I thought about asking Marcus another question.<\/p>\n
There were several I could have chosen.<\/p>\n
I could have asked when he last saw my father.<\/p>\n
I could have asked who had packed the box.<\/p>\n
I could have asked whether my father had said anything about the letter.<\/p>\n
But I knew how those questions would go.<\/p>\n
Marcus would tell me what he knew.<\/p>\n
If he did not know, he would say so.<\/p>\n
I would probably feel disappointed, even though he had done nothing wrong.<\/p>\n
I had to admit that the problem was not always the answer.<\/p>\n
Sometimes it was the expectation I carried into the conversation.<\/p>\n
I wanted someone to give me the missing part of my father's life.<\/p>\n
I wanted the years of silence to become understandable because another person had witnessed something I had not.<\/p>\n
That was a lot to ask of Marcus.<\/p>\n
He had brought me the box.<\/p>\n
He had not promised to explain my father.<\/p>\n
I looked at him across the table.<\/p>\n
"Sorry," I said.<\/p>\n
He frowned slightly.<\/p>\n
"For what?"<\/p>\n
"For acting like you were supposed to know everything."<\/p>\n
Marcus shook his head.<\/p>\n
"You asked questions. That's all."<\/p>\n
"I kept expecting you to tell me what it meant."<\/p>\n
"I understand."<\/p>\n
He spoke without irritation.<\/p>\n
That made my apology feel more necessary, not less.<\/p>\n
I had been so focused on what I wanted from him that I had barely considered what it was like to sit across from me.<\/p>\n
He had watched me handle the shoes.<\/p>\n
He had watched me look at the envelope.<\/p>\n
He had answered the same kinds of questions more than once.<\/p>\n
He had done all of that without claiming to understand the reasons behind my father's choices.<\/p>\n
I had mistaken his restraint for a sign that he was holding something back.<\/p>\n
Maybe he had simply known where his knowledge ended.<\/p>\n
I wished I had learned that difference earlier.<\/p>\n
"I don't want you to think I'm blaming you," I said.<\/p>\n
"I'm not thinking that."<\/p>\n
I looked at him.<\/p>\n
"You're sure?"<\/p>\n
"Daniel, I brought you the box because your father wanted you to have it. I don't know what else you want me to say."<\/p>\n
There was no anger in his voice.<\/p>\n
There was a limit, though.<\/p>\n
I heard it clearly.<\/p>\n
For once, I did not try to push past it.<\/p>\n
"Nothing," I said. "That's enough."<\/p>\n
Marcus nodded.<\/p>\n
The conversation ended there.<\/p>\n
It did not end with a revelation.<\/p>\n
It did not settle the questions I had about my father.<\/p>\n
It simply allowed the two of us to sit in the same room without making Marcus responsible for the things neither of us could explain.<\/p>\n
I turned back to the table.<\/p>\n
The envelope had a small crease near one corner.<\/p>\n
I had not noticed it earlier.<\/p>\n
I touched the paper carefully, then withdrew my hand.<\/p>\n
The crease was not evidence of anything.<\/p>\n
It did not tell me how long the envelope had been stored or how many times it had been handled.<\/p>\n
It was just a crease.<\/p>\n
I found that reassuring.<\/p>\n
Not everything needed to be a clue.<\/p>\n
Some things could be exactly what they appeared to be.<\/p>\n
The shoes were shoes.<\/p>\n
The envelope was an envelope.<\/p>\n
My father's handwriting was his handwriting.<\/p>\n
The fact that I did not understand his reasons did not change those facts.<\/p>\n
I leaned back in my chair.<\/p>\n
For a moment, I remembered the way my father used to organize his tools.<\/p>\n
He had a place for each one.<\/p>\n
If I returned something to the wrong drawer, he noticed.<\/p>\n
If a wrench was missing, he asked who had borrowed it.<\/p>\n
He disliked searching for things that should have been where he left them.<\/p>\n
I had found that habit irritating when I was younger.<\/p>\n
I thought it meant he cared more about order than people.<\/p>\n
Perhaps sometimes he did.<\/p>\n
But I could also remember how he repaired things instead of replacing them.<\/p>\n
A loose handle.<\/p>\n
A broken hinge.<\/p>\n
A chair that rocked because one leg had come slightly loose.<\/p>\n
He would turn the object over, study the problem, and begin working.<\/p>\n
He rarely explained what he was doing.<\/p>\n
He simply kept going until the thing worked again.<\/p>\n
I had always seen that as an example of his stubbornness.<\/p>\n
Now I could see another part of it.<\/p>\n
He was willing to spend time on things he believed were worth repairing.<\/p>\n
That did not mean he had treated every relationship the same way.<\/p>\n
It did not excuse the times he had hurt me.<\/p>\n
It only reminded me that a person could have qualities I understood and still remain difficult to understand as a whole.<\/p>\n
I had wanted my father to be one thing.<\/p>\n
A good father who had made mistakes.<\/p>\n
Or a distant father who had never really known me.<\/p>\n
Either description would have allowed me to put the past into a neat place.<\/p>\n
The truth might not fit either one.<\/p>\n
I looked at the box again.<\/p>\n
I was still waiting for it to provide some kind of answer.<\/p>\n
That expectation had not disappeared just because I had recognized it.<\/p>\n
I was learning that understanding a habit did not mean I could stop it immediately.<\/p>\n
I still wanted the next thing I examined to make the evening easier.<\/p>\n
I still wanted the letter to explain why my father had chosen to leave it for me.<\/p>\n
I still wanted the shoes to mean something more than a remembered size.<\/p>\n
Wanting those things did not make them true.<\/p>\n
I could let myself want them without deciding that I had found them.<\/p>\n
Marcus glanced at the clock.<\/p>\n
"You need anything?" he asked.<\/p>\n
"No, thank you."<\/p>\n
He nodded.<\/p>\n
I almost asked him to read the letter with me.<\/p>\n
The idea came and went quickly.<\/p>\n
I was not sure what I hoped he would see that I had missed.<\/p>\n
Maybe I wanted another person to confirm that I had understood it correctly.<\/p>\n
Maybe I wanted someone else to share the weight of it.<\/p>\n
But the letter had been addressed to me.<\/p>\n
Whatever its meaning, I needed to consider it for myself before asking anyone else to interpret it.<\/p>\n
I did not have to do that alone forever.<\/p>\n
I simply did not want to surrender my judgment because I was uncomfortable with the responsibility.<\/p>\n
I placed my palms flat on the table.<\/p>\n
The wood felt cool beneath them.<\/p>\n
For the first time since Marcus had arrived, I was not preparing another question.<\/p>\n
I was just sitting there.<\/p>\n
I could hear the refrigerator running.<\/p>\n
I could hear Marcus breathing across from me.<\/p>\n
I could hear the faint movement of a car somewhere outside.<\/p>\n
The ordinary sounds of the house continued around us.<\/p>\n
My father's death had not stopped the world.<\/p>\n
His letter had not stopped it either.<\/p>\n
The box had brought his absence into the kitchen in a way I had not expected, but I was still here.<\/p>\n
Marcus was still here.<\/p>\n
The table was still the table where I had eaten countless meals and paid bills and set down things I meant to put away later.<\/p>\n
I did not need to turn the room into a place of ceremony.<\/p>\n
I only needed to be honest about what I was feeling.<\/p>\n
I missed my father.<\/p>\n
I was angry with him.<\/p>\n
I wished I had asked more questions while I still could.<\/p>\n
I also wished he had answered some of the questions I had already asked.<\/p>\n
Those feelings did not cancel one another out.<\/p>\n
I could miss someone without pretending they had never hurt me.<\/p>\n
I could be angry without deciding that every good memory had been false.<\/p>\n
I could accept the box without knowing what to call the gesture behind it.<\/p>\n
That was where I had arrived.<\/p>\n
It was not a final answer.<\/p>\n
It was a way to continue.<\/p>\n
I thought about asking Marcus another question. There were several I could have chosen. I could have asked when he last saw my father. I could have asked who had … <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":39749,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-39767","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-insightdrama"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39767","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=39767"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39767\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":39787,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39767\/revisions\/39787"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/39749"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=39767"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=39767"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=39767"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}