Second Chance Summer (45 page)

His head was lolling back against the chair again, and his eyes were closing. And I didn’t know if he’d know what I was saying—or remember, if he was going to a place where there was remembering—but I leaned close to him and kissed his much-too-thin cheek. “Daddy,” I whispered, feeling my own breath hitch in my throat. “I love you.”

Just when I was sure that he was asleep, the one corner of his mouth lifted in a smile. “I knew that,” he murmured. “Always knew that.”

I didn’t care if Paul saw me crying. It didn’t matter in the least. I had told my father what I needed to. I squeezed his hand, gently, and I felt him squeeze it back, so faintly, before he drifted off to sleep once again, as, above us, the stars continued to fall.

chapter thirty-six

I
KNEW THAT SOMETHING WAS DIFFERENT WHEN
I
WOKE UP THE
next morning. I could hear voices outside, the phone ringing, my mother’s voice, low and choked. I could hear the crunch of tires on gravel, and voices from the living room, voices at a normal volume when normally we spoke softly, to let my father get his sleep.

Nobody was letting him get his sleep now. Which meant—

No.

I thought this as hard as I could. I hadn’t opened my eyes yet, and I squeezed them shut, tightly. If I didn’t open them, I could be anywhere. I could be in my bed, back home in Stanwich. And maybe it was five months ago, and all that had happened was just some terrible dream. And I’d go downstairs and my dad would be eating a bagel while my mother chided him about having to lose weight. And I’d tell him all about my dream, even as the details were fading and getting further away, just a crazy dream, thank God….

“Taylor.” It was Warren, his voice sounding cracked and broken. I felt my face crumple, my chin tremble, and even though I
hadn’t yet opened my eyes, two tears slipped out from the right one.

“No,” I said, rolling away from him, toward the window, hugging my knees to my chest. If I opened my eyes, this became real. If I opened my eyes, there was no going back to a moment when this wasn’t true. If I opened my eyes, my father was no longer alive.

“You have to get up,” Warren said, his voice sounding tired.

“Tell me about Coca-Cola,” I said. “What were they trying to make?”

“Aspirin,” Warren said after a moment. “It was just a big mistake.”

I opened my eyes. Sunlight was streaming in through my windows and I felt a sudden rage at it. It shouldn’t have been sunny. It should have been dark, stormy, nighttime. I looked over at Warren, whose face was blotchy and whose hands were clutching a tissue. “It’s Dad,” I said, not asking a question.

Warren nodded, and I could see him swallow hard. “Paul said about dawn this morning. He was sleeping. It was peaceful.”

I was crying now; I wasn’t even trying to stop. I had a feeling I might never stop, ever. As long as this stayed true, I couldn’t imagine that I’d ever want to stop.

“You should come out,” he said, resting his hand on my doorknob. “So you can get a chance to say good-bye.”

I nodded and, after a moment, followed behind my brother. The
clothes I’d dropped on the floor the night before were still there. My makeup was still on the counter. How could those things, those stupid insignificant things, still be there when the world had ended, sometime about dawn? How could they still be there when my father wasn’t?

I stepped out into the hallway and saw my family. My grandfather was standing in the kitchen. My mother was standing near the hospital bed, her arm around my sister. Warren leaned against the back of the couch. And in his hospital bed was my father, his mouth open, his eyes closed.

He wasn’t breathing.

He wasn’t
there
.

It was such a basic thing—I’d seen it on a thousand cop shows and movies. But I just stared at my father, on the bed, still. I couldn’t make myself understand it. I’d never not known him alive, breathing, laughing, making terrible jokes, filling up a room with his voice, teaching us how to throw a football. That he was suddenly not alive—that he was so still, there but not there in any of the ways that mattered—was a truth I could not wrap my head around. And as I looked at his closed eyes, I realized that I would never see his eyes again. That he would never look at me again. That he was dead.

I was crying full-out now, and even though I hadn’t noticed my mother move, she was suddenly right there, pulling me into a hug.
She didn’t tell me it was going to be okay. I knew in that moment that things would be forever different—that today was going to be a day that split my life into before and after.

But in that moment, I just let myself cry onto her shoulder, as she hugged me tight, as though letting me know that, at least, I was not alone.

chapter thirty-seven

T
HE FUNERAL TOOK PLACE FOUR DAYS LATER
. I
T WAS A BRIGHT
, sunny day, which again seemed wrong. I’d been hoping that it would rain—the night before had been cold and overcast, but I’d nonetheless sat out on the front porch steps with the dog until my feet got numb.

I couldn’t get over how empty the house seemed now, and how without my dad there, none of us knew what to do with ourselves. Warren, for the first time since I could remember, hadn’t been able to read. Instead, he’d been spending days down at the tennis center, hitting a ball against the wall as hard as he could, returning home tired and drained-looking. My grandfather had been whittling and taking the dog for long walks. When he came back, his nose was always red, his voice hoarse, and the dog exhausted. Gelsey hadn’t wanted to be alone since that morning, and so we’d been spending a lot of time together. We weren’t talking about what had happened yet, but it somehow helped just to be able to look across the room and see my sister there—proof that I wasn’t the only one who was
going through this. My mother had been spending her days organizing everything—the service, the casket, the flowers—and seemed as though she was handling things better than any of us. But earlier that day, I’d come outside to see her sitting on the porch, her hair damp from the shower, crying. There was still a piece of me that wanted to turn around and not have to face this, but I made myself keep going and sit next to her on the porch step. We didn’t speak, but I took the comb from her hand and combed through her hair in the sunlight. When I’d finished, and released the stray hairs into the wind for the birds, my mother had stopped crying. And we just sat there together for a moment in silence, our shoulders touching as we leaned against each other.

The tiny Lake Phoenix chapel was filled with people. We were going to be doing a larger memorial service back in Connecticut, so I hadn’t expected this one to be so packed. But standing by the front pew in a black dress my mother had lent me, I watched them streaming in, all these people who had shown up for my dad. Wendy was there, and Fred and Jillian, and Dave Henson, who’d sold him so much licorice. Lucy was there with her mother, Angela from the diner was there, and the Gardners, everyone from the beach—and Leland had even combed his hair.

The minister hadn’t been too happy when I’d given him the mix CD of the music we had chosen. It probably was a little unorthodox—opera mixed with Jackson Browne. But I had a feeling it’s what my dad would
have wanted. He also wasn’t happy about the dog, but my grandfather had told him that Murphy was his service animal, and so, he was sitting under the front pew, at my grandfather’s feet, perfectly still.

It was just the family in the front row, Gelsey in an old black dress of mine, Warren wearing a suit that somehow made him look younger. My grandfather was wearing his Navy dress uniform, which might have been one of the reasons the minister hadn’t argued with him. My mother was sitting next to me, clutching one of my dad’s handkerchiefs tightly. I noticed we’d left an extra, open spot in our row, as though he might be joining us, but was just running a little late, parking the car. I couldn’t somehow get my mind to accept that the still figure in the casket at the front, surrounded by flowers, was him.

The minister gestured to my mother, and the service began. I let the words wash over me, not really hearing them, not wanting to hear about ashes and dust when it came to my father. After he was done, my grandfather spoke, about what my dad had been like when he was young, and how proud my grandfather had always been of him. My mother spoke, and I gave up on trying not to cry. Warren spoke briefly, reading a section from the T.S. Eliot poem Dad had loved.

And even though I hadn’t planned to say anything—or prepared any remarks—I found myself standing as Warren returned to his seat, and walked straight up to the lectern.

I looked out at the crowd and saw, standing in the back, Henry. He was with Davy, wearing a suit I’d never seen before, and his eyes were fixed on mine—supporting, encouraging, somehow giving me the confidence I needed to start.

And as I looked out at the crowd, I realized I wasn’t panicking. My palms weren’t sweating. And I wasn’t worried about what I was going to say—it was simple. It was just the truth.

“I’d always loved my dad,” I said in a voice that was stronger than I’d expected it to be. “But I actually got to know him this summer. And I realized that he’d been teaching me so much, all along.” I took a big breath—not because I was nervous, but because I could feel tears building up, and I wanted to try and get through this first. “Like the importance of really bad puns.” The crowd laughed at that, and I felt myself relax a little bit. “And that you should always get ice cream when the opportunity presents itself, even if it is close to dinnertime.” I swallowed hard. “But mostly, he taught me this summer about courage. He was so brave, considering what he was facing. He didn’t run away from it. And he was brave enough to admit that he was afraid.” I wiped my hand across my face, and took another shaky breath, to try to finish.

“I’m just glad that I got the time I did with him, even—” my breath caught in my throat, and the view of the crowd got blurry. “Even if it wasn’t enough time,” I finished. “Even if it wasn’t nearly enough.”

I stumbled, half-blind with tears, down to my seat. The minister
was speaking again, and now Jackson Browne was singing. And it was Warren, unexpectedly, who pulled me into a tight hug and let me cry against his shoulder.

Things wrapped up after that, with the announcement of the reception back at our house, and then the processional past the casket. I sat it out, holding Murphy on my lap, feeling like I’d already said good-bye to my father under the stars. But I noticed that as my grandfather went up, his posture so straight in his uniform, he put into the casket the figure he’d been whittling all week—a tiny carved robin, taking flight.

chapter thirty-eight

I
TURNED THE CAR DOWN THE DRIVEWAY, SHUT OFF THE ENGINE
, and let out a breath. I had just dropped my grandfather and his telescope off at the bus station, and it had been much harder to say good-bye than I’d been expecting. And there had been far too much of that already lately.

In the days after the funeral, we slowly fell back into the pattern of a few weeks before. But instead of playing Risk, or watching movies, we began to talk about my dad. And with every story, some of the memories of him sick faded away a little, and I started to remember him as he’d been my whole life, and not just this summer.