The Ways of Fatherhood

It was a rainy Saturday, late in the morning, when Robert Bryant walked into the coffee shop and ordered a cortado, rested his jacket on the back of the chair gently, and looked at the rain drops collectively falling down the window. A taxi dropped a young woman off outside and she opened her umbrella and ran inside. She closed her umbrella, ordered a drink, and then left with her umbrella open and disappeared into a building across the street.

‘How odd,’ Robert thought to himself. ‘I will never see her again either.’

A young girl, eighteen or nineteen, brought him his cortado in a small glass and resting on a plate. He looked at her, smiled softly. Her eyes were a warm brown. Her smile was delicate with an undertone of sadness.

“Thank you,” he said, and she smiled at him and asked him if he needed anything else. “No,” he said. “No, that’s okay. Not right now.”

He sipped his cortado and watched as the young girl, Nancy, he believed her name was, after her grandmother, wiped off the counters and tables and brought dishes to the back.

Over the next hour several people came in. Some stayed and some left. Some had their laptops, others had a book, and some had good company. The traffic outside was heavy, despite the even heavier rain. A small stream was beginning to form on either side of the roadway.

He watched as she greeted people with a smile, and in that smile, he saw her mother, and only her mother, in a way that nobody could ever see her the way he did. And in that smile, he saw their memories together from decades ago and it got him dreaming. His drink had been gone a long time, and he wanted to order some more, but he was both enjoying the way her voice sounded to other people, and at the same time he was terrified of the way it sounded. It made him sick and disgusted, ashamed and wrought with regret. Every time he went to stand, he felt his legs solidify to the floor and fill with concrete. His hands trembled and his heart fluttered and his stomach was filled with rocks. His body was not doing what he was telling it to. Out of fear or out of shame he could not tell. So, he remained there, by the window, until the rain stopped in the afternoon.

A man that looked vaguely familiar walked in. Robert stared at the man briefly, with that feeling of knowing, but unable to recall why he knew the man. He looked at his stature as he ordered a drink and a sandwich. The man turned around and Robert stared at his face, unable to place the man. Then he looked up and saw Robert, smiled and nodded, and looked back down at his phone. Then, briefly, back up at Robert, who had by now looked away back to the window.

“Bert?” he heard the man call. “Bert, is that you?”

Robert looked at the man in surprise and still could not recall who he was. He did not provide a response. The man came over and stood next to him he was smiling at Robert and put his hand out.

“Andrew. Andrew Carillo!” the man said.

And then Robert knew. It was a friend from high school whom Robert had not seen since then.

“I’ll be damned,” the man said.

Robert stood up with his hand out and grasped Andrew’s and placed a hand on his shoulder gently. “How you been, Andrew? Sit. Sit a minute, won’t you?”

Andrew pulled out a chair and sat down with a big grin.

“It’s been at least, what, twenty years now?”

“About that,” Robert said. “How you been, Andrew?”

“Good. Real good,” he said. “Wife, kids, the whole nine yards. You know how it is at this age,” he laughed. “How about you? Where you stayin’?”

Robert nodded. “Good, good,” he said. “I’ve been around. Just moved back to town. My mom passed a little while ago and my dad didn’t want the house, so.”

“That same one off Clifford? Yellow, wasn’t it?”

“That’s the one,” Robert said.

“You gotta be kiddin’ me! Hey, my drink is ready. Here,” he said, fishing in his pocket for a pen and wrote his number down on the back of his receipt. “Here’s my number. Give me a call some time.” Then he stood up, said, “Love to have you over some time. You take care now!”

Robert looked at his number. He ordered a coffee with sugar in it and a croissant. Andrew was gone by the time he looked up and didn’t see which way he had gone. He put the receipt in his pocket, stood up, put his jacket on, and Nancy was no longer at the front. There was a new girl there. He ordered a small coffee to go, paid, and left.

A week later, Robert dialed Andrew’s number from a hotel lobby and he answered. He invited him over to dinner that evening, and it was a good thing because he hadn’t much food left in his home and hadn’t been able to find work yet. He walked the same way home he had as a child, went in through the same front door, got in the same shower.

‘How things never truly change,’ he thought.

After his shower he put his clothes in the washer. Naked, in front of the mirror, he filled the basin up with hot water and ran it over his face. He lathered his face in shaving cream and shaved the thick, black hair that was starting to grow after only a couple of weeks. He stroked the razor across his face, dipped the razor into the basin and shook it, and took another pass. When he was finished, he emptied the basin, rinsed it out, and got a cold rag to wipe his face. He looked almost fresh, almost clean.

He laid back on his bed thinking of Nancy and the way she looked and the way she carried herself the same way her mother had when she was that age. He closed his eyes and imagined the way her smile was thin and sad, just like her mom’s was. Then he thought of her mom, of Haley and the way she made him laugh. The washer went off, and when he opened his eyes, he realized he was crying.

Andrew opened the door cheerily. “Bert,” he said with his hand out. “Come, come. Grab a seat. Let me take your jacket, I have a closet right here for those. Dinner’s about ready. What you drinking these days?”

“Water, please,” he said.

“You sure? We got some different wines. I got a beer fridge out in the garage. How about some coffee?” Then, “I’m rambling. You just got here and here I am overwhelming you. I got steaks coming. Some garlic potatoes, too! Boy, you’ll love it. Come, sit.”

Andrew had a nice dining room. It was off from the kitchen, and it smelled herby and like a home cooked meal. He hadn’t smelled anything like it in a long time. He sat at the table while Andrew was making minor conversation from the kitchen and Robert responded with yes or no, while he looked around the room, into the kitchen, that was far nicer than anything he had been in.

Andrew brought him a mug of coffee and had a damp towel thrown over his shoulder. He had a mug himself and took a sip, and held the cup up to Robert in a cheers kind of motion. Robert obliged, and sipped his coffee.

“Lovely home you have here, Andrew.”

He looked around, said, “Yeah, she ain’t bad. Had to do a lot of work to her to get her looking this pretty. Should have seen it when I bought it. Basically had to completely redo the kitchen. Added that garage.” Then, “But I don’t wanna bore you, Bert. Listen, I’m glad you’re here. Real glad. I’m glad I ran into you. Something I been wanting to tell you for, well, as long as I can remember now.”

Robert took a drink of his coffee. “Yeah? What’s that, Andrew?”

“Well, I suppose I’ll just come out and say it.”

“No better way to say it.”

“I married Haley.”

Robert nodded. The back of his neck began to tingle, then that tingling spread into his shoulders, his back, his arms, down his torso, through his feet, and he felt even teeth begin chattering.

“That so?” he said.

“And I wanted to tell ya for a long time. A damn long time, Bert. Shit, you know how Haley was, what with the whole thing’n all.”

“Yeah,” is all he could say.

“I suppose you’re probably wondering when.”

“Yeah,” is all he could say.

“Well, Nance had just had her fifth birthday. So about 13 years ago.”

“Yeah,” is all he could say.

“I raised her good, Bert. Real good. For you,” he said. “And I want you to know that. I tried. I tried real hard. I never could have kids of my own. I always wanted to thank you in a way. In whatever a way a man can thank another man for gifting him the chance to be a father.”

Robert didn’t say anything. He nodded, looking at his coffee. “How is she, Andrew? How did she handle it all?”

Andrew ran a hand through his hair and let out a slow breath. “About as well as you can expect a sixteen-year-old to handle losing her mother. But she got through it. She got through it all right. She’s in therapy now. That seems to help.”

“Therapy, huh.”

A timer went off, and Andrew went into the kitchen. The timer faded, all sound faded, and Robert could only hear a heavy ringing in his ears. He looked down into his coffee for a long time and got lost, seemingly, in a black hole of everything he didn’t know. It hit him then that his entire life had stopped, but the world continued to go on.

Andrew brought three plates in with steaks, potatoes and gravy, and rolls. And then he brought a big salad bowl and small bowls and forks and knives and sat those down.

“She,” Andrew started. “She knows you’re here,” he said. “She’s real excited. Real excited, Bert. But nervous, too. Fragile, ya know. Yeah. Yeah.”

“Oh,” Robert said. “Yeah.”

 “She heard you got out.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

“From who?”

“Don’t know. She just knew it.”

“Women have that way about them.”

“Yeah. Yeah, I suppose they do.”

Robert asked, “Does she hate me?”

“No,” he said quickly. “No, I wouldn’t say that.”

“What would you say?”

“Oh,” he said. “Oh, I don’t know. Something else. Very different than that. Very different.”

“So, she knew about me?”

“Always,” Andrew said matter-of-factly. “Haley never hid that from her.”

Then, the front door opened, and in he could hear the way she stopped there. He wondered if they were feeling the same thing or very different things entirely. He heard the door closed and he wasn’t sure if he should stay seated or stand. He stood up, brushed his hair back, wiped off his shirt, fidgeted, he sat his coffee down, picked it up again.

She turned the corner, and there she was, his little girl. The one he dreamed about, wrote innumerable letters to, cried over, screamed over. There she was.

Neither of them moved. Robert wanted to go to her, to wrap his arms around her, to breathe her into his soul, but he didn’t move. She took a step forward, paused, then looked up from the floor at him and she had been crying. She held no hatred in her eyes the way he thought she would. She had no room for hatred in her heart, in her being, in her soul. She was perfect, loving, and kind. And he knew all of that in only an instant. Had known that from the moment Haley told him she was pregnant. He knew instantly that he was having a daughter, and that daughter would be exactly who was standing before him. He knew it then, and he knew it staring at her in that moment.

He tried to say, “Hey,” but it didn’t come out, and he choked on his words, and he realized then that he was crying. “Hey,” he said again.

“Hi,” she said, fighting to get even that out.

“Can I give you a hug?” he asked.

She nodded and wiped her face. He walked, his feet slightly unsteady, over to her and she buried her face into his chest, and he wrapped his arms around her and felt her small arms around his waist. She was sobbing into him, and he kissed the top of her head, and breathed in the smell of her hair.  He held her there for a long while. He pulled himself away, and with both hands he held her out from him and looked at her face, all over, and shook his head, telling her how pretty she was and how much she looked just like her mother. Then he pulled her back in, and they were both laughing about it all while crying.

They laughed over dinner and shared stories about Haley and what Nancy was like as a baby, a toddler, a child, and as a teenager. And it was as if sharing a story with an old friend. The conversation was light and enjoyable, and it was pleasant to finally be there with his daughter for the first time, to get to know her, to see her, to love her in real life. Several times he felt a tear escape for no reason, only at the thought of it all. He saw the way that her and Andrew loved each other, truly loved each other the way a father loves a daughter, and a daughter loves a father. She saw the joy in their eyes, and how natural their love was.

It was a little after midnight when Nancy left, and it was just the two of them again. Robert started picking up dishes and taking them to the kitchen. He grabbed another cup of coffee.

“She seems good,” Robert said.

“She’s worked for it.”

“Mhm,” Robert grunted. “How was she?” he finally asked. “In those final days.”

“Haley?”

“Yeah.”

Andrew only grunted. “You want the truth?”

“I suppose anything else is a waste of time, and I’ve wasted enough time.”

Andrew leaned against the counter. “Happened fast. Real fast. Seemed like we went in for a headache and the next day she was gone.” Robert nodded. Andrew continued, “Nothing you could do about either. That was the worst part.” Robert kept nodding. “She wrote you a letter,” he said after some time.

“A letter?”

“Yeah.”

“What’d it say?”

“Don’t know.”

“You never read it?”

“She made me promise not to.”

There was a pause between them. A natural breath of air.

“You still have it?”

Andrew looked at him, his lips pursed. “She burned it.”

Robert thought about that. “Probably better that way. Probably for the best she burned it.”

“You think?”

“Don’t know. I think so. Yeah. I think so. Yeah.”

“Okay,” Andrew said.

“Okay.”

Robert finished his coffee, said, “Thanks for dinner.” Then, “And for,” then, “ya know.”

“Yeah,” he said. “Come by any time. Any time.”

“You think she needs some time?”

“Yeah. Yeah, some time. Give her some time to get used to the all of it.”

“Thank you,” Robert said again.

“Hey, yeah. Ya know. Any time.”

“Well, I’ll see ya,” Robert said.

“See ya,” Andrew said.

“Hey, Andrew,” Robert said at the door.

“Yeah?”

“Thank you.”

“Yeah. Hey, any time. Any time at all.”

“I’ll see ya.”

“Next time,” Andrew smiled.

Robert closed the door behind him. The moon was nearly full, and it was cloudless and a cool breeze went through him. It was a fine life.