In My Father's Eyes (6 page)

“During the first ultrasound they discovered a lump on her cervix. Cancer.” Emily felt his skin shudder at the memory. “The doctor wanted her to undergo chemotherapy and radiation. It would mean aborting the baby. Lydia refused. I argued with her, pleaded with her. Threatened to leave her if she didn’t follow the doctor’s orders.

“The cancer was particularly virulent. Lydia got sicker day by day. With the baby growing, it seemed to suck the life from her. As it got bigger, Lydia got worse. She wouldn’t listen to me, just gave me that crooked smile of hers and patted her stomach as if that was all the answer either of us needed.

“She died four days after Colin was born. He was perfect and pink and healthy lying on her wasted, sunken chest. It was grotesque. By that time it was too late for chemo or surgery. The cancer had spread into her liver, kidneys and lungs.”

Emily’s hand clasped his forearm, touching for the sake of touching. The pits in his skin like Braille under her fingers more eloquent than words. They sat silent for a long while. The only sound the croaking of frogs and the sighing of the wind through bamboo.

“What happened to your son?” Emily asked, her voice barely audible. She felt the muscles on Harold’s arm tense.

“Lydia’s aunt Caroline took care of him. At first, it was just until I pulled myself together. When that didn’t happen, she got custody. I gave him up because, by then, the drugs and booze were more important to me than anything else; the only way I had to drown the pain of losing Lydia. He’s been living with Caroline and her husband in California.” Harold leaned forward as if to curl around the pain in his gut. “I haven’t seen him in a long, long time.”

“That…that must be hard.” Emily rubbed her hand on his arm in comfort.

Harold grunted at the understatement.

“The point is, Emily,” Harold said, turning to face the teenager, “Life is going to come at you in ways you never expect. Sometimes you can handle it…sometimes it will drown you in sorrow and confusion and guilt until you think you can’t survive one more minute without exploding.

“Losing Lydia was like losing half my soul. It was like waking up one day to find your arms and legs cut off. She was the best part of me and without her I couldn’t stand to breathe much less take care of my son. I ended up losing both of them.”

“But…” Emily interrupted, unable to find the words. Harold quirked his lips sadly.

Leaning back on the bench he took a deep breath. “Colin’s a grown man now. I can’t blame him for wanting nothing to do with the father that abandoned him. Sometimes…being sorry…isn’t enough to fix the mistakes you’ve made.”

Emily grunted in agreement slouching on the bench.

“My Dad,” Harold continued, “before he died…after my mother convinced me to come home and see him. I’d sit with him in his room; tubes coming out his nose. All I wanted was to leave and score a fix…every time I’d start shaking and get fidgety, he’d reach out with his hand. My father always had strong hands, thick hands…but now his fingers were like twigs in cheesecloth. He’d wrap those fingers around my wrist and hold onto me.

“’You have to forgive her,’ he told me, ‘You’ll never learn to forgive yourself until you forgive Lydia for leaving you.’ He was right, of course. Only I didn’t understand it all then. But I was angry; angry at Lydia, angry at myself, angry at the cancer, angry at God…even angry at Colin; little, tiny Colin all pink and beautiful.
Hmmphh
. And the more I tried to drown it, the stronger it got, the more booze, the more smack, it took to keep it down.”

Sitting up, Harold shifted on the bench. He reached and grasped Emily’s head in both hands, forcing her to look directly in his eyes. “I’ll tell you what my father told me, what took a long time to finally sink in…” Holding her gently Harold spoke.

“It’s not your fault, Emily.” She tried to turn away, her eyes shifting to the side, but Harold wouldn’t let her go. “It’s not your fault.”

“Stop.” She whimpered, her hands grabbing his forearms.

“It’s not your fault.” Harold said again, his eyes beginning to moisten.

“You don’t know…” Emily gasped, her breath coming in hard sobs.

“It’s not your fault.” Harold repeated, his hands grown warm and electric on her skin. Emily shuddered, tears falling from her eyes.

“I killed her!” Emily shouted. “Emma’s dead! And I killed her!” Emily’s chest heaved with emotion, her cheeks streaked with tears. Harold pulled her to him, her head on his shoulder, his arms going around her as her body wracked with sobs. Holding her, caressing her hair and back, Harold made soothing noises as the girl told him of her sister’s death; told him of the grief and guilt; told him of the silent days that followed; the times her father would look at her, his face ashen and leave the room, unable to even be around the monster that murdered his daughter.

They sat like that, the girl in his arms, for minutes that stretched as Emily recounted her miserable tale between sobs, her hands clutching him as if she would fall away into nothing should she let go.

Harold listened.

After a time, Emily quieted. She felt empty. Her body sore and bruised as if she’d been in a car wreck. Her face swollen and puffy against Harold’s shirt, now wet with her tears. Disengaging, she wiped at her eyes.

“Oh, God,” she sniffled, turning away from him. Harold let her go reluctantly. “I’m a mess.”

“Yes, you are.” Harold said forcing a bark of laughter from Emily and a half-hearted smack on his thigh. “And you’ve ruined my shirt.” Harold added looking at the mascara stains on his shoulder.

Emily snorted, “Good. It’s an ugly shirt.”

Fumbling for her purse, Emily took out her cigarettes and lit one, inhaling deeply. The sun had started to sink lighting the grotto in serene golden amber. Leaning back on the bench, the girl and the man settled into an easy silence broken after a long, long moment.

“Promise me you won’t cut yourself anymore.” Harold asked quietly.

Emily wiped her nose with the cuff of her sleeve, her cigarette half gone, she nodded. “I won’t.”

Chapter Eight

That night her mother’s incessant chatter and Tom’s oblivious bonhomie didn’t irritate her quite as much. Over the dinner plate she cast glances at her mother, watching her smiling face. For the first time she really considered the life her mother had led since the accident. She’d lost one daughter, her marriage disintegrated, and her one remaining daughter retreated into an impenetrable redoubt of unassailable attitude. How had she lived with that? How had she come to grip with the sorrow and pain?

Later, she found herself sitting on the couch watching a quiz show on television with Tom. Even his invariably wrong answers didn’t annoy her as they usually did.

“Who is Bach?” Tom said to the television and sighed when the contestant answered correctly.

From the kitchen came the soft sound of her mother singing
Annie
songs amid the clatter of dishes being put away. For the first time in a long while Emily found herself listening to the people she lived with and wondering what lay beneath their exteriors. Whether it was the revelations from Harold that his picture-book world held beneath its covers dark, painful secrets or something within her was finally awakening to the realization the people around her were probably more complicated, more nuanced than she’d given them credit for, she couldn’t decide.

Was her mother’s cheery demeanor a false-front she used to shield herself from her own pain and disappointment? Was Tom’s laconic, placid persona hiding his own inner demons? Tom had to know about Emma. Her mother had to have told him about it. Why did he never ask Emily about her?

There were times when Emily felt she would burst; when the need to say something, anything, would come over her and her spirit boil for release as it had with Harold at The Gardens. No one had ever listened though.

Was that because of me? She thought. Is it that they wouldn’t listen or is it because I never wanted them to?

“Classes start next month,” Tom said, breaking into Emily’s thoughts.

She looked up from the television. “I know. I’m thinking about it.”

Tom hesitated, taking a breath, having steeled himself for the usual snarky reply, Emily’s quiet response caught him off guard.

“Well…okay.” He said finally.

Carol entered the den, the hem of her floral print dress floating above her ankles like mist. In her hands she carried a plate of cookies. Emily, looking up from the television, caught sight of her in the doorway.

“Oatmeal cookies,” Carol offered.

Emily couldn’t help herself and guffawed with laughter, her eyes smiling up at her mother and the portrait of a 1950’s housewife framed by the door. Jumping up from the couch, Emily strode over to her mother, lifted a cookie from the plate. Taking a bite, she leaned over and hugged her mother careful not to spill the plate. “Thanks, Mom.” She said, planting a kiss on the startled woman’s cheek before striding down the hall to her room.

Flabbergasted, Carol looked at Tom who merely shrugged in response.

In her room, Emily sat at her desk, finishing off the last morsel of cookie, and flipping through her sketchbook. She’d become interested in graphic novels in middle school after reading the adventures of Solomon Kane, a 17
^th
-century Puritan who roamed the world fighting evil in all its forms. From there, she’d gone onto the darker works of Eisner and Kirkman

She found herself drawn to the dramatic imagery and the broad themes of survival; of atonement and redemption; the righting of wrongs and the perpetual battle between good and evil. In that world the lines were drawn in stark contrast making it easy to determine right and wrong; far different from Emily’s reality where life was shades of gray confusion.

Stopping at a blank page, Emily paused, the graphite pencil in her left hand poised a moment before touching the paper. With swift strokes she formed the outlines of a portrait, the harsh edges of chin and skull. In moments she was lost in the process, allowing her hand and mind to work without conscious thought, letting the image appear as if my magic on the page. The scritch of the pencil on paper the only sound as the form took shape.

Her mother was fond of telling her that everyone has a talent, if they only look for it. Emily didn’t know if her drawing was any good, if it deserved to be called a talent or even art, she only knew it gave her a way to express the emotions roiling inside her. Lost in her art the world around her faded, taking with it the confusion, the anxiousness she felt when she thought about the future. On these pages, in these pictures, she wasn’t lost. In her work, the world could become whatever she imagined.

She realized she’d been at it too long when her fingers started aching from the effort of controlling the pencil. With the portrait nearly complete, she set down the pencil, flexing her left hand to loosen tight muscles. It had been a while since she got lost in her drawing; not since graduation and it felt good to be back at it again.

Leaning in, she blew across the paper removing stray graphite and crumbles from her kneadable eraser. The house around her had grown quiet as the evening stretched into night. Looking at the alarm clock on the dresser, she realized she’d been working for hours. Placing a piece of onion paper over the drawing to protect it, she closed her sketchbook and stood stiffly.

Her reflection stared back at her from the mirror above her desk. The absence of piercings and dark makeup still caught her off guard; as if the person in the mirror was a stranger with strange emotions and desires.

Wedged into the frame, Emma’s nine year old face smiled back at her; a posed school portrait with the girl wearing the uniform white top and blue culottes. Nestled in the hollow of the little girl’s neck a small silver cross caught the flash of light from the camera and seemed to glitter back at Emily.

Her hand went to her own throat only to touch bare skin.