Noel Street Page 15

  I didn’t recognize him at first. He was older, of course, but he looked older than I would have thought after six years. He was completely gray, the hair at the top of his head thinning. Maybe it was because I no longer feared him, but he seemed smaller and softer somehow, even though he still held himself like a military man.

  “Hi, Miche,” he said. He pronounced it “Meesh.” Michelle was my real name, but everyone except my father called me by the abbreviated Elle.

  For a long time I was speechless. Finally I asked, “How did you find me?”

  “A mutual friend.”

  “We don’t have mutual friends.”

  He cleared his throat. “Seeing me is probably a pretty big shock.”

  “That’s an understatement,” I said.

  Just then Dylan walked up behind me. “Mama.” I didn’t want him to see my father, but it was too late. He stood behind me staring. Then he said, “I’m Dylan. Who are you?”

  “Don’t tell him,” I said.

  My father glanced at me, then back at Dylan. “You can call me Larry.”

  “Hi, Mr. Larry,” Dylan said.

  “Dylan, I need you to go back to your room.”

  Dylan frowned, then stomped back to his room.

  “I’m sorry it’s so late,” my father said. “I tried to catch you earlier, but you weren’t at the diner.”

  “How do you know where I work?”

  “Same friend,” he said. “May I please come in? I promise I won’t stay long.”

  I didn’t move. I think I felt that letting him in was, in some way, symbolic of letting him back into my life, something that wasn’t going to happen.

  “Just five minutes and I’ll be gone,” he said.

  I thought over his request. “All right. But just five minutes.”

  “Five minutes,” he echoed. “Thank you.”

  I stepped back from the door and let him in. I walked to my kitchen and brought out an egg timer. I set it for five minutes, then put it on the table. My father watched my demonstration but said nothing about it.

  “You have a nice place. May I sit down?”

  I nodded. I noticed he was holding a brown manila envelope under his arm. For a moment we just looked at each other without speaking.

  “You don’t have much time.”

  “I know… It’s just been so long.” He glanced at the egg timer, breathed in deeply, then sighed. “I came to tell you that I’m sorry. What I did to you, especially at such a difficult time, was unconscionable. I am ashamed of what I did. I don’t expect you to forgive me, but I wanted you to know that I’m sorry. I was wrong.”

  It was the first time I had heard those words come out of his mouth. It should have felt good, but it didn’t. I read somewhere that we always react angrily at people for finally doing what they should have done before. I wanted to punish him.

  “Wrong about what?” I said.

  “Pretty much everything,” he said. He looked down.

  “What were you hoping would come from this?” I said. “That after all this time I was just going to let you back into our lives? Is that what you expected?”

  He continued looking down, the balding crown of his head showing. “Expected? No.” He slowly looked up. “But I was hoping.”

  I didn’t respond.

  “I believe that when you repent, you need to make restitution, when possible. I wanted to see if you’d let me make up for what I should have done a long time ago.”

  “Is that what this is? Repentance?”

  “In part.”

  I suddenly understood. “You paid my rent.”

  He nodded. The bell rang on the egg timer. I glanced down at it and then back at him. “What made you think I wanted your help?”

  “I didn’t think you wanted my help. I just thought you probably needed it.”

  I wasn’t sure how to respond to that. He glanced down at his watch. “Well, I’ve taken my five minutes. Thank you for hearing me out. I’m sorry to bother you. I just wanted to tell you in person how sorry I am.” He slowly stood, his gaze catching mine. “And how much I’ve missed my girl.” His eyes were moist. “I’ve made some big mistakes in my life, Miche, but none bigger than my mistake with you. Turning away my only daughter is unforgivable. I hope you can forgive me someday. Not for my sake—I don’t deserve it—but yours. For your own peace.”

  William’s words about forgiving my father echoed back to me.

  My father turned toward the door and began walking toward it. “What I want doesn’t matter, anyway. At least not for much longer.”

  “What do you mean by that?” I said.

  He didn’t answer, but continued toward the door.

  “What did you mean by ‘much longer’?”

  He turned back and looked at me as if he were trying to decide whether or not to answer. “I have cancer, Miche. The doctors say I won’t be around much longer.”

  The words affected me more than I wanted them to. “That’s why you came back now? Guilt? Dying regrets?”

  He looked at me sadly. “No, the guilt and regret were there long before the cancer. Up until now I didn’t know where you were.” He gazed into my eyes. “I’ve looked for you for years. I even hired a private eye, but he failed. I had no idea where you went. I didn’t even know what your new last name was. For all I knew you had left the country.” He sighed. “I’d given up hope of ever seeing you again until your friend showed up.”

  “Who is this friend?” I asked.

  “Second Lieutenant Smith.”

  It took me a moment to understand. “You saw… William?”

  He nodded.

  The revelation angered me. My life was none of William’s business. “What did he tell you?”

  “Much,” he said softly. He breathed out. “He told me about Isaac—the kind of man he was, the kind of soldier he was. He told me how he was killed in action.” My father’s voice choked. “I’m so sorry you had to go through that alone. I’m sorry I wasn’t there for you.”

  I could see the pain in his eyes.

  “He told me he was ashamed of me.”

  “What did you say to that?”

  “He didn’t tell me anything I didn’t already believe. I told him that I was ashamed of myself.

  “Then he told me about you and Dylan. I asked him whether he thought you’d talk to me if I went to see you. He said he didn’t know, but if I had any courage left in me, I should try.” He cleared his throat, blinking away the forming tears. “I can’t change what I’ve done, Miche. I can only try to change the future. I came to do the right thing if that’s possible.” He looked into my eyes. “If you’ll let me. I know I’m asking a lot, but it would be a true mercy.”

  As I looked into his vulnerable, pleading eyes, the man standing before me somehow changed to me. I no longer saw the rigid military man who had rejected my baby and me that painful night. I saw someone different. I saw a humble, broken man mourning the mistakes of his past. I saw a grieving, aging man trying to make something right, not just for him, but for the sake of right itself. I saw through the veil of mistake and circumstance a man I’d once known, a man who had provided and cared for me. A man who had held my hand and carried me on his shoulders when I was tired. A man who, in his own, sometimes flawed ways, always did his best to protect me. In short, I saw my father again.

  I couldn’t speak for a long time. Then I nodded. “All right.”

  Those two simple words had a profound impact on him—more, perhaps, than I could understand. He wiped his eyes with his forearm, then took the brown envelope from under his arm and handed it to me. “This is mostly just a lot of legal mumbo jumbo. I set up a college fund for Dylan. There’s enough there for his education at a good school, also books and housing. He has several years before then, so the fund should grow a bit. It might even help him get into a house someday.”

  “You paid for Dylan’s college?”

  “There’s something else. I set up another fund. It’s in
that same envelope. It’s called the Isaac Sheen Scholarship Fund. It’s for one Negro student each year at Arizona State.”

  “Thank you.”

  “It’s long past due,” he said.

  As I looked into his eyes, I suddenly started crying. He just stood there, almost at attention, his face full of emotion. “We once had a wonderful relationship, Miche. You were my life. My light. We had such fun.” He grinned. “Well, maybe I was never much fun, but I tried.”

  I laughed through my tears. “You were fun. Sometimes.”

  He laughed as well. Then his gaze grew more serious. “My sins have brought their own punishment, Miche.”

  Hearing this made my heart hurt, not just for my loss but my father’s as well. I thought of my love for Dylan and understood that my father loved me the same. For the first time I realized just how much he had suffered too.

  I wondered if he’d gone through this alone or if my mother had changed as well. “Where’s Mom?” I asked.

  My father looked down. “She’s gone. She tried, but…” He cleared his throat. “Two years ago her liver failed. We tried for a transplant, but it was too late.”

  I suddenly felt my own pain of loss. “I’m sorry I wasn’t there for you.”

  “It was my own fault.” His eyes welled up. “I can’t tell you how many times I’ve looked through our photographs of us. The Christmases we spent. I’ve missed my daughter.”

  “I’ve missed you, Dad.”

  He swallowed. “May I hug you?”

  “I would like that.” I fell into him and we embraced. It felt so good to be held by him again.

  “Thank you, Miche.”

  “Thank you, Daddy.”

  After we parted, his eyes were red. “Do you think I could see Dylan? I won’t tell him who I am. I just want to see my grandson.”

  “Yes.” I walked to Dylan’s room and opened the door. As I expected, he wasn’t asleep. He was always curious when someone new was in the house.

  “Dylan. I want you to meet someone.”

  “Is it Mr. Larry?”

  “Yes.”

  Dylan hopped out of bed. He walked directly up to my father. “Mr. Larry, why are you at my house?”

  My father crouched down on his haunches. “I came to see how you and your mother were doing. You are a handsome young man.”

  “I know,” Dylan said. “Who are you again?”

  My father just looked at him and then wiped his eyes.

  “Why are you crying?” Dylan asked.

  “Because I’m sorry you had to ask that.”

  I stepped forward. “Dylan, this is your grandpa. My father.”

  Dylan looked puzzled. “You said you didn’t have a father.”

  “I was wrong,” I said.

  “I have a grandpa?”

  “You do,” my father said. “I’m right here.”

  Dylan still looked confused. Then he asked, “Where have you been?”

  “I’ve been lost,” he said. “Very, very lost.”

  “And someone found you?”

  He smiled. “Yes. Someone found me. A soldier.” He glanced at me, then back to Dylan. “If it’s okay with you and your mother, I’d like to invite you to our house for Christmas. I’ll even take you on a sleigh ride through the mountain with real horses.”

  “You have real horses?”

  “Yes. And real cows, goats, and chickens.”

  “Are you a farmer?”

  “Yes, I am. And I have a big farmhouse, but no one to spend Christmas with.”

  Dylan looked at me. “Can we go to his big farmhouse for Christmas, Mama?”

  I nodded. “Yes.”

  I looked over at my father. He didn’t even try to stop his tears.

  CHAPTER thirty-two

  Throughout history, the homecoming has been celebrated in story and in song. I have never understood why as well as I do today as I celebrate it in my heart.

  —Elle Sheen’s Diary

  Two days later, Dylan and I made the three-hundred-mile drive south to Cedar City. I hadn’t been there since I’d left six years earlier. It took us five hours. It’s hard to believe that just five hours had separated so much.

  I was wearing Isaac’s ring on a gold chain around my neck. It was the gold chain my father had given me at my high school graduation. I hadn’t worn it since I left, but even in the hard times I hadn’t been able to pawn it either. Maybe, like William, I was still holding on to something I couldn’t bring myself to admit I wanted. Or needed.

  “The old Fairlane,” he said, walking out to greet us. “I’m a little surprised it’s still running.”

  “Barely,” I said. “I just replaced the alternator, clutch, and timing belt.”

  His brow furrowed. “What did that set you back?”

  “Not as much as it should have,” I said. “William fixed it for free. But it hasn’t stopped the rest of it from falling apart.” I grinned. “I think it has leprosy.”

  My father chuckled. “Old cars don’t get new.”

  I smiled. “I’ve heard that.”

  * * *

  Christmas Eve was a giant party. My father had cut his own tree from the forest behind his property. Unlike the small tree at home, his was massive and rose nearly fourteen feet high in his spacious living room, filling the entire room with its beautiful fragrance. It was elaborately decorated with beautiful lights, ribbons, and ornaments.

  “Who decorated your tree?” I asked.

  He looked at me with surprise. “I did, of course. You know I’m a Christmasphile.”

  I smiled with remembrance. It was true. My father loved Christmas.

  My father had a lot of friends whom he’d invited over to see his returned daughter and grandson. Probably close to a hundred people came by the house. I shouldn’t have been surprised, but there were a lot of single, older ladies who spent a lot of time with us. Frankly, I didn’t know there were that many single women in Cedar City, but I suppose, for my dad, they were probably coming from other cites as well. There were even a few handsome ranchers that my father, not so discreetly, informed I was single.

  At the height of the party my father walked to the center of the room with a glass of wine. He clinked on the glass with a spoon until the room was quiet. “I’d like to make a toast,” he said. He turned to me. “As most of you know, Christmas is a special time of year for me. At least it was. There hasn’t been a tree in this house since my daughter left. I swore that there would be no tree until she came back. I had begun to lose hope that there would ever be a tree in this house again.”

  His eyes welled. “But Christmas is about hope. The Wise Men traveled far to find a mother with her child in a simple manger. The same is true for me. I may not be wise, but I was searching. And God, in His infinite goodness, sent me a star to find her. So I raise a toast to that star, a soldier who set me on the right path, I raise a toast to the season itself and its promise of hope. Most of all, I raise a toast to that mother and her beautiful, beautiful child. May Christmas forever live in our hearts.” He raised his glass. “To Christmas.”

  I raised mine and said softly, “And to the Father.”

  All in all, it was a glorious celebration with food and music, laughter and joy, and I think Dylan had more fun than the rest of us.

  After everyone had left, including a few of the women I practically had to shoo away, my father and I stayed up late and told stories of the old days, some true, some not so much. Mostly my father just wanted to know all about my life since I’d left.

  In the end he asked about William and what had happened between us. I was surprised at how much I was willing to share. Even though he’d broken my heart, he’d given me a precious gift. He’d given me my father back. And he’d given Dylan a grandfather. Most of all, he’d given my heart something I didn’t want to believe was lacking—forgiveness.

  “He loves you,” he said.

  I nodded. “I know. But maybe not enough.”

  My father nodd
ed, then said, “Don’t underestimate the power of love over fear.”

  My father had prepared my old room upstairs for my return and one across the hall for Dylan. Being in a strange house, I asked Dylan if he wanted to sleep with me—something he often asked to do even in our house—but, for the first time ever, he turned me down. He was pretty excited to have his own room in the farmhouse.

  The next morning Dylan and I woke to the smell of coffee and Burl Ives’s Christmas music playing from my father’s television stereo. It was a powerful flashback for me, reminding me of many happy Christmases we had shared together.

  Dylan and I walked downstairs to find the tree literally buried in a mountain of presents. There were more than twenty gifts for each of us. I don’t know how my father knew what we wanted, but he did pretty well, though he later confessed that several lady friends had lent a hand in the purchasing and wrapping department.

  Throughout the morning’s unveilings, my father just sat in his old La-Z-Boy chair, the same one I remembered from my childhood, and watched the proceedings with a joyful smile that practically split his face from one side to the other.

  The gifts he gave us were more than extravagant, and Dylan looked like he was living a dream he was afraid to wake up from. He got a cassette tape recorder, a phonograph player system with a built-in 8-track player, Jackson 5 and 5th Dimension albums, a pet rock, and a plethora of other amusements. There was even a new Atari Pong game, the expensive one Dylan sometimes talked about but knew I would never be able to afford. One of his favorite gifts was his own pair of leather cowboy boots.

  “Look, Mama, boots!” he said, holding them up. “I’m a cowboy.”

  “Put them on,” I said.

  “Can I?” he asked.

  “Of course. That’s what they’re for.”

  Dylan pulled the boots on over his bare feet.

  “Now you look like a real cowboy,” I said.

  “Except for a hat,” my dad said. “Every cowboy needs a hat. Wait a second, I think I got one of those too.” From behind the chair he brought out a small felt cowboy hat. He threw the hat to Dylan like it was a Frisbee.

  “Wow!” Dylan said. He put it on. Backward.