“I hope you didn’t plan to cook.” My father hands his bag to the cabbie and holds the taxi’s back door open for my mother and me. “Because I want nothing more than a steak at the Buckhorn.” His look is wistful. “You can get all the mai tais you want, but you can’t get a good steak to save your life in Hawaii.”
Unlike my mother, with her frequent postcards, my father wrote to me only twice from Honolulu. What his communication lacked in quantity, it made up for in quality; he wrote letters, not postcards, pages and pages describing his favorite holes at the golf course, the hike he took with Uncle Stanley up a mountain called Diamond Head, the surf on the beaches on the north side of the island. And the food; he told me all about the meals he’d been eating, the fruit salads and grilled fish and sweet rolls. In both letters he remarked that while the Hawaiian food was “interesting,” he missed eating “good old-fashioned red meat.”
Now, however, at his mention of going out to eat, I let my face fall slightly. “I have a delicious home-cooked supper planned.”
“Do you now? What a shame.” He shakes his head dramatically as he climbs in after my mother and me, a little smile playing around his lips.
I grin, too. I can’t get a joke over on him; he knows me too well. “Now, Dad, you didn’t let me finish,” I chide him affably. “My supper is planned for tomorrow night.”
He takes my hand. “That’s my girl.” Looking up, he informs the driver to take us to his favorite steak house.
The Buckhorn Exchange is the oldest restaurant in Denver, dating back to 1893. It is also one of the most famous; there was an article about it in Life magazine some years ago. I remember my father proudly showing me the glossy magazine page and saying, “Look, honey, Denver is on the map now!” The editors, I suppose, took note of the Buckhorn’s long history, its delicious steak dinners, and its Western ambience. In its small, darkly paneled rooms, old photographs line the walls, and saddles and horse memorabilia are spread about. There are rustic tables and chairs for dining, and comfy velvet sofas in the lounge. It’s kitschy, but my dad loves it. “Ah, home!” he says as we are seated at a table in the back room. “Back in the wonderful, wild, wild West.”
Supper is marvelous. We linger over cocktails, followed by two bottles of wine—much of which, I am ashamed to admit, I drink myself. My parents are alive with stories of Hawaii. “It was exceptionally beautiful,” my mother says, her voice hushed, as if describing a cathedral. “I’ve never seen anything like it. Flowers as big as dinner plates. Palm trees everywhere. Brand-new, high-rise hotels cropping up everywhere in Waikiki. And the ocean . . . you should have seen how blue the ocean was . . .”
“And the girls,” my father says. “You should have seen how gorgeous the girls were.”
“Tom!” Lightly, my mother punches his upper arm.
He’s teasing, of course. He’s never had eyes for anyone but her. Once, when he and I were watching a beauty pageant together on television, he told me that if Miss America walked into the room and offered to run away with him, he’d send her packing. “Even if she had legs to the moon, she couldn’t hold a candle to your mother,” he said, his eyes luminous. “Not when your mother was her age, and not now, either.”
I remember feeling a bit melancholy, wondering if anyone would ever adore me like that.
After dinner, my father has the hostess call another cab to take us home. The wine has gone to my head; vaguely, I hear my dad saying something like, “We’re living it up—this is the last night of vacation!” I climb into the backseat of the taxicab, sitting in the middle. How safe I feel, snuggled between my parents, and how easy it is to nod off in the secure little haven that they create for me.
Chapter 25
And then I’m singing to my children.
Lay thee down now and rest . . . May thy slumber be blessed . . .
I’m in the boys’ room, a space I haven’t previously occupied in the dreams. The room is, predictably, painted blue, somewhere between the hue of the sky and that of a king’s royal robe. Side by side are twin beds, with blue-and-red-plaid coverlets on them and matching shams that are currently on the floor, as the boys are in their beds and ready for sleep. Above Mitch’s bed are several small framed prints of ships and trains—no doubt painstakingly selected by yours truly—as well as an assortment of crayon sketches on the same subjects, most likely done in his own hand, taped beside the framed works. His bedside table is piled with picture books; his bed is crammed with stuffed animals of every sort. In the center of the bed, Mitch sits in rumpled splendor, his covers already disheveled despite the fact that he has likely just been tucked in.
Michael’s side of the room holds nothing. No artwork on the walls, no toys on the bed, no books to look at if he wakes early and can’t get back to sleep. The only thing on his bedside table is his eyeglasses case. He is sitting up very straight in bed, his pillow carefully arranged behind him, his covers neatly pulled up on his lap. His eyes without his glasses are open but unfocused, and he is swaying slightly, silently.
Both boys wear forest-green flannel pajamas with contrasting blue piping. But other than their attire and their vaguely similar coloring and features, they could not be more different.
I am seated in a rocking chair between the beds. I have a sudden flashback to this chair in this same room, same position, but between two cribs, when the boys were toddlers. Even then, the contrast was stark. Mitch would stand up in his crib, leaping gleefully about, until I was terrified that he would fling himself out of the crib in his excitement. His crib then, like his bed now, was filled with stuffed animals. Some of the same ones, no doubt.
Michael, on the other hand, would position himself quietly in the middle of his pristine, animal-less crib, not moving a muscle, while I sat in the rocking chair and read a bedtime story. Michael would not look at me, nor demand to see each page as I turned it, the way Mitch did. He’d stare at his feet in their fuzzy footed pajamas, betraying no emotion toward the story, Mitch, or me.
Now I rock slowly, humming Brahms’s Lullaby. Mitch lies back under his covers and closes his eyes. In the light from the small, dimly lit lamp on the dresser his mop of blond curls gives off a faint sheen. His hair looks slightly damp, as if he has just been bathed, and I can’t resist leaning in to sniff the Johnson’s Baby Shampoo smell of his clean head. He smiles and opens his eyes, meeting mine. I love you, he mouths.
I love you, too, I mouth back. Mitch closes his eyes again and snuggles into his blankets.