Chasing Forgiveness (20 page)

“Dad,” I ask, “why did you do it?” I swallow hard. “Why did you kill Mom?”

Dad puts down the lamp and sits on the floor. I don't know if he'll answer. Maybe he'll just go on cleaning.

He rubs his hand across his face a few times, and it makes a slight scratching sound on his beard stubble. “I'm not sure if this is the right time to talk about this, Preston,” he says.

“There's never going to be a right time,” I answer.

We both know that it's true. And of all the wrong times to talk, maybe this time is the best we'll ever get.

I sit down across from him, and Dad closes his eyes, as if to pray for the right words to come.

“I loved your mother, Preston,” Dad says as we sit in the middle of the ruined living room. “I know it sounds funny, but I did. I think she wanted to leave me for a long time—but she wouldn't leave you kids, and I don't think she had the heart to leave me while I still loved her. So I think she tried her best to just make me stop loving her.”

I watch his eyes as he speaks. I watch his every gesture, looking for lies or cover-ups—but everything he says has such a ring of truth, I have to believe him.

He tells me how they were each other's first love—a fact I knew, but it never occurred to me that Dad met Mom when he was younger than I am now. They were going steady at fifteen, while I can't even stick with the same girlfriend for more than a couple of months at a time. He was so young. “I
remember I baked her a cake on her sixteenth birthday,” he says. “God, I was just a kid.

“You see, I never felt I was good enough to keep her,” says Dad. “I thought it was a miracle she went out with me, much less married me. And I treated her like a queen at first. Gave her whatever she wanted . . . but after a while she wanted so much, I didn't know what to do. She started measuring us against all our friends who were richer than we were.”

I remember some of that. I always remember feeling that our house was big, but for Mom it wasn't big enough—and our cars were nice, but they just weren't as nice as they ought to be.

“And then after Tyler was born,” says Dad, “your mom finally made it clear
I
wasn't good enough. After she had him, she decided she'd had enough, period.”

“Enough kids?” I ask.

“No, Preston, just
enough
. She wouldn't
be
with me, Preston. We lived in the same house for five more years, but I knew she didn't want to share it with me—and the more I told her I loved her, the more she pushed me away.”

I have to keep reminding myself that it's my mother he's talking about. How could my mother be cold toward anyone? All I can remember after four years are the good things about her. But yet I know that Mom couldn't have been perfect, and I know Dad can't be lying.

“Don't get me wrong, Preston,” says Dad. “Your mother
was a wonderful woman, but, you see, I pushed her into a corner, and she had to push back.”

“You guys should have just got divorced,” I tell Dad.

Dad shakes his head. “I can say that now, but then I would rather have died. I thought divorce was for other people. I thought if I loved her enough, it would be enough for both of us, and if I waited, she would love me again, too.

“But it only got worse, Preston. I was so frustrated, I started to smother her—and I would make a big deal out of everything she did that I felt was wrong. Pretty soon she started telling people she never did love me, that she married me just to get out of the house. I don't know if she really believed that, but she said it—maybe to get back at me for how I was treating her.”

Dad grits his teeth, angry at himself now. “I was such a jealous bastard,” he says, and he tells me how he wouldn't let her wear bikinis, and wouldn't let her go out with her girlfriends for fear that she would meet another guy she liked better than Dad. It was as if Dad were trying to keep her locked away from everyone else.

“I would yell at her, and she would humiliate me,” says Dad, “make me feel like I wasn't a man—worse, like I wasn't a human being. I don't even think she did it intentionally. She was just angry and confused, and she took it out on me. I just couldn't take it.

“And we'd fight,” says Dad.

If there's anything I can remember it was those fights. They would say horrible things to each other. “I would tell her she was a terrible wife and mother,” says Dad. “She would tell me that if we got divorced, she would make sure I would never see you boys again. We didn't mean any of those things, but words like that, they stick in your head and don't go away.”

Dad takes a moment to catch his breath and slow his tears. I can understand and accept all he's saying, but still, it's not enough.

“That's still no reason to kill someone,” I say.

“Of course it's not,” says Dad. “Don't you think I know that?”

He wipes his eyes and continues. “You see . . . I think in some strange way, I started to hate myself, and hate her, too. I hated the way she made me feel. I hated the fact that she would never take anything I said seriously. I hated her almost as much as I loved her, and it drove me crazy.”

I can see it all coming back to him now—the craziness, the sickness that had gotten into his head that we all saw those few weeks before Mom died.

“Do you know what it's like, Preston, to love somebody more than anything else in the world, but hate them, too?”

“Yes, I do,” I whisper, frozen by the question. “I know that feeling.”

“I borrowed the gun from Paul Talbert,” says Dad, “right
after your mom started seeing Warren Sharp. I sort of tricked his wife into giving it to me. At the time I even thought Paul Talbert was seeing your mom. Can you believe that? I know she spoke to him the day she threw me out, and I blamed him for that.”

Dad stops for a moment. I can see how hard it is for him to talk about, but he's making himself do it. He's making himself talk because I asked him. I knew he'd find the courage to tell me if I asked him.

“Anyway,” says Dad, “I held the gun for a few weeks. I figured I'd show it to your mom and threaten to kill myself. I thought I might even do that, too—but mostly I just wanted her to see it so that she'd take me seriously for once. That's all I really wanted with the gun—to get her to see that I was serious. . . . But she didn't take me seriously. In fact, she said I was ridiculous. And then she turned her back to me and started signing checks like I wasn't even in the room, and I remember feeling so small and so ridiculous that there was no reason for me to even live anymore. And I looked at her, and knew that all the love in the world wouldn't make her love me. And I hated that. I didn't know who I hated more for it—her or myself. I screamed this god-awful scream . . .

“And then the next thing I knew, I woke up in the hospital. I knew I must have shot myself—I could tell from the pain in my gut. I knew because I remembered having the gun, but that's all I remembered. And I asked the nurse how your mom was . . .
figuring she called the ambulance or took me to the hospital herself. I asked how she and you boys were . . .”

Dad can barely speak through his tears now. The words come out of his throat a raspy croak. “And I remember the thing that was going through my mind over and over again, before I found out that I'd killed her. . . . I kept thinking, Now she'll take me seriously. . . . Now she'll take me seriously. . . .”

Dad breaks down, giving in to the tears completely. There are no more words left in him. Nothing but sorrow. If he had a gun, I think he would finish the job right here and now and take his own life. But I won't let him.

I put my arm around him and hold him close.
It's okay, Dad. Let me be the dad for a while,
I want to tell him.
Let me comfort you. Let me be there for you.

I feel like rubbing his head and scratching his hair like he used to do to me, but I know that it would somehow humiliate him even further. So I lean my head up against his chest.

“Rub my hair, Dad, like you used to.” He looks at me but doesn't move. “Please, Dad, I want you to. I don't care if I'm fifteen—I want you to.”

Gently my father begins to rub his tear-moistened hands across my scalp. After all these years, it still makes me squint my eyes like a cat being petted between the ears.

“You should have hated me, Preston,” he says. “You all should have hated me.”

“I know,” I admit. “I sort of did.”

“I can never give you back what I took away,” he says.

“I know that, too,” I tell him, “but it's okay.” I close my eyes and give in to the calm feeling as he holds me like a father should hold his kid. I finally feel an invisible quilt wrapping around me.

“I forgive you, Dad,” I whisper. “I forgive you.”

And as I say it, I realize that in all these years—in all those dozens of times I've said those words—this time, sitting here in the wreckage of our home, is the first time I've ever meant it.

I explode from the blocks with a perfectly controlled blast of energy. I will be relentless today. I will make this first meet of the season the best meet of my life.

Everything seems to have fallen into place for this meet, and as I take the lead, even before the first turn, I begin to think about how my life has finally fallen into place, too. The thing with Sarah seems like such a small part of our lives now. Our house was fixed, because things can be replaced, and Sarah packed up with her kids and moved to Seattle, because people go on with their lives.

So now things are normal. I go to school, we eat dinner, go to church on Sundays. Dad and I have arguments like most sixteen-year-olds and their parents. Normal.

As I round the first turn, for an instant I can swear I catch
sight of my family in the stands. I know they're all there: Aunt Jackie, Grandma, Tyler, Dad. Everyone but Uncle Steve.

Uncle Steve still doesn't talk to Dad. There are probably a lot of people who'd do the same—a lot of people who would say that my grandmother's Peace after she found out my mom had died was just plain old shock—and that the healing that took place in our lives isn't healing at all—it's just denial.

People have a right to say that, I guess.

And I have a right not to listen.

The final turn. I get to thinking about this thing I saw the other night on
60 Minutes
. Same story as ours—the dad goes nuts and kills the mom. The woman's parents get custody of the kids, and then what do they do? The grandparents teach the kids to hate the father for what he did.

Then the father gets out of prison. He fights to get the kids back again, and when he does, he teaches them to hate the grandparents. Then the grandparents sue to get the kids back a second time. In the end, everybody hates everybody, the whole family's all screwed up in the head and miserable, and only their lawyers, who are getting richer than Midas, seem happy about the whole thing.

Personally I think our way is a whole lot better.

I'm in the stretch, and I'm so far in the lead, I can't see any of the other runners. I blast across the finish line, and for the first time, I know for a fact that I am fast enough!

The crowd cheers, and Grandpa, who is still my private
coach, hurries up to me with the news, but he doesn't have to tell me—I know: it's a new school record.

“Yes!” I throw back my head in triumph. Up above, the clouds hang in perfect balance between the earth and the sky. I think of Mom and wonder whether or not she's cheering for me. It's been almost five years now. It took me quite a while to realize that even if Mom did roll over in her grave, like the district attorney said, it certainly didn't stop her from loving me or Tyler, or Grandma or Grandpa.

Actually, she's probably at peace with this whole business now, because from where she sits in heaven, the troubles we go through down here probably don't seem all that important.

•  •  •

When the meet is over, the good feeling doesn't just slip away like it used to—it lingers in the air, and while everyone else is clearing the stands and jamming the parking lot, my family comes down as they always do. Grandma gives me her big kiss and tells me how proud she is of me, and Dad and Tyler both give me hugs.

“You'll probably break
my
records someday,” I tell Tyler.

“You really think so?” he asks with his trademark smile—wider now that all of his teeth are in.

Smile or not, though, I do worry about Tyler. In lots of ways, he still doesn't quite get it. He'll seem fine, and then out of nowhere he'll come home with a picture he drew in school of Dad shooting Mom. And below it, a caption: “Bad, Bad,
Dad.” Someday, when he's old enough, Tyler will have to have it out with Dad like I did, and Dad will have to explain to him about what he did to Mom. I don't think it's something Dad can hide from, and I don't think he should try. It may be his last responsibility to our mother.

I hand Tyler the record-breaking medal to hold, and he examines it, probably wondering why it doesn't look any different from the other ones.

Yes, Tyler will be okay. I have to believe that. Just like I have to believe that Mom is watching, cheering me on—and that a day will come when I will finally see her, and she'll hold me with such a powerful embrace, it will make up for all the embraces we've missed over the years. But that's a long way off. For now, I have enough love around me to last a lifetime.

Jason hangs in the background like he always does during the family emotional stuff. Finally he comes up to me and pats me on the back. “Congratulations,” he says. “Today the pizza's my treat.” Which is easy for him to say; he works at the pizza place, so he gets it for free.