"Hi!"
"Father, it's been a while."
"Wow, you've aged!"
Sissy and I, along with my nephew's then finance, Erica, volleyed answers back and forth over the four hour journey, our voices punctuated with anxiety, our stomachs percolating like the old Farberware electric coffee pot that pumped out tongue scorching java for years until Mr. Coffee walked in.
None of these felt quite right and as we approached the old man's 50 acre spread in upstate New York, we decided to name the mission.
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| The Gates of Heaven or Hell? |
"Showdown at the Gates."
"The Gates of Hell."
We stopped at the nearest bar and I downed two bracing vodka and tonics and knocked back an Ativan. Sissy had two goblets of red wine and we figured the world would be closer to a utopia if along with morning coffee and tea, we all popped an Ativan.
"I'll have a skim milk latte with a two milligram chaser of Ativan, please."
No wonder why so many housewives, including mom, were so placid in the 70's. They didn't give a hoot if their popovers didn't rise, they were floating along life's turbulent waters on a Valium raft.
But we wondered how we would react seeing a man who had once been our father. Had he aged? What did he look like? Had his voice changed? Was he in good health? Would he yell at us? (That booming voice used to stop us in our tracks) Dismiss us like naughty children? Tell his German Shepard's to attack? (Wear your sneakers, Sissy, in case we have to sprint out the door) Or simply just keel over at the first sight of his now middle aged daughters? ( I don't suppose we're in the will)
He'd always been an impressive and imposing man, standing over 6 feet tall with hazel eyes, and wavy black hair that refused to lay flat on his head unless it was clipped every couple of weeks at the local barber's shop. He even tried having it straightened but the solution burned his scalp, leaving red, weepy sores on his head for days.
Dressed in bespoke suits and crisp white shirts, he made his fortune in the courtroom, his good looks, rehearsed posturing and deep voice won over jury after jury. And ladies, too. Lots of them.
The drive to earn more, to win more, all stemmed from his childhood days where he spent years battling an alcoholic father who provided little for his family. We remember Papa as a gentle man, with eyes as blue as a Cape hydrangea, who'd drive us to the penny candy store on Partridge Street and let us stuff bit-o-honey, bubblegum cigarettes and yards of dots into those little paper bags.
Worn clothing, holes in his shoes, a stutter, Dad was our very own Horatio Alger who lifted himself from poverty and abuse by putting himself through college and law school while working full time and supporting a wife and three kids. He managed the local paper's distribution route, taught English at our community college, built several houses during law school. He moved us to Atlanta while he took graduate courses at Emory and we came back with enough y'all's to rattle our Yankee grandparents for months.
"My, my" our grandmother tutted. She'd been against us heading south. And we suspect against her only daughter marrying the scrappy kid who barely made it out of high school. He married my mother because he had to. He never loved her.
We remember those early days with some fondness- a mischievous father who was always up for a water fight with the neighborhood kids, who climbed up on the roof one snowy Christmas Eve and rang sleigh bells, who taught us to ski by snowplowing backwards down the slope, who took us for ice cream at Ross' where the smell of french fries, cheeseburgers, and onions rings punctuated the thick summer air with their salty, greasy scent.
But painful memories have a way of darkening even the happiest ones, eclipsing smiles and laughs, leaving gaping black holes where sunny recollections once shined, and as we drove through his property, on a frigid January day, I slipped down into the car seat, wishing I could dissolve into the soft cloth and disappear.
Yet sissy surged ahead, her bravery fueled by Cabernet and more than 50 years of wisdom and strength.
"You're strong sister," she said. "Besides, no one fucks with the Cade sisters."
She was right. We'd been living without parents for over two decades. Had our worlds turned upside down, with little left to salvage. Been rejected once before. But we survived.
Could a second one be anymore painful?
