Episode 3 – I Search For My Children

I traveled from room to room. The air felt quiet and as much asleep as the night had seemingly become. Each room was empty and scarce, but for the sound of my dress shoes clapping on the hardwood floors. The stairs creaked and echoed out their wheeze as I went cautiously up those flights of stairs. The banister, likewise, gave a little as I leaned on it from step to step. There, to the end of the hallway, sat my children's room. The door became slightly ajar, but unmoved. I could hear the rustle in their sheets as I came still closer.

I pushed the door free, saw the long shadows grow longer still. I watched them as they apparently slept quietly without a diversion, though I knew they were play-faking sleep this early in the night. I moved to Cory's bed first and I sat on the edge of his bed.

"Hey," I wiggled him awake, and so he turned to see me, "How's your tooth?" I whispered as he grinned on me. I took to wiggle that top, front tooth, "Still there." He nodded in agreement. "Are you ready to pull?" He disapproved on this statement and I reacted with a smile. I brushed back his hair; felt the silence pass between us as we stared on one another for a moment. Such the likeness of me he was; that temperamental way; the soft freckles of youth I once owned myself; the reaching-back dimples whenever I smiled, poised themselves as well over his cheeks. I could see the memories of myself when I looked on him, noting how reflection plays such a stare with me while we were frozen in moments like this.

Cory was my shadow and I knew this. His disposition; his mannerisms; his boyish performances were as I was so many years before. As if he were walking down the same pathway that I had first traveled on. Memories and Reflections – both now came rushing on me like a past wind I once remembered, but I had so recently forgotten.

"You know, we are only delaying the tooth fairy.." I suggested with a silly grin.

"She can wait…" he fearfully proposed.

"She might forget," I further suggested by a sly grin.

"She won't," he smiled, nearly popping out that tooth when he did so, "She never forgets."

"If you say so…" I whispered. I brushing back his hair once more, taking a move to wiggle that tooth back and forth myself, "It seems mighty ready..."

"Not yet…" he pulled his covers up to his chin as I leaned in on him. I placed a kiss over his forehead and I sent back a serious expression like a shadow hovering over his bedposts.

"You remember what happened to the last tooth?"

"Yes," he shyly proposed.

"Then I think we should pull it…" I came again.

"He'll never let you pull his tooth dad…" I heard Tyler turn, rustle about in her bed, and roll to face the both of us, "Not me. Let dad pull three of them, and I got three dollars to prove it," she said this with such an air of pride.

"Will too!" Cory lashed out.

"Will not!" Tyler volleyed back.

"Will too!"

"You haven't before," she grinned on this.

"Cory," I shot a firm glance at him, "Tyler," I did as much the same to her, "I'm sure when the time comes I'll be able to collect your tooth for the tooth fairy. No need for arguments here for the sake of arguing…You both still have a full head of teeth to lose, and will become more than 'well to do' by it at the expense of the tooth fairy herself.."

I eyed them both as they had grown more silent. They both shot me the expression that somehow I was angered by their little quarrel.

I paused. I made a sigh in hopes to defuse the situation and allow myself to collect my thoughts to speak on further.

"What chapter were we on?" I said.

"Chapter 7," Cory cautiously remarked.

"Which book?" I had forgotten.

"Dad?" Tyler pleaded with me to remember.

"Oh yes," there was a pause, and it seemed to be sent my way, "Robinson Crusoe."

"No dad," Cory softly replied.

"Black Beauty..." and by the look on their collective faces, I was in error again, "Heidi…Oliver Twist…The Call of the Wild?" I could only venture then and still be fiercely abandoned by my more usually-keen memory.

"You used to never forget..." Cory employed.

I felt his words softly pinch me with its most accurate accusation. I had failed them again, and so I felt the most inept of our trio. To sense that these moments we shared; these very moments which held the utmost meaning to them had failed to hold any relevance with me. That pause brought me into shame and embarrassment in front of the very two little people who held me so in high regard and invincibility. I wondered where the right words would come from. I was holding still, gazing but into the reflective stares of their eyes while they were sitting, wanting me, hoping even still, that perhaps, if all were to go as it should, that I might remember the book we had stopped on before. I thought for a moment as I tried to discover the magical title which would appease them so. I could not find it.

"What can I say?" I only mastered this phrase.

"Huckleberry Finn…" Tyler spoke out, disappointed as she was with me. I was so finding more failure within myself.

"Yes…Yes," I threw my finger into the air as if it had come to me only a fraction of a moment after she had said so, and would have darted back into my memory if she had not blurted it out to me so prematurely. My look found theirs' to be so full in acrimony that perhaps I had lost them for a second.

"Where were we in the story?" I defused.

"Huck was being chased by Pap with a knife..." Cory said.

"And why was he doing this?" I shot them a confused expression, as though I had never thought of reading that section before.

"Pap thought Huck was the Angel of Death, or something…" I saw the despondent stare resonate from my daughter's soft and engrossing eyes, which all but tore over me. I could sense that lump drive upwards in my throat; my inner tears remained within.

They couldn't see my own sorrow.

The gaping hole of silence in our conversation seemed to frustrate them further; my lack of comfort; my inability to set things right and make the world as it was before; to somehow turn time backwards and give back those dear things which were so recently lost to all of us.

Surely I would have been an awkward clockmaker. I believe I would have brought to heir the revolution of having the hours spin counterclockwise. But I suppose I would have been just as well the smart clockmaker as a good father to these children now. It was true. Somehow I had lost my step along the pathway; turned a corner I was not meant to travel on. And in looking back and so seeing the ways I should have gone, I was in a struggle to redirect myself.

Sometimes life throws shadows in your way without the light to guide you by. Your hope is to discover the way as you see fit. But sometimes, even in the most winter of times, there isn't enough light to be sure on. Then, when the hour is most dim and the air the coldest still, you just have to discover the way.

I saw their worried eyes; their most early precepts of childhood where everything was to be of fancy and play. Nothing bad was to touch them in their lives, where security was as great as life itself. This infant bubble had somehow burst by the pin of fate itself. And now they felt the world seemed as cold and dim as I did.

Tyler moved from her bed to sit most near to me, to see more closely the weakness in my own eyes. Cory leaned up, intently eyeing in me the same thing as Tyler did. I felt the weight of their stares expose the very expressions I did not want them to see. This caused me to wilt under that pressure. The mask seemed not as strong as it did before. But I held to a sigh; looked away briefly until my daughter's soft voice caught me back again.

"How long will you be sad daddy?" Her five-year old voice nearly struck the beat strings to my heart. I could not deny the sword in her words, yet I still refrained from my weep and I kept it silent.

"Only until the Spring dear," I whispered back.

She placed with me a hug, and too, Cory leaned in further until they both were within my grasp. I squeezed both into a tight fit; my embrace growing stronger. We held each other still there; time eclipsed and spun now on that same moment as we locked into that comfort and embrace. We did not want to let go. But we let everything pass until we were all sure that everything would at least heal a little in that time we could share together.

"We should attend to our reading tomorrow... can we?"

"Huckleberry Finn?" Cory hopefully said.

"Oh yes…and while you are at school, I will be sure to review the first six chapters again," I smiled, "In fact, I'll become the best expert on it."

"And the voices?" Tyler chimed in.

"Of course," I replied, "What is a story without voices?"

"Not a good one…" Cory leaned back, with arms placed over his head. He stared back on the ceiling tiles like they were bright stars in the night sky.

"Then I will have to make good practice on different ones," I placed Tyler back into her bed.

"I like it when you do an old man…" she giggled aloud.

"Like this?!" I grew my face old, rolled my eyes in retreat, gummed my lips over my teeth, and dried out my voice until it sounded like the one who needed a long and deep glass of whiskey, "A varmint! A heathen!"

"You sound like the way Pap would sound," she giggled once more and she smiled broadly as she looked to me.

"Pap…" I softly whispered that word through my lips and I so stared out into some unforeseen distance. My mind was venturing away again; eyeing the prodigal notions of a son lost in his own history; poking that long scope in retreat, into the way I had come. I could see my own childhood as I peeped backwards like a good Tom, "Pap… I used to call your grandpa that."

My words trailed off at the end of that sentence.

"Grandpa?" Cory shot in.

"He was Pap to me…" I looked back onto Tyler's shining face, "You're a giggly-goo one, aren't you?"

And she laughed once more as I tickled her to clear it out of her system.

"What did he call you, dad?"

"Just Conner," I paused and winked a smile, "But when he was really angry with me, he used to call me Connnniiieee!"

There was a general roll-call of laughter which hit the room. I looked back at the shimmering light and open door. I could see Sandra's shadow standing off in the distance; silent and motionless, staring into our audience to overhear what was going on between us three.

"Time for bed," I returned my attention their way, "Butterflies and bats need their rest too," I imposed a metaphor to each of them.

They drew snug in their beds.

The soft, cupping blankets rolled back just underneath their chins. Their eyes were in a droop, and yawns were consuming the full expressions in their faces. I could see that they had a full day. The tiny-tot children closed their eyes, fell to a slumber, and so tumbled into some dream and sleep I could only imagine. I left them as they were, but better still than before. It seemed perhaps they would have good dreams rather than nightmares now, as long as Pap did not show up in them.

I had often heard Tyler crying in her sleep. When I went to comfort her in those moments, the tears kept flowing even as she awoke. They were so very long to dissipate. Tonight perhaps would be different.

I drew the door closed and I stepped down the hallway where Sandra was leaning up against another door post.