Shelter Us: A Novel (8 page)

Robert has left for work already, and I’m coaxing Izzy to finish dressing so we won’t be too late to Oliver’s school.

The doorbell rings.

“Coming,” I hear Oliver shout, accompanied by the staccato of his feet pounding a path to the front door. Before I am even downstairs, I hear a man’s voice speaking to him.

“Hello!” I call out, hurrying to the front door. “Oliver, I’ve told you never to open the door to strangers.”

“It’s not a stranger,” the man says. “It’s me.”

My father stands on my doorstep.

My eyes open wide in shock. He is supposed to be across a continent and an ocean from here. He holds a light-gray trench coat in one hand and in the other a gift bag that says LAX D
UTY
Free. His hair is grayer than I remember.

I recover and say, “Oliver, this is Grandpa David. The one who sends you birthday cards from Italy. Remember?”

“Oh, yeah . . .” he pretends.

“Hi there, Oliver,” my father says to him with a chastened smile.

“I guess you
are
a stranger,” I say, putting my hand on Oliver.

“Can I come in?”

I look him over. How would I explain to my kids not letting my own father into my house? Better to let him try to explain where the hell he’s been. I step aside and let him in.

Growing up, I felt as though my story was a fairy tale. Good things came easy. Evidence that fate was kind was everywhere, in the most fundamental things. My parents’ meeting, for example. My mom could have lived her life in the small Guatemalan village where she was born, thousands of miles from my father’s working-class Jewish family in LA. But Bibi’s march north and her determination to send her daughter to college changed all that. “Love at first sight in the library,” my parents always said. When I was born, Bibi helped take care of all of us. I was the center of the universe to three parents.

My lucky streak ended the day before my senior year of high school started. My parents were celebrating their anniversary with their annual weekend in Santa Barbara. They loved to walk on the beach, browse in art galleries, eat at their favorite restaurant on State Street. They took pictures of each other on the carousel. They saw the zoo’s crooked-necked giraffe.

I imagine that they held hands as they drove home Sunday night, my dad at the wheel, my mother gazing at the moonlight reflecting on the Pacific. Maybe she dozed as they glided south along the Pacific Coast Highway. Or maybe her mind went to meeting my father, their wedding, my birth. Maybe she thought of Mother’s Day cards, which she kept in a box in her closet; of ballet recitals, tutus, and sagging pink tights. Maybe she thought about the coming year, my last at home before college. Such thoughts might have carried her well into Malibu, where perhaps she dozed off again, where my father strained to keep his eyes open, where he considered stopping for coffee and stretching his legs but didn’t because they both wanted to get home. Maybe she was sleeping when my father’s eyes closed and he nodded
off on a curve in the highway, failed to pull the steering wheel left the few degrees necessary to stay on course, and headed off the embankment and onto the rocky stretch of shore below. If only the car hadn’t rolled on its right side, she might have walked away like my father did, with a broken rib and some cuts on his face. If only one of them had said, “We’re tired; let’s stop.” If only they’d left Santa Barbara an hour earlier, a day later. A thousand more “if onlys.”

It blurs together: Saying good-bye to my parents in our driveway. Bibi coming to stay with me while they were gone. And then The Call.

“Hello?” I answered the phone. It was nearly midnight, and I was watching TV. I thought it might be my boyfriend, Brian, calling to say he was going to try to sneak in without Bibi’s noticing.

“Sarah.” My dad’s voice sounded distant. “Is Bibi there?”

“Yes. Why?”

“Put her on the phone.”
What happened?
I wondered.
Did the car break down? Do they need a ride?

I got my grandmother out of bed, and she came back with me to the family room. I watched her, hoping to find out what was going on from the half of the conversation I could hear.

“Yes?” A pause. “Just tell me, David,” she said. She was quiet; then, a moment later, she dropped the phone and a wail emerged from her body like nothing I’d ever heard from her. I had never even seen her cry. She began punching the pillows on the sofa, scratching at the skin on her neck and chest, pulling her hair. My heart banged against my chest so hard it felt like it had sharp corners instead of soft tissue. I moved toward the dangling telephone. The room and its contents started to look fuzzy and white. I dropped to my knees to keep from falling and could make out the outline of the telephone receiver by my grandmother’s feet. She had slowed her frenzied movements, had stopped punching the furniture, and all her energy was coming out through her voice: “
No! No! No! No!
”

I reached the phone and clutched it to my left ear, covering my other ear with my hand to block out Bibi’s frightening sounds. I curled on the floor, knees down, fetal position, forehead touching cool, hard,
wooden floor, and closed my eyes. “Dad?” I creaked. I could hear him on the other side, trying to talk. He kept taking a breath to start again, and on the third or fourth try he began to speak the words I feared were coming.

“Sarah, there was an accident. Mommy . . .” He stopped speaking, couldn’t make himself say the words he heard in his head. He’d said “Mommy,” not “Mom,” I noticed.

“Is she okay?” My voice came out like a little girl’s. I told myself that Bibi was crying like that because my mom was very hurt, maybe even paralyzed. Or maybe she’d killed someone else while she was driving, maybe she’d killed a whole family, something terrible. In the background I could hear people murmuring, a voice over a PA system, metal wheels rolling. My father spoke words I’ll never forgive him for. “She died, Sarah. Mommy died. I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry.”

At seventeen years old, I joined an unofficial high school club—the Death Kids. Among us were Girl Whose Sister Was Kidnapped, Boy Whose Older Brother Hung Himself, and me: Girl Whose Mom Died in a Car Crash While Her Dad Was Driving. I wasn’t friends with the other Death Kids. They were shrouded by loss. I stayed as far away from them as I could.

When my mom died, none of us knew what to do, ritually speaking. She—a Jewish convert for her secular, atheist husband—loved Jewish rituals and read a lot about them. But she never forced it on us. We didn’t have to embark on her spiritual journey, she always said. Apart from a Passover Seder every year that involved all of us and a smattering of stragglers she invited, her Judaism was between her and God. When she died her rabbi came over and counseled us that Jewish law called for us to stay home from work and school for a week, cover the mirrors, and let visitors come pay their respects. “Sit shivah,” he said. I liked the sound of it.

My father would have none of it—not the mirrors business, not the visitors, and definitely not the staying home. The day after her funeral, he went back to work, staying late like always, a work habit that had been responsible for his rise to head of white-collar crime
and managing partner at one of the oldest law firms in Los Angeles. He let me decide if I was ready to go back to school or not.

Not, I decided. Bibi and I stayed in the house, crying, snacking, and talking. We took my mom’s Judaism books off her shelves, and paid close attention to the handwritten notes in the margins. We handled them like illuminated treasures from the Dark Ages. We talked about the passages she had underlined, and what she might have thought about God. Bibi, a pragmatist who hadn’t stepped into a church since she’d come to America, was intrigued by her daughter’s interest in religion. The chapter on death described rituals we followed as well as we could. They gave us something to do. On the seventh day, we opened the front door to an unfairly lovely afternoon, stepped outside with arms locked, and walked ourselves around the block. It was time to rejoin the living.

There was no Mr. Mom routine for my Dad. It was Bibi who made sure I ate dinner, had clean clothes, and felt life in our house. It wasn’t until I became a mother that I realized she had done that for herself as well as for me.

A year and a day after the accident, I kissed Bibi and my dad goodbye and drove to Mills College in Oakland. Bibi had wanted to help me move in, but I thought I’d feel my mom’s absence more if she came with me. I saw college as my fresh start, where I was free from the Death Kid label. I poured myself into studying and achieving with one clear goal in mind: after I graduated I would never ask my dad for anything.

My father got his fresh start, too. A colleague invited him to work at the International Court of Justice in the Hague. With my blessing, he was gone. I (mistakenly) thought there was little difference between him being an hour’s flight away or ten, but he should have known better. What helped him most of all was the young Italian lawyer he met there. They married, moved to Rome, and had two daughters. He never came home.

Robert and I visited them once, on our honeymoon. It was unnerving to see him living an alternate life. I could not get it in my head that
his two little girls skipping around and speaking Italian were my siblings. I felt no connection. Not to them, not to my father. We left Rome two days earlier than we’d planned. Everything around us was ruins.

The D
UTY
F
REE
bag yields two remote control trucks and a set of airport vehicles. Oliver begs to stay home and play with them instead of going to school. I don’t want my father to witness me quarreling with my kids, so I say yes. He helps them open the packages, and then sits with me at the kitchen table.

“I have to say, Dad, I didn’t expect to see you standing on my doorstep.”

“I’m sorry for the surprise. I’m here for work, and I wasn’t sure if I’d have time to come by this morning. One of my meetings was cancelled, so I thought—”

“You thought you could squeeze us in at the last minute?”

“Well, when you say it like that it sounds bad.”

“If the shoe fits, Dad . . .”

“Actually”—he uncrosses and re-crosses his legs, a move I recognize from when he was trying to maintain patience with my adolescent self—“I was going to say, I didn’t know if I’d have time this morning
or
later this evening.”

“Oh. That explains why you didn’t call to say you’d be in LA.”

“I didn’t call in advance because I didn’t want you to say no.” He looks at me pointedly.

Fair enough. I pick at my fingernails. “Well, so, how long are you in town?” Sitting across from my Dad here in my house feels so bizarre, and also inexplicably normal.

“A week,” he says. “But I’ll be back again on and off for a few months for work. The girls wanted to come, but they couldn’t miss school. They’re in high school already.” He shakes his head. “I can’t believe how big the boys are getting. They’re beautiful, Sarah. You’re doing a great job.”

Hearing my dad compliment my parenting revs up my tear
production. It feels so close to the way things between us should be. I look away so he won’t see. The neighbor’s olive tree waves in the breeze. A hummingbird dashes in to poke its nose in a white-flowering bud, then dashes away. By all accounts, this is a gorgeous day.

“Sarah, I would really love to spend time with you when I’m here. I want to get to know my grandsons. I miss you, Sarah.”

A simmering stew of hurt and fury bubbles in my gut. I check to see that the boys’ active ears are out of hearing distance before responding. “What makes you think that you can just show up and expect everything to be instantly better? You left, Dad!”

He looks at his shoes. He takes my berating like a beleaguered boxer in the corner waiting for his opponent to take pity on him. “I know, Sarah. I have no rights. I’m throwing myself on your mercy. I’m asking for forgiveness.” My anger ticks down a notch. His experience with hostile witnesses serves him well.

Izzy bounds over, zooming a new plane through the airspace between my father and me. My dad rumples his hair before Izzy pulls loose and flies around the room.

“I’m just saying, it’s a lot to ask, Dad.”

“I know. But it’s better than not asking, right?” I let his question sit on the flat table between us, unadorned by a reply. “At least can I give you my local cell number so you can reach me if you want to?”

“Fine.” A single blood vessel in my heart opens to make room for the possibility that I could let him back in my life. It’s just enough to lift my body from my chair, walk my legs across the room, and pick up my cell phone. I place it in his hand, he puts in the number, and hands me back the phone.

“I’d better be going,” he says, standing up from the table. “Hey, good-bye boys!” he calls to them. They don’t notice. “That’s fine, let them play,” he says to himself. I appreciate that he does not request hugs. I wouldn’t have made them.

I walk him to the door and close it behind him. I feel my phone in my hand. I search my contacts, and, sure enough, there it is. D
AD
.

“H
e was here?”

Robert is home from work. I’ve just told him about our surprise visitor this morning.

“Are we going to see him again?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know that I want to.”

He sighs, pushes his hands through his hair. “Sarah, he’s your father.”

“Yeah, well, he lost the right to be treated like one when he stopped acting like one.”

“I just . . . I feel sorry for him. I mean, what if Izzy and Oliver were mad at me for some reason?”

“Like, if you killed me and then abandoned them for Europe?”

“Come on, Sarah. Don’t you think that’s unfair? It was an accident.”

“I don’t want to talk about this right now.”

We meet each other’s eyes. Accidents are a touchy subject. “Okay, fine. But I’d like to call him to ask him over for dinner or something.”

“No, Robert.”

“Why not?”

“Because he’s my father. I decide.”

“Sarah,” he says in his let-me-calm-you-down voice, “please, just for a second, think about other people here.” He looks around the room, motions dramatically to Oliver and Izzy. “Do it for them. My dad’s gone. He’s their only grandfather. And he’s my father-in-law. If I want to invite him here, don’t you think I should be able to?”