Looking into You

by Chris Fabry

Treha’s grandfather grabbed the box so quickly that her mother stumbled, the chair tipped, and she fell into the shelves, barely able to catch herself.

  Treha was there in a flash, holding her until she could right herself. “Are you all right?”

  “I’m fine,” her mother said, glancing at her father. He had the box at his desk, running his hands over the dust and clearing it away.

  “The nurse is almost here,” Treha’s grandmother said, walking tentatively into the room. She stared at her husband hovering over the wooden box. “John?”

  He put it on the desk, grabbed the wheeled chair, pulled it to himself, and fell in. Wrinkled hands lifted the top open and the other three in the room crept closer.

  “What did you keep in there?” Treha said.

  “My journal—there it is. That’s my first journal. Mom, I had no idea you still had this.”

  “I didn’t know it was here either.”

  There were ancient birthday cards, pictures of Treha’s mother as a child, a pendant that she said her father had given her on her sixteenth birthday, a ring, as well as a collection of coins from other countries scattered at the bottom.

  The old man moved the journal and pulled out a long, velvet pouch tied at the top. He removed it with shaking hands and sat back.

  “What in the world do you have there, honey?” his wife said.

  His breathing grew more rapid and his hands shook. He ground his teeth and began making a low, guttural sound like some frightened woodland animal caught in a trap.

  Treha touched his shoulder. “It’s all right. You found it. Do you want me to open it for you?”

  His head wobbled like a bobblehead doll. He gave a hint of a smile. Just the slightest rise of his upper lip over worn teeth. Then he placed the pouch in Treha’s hands.

  “What’s he doing?” her grandmother whispered.

  Treha looked at her mother, who couldn’t speak or breathe. Her grandfather was calm, almost expectant as he watched. Treha knelt in front of him and untied the leather cord that held the pouch tightly closed. When it opened, she pulled out a wooden ink pen, the same kind Treha had seen her mother carry.

  A single word was carved into the wood.

  Treha.

  She looked up at the old man, then at her mother. “How long has this been in there?”

  Her grandmother held out a hand. “Let me see that.” She studied the pen. “He had to have made this years ago, when we were still . . . John, is this what you’ve been looking for? Is this why you’ve been upset?”

  The doorbell rang. “I’ll get it,” Treha’s mother said.

  Treha watched as a light dawned on her grandmother’s face and the transformation was complete.

  “You,” she said, turning to Treha. “It was always you.”

  “I don’t understand,” Treha said.

  “When I talked about you to your mother, when I spoke your name—or wouldn’t talk about you. He would get agitated. And he climbed up here and searched and searched.”

  The woman was crying now, wiping at her tears. Treha put a hand on her shoulder, and her grandmother closed her eyes and shook her head.

  “I was the one who made Paige go away,” she said. “I sent you away. John said we should keep you and raise you as our own. He talked about you. Wondered where you might be, what you were doing. When we prayed at night, lying side by side, he would speak your name and pray. I asked him to stop. I told him it was too painful.”

  “How did he know my name?”

  “Paige wrote him a letter after you were born. She mentioned that she had asked the adoptive family to keep your first name. He must have carved this pen for you while we were still overseas.”

  Treha took the pen back and traced the letters with a finger, then looked at the man who carved them. She kissed his forehead. “Thank you for my pen. Thank you for loving me.”

  His eyes were a faded blue and around the edges were splotches of dark pink and red and veins that were too big. But he smiled again. With great effort he tried to push some word from his own deep cavern, trapped and hidden by layers of boxes and promises and heartache. He struggled to draw it out, his face tightening.

  Treha patted his hand and he relaxed. Some words didn’t have to be spoken between a grandfather and granddaughter.

  CHAPTER 40

  Paige

  I called Beverly and told her we were coming home. I thanked her for her advice and told her she had been right. Moving toward Treha had been the best decision I had ever made. She said they were planning a reading group get-together where they would welcome our newest member, and I wept when I hung up because it is a wonderful thing to have a friend who knows you.

  My father spoke only a handful of words while Treha and I were there, but it was enough to see him content and not agitated, sitting with Treha watching television or just looking out the window. Her presence calmed him and my mother and I marveled at their connection.

  We stepped off the plane in Nashville and felt the full onslaught of fall, a new season with new possibilities. As we walked toward the parking lot, Treha put a hand on my arm. When I saw what she was looking at, my heart picked up speed.

  Smiling, Ron Gleason held up a poster that said Welcome home, Paige and Treha. “Dr. Beckwith told me you were returning this morning. I hope you don’t mind.”

  “I’ve never had a welcoming committee,” Treha said.

  “I’m not sure one is a committee,” Ron said. “It’s good to see you. It sounds like you’ve been on quite an adventure.”

  “Thank you for coming,” I said, putting a hand on his arm. Coming here was a sweet gesture, kind and thoughtful. The thought crossed my mind then that if Ron was willing to accept and embrace my life, my past, my inabilities, and the ways I’d run from him, perhaps I could run toward him, too. Toward another something good.

  “I was thinking of grabbing something for dinner on the way home,” I said. “Would you like to join us?”

  He smiled. “I’d love it. But let me get the food and meet you there. You go home and get settled.”

  The night brought laughter and tears. I told Ron everything about the trip, about the past, and it felt like something loosened inside. When Treha yawned and said she was too tired to talk more, Ron put the food away while I showed Treha her room. And then it was just the two of us, finishing the dishes together.

  “Are you thinking you’ll try to return to school now that you’re back?” Ron said as we moved to the living room. “I wasn’t sure if I should say anything with Treha here. I didn’t want to overstep.”

  “You’d come to the airport with a sign and you’re afraid of overstepping?” I said.

  He smiled, taking a seat on the couch in front of the fire. I chose a spot next to him, close to him.

  “I’d like to fight for my position there. I think it would be good for me to follow through. With my thesis, the teaching. I really love it, you know? What happened has been a gift. I can see that. The whole thing was something that may liberate both Treha and me.”

  “What has Treha decided about Bethesda?”

  “She’s going to leave.”

  “I see. I can understand that.”

  “She’ll stay with me, at least for now. After the semester we’ll both go visit and help my mother with my dad. I don’t think it will be long before . . .”

  “You want to be a family again.”

  “Yes. And when I’ve finished my dissertation, I’m thinking of writing. Continuing to write.”

  “That’s wonderful. What do you want to write about?”

  “I think I have something more important on my heart. Treha and me. I want to tell how this struggle we’ve gone through brought us together. How she brought me to myself. And how I almost missed real life.”

  “I think that’s great, Paige. I’ll buy the first copy.”

  “There’s just one thing missing.” I waited a bit for dramatic effect. I had practiced this on the drive home from the a
irport with Treha. She had suggested the silence.

  “What’s that?” he said.

  “Us.”

  He leaned forward. “Us? I didn’t know there was an ‘us.’”

  “There doesn’t have to be if you don’t want it.”

  “Oh, I want an ‘us,’” he said. “I’ve always hoped for an ‘us.’ An ‘us’ is more than fine with me.”

  “I know, and it took the trip and a lot of thinking to realize . . . I wanted to have this conversation with you, invite you here. When you showed up with that goofy-looking sign today, something melted inside.”

  He put a hand on my arm and I swear I felt a tingle. Not an explosion or fireworks over Niagara Falls or anything like that, but a tingle.

  “I’ve spent my life rolling this big stone over my heart. Treha helped roll it away. I don’t want to live like that anymore. And I don’t know where this will lead, I don’t know the future, but I know I’ll regret it if I don’t give ‘us’ a chance.”

  Ron smiled. “Wow.”

  I smiled back. “That’s the best you can do? Wow?”

  “I’ve never had an answer to prayer show up on a couch looking so beautiful,” he said.

  “Kiss her,” Treha said behind us, peeking around the corner. I swear she smiled before she ran back to her room.

  And he did. He leaned forward and closed his eyes and kissed my lips.

  Wow.

  There is no greater power on earth than a mother’s love, unless it is a child’s desire for it. There is no greater power than love that rolls stones away.

  After Ron left, I settled into bed and fell asleep holding a book, dipping again into a familiar story. I was awakened deep in the night by Treha climbing into bed next to me and burying her head beside me under the covers. I turned off the light and hugged her with one arm.

  “Did you talk with him?” she said.

  “You know we talked. You heard every word.”

  “Not every word.”

  “You have to promise you’re not going to spy on our every date.”

  “I promise.”

  I closed my eyes, night sounds leaking through the window, my hand on my daughter’s back, her even breathing lulling me toward rest, toward sleep. And the words rose in my mind. The story of our lives. But instead of waking me, the words soothed and salved the ache, a balm to a weary mind.

  When I woke up, the morning sun was streaming through the window, and Treha was still there, sleeping peacefully.

  Turn the page for a preview of

  THE PROMISE of JESSE WOODS

  Available now in bookstores and online

  SUNDAY, OCTOBER 7, 1984

  The elevated train clacked outside my apartment, meandering on its predetermined path through Chicago. Beyond the tracks loomed the Cabrini-Green housing project, where Dantrelle Garrett lived. Dantrelle sat on my couch tossing a weathered baseball into my old glove, watching the final game of the NLCS between the Cubs and Padres.

  “Who’s that?” Dantrelle said, pointing at a picture on my bookshelf.

  “My brother and me. That was a long time ago.”

  He studied the photo. “You’re not from around here, are you?”

  It was the first time in the three months since I’d met Dantrelle that he had asked anything about my background. I took it as an invitation.

  “I grew up in Pittsburgh, then moved to a little town in West Virginia.”

  “Where’s that?”

  “A long way from Cabrini,” I said.

  “Do you love you mama and daddy?”

  “Sure.”

  “Then how come you don’t have a picture of them?”

  “I do, in an album somewhere.”

  “If you love somebody, they ought to be on top of the shelf.”

  I shrugged.

  “How come you moved to Chicago?”

  These were penetrating questions from an eight-year-old kid, but they grow up quickly in the projects. I told him about my schooling, how I had majored in theater and minored in counseling, but his eyes glazed.

  “You want popcorn?” I said.

  Dantrelle nodded and I pulled out my biggest pot and heated the oil. The smell of the popcorn and drizzled butter triggered a memory, but I pushed it aside and sat beside Dantrelle.

  “When I was a kid, I loved the Pirates. The Pirates were my life. But we moved to this town where everybody rooted for the Reds. And the Pirates and Reds were rivals.”

  “Like the Cubs and the White Sox.”

  “Yeah, sort of. Except they were in the same league.”

  Dantrelle shoved a handful of popcorn in his mouth and butter dripped from his chin. I handed him a napkin and he put it on his lap.

  “You think the Cubs are going to win?” he said, ignoring my story.

  It had been a phenomenal year to be a Cubs fan. Every game on channel 9. Harry Caray and Steve Stone and “Jump” by Van Halen. Sutcliffe and Sandberg and Cey.

  “Yeah, I think they will. No way the Padres win three in a row.”

  It was disorienting to hear Don Drysdale, a lifelong Dodger, describe the game instead of Harry Caray. The Cubs had won the first two at home and lost the next two in San Diego.

  In the bottom of the seventh, my phone rang and I almost let it go, thinking it might be my mother. But I picked up the cordless handset just as a ground ball rolled through Leon Durham’s legs and into right field. Dantrelle cursed. The Padres evened the score at 3–3.

  “Matt?” a voice said with a familiar twang.

  “Who is this?” I said.

  A chuckle on the other end. “A voice from your past.”

  “Dickie?” I said. Keith Moreland fired the ball to the infield, the Cubs’ curse alive. “How are you?”

  “Lookin’ for a breakthrough,” he said, and his words brought back every bittersweet thing from my youth. I had lost touch with Dickie. After high school I had ripped the rearview off my life.

  “You’re probably going to see a breakthrough sooner than the Cubs. You watching this game?”

  “I was never into baseball.”

  I closed my eyes and saw the hills and Dickie’s bike and trips to Blake’s store.

  Dickie Darrel Lee Hancock was the son of a white mother and an African American father. That would have been a hardship anywhere in 1972, but it was a knapsack full of rocks on his forced march through his childhood in Dogwood. Dickie lived with his mother in a garage apartment on the outskirts of town, and it always seemed he was outside looking in. I guess that’s what drew the three of us together. We were all on the outside.

  “How did you get my number?” I said.

  “Called your parents, PB.”

  PB. I hadn’t been called that in years and the sound of it warmed me.

  “They said you don’t have much contact with the past.”

  “That’s not true,” I lied.

  “Took me a while to wrangle your number from them. I suspect they didn’t want me to call because of the news.”

  I stood and touched Dantrelle’s shoulder. “I’ll be right back.” I stepped out of the apartment into the hall and the door closed behind me. “What news is that?”

  “Jesse’s news.”

  Her name, and Dickie saying it, sent a shiver through me. I’d been waiting for this. I’d had a foreboding feeling for years. “Is she all right? Did something happen?”

  “She’s engaged, Matt. The wedding is Saturday.”

  “This Saturday?”

  “Yeah. I just heard about it or I would have tracked you down sooner. My mama told me.”

  I walked down the hallway to a window that allowed a clear view of the el tracks and the specter of the housing project. From my building east was a thriving, churning city. A block west, past this Mason-Dixon Line, was another world. It reminded me of Dogwood.

  “Who’s she marrying?”

  “What’s that noise?” Dickie said, avoiding the question.

  I paused, not hearing anything, th
en realized the train was passing. The open window let in not only the heavy autumn air but the clacking sound track of my life.

  I told him about the train, then asked again, “So who’s the lucky guy?”

  “Earl Turley.”

  My stomach clenched. I couldn’t speak.

  “Yeah, I can’t believe it either,” Dickie said to my silence. “I know how you felt about her.”

  “Wow,” I said. “I appreciate you telling me.”

  Dickie paused like there was more. “Matt, your dad is officiating.”

  His words felt like a dagger. “Well, we were never on the best of terms when it came to Jesse.”

  “I get that. I know how they felt about her too.”

  “Are you going to the wedding?” I said.

  “Wasn’t invited.”

  “You didn’t answer the question.”

  “That’s not the question, Matt. The question is, what are you going to do?”

  “Do?” I said. “It’s a little late in the game to do anything. Jesse has a mind of her own.”

  “Yeah, but you were the one she turned to when life got hard. Maybe it’s not too late.”

  “If you’re talking romance, Jesse never felt the same as I did.”

  “That’s not true.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “You don’t know everything about her. I know she confided in you, but there are some things . . . Look, it’s none of my business. I thought I’d call and let you know.”

  “Wait, you know something. You remember something.”

  Dickie sighed. “I talked with her a couple of times. After you left for college. She told me things she regretted. Decisions she made. She made me promise to keep quiet about them. But she must’ve figured I would be the last person to tell you anything. I guess I’m breaking a promise even making this phone call.”

  “Which is something Jesse would never do,” I said. Though there was one promise she was breaking by marrying Earl, and I couldn’t shake that fact. Dickie was privy to many of the secrets between Jesse and me, but not all of them.

  There is magical thinking a child develops when he believes the world revolves around him. He begins to think he has power to control life’s events. I’d always blamed myself for the 1972 Pirates. If I hadn’t left Pittsburgh, things would have turned out differently. A butterfly on the other side of the world flapping its wings. A child in a suburb praying for his team. I had grown out of that mind-set by moving to Chicago and growing up, but something about the memory of Jesse and what she had done, what I had forced her to do, made me wonder if I could prevent another tragedy in her life.