Thanks for the Memories (33 page)
He can’t open the paper quickly enough and battles with the oversize pages to get to the correct spot. Finally he gets to the classified pages. He scans the advertisements and birthday greetings and is about to close the paper altogether and join Doris in chastising Al for his caffeine habit when he spots it. Eternally grateful recipient wishes to thank Justin Hitchcock, donor and hero, for saving life. Thank you. He holds his head back and howls with laughter. Doris and Al look at him with surprise.
“Al”—Justin lowers himself to his knees before his brother—
“I need you to help me now.” His voice is urgent, the pitch going up and down with excitement. “Did you see anybody when you were jogging back to the house?”
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“No.” Al’s head rolls tiredly from one side to the other. “I can’t think.”
“Think.” Doris slaps his face lightly.
“That’s not entirely necessary, Doris.”
“They do it in the movies when they’re looking for information. Go on, tell him, baby.” She nudges him a little more lightly.
“I don’t know,” Al whines. “By the time I got to the house, I couldn’t breathe, let alone see. I don’t remember anyone. Sorry, bro. Man, I was so scared. All of these black dots were in front of my eyes, I was getting so dizzy and—”
“Okay,” Justin leaps to his feet and runs up the stairs to the front yard. He runs to the driveway and looks up and down the street. It’s busier now; at seven thirty there is more life and traffic noise as people leave to head to work.
“
Thank you!
” Justin shouts at the top of his lungs. A few people turn around to look at him, but most keep their heads down. A light drizzle of October London rain begins to fall while another man loses his mind on a Monday morning.
“
I can’t wait to read this!
” He waves the newspaper around in the air, shouting up and down the road so that he can be heard from all angles.
What do you say to someone whose life you saved? Something deep. Something funny. Something philosophical.
“
I’m glad you’re alive!
” he shouts.
“Eh, thanks.” A woman scurries past him with her head down.
“
Um, I won’t be here tomorrow!
” Pause. “
In case you’re planning
on doing this again.
” He lifts the coffee into the air and waves it around, sending droplets jumping from the small drinking hole, burning his hand. Still hot. Whoever it was, they weren’t here that long ago.
“
Um. Getting the first flight to Dublin tomorrow morning. Are you
from there?
” he shouts to the wind. The breeze sends more crispy
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autumn leaves parachuting from their branches to the ground, where they land running, make a tapping sound, and scrape along the ground until it’s safe to stop.
“
Anyway, thanks again.
” He waves the paper in the air one more time and turns to face the house.
Doris and Al are standing at the top of the stairs with their arms folded, their faces a picture of concern. Al has caught his breath and composed himself but is still leaning against the iron railings for support.
Justin tucks the newspaper under his arm, straightens himself up, and tries to appear as respectable as possible. He puts his hand in his pocket and strolls back toward the house. Feeling a piece of paper in the pocket, he retrieves it and reads it quickly before crumpling it and tossing it into the trash. He has saved a person’s life, just as he thought; he must focus on the most important matter at hand. From the bottom of the trash bin, beneath rolls of tired old smelly carpets, crushed tiles, paint tubs, and drywall, I lie in a discarded bathtub and listen as the voices recede until the front door finally closes.
A crumpled ball of paper has landed nearby, and as I reach for it, my shoulder knocks over a two-legged stool, which toppled onto me in my rush to leap into the bin. I locate the paper and open it up, smoothing out the edges. My heart starts its rumba beat again as I see my first name, Dad’s address, and his phone number scrawled upon it.
h e r e o n e a r t h h a v e y o u been? What happened to W you, Gracie?”
“Joyce” is my response as I burst into the hotel room, breathless and covered in paint and dust. “Don’t have time to explain.” I rush around the room, throwing my clothes into my bag, taking a change of clothes, and hurrying by Dad, who’s sitting on the bed, in order to get to the bathroom.
“I tried calling you on your hand phone,” Dad calls to me.
“Yeah? I didn’t hear it ring.” I struggle to squeeze into my jeans, hopping around on one foot while I pull them up and try to brush my teeth at the same time.
I hear his voice saying something. Mumbles but no words.
“Can’t hear you, brushing my teeth!”
Silence while I finish, and when I head back to the room fifty minutes later, he continues where he left off.
“That’s because when I called it, I heard it ringing here in the bedroom. It was on top of your pillow. Just like one of those chocolates the nice ladies here leave behind.”
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“Oh. Okay.” I jump over his legs to get to the dressing table and reapply my makeup.
“I was worried about you,” he says quietly.
“You needn’t have been.” I realize I have one shoe on, and start searching everywhere for the other.
“So I called downstairs to reception to see if they knew where you were.”
“Yeah?” I give up looking for my shoe and concentrate on inserting my earrings. My fingers, trembling with the adrenaline of the Justin situation, have become too big for the task at hand. The back of one earring falls to the floor. I get down on my hands and knees to find it.
“So then I walked up and down the street, checking all of the shops that I know you like, asking all the people in them if they’d seen you.”
“You did?” I say, distracted, feeling carpet burns through my jeans as I shuffle around the floor on my knees.
“Yes,” he says quietly again.
“Aha! Got it!” I find the backing beside the bin below the dresser. “Now where the hell is my shoe?”
“And along the way,” Dad continues, “I met a policeman, and I told him I was very worried, and he walked me back to the hotel and told me to wait here for you but to call this number if you didn’t come back after twenty-four hours.”
“Oh, that was nice of him.” I open the wardrobe in the hunt for my shoe, and find it still full of Dad’s clothes. “Dad!” I exclaim.
“You forgot to pack your other suit. And your good sweater!”
I look at him—for the first time since I’ve entered the room, I realize—and only now notice how pale he looks. How old he seems in this soulless hotel room. Perched at the edge of his single bed, he’s dressed in his three-piece suit, cap beside him on the bed, his case packed or half packed and sitting upright beside him. In one hand is the photograph of Mum, in the other is the card the t h a n k s f o r t h e m e m o r i e s
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policeman gave him. The fingers that hold them tremble; his eyes are red and sore-looking.
“Dad,” I say as panic builds inside me, “are you okay?”
“I was worried,” he repeats again in the tiny voice I’d been as good as ignoring. He swallows hard. “I didn’t know where you were.”
“I was visiting a friend,” I say softly, joining him on the bed.
“Oh. Well, this friend here was worried.” He gives a small smile. It’s a weak smile, and I’m jolted by how fragile he appears, how much like an old man. His usual attitude, his jovial nature, is gone. His smile disappears quickly, and his trembling hands, usually steady as a rock, force the photo of Mum and the card from the policeman back into his coat pocket.
I look at his bag. “Did you pack that yourself ?”
“Tried to. Thought I got everything.” He looks away from the open wardrobe, embarrassed.
“Okay, well, let’s take a look in it and see what we have.” I hear my voice, and it startles me to hear myself speaking to him as though addressing a child.
“Aren’t we running out of time?” he asks. His voice is so quiet, I feel I should lower mine so as not to break him.
“No”—my eyes fill with tears, and I speak more forcefully than I intend—“we have all the time in the world, Dad.”
I look away and distract those tears from falling by lifting his case onto the bed and trying to compose myself. Day-to-day things, the mundane, are what keeps the motor running. How extraordinary the ordinary really is, a tool we all use to keep going, a template for sanity.
When I open the case, I feel my composure slip again, but I keep talking, sounding like a delusional 1950s suburban TV
mother, repeating the hypnotic mantra that everything’s just dandy and swell. I “oh, gosh” and “shucks” my way through his suitcase, which is a mess, though I shouldn’t be surprised, as Dad has never
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had to pack a suitcase in his life. What upsets me is the possibility that at seventy-five years old, after ten years without his wife, he simply doesn’t know how to. A simple thing like that, my big-as-anoak-tree, steady-as-a-rock father cannot do. Instead he sits on the edge of the bed, twisting his cap around in his gnarled fingers. Things have attempted to be folded, but instead are crumpled in small balls with no order at all, as though they have been packed by a child. I find my shoe inside some bathroom towels. I take it out and put it on my foot without saying anything, as though it’s the most normal thing in the world. The towels go back where they belong. I start folding and packing all over again. His dirty underwear, socks, pajamas, vests, toiletry bag. Then I walk over to get the clothes from the wardrobe, and I take a deep breath.
“We have all the time in the world, Dad,” I repeat. Though this time, it’s for my own benefit.
On the tube on the way to the airport, Dad keeps checking his watch and fidgeting in his seat. Every time the train stops at a station, he pushes the seat in front of him impatiently as if to move it along himself.
“Do you have to be somewhere?” I smile.
“The Monday Club.” He looks at me with worried eyes. He’s never missed a week, not even when I was in the hospital.
“But today is Monday. We have time.”
He fidgets. “I just don’t want to miss this flight. We might get stuck over here.”
“Oh, I think we’ll make it.” I do my best to hide my smile.
“And there’s more than one flight a day, you know.”
“Good.” He looks relieved. “I might even make evening mass. Oh, they won’t believe everything I tell them tonight,” he says with excitement. “Donal will drop dead when everybody listens to me and not to him for a change.” He settles back into his seat t h a n k s f o r t h e m e m o r i e s
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and watches out the window as the underground speeds by. He stares into the black, no longer seeing his own reflection but seeing somewhere else and someone else a long way off, a long time ago. While he’s in another world, I take out my cell phone and start planning my next move.
“Frankie, it’s me. Justin Hitchcock is getting the first plane to Dublin tomorrow morning, and I need to know what he’s doing, stat.”
“And how am I supposed to do that, Dr. Conway?”
“I thought you had ways.”
“You’re right, I do. But I thought you were the psychic one.”
“I’m certainly not psychic, but even still, I’m not getting anything about where he could be going.”
“Are your powers fading?”
“I don’t have powers.”
“Whatever. Give me an hour, I’ll get back to you.”
Two hours later, while Dad and I wait at the gate, Frankie calls back.
“He’s going to be in the National Gallery tomorrow morning at ten thirty. He’s giving a talk on a painting called
Woman Writing
a Letter
. Sounds fascinating.”
“Oh, it is, it’s one of Terborch’s finest. In my opinion.”
Silence.
“You were being sarcastic, weren’t you?” I realize. “Okay, well, does your uncle Thomas still run that company?” I smile mischievously, and Dad looks at me curiously.
“What are you planning?” Dad asks suspiciously once I’ve ended the call.
“I’m having a little bit of fun.”
“Shouldn’t you get back to work? It’s been weeks now. Conor called your hand phone while you were gone this morning, it slipped my mind to tell you. He’s in Japan, but I could hear him very clearly,” he says, impressed with either Conor or the phone
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company, I’m not sure which. “He wanted to know why the house doesn’t have a For Sale sign yet. He said you were supposed to do that.” He looks worried.
“Oh, I haven’t forgotten.” I’m agitated by the news of Conor’s call, but I try not to let it show. “I’m selling it myself. I have my first viewing tomorrow.”
Dad looks unsure, and he’s right to, because I’m lying through my teeth.
“Your company knows this?” His eyes narrow.
“Yes.” I smile tightly. “They can take the photos and put the sign up in a matter of hours. I know a few people in the real estate world.”
He rolls his eyes.
We both look away in a huff, and just so I don’t feel that I’m fully lying, while we shuffle along the line to board the plane, I text a few clients to see if they’re interested in a viewing. Then I ask my trusty photographer to take the shots of the house. By the time we’re fastening our seat belts, I have already arranged for the For Sale sign for later today and a viewing appointment tomorrow, for a couple I’ve been working with. Both teachers at the local school, they will come by the house during their lunch break. At the bottom of their text is the mandatory “Was so sorry to hear about what happened. Have been thinking of you. See you tomorrow, Linda xx.”
I delete it right away.
Dad looks at my thumb working over the buttons on my phone with speed. “You writing a book?”
I ignore him.
“You’ll get arthritis in your thumb, and it’s not much fun, I can tell you that.”
