Chapter 5 - Everything He Left Out
Marcus picked up the envelope. He turned it over once and set it back down without opening it.
"Before I read anything in here," he said, "I need the rest of it. The parts you skipped."
My father wrapped both hands around his mug. "What do you think I skipped?"
"You said a letter came. Years later. That's how you found out about Carol." Marcus's voice stayed level, the way it did when he was being careful. "Who sent it?"
My father was quiet.
"Somebody knew where to find you," Marcus said. "Carol died and somebody reached out to you directly. Who?"
"Her sister," my father said. "Ruth. She and Carol were close. Ruth thought I had a right to know, even though she didn't much want to be the one telling me."
"Did Ruth know who I was when I started working for you?"
Another pause. Longer.
"Yes," my father said.
I leaned forward. "So Carol's sister knew. You knew. And the two of you watched Marcus drive your car for six years and said nothing."
"Ruth wanted nothing to do with me after she mailed that letter. She made that clear. Whatever I did with it was my business, not hers." He looked at Marcus. "She asked me once whether I'd talked to you. I told her I hadn't found the right moment."
"And what did she say?"
"She said some moments don't sit around waiting to be found." He put the mug down. "She was right."
Marcus leaned back in his chair. I could feel him working through it, the way he worked through everything — slow, complete, turning it over until he had the shape of it.
"I'd like to meet her," he said.
"I figured you might. She's still local. In her seventies now. Never married." My father paused. "She has photographs. Your mother, when she was young. Things I don't have. Things you should probably have."
The kitchen was very quiet. From the living room came the low sound of the TV and my son laughing at something.
"Why did you really hire me?" Marcus asked. "Not the version from out on the porch. The real one."
My father looked straight at him. "Because I was a coward who wanted to know his son without ever admitting he had one."
It was the most honest thing I'd ever heard the man say.
Marcus nodded once. Not forgiveness. Not yet. Just acknowledgment. The recognition that something true had finally been said.
"And when I started seeing your daughter?" Marcus asked.
"I was furious."
"Because of who I was to you? Or who you thought I was?"
"Both," my father said. "And neither one made any sense, and I knew it, and I said what I said anyway. Because I'd spent fifty years building a wall around everything I was ashamed of, and the two of you together felt like it was going to bring the whole thing down on my head."
"It did," I said.
"Yes." He looked at me. "It did."
I thought about the morning my key stopped working. I'd stood outside the gate of the house I grew up in with my suitcase next to my feet, and I'd promised myself I would not cry. I didn't. I called a cab and went to Marcus's apartment and sat on his hand-me-down couch and felt, underneath all the hurt, something it took me years to name.
Relief. That the wall was down. That I was on the outside of it.
"I need to ask you something," I said to my father. "And I need you to be honest."
"All right."
"If Marcus didn't look the way he looks. If our son didn't have that face. Would you have come?"
He didn't answer right away. He looked at the photo lying between us on the table.
"I'd like to tell you yes," he said.
"That's not what I asked."
"No," he said quietly. "It isn't." He was silent a moment. "I've had this address for three years. I've driven down this street twice. Both times I told myself I was waiting for the right time." He looked up. "I don't know if I'd have gotten out of the car without a reason I couldn't argue with. And that's the most shameful thing I've said today, and I've said a few."
I looked at him across the table. Eight years. Two drive-bys. A photo in his coat pocket.
"Okay," I said.
"Okay?"
"I'm not ready to forgive you. I want that to be clear. But I'm not going to ask you to leave either." I glanced toward the living room, where my son had turned off the TV and was now, apparently, delivering a lecture to his sister. "They deserve to know their grandfather. Whatever happened between you and me doesn't change that."
My father's throat moved. "Thank you," he said.
"Don't thank me yet," I said. "You still have to get through dinner."
Marcus stood and opened the fridge. He stood there studying the shelves with the focused look of a man who has decided to do something useful with his hands.
"Hope you're not picky about pasta," he said to my father.
My father looked at the back of Marcus's head. At the man he'd hired to drive his car. At his son, standing in his daughter's kitchen, about to cook dinner.
"I'm not picky about anything anymore," he said.
From the living room, my son's voice went up with sudden urgency. "Dad! Dad, come tell her I'm right!"
Marcus shut the fridge and went.
May you like
My father and I sat alone at the table, and for the first time in eight years, the quiet between us wasn't a wall. It was just quiet. But underneath it I could feel something moving that hadn't finished moving yet.
The envelope was still on the table. Neither of us had touched it.
