January 1, 2016
If I had known back when I was thirteen that when my father and I docked his boat at the marina outside of Rome it would be the last time I'd sail with him, I would have paid better attention. I would have memorized the way he looked when he hoisted the sails and the boat picked up speed. I would have stared at his face and recorded every laugh line in my mind. I would have taken a mental picture of how his hand looked on the tiller and learned his laugh by heart so that I could recall those things any time.
A few years after that fateful day when my mother put her foot down and said no more sailing, and then my father left just a little over a year after that, I could barely recall those details about him, no matter how much I tried. I think, though, that was the beginning of how I learned to profile people - never wanting to miss anything again because I assumed there would be more opportunities, I started watching mannerisms and facial expressions of people - friends and acquaintances. I started noticing subtleties and committing people to memory.
By the time I was nineteen, long before thoughts of the FBI and Interpol even entered my mind, I could tell a lot about a person - even strangers - just by watching their behavior. By the time I was twenty-one, it became a bar game with my college friends.
"He's married. His eyes are roving around and he's nervous someone he knows might see him here. Plus he's keeping his left hand in his lap. His ring is off, but he probably has a faint tan line there."
"I don't know what she's telling that guy, but she's lying. You can tell by the way she's holding her shoulders and the way her eyes keep shifting to the left, seeking creativity for her story from that side of her brain."
My friends thought it was great fun, and they loved that nearly all of the time I was right. I never told them that my parlor trick was a well-honed skill that came from the most devastating moment of my life - that when it counted, I wasn't paying enough attention and I was going to make sure I never missed or forgot anything about a person I cared about again.
When I was on that sailboat with my father again, just a little over a week ago, two days before Christmas - over thirty-one years since the last time we were on the water together - I realized that what I could not call up in memory rushed at me like de ja vu once my father helped me hoist the sails on my boat.
Duex Lunes. But there were three of us on the boat that day; three people who had the ability to clear the clouds from the sky just by existing and going through the cycle of life as best they could. Because we were not unloving or deceitful people. We were damaged in some ways, and we dealt with those things in ways that were not always healthy, but at the core of us we were all good and kind and honest.
Even my father, whose smile was almost like I remembered it even if his teeth weren't the sparkling white they used to be; whose hands still shook slightly, but he was sober and he held the tiller in the relaxed way I remembered once I saw it again; whose wrinkles were plentiful and hair was grey, but the slope of his shoulders and the way he looked at me reminded me of the relaxed, loving man I once knew.
We didn't talk much when we first set out; I wasn't sure how to get a conversation started, and I wasn't even sure if I needed words from him. At first, his presence was enough. But when I cast my fishing rod over the side of the boat and got a bite just minutes later, my father laughed. "Do you remember when you were five and we were fishing on Lake Nasser in Egypt? I was busy with the boat and you caught a bite and tried to reel in a fish much too large for you on your own. You went right over the side, Lune. But the best part was when you popped your head up in the water and laughed. We lost a good fishing rod that day, but I didn't care. I remember thinking that you would never be the type to scare easily."
The tears welled in my eyes and I nodded at him, "I remember."
He smiled at me and touched my cheek. "Alcohol has taken a lot from my mind and my body, but it's taken none of my memories of you."
That was the way our time on the boat went for the first couple of hours on that cold and clear December morning. We'd lapse into silence, and then my father would bring up a memory. And I'd laugh or cry. Derek was a quiet bystander for the most part, but I was acutely aware of him when his hand would touch my my back or my hand at just the right moment; when I needed him to. He smiled frequently at my father when he made me laugh from a funny memory, and clamped his warm, gentle hand on my father's shoulder often throughout that morning.
Derek, who knew what I needed when I was too scared to put it into words because I didn't want to be disappointed. Derek, who I knew instinctively had gotten my father sober and here not by asking for forever, but probably by asking for just this - just one sober day on a boat with me.
What shocked me into complete disbelief was that after we'd caught several bass and eaten the brunch Derek had packed, when it was just after noon and we'd been out on the boat for a little over six hours, was when my father nodded at Derek and me and said, "It would be a shame not to be able to enjoy today's catch with you."
And beneath those words, a truth I picked up on right away, "I can handle this for a little longer, being sober and being with my daughter. I'm not ready to let go yet."
My father, who I learned was dropped off at the marina by Andrew Farley, came home with us. He insisted on curling his long legs into the backseat of Derek's car so I could take the passenger seat, and he was so quiet on the drive back to the rowhouse, that I frequently looked over my shoulder to make sure he was real and still there. I kept one hand in Derek's and one clutched against my leg, butterflies hammering around inside my stomach, and my heart beating so fast that I could hear it in my ears.
What I never fully considered was the power of Fran Morgan and how that woman could put even a stranger who had spent the majority of thirty years in near solitude at complete ease. She was a buffer unlike anything I'd ever seen before, perhaps purposely making mistakes at cleaning the fish so that my father could correct her and she could get him laughing. Who turned the tables when she tried to teach my father to bake bread and playfully chastised him for not kneading the dough the right way.
I sat at the table in the kitchen, Derek next to me and his hand on my thigh, feeling like I was somewhere else, in a theater somewhere watching my father on a screen, watching him come back to life right before my eyes.
We shared an enjoyable dinner of tea, fish, fresh bread and salad, followed by one of Fran's pies for dessert. I stayed away from questions I had that might be painful for him - how he'd fallen in love with my mother in the first place, how he'd convinced her to have a baby at all, how he'd gotten from Italy and back to the US, because I knew it hadn't been on his small sailboat.
"Do you want to stay tonight?" I asked him softly, hopefully, as it got later. "Fran's in the guest room, but there's a couch up in the den that folds out."
He was standing by the mantle in the living room at the time, Derek and his mom in the kitchen cleaning up, and he was staring intently at the small boat in the bottle that he'd left me. His eyes flitted between that and the framed picture of the two of us that Derek had set next to the bottle. He glanced at the stairs and then glanced at the worn leather chair, the large Christmas tree, and the warmth of a room with built-in bookcases and comfortable furniture.
His eyes were watery when they finally turned to me. "This couch will do," he said, and I let out a quiet breath I wasn't even aware I was holding.
I smiled at him and nodded. I went upstairs and returned quickly with sheets and blankets and a pillow, almost afraid he'd be gone before I got back downstairs. But he was there, waiting for me.
Derek appeared as I was making up the couch. "Let me get you something more comfortable to sleep in," he said quietly. And my father followed him upstairs, returning minutes later in a pair of Derek's sweats and a t-shirt.
We all retired to bed shortly after that since our morning had started so early. But later, around midnight, I woke up and crept downstairs. I settled into Derek's chair and quietly watched my father sleep. Not surprisingly, Derek came downstairs minutes later. He maneuvered my body so we both fit in the wide chair. "He's cute when he's sleeping," he said quietly in my ear.
And I smiled and then I quietly cried. "Thank you," I whispered to him once I'd calmed down. "There are no words for the love I feel for you."
He kissed my cheek and wrapped his arms around me, and I glanced at the Christmas tree in the room. There were a few gifts for Derek Morgan, wrapped up in bright paper and neat bows, under our tree, and they paled in comparison to what he'd given me. Suddenly the new football jersey and tickets to the Bears game on January 3rd, when they were playing in Baltimore, seemed so trivial and, quite frankly, lame.
I knew what Derek Morgan wanted most in the world even though he never voiced it, because like the skills I had honed after my father left me, I'd been watching him and taking notice. I wasn't sure I could give it to him, not in the traditional way. But in that moment I wanted to explore the possibility. Maybe that's what true love is, I thought as I sat in his arms and watched my father sleep. Maybe it's not just wanting to give people what they need or want; maybe it's loving them so completely that their needs and wants become your own - a shared goal, a shared path, even if it's a path you never thought you'd take.
We eventually made it back up to our bed that night, and on Christmas Eve morning, we came downstairs to find my father dressed, the blankets and sheets folded on the couch and him sitting comfortably, reading a book.
"I need to get back to Andrew. He'll be all alone at Christmas otherwise," my father said when he saw me.
Translation told by the look in his eyes and the way his hands gripped his thighs: I've reached the end of what I can handle. For the moment. Please don't take it personally.
I nodded and told him I'd drive him back to Delaware. He held my hand while I drove and I sensed he needed quiet, so I silently navigated the car, even keeping my breathing soft, and let the warmth of his hand permeate to my soul.
When we arrived in Delaware, I got something more than I would have dared hope for. "The family that owns this place won't be back until spring. So you'll know where to find me. If I feel like I need to get away, I'll make sure Andrew knows where I am so you can locate me. I love you. You are remarkable and I can't believe you're mine. I'll try, Lune. I'll try to not start drinking again, but I promise I won't totally disappear on you again."
With a kiss to my forehead and each cheek, he was out of the car and gone. I didn't follow him, even though I wanted to, just to wrap him in my arms and hang on. Instead, I made the drive back home with tears in my eyes and a smile on my face.
Christmas was secondary to what ultimately settled into the forefront of my mind, though pleasant in itself. The quiet dinner with Fran on Christmas Eve and Christmas dinner at Rossi's the next day. Derek holding JJ and Will's new baby boy and the look in his eyes he tried to hide only bolstered what I was waiting for.
It was on December twenty-sixth when I quietly crept into the den after Derek was asleep, did the research I needed to, and sent an email to my doctor. It was December twenty-seventh, when Derek was driving his mom to the airport and intending to stay there with her until she boarded her flight, that I drove to Dr. Craig's office.
I didn't want to set us up for grueling infertility treatments; I wanted to set us up for a potential improbability and move on to other options quickly if that didn't work, knowing neither of us could handle the ups and downs and disappointment for too long when there were other viable options out there.
I wanted to be told my uterus and Fallopian tubes and all my inner workings wouldn't be prohibitive to this on the one percent chance that at the age of forty-five, I still had any eggs in there that wanted to come out and play. Like Derek knew that just one good day with my father would be enough even if I got nothing else, I wanted to give him one sliver of chance.
The chance of something I knew he wanted and saw in his eyes when we saw kids playing at the green space across the street from the rowhouse; the longing that was plain on his face when he saw me holding his infant second-cousin; that quiet desire that seeped from his pores and into the space of a room when he was holding JJ's baby.
I got what I needed - the first part of the necessary ingredient - my uterus looked good. Exceptionally good for someone my age.
When I was fifteen, after my abortion, I swore off boys for awhile, and then - when I let them back in - I swore of intercourse. I became a master at blow jobs, a skill I am in no way sorry I'd honed in the past month. When I was eighteen and at college, away from the watchful eyes of my mother, I went on the pill. I never told anyone I dated though, and it was always condoms, too. Double protection, the fear of an unexpected pregnancy all but blown out of possibility. Over eleven years ago, right before I went in with Doyle, I switched from the pill to an IUD.
When Dr. Craig pulled out the second IUD I'd had inserted in me since 2004, with a sharp twinge and a mild cramp, I felt no fear. Tears dripped down my face while my feet were up in those stirrups, and they were tears of hope. I knew Derek and I could love an adopted baby with wild abandon, but what I dreamed in that moment was of a delivery room, of him holding my hand, of sweat-slicked hair and excruciating pain that felt like a blessing, and of him holding a baby in his arms that was part him and part me.
Like the last letter my father wrote to Andrew, I envisioned Derek with our baby in his arms in the delivery room, and of him looking down at the face of that baby boy or girl and knowing that his life had changed forever. I dreamed of watching that instant connection and feeling nothing but tranquility and love, because I wasn't like my mother. Not at all. The love I felt for Derek Morgan would only grow and expand when I watched him love our child - biological or adopted.
I held out for three more days. I fell into an exhausted sleep every night, so emotionally wound up during the day and still reveling in the time I had with my father, that Derek never questioned my early bedtimes.
But on New Year's Eve, I knew it was time to give him a belated Christmas present, one that came from deep within my heart, much like he'd given me.
We sit together in his leather chair, after deciding to spend the start of the new year quietly at home together. When the ball drops in New York and we watch in fifty-inch technicolor on the TV in our living room, after he kisses me soundly, I reach into the cushions of the chair.
I hold out to him a small wrapped box.
"What's this?" he asks curiously.
The crowds are cheering in Time's Square from the TV and there is confetti flying in the air there, and there is confetti flying in my heart. "Open it," I whisper.
He moves his arms away from my body and rips into the wrapping paper, opening the lid and revealing nothing but an empty box.
His left eyebrow raises curiously at me. And I smile. "I could have taken my old IUD with me and put it in there, but that would have been kind of gross."
He stares at me and then into the box again. "What?" he whispers.
I touch the lines that have appeared on his forehead, smoothing them and then run my fingers down his face. I kiss his lips - his impossibly perfect lips - and touch his hands - hands that could never truly hurt me ever and would never leave me. "I figure we can see if after all the miracles we've received since the beginning of August, if there's just one more out there that the universe has in store for us."