Remember Us

by Lindsay Blake

  “I don’t want to talk about it.” I turned my back on her.

  “Everything changed the minute I had you. I swear. I couldn’t imagine any world except one with you in it. I could never imagine this,” she whispered and waved her hand at me.

  I pretended I hadn’t heard.

  When we ushered Ben and Dad into the garden an hour later, dusk was falling, showcasing the glow of our twinkle lights. Our movie screen, one of Grandma’s cream bed sheets, hung between two trees, and we’d carried the venerable green couch out from the sunroom. I’d placed large pillar candles around the patio and they flickered in the half light. The night smelled like freshly-cut grass and garlic. Rocky barked and danced between our feet, like Bernice always insisting on an extra measure of the room’s attention.

  It took the men a minute to take it all in. Ben said, “Cool,” grabbed a slice of pizza, and dropped onto the couch. Bernice started to cry. And Dad, he didn’t say a word, but smiled and smiled until the first movie came to an end two hours later.

  For years, Friday nights had been a “stay in” night for us to watch movies and eat pizza as a family. They stopped altogether after she left.

  So the four of us ate pizza and watched movies on a Friday night once more. Ben and I picked Close Encounters for our movie choice, and we let the parentals pick the second, knowing they’d go for something even older, like Roman Holiday, which is exactly what they did.

  “Predictable,” I muttered loud enough for only Ben to hear.

  We drank two bottles of red wine and fell asleep under the stars and spring’s warm blanket, right before the depressing part of the movie where Princess Ann and Joe Bradley decide they can’t be together.

  Because sometimes sleeping through reality is the only way to make it safely to the other side.

  7

  Reese

  “Reese’s Pieces, you know I love you.” Dad and I sat together on the front porch swing before dinner.

  “Dad, I know.” He hadn’t told me since I was ten.

  “Reese, I want you to go back to your life. I’m practically healthy as a horse, or I will be by the time you fly to Atlanta and say ‘Snickerdoodle.’” Above his ever-growing beard, his eyes read somber.

  “Dad, I—”

  “It’s time for you to get on with your life, to go back and take some more of those photos of yours. The world is waiting, and I’m the only one with enough balls to say it.”

  It wasn’t the most eloquent speech, nor was it an apology, but it was a start, and I made a mental note to tell Ben Dad said balls. “Dad, you know I’m staying, right?”

  “I know, but I had to try.” He pulled me into his chest.

  “Dinner’s ready,” Bernice yelled out the kitchen window, breaking the moment in half.

  We shoved food around our plates in silence until Dad farted, right in the middle of dinner, as I passed the peas and waited for the asparagus. It was loud and windy and for a moment I froze, staring hard at the table.

  “You passed the peas; he passed the gas,” Ben said under his breath.

  We grew up in a house of strict decorum. Gentility was not dead in Mississippi and Bernice transported it all the way to Nebraska with her suitcases and her whole heart when she moved north in high school. So we didn’t talk about farts; we called it “passing gas” if it ever had to be discussed. Nor did we indulge in discourse on sex, rock n’ roll or the mediocrity of President Jimmy Carter. I called it The Code of the South but was never quite sure where my mother’s mandates ended and where the actual Southern delicacies began. She used her Southern background at random, when it was convenient or she wanted to seem engaging.

  So when he farted, I froze, obliged to ignore the rudeness and cover it with something distracting and generic. I cleared my throat and was preparing to dialogue in minute detail about the week’s weather report, when Dad snickered.

  Bernice looked conflicted; she’d always lectured Dad in these sorts of moments before, but when Dad let out another snicker, Ben was right behind him. Boys and their farts. Let’s be honest, what’s so funny about that?

  On and on they continued until Bernice and I joined in, sides aching, a moment of sweet, happy relief we could not deny.

  I grabbed my camera from under my chair, for what is better than capturing laughter and her lines? Click. In one millisecond, the moment was captured, a recording that proved for at least a moment we’d laughed simultaneously.

  When we settled down, Bernice excused herself to dish up more food, and on the way back slipped, dropping the bowl of creamed, steaming spuds.

  For a minute we couldn’t tell if she was going to cry or curse and before we could live in the verdict, Ben, dear Ben, threw a dinner roll at her head.

  It bounced off her well-sprayed curls. Rocky yipped in excitement and went chasing after it into the hallway.

  Bernice’s look of surprise didn’t have time to grow old before Ben threw another and another and then one at me. And before I knew it, there were chairs turned sideways and a swirl of fatty Southern foods hurtling through the air while Rocky barked and danced between us all.

  It was an absurdity—the shambles in the dining room, the parallel mess of our family. And then our hilarity shifted to tears, a steady river of grief, a prominence of words unvoiced between us as we huddled around Dad on those ancient wooden floors, laughing and sobbing intermittently.

  As I watched my father cry for the first time in as long as I could remember, the earth shifted on its axis.

  I didn’t know then that we’d look a lot more broken before we laughed like that again. I didn’t know some messes were meant to stay. I didn’t know how complex it would be to sort the pieces of our family’s story. I didn’t know, so I remained in Omaha. When I looked back later, I would always wonder if that was the moment I should have walked away like Dad advised, wondered if it would have made any difference at all.

  Bernice

  On June 10, the anniversary of our first date, I wore my blue dress because Carl had always loved me in blue. I found myself dropping dishes, trailing off in the middle of sentences to Benjamin all morning.

  It had been thirty-four years since we’d gone on our very first date to get ice cream. I’d worn a yellow dress and red shoes, and later Carl told me my pinked lips and blazing eyes had held him captivated as we sat at the park in the warm afternoon, thinking the sky was our limit, feeling as if we’d been there together forever. Even on the first date, I loved his laugh, silent and strong. I’d fallen for him in the space of one afternoon, two short hours. I put a finger on his shoulder, playfully shoving him, and fire flew through my body.

  Through the decades, we’d always celebrated June 10. We both knew after that one date we’d found our matching half, and we felt it should be commemorated. Most people celebrated their wedding date, if they could actually get around to remembering it at all. But Carl and I, we honored both days—the one we fell in love and the one we committed to a lifetime together. Milestones matter.

  For all our years together—except the last ones when he was too distracted to notice anything except the inches in front of his face—Carl had sent me bouquets of flowers on our anniversaries. Marigolds had always been my special flower, so he’d insist on extra of those, even the year there had been a bug infestation that ate most of the crop and they were selling for triple the price.

  Even after I left, I’d celebrated our days annually. Every anniversary had been toasted with a full bottle of red wine and a call to Carl. I’d hang up as soon as he answered, of course, but hearing his “Hello,” imagining the warmth of his breath through the phone, it was enough, almost enough, knowing he was alive in the world.

  I wanted to ask when he had ceased to wake up with a catch in his heart on one of our special days and wondered if he’d call to mind the importance of the date this year. After all these years, I doubted he’d even remember. I was another girl; it was a different lifetime.

  I craved his forgi
veness, hoped beyond hope Carl would remember, would acknowledge all we’d had. If any remembrance could soften his heart, I knew our anniversary would be it. So by mid-morning, I’d convinced myself it was now or never. I went out and purchased a bouquet of marigolds, which I put on the coffee table in the living room. I slipped a note into the book he was reading. Carl, would you please do me the honor of a coffee out today? I’d like to talk.

  I found a dozen excuses to walk by him for the next two hours, and when he finally nodded, I knew what he was saying.

  “Great, let’s head out before dinner.” I turned on my heel, face afire, heart beating its way outside my chest. Carl had agreed to talk. To me.

  We left before Benjamin and Reese got home from work, and I was so nervous during the drive, I didn’t say one word. I paid for our coffees and we settled into a booth, studied each other like we were parlaying before a battle.

  “Well?” Carl pushed his coffee aside.

  “Carl.” My heart dissolved into a puddle, some incoherent mess. “I want to know where we went wrong.” I’d dissected it a million times since and always wished it could be narrowed down to one single decision, one irreversible moment setting the course of our future. But in my mind, it was more convoluted than that.

  “You left.”

  “I did. I did.” I took a deep breath. “But I think maybe you left me too. Before.” He growled, and I tapped the table, a nervous habit which set my bracelets jingling. “I’m saying you stopped talking to me. You wouldn’t go with me to counseling. I’m not saying this is your fault.”

  “Of course it’s not my fault.” He slurped coffee and slammed his mug back down. “I only agreed to talk to you today because I almost died. And that makes a man think. I’ve been doing a lot of thinking lately.”

  “That’s good, Carl. I’m glad.” He glared at me, and my insides sank. “Well, tell me where you think it started. Before.”

  “Do you want me to talk about the guy at your office—Adam, Ayron, whatever his name was—or your promotion first?”

  “Carl, we’ve been over this. Nothing happened.”

  “Your definition of nothing is interesting.”

  “What about when Brett screwed you over with the investment property?” More than the money his friend up and took, there was the pain of a lost friendship, of loyalty smashed to pieces. Carl was laid off a month later and nobody was hiring in the recession, not even highly talented architects.

  “It had nothing to do with it,” Carl said, a second wave of sadness crossing his face.

  “I think it didn’t help.” I forced out the words, even after all these years remembering the pain. I’d worked extra hours to carry us, much to his embarrassment. Months went by and then a year or two. I still saw no signs of my love in the listless man who came to the dinner table and my bed, night after night without a thank you, without a “How are you?” to break the silence. I tried to talk to him, to shake him, to reason with him in turn, but nothing worked. He was lost inside his misery and we became strangers.

  “Well, maybe.” Carl fiddled with his coffee cup.

  “It was a hard time for us.” I laid my hand on his and he didn’t pull away. We’d been shadows, shells, existing but not living in our own story. We didn’t talk, we didn’t make decisions together. Biting words and disdain grew where there had been respect and listening. I don’t know how it happened, only knew it was poison.

  “Well,” Carl said.

  “Well,” I replied. I was destroyed inside the nightmare. Every day I felt trapped, unseen, at the end of my rope. I thought I was going to burst, and no one understood when I told them what was happening behind our walls. They all said to give it time, to get ahold of myself. They acted like it was my fault. And then there was the baby—but of course he hadn’t known about that.

  “I didn’t like how I never saw you. You weren’t there for me.” His look dared me to disagree.

  “Someone had to—” I snapped before I stopped myself. “I did work a lot.”

  “You were never there.” His glare stung.

  On and on it went. Two decades of bottled hurt and anger simmered, boiled to the surface. He said this and I heard that. I remembered this, but he’d forgotten that. We ripped into each other, claws out, souls bared, and I wasn’t the only one who found my eyes full of tears.

  There was more yelling on the way home. He was still furious with me, but his anger helped me find a fury of my own.

  We went out again the next day. And the day after that it was his idea to go out for lunch; he seemed a little fascinated, almost as if he was excited to spend time with me. The kids caught us getting out of the car mid-laugh and gave us strange looks but went back inside without a word. On the fourth afternoon, our coffee led to cocktails, which led to dinner, which led to more coffee, which led to staying up all night like we were sixteen again. We yelled over the first coffee, flirted through the drinks, settled down to ask questions and listen over the dinner hour, and couldn’t keep our hands off each other during dessert. Hope grew inside of me like a fire, a train.

  We continued our dialogue every day because there was a wasteland between us to be razed, but we were taking tentative steps through the chaos. He vacillated between anger, quiet, and desire. My own emotions were equally as complicated: frustration and love partnered at every turn. But in less than a week, Carl and I were on the upswing of friendly. It was the only miracle I’d ever witnessed firsthand, and I wasn’t going to question it.

  The morning after Carl and I sat in the living room kissing like teenagers until 2 a.m., Reese and I were alone in the kitchen. She wore a dated blazer and ill-fitting pants, and I hoped she hadn’t noticed my grimace upon her entrance.

  “Carl is as sexy as Cary Grant soaking wet,” I proclaimed as she poured her coffee.

  “Ew. No. Don’t. I don’t want to know what you’re talking about.” She shoved her face into the fridge as I took a dainty sip of my coffee.

  “I’m just saying.” We hadn’t told the kids about our half-formed truce, but I couldn’t keep the news entirely to myself either. “I get titillated thinking of the possibilities.”

  “Please never use the word ‘titillated’ again in my presence.”

  “Titillated? Titillated is a wonderful word. It speaks volumes.” I arched my eyebrow at her. “Titillated.”

  She disappeared into the pantry.

  “Speaking of which, my friend Ruth recently gave me a recipe for a hot chocolate bath and my word. Pass the whipped cream, sugar.”

  She reappeared, making a gagging noise. “I’m going into Dad’s office for the morning.”

  “Are you taking your father with you?” He was certainly doing well enough to go back to work, but I for one didn’t mind if he took another sick day.

  “Nah, it sounds like you two have some catching up to do.” She gave me the peace sign and left her fresh cup of coffee on the granite counter.

  8

  Reese

  “Dad’s turning fifty this month. What should we do?” I cornered Ben and Bernice in the kitchen while Dad showered.

  “Let’s have a partayyyy!” Bernice shimmied around the kitchen, hips wagging, braceleted arms waving wide.

  “Uh, I was thinking more like a party, something simple.” I looked at Ben.

  “Ladies, this is Carl Clifford Hamilton we’re talking about. Maybe we should look up something under the chill section of the menu.”

  In the end, we compromised on a picnic, a simple celebration to honor this father of ours. None of us dared to say out loud, “This could have been his last.”

  His birthday was June 21, stuck right in the middle of the calendar. We decided to widen the doors to celebrate his fiftieth and snuck his sister Naomi, the Fischers from across the street, his squash partner Earl, and his best friend Doug to our back garden without Dad suspecting a thing. Charlie’s parents flew from Arizona to be there too.

  The day was warm, not quite hot, and the clouds
scattered low and puffy in the sky. The table lined with lemonade pitchers, desserts, and sandwiches took us all morning to assemble and the fence full of photos and notes even longer.

  I don’t know when I’d seen Dad as thunderstruck. The party commenced at three in the afternoon and at ten, most of us were still in the garden, tucked under the stars, sipping our Baileys and coffee.

  “I’d like to propose a toast.” Ben stood on a chair, the moon hanging precariously over his shoulder. He waited for everyone to quiet down. “To my Dad. The one who taught me how to fish, how to love, how to keep going when all looked lost. I love ya, Dad.” He raised his mug and there was a collective “Hear, hear,” as people dabbed their eyes and took modest sips of their drinks.

  “I’d like to say something too.” Bernice appeared uncharacteristically nervous as she clambered up beside Ben. She looked at Dad, as if waiting for his permission, and his shrug was all she needed. “Carl, you almost died this last year, but you didn’t. Thank goodness for second chances. Carl, you are a good man. A lot of people have misunderstood you through the years, thought you were hard-hearted or just plumb mean. But Carl, there is no one like you. I’ve travelled a bit you know, and I’ve never, ever—” She gasped in large quantities of air but couldn’t get the crying under control. She’d definitely had her share of the wine tonight and Rocky’s too.

  While Ben comforted Bernice, I cleared my throat. “Well, not surprisingly, it seems I missed the Hamilton memo about giving speeches tonight.”

  The crickets sang into the still night as people chuckled politely.

  “One of my favorite memories of Dad is back when I was seven, and we were out rafting on the river. Someone was being crazy and rocking the boat, ahem.” I blew Ben a kiss and waited for the laughter to settle. “I thought I was going to fall overboard, but Dad reached out, grabbed my hand, and wouldn’t let go. I don’t know if I’ve felt so safe since. Thanks, Dad. Cheers.” I was surprised at the story that rose so readily to the surface, and as echoes of “Cheers” filled the yard, I wondered once more if I would ever feel that safe again.