The Light of Hidden Flowers (18 page)

The next Monday morning, I entered Fletcher Financial. I had e-mailed Paul, Roger, and Jenny and scheduled a meeting. We assembled in the conference room. I sat in Dad’s chair, at the head of the table. I started the conversation.

“If Dad were here, he’d start by quoting
Alice in Wonderland
, when Alice asked the Cheshire Cat ‘Which road do I take?’ and he responded ‘That depends on where you want to go.’”

The three of them issued small, conciliatory laughs.

“I can’t say that I’m exactly sure where I want to go,” I admitted. “But there are some things I know for sure. I want Fletcher Financial to thrive for many years to come. I want our clients cared for as well as if Dad were here.”

“Agreed,” Paul said.

I went on. “But I also agree with what my father said in his letter to me . . .” All of a sudden I felt clammy and flushed.

“Honey, what’s wrong?” Jenny asked, standing and coming to me, placing the back of her hand on my forehead.

“Nothing,” I said. “I just figured something out, that’s all.” When my father was delusional, he’d rambled on about “the letter he wished he had never written.” It was this letter, I now knew—his missive to me to be brave. He regretted writing it.

“Sorry,” I said, finding my place. “My father was right, in that it is time for me to get out of Virginia for a while.”

Jenny clapped her little hands, then waved her fists in the air like pompoms, cheering me on as a mom would do.

“I never studied abroad,” I said. “I was never shipped off to war, like Dad. I need to have an experience of my own.”

“How can we help?” Roger asked.

I looked at him squarely. “I’m going to need for you to draw up some paperwork, some interim paperwork.” I explained that I wasn’t yet ready to sell my shares to Paul, but that I wanted to put him in charge of the firm while I was gone, while I was considering my next step. “So whatever needs to be done—new POAs, a new succession planning agreement—I’d like for you to work it up before I leave.”

Paul murmured something about things staying the same, how that’s really all he ever wanted.

I went on. “And Roger, I’ll also need for you to draft some new estate docs for me.” I looked at Jenny. “If my plane goes down over the Atlantic, I need to make sure that my beneficiaries are correct.”

Jenny purred little “nos” as if that would never happen.

“I would want half of my estate to go to Jenny,” I said, regarding her tenderly, the woman whose support of me had never faltered. “And the other half to go to the Fletcher Financial charity fund.” We had established a “Give Back” fund years ago, into which we funneled our own philanthropic dollars as well as the money of some of our clients who believed in our list of charities.

Roger said he would get right on it. Paul and I exchanged smiles. Dad had handpicked Paul many years ago from a competitive pool of graduates looking for their first financial planning job. Dad knew he was one of the good guys. I knew it, too. And Jenny beamed through watery eyes. She was as much my mother as I could ever ask for.

CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

Two nights before I left for Italy, I sat down at my desk, logged on to Facebook, and scrolled through the usual: the aunts, the cousins, the old friends from college. I clicked on Joe’s page. Lots of photos of his children, but none of him and his wife. I was in a “what the hell” type of mood. I had no time for regrets. I had every reason to be brave, especially if my plane plummeted into the ocean.

“I’m off to Italy!” I wrote. “It made me remember how your parents used to always talk about Naples, right? I’ll eat a piece of pizza in their honor. Anyway . . . no need to respond. Just thought I’d say hi. I’m sure you and Lucy have spent time in Italy.”

My fingers hovered over the keyboard.
Seal it in cement,
Missy. Say it.

I began to type. “BTW—I’m engaged. Someday soon I’ll be amongst your kind: the married.” My finger tapped on the backspace key as I considered erasing the entire line. But why? How would that be fair to Lucas, the man I promised to marry?

I hit “Send” and then walked zombielike to my bed, face-flopped onto my pillow, and sulked, because telling Joe that I was getting married meant that I could no longer indulge in the fantasy of him showing up at my door, telling me he’d never stopped loving me, and pulling me into the arms I remembered so well.

The next day, I drove to Arlington cemetery and parked in the back row. I hiked up the path, passing the visitors’ center, veering left and then right. My entire field of vision was filled with whitewashed tombstones, grave markers to our fallen soldiers. There were so many. There were too many. It never failed to impress me—the number of dead, the ages of the dead—so many, so young.

I found Dad’s marker. For such a giant guy, the grave marker was diminutive, a sorry meter of his personality and its contagious effect. “Frank Fletcher. Husband, Father, Veteran, Community Leader. Gone, but not forgotten.” I took the last couple of steps slowly, with apprehension, a child contrite after acting out at her father. Now that I had made some key decisions, I regretted that I had wasted a minute of my life feeling ill will toward the man I loved the most.

I kneeled by Dad’s gravestone, placed my forehead on the cool granite, and cried. I told him how I was trying to be brave, how I’d temporarily turned the business over to Paul, how I’d booked a trip to Tuscany, how God-willing I was going to get on a plane, how I’d set a date with Lucas, how I’d sent a message to Joe, the guy I’d never stopped loving. My heart swelled, and it was almost as if Dad were smiling his straight pearls at me. “Daughter of mine,” he would say, “you win some, you lose some. But boy oh boy, when you win.”

CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

The next day—three months following my father’s death—I entered Reagan National Airport. Lucas had offered to drive me. So had Jenny, so had Paul.
No thank you,
I had said to each of them, and now, as years of self-doubt clawed at my ankles, I wondered why I hadn’t accepted a helping hand. Here I stood with seemingly miles of walkways before me. I inched my way toward a wall of glass, pressed my hands flat against the cool window, and watched my breath fog into thin clouds. I stared, wide-eyed, at the airplanes taking off and landing.

At the most inconvenient times, I remembered my father with a keenness that nearly buckled my knees.
Dad, Dad, Dad,
I murmured, reaching for the charm of St. Brigid that hung around my neck. I closed my eyes and let the pain of missing him prick pins on my skin.

Healing was proving to be a sneaky, power-hungry control freak who could have made my life easier all at once, but instead doled out my therapy like a close-fisted welfare worker in charge of the food stamps.
Here’s just enough to get you by,
she’d say, handing me my first voucher: Anger. And when I was finished with Anger, I sold it for a loss and bought high on Love—a poor strategy for a seasoned stock picker like me, except for the fact that I knew sometimes you had to sell your losers and buy high to join the winners. I would profit from having Dad and his love on my side.

There were five steps to boarding the plane, my counselor, Susan McGillis, had told me. Count them, cross them off, reward yourself for making it to the next step. “Tell me the steps,” she’d said at my last session.

“My first step is to choose a destination and to buy an airline ticket.”
Check.

“My second step is to pack my suitcase,” I said.
Check.
I reported to her how I’d taken more than two weeks to pack it expertly, to fold my travel clothes—researched and purchased at REI—into perfect little squares; how my waterproof, bug-proof UV blouses and sweatshirts were arranged by outfit; how all colors coordinated with each other, so as to promote a mix-and-mingle attitude. How my quick-drying, microbe-material shirts could easily be washed in a sink, if need be. I told her how I’d packed my toiletries, my first aid kit, my electricity converters, and Tide stain sticks.

“My third step is to get to the airport,” I now told myself.

I thought of Lucas, my known quantity, a good man who had been patient with me.

“Two weeks,” I told him, in my most comforting voice. “Two weeks and then I’ll be back to work and back to you.”

“Get it out of your system,” Lucas said supportively, as though I were trying to detoxify the sugar from my blood.

I had texted Susan when I got inside the terminal. She had texted back her unwavering
Check!

My fourth step was to check in and to process through security. There was a part of me that secretly hoped I’d measured my three-ounce liquids incorrectly, that my pocketknife had jumped from my suitcase to my shoulder bag, that a security tag sewn into my pants would alarm TSA so that I’d need to be searched, and in the process, miss my plane. But security was a breeze—I was x-rayed and cleared and at the gate, lickety-split.

My fifth step was to board the plane. At the thought of this my heart seized, like a forearm in a blood pressure cuff, constricted to the point of panic. In just a few moments, they would call for boarding.

The alarm on my phone buzzed, reminding me that it was time to take my prescription medication, a sedative so strong it made my old Xanax seem like a baby aspirin by comparison. Susan and I had done a trial run with this medication and within an hour of taking it, I was knocked out in a dopey daze. I worried that taking the pill too early would put me in peril, should the plane run into a delay, such as a weather setback or runway change. I had no choice, though. I wasn’t capable of boarding the plane unmedicated, and I knew it. I took the gamble, and swallowed the pill.

Minutes later, the flight attendant activated her microphone and announced to the waiting passengers that boarding would begin. In a cottony daze, I walked with the herd toward the flight attendant and through the turnstile and into the long tunnel that led to the plane. While the airport had been as chilly as a walk-in refrigerator, the tunnel was jungle muggy. I closed my eyes and practiced the techniques that Susan had taught me:
Inhale through the nose 2-3-4, exhale through the mouth 5-6-7-8. Inhale 2-3-4, exhale 5-6-7-8.

When the passageway came to an end and the airplane was in front of me, I halted and stared down through the crack to the tarmac. My last glimmer of solid ground. I recited the statistics I knew by heart: (1) flying was twenty-two times safer than traveling by car; (2) approximately twenty-one thousand people died on the road in the United States in a six-month period—approximately the same number of all commercial air-travel fatalities
worldwide
in forty years; (3) more than three million people flew
every day
; and (4) a Boeing aircraft took off or landed every two seconds somewhere in the world—all day, every day.

But I also knew that my fear of flying couldn’t be overcome with data.

I lifted my right foot and bridged the chasm between the tunnel and the plane, leaned into my now planted foot, and entered the aircraft.

“Welcome aboard!” the flight attendant chimed.

In my milky stupor, I said, “Same to you!”

I found my seat, an aisle seat, as recommended by Susan—more air, she said. I texted her and she texted back, and then I pulled out my on-board checklist.

1. Buckle up.

2. Earbuds in, iPod activated, soothing music playing.

3. Fluffy pillow across the chest.

4. Water bottle by side.

5. Eye mask on.

6. Commence breathing exercises.

I was on my third breathing sequence when I heard the flight attendant announce our journey. “Welcome aboard Flight 823 en route to Florence’s Firenze airport. The flight will be approximately eight hours.”

In the dark, cloudy world under my eye mask and the medication, I flinched when I heard my cell phone trill, alerting me to the fact that (1) I had an e-mail, and (2) I had forgotten to power down my phone. I lifted my eye mask and blinked frenziedly to clear my vision. I slid my thumb across the screen and opened my in-box.

A Facebook message from Joe.

I stared at his name. J-O-E. In my opaque blur, I considered the entirety of his name:
J
plus two vowels? I blinked more, and tried to tap on Joe’s name. The message: “Missy, how exciting that you’re off to Italy. Send me some messages and post some photos. I would love to see where you are.”

He would love to see where I are . . . am!
A happy, goofy grin swept over my face.

“I’ve been to Italy a number of times. Beautiful country, but you never get beyond seeing the Carabinieri and their machine guns right in a Roman square.”

Carabinieri . . . machine guns . . . carabinieri
—
carbonara.
Guns, pasta, eggs, bacon.

“Safe travels!! And PS—What exciting news that you are engaged.”

Oh yeah . . . Lucas. Gonna marry Lucas.

“I’m so happy for you. In case I haven’t mentioned it, I’m about to leave ‘Club Marriage.’”

What?
My eyes spread wide, but the weight of the lids dragged them down, little monsters tugging on the shades.

“After fourteen years, my wife has left me.”

What?
With my right hand, I slapped my cheek, forced my lids to comply.

“She has taken a job that requires a ton of travel, so we haven’t seen her much for the last year or so.”

What?
Joe alone, a single dad with three kids?

“The kids and I are coping, but of course it’s difficult.”

What? What do you eat for dinner? Let me cook for you and your three beautiful children. I’ll make you a delicious cioppino with a giant crusty loaf of bread. And what about the kids, what do they like? Chicken fingers, grilled cheese, Mickey Mouse–shaped pancakes?

“There’s plenty of blame to go around. Life has thrown me some curveballs, and she’s gotten hurt because of it.”

What? What sort of curveballs?

“She decided she had had enough of being a marine wife. She wanted to try it alone.”

What? Why would anyone want to go through life without you? Let me get this straight: She
left
you?

“Sorry I hadn’t mentioned it. Up until now, we were just separated.”

All these months we had been talking, Joe had been separated.

“Our divorce will be finalized in a matter of weeks. I hope this news doesn’t depress you. I just wanted to let you know.”

Those were the last words I read before I succumbed to my self-medicated sleep.