Chapter 10 - Ask Before Coming In
Noah leaned against the kitchen doorframe with his phone in his hand.
“He asked whether this was a good time,” he said.
Lillian looked at Maeve. Maeve waited. Their father's arrival would usually have settled the evening's plans, the way a sudden change in the weather could settle an outdoor party. Tonight Lillian had a chance to decide.
“Tell him we can talk for twenty minutes,” she said, “and that we're not serving dinner again.”
Noah spoke into the intercom. Richard came up in the elevator alone. He stood outside their door holding a canvas grocery bag full of lemons from his backyard tree.
“I didn't know what to bring,” he said.
Lillian opened the door wider. “You didn't need to bring anything.”
He looked at Maeve in the kitchen. She held a dish towel in one hand, water running down her wrist. He seemed surprised that she had come here without a uniform, a rank, or an entourage of military friends to take her side.
“May I sit?” he asked.
Lillian nodded toward the dining table. Noah carried the remaining dishes away, not because he was being dismissed but because he could see his wife wanted to do the talking.
He had rehearsed the visit while driving, though he'd promised himself not to arrive with a speech. In the grocery bag, beneath the lemons, was a folded list of the things he wanted to say. He had written apologize for the funeral and ask how to help. Then he'd crossed out the second one because helping was the language he used to make other people's lives into projects.
While waiting for the elevator, he'd almost gone home. A woman carrying a stroller had asked him to hold the lobby door. He did, and she thanked him without knowing who he was. It reminded him, embarrassingly, that he knew how to be considerate when he wasn't asking his daughters to see him as a good man.
He left the folded list in the bag. If the conversation went badly, he would have to sit with it, not read a better version from a page.
Richard set the lemons down between the salt and pepper shakers. “I went to see Tom Reed.”
Maeve pulled out a chair. “How'd that go?”
“Not well. He told me he was sorry he broke his promise about waiting.”
“And?” Lillian asked.
“He said his bigger mistake was making that promise at all.”
The words visibly cost Richard something. He went on. “He asked whether I had let you become my substitute for a marriage. That's an ugly question to hear from someone who knew your mother.”
“Was he wrong?” Lillian asked.
Richard rubbed a thumb along the grocery bag seam. “Not entirely.”
It would have been easier if he were cruel. Lillian knew how to stand against a cruel man. This was a father who had spent years believing love meant keeping his daughters where he could count on them.
“When Eleanor got sick,” he said, “I thought if I could control the schedule, the doctors, the meal deliveries, the phone calls, I'd somehow control the outcome. When she died, I didn't know how to live in a house where nobody was asking me what to do next.”
Lillian listened, wary of a speech that made his fear the center of their pain.
“I kept you busy,” he admitted. “I asked you to move things, help with the bills, come on Sundays. I told myself I was teaching you to be responsible. The truth is I couldn't stand the idea that you'd find a life where I wasn't needed.”
“Dad,” Lillian said, “I wanted to move to Chicago. I turned down the school district job because you said I was abandoning you.”
He lowered his eyes. “I remember.”
“You told me you didn't.”
“I wasn't being honest.”
For a moment Maeve thought Lillian would leave the table. Instead she picked up one lemon and turned it in her hands.
“And you let me think my sister was the selfish one,” she said.
Richard looked across at Maeve. “I did.”
Maeve expected a defense. None came.
“I blamed you because I was furious you couldn't be there when I wanted you,” he said. “Your mother and I disagreed about that. She thought I was asking you to make an impossible choice. I thought every choice was possible if you cared enough.”
“You let Lillian carry the price of that disagreement,” Maeve said.
“Yes.”
“And you told people I refused Mom's dying request. She wrote that she hadn't made that request.”
He swallowed. “Yes.”
The kitchen clock ticked. Noah watched from the hall but did not join them.
Maeve had spent years picturing how she'd feel if Richard admitted the truth. Vindicated, perhaps. Lighter. Instead her stomach felt hollow.
“There's something else,” she said. “I had an opportunity to return a call. I didn't. I stayed at work because I was afraid if I took the call, I'd fall apart. That's on me. But it isn't permission for you to rewrite Mom's last days.”
Richard nodded. “I can't undo it.”
“No.”
“I want to ask you both to forgive me.”
Lillian set the lemon down. “I'm not there.”
“I understand.”
“Do you?”
He looked at the floor. “I'm trying to.”
Maeve said, “If you want a relationship, it can't be one where we have to protect you from our feelings.”
Richard looked at Noah. “And what do you think?”
Noah had been waiting to stay out of it. He hesitated. “I think my wife is doing something hard. I'd like you not to turn it into a vote.”
Richard looked back toward his daughters. He nodded once and stood.
“I'll go,” he said. “I know this was more than twenty minutes.”
Lillian walked him to the door. His hands shook while he reached for his coat.
“Dad,” she said, “you can call me. But please don't call three times if I don't answer.”
He smiled faintly. “Once, then a message.”
“Once.”
He left without asking for Sunday dinner.
Lillian stayed at the door after the elevator had descended. Maeve approached but waited beside her rather than touching her.
“I thought I'd feel better,” Lillian whispered.
“Me too.”
“Do you believe him?”
“I believe he meant what he said tonight. That's a beginning, not proof of what he'll do tomorrow.”
May you like
Lillian leaned her head against the doorframe. “Then we'll have to see what he does tomorrow.”
