The Light of Hidden Flowers (3 page)

Dad remained introspective. He looked up with ghostly eyes. “I still know a lot of those jokes, Missy. Not the entire book, like I used to, but plenty of them. I still remember them like it was yesterday.”

“Yep,” I said. “You still got it, Dad.”

Dad looked at me, and the burden in his face was both young and old.

“I forgot what the hell I was talking about today,” he admitted. “Just a blunder. It won’t happen again.”

CHAPTER FOUR

At eleven and noon, Dad and I met with old clients, reviewed their plans, and made adjustments. Dad was the leader; I was the foot soldier, presenting data, explaining the why and what and where and how. Then there was chitchat and reminiscing. There were roars of laughter, and wiping of eyes, and mad appreciation for each other. Handshakes and hugs, and promises to get together soon. These were the relationships that my dad was in—fully loyal and totally committed.

Then Dad left for the golf course and I worked on my models. When my stomach grumbled, I headed out into the blinding spring sun, and down the brick-lined street to Ellie’s. I reserved my eating pleasure for no one. I loved food, from a perfectly toasted English muffin with melted butter oozing from its golden nooks, to Ellie’s homemade soup, to the fanciest five-star restaurant. In Ellie’s little lunch shop, she made three soups daily. Today I was compelled to choose between (1) portabella mushroom, sausage, and kale; (2) broccoli cheddar; or (3) tomato-basil with pesto drizzle. I selected the tomato, and licked my lips as Ellie tore a nice hunk of bread from the crusty loaf. “A pecan bar, too,” I said, pointing to her dessert case. It was my birthday, after all.

Back at my desk, I ate my tomato-basil while I charted beta. Today I was researching a stock I’d been following for a few months, ZelInc, a data storage company. I went through my twelve-step process. Though I had run these numbers countless times before, I now ran them again. I looked at revenue, because the health of a stock started with its ability to make money. Next I analyzed the earnings per share. If revenue was the measure of how much money a company was taking in, earnings per share was the gauge of how much was flowing down to the shareholders. Then I divided the average shareholder equity during the past twelve months by the net profit the company had made during that time. This gave me my return on equity and showed me how efficiently the company was producing a return for the owners. I went on to calculate the PEG ratio, the weighted alpha. I read up on what other analysts were saying about this stock, what the insiders were buying, as well as a handful of other metrics to help my decision-making process.

Before I knew it, hours had passed and it was already three o’clock. Jenny knocked on my door. “Guess who is on the phone?”

I shrugged.

“Mr. Fancy-Pants from this morning.” She gave a smug smile.

“Mr. Longworth?”

“You got it.”

“And?”

“He wants to talk to your father.”

“Should I take it?” Dad had already been on the golf course for a couple of hours.

Jenny nodded and then left my office. I considered calling after her, asking her to take a message, but I had been a big enough coward today. The least I could do was take this call.

I inhaled a gallon of air, blew it out slowly. I smiled before answering, a trick Dad had taught me, a trick Dale Carnegie books and tapes had taught him years ago. “Mr. Longworth, hello, this is Melissa Fletcher. My father isn’t here right now.”

“We’ve decided to go with your firm.” His tone was adamant. “We don’t want to interview the others. We want your father. Your firm.” Now his tone was pleading, almost frantic, like he was begging the store clerk at American Girl on Christmas Eve for the last Girl of the Year doll for his daughter.

“I’ll talk to him,” I said.

“Put in a good word for us, will you?”

“I will.”

“And happy birthday,” he added.

I called Dad on his cell phone, the flip-top variety that did nothing other than take and make calls. I told him about Longworth. “Missy, tell him I’ll think about it. Tell him I’m not sure if it’s a good fit. Tell him I’ll consider it, and will get back to him by Monday.”

“It’s only Thursday, Dad. This guy sounds like he’s going to blow a gasket.”

“By Monday, Missy. Let me think about it.”

I returned Mr. Longworth’s call. “So now he’s interviewing
me
?” he scoffed. “I’m now begging this guy to take my ten million dollars?”

“If he says yes,” I said, “you won’t be sorry.”

Before I shut down my computer, I typed Mr. Longworth’s name into the search engine: three pages of entries, all related to his business in wires. Then I typed in “Elizabeth Longworth,” and I was surprised to see a fair amount of entries registered for her, too. Only hers were related to the work she did as a board member for the One by One Foundation, a nonprofit designed to aid in the development of Third World countries by building water and sanitation infrastructure. There were pictures of Mrs. Longworth—Chanel-tweed Mrs. Longworth—makeup-less in chinos and an unironed linen camp shirt, standing arm in arm with a village full of disadvantaged children. She had been instrumental in funding the local outreach organization that built the wells, and while the work itself was admirable and fascinating, I was mostly impressed by Mrs. Longworth herself. In person, she had struck me as passive and meek. Intelligent, yes, but not strong. Yet in these photos, fueled by her passion, she was courageous and fierce.

Before I decided to major in finance, I dabbled in the study of public policy. In my heart I was a Peace Corps girl with wanderlust and a dream of bettering conditions in the Third World. There were so many ways to organize a society, and yet the needs of the people were the same in every nation: food, clothing, shelter. To work, for life to have meaning.

The chance to improve another person’s lot in life, through the development of farming, water, and infrastructure, exhilarated me. At William & Mary as an undergrad I declared a double major in finance and public policy. In the end, there was a fork in the road. To choose public policy and travel meant to leave Dad. To choose finance meant to stay by his side. For as much as my passions resided in tents and huts and yurts, I opted for Dad.

I chose Dad because I loved him more than anyone in the world. I chose Dad because I was already down one parent, and the thought of losing time with my one remaining was riskier than buying a tech stock at the height of the Internet bubble. And maybe I chose Dad because I wasn’t brave enough to leave home. But if I had gone, I would have grown stronger and maybe, just maybe, I would have had the guts to step in to help my father this morning.

CHAPTER FIVE

At five o’clock on the dot, I packed my bags and headed toward the front office. From the looks of Jenny—her computer still glowing, her mug of coffee just refilled, her lipstick recently reapplied—it appeared she planned to wait for Dad, who was still on the golf course. “Tell Dad I said good night.”

“Happy birthday, honey,” she said again, blowing me a kiss.

It was the last week of May and though the month had started unseasonably cold, gushing rain and shooting ice daggers, Mother Nature was now handing out daily doses of sunshine like overstuffed goody bags. As I peered west over the faraway mountains at the Creamsicle sunset, I knew Dad was right, that it was a beautiful night to be at the country club, to be rallying on the tennis court, feeling the fresh air whiz by my neck. And while I did enjoy playing tennis, going to the country club was anathema to me. It was hard work. It required that I turn myself into someone else, demanded that I elevate my sociability many degrees beyond my comfort level, putting myself forward to a threesome in need of a fourth, most likely cheery BFFs from high school, then Chi Omega sorority sisters in college.

The tableau was all too familiar to me. I’d try, but I’d fail. For all of my efforts, I wouldn’t look like them, talk like them, be like them. I knew the truth. The world loved extroverts: it valued the gregarious personality; it praised the person of action over the person of contemplation. To be me—an introvert, a sensitive sort of person who preferred the company of her own thoughts over the conversation of others—meant swimming outside the mainstream.

The few times I had made the effort—to play tennis, to be sociable—I’d met Dad on the veranda afterward and sipped an Arnold Palmer while he called over guys for me to meet. “Missy, this guy here—Tom Creighton—is a genius with the computers, just like you.” The guy—Tom—would
Aw-shucks
and shake my hand and return the compliment to Dad, correcting him slightly, saying that he wasn’t really a computer guy, more like a security systems analyst. “Either way,” Dad would say. “He’s a good guy. And Tom,” Dad would go on, shaking his head, “Missy here has a beautiful mind. Never seen anything like it.”

And I’d try, and Tom—or Bob, or Sam, or Max—would try, but our inane chitchat could never measure up to Dad’s hopes for everything to be
the best
. For all of his efforts, the men would leave, undoubtedly feeling as though they had been sold a bill of goods: the spinster daughter who was single
after all of these years.
And I’d leave feeling just the same: like half-stale bread on the day-old rack. Dad’s speechwriting was good—for me, for the guys—but something didn’t line up. We were able to detect the spin.

I slid into my Subaru Outback wagon. When I purchased it a few years back, the salesman—an enthusiastic twentysomething—told me I
had
to have this car.
It’s got all-wheel drive! It’s got a hatchback that holds like a gazillion shopping bags! It’s got a mammoth backseat with built-in tethers for your kids’ car seats!

That’ll come in handy!
I said, just to make him happy. The truth was that I had done hours of research and knew I wanted this car because of its fuel efficiency, reliability, and safety rating. I was a
Consumer Reports
type of gal, the kind that made life choices by comparing black and red dots.

Today the extra seats, all the space, and the roof rack mocked me.

Although I would have liked a special compartment to store my shame.

I clicked on the Rosetta Stone CD I listened to each night on my way home from work and repeated Italian after the narrator.
La donna beve.
The lady drinks
. La bambina mangia.
The baby eats.
L’uomo mangia zuppa.
The man eats soup. I had been listening to these CDs for years, and knew the vocabulary by heart.

“Take a trip!” Dad said all of the time. “Go see your beautiful Italy. Go see the Grand Canyon, for heaven’s sake!”

“I will, Dad. Someday. I promise.”

“What are you waiting for?” Dad asked. “For the old man to kick the bucket?”

“I’m not waiting for anything,” I’d say.

“Just because it didn’t work out once before, doesn’t mean it won’t work out if you try again.”

Dad was referring to my last attempt to board a plane. Though I had read countless books on overcoming the fear of flying, visited the airport three times in preparation for my trip and taken my Xanax a half hour before takeoff, I still couldn’t do it. I made it onto the airplane, but at the commencement of the flight attendants’ safety demonstration, my heart wedged into my throat; had it not been for an extremely calm attendant who had once been an ER nurse, I would have hyperventilated and succumbed to a serious panic attack. She removed me from the aircraft and seated me in the waiting area. My luggage, already locked in the plane’s belly, would go to Italy without me. I watched the plane soar into the sky and then sat for two hours, observing countless more take off.

That was four years ago.

At home, I dropped my bags on the kitchen chair, tuned my ears to the silence of my living-alone existence, grateful for the hum of the refrigerator.

I lived in a three-story brick town house in Old Town Alexandria. Only a few blocks from the water and a few blocks from downtown shopping, my location was desirable, by any measure. Dad lived only a mile or so away, in the same house he’d shared with Mom, so many years ago. Her framed photos still stood on the fireplace mantel, her macramé plant holders still dangled from hooks in the ceiling, her framed needlepoints still hung on the walls.

I didn’t remember her. The memories I kept, the feelings I housed, weren’t organic; they were from photos, an archive of images I contrived so that I could fake a recollection. A childhood forged from secondary sources. A dollhouse I filled with a hodgepodge of found items. That was the worst part. That I didn’t get to keep a piece of her like Dad did. Dad remembered the real deal, when I had memorized the images. He was bona fide; I was just pretending.

In the kitchen, I chopped some onions, crushed some garlic, and sautéed them over a gas flame. Then I poured in a can of crushed tomatoes. The sweet aroma filled the air as the sauce simmered. I tossed in some basil and oregano, salt and pepper. In a separate pan, I boiled water and submerged fresh pasta. When it was heated, I covered it in sauce, and then grated fresh Parmesan on top. I poured myself a hearty glass of Merlot. I went to the family room and clicked on the television and DVR, chose a
Jeopardy!
episode from the lengthy list of them, and settled into my nightly dinner ritual, eating while watching brainiacs answer trivia. The only thing that changed was the food, whether it was pasta or soup or chicken or fish, all recipes I learned from
Molto Mario
while watching the Food Network. Soup,
zuppa
. Fish,
pesce
. Chicken,
pollo
. I sat there, stuffing my face with pasta, calling out answers. The Roman god of wine: “Who is Bacchus?” The country to the east of Sudan: “What is Ethiopia?” The founder of the Achaemenian empire: “Who is Cyrus the Great?”

A beautiful mind,
indeed, I thought snidely, washing down my mouthful with a swig of wine. Look at where it got me. Alone on my thirty-fifth birthday, eating too much pasta in front of the television. A bottle of wine for one.

After dinner, I popped the button on my work pants and went to the freezer for the carton of pistachio gelato. I turned on the teakettle and sat on the granite countertop, shoveling the creamy treat into my mouth, as I waited for the kettle to blow.

With my cup of tea, I sat at my desk and turned on my computer.

“Let’s see what everyone is up to,” I said as I logged on to Facebook. Though far from the most social person on earth, I was a hell of a lurker. I relished checking not only on my high school and college friends but also distant cousins and great aunts and uncles I had never met. We were a small family to begin with—Dad, Mom, and their only child, me. But Dad was the youngest of five siblings, and both his parents died when I was just a baby. And Mom’s upbringing was rocky. Her parents divorced when she was young—back in an age when divorce wasn’t so common—and both remarried, starting new families. When Mom died, there wasn’t much support for Dad and me. After a few perfunctory attempts by distant relatives, a few casseroles prepared and put in our freezer, the writing on the wall was clear: it was just the two of us. Dad bought me a shiny red Betty Crocker cookbook, and in a matter of years, I’d learned to prepare basic meals.

Still, I’d connected on Facebook with some of these distant cousins, great aunts and uncles, as well as with some old friends from high school and a few from college. Out there. Somewhere. I read their posts, the comments. I scrolled carefully over the photos of their children at soccer games and dance recitals. I grinned at silly pictures of family life, my friends and their husbands making goofy faces at their children. I watched as kids blew candles and gobbled frosting roses, babies attempted their first wobbly steps, toothless first graders dressed as Disney princesses. I delighted in watching them grow up, these children I had never met, a few that I had, once or twice. I witnessed anniversaries and trips abroad: the Louvre, the Coliseum, the Great Wall. I hopped aboard the Space Mountain roller coaster at Disneyland, stepped inside Hogwarts School at Universal Studios, rode the waves on the beaches of North Carolina. I imagined a life different than mine.

A few of these people—hardly close enough to call friends or family, really—had posted happy birthday greetings on my wall. Like a distant echo from one end of a tunnel:
Happy birthdayyyyyyyyyyyyy, you person we barely know!

But tucked within these faraway comments was a birthday wish from my high school boyfriend, Joe. My truest love. The man I had never forgotten.

Loving Joe had been like sliding on eyeglasses after a lifetime of poor vision. Joe was my revelation.

“Happy birthday, old friend. Good one? Hope so.” Eight words. Our first bit of direct contact in fifteen years.

Though we had been Facebook friends for a few years, we had never messaged each other, had never posted on each other’s walls.

I stared at the wish, an almost supernatural bridge from the past to the present, as if I could feel the tug of leaving one dimension for another. I captured the screen with his wish on it, printed it, and cut it out with scissors. I stared at it as if it were a prophecy.

As I brushed my teeth before bedtime, I remembered the gift from Dad. I went to my bag and pulled out the rectangular box. Inside was a necklace with a silver charm. In my palm, I examined it closely. It was a saint, but not one I recognized. On the back of it was engraved “St. Brigid, patron saint of safe travel.” Also inside the box was an Expedia travel voucher with a note. “Take a month, take two! Travel, explore! Happy birthday, Daughter.”

I sat down at my vanity, picked up the phone, and called Dad. “Thank you,” I said.

“Will you do it?” he asked. “Take a big trip?”