My father’s voice. Dad’s voice.
I felt my throat begin to tickle and my chest get heavy, but I stayed outwardly calm.
“You… know who I am?”
“Saw you on TV, many times. In the paper too. Your mother finally tell you?”
“She told me you were dead.”
He nodded. “It was easier that way. You coming in?”
I wasn’t sure if I wanted to. Still, my feet followed his into the house, and the door closed behind me with a surreal, otherworldly feeling.
The house was dark, clean. It smelled of lemon polish and cigar smoke. We passed a living room with a leather couch, a TV, an old hi-fi. Paintings on the wall, mostly of wooded landscapes, in heavy ornate frames that were popular in the ’70s. Lots of wood paneling. Lots of wood everything. The kitchen was also done in brown, tile and wallpaper. Tidy, but without any overt personality.
“Would you like coffee? I have some from earlier.”
He indicated the green percolator on the counter. I didn’t want coffee, but I suddenly felt uncomfortable and I wanted to have something to do with my hands.
“Coffee is fine.”
“Cream or sugar?”
“Black.”
He grunted, like he expected that, and took a mug out of the drying rack in the sink.
“Got this machine about thirty years ago. Still brews a decent cup.”
So he didn’t abandon appliances, only families. He handed me the mug, and I was grateful for the warmth.
“Your mother tell you why?” he asked. He sat across from me at the kitchen table.
“She wrote a letter. You said you hated her, hated me, and didn’t want to have anything to do with us ever again.”
Wilbur grunted again.
“Is that true?” I asked.
“No. I was always fond of you, and your mother. It hurt like hell to leave.”
“So why did you?”
“I had to.”
I pushed down the anger, which was gathering like a storm in my head.
“Another woman?” I asked.
Wilbur laughed.
“No. If that were the case, I would have told your mother.”
“So what happened? You woke up one morning, decided you no longer wanted the responsibility?”
Wilbur stared at me for a long time, and for a moment I wondered if he’d died with his eyes open. I was almost ready to reach out and feel his pulse, when he said, “How is your mother doing?”
“She’s doing fine. And you’re avoiding the question.”
“I suppose I am. I’ve… thought about this moment. Many times. You, being here. Sometimes you’re yelling at me, screaming. Sometimes you’re crying. Sometimes you even pull a gun on me. I always start off by trying to explain how things were different back in the sixties. It’s not like it is today. Men were expected to act like men. I could have done the easy thing. I could have stayed and lived a lie.”
Some anger seeped out. “You’re acting like leaving your family was courageous.”
“You asked me if I no longer wanted the responsibility. I always wanted the responsibility.” Wilbur’s eyes got glassy. “The day you were born, I promised to-”
“Stop.”
“-take care of you, forever. I made that same promise to your mother, on our wedding day.”
“Which is why you abandoned us, left us with nothing.” I folded my arms. “You never tried to contact us, never gave us a dime.”
Wilbur stood up, walked to the percolator, and took a fresh mug from the cabinet. He poured himself some coffee, sipped it slowly.
“It was easier to walk out of your lives than have you and your mother deal with… everything. I had to play the bad guy.”
“Why?”
“Because the truth would have hurt more.”
“And what is the truth?”
Wilbur didn’t answer. I decided I’d had enough of this. It was only making me angry. I stood up.
“Thanks for the coffee, Dad. Maybe we can do this again in another forty years.”
“Jacqueline, wait…”
I left the kitchen, walked down the hall, and noticed some pictures hanging on the wall. One was a baby photo of me. I pulled it down and stared at it.
“Why do you have this?” I yelled. “You don’t deserve to have this.”
I wasn’t sure if I should keep it or throw it across the room, when I noticed another picture on the wall, of my father and another man, both wearing tuxedos. By the size of the lapels, this was mid-1970s. Wilbur was smiling, and so was the other man, who had his arm around my father’s waist.
And all of my anger vanished, as if a trapdoor had been pulled under it. I took the frame off the wall and walked back into the kitchen.
“You’re gay,” I said.
Wilbur opened his mouth, then closed it. He did this a few times, like a fish in a net, before he finally spoke.
“I think I always knew. But I spent the first thirty years of my life denying it. Fighting it. Unable to accept it. Homosexuality was considered a weakness back then. A lack of self-control. Or a disease.”
Wilbur smiled, but it was tinged with pain.
“The University of Chicago had an experimental program at the time. I went once a week to get shocked. Electrocuted. Aversion therapy, they called it. They showed me gay images, had me read gay literature, and then gave me a jolt. Barbaric, by today’s standards. So much has changed.”
“Mom didn’t know?” I asked softly.
“No. And I couldn’t tell her. Not only because of the ridicule she would have gotten from her friends, her family. But it would have really hurt her. She would have felt like it was her fault, that she wasn’t trying hard enough, that she made some kind of mistake. It would have been a much harder rejection for her than me leaving because I was an uncaring bastard.”
I looked at the tuxedo picture again. Saw how happy he looked.
“Did you…”
“I never cheated on your mother. Not once. But I couldn’t give her what she needed. If I’d stayed with you, I would have been living a lie, and we all would have been miserable as a result.”
“But what about me?” I asked, my voice very small.
“Your mother told you I was dead. How could I visit you? I sent money, of course, kept sending it up until you graduated from college.”
Now my eyes were glassy too.
“How responsible of you.”
“I’m sorry, Jacqueline.”
I turned away, unwilling to let him see me cry.
“When I got older. When I grew up. Why didn’t you ever try to contact me?”
“I meant to. I always meant to.”
I wiped my cheeks.
“I have to go now.”
“Please stay.”
I looked at him.
“Forty years, Wilbur. You missed out on my entire life.”
“I can’t tell you how hard it’s been. At least you thought I was dead. I knew you were alive. I’ve spent more time thinking about you than most fathers actually spend with their children. Every morning I’d wake up and think about calling you, about talking to you.”
“But you didn’t call.” The tears were really coming now. “I found out you were alive, and I came. You knew I was alive, and never came.”
“Jacqueline…”
I whispered, “I wouldn’t have cared that you were gay.”
“Please stay…”
“Good-bye, Wilbur.”
I walked out of his tidy little house, went to my car, and cried the entire way to the hospital.
Latham was asleep when I arrived. I held his hand and thanked the universe that he was most certainly heterosexual and decided that when we got married, I wanted to have my reception at Chateau Élan because the staff was certainly dedicated.
And when the wedding was over, I’d send Wilbur a picture of me in my dress and write See what else you missed on the back.
CHAPTER 35
THE DOORBELL WOKE ME UP. It was still strange to hear a doorbell, having spent my entire adult life in apartments. I peeked at the digital, noted it was almost nine a.m., and calculated that I’d gotten a full eight hours of sleep. After leaving the hospital late last night, I picked up a frozen pizza and a six-pack of Goose Island IPA and finished both of them, then ordered a bunch of crap from HSN that I didn’t need. If memory served, one of the items was a vacuum cleaner that could suck up a bowling ball. This was incredibly important, as most homes in North America are just filthy with bowling balls.