The Perfect Weapon Ending 1 Chapter 1004 Part 3 section 1 of 3
Ending 1 Chapter 1004 Part 3 section 1 of 3
“I’m driving this time,” Sydney said firmly as they entered the parking garage. “Don’t argue. Just hand over your keys.”
“Why?” Jack asked, although he put his hand in his pocket and tossed her his key ring.
“You drive like a maniac sometimes. Life is not a...chase game, Dad. You don’t always have to drive like you’re trying to lose an enemy operative on your tail, you know,” Sydney said as she unlocked the car doors.
“Well, it’s good to keep the skills active, you know. The training driving range is a little too predictable after a while,” Jack shrugged as they sat down in the car and picked up their sunglasses from the dashboard.
“Let me guess, your other hobby is the gun range?” she began maneuvering the car out of the parking garage.
“Well, it’s nice and relaxing there at 3am,” Jack shrugged.
“Three am?”
“I have twenty-four hour access to the gun range and I often have insomnia.”
“In the words of the ever-pithy Jack Bristow. Just,” Sydney grinned. “Take something.”
“I had that coming.”
“Totally. For nearly two years. You were trying to scare me off, as I recall. Although I admit, it was pretty stupid to stand out there in public---”
“But that was...obnoxious of me. Sorry about that.”
“It seems funny now. Seemed funnier still when you said it earlier to Judy.”
“I’ll probably pay for that in some way. Find a pencil, broken in half or maybe just the eraser head of a pencil in my bed, perhaps.” He began to laugh. “Actually, that would be pretty funny, don’t you think?
“In your what?”
“You know, like the horse head in ‘The Godfather’?”
“Oh, I thought....”
“Sydney! As if I’d talk to you about---” Damn it, he could feel his cheeks coloring slightly and knew he’d rather die than have the conversation, one of them anyway, that he’d planned. But Judy was right, in that annoying way she had of being right far too often, that he might as well just get it all over with today. Start fresh. If only Sydney would just step on the gas instead of flirting with it.
Sydney looked straight ahead, willing herself not to smile or frown or just start screaming, whatever the appropriate response was when one knew too much about a parent’s sex life. She should ask Vaughn, he was the expert on appropriate behavior, after all. But then again, she’d have to explain and if she had to explain, to some man, anyway, she’d....Maybe she should talk to Dr. Barnett? Or...maybe this is what friends were for. But who? Susan? Susan’s flippant manner concealed a heart of gold and sharp acumen about others. Okay, Susan, she’d talk to Susan about this sometime when they knew each other better. Okay, she was okay now, she decided, even if stuck on the word okay and opened her mouth to ask, “Where are we going now, anyway? Tell me in which direction to point the car.”
“Oh, the cemetery.”
“The one where the gravestone is?”
“Yes. There’s something I have to do there, one final piece of closure and I’d....like you to help me.”
“Sure, then lunch?”
“Sounds good, I’m getting hungry myself. Where do you want to go?”
“Someplace I remember that you used to love. The ocean,” Sydney said, glancing over at her father.
“Sounds great.” He looked at his watch. Time was wasting and he was hungry. To say nothing of the fact that sooner started, sooner finished. Turning to look at his daughter, he said cajolingly, “You know, if you would drive a little faster, we could---”
“Dad...Stop it.”
“I’m driving on the way out.”
“Don’t think so. Back on topic. Your life or lack therof. The driving range? The gun range? You need some new hobbies. Something completely unrelated to work or anything about it. Something...creative. Like...” Sydney trailed off as she thought.
“Well, I could design tattoos,” Jack said.
Sydney laughed. “True. Your attention to detail was remarkable. But wait, didn’t you make a comment about Sark’s tattoo design being a lot like designing jewelry?”
“Yes...I did. Do you remember-“
“Jewelry. Wait. You were talking about that on the roof. And you dismantled that chain yourself. Mom...You...That big jewelry box of hers. You designed those pieces?”
“Just some of them,” Jack said, tapping his fingers on the seat. Sydney drove like an old lady. That’s what happened when you drove a stinkin’ Ford Focus with four cylinders on a regular basis. Four cylinders? What kind of spy drove four cylinders? What kind of acceleration could you get with four cylinders?
“I never knew that,” Sydney thought, trying to remember the jewelry.
“Neither did she,” Jack admitted. “I didn’t make pieces in those days, like I’m thinking about trying now. But in any case, I didn’t tell her about the designing.”
“What? Why?” Sydney asked, looking over at her father as she maneuvered carefully through traffic. After everything they had gone through to reach this point on their journey, she was not going to take a chance on crashing in some stupid Southern California car accident.
“Because I was an insecure dweeb.”
Sydney laughed out loud and looked at her father, “If ever anyone were less dweeb-like than you....”
“Ah, but it all depends upon what you see when you look in the mirror, doesn’t it? Turn here, Sydney.”
“I know, Dad,” Sydney said with exaggerated patience. Suddenly, she was glad that Francie’s mother had taught her how to drive instead of her father. She might have killed him.
“Then why don’t you have your directional on?”
“Why don’t I what?” Okay, she would kill him now. She’d been driving for more than ten years, had passed every driving test for either SD-6 or the CIA with flying colors and he was yanking her about a stinkin’ directional when there was no one behind them?
“Well, I didn’t have the fun of teaching you to drive,” Jack said hiding a smile. “So.... I thought I’d make up for lost time and start-“
“Aaack! Do NOT think you are going to criticize my driving-“
“Syd, you just missed the turn,” Jack said smugly.
“You distracted me!”
“Distraction, yet another gift of mine. But that is my point. A good driver does not let minor issues inside the car distract them from-“
“Shut up.”
“Sydney, the shut up is getting a little old,” Jack said in that tone of voice that made her sit up straight, even at her age. “I am your father and I truly don’t appreciate---”
“But I meant shut up in a nice way.” Her brow creased. Hadn’t her mother had some bizarre endearment for her father....Idiot, that was it. She remembered a friend asking her about that one time and telling her that her mother meant idiot in a nice way. Maybe she should stop telling him to shut up.
“Yeah, right. But, take the turn here, there’s a shortcut---”
“I know the way!” Sydney exclaimed.
“I just think---”
“You know what? You think you know so much, you can drive when we leave!”
Jack grinned. “Gotcha,” he said.
Sydney groaned.
“What are we doing here?” Sydney asked as the two of them opened their car doors and got out. She threw the keys in his direction and he snagged them out of the air. He stretched, then noted that even within this grove of trees, the day was still warm. Pulling off his sweater he threw it in the car and then stopped at the look on his daughter’s face.
“What?” he asked curiously as he slammed the door and walked back to the trunk.
“It’s just that I could not tell you the last time I remember seeing you in jeans, tshirt and hiking boots. I mean - Dad! You have arms, actual arms with skin and flesh and hair and-“
“If this is what passes for humor these days-“ Jack began giving Sydney a look as he pressed the button on the key chain and the trunk popped.
“I mean, what’s next, shorts? Do you even own a pair of shorts? How about sneakers? Maybe we should go clothes shopping some time and-“
“Sydney. I’ve been getting dressed every morning by myself for almost fifty years, I think I can handle it,” Jack said rolling his eyes and making a mental note to buy new sheets. He had forgotten, but those white ones had to go, they were too, well, hospital-like. Maybe...black? Blue? Maybe a new bed, while he was it at? Maybe a new place? Maybe he needed to make a list. There was so much to do, he thought as he opened the trunk of the car.
Sydney burst out laughing as she looked inside. “I thought about this the night we tagged teamed Sark and earlier when Judy was talking. You have a regular game of Clue in here. All you need is a candlestick.”
He smiled slowly. “That’s what Laura always said.” He handed her a shovel, gardening gloves and a trowel and pulled out two large plastic bags from a local nursery. “What is it?” he asked as he caught her uncertain frown as she pulled out the bags of prefertilized gardens soil and mulch.
“Is it...okay to talk about her?” Sydney asked as her father pointed the way toward the gravestone. “I mean, I don’t want to upset you. So, please tell me the truth? Is it okay?”
“Of course. There are good memories, aren’t there? Many good memories. They belong to us,” Jack said softly as they put their gear down next to the stone. He was hoping that this little exercise would be a doubleplay, some last little bit of closure and recovering at least one set of memories, possibly two. “Those memories are mine and yours as well.”
“Dad, we talked before about what was real and what was false, how confusing it was after you found out the truth the first time.” Sydney shook her head as her father offered her a pair of gloves. With a shrug he threw the gloves down on the ground. “But,” Sydney asked, “When Judy brought up the fact that you had successfully spent months interacting with Derevko, it made me think again.”
“Don’t strain yourself,” Jack said dryly, as he picked up a shovel.
“You know, I realize that restraining those smartass tendencies of yours - in public, anyway, for all these years must have been somewhat difficult, but really, Dad....”
“Okay. I’ll stop. Or tone it down. But...you don’t know how good it feels to just say what you’re thinking....”
“You did it every once in a while. Usually with Sloane. Vaughn still gripes about the time you put a gun to his head in that Chinese restaurant and told him that he was too young, too naive and that only time would cure that.”
“Oh, yeah, I’d forgotten about that. That was fun.” Jack sighed reminiscently. “I had tea while he swallowed his tongue.” He shoved the point of the shovel into the ground with one hard push.
“I bet you had that really...smug look on your face when you said it too. That smug look that makes the recipient want to just smack it right off of you.”
“Smug? I have a smug look?” He opened his eyes wide as he asked the question and lifted a shovel-full of soil over to the side..
“Don’t try that innocent face on me, I know you too well. When you think you’ve just scored a direct verbal hit on someone, yeah, you get that smug, ‘Isn’t this fun?’ look. You live for that stuff, Dad.”
“Well, not anymore. I’m hoping that I’ll have other forms of torture, I mean amusement, in the future.”
“Other than tormenting Vaughn?”
“Yeah. Well, I won’t give it up completely, because it’s truly just too enjoyable, but I don’t want to scare Pretty Boy too badly.”
“Pretty Boy?” Sydney giggled. “But true, don’t want him to think we might have a kid just like you. I mean, who wants to be scared of their own kid?”
“So... thinking about giving me grandchildren with him, are you? I would prefer it if they were born after a wedding, if you ask my opinion,” Jack said with a stern glance as he put his foot on the shovel and pushed it into the ground.
“Why do I open my mouth?” Sydney sighed and looked upwards.
“The answer eludes me.” Jack laughed, then waved his hand around. “Sorry, sorry. I’m-“
“You’re on a roll. Don’t worry about it. Or my delicate feelings, Dad,” Sydney said, rolling her eyes. But she smiled, it was so good to see her father like this, talking without weighing his every thought, actually making hand gestures like she remembered. In a blue tshirt and jeans, no less. She wished she had a camera.
“Sorry, I’ve been practicing my rapier wit,” Jack grinned, “On Susan and Judy and they -“
Sydney nodded. “Yes, they are both as snotty and snarky as you are. The real you, anyway.”
“Snarky?” Jack asked, raising an eyebrow. “Is that a word? A real word?”
“Oh no, not another English lesson,” Sydney groaned.
“Well, if you want to be an English teacher, it’s easier to speak properly all of the time than-“
“Is that something your mother told you?” Sydney asked suddenly, realizing that she knew next to nothing about her grandparents, other than what her father had said about his father.
“Yes, actually.” Jack waited, knowing she had some questions, she must. He and Judy had talked about this, preparing for her questions. Practicing, she called it. Said it helped shy people to practice. Not that he was shy, just reserved, but... He took another shovel of dirt out of the ground and tossed it aside.
Sydney took a deep breath before asking, “What was she like? Your mother?”
Jack stood up straight, but looked away for a moment, remembering. Did he have any photos, he must. He’d have to dig them out for her. “She...was tiny. I was taller than her by the time I was eleven, maybe ten. My size, I get from my father. But I have her hair. It looked better on her, a woman. All those curls.” Jack rolled his eyes. “She was a good teacher, highly-intelligent, a very sweet person, too sweet. Or perhaps she was just not strong enough, maybe? I’m not blaming her, just wondering. But the random violence, the anger, the general...nastiness that was my father, chipped away at, perhaps, her strength and certainly her self-esteem-“
“And yours?” Sydney blurted out, her mouth realizing the truth before her brain did.
“Yes. Good catch,” Jack noted, nodding at her. “But my mother, she...didn’t know how to handle what life had thrown at her. Of course in those days....”
“The dark ages. There were no women’s shelters, no support groups....”
“No safe place for women and children in those days. You were completely on your own. But... at least he left and with him went the violence. She didn’t know how to take care of herself though. Had never been raised to take care of herself. So, after he left and we were on our own....”
“How old were you?”
“Five. I, well, in some ways, in very short order, I became the caretaker.”
“I’ve heard about that happening. The child becomes the parent. Far earlier than the natural order of things.”
“Oh, you mean when I get old and you take care of me?” Jack said, grinning. “I am going to be the most obnoxious, obstreperous old coot there ever was.”
“Hate to break the news, but you’re obnoxious and obstreperous now. And in the future? Just to warn you, let me take you clothes shopping now, or I will SO be dressing you funny then.”
“I can hardly wait. What’s your definition of funny, anyway?”
“Don’t know. Hmm. I think I’ll get Weiss’ opinion on that,” she said, stroking her chin.
“Save me. I’ve seen his swim trunks and golf clothes. No wonder the guy can’t get a date.”
“Susan-“
“Yeah. She’ll pick out his clothes and everything else and he’ll like it once she gets done training him. Match made in heaven.” Jack bent his head again to his shovel. “So, any more questions? You can always ask. Now or later, you know.”
“I don’t remember your mother... She must have died before I was born?”
“Yes. She did. My father died after her, but years ago.” Jack frowned as he remembered the circumstances that still niggled at him.
“How did you know? If he deserted you and all?” Sydney asked curiously.
“Good question. It was odd. I got a phone call from a police department in Toronto. They had gotten an anonymous tip on a John Doe found at the bottom of a stairwell. Broken neck. I remember, it was on my birthday.” He bent his head and continued digging, wondering as he did every time he thought of that bizarre phone call just who had called in that tip. Since Panama, since learning of her little chase game idea, he had wondered if that had been a clue in a birthday present. Totally twisted, but he could appreciate the sentiment, after all. Well, he wasn’t going to ponder that aloud. Sydney didn’t need to imagine that kind of birthday present.
“Some birthday present,” Sydney muttered. She bent to pick up a trowel to hide her face for a second as a thought occurred. It was just twisted enough, would Irina have thought that was a perfect gift? Unaware of the transparency of her thoughts, she asked, trying to change the topic, “Dad. What was it like for you these last few months? Interacting with this woman, Irina, who was your wife, but yet who wasn’t?”
“It was like...”He smiled and twirled the shovel around in his hands. “I used to be famous for my analogies. Drove Arvin insane. So in memory of our former friendship, here goes. It’s like going back to visit your childhood home, a place of good memories. So, you drive up to the house, it’s the right address. And you knew ahead of time that it would be different; it had to be. Time has passed...nothing stays the same. And yet, it still startles you. Something is different.”
He poked the shovel into the ground behind the stone again. “New paint maybe. Or they took the front porch off. Or that tree you used to climb in the back yard is gone. Maybe even the entire facade is different. Or maybe the outside is the same, or possibly, even more attractive, but then the current owners let you in and the interior has been remodeled and you can’t recognize what you once knew, not really. And you drive away, wondering if the house is still there, buried under the changes, but you can’t find it, see it, get to it. Or is it just gone? And you realize that what is really different is that it isn’t your house any more; it’s just the past. And maybe you weren’t looking for the house itself, anyway. Just the happiness of the past. So, you drive away, deciding it’s better to just remember it the way it once was, having your memories. And you realize that what you really need to do is...remodel the kitchen in your own house, install a skylight in your bedroom or plant a tree in your own backyard and watch it grow. Keep the memories and move on.”
“That hole is big enough now for a tree, Dad. I think you can stop.”
“Oh, true. I’ve always excelled at digging a hole for myself too quickly,” he said with a self-deprecatory smile, looking at the gravestone. “Please hand me one of the bags with the rambler roses.”
“Red or white?”
“Hmm....Red, I think. What do you think about putting the white in front and having the red cascade down over it from the back? Or should it be the reverse?”
“No, the red coming over the white. Color, life cascading unexpectedly over death? Perfect,” Sydney decided as she handed him the bag, then hauled over the bag with the garden soil with the fertilizer already mixed in.
Jack gave her his shovel and knelt down in front of the hole, while she stood next to him. He unwrapped the shrub and explained that it was easier for the plant to take root if you loosened the ball of roots and dirt, that it would allow the water to penetrate deeper as Sydney nodded and listened, he thought with far more intensity than the occasion demanded. Was this going to work, he wondered. He suggested softly, “Why don’t you get started on a hole in the front of the stone?” But she stood there, watching him carefully place the roots of the rose bush in the hole and fill it in with a mix of original dirt and garden soil. Seeing... another set of hands, no, two sets of hands working in dirt. She put a suddenly-sweaty hand to her temple.
“What is it, sweetheart?” Jack asked, looking at her carefully.
He pulled his hands free to reach for her, but Sydney exclaimed, “No! Keep planting, Daddy! Let me help.” He stared at her for a moment hearing the little-girl note in her voice, then moved a little to the side to make room for her before the shrub. She moved closer to him and knelt down and put her hands into the dirt and began helping. She closed her eyes, her hands stopped moving, but she still saw her father's hands helping hers with a trowel, but not the trowel on the ground nearby. No.
She was remembering... Remembered... gardening.... but watching, she saw her much smaller hands with his. His hands were browner then, tanned from spending more time outdoors than he did these days. And his hand was not bare, he wore a ring, his wedding ring glinting up at her in the sunlight. Then. But now? Where she wondered again, had their wedding rings ended up and what had Laura had inscribed in his ring?
Leaning against him suddenly, she asked, taking a deep breath, opening her eyes, “You used to...garden, didn’t you? And Mom too. Roses? Red roses, white roses... and....I can remember the scent, but I can’t see...Dad!”
Jack put one hand on her back and slowly rubbed it up and down and took one of her hands in his other hand, as he reassured her, “Shh, it’s okay. Remember the scent. Sometimes if I close my eyes and breathe deeply I can still smell that garden. Can you? Take a breath...” Jack said softly. “Close your eyes, breath in and out. Just relax and it will come to you. Let go.....”
Sydney took a few deep breaths and concentrated on the warmth of her father’s hand on her back, the pressure of his hand squeezing hers. Finally, she said, “Yes, I can see it. We had a fairly formal garden all around the house and the edge of the yard. Jasmine. Peonies. Roses. Traditional. Very...pruned, very structured. I can see her clipping the roses, making a bouquet for the table in the front hallway... fussing with them. And I can see...the two of you going out somewhere, someplace fancy. Her hair is up and she’s wearing a red dress with a handkerchief hem, I think. You have a tuxedo on and she’s clipping one of her roses to your lapel. She’s saying something about how you two will match perfectly, as you always did, she said, and how she spent forever looking for the one perfect rose.”
“Yes. Roses. But do you remember? There was also some annuals for---”
“Me!” She exclaimed, opening her eyes.
“And me, too. I always liked the more unstructured look.. It was a regular argument between Laura and me. She liked the...predictability of the roses. And there was some sentimentality to it as well. Roses are beautiful too, of course. There is nothing wrong with that choice. Or liking the two colors, the contrast of the red and white. While I liked going to the nursery every year and buying something different. When you were about two, I began taking you with me and you would point out the colors you liked---”
“Purple! Every year, I wanted pansies...”
“In the spring, yes. And in the summer, purple...” Jack trailed off, waiting for her memory to kick in.
“Petunias! I liked the purple petunias with the white ruffly edges. I wanted a dress like that, I remember. Wait, that’s how my room ended up being purple, isn’t it?”
“Yes. You wanted it to look like those petunias. I have a picture of you in a white dress when you were about three, plopped down in the purple petunias with this huge smile on your face. Do you remember working in the garden?” He asked carefully, seeing the look on her face as she had watched his hands in the soil. He sighed with relief. At least that attempt had worked, seeing his hands and smelling the roses had unlocked that memory.
“I had my own little shovel and wagon and...” She thought, remembering many moments in the sunny backyard. She and her father making a dirty mess of themselves, her mother growing exasperated at it, then eventually laughing under the onslaught of her father’s teasing or the game in which they would run at her and rub their dirty hands on her clean clothes and then, and then, she remembered, with a smile, her mother sneaking up on them and turning the hose on them. She running shrieking around the yard and the laughter on her mother’s face, on her father’s face, all of them dripping wet and muddy. That old man next door, Mr. Greensomething, coming out and shaking his head. He had even taken a picture one day...
“Dad, do you have that picture of all of us in the backyard that Mr. Greenjeans--”
Jack burst out laughing. “No, he wasn’t with Captain Kangaroo, although you used to get confused about that. It was Mr. Greenlaw. And that photo? Um, yeah, I think I do have it somewhere. I didn’t b---” he bit his words off, then took a deep breath to explain.
But before he could do so, Sydney nodded and spoke up. “You burned a lot of stuff, didn’t you?”
“I burned some things. I thought it would be cathartic. I was wrong. Burning is just another form of destruction. I needed to...find a way to build on best parts of the past, not destroy it.”
“Did you...throw away anything other than that toaster out the window?”
“Oh brother. I’m never going to live that down. That was totally juvenile. But damn, it felt good.”
“I threw my beeper into the ocean once,” Sydney offered. “I know the urge.” She leaned forward and began working the soil around the rose bush again.
“I buried my beeper in the garden once,” Jack reminded her, willing himself to keep away from the rest of that memory. Well, at least until he had to give Sydney the expurgated, heavily-expurgated version of that story to prove the truth to her. He looked at his watch. Told himself that he had been tortured countless times, surely he could survive that conversation. Right? And he was doing this for Sydney. He could do it. He sighed and told her, “And I threw the key charm that had been on the chain into the ocean one night as well.”
“The key charm...On the chain, right?” Sydney said, tucking her hair behind her ear as it swung forward, impeding her vision.
“It was a little key that hung on the clasp of the chain. It was meant..." Jack groaned silently as he admitted, "This is so sappy, meant to symbolize love, the key to my heart.”
“It’s not sappy, it’s sweet. You knew the way to make a woman happy, Dad.” Then she choked and began patting the dirt down. Don’t go there again, Sydney Bristow, she told herself.
Jack spoke quickly. They didn’t need to head down that path. What the hell had he been thinking writing that manual for his dissertation? “So, anyway, I broke the key in half and threw it in the ocean from a cliff.”
“Why there?” Thank god, he had changed the topic. But should she tell him---
“Symmetry. It was the same cliff from which Laura and I threw a bottle the night I proposed. I had copied down a poem, Byron-“
“The one on the gravestone?” Sydney asked moving around to the front of it.
“Yes. I’m not a Byron kinda guy, but for that occasion, who better? Gave her the ring, roses. And we’d had a picnic on the beach at night-“
“With candles? Wine? Moonlight? A warm night?” Sydney asked eagerly.
“Yes. How did you know?” Jack asked as he tilted his head and looked at her curiously.
“Because it sounds very romantic. The kind of proposal any woman would dream about.” She sighed.
Jack looked at her. Well, that was interesting, he would not have known that Sydney was a romantic. Did Vaughn know that? Hmm. She must have gotten it from...Laura, he guessed. He was not the romantic type, after all. Ahem. “Well, I wouldn’t know about that. She seemed to like it. She...cried, so I’m going to choose to go with the notion that she did like it. But we took the poem, and some petals from the roses I had given her and put them in the empty wine bottle and tossed it in the ocean. Her idea.”
“Why? What did that mean?”
“It was....her idea that it would float around forever. She said that when I was traveling over the waters of an ocean and she wasn’t with me, that I could look out the window of the plane and look down and imagine the bottle down there, that she was with me, somewhere. And I suppose in the end, the love is still there, somewhere.”
“So....You threw that key in after that bottle.”
“Yes. Somewhat...melodramatic,” Jack said wryly. “Sometimes I...lost control. Like when I threw the toaster through the window.”
“For someone so controlled, when you let loose, you have a tendency to shatter glass.”
“I beg your pardon?” Jack asked, his color high.
“I saw you on the monitors in Mom’s cell that one time with that guard, the time you dashed the glass to the ground -“
He thought frantically, he had destroyed that tape hadn’t he? He asked casually, interrupting her, “Did you see anything else that day?”
“In the cell? No, Kendall came over and was jabbering in my ear about something. I got distracted.”
There is a god, Jack thought to himself. And Kendall did serve a useful purpose. Once. He can continue to live.
“So, what color were the roses that night you proposed?” Sydney asked looking from the red rose bush to the white.
“Red. I gave her red roses that night, that’s what she carried in her bouquet on our wedding day---”
Sydney frowned. “Is that what you were referring to a moment ago, when you mentioned sentimentality in connection with the roses in the garden? Didn’t, didn’t you send her red roses every so often?”
“Yes. And we had that really large red rose bush in the garden. I gave it to her because she could not remember much about our wedding. Too emotional, she said. And...it was true, actually.”
“I remember...one day with Arvin picking roses off of that bush,” Sydney mused as she absently traced the words on the gravestone with her fingers,
Love indeed is light from heaven;
A spark of that immortal fire With angels shared.
We shared her for a time.
She is with the angels.
Laura Bristow.
She frowned, asked, “Or am I mistaken?”
“No. You remember that correctly. That was the day I had the breakdown. I was inside with Emily. That was what I was talking about before, when Emily was trying to clean me up and I didn’t want you to see me that way. They had told you I was sick and you thought to give me some roses--”
“Like you had given to Mom that always seemed to make her so happy. I remember. I was worried about you. Afraid you were going to die too. So I thought if I gave some to you, it would make you happy again.”
“I am happy again, sweetheart,” Jack said with a smile, as he resumed mounding the dirt around the plant.
Staring at his bent head, she smiled and looked back at the gravestone.
Byron, she named the author in her mind, one of the Romantics. How...odd. She would have never thought of her father that way. Never, not even now until she saw these words. But...for him to have held onto the remnants of his love for this woman, however deeply buried and even unacknowledged it may have been, for so long and so strongly that he could even contemplate forgiving her, he must truly be a hopeless romantic on some level. The cost to face reality that night in Panama, the next morning when he had opened that limo door, must have been extraordinary. She hoped next time... She shook her head and desultorily began digging the hole for the other rose bush with her trowel as she remembered, saw other images.
Seeing her mother’s happy face as she opened a florist’s box containing red roses or a small box with a piece of jewelry or as she raced into Jack’s arms as he had paused in a doorway with his arms on the doorjamb or tucked her into bed or read her a story or braided her hair, she asked, “Was she, Laura, happy with us?”
“Yes. She was. She told me in Panama that she was, “ Jack said carefully. “But to answer your question more fully, I think not only was she happy, but that in some ways she had a deep yearning for our life. There are moments that are so real, so true.”
“Like what?” Sydney prompted when her father stopped.
“Like...do you remember that glider on our front porch?” He was going to have to work his way up to ‘that’ conversation. Judy had been right again, damn it. She had told him he could just rip it off - her endless band-aid analogy - or work his way up to it. She had made him a bet that he would choose the latter choice. She won. Again.
“Sure. The one we sat on every night when you read to me? That one?” Sydney smiled, remembering.
“Yes. That stinkin’ glider. Geez, I looked for weeks for that glider, she had to have one--”
“You looked for weeks?”
“They didn’t make them any more. Dave and I eventually found one at an estate sale, lugged it home in Arvin’s compensatory vehicle---”
“Compensatory vehicle?”
“Short man. Big truck, big tires?”
Sydney let out a peel of laughter. “Dad!” She laughed some more, than added, “I’m gonna tell Vaughn that one!” Jack shrugged and smiled. “But you looked for weeks... You spoiled her the way you spoiled me, didn’t you?”
“Guilty. I enjoy...spoiling the women in my life.”
“Because...you’re sweet, Dad.”
“Stop it. So, anyway, she wanted, needed a big old-fashioned glider. It had to squeak, too. And a screen door that slammed.” He laughed. “A slam and a squeak. I don’t know what she saw in that glider, heard in the slam of that screen door. But somehow, it meant something important to her. I’ll never know what, I don’t that she does either. Consciously anyway. She seems to have avoided examining her motivations, her needs. But...it’s something you could ask her when you visit,” Jack suggested. “If it interests you.”
“We’ll see. I’m not quite....sure what to say to her when I do visit, so maybe that’s a good gambit. Asking about the glider.”
Jack nodded, waited a moment, then when Sydney said nothing more, he continued, “So that was an example of a real moment, a truth. In some ways...The emotions between all of us were true. And then there was you. The most real moment, the greatest truth of all.”
“What do you mean?” Sydney asked as she stuck a finger in her mouth and sucked it where a thorn had pricked it.
“How bad is the scratch?” Jack asked.
“You must be joking,” Sydney said, rolling her eyes.
“Well, get a band-aid from the trunk or---”
“Dad, it’s nothing.” She bit her lip to avoid laughing; this reminded her of that time in Kashmir when her parents had fought over her scraped knee.
Jack met her eyes and smiled broadly. “Gee, too bad there are none of those stinkin’ wonder berries around---”
“That totally ticked you off, didn’t it?” Sydney asked. “Hey....given that don’t ever give me grief about being jealous of you! You were jealous, weren’t you? Admit it.”
“I wanted to push her down the hill.” Jack sighed, “That reaction of a two year old is hardly to my credit, thinking like a petulant child but...”
“But then again, aren’t all men petulant children?” Sydney laughed as her father gave her a dirty look. She nodded as she asked, “But you didn’t push her down the hill because....?”
“Because I am, in fact, a mature adult.”
“Of course you are. That’s why you threw a toaster through a window, because you’re a mature adult.” Was it going to be okay to joke about that she wondered as she took the chance, then relaxed when her father responded.
“Very funny.” Jack rolled his eyes, then continued, “The truth is that I didn’t know whether or not her breaking her neck would be positive or negative.”
“What decided you?”
“Honestly? If she died before you knew the truth, then you would always have this vision in your mind of your mother, the martyr, rather than the truth, whatever that might be. Sometimes it’s best to call someone’s bluff and let the hand play out. As you know, you’re a good poker player.”
“Coming from you, that is a compliment, I know. And if she had never betrayed us again, had not been bluffing, then it would not have mattered, really. Your doubts.”
“No.”
Looking at the gravestone with its inscription, Sydney nodded. “I wish she had stayed dead. Had never come back.”
“I don’t,” Jack said firmly. “I’m grateful she came back.”
“What?” Sydney said in shock, her mouth hanging slightly open.
TBC at Chapter 1004 Part 3 section 2 of 3