The Light of Hidden Flowers (7 page)

CHAPTER TWELVE

The following week, Lucas called. In preparation for his call, I had checked him out on LinkedIn: bachelor of science in accounting from University of Maryland in College Park, master of science in taxation from American University, member of the Virginia Society of CPAs, practiced solo for five years, then partnered with the nationwide firm of Powell, Dunfee, and Hayworth, Chartered.

He wasn’t on Facebook, though I certainly didn’t hold that against him, as clearly I wasn’t much of a Facebook participant, just a girl spying on more interesting lives than mine. I searched his name and read numerous profile pieces on him. I logged on to the Virginia Board of Accountancy and saw that he was squeaky clean—never had a complaint filed against him.

“Are you free for lunch?” Lucas asked. “Not today, of course. Maybe next Tuesday.”

“Let me pull up my calendar,” I said coolly, pretending to scan my empty pages. “Looks good to me.”

“Where shall we go?”

“You choose,” I said. “I like everything.”

“I don’t get out much for lunch,” he said. “What do you suggest?”

“How about the Fruit Stand?” I suggested. “That’s always good. And don’t be put off by the name—it’s mostly a sandwich shop. I think it used to be a fruit stand, like a million years ago.”

“I like fruit,” he said.

As a garnish,
I thought. But not for lunch. Certainly not for lunch. “Great! So you’ve never been?”

“Never been,” he repeated. “Looking forward to it.”

I found it hard to believe that Lucas had never been to this Alexandria mainstay, always packed with an eager lunch crowd.

“You’ll love it,” I told him, “but we’d better meet at eleven or one; the noon hour will be too busy.”

So at eleven o’clock on the following Tuesday, I met Lucas at the Fruit Stand. He was waiting for me on the front porch, wearing khakis and a golf shirt, his blond shaggy hair pushed back to the side. I straightened my posture and pasted on a smile because he was seriously cute. When I got close enough, Lucas held out his hand. We shook, and when we drew close, he smelled of soap and toothpaste.

The restaurant was crowded, but we got lucky and were seated in a lovely corner table by the fireplace. When the waitress brought us a basket of their signature homemade dill-pickle kettle chips, I moaned out loud. “These are amazing,” I said.

Lucas popped one into his mouth. “Yum! You’re right,” he said, and then resumed his discussion about the new tax law, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.

“I’m eating all the chips,” I said. “Don’t you want any?”

Lucas laughed as though I were making a joke. “I love watching
you
eat,” he said, and continued to ramble on about the portability feature in the new health-care legislation.

When the waitress came, I ordered the walnut, pear, and Gorgonzola salad and a bowl of the she-crab soup. Lucas ordered the Virginia ham and brie panino with caramelized onions and cranberries.

“Sounds yummy,” I said.

Lucas smiled, nodded eagerly. “But can we leave off the onions and cranberries, and substitute a slice of swiss for the brie?” he asked the waitress.

The waitress looked at him curiously, but Lucas just smiled and thanked her.

“Are you a health nut?” I asked him when the waitress had left.

“I guess I keep it simple,” he said. “But not necessarily a health nut. I find it hard to resist pie with vanilla ice cream.”

When the food came, Lucas was still explaining the difference between the filing necessary for a domestic entity versus an international one, and I was still picking at the leftover shards of dill-pickle potato chips. In the time that he explained it, I worked my way through the most intoxicating bowl of soup ever. When I asked him if his sandwich was okay, he looked down at his barely touched ham and swiss, and said it was perfect.

“What else?” I asked, steering the conversation away from work. “Tell me about yourself.”

“Well, I’ve been in the area my whole life.”

“Same,” I said.

“Went to University of Maryland, and then to American.”

“Tell me something that’s not on your résumé,” I said, smiling.

Lucas’s face flushed red. “That’s a tough one!”

Quickly, I thought of a laundry list of things that weren’t on my résumé: I was an Italian-language learning novice, gelato lover,
Jeopardy!
genius. I wouldn’t dare tell Lucas any of these things. “You’re right!” I admitted. “Believe it or not, I read that question in a magazine: questions to ask when on a date. Kind of stupid, now that I think about it.”

“No!” he said. “It’s a good question. I just feel bad I can’t think of anything. Makes me feel like a dolt!”

“Sports?” I asked.

“Yes, that’s it.” Lucas nodded wildly. “I work out at the gym. I run, play a bit of basketball.”

“I used to run in high school,” I said. “Because my father made me . . . insisted that I play a sport. And I used to play tennis, but hardly ever now.”

“We should go running sometime,” he said. His tone was sweet, considerate. His baby blue eyes were worth looking at.

“I’d die,” I said. “But it would be fun.”

“I’d dangle dill pickle chips in front of you,” he said.

“I’d make you eat some.”

After lunch, Lucas walked me to my car. A breeze mussed his hair. I reached up and cleared the blond swath from his eyes. “This was fun,” he said.

“This
was
fun,” I agreed.

“The restaurant was great.”

“I think I like food more than you,” I said. “I think I
ate
more than you.”

“You haven’t seen me with pie and ice cream,” he said.

I hadn’t converted him to my food religion, but maybe that was okay. I’d make a project of it. The good news was that he seemed sold on me, and judging from my sweaty palms, I apparently was interested in him. Lucas Anderson was cute and smart, smelled of soap and toothpaste, liked fruit, pie and vanilla ice cream, taxes and laws, and apparently, me.

As I slid into my seat, Jenny called. “Everything okay?” I asked.

“It’s your father. He’s at the country club and apparently misplaced his car keys. Do you have a spare set?”

“No,” I said. “But I’ll go pick him up. Tell him I’ll be there in ten minutes.”

As I drove to the club, I listened to public radio. The newscaster interviewed an elderly gentleman who had suffered a brain tumor. Was that a possibility for Dad?

That night, I typed a search into my computer: brain tumors.

The most prominent symptom of a brain tumor was headaches. I tried to remember if Dad had had many headaches lately. Other symptoms included seizures, changes in vision, difficulty walking. And then, there it was: memory loss.

Tumors were most readily removed through surgery. In instances when the tumor was positioned in such a way as to preclude surgery, radiation or chemotherapy was used. The only problem was the damage to the healthy cells, of course. Such damage could lead to the loss of certain faculties.

My first thought was Dad losing his ability to speak. My father bound and gagged. A storyteller who had lost his words.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

I sat on Dad’s sofa while he scowled at the computer screen. I saw him differently these days—actually
saw
him, for the seventy-year-old man that he was. I was so used to focusing on measuring how he saw me that I’d rarely reevaluated my assessment of him.

“If you would just come out of your shell,” Dad would say to the teenaged me. “Then the world could see what’s inside that beautiful mind of yours.” My father—who understood human nature so well, yet never fully got me—deployed his brand of pragmatic optimism against me as the only panacea he knew. “Pretend you’re social, even if you’re not,” he’d say. And as horrible as it sounded to the outside observer, my father wasn’t criticizing me. He loved who I was, but he also believed firmly in emulating the achievements of others. And to him, sociability equaled success.

As I studied him now, he hardly seemed like the same man.

Dad looked up. “Tell me about this Lucas fellow,” he said. “You like the guy? Is he good enough for my daughter?”

Since our lunch at the Fruit Stand, Lucas and I had seen each other two other times.

“Lucas is a nice guy,” I said.

“But does he do it for you?”

“Dad!”

“I’m not talking about . . .
that
. I’m just asking if he floats your boat. Does he raise your blood pressure, give you chills, make your heart race?”

“He’s a nice guy,” I said. “A really nice guy.”

Dad lifted his eyebrows at me, clearly doubting that “nice guy” status was good enough.

“What else?” he asked. “Are you happy? Are you doing what you want to be doing?”

“I’m good, Dad,” I said. “Really, I’m happy. I’m fine. What about you?”

“Your old man is better than ever,” he said, granting me his trophy wink and a smile. “Are we ready for our day?”

At ten o’clock, the Sherwoods came in. Dad had known Bob Sherwood for fifty years; they went to the same high school, played varsity football, worked at Dairy Queen in the summer. Both were deployed to Vietnam, and both came home with stories to tell and an urgency to marry their high school sweethearts. Bob married Laney, and Dad married Mom. Today, Dad and Bob reminisced, while Jenny brought in coffee. I attempted chitchat with Mrs. Sherwood, a stunningly assembled woman who put me to shame with her jewelry and makeup and matching shoes and purse.

“Been on any trips?” she asked.

“No, just around here,” I said, trying not to hold this against her. It wasn’t like she knew about my desire to travel and the paralysis that prevented me from it.

Jenny poured coffee.

“Best coffee ever!” Dad beamed, Jenny blushed, and the Sherwoods lifted their cups.

“Are you seeing anyone, dear?” Mrs. Sherwood asked. Another common question for a longtime family friend to ask, but still—she was on a roll.

“I am,” I said. “A very nice guy. A tax attorney.”

She pulled her coral lipstick into a broad smile. “Do you still like working in your dad’s office?”

Working in my dad’s office?
I wanted to scream: Do you mean working
with
my dad as a partner and the firm’s principal financial analyst? The person who manages your $2.4 million? I’m not some summer intern, filing papers and answering the phones, thank you very much! I have more degrees and certifications than most in this business, I wanted to tell her. Though of course I didn’t. She was just a nice old lady asking nice-old-lady questions. And why wouldn’t she see me
that
way? As the mousy daughter of the charismatic Frank Fletcher. Why would she think more of me than met the eye? It was true, wasn’t it? Fact: I did still work with my father,
after all of these years.
Fact: I was still single,
after all of these years.
Fact: I hadn’t gone on any trips,
after all of these years.

Finally, Dad and Bob returned from memory lane and I cued up the projector, blasted their current portfolio onto the screen and felt compelled to deliver my part of the presentation with more technical acuity than I would usually employ. I used my red laser pointer to highlight their returns, and then, for show-off purposes, launched into a detailed explanation of the difference between “time-weighted returns” and the “internal rate of return.” I drew a complicated equation on the whiteboard with brackets and parentheses, to prove my point. When Dad jumped in with a simple, “So great, we’re making money!” I knew I had impressed no one.

Dad took it from there. He talked about seeing the lawyer, his buddy Roger, to update the wills and trusts.

“If we put money in the trusts,” Mrs. Sherwood said, “how will we get to it?”

Dad carefully explained how putting money into a revocable trust meant nothing in terms of control. “It’s still your money, L—”

Dad looked at me. Then Bob looked at Dad. Then I looked at Mrs. Sherwood—Laney. And I finally got it: Dad couldn’t remember her name.
Laney!
I wanted to shout at Dad.

“That’s right, Dad,” I said. “With a revocable trust, Laney—Mrs. Sherwood—still has full access to the money. She only needs permission from the trustee. But in this case, she is the trustee, so she only needs permission from herself.”

“You see, Laney,” Dad said, “it’s still your money, Laney.” Dad couldn’t stop saying Laney, as if, now that he had it again, he was desperate to cement the name in his memory. “Nothing to worry about, Laney.”

After the meeting, I poked my head into Dad’s office. “You okay?”

“Of course I’m okay. Why wouldn’t I be okay?”

“You forgot Mrs. Sherwood’s name.”

“Too much time on the golf course!” Dad said, flashing a false smile. “My brain is in a sand trap!”

“How often are you forgetting things, Dad?”

Dad turned his mouth downward and waved me away. “I’m fine!”

“Dad. Seriously. Have you forgotten other things?”

“I forget things all the time, just like
anybody
else,” he said. “I go to the refrigerator and can’t remember what for. My father was the same way. But he didn’t exercise his brain. My mind is working all the time.”

“Sure, Dad, but there might be something going on—”

“The Dow 30!” Dad roared, clapping his hands. “Let’s go: 3M, Wal-Mart, Amex, Disney, P&G, Apple, Nike, Pfizer, Boeing, JPMorgan, Goldman. What else? Don’t tell me, Missy. Chevron, Exxon, Intel, IBM.” He stalled, tapped his head. “Let me think.”

“Dad, stop!” I said. “Can you please stop for a second and consider that perhaps something is going on with your brain? Can I make you a doctor’s appointment?”

Dad settled down, gave up on his Dow listing. “I’m good, Daughter! I’m good,” he whispered. Then he looked at me long and hard. “Did I ever tell you about my army buddy, Dick McMurray?”

Though I had heard many of Dad’s army stories, I hadn’t heard about Dick McMurray. I settled into the crook of the sofa.

“Dick was a scrappy guy and that’s exactly the way I always thought of myself—maybe not the smartest, but scrappy as hell, resourceful, hardworking.”

Dad often referred to himself as scrappy and resourceful, traits he found admirable because they involved hard work. Being smart, like me, he considered a bit of a freebie, like athleticism. I was born this way. Fortitude wasn’t involved in intelligence.

Dad zoned in on me. “One day, the fighting had gone on so long, we didn’t know which way was up. Dark, murky hellhole: you couldn’t see a damn thing. We were taking rounds from every direction. Mackie got hit. It wasn’t until a few hours later that we were able to really take a look at him and see how his body was sprayed with shrapnel. We couldn’t see the piece that was lodged in his head. He survived, though.

“When I was shipped home in late ’68, your mother and I drove to Philadelphia to see him. His wife, Marie, told us to be prepared, he wasn’t the same guy, because of the brain injury. She walked him out and sat him down. Gave him a snickerdoodle and a cup of tea.

“He looked like an old man, withered, shrunken—just skin covering bony limbs. When he recognized me, he cried like a baby. He pointed at me like he wanted to say my name, but for the life of him, he couldn’t get it out. ‘Frank,’ I said. ‘It’s Frank.’

“Missy, dear daughter,” Dad said, “that’s how I feel sometimes lately. Like there’s a piece of shrapnel lodged in my brain, a barricade preventing me from reaching up and grabbing the information I need.”

“Can I make you a doctor’s appointment?” I asked.

“Not yet,” Dad said. “Not yet.”