"Someone got a letter," said Ororo as she dangled the envelope over my head. I reached up and grabbed it.
"Thanks, 'Ro. This is quite a treat. I never get mail."
"You get flowers," said Logan, who was sitting across from me. I blush and remember the white lilies he has sent me on every birthday, even the two he's missed. I've kept one from each bouquet, so five lilies are pressed between the pages of my journal. Ororo tries not to smile and I can tell she's resisting the urge not to wink at me as she leaves the lounge.
"Aren't you going to open it," says Logan casually, laying his book on the arm of his chair.
"I will open it when I'm ready. I suggest you get back to your reading. You're not getting out of it."
He rolls his eyes and snatches the book up again. Wuthering Heights. I'm sure he's cursing my extra strength right now. He'd teasingly bet me he could outlast me on the running trails on the school grounds. I don't think he expected me to take him up on it and when I did, I showed him exactly how long those trails can be. I almost felt bad because I don't think he'd never been so worn out in his life but the penalty was worth it: he had to do whatever I wanted. I said Read Wuthering Heights and I'll never tell anyone that I beat you.
My aim in making him read that particular novel was to try and get him to see how ridiculous it is to ignore the fact that some people were meant for each other and trying to change that only causes pain. He is thick-headed sometimes and it frustrates me but if I actually tell him I love him, he would freak out, run away, I'd never see him again, and I'd pine away to nothing in my bedroom fingering dried out white lilies. The lilies... Giving a girl flowers on her birthday is a very fatherly thing to do. I'd rather he take me somewhere. I think I'd go anywhere with him.
His feet are propped up in the chair next to my hip. He nudges me with a booted toe and now we are brother and sister. I nudge him back with my sandled feet and ask him how far he's gotten. He tilts the book so I can see that he is halfway through. I nod like an approving teacher and continue my own book, The Awakening by Kate Chopin. Emma is frustrated by her love for a man who won't love her back because he's afraid of hurting her. I think I can sympathize.
I know he loves me the way I want him to. The way he looks at me and tries to hide behind his status as my surrogate father/brother only reinforces it. But I know he's afraid of hurting me. He can have me in every way if he wants because I am twenty-three and in control of my power. I can make my own decisions and I would decide to give myself to him if he would only ask. He won't, though, because he's afraid of hurting me. How he thinks he will hurt me, I don't know. Does he think he will be unfaithful? Does he think he will get restless and leave? I haven't got a fucking clue. I haven't got any choice but to wait.
"Marie, I know I said I'd read this and I will, but if I have to listen to Kathy's whining for one more second, I'm going to throw up on your pretty sandals over here."
"Thirsty?"
He says yes and rises. I follow him into the kitchen, tucking my letter into the pocket of my shorts. He hands me a Diet Coke and takes one himself.
"Diet Coke," I say with a raised eyebrow.
"Scott bet me I couldn't go a week without alcohol."
"What is it with you and gambling?"
"I don't know. Can't say no, I guess. Why?"
"Well, I don't know how you're going to get through the rest of Wuthering Heights because it doesn't get much better,"; I say and walk away, leaving him wide-eyed in the kitchen.
Outside, I miss where I grew up. Mississippi air was heavy with warmth and microscopic molecules of water that you couldn't see. In New York, it's different, a little drier and not so hot. The summer is beautiful, though, especially with the school gardens. I can sit perfectly still in the middle of the rose bushes and the bees don't even know I'm there.
I take out the envelope and sit in the shade, the grass cool on my bare legs. Only now do I notice the return address: Meridian, Mississippi. This was the last place I would have expected this letter to come from. After my mother died, my dad cut off all contact with me. He sent me the meanest letter telling me that I should not call, I should not write, I should not try to visit. No one in my family wanted to see me and no one would accept me under their roof under any circumstances. Logan was angry when he read the letter and said that wasn't right, but I told him not to worry about it. I had expected such a thing and had prepared myself for it. That's what I told him. He knew I was lying, though, and he came to my room a few hours later and held me while I cried. He was there when I woke up the next morning, his arms still around me and the most content look I've ever seen on his face.
This letter is formal, not mean. It is very cold. My dad's sister is writing to say that he is very sick. She cannot take care of him because she cannot take the time off from her newspaper job in Chicago. His parents are too old and they live in Georgia and my mom's family is scattered and unreachable. I am the only option. Aunt Charlene has enclosed the money for a train ticket and a taxi to our house. There are no phone numbers and no addresses, only the one on the front that used to be mine.
My dad needs me. All the times I might have needed him to help me and he didn't and now he needs my help. I look at the cash my aunt has sent me and I know that there is no other choice.
"What the fuck are you thinking going down there to help that asshole who calls himself your father!"
"Logan, no one else can take care of him."
"So who the fuck cares!? What has he done to deserve a daughter who will drop everything to go mop his fucking forehead and change his fucking sheets, wait on him hand and foot?"
"Nothing! I admit that he doesn't deserve help! But he doesn't deserve to die alone either and I'm going to show him more compassion than he's ever shown anyone else. I am going to show him that he was wrong about me."
Logan can't say anything to that. He is leaning against my dressing table, thumbnail carving a crescent-shaped ditch in the wood.
"How long will you be gone," he asks in a more tender voice.
"I don't know. Until someone else can take care of him. Or until he dies."
He is staring at his boots as I pack a suitcase and my suede backpack. That backpack was a gift from him from Alaska. He saw it being made.
Feeling the rough leather under my bare fingers, it hits me how much I hate to leave him. I think this might be good for both of us, though. Maybe he will realize how much he loves me and he will lose his fear of whatever or maybe he will realize that he likes being my big brother and he will leave it at that and I will heal away from him, although my father's house is not really the best place for healing. Either way, we need this. It will settle things.
Logan helps me put my suitcase in back of a black Jeep Cherokee, the carry-on beside it. Then he kisses the top of my head and sits in the driver's seat to wait. I can tell from his squirming that he is uncomfortable in the leather-covered bucket seat. If he could have fit me, my suitcase, and my backpack onto the back of his motorcycle, we would have taken it all the way to Grand Central.
Inside, Ororo hugs me and says Be strong, girl. Jean says to call or write if I need anything or want to talk and Scott smiles, says You will be okay. Bobby says he will call me and ask for Mary, our best bud code for I-need-to-talk-and-I-need-someone-to-listen-to-me. When he wanted to ask Kitty out, he said Rogue, I've got a Mary. I think it comes from his ultra-Catholic mother saying Holy Mary Mother of Jesus whenever she is upset. We shortened it to just Mary.
Kitty and Jubes both have my address and they say they will write. Jubilee has a nasty glint in her eye that warns me to expect a visit or two. I love every one of these people and I tell them so before stepping into the Professor's study.
"Rogue, I trust you will be coming back to us at some point?"
I nod and he smiles like he is relieved.
"I don't know how sick he is. It could be a long time."
"I know. There will always be a place for you."
"Thank you," I say as I reach out to shake his hand. Then he hands me a wallet of credit cards and cash, standard issue for mutants who strike out on journeys of self-discovery, whether they mean to or not. There is a place for everyone here.
More embraces carry me to the door and I walk out and wave before climbing into the Jeep. Logan starts the engine and we drive to the train station in silence.
"Coast clear," I ask him as we pull up.
"What," he says, confused.
"No metal-heads, shape-shifters, or man-animals in sight?"
He smiles and shakes his head. None he says after dramatically sniffing the air. I love when he is silly.
Inside the station, we buy the ticket to Jackson, Mississippi with a connection to Meridian. It is open-ended because I do not know when I can come back. We find my platform and he sits with me until a silver train pulls up hissing. In my compartment, he hoists my suitcase into the rack overhead and I set my carry-on in my chair, by the window so I can watch the countryside. Back on the platform, he kisses my hair again and squeezes my hand, says Bye, kid. All of these things are open-ended, waiting for me to return.
I never realized how big this country is until I saw it through the window of the train, everything passing by in a rush of summer greens. I try to read and I can't. I try to sleep and I can't. The only thing I seem to be capable of right now is thinking. Logan is on my mind and I try to remember my father's face, my mother's laugh, any characteristic of any relative who was ever kind to me.
Time passes quickly this way. The train slows, pulls up to the platform in Jackson. The humid heat that wraps around me after the frigid air-conditioning makes me smile. I have no trouble finding the connection to Meridian but my heart skips as I think I am going home.
I whisper the words to myself, making other passengers stare at me.
The Meridian station is small. After calling for a taxi, I pick up my suitcase and wait, with my backpack slung over my shoulder. I'm tired because I haven't slept since the night before I got the letter.
The taxi driver is nice: he helps me load my suitcase into the trunk and carries it up to the porch for me when I get home. I tip him well with Xavier's self-discovery money then I watch him drive off. I test the door: locked. I have to ring the bell and wait. Shuffling steps scuff the floor and the door opens. An old man I do not recognize stares at me, glares at me. He is skinny, bent over, and wrinkled. His gray skin shines with the perspiration of disease. Marie he says like a gunslinger growling the name of his nemesis. I try not to be shocked and say Dad. His eyes narrow at the word.
"You can stay upstairs in the guest room," he says before walking away. I hear a television talking in the den. The house is dark and messy, all the windows covered, no woman to clean things up. I go upstairs and find that the guest room is my old room, vacant of any identifying mark. The closet is empty, the bed is a generic brass twin, there is a dresser with mirror over it, an empty bookshelf. I am like this room and its furniture, begging to be filled.
I set my suitcase and backpack on the bed and listen to the pained grumbling of my father downstairs. I think the most awful thought of my whole life. I hope you die soon.
I have to talk to him. There is no avoiding the confrontation. I sit beside him on the couch, but not too close. He smells like he is dying. From where I am, I can see that the dining room table is gone, replaced by a hospital bed and the kind of rolling table that fits over the bed so whoever is in it can eat or write or whatever he might have the strength to do.
"Dad, will you tell me what is going on?"
"My name is William."
My mouth goes dry and a feeling of dread boils in my stomach. It is not death I smell on him, but hatred. He hates me.
"Okay, William. How 'bout I call you Bill? Or Willy," I ask, thinking How 'bout I call you fuckface?
"William," he says curtly.
"Fine. William, tell me what I need to do for you?"
He could have hired a goddamned nurse for this.
"I have liver cancer. My blood type is rare, so there wasn't much chance for a donor. Then it spread all over. I'm made up of tumors and blood now."
"I'm sorry, William."
"Not your fault."
I'm surprised he can admit that. I would have guessed he would blame my mutation for his cancerous one. DNA fuck-ups are DNA fuck-ups, plain and simple.
"I'm glad you think so. Please tell me how I should take care of you."
"I just need you to cook and clean. I need medicine a lot. You just have to change the bags," he says and taps a machine at his side that I had not noticed before, "I'm hooked up to this thing pretty much all day. It can go anywhere I go except the shower."
I say a prayer. God, please don't make me help my daddy shower. God answers the prayer quickly because my dad says I don't need help in the bathroom at all. He says it with a tone that is just above shame.
"Okay, William. Do you ever need help during the night?"
"Sometimes," he says shortly, like he is hiding something.
"Can I sleep down here?"
"Sleep wherever you want," he says and turns up the volume on the television.
"Oh, Bobby, I don't know how I'm going to get through a week here much less a month. This could go on even longer. This is, like, ten times worse than a Mary."
"Yeah, but you'll be cool. Hang in there. Just think of my handsome face and everything will resolve itself. All the wrongs of your world will be instantaneously righted."
"Thanks. So does that mean it was you and not God who has left my dad with the ability to bathe and clothe himself?"
"Oh, gross, Rogue! I can't believe you said that! And there's a picture of my parents right across from me, shit!"
"Just cutting down your ego a bit. Anyway, I should go now, but Bobby?"
"Yeah?"
"Think of my gorgeous face whenever you look at that picture and all disgusting images will be instantaneously erased."
I can't sleep. I toss and turn in the generic daybed as the moonlight illuminates the room, making the white walls glow. Downstairs, I hear the pained cries of a man who is falling apart. I consider going down to help him and I remember that he would not let me call him Dad. Then I remember how he said that he was all tumors and blood and that makes me get up and walk downstairs. I can see through to the dining room. He is shaking in his hospital bed with every cough.
Walking into the room, I say William, can I do anything to help you? He turns to me looking like the living dead and I try to hide my shock.
"Dad, please let me help," I say, forgetting myself. He lets it go and holds a hand, pointing to a table just inside the doorway. A lamp is on and by its light I see plastic bags of clear fluid piled on top of one another like sandbags. I take one and walk over to him. His other hand points to the IV stand. I remember watching Jean change IV bags from when she drafted me to help in the infirmary after a mission that nearly cost us half the team.
"Where should I put the used one," I ask him.
"Red trash can," he says.
I throw it away and ask him if he needs anything else. His medication--morphine for the pain--is beginning to take effect and he shakes his head before falling asleep. One hand released a rag covered in blood spots.
Now I know what he was holding back when he said Sometimes. It won't be long for him. Knowing this, I am strangely relieved.
It took me forever to get back to sleep and I feel the effects of it the next morning. I can hardly open my eyes when he calls me. Another medication change I assume as I descend the stairs. Instead, I find a short-haired woman waiting for me in blue scrubs and a fabric jacket with clouds on it.
"I'm Janine," she says and holds out a hand.
"Marie," I say, taking her hand and shaking it weakly.
"I'll be here to help out for a couple of hours during the day. And I'll show you what all you need to do for your father."
I nod and ask her if she would like some coffee, it would only take a minute to make. She shakes her head and sits by my dad on the sofa, where he is watching television. She talks to him in whispers, making me feel like they're conspiring against me.
Once I'm caffeinated and dressed, she goes through the basics with me: how to change the IV bags, the special way to tuck in his sheets, his meal schedule, how to make sure he eats enough, when to call for help, who to call when he passes away. All of this stuff to remember ... I feel like I'm in school again.
Janine leaves and my dad watches TV, indifferent to me. I take the time to walk around the house I used to live in and had almost forgotten. Mom's darkened sitting room is full of sheet-covered furniture. Her piano stands in the middle of the room, pushed in here to get it out of the way. In one corner, I see the shape of her sewing machine. I whip the sheet off and look at it. In my mind I try to conjure up the hum of the needle as it whipped through the cloth of the dresses I wore to church when I was little. As I trace the plastic, I try to feel those dresses beneath my fingers. The needle scratches my finger tip as I strain to remember the words of the songs she would sing when she worked. I leave her piano alone. I do not want to know how the keys feel under my fingers.
Beyond her sitting room, there is a study that belongs to my dad. In it, he keeps his desk and his walls of books and National Geographics. The dining room table and chairs are in here, the table on it's side with the legs sticking out and the chairs stacked beside it.
Looking around the room, I remember his hobby: entomology. For some reason, he loved bugs. All over there are watercolors of different insects, some beady-eyed and dark, others bright and graceful looking. The watercolor paint makes them all look so lovely. Between paintings are glass cases of insect specimens, all labeled and neatly pinned on the white cloth background. One whole case is filled with butterflies, colored wings jumping a little when I tap the glass.
In another case, there are bees with fuzzy yellow and black bodies. There are beetles with eyes on their shells to frighten away their predators and a praying mantis: the women eat the men after mating. Then there are two mayflies down in the corner. I think they are so tragic because they have only a day to find a partner and procreate. Then they die.
I think about the mayflies all afternoon and listen to the television drone. When I try to fall asleep, I wonder how soon my mother's sitting room was covered up after she died, how soon her piano was shoved aside. My dad's coughing wakes me up again and the way he won't look me in the eye makes me cry myself to sleep.
This is where everything lulls. The days are very long, with evening calls to the Bobby and my friends to break up the silence between my father and I. Jubilee and Kitty have sent a couple of letters, but our phone conversations are so much more fun.
Logan does not call, he writes. He sent me a postcard of the New York City skyline and another of the Liberty Bell in Philadelphia. He's running again and I'm really not sure why. After the bell, there was one of the Lincoln Monument in Washington D.C. silhouetted against the sunset and one of the strangest sculpture I've ever seen: a silvery man half-buried in the ground, one arm reaching up to the sky and his mouth locked in the O of a scream. Hanes Point the postcard says. Logan's writing says that this an accurate picture of what he feels like without me around.
The next postcard is from Williamsburg, Virginia and he's making fun of all the people who dress up in the period costumes. Then he's asking me to help him steal the gold from Fort Knox, Kentucky. Wanna help me steal it, Marie? his scrawl says on the back of the picture of the gold bars all piled up in their vaults. I tape his postcards up on my wall. They interrupt the whiteness.
After four weeks of my father steadily deteriorating, a knock on the door around 9:30 one night brings me downstairs. I try to keep in shape: I run when Janine is here and I stretch and do push-ups and sit-ups in my room. When I came to answer the door, I was covered in a light sheen of sweat, hardly the way I would have wanted to meet anyone.
As soon as I open the door, Jubilee launches herself at me and wraps me in a hug.
"We have missed you so much," she says. Kitty laughs and hugs me, too. Bobby is leaning against the doorframe, twirling car keys around his finger. His arms stretch out and he bear hugs the life out of me.
"Bobby drove us," says Kitty, "We feared for our lives."
"Hey! We made it here, didn't we?"
"Yeah, Bobby, and you only aged us about ten years. Rogue, we need you back so bad! You wouldn't imagine the trouble we can get into without your good sense," says Jubilee, "Even I wouldn't have guessed it."
I usher them into my mother's sitting room and tell them we have to be quiet because my dad is sleeping. They fill me in on what's been happening while I've been gone: St. John asked Jubilee out and Remy has been sniffing around Storm. They say they've never seen him so focused on anyone, even me. The news that really got me though was that Jean is pregnant. Kitty says that Scott walks around with this stupid grin on his face half the time. Jean has the grin the other half.
I ask them when Logan left and they look at each other like they were surprised that I knew.
"He's been writing to me. Postcards, mostly, but a couple of letters."
"He left about a week after you did. No one at school has heard anything from him. I think only the Professor knows where he's gone because he let him use a car. I was so pissed when I found out he had the Jeep. That was my favorite!"
I smile at Jubilee and find myself relieved to know that he's in a car and not on that death-machine-I-mean-motorcycle, not that it would matter for him.
We talk until after midnight. They leave for a hotel and promise to take me to lunch. Just call us when you're ready says Bobby.
The next morning, I ask Janine if she can stay an extra hour. She agrees and I'm free for three glorious hours, almost all of which are spent at a table in a Ruby Tuesday's, talking with my friends.
"We're actually on alert," says Kitty. "The Professor has sources that say the Brotherhood is waking up, so to speak. He suspects that they're going to try and bust Magneto out, but no one can really say."
"We have to leave day after tomorrow," Bobby adds, smiling thinly with disappointment.
"It's okay, really. I'm glad you guys could come at all."
We had lunch every day while they were here and they came over after my dad was asleep and always brought good food and movies.
It was the night before they had to leave when we got busted. I admit we were getting a little loud, but I had closed all of the doors between where my father slept and where we were laughing our asses off at the stupidest jokes and the most ridiculous lines in the movies we were watching.
I had hooked up a television in my mother's sitting room and had pulled the sheets off of everything. The piano was pushed against the wall to make room for the TV.
My dad walked in and, despite his sick condition, he still managed to twist his face into an expression of fury. I felt like a kid caught smoking in the woods.
"Are these people friends of yours?"
"Yes, William. They came down to visit me from New York."
"I suppose they go to that school, too?";
"They do."
"I think I've done well to tolerate one mutation in my house. I'd rather not have to deal with anymore."
I was so horrified I couldn't speak or cry. I merely got up and took his arm and turned him around saying, Sorry, William. I'll make them go. He shook my hand off and shuffled back to his bed. I changed his medicine and shut the door to the dining room behind me.
"I'm sorry, guys," I say as I lead them out to the porch.
"It's okay," says Kitty before she kisses my cheek. Bobby hugs me again and kisses my hair. We'll be waiting for you, he says.
"Don't be too long," says Jubilee with tears in her eyes.
"I'll miss ya'll," I say as they walk down the steps and to their car.
"See ya," says Jubilee waving out the window. They drive away and I'm left staring at the moon, who doesn't seem to care that I am alone.
The next morning, my dad finds that he has the energy to yell at me for letting other mutations into his house. Standing in the living room, he shouts over the television.
"How dare you take that kind of liberty!! You do not live here, you do not own this house and you never will!!"
"Who the hell else am I supposed to talk to!? You don't seem to be capable of human interaction!! What have I done to make you hate me so much!?"
"I will never forgive you for what you did to your mother," he shouts then looks as if he is suprised at himself for saying it.
"And what exactly did I do to my mother!?"
"You killed her!!"
"What!?"
"After you left, she didn't hang on to anything. When she got sick, she just totally let go."
"I didn't have any choice!! I had to leave because you threw me out!!"
"Why did you have to do that to David!? You could have just stayed away from him and everything would have been fine!!"
"It would not have been fine, Dad!!"
"My name is William!!"
"Fuck you and your name!! You're my dad whether you like it or not!! And if I hadn't been the one to have the mutation, it could have been grandkids. Would you have shunned them, too!?"
He doesn't say anything, only sits down on the sofa.
"And further more, I am not a mutation. My friends are not mutations. We are people who had bad luck when it came time to hand out DNA or whatever. You had bad luck, too. What do you think cancer is? It's a mutation, Dad. Welcome to the club."
I hear Janine come in through the back door in the kitchen and I grab my purse and the keys to my dad's truck off of the table by the front door. I knock the mail off and stop. There are bills and magazines and a shiny postcard with a picture of a stage with people on it and a big banner saying The Grand 'Ole Opry. Ridiculous is the only word on the back, along with a small line at the bottom: Hope you're okay, L.
Janine walks in and feels the tension. Her eyes flutter from my father to me, from me to the purse in my hand, and back to my father.
"I'm going out."
She nods with something like understanding and I leave. I am in such a rush to get away that don't even see the mailman.
"I am so sorry," I say as I help him up and hand him the letters that fell out of his bag.
"It's okay, really." He gathers the mail for our house and shoves them into my hands. "You got a postcard," he says has he walks down the sidewalk.
This one is the most exciting. It is a map of Mississippi with a big white flower beside it. Big block letters say "The Magnolia State" in green. On the back, Logan writes I haven't seen one damn magnolia the whole time I've been here.
I'm laughing and my heart is beating faster when a shiny black SUV pulls up. It is the very same one that took me to the train station and the man who took me there gets out. Logan walks up to me and I can't move. Taking my arm, he guides me to the porch steps sits down next to me. He grins and smells so good, like his cigars and the aftershave he says he doesn't use. My love for him hasn't faded during the month that I've been here. So much for healing.
Jesus he says. It's hot as hell down here, Marie. And I still haven't seen any magnolias. I laugh and lean into him. He puts his arm around me and kisses the top of my head and oh, god... I want this to be our house and I want two perfect children to run out the door and throw their arms around us squealing Love you, mommy, Love you, daddy and he would laugh and tumble them over his shoulders and into our laps and our family would sit and let the sun turn us all dark brown.
"I'm missing you," he says.
"I'm missing you, too. Logan?"
"Yeah?"
"How much are you missing me?"
"A lot, Marie. Can I tell you something?"
"Anything."
"Jean and Scott and 'Ro said that I shouldn't be such a pig and not do it. Plus I finally finished Wuthering Heights, which was sort of the clincher."
"Do what?"
"Tell you I love you, Marie."
I don't say anything, only smile and lean in closer. I love you, too, Logan I say and then he tightens his arm around me and tilts my face up to his and kisses me on the steps of my front porch, like we are two kids back from the movies on a humid summer night trying to figure out exactly what our kiss should be like.
He quickly takes my hand and pulls me to the black Jeep Cherokee, saying Get in, Marie. He pulls up at a motel and takes me to his room. I wonder a little sadly if he planned this all along as he kisses me again and slides his fingers under my shirt. Then he lowers me so gently to the bed and we make love on top of the covers and I come for the first time in his arms. Laying on the cheap comforter naked and sweating, neither of us speaks. The air conditioner is arctic and we crawl under the sheets for only a moment before we want each other again.
This time I have my head on his shoulder and I say This is what you want? His response makes me eat the doubt I felt. I want you. Then he says Come back with me? I tell him I can't, that I have to stay until someone else can take care of my father or until his disease gets the better of him. I leave out this morning's fight. Then he tells me he will stay here until I'm ready to go and I know he loves me. The emptiness that has lived in me for the past month goes away, just like that.
It is dark before he drives me back to my house. Sitting in the car with him in the seat next to me, I don't want to get out. I tell him about my friends visiting and about the fight between my dad and I. His hands tighten on the steering wheel but he doesn't let himself get upset.
"You have my number, Marie. You know I'm here."
"Thank you," I say before kissing him one more time and climbing out of the car.
In the house, Janine is sitting on the couch thumbing through magazines and watching TV.
"I'm sorry you had to stay," I say and my face reddens because I know I must look a mess. But Janine lets it go and smiles with the understanding I saw earlier today.
I look in on my dad and see that he is sleeping quietly before going through the kitchen and out the back door. I sit on the steps under the overcast sky and listen to the crickets, recalling things, the happy parts of my childhood.
My mother making me chocolate chip pancakes on Sunday mornings before church. Eat up so you'll be strong when you grow up. I am strong, I think. God loves you, sweetie. God will always love you, no matter what.
Daddy standing me on his feet and dancing me around the living room. You make me feel like dancing, I wanna dance the night away.
Watching him pin down his specimens so carefully, explaining what was special about each one. He was always careful with the butterflies. It hurt to see such little bits of beauty pinned down onto white muslin and labeled, corpses in an insect morgue. He always said he'd never caught a luna moth, the most beautiful, the most unattainable, he said. It wasn't a butterfly, but it was still something lovely to be acquired and suffocated in a glass jar with a cottonball of chloroform.
Seeing the luna moth on a midnight hunt in the backyard with my father. His back was turned. It landed on my shoulder. I think it whispered in my ear Save me . I took it carefully in my hand and set it deep in the hedges that my father had already searched. I felt powerful, seven-year-old me saving something so rare and beautiful.
The heavy clouds break and the moon shines through, only halfway out of her shell of darkness tonight. I hear another whisper, a thank you, and the luna moth lands on my knee. It's tiny eyes regard me and I cannot read them. They only stare as he lets me see his beauty. Smoothly curving wings of pale green, edged with brown. A soft, furry body that feels like silk as my finger brushes it carefully. The wings flicker and he is gone, leaving me with the experience of the touch.
It takes two weeks before my dad will even speak to me. Janine has doubled her time here, partly for my benefit I think. I call Logan every night. He listens mostly, which is what I need him to do.
He actually came over one night and we talked out on the porch. I think my dad must have a sixth sense when it comes to mutants because he knew he was here. He came onto the porch with his medicine machine in one hand, rubber tubing dangling from it and from the needle in his arm.
"I told you I didn't want any more mutants in this house."
Then Logan did the most honorable thing he ever could have done: he took my head in his hands and kissed my forehead, whispered in my ear I love you. Then he said to my father, You're daughter is beautiful in so many ways. You should talk to her.
Then he left. My dad just stared until the black Cherokee was out of sight.
Inside, I sat down on the couch and stared at the silent television. My dad sits next to me, setting his machine between us.
"So why should I talk to you," he asks.
"I don't know," I say shaking my head. "He just wants me to be happy."
"Do you love that man?"
"Yes. His name is Logan."
"How old is he?"
"I don't know and neither does he. It's a long story, Dad. A long story involving a lot of mutants."
It is quiet for a long time before he says, So you think you're in love. I know I am I say and he smiles, something I did not expect.
"Good for you," he says and tells me just a little about when he met my mother, how he just wanted her to be happy. That is what loving people is about he says. Making them happy. I'm thinking to myself How would you know that when he says that he just wanted me to be happy, too. When I left, he was angry at his failure. I was not happy and neither was my mother. I never realized he loved her so deeply.
He explained all of this to me and then asked me to tell him why Logan doesn't know his age. I told him that and what happened to me from the time I left and he just listened. He set the machine on the floor and took my hand and said I'm sorry. He was too tired to say anything else and I wondered if I was expected to forget all of his anger towards me, how he threw me out of this house five years ago, his coldness in informing of my mother's death, so many other things.
His breathing is slowing down.
I remember dancing on his feet in the living room.
He squeezes my hand.
I remember him giving me extra syrup for my pancakes on Sunday mornings.
He breathes I'm sorry again.
I say Thanks, Dad and kiss his hand, sliding my fingers up his wrist to feel his weakening pulse.
He heaves one more breath and his pulse fades away.
I let all of the bad stuff go.
I spent almost two months at home with my dad. We didn't talk much at all, but we did reach an understanding. As I watched the gurney that carried his body wheeled down the sidewalk, Janine reaches over and hugs me.
"You took good care of him," she says.
"Thank you," I say with a lump in my throat.
"Are you leaving soon?"
"Yeah, I'm going back to New York after the funeral."
She nods and follows the gurney to the van that will carry it to the funeral home. He wanted to be buried next to my mother and tomorrow, he will be.
Logan waited at the house until after the funeral. Aunt Charlene had come to take care of the house and prepare it for the market. She didn't speak to me except to tell me to have a safe trip back up North. I asked her if I could have the watercolors of the insects in my dad's study and two quilts that my mother made. She said she didn't care and I think that was the sad truth.
My suitcases and the boxes with the quilts and paintings are in the back of the car and Logan is waiting to drive me back to Westchester.
First, though, he hands me a package.
"I went shopping yesterday," he says.
"You?"
"Yeah. I got you something," he says, pointing at the package. I open it and it is a small velvet-covered box. My hands start to shake as I open it. A flat gold ring with three square-cut diamonds embedded in the metal glints in the sunlight.
"Marry me, Marie?"
"Yeah, I think I will."
"You sure about that? You're going to be stuck with me for a long time."
"I wouldn't have it any other way," I say as I lean over to hug him. He goes a step further and kisses me right there in the car, in front of all of the funeral guests standing on the porch and in front of Janine, who has shielded her eyes with her hand and smiles at us through the bright sun.
The drive home is without a doubt the best road trip I have ever been on. We don't get much sleep, but I don't mind and neither does he.
As the impressive façade of the mansion finally looms before us, I know that this is home now. We speed through the gate and stop in front of the garage. I wait for him and he opens my door, offering a hand to help me out. We walk up to the door together, but before he knocks, his lips catch mine, his fingers trail along my cheeks, then his arms pull me close. We light the dark summer.
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