped over the piece of paper with the telephone number on it just as I was brought to the front of the line for taxis outside. The man wheeling me braked the chair and lifted my suitcase into the trunk of the waiting cab as I held the phone between my ear and shoulder in order to jot the street name down. She had to repeat the spelling twice before I could properly write it down and, as there was no chance of pronouncing it, I got into the backseat of the cab and handed the paper to the driver without trying. He nodded as he read it and pulled away onto the street.
The city wasn’t how I had pictured it would look. The bicyclists whirring past the car and cobblestone streets looked like a scene torn from a story-book that had been read to me years before rather than a real place. Across the bridge, the houses lined up were so close that they appeared to be squished together, and the varying shades of bright paint colors were the only things that separated one from the next. As the taxi weaved in and out of more streets, pulling around crowds of people and starting and stopping frequently, the sun began to set and the city lit up in an assortment of lights that glowed against the dark water in the canal. The surface looked smooth and hard enough to step upon, like some enchanted pavement to the other side, and I had begun to doubt that my father lived there at all: it was impossible to imagine him in such an enchanting place.
The car continued past the main city and pulled to a stop sometime later outside of a white house with a brick foundation. There was a garden below the front windows and surrounding
the porch, and a small bicycle with tassels on the handles was laying off to one side. I hesitated as I handed the money to the driver, frightened that I had not written the name down correctly after all, and realized that I had forgotten to get more money from the bank machine at the airport. I wondered if there would be enough to get me to the proper house.
“Do you have a card?” I asked even so, looking over the prepossessing exterior again and thinking that I would have to call him back in a matter of minutes. He shuffled in his pocket for one and handed it to me, and I stepped out onto the pavement while he got the suitcase from the trunk.
“Thanks,” I said absently when he placed it beside me.
I stood at the base of the driveway and waited for the car to pull away, my eyes leaving the overturned bicycle and going to the front door. My father might have been waiting on the other side of it. I wasn't sure if the thought of him being there or not being there was worse. With a sudden uneasiness, I smoothed down the front of my sweater and laid a hand atop my hair to flatten it, wondering if I looked more presentable now than the last time that he had seen me. I had had severe bruising covering the majority of my face from the fight with Trask then, though even the reminder of it didn't ease my uncertainty. He knew what I was now – he could be fully certain when he looked at me instead of just fearfully convinced. And though the medication hid the terrible visions that I had had, it wouldn't hide what he saw when he looked at me – if anything, it would exaggerate every mistake and weakness scratching beneath the skin – and it made my mouth so dry that my voice crackled when I spoke: he would pick up on it immediately. I licked my lips again and continued to stare at the door, wishing that there was a way inside that would allow me to find what Jack had sent without needing to pass my father, as well.
My leg gave a twinge and I shifted my weight from it, realizing that my heart was beating more hastily than I had expected it to. I imagined how his solid expression would deteriorate into one of bafflement when he saw me, possibly distressed that I had made such a journey or angered that I was there at all, but I forced myself to uplift my feet from the pavement and make my way down the front path. I only needed to find my mail and see if there was something from Jack, I thought as I stepped onto the front porch. After that, I could pretend that I agreed with him that the idea had been foolish, even allowing him to drive me back to the airport seemingly to go home. It wasn't as though I had any interest in staying with him.
The front door was a dark shade of green and two lone brass numbers were nailed upon it: 56, the same age that he would be the next June. I raised my hand and pressed the doorbell, and the sound of it rang behind the wood to alert the house to my presence. When it had died down, the sound of footsteps crossing the hardwood came instead. The steps were light, though, and clicked in a way that my father's oxfords had never done, and when the door opened a moment later it was to reveal a middle-aged woman whose hair was clipped back behind her head. She had an oval face and dark eyes, but when she looked down at me her mouth turned upwards into a polite smile.
“Sorry – I have the wrong address,” I said, quickly taking a step back.
She turned her head at me oddly as though trying to place where she had seen me before, and I was surprised that when she spoke her accent was not Dutch, but English.
“That's alright. I hope you find the right place.”
“Right. Thanks.”
I backed to the edge of the porch and turned to limp back down to the path, but no sooner had I placed my foot on the step than a familiar voice sounded from inside the door.
“Who was that?”
I paused, my shoulders suddenly stiff, and slowly turned my head.
“Just someone with the wrong address.”
I was midway through debating whether to stay or go, suddenly ready to forgo the entire plan to get my mail with the realization of how incredulous the idea had been, when a definite silence sounded from the still-open door. I dropped down to the top step before turning around, and the woman looked back at me as my father's fixated stare crossed over her shoulder.
He looked the same as ever with his iron-colored hair and the stoic expression on his face but for the odd sight of the woman standing beside him. Whereas her features had appeared largely plain just a moment before, she had suddenly grown rather too pretty and young, and her pleasant voice was lost in the warm air. She was tall even standing next to him, who towered nearly as high as the doorway, and something in her stance matched him appropriately. As I took in the sight of them there together, the thought that they looked more suited for one another than he and my mother ever had occurred to me, but I pushed it away with a firm shake of my head.
“Enim?”
He stepped outside as though in a daze, and his surprise was so evident that the familiar sense of foolishness returned to my limbs. The woman looked between us oddly, and I shifted my eyes over to her only because I was having trouble keeping them on my father.
“I – where did you – how did you – what are you doing here?”
“I came to see you.”
My voice was low enough so that the hoarseness didn't come through immediately, but any sense of relief was lost at the expression of utter disbelief skewing his brow and cutting against his eyes. He stared at me for a long moment, shaking his head several times as though it might remove me from his vision, but no amount of doing so could drive the sight of me away.
“But – why?”
I paused to look at him steadily, straining to get any hint of the words that I had planned to say to consent to leave my mouth.
“Because I missed you.”
Ch. 6
“Why don't you come inside?”
Though it took her nearly four minutes to do so, the woman managed to speak quite calmly when she finally found her voice. While my father was still too stunned to do more than splutter, he managed to shake himself enough to take a step back and allow me to cross through the door.
It was a spacious house, a bit too contemporary and empty to be livable, with polished floors and simple furniture that contrasted sharply to the home that we had once lived in together. I eased into the front hallway carefully. Despite how clean my boat shoes were, it felt as though stepping on the carpet would leave horrible imprints of my feet against the ivory.
“I'll make tea,” the woman said, shutting the door as my father stepped back inside after me. She hurried through to the kitchen that was situated off to the right. From where I stood, I could only see the stretch of marble counter and the three oddly-shaped chairs lined up at the island, though I could hear her taking something out of a cabinet and placing it down upon the stove. I pulled my eyes away and looked back at my father.
“So you drink tea now?”
His head shifted to the side, surprised that that was the first thing that I chose to say. Perhaps he didn't remember letting me sip from his coffee cup when I was younger, or the way the scent of it always overrode that of my mother's peppermint tea except for the times that he had been away on business trips, but the smell of it was one of the only remaining things I still cared to associate with him.
“I do, yes,” he said. “Things change.”
“Right.”
I turned to look at the room on the other side of the hall, which appeared to be the living room. It had two lone couches, neither of which was a standard shape, and an assortment of furniture that was laid out as though on display rather than used for living purposes. The entirety of the place looked like some sort of overly-modern art museum.
“What are you doing here, Enim?”
I turned back to him slowly and gave a noncommittal shrug. The majority of my doubt had edged away to make room for the separate feeling of coldness that had come over my skin.
“I wanted to see you.”
“Yes, well – I rather thought you might have called.”
“Right. I thought about it, only I don't really like hearing voices that aren't attached t
o people that I can't see,” I said. “You know, given the diagnosis and everything.”
My father circled about me and shepherded me from the hallway to the living room, throwing an anxious glance over his shoulder as he did so.
“Yes, well, that's – that's understandable, but a letter or email would have sufficed just as well.”
“I hadn't thought of that.”
He steered me over to the fireplace. There was a line of photographs on the mantel of the woman and a few dark-haired children, half of which contained my father. I eyed them distastefully.
“You can imagine my surprise, Enim. I had no idea that you were well enough to leave the facility, and certainly none that you had planned to come here. You should have let me know so that we could have made the proper arrangements.”
“So she comes with kids, too?” I asked, ignoring his lecture.
“I – what? Melinda has children, yes.”
“Where'd you meet her?”
“I – we worked together, for a short period of time.”
He watched me closely as though waiting for a great response, but none came. Whether it was the result of the medication that had finally stabilized my moods or just the sheer disconnect that I felt from him, the news hardly seemed to matter. He was someone else now, just like I was: it seemed fitting that he went on with his new life separately from mine.
“When did it happen?”
“When did what happen?”
I turned back to face him, my eyes traveling down to the hand hanging loosely at his side. There was a silver band running around his finger. The last time I had seen him, it had been gold.
“The wedding.”
He ran his tongue hesitantly over his teeth, glancing again at the open doorway and then back at me.
“It – it was in March.”
I gave a slow shake of my head, but my expression was as blank as ever.
“Wow. You waited a whole … eight weeks after Mom died?”
He tightened his jaw.
“It wasn't like that, Enim. She was – your mother was gone long before that.”
Song to the Moon (Damnatio Memoriae Book 2) Page 8
