The Book of Someday Part 18

Micah.

Wisca.s.set, Maine ~ 2012.

"You always chose her over me. Why?"

Micah has asked this softly and suspects her father will answer it softly. For the last few minutes the sound of their footsteps crunching on the leaf-covered path has been louder than either one of their voices. This meeting with her father, uncharacteristically civil. The shocks and losses in Kansas, and Louisville, and Newport, have taken the fire out of Micah.

"I never pushed you aside to choose her." Micah's father's tone is patient, gentle. "I simply went where I was needed." He has inadvertently walked through a spider's web and is brushing at the sleeve of his shirt, a pale-blue chambray. An old work shirt beginning to fray at the collar and cuffs, but freshly starched and perfectly pressed.

Micah's father has always been meticulous about his clothes and his grooming. He's a small, dapper man with white hair and clean fingernails, and breath that smells like peppermint. "Do you think we should go back to the house?" he's asking. "Or walk down to the water?"

They are in the woods behind the well-kept farmhouse that he and Micah's mother own in Maine. The air is bracing and wonderfully fresh. Breathing it during the course of the walk has made Micah feel stronger-less hopeless, less sick. It has made her cancer seem less real.

Her father, finished with the removal of the spider's web, is bending to admire a tangle of wildflowers growing at the base of one of the trees. And he's saying, cheerfully: "Back to the house or onward to the water-which will it be, my girl?"

"I was never your girl. She was." Micah's words are muted. Jealous.

Her father has heard the jealousy, and there's defensiveness in his voice. "Your mother had a million invisible fractures running through her."

"What does that mean," Micah asks, "a million invisible fractures?"

Her father isn't bending over the wildflowers any longer; he's standing up now, holding one of the blossoms. He walks the few steps to where Micah is, and with a gallant flourish, tucks the flower behind her ear.

"Your mother was damaged, Micah. You never were. From the time you were barely more than a baby, you were headstrong and self-directed. Boldly walking your own path. Anyone trying to guide you seemed to just get in your way."

Her father is looking directly into Micah's eyes; she's seeing how proud he is of who she is. It's making Micah wish that over the years she'd been kinder to him, gentler with him.

In spite of this, there are still things about her father she resents. Unresolved issues she's determined to make him explain. It's why Micah has come here, to Maine, after visiting her mother in Newport.

She's pulling the delicate wildflower from behind her ear and turning it in her fingers, watching it beginning to wilt under the heat of her touch, as she's telling her father: "When I was growing up you were hardly ever around, you were always off with her."

Her father takes the flower from Micah and drops it onto the ground. "What can I tell you that you don't already know?"

A childlike frustration is in Micah as she says: "I know the 'what'...what I want to know is the 'why.'"

"They're the same, Micah. The situation was the explanation. Your mother was a big star and I was her agent and producer. More than that, I was her confidante. Her moral support-"

"But what about me? What about what I needed from you? The whole time I was in high school I saw you maybe three times a year-four if I was lucky. Why did you just forget about me like that?"

"I never forgot about you. I was giving you room. Without it, I thought you'd run so far-and so wild-I'd lose you forever."

Micah slams her hand against the trunk of the tree. Making her father jump. Feeling as if she's being blamed for his failures. "What the h.e.l.l are you talking about?" she whispers.

"You remember how you were as an adolescent. I truly believed if I didn't back off, you'd self-destruct." Her father is changing direction and walking away, heading deeper into the woods.

And Micah is running after him, insisting: "That's such a f.u.c.king cop-out." It's as if Micah is sixteen again-cut to the quick with adolescent injury. And she's asking: "Isn't it a parent's job to stick by their kid? Support them? No matter what?"

Her father has stopped-waiting for her to catch up. When they are again side-by-side, his response is subdued. "You were on a path to destruction. Does a loving parent support his child in that? Or does he do whatever it takes to get his child onto a safer path?"

To Micah it sounds as if he's simply offering excuses, and it's tearing at her. Making her wish she had the strength to scream.

"What G.o.dd.a.m.n path did you think you were putting me on by walking away?" she asks.

If her father is as tense or as upset as Micah, he isn't showing it. There is calm, and what sounds like caring, in his voice. "If you're referring to that summer when you and I had no contact at all, you're wrong to describe it as me having walked away from you. I didn't. I stepped back and waited in the wings. And never took my eyes off you. You were always my girl."

The storm of emotion in Micah is getting stronger and more chaotic. But the crushing blows she has already taken (from Jason, and Hayden Truitt, and her mother) have left her too weak to do anything more than murmur: "That's not true."

While her father is telling her: "Dealing with you during your adolescence was like trying to juggle dynamite, Micah."

She shakes her head and turns away. "Dealing with me was your job...I was your f.u.c.king daughter."

And now her father sounds annoyed, as he's asking: "Don't you remember how you were? How mercurial? How out of control? If I came too close...if I showed interest in your friends or your studies...you said it made you feel smothered. When you were in boarding school, if I came alone to see you...you were furious because your mother didn't come with me...it proved to you she didn't love you. If I brought your mother to see you...you wanted her to go away because people were taking her picture and asking for autographs. You said you felt pushed aside by her celebrity-"

"I did feel pushed aside."

"-and then there were the drugs, and the acting-out. The wild friends. I brought you counselors, and mentors, and tutors, and changes of scenery. And finally-that summer, when you'd left me no place else to go-I stepped away. Tell me, Micah, what else was I to do?"

"I don't know," Micah tells him. "But you could've done better."

This comment seems to knock the breath out of her father. It takes him a long time before he says: "That isn't a judgment you're qualified to make, Micah. You have never for as much as a day been anyone's spouse. Or anyone's parent."

Although he is keeping his voice low, it's evident he is upset. "You dealt with two of life's most demanding challenges by avoiding them. You shirked the hard work of marriage-the labor of dedicating yourself for a lifetime to another human being. And you turned your back on the demands and sacrifices of being a parent."

Her father's voice sounds as if it's about to break. "To my knowledge, you've never even had a pet, or a house-plant. You've never taken responsibility for the welfare of a single, living thing other than yourself. You have no right to criticize me, Micah. I was fighting with all that was in me to do my best as a husband. And a parent. I was battling, head-on, with trials and obligations you've never had the courage to go anywhere near."

Micah is watching her father struggle to keep his composure while he's explaining: "I was married to someone I greatly loved, who happened to be terribly gifted and terribly flawed. A woman that sang like a siren-G.o.ddess and had the soul of a needy little girl. I was the father of a daughter bursting with talent and consumed with arrogance, and anger. A young woman who refused to blossom until she'd succeeded in forcing me to let go of her."

He's brushing at his sleeve-at the place where earlier he had broken the spider's web. "Perhaps I did everything wrong, but I did the best I could."

Her father has shown Micah a version of their story-truths about his life, and hers-that she has never acknowledged before. She wants to say she's sorry. And can't. She has let too much time pa.s.s. She isn't capable of forming the words.

"I don't think it's me you're really angry with, Micah. I think the problem is that you keep using people up and wondering why they don't love you." Her father hesitates, as if sorting through his thoughts as he's speaking them aloud. "You wanted to be famous, to prove to everyone around you that you were the best. It became your life's work. And you let it blot out everything else."

He pauses. When he speaks again, his voice is soft with pity. "I don't think you understood that being revered isn't the same as being loved." Her father sighs and says: "Awe is reserved for G.o.ds and film stars. Creatures that keep themselves separate from the rest of us. Out of our reach. Behind stained-gla.s.s windows and cinema screens.

"Micah, you were the one who separated yourself from me. I never for a moment wanted to leave you." Her father is standing perfectly still, seeming as if he's struggling to know what to do next. "I'm here," he says. "I've always been here. And you've always been my girl."

His head is bent. The breeze is ruffling his hair. It's thinning, and as white as snow. And there is s.p.a.ce, all around, between the frayed collar of his neatly pressed work-shirt and the sallow, ropy muscles of his neck.

Micah is seeing that her father is old. That he is full of regret.

When she drives away. In the late afternoon. Micah kisses her father good-bye.

Wanting to tell him, I love you.

Saying nothing about her cancer.

On the third floor of Micah's Boston brownstone, there is a large, carefully arranged room. The room is cool, dark, and spare. Much of the time it's silent-except for the occasional rustle of ghosts.

This is the last stop on Micah's journey. The final person she needs to settle things with. Before she decides whether to battle her cancer, or surrender to it.

Micah is holding on to the doork.n.o.b. Has been holding on for several minutes. And still-she can't turn it.

She's too afraid.

She's not ready.

Not yet.

AnnaLee.

Glen Cove, Long Island ~ 1986.

"AnnaLee! Are you ready yet?" There is excitement and happiness in Persephone's shout.

AnnaLee is thrilled by the sound of that happiness. She's hurrying down the hall. Seeing that the door to Persephone's room is open, and that the latest version of the hand-lettered sign simply says "Persephone's Realm."

The hostile teenager who arrived at the beginning of the summer is now entirely gone, replaced by a new Persephone-a vibrant, caring girl who has captured AnnaLee's heart. Completely.

"How come you're still in your robe? AnnaLee, you need to get dressed. You're my creation tonight. I want to see how you look!"-is the excited greeting AnnaLee is receiving as she's entering the room.

Persephone, perched on the edge of the bed with Bella in her lap and an open makeup case at her side, is putting on a headdress, a towering arc of rhinestones and apricot-colored feathers. As soon as the headdress is in place, Persephone quickly slides Bella out of her lap and onto the bed.

"What do you think?" she asks AnnaLee.

Persephone is standing up now. Showing off her costume-a snug bodice of glittering beads in hues of gold and apricot, and a shimmering diaphanous skirt, shaped like an inverted, exquisitely petaled flower. Each ruffled petal is flawless-each one a different, muted shade of coral-colored chiffon.

"What do you think? Do you like it? Do I look like a Ziegfeld girl?" Persephone asks.

"You look like a dream," AnnaLee says. "I want to complain about the skirt being too see-through. But it's too lovely...I can't."

"Great! Now get your costume on, we're running out of time. Rebecca will be here to pick me up in a few minutes." Persephone is hurriedly tossing a tube of lip gloss into her purse. "We're going to Mrs. Jahn's early, in case there's any last-minute stuff to do on the decorations or-"

She looks around, suddenly frantic. "The camera. Where did I leave Rebecca's camera? She's putting together a sc.r.a.pbook-to get new clients. It was my job to photograph the work while we were doing it and tonight I'm supposed to take pictures at the party, with everything all perfect and finished-and now I don't know where the camera is. s.h.i.t, oh s.h.i.t, oh s.h.i.t!"

Bella, who's still on the bed exploring the contents of Persephone's makeup case, looks up, interested.

AnnaLee shoots Persephone a warning glance.

Persephone winces. "Sorry, Bella. I didn't mean to say s.h.i.t."

AnnaLee does her best not to smile.

She's sorting through a pile of clothes on the floor near the bed. Unearthing the missing camera, handing it to Persephone and saying: "I think what you need to do right now is calm down."

"But what about your costume, AnnaLee? I want to see how it fits."

"It's fine, and besides, it doesn't sound like you'll have time to make any alterations."

"I will. Really. Rebecca's coming early but we're having sandwiches here, before we go. Because we'll be crazy-busy at the party and won't have a chance to eat anything once we get there."

Persephone is excitedly pushing AnnaLee into the hallway. "I can chew and baste at the same time, I swear. And I really, really need to get a look at your outfit before I leave."

"Don't worry, you'll see it at the party." Her costume is the least of AnnaLee's concerns at this particular moment. She's worrying that Jack isn't dressed yet and wondering if he has told the babysitter what time they'll be dropping Bella off.

Persephone is tugging at the sleeve of AnnaLee's bathrobe, explaining: "I had tons of help from Rebecca when I made my outfit. But I did all the work on your costume by myself. Yours is my first ever, start to finish, totally on my own sewing creation."

There's an earnest seriousness in Persephone as she says: "I didn't make that costume for just anybody. I made it for you. I want to be sure it's totally perfect. Don't you understand?"

AnnaLee is overwhelmed with affection, and pride. "I'll meet you downstairs in five minutes."

As AnnaLee is brushing Persephone's forehead with a kiss, Persephone is pointing to the bed. "Maybe you ought to give yourself more like ten minutes."

What AnnaLee sees makes her laugh.

Bella. Gazing into Persephone's makeup mirror. Studiously coating her face with bright red lipstick.

AnnaLee, with Bella perched on the bathroom countertop, is using a fresh washcloth to wipe away the last traces of the lipstick. The ones she has already used are in a pile nearby, all of them stained with blotches of brilliant, fire-engine red.

Bella is squirming. Turning her head from side to side, making a game of trying to avoid the swipe of the washcloth. And AnnaLee-still concerned about Jack, and about being late for the party-is telling Bella: "Not now, sweetie, we'll play later. We'll play tomorrow. Tonight we have to get Daddy where he needs to go-"

AnnaLee has stopped short-struck by a thought she has been avoiding for weeks. There is nothing set in stone about this evening. There's no guarantee that Mrs. Jahn will hire Jack. No guarantee that tonight AnnaLee's life will change-that it will ever change.

There is a sensation in AnnaLee like she has just stepped out of an airplane. Parachuteless. Into midair.

Without realizing it, she has dropped the washcloth she's been using to wipe Bella's face. Bella is picking it up and trying to hand it back to her.

AnnaLee, adrift, has forgotten about the washcloth. She's staring at herself in the bathroom mirror, but talking to Bella. "Love isn't enough, Bella. Promise me, when it's time, you'll find someone who is strong-who can stand beside you in holding up the roof over your head. Promise me you'll choose somebody who knows how to help you fight the battles your life will bring."

She rests her cheek against Bella's and whispers: "No matter how much in love you are, or how pure his soul is, don't choose a man like your daddy. His helplessness will hurt you-it'll hurt so much you'll think you're going to die."

AnnaLee straightens up-abruptly aware that she and Bella aren't alone anymore. Someone else is in the room.

Even before she has turned to see who it is, AnnaLee knows it's Jack.