Finding Noel (25 page)

Saturday morning as the sun peeked over the Wasatch Range, I picked Victor up and we drove to the airport. Even though I pushed thoughts of Macy from my mind, there were reminders everywhere I looked.
How could we have created so much history in such a brief time?
I wondered. For the first time since I met him, Victor's conversation actually concerned something pertinent to the real world. He wanted to know why I was going back to Alabama. I couldn't really answer him. Or maybe I just didn't want to. “It's just time,” I said.

He had already paid me for my car, and he dropped me off curbside at the Delta terminal. I pulled my two bags from the trunk. We said goodbye and he drove off in my Malibu. I curb-checked my bags, shoved my boarding pass into my shirt pocket and went inside the terminal to wait.

My flight took me from Salt Lake City International through Atlanta's Hartsfield with a three-hour layover. I had plenty of time to think. Macy was right about one thing: in the last four weeks I had thought little about my mother. It was not that she was forgettable; it was rather that I was afraid of where those thoughts might take me. Now, as I prepared to face my loss head-on, I realized how distant I really was from
home. I didn't even know where my mother was buried. I called my Aunt Marge from the Atlanta airport and told her that I was coming home. She was elated at the news and offered to pick me up at the airport, but I turned her down. I needed time alone. I did accept her offer to stay at her house. That way my father would never even know I was in town. Not that he'd care.

I landed in Huntsville around 6 P.M. Maybe sixteen minutes past. I carried my bags, then walked directly out of the terminal and hailed a cab. The driver seemed a little perplexed by my destination.

“I'm taking you to the city cemetery?”

“Yes, sir.”

He shrugged. “Okay.”

The cab dropped me and my luggage off and, at my request, left. My aunt had told me the approximate location of my mother's grave in the cemetery. I wasn't really sure how I'd get to my aunt's house; I just knew I didn't want anyone around.

It was snowing lightly, and there was more snow on the ground than I ever remembered having in Huntsville—nothing compared to Salt Lake City—but enough to make walking difficult. I hid my bags behind a hedge, then trudged in ankle-deep snow between the stones, scanning the names. I searched for nearly twenty minutes without luck and began to wonder if I had misunderstood the directions my aunt had given me. I was walking back toward my bags when I found these words carved into rose granite:

Alice Liddel Smart

Beloved Wife and Mother

June 16, 1946—October 23, 1988

Only at that moment did my mother's death become fully real to me. I fell to my knees and began to cry. Then, in anguish, I shouted, “Mom,” the word muffled in the quiet, snow-draped setting. I fell forward to my hands, and my body heaved while the snow collected on and around me. I didn't brush it away. I wanted it to cover me, to bury me with her—“Why did you leave, Mom?”

The winter sun was beginning to wane, leaving the cemetery chill and in shadows. I knelt there motionless and cold as the stone in front of me.

I don't know how long I'd been there before I heard the sound of footsteps crunching through the snow. I looked to see who it was. It was Stu. I stood up and he stopped walking. We just stared at each other. He stood about twenty feet from me wearing his oil-stained navy blue mechanic's jacket, the one with the patch with his name sewed on it. I was angry at him for trespassing on my grief.

“How did you know I was here?”

“Marge told me.”

Now I was angry at her as well.

“How you been?” he asked.

“Since when do you care how I've been?”

He just looked at me with a hollow stare. There was no anger in his gaze—at that moment I had a monopoly on
anger. “I'll tell you how I'm doing. I lost my mother, two girls and my scholarship to school. I've been cleaning toilets to get by. But I'm sure that makes you happy.”

He rubbed his face. “No. It don't.”

As much as I wanted to leave, I suppose, in my own way, I was finally standing my ground. “Why did you come?”

“I wanted to see you.”

“Why?”

He couldn't answer. He sniffed and looked around. Then he looked down at his feet. After a while he said, “I was afraid I might never see you again.”

He was right. I hadn't intended on ever seeing him again. Still his reply surprised me. “You spent your whole life chasing me away, and now you're afraid I might not come back?”

“I guess so.”

I didn't know what was going through his mind, but I knew that this was likely my only chance to say what needed to be said.

“So why did you have to make everything so hard? Why couldn't you have been a real father?”

I expected him to lash out at me, but he just stood there looking at me sadly. He took a deep breath. “Alright. Come with me. It's time you knew.”

“Knew what?”

“I want to show you somethin'.” He began walking away from me, unsteadily in the snow. At first I just stood there, not sure of what he was up to. Then curiosity prevailed. I followed him, always staying at least ten yards back. The only noise was the wind and the crisp sound of our steps in the
crusted snow. Finally he stopped at the base of a knoll at another headstone, his hands in his pockets.

The headstone was alabaster, weather-stained and partially concealed in shadow, capped with a thin layer of icy snow. Still keeping my distance from Stu, I walked up to it, my eyes focused on the words etched into its face. The stone had an American flag engraved on it.

Virgil Marcus Hunt

February 14, 1949—March 4, 1969

I looked at him, expecting an explanation, but he said nothing. Finally I asked, “Who's this?”

My father said nothing. He just rubbed his hand through his hair like he always did when he was at a loss for words.

“Why did you bring me here?”

He turned and looked at me with an anguished expression. “It's your father.”

“What?”

He began walking away from the grave as if it was painful to be near it. I followed him.

He didn't stop walking until he reached my mother's grave. He sat down on a white marble bench a few yards away and buried his face in his hands.

“What do you mean,
my father?
”

It seemed a long time before he looked up. “I'm sure it crossed your mind more than a few times how a woman like your mother ended up with a guy like me. I wasn't your mother's first choice. Never was. She was dating a couple fellas.
Me and Virgil back there, and some other boy from Birmingham. But Virgil was her favorite. He was a student at the university and a real BMOC. He played the guitar real well. I was just… you know. No surprise she chose him.

“While they was still engaged, he was drafted. They hurried and eloped, didn't tell no one. I think I was about the last to know. One day when I thought maybe I still had a chance with her, I went to get her flowers at Pat's, and the girl there knew Alice. Told me Alice and Virgil was married. She'd made up the bridal bouquet herself. That about killed me. Girl behind the counter at the florist shop knew and I didn't.

“Six weeks later Virgil left for Vietnam. Lots of boys we knew didn't come home. He was killed just four months there. Just like that. Your mother barely nineteen and she was a widow.” He turned and looked at me. “And she was pregnant with you.

“When I heard he was killed, I come back around, to give my condolences, but we both knew why I was there. She was grievin' pretty sore, but she didn't turn me away.” He looked down. “I shouldn't have stayed. I knew her heart was still with him, but I didn't love no one else. Next thing I know, we was courtin'. I was pretty sure she just wanted her child to have a father—couple times she nearly said as much.

“I told myself it didn't matter. Hearts do that. A chance for a guy like me to be with Alice—that's like winnin' the Alabama and Florida lottery all at once—who cares how you get it. I told myself with time she'd come around to love me.” Suddenly my father's eyes welled up with tears. “She never
did. She put up with me. But she never loved me. It was like she'd already given away that part of her heart.”

For the first time in my life, I saw my father cry. He looked at me the whole time, unashamed of the tears streaming down his face. “I loved her, son. I would've been anything she wanted. But I couldn't be
who
she wanted. She wanted that man back there.” His voice cracked. “She loved you something fierce. And I was jealous of you and of that love. Because I knew it was more than just you was her boy. It was 'cause you was a part a him.”

He wiped his eyes with the back of his hand. “I know I wasn't good to you. I ain't proud of it. I took all my hurt out on you. It wasn't right, it was just what it was.”

He put his hands into his coat pockets and looked back at the stone. “That's why I came. I wanted to tell you how sorry I was.” He looked up at me and into my eyes. “I'm sorry.”

In my twenty years of life I had never heard my father speak those two words. Neither of us spoke for some time. The snow still fell, shrouding us. Then he brought something out of his coat pocket. “Anyway, seeing how I'll probably never see you again, I brought you some things.”

He stood and walked to me. Then he reached out his hand. I put mine out and he dropped a gold ring into my palm.

“That was your mother's wedding ring from Virgil. She wore it on a chain around her neck. Never took it off. I know she'd want you to have it. I hope you don't mind, but I kept the chain.”

I lifted the ring to examine it. It was a yellow gold band with a marquise diamond surrounded by small chips of dark blue sapphires. I remembered that I had seen the ring once when she was weeding the flower bed and it fell outside her blouse. I asked her about it, but she just stowed it back inside her shirt and continued pulling weeds.

I put the ring in my pocket. Then Stu brought out of his coat a larger packet, a brown paper lunch sack smudged with motor oil. He handed it to me. I opened the bag and looked inside. It was a large stack of bills, mostly twenties and fifties.

“What's this?”

“It's money I'd been puttin' away for your schoolin'. I know you'll do real well, whatever you end up doing. You was always real smart like your mom. And your dad.”

I could tell it was difficult for him to say that last word. Then he turned and began to walk away, shuffling slowly through the snow. I don't really know how, but at that moment Stuart Smart was no longer the icon I had hated and feared. He was just a man—hurting and human. A man like me. He was what Joette said,
the man behind the curtain.
He began disappearing in the shadows.

“Hey, Dad.”

He stopped and slowly turned back.

“Thanks.”

He nodded.

I rubbed my nose with my glove. “You want to go somewhere and talk?”

He stared at me for the longest time. Then he said, “I'd like that.”

I walked up to him. When we were an arm's length apart, we just looked at each other. Then a miracle happened. I reached out and hugged him. And at that moment the world I thought I knew no longer existed. At that moment, Stuart Smart became my father.

I do what I can to keep my mind here in Alabama. But my heart keeps wandering back to Utah.

MARK SMART'S DIARY