The three dots for an impending reply popped up immediately. I checked the time. Eight o’clock in the morning in Boston. Jason had probably been at the hospital for hours already.
Very happy. I’m sorry you’re upset, but I’m trying to put fight in Dad. I want him to live, C. Not saying you don’t, but if I have to pit him against you—so be it. You first. Cancer next. Text me how it goes. I’ve got Sloan Kettering set for next Friday.
I sighed. How was I to reply to that?
I couldn’t, so I didn’t. I slid my phone into my back pocket and descended two more flights to the kitchen.
Dad sat alone, small and slumped, at the enormous table. He pointed behind him toward Mom’s mudroom and office nook. “She went to write down the address for our lunch reservations. I gather food will soften our conversation.”
“It’s her fix for everything it seems.” I pulled out the chair across from him. “How are you here so fast? Were you on Mat’s flight?”
“I caught the 10:00 p.m. United flight. I assume he was on the 11:30 p.m. American I also looked at. Your mom said I just missed you.”
I wondered what would have happened if he’d been early enough to catch me. Would I have stayed and sent Mat a text sending him straight back home? Would Dad have confiscated the letters and diaries? Could he still?
“There.” Mom’s overbright voice silenced us. “I had a reservation at a wonderful restaurant for Caroline and myself, but then Mat came . . . Well, it won’t go to waste. If you leave now, you’ll just make it.”
“But?” I pointed to the ceiling.
“I’ll take care of him.” Her decisive tone was new. Granted, I hadn’t been around my mom for years, but she had always been more of an “if you think so . . .” or an “if that’s what you want . . .” kind of person. An absent person who hadn’t cared enough—after telling me exactly where I fit in her world—to put up a defense or an offense ever again.
She started to clear the dishes from the table. “You need a proper meal, and talking in public might be the only way not to escalate this. There’s no point going any further if you two can’t get on the same page. Head out the front door, grab a cab, and here’s the address.” She handed me, not Dad, a slip of paper.
As we walked to the street corner, better to find a passing cab, I studied my dad. I’d always considered him a mild man. Salt-and-pepper hair—the most basic of spices, and used sparingly—with a disposition to match. His profession bolstered the image. Transactional law didn’t require a lot of emotion. It required knowledge and acumen, attention to detail.
But I was wrong. He wasn’t mild mannered. He was resigned. Fearful. Lost. It became clear in that tortured “no” moments earlier. Such a short word to carry so much power.
Margo’s Mrs. Dulles was right. The eyes are the windows to the soul and, now looking, really looking, I saw so much in my dad. I saw what I’d only heard and failed to understand years before—my mom yelling across our living room days before she walked out. “If you’d only talk to me. Give me something, Jack. Help me. I’m hurting like you, but we can’t live like this anymore.” I finally saw what Jason confronted every time he asked a colleague to consult on Dad’s diagnosis only to have our father back out. I saw why, after years of pushing and prodding to connect, I could never reach him. He simply wasn’t there.
How long had Mom, or anyone, tried to push this boulder uphill only to have him tuck tight and roll down again?
Now it was up to me? I was to be the juggernaut that got him fired up to feel, to fight, to live?
Jason certainly had high expectations.
Nineteen
All this churned within me as the cab drove north through Knightsbridge, around Green Park toward Regent’s Park. It dropped us off at a modern glass office and amphitheater complex along the canal.
“Down the ramp to the left.” The cabby pointed. “You can’t miss the Prince Regent.”
We wandered down the semicircular drive and, at the end, stopped. The London Shell Company’s Prince Regent restaurant sat before us. On the water.
“It’s a boat.” I stated the obvious.
We stood there staring and speechless. The Prince Regent was a long canal boat. I could see that the restaurant inside was light wood, large windows, and white tablecloths. If the idea of a boat leaving land and trapping me with Dad hadn’t felt so intimidating, I’d say the Prince Regent looked charming.
Dad scoffed. “I’m not in the mood for tourist food and a canal tour through the zoo to Camden. There is nothing enticing about this prospect.”
Dad digging in his heels made me dig in my own.
“We need to talk.” I pointed to the boat. “There’s our table for two.”
Dad’s eyes widened in surprise. I surprised myself. But I was mad—and beyond tired. I had come here to help, maybe not to start the fight Jason wanted, but to offer another option—hope—for all of us. And foolishly, I’d let it grow. Somewhere along the way, my desire to simply understand and offer a palatable comment morphed into vindicating my aunt, rewriting my family’s story, and saving my dad. The absurdity of it would have been laughable, if not so tragic. Especially as I was now cast as the villain in our story, the “Tresse” as Margo and Caro would have called me.
As we stepped down the boat’s four steep stairs into the dining area, I noted a map on the wall outlining our path and timeline through the canal. I chuckled as we waited by the stern’s galley kitchen to be seated.
“What’s amusing?”
“You. Me. Mom. This is what we’ve come to . . . a two-hour tour in hopes we’ll talk and, in public, in hopes we’ll behave.”
Dad chuckled too.
I watched the hostess seat the couple who entered before us at a four-top with another couple they clearly didn’t know. My eyes widened at the thought of trying to talk to my dad with another couple leaning and listening in.
“Are you the Paynes?” A woman about my age with flaming red hair gestured to Dad with a teasing smile. “You’re our last guests to arrive. We were going to raffle off your table in a minute.”
“That would have been a shame,” he murmured.
As we walked toward the boat’s bow, I noted the tables. Each was draped in white linen with a bouquet of fresh flowers in the center and antique cutlery flanking china plates. No setting matched. Each was unique and lovely. The glasses were old as well. Vintage with gold inlay. The 1930s type. This was no slipshod affair.
As we sat, a waiter came over with two delicate glasses, each a quarter full of brown liquid. “Here’s an apple cider brandy made in Somerset to start off your lunch.”
I enjoyed a sip while he laid the menus next to our plates.
“And here,” he continued, “is a map of our route and a menu. You don’t have a choice about either, but some find it nice to know where they are going and what they’ll eat along the way. If you have any questions, let us know.”
He stepped away and the boat pushed off the side of the canal.