Chapter 4 – Homecoming
The car halted in front of the small house that Elya had directed Kevin to. Kevin looked out the passenger side window. "So, this is it?"
"Yeah," Elya half sighed and watched Kevin as he, once again, hoisted his wheelchair out of the car and got in. This time she wasn't so eager to exit the vehicle.
Kevin came to the passenger door and opened it. "You coming or not?"
"He's gonna be mad," she stated and both Kevin and her knew whom she was talking about.
"Nah," Kevin assured her. "He's gonna be glad that you're home. You'll see."
"I'm not so sure," Elya said skeptically.
"Only one way to find out," was Kevin's reply as he nodded towards the house. "Come on."
Elya's answer was to get out of the car after all. She let Kevin go first, but then realized that he wouldn't be able to get up the three front steps to the front door. Kevin stopped in front of them, turning the wheelchair so that it stood with its back towards the stairs. "I think you'll have to help me with those."
Elya looked confused for a moment. "How?"
Kevin explained to her how she could aid in getting the chair up the stairs, which turned out not as difficult as she had thought.
She barely had time to prepare for facing her father's wrath, or relieved happiness, or whatever was to come. Adam had heard the commotion outside and opened the door just as Elya and Kevin had mastered the last step.
For a second, the threesome just stood, not saying anything. Elya looked to the ground, ashamed for some reason. She started, "Dad, I ..."
But he just quickly went over to her and pulled her into an embrace—something she had not expected. She just stood limply for a second, then carefully returned the hug.
"Do you know how scared I was?" he muttered into her hair. "Don't ever do that again, you hear me?"
Something else she had not expected happened—she felt tears welling up in her eyes. "I'm sorry," she whispered. "I didn't mean to ..." she stumbled, not sure how to tell him that she was now truly sorry for just running off.
Her father released her from their embrace and she wasn't surprised to see his eyes shining with a hint of tears which he quickly tried to blink back. She knew he didn't want to cry in front of Kevin.
Adam turned to Joan's elder brother. "Kevin, thank you for getting her home. I owe you. Come in, please." Adam gestured inside, thinking quickly. Were there any more steps or other obstacles for Kevin inside? No, he didn't think so.
"Sure," Kevin just said and followed Adam and Elya.
Adam, Elya and Kevin went into the kitchen, but before Elya could sit down at the table, Adam told her, "I'd like you to go to your room."
Elya looked at Adam pleadingly. "Dad ... I wanna know what's going on."
"Please, Elya," he said, the tone of his voice serious and determined in a way that Elya knew it didn't leave any room for negotiation. With somewhat of a pouty face, she did as she was told, but not without lingering on the stairs. The kitchen door was being closed, presumably by her father, and she knew she wouldn't be able to listen in unless she stood with her ear pressed to the door.
She briefly wondered if she was going to be punished for her little escapade. Grounded maybe? A month's worth of kitchen duty? Dad knew how much she hated washing up. Why couldn't they afford a dishwasher, like all her friends' parents? Sighing heavily, she went into her room. But she still thought the trip had been worth it, whatever her punishment was going to be.
Downstairs in the kitchen, Adam pulled one of the chairs away from the table, so that Kevin could position his wheelchair at it before Adam himself sat down. There was an uncomfortable stretch of silence before Adam said, "Thank you for taking Elya home."
"No problem." Kevin narrowed his eyes almost disdainfully. The sarcasm in voice was clearly audible as he said, "It was good to finally get to know my niece. I just wish I had known I even had a niece, though, and not only find out now, after fourteen years."
A pained expression crossed Adam's face. "Yeah. Yeah, I know. It ... We decided it would be best if no one knew at the time. I mean, things weren't exactly great between us and your family then, and as soon as Joan found out she was pregnant, she decided it would be best not to tell you. Guess we never managed to gather the courage to tell you at a later time. And then, when Joan left ..." Adam stopped, looking at Kevin. "When was the last time you saw her?" he asked him.
"My mother's funeral, six years ago."
Adam had to keep hard from gaping as Kevin's statement fully registered. "Your mother's dead?" he asked, incredulous.
"Yeah, she died in a car crash. You didn't know?"
"No," Adam said, just above a whisper. "No, Joan never told me."
Kevin sat up a little straighter. "Adam, I know it's not my place to pry, but what exactly is going on here? Joan suddenly vanishes with only so much of an explanation. She leaves you and your daughter behind, doesn't tell you her mother died. You never tell us about Elya and then she suddenly turns up at my house, asking about her mother and her family." He lifted his arms slightly in a gesture of lack of comprehension. "I don't understand this, any of this."
Adam sighed a heavy sigh. He'd had a feeling this was going to happen eventually. Someone would ask questions and he'd have no way to bend the truth enough to offer a satisfactory explanation. And he was getting sick of fabricating lie after lie or saying that he didn't know or couldn't say. But what choice did he have? He had promised Joan that he would not tell anyone about her true motives. And that promise he intended to keep, at any cost.
"Kevin," he began. "There's ... there's something about Joan that you don't know, and it's something I can't tell you. Something that explains all of this, or at least part of it." He gave Kevin a pleading look. "Please don't ask me about it, because I cannot tell you."
Kevin's brow furrowed in confusion. "Okay. No, not okay. But there's nothing we can do about it, can we? I'd like to say that it's not fair to keep what you know to yourself, but I guess you have your reasons. Like Joan has hers. But I think it's time that we did something about it. I mean, look at Elya. She needs the answers just as badly as I do. Have you talked to your wife recently? Told her what's going on around here?"
"We talked on the phone three weeks ago, maybe. She calls every now and then. Never leaves a number to call back, never tells me where she is. Believe me, if I'd had a way to track her down, I'd have done it a long time ago." Adam's face bore a pained expression now. There was so much bitterness and rejection and abandonment in the air that he sometimes thought it would seek him out at night and stifle him.
Very quietly, Adam went on. "I mean, I love her, I still do. But ten years ... that's quite a stretch. It gets harder and harder. Sometimes I don't even know if she really is the person that I remember." His voice picking up some more resolve, he looked at Kevin. "I'd have to agree with you. We need to do something about it." Adam rubbed his face with his hands. "If only I knew how or what."
"Does she send e-mails sometimes? Any kind of written communication?"
Adam shook his head. "No. Phone calls only."
"Okay, then that won't help us. Okay, give me some time. I'll think of something." He looked at Adam, his face hopeful.
"Thanks, Kevin," Adam said, and meant it. "Give me a call if you find out anything. Anything at all."
"Sure," Kevin said. "And now that I know I have a niece, it would be nice to see some more of her."
"All right," Adam readily agreed. "I think that can be easily arranged."
Kevin steered his wheelchair towards the door, ready to leave. Adam helped him down the stairs, but before Kevin went on towards the car, he looked back at Adam. "You might want to give Luke a call. I think he'd like to know he has a niece as well, and he shouldn't be hearing it from me."
Adam slowly nodded. "Yeah, I'll call him."
With that, Kevin left and Adam went back into the house, closing the door behind him. He lingered in the corridor for a minute, looking at himself in the mirror that hung on the wall next to the coat rack. Absently taking in the crow's feet that were only just visible around his eyes, he wondered where the time had gone. Sometimes those ten years without Joan seemed like an eternity, sometimes like the snap of a finger. When exactly had he turned from love-struck teenager to troubled father? He couldn't remember exactly.
But there was another matter at hand that he had to attend to. He drew in a breath and started to trudge up the stairs to Elya's room.
Softly rapping on her bedroom door, he listened for an answer. When there was none, he said to her through the closed door, "Elya? Can I come in?"
Her voice was neutrally indifferent. "Yeah, whatever."
Adam sighed. This wasn't going to be easy. But when had it ever been easy? He slowly opened the door to see Elya sitting on her bed with her back against the headboard, her knees drawn up, a book in her lap. From her determined stare, he guessed she hadn't really read much from the book tonight.
He sat down on the desk chair and swiveled it around so that he was facing her.
"Am I grounded?" she asked, raising her voice provocatively, but not looking at him.
"Oh yeah, you're grounded all right," Adam told her. "For a week. At least."
"Great," Elya muttered sarcastically. "No jujitsu practice either, I take it."
"No, no jujitsu or any other activities," Adam said in a harsher tone than he had intended. It softened considerably as he asked her, "Look, can we talk?"
She defiantly gazed straight ahead, refused to meet his eyes or even look at him. "Oh, now you want to talk. Except we don't talk about what I wanna talk about. So, remind me, why should we talk again?"
"Elya ..." he half sighed. "In fact, this is exactly what we need to talk about."
"Oh yeah? Then let me say this. I want to get to know my mother. I want to know what kind of person she was, what kind of person she is. And you refuse to let me, so tell me, what was I supposed to do? Just sit around and wait until you maybe, some day decide that it's time for me to learn about my mother? Or maybe just rot in ignorance until all hell freezes over?"
Adam flustered slightly, sitting up a little straighter. "And running away is the answer?" he asked, his voice firm.
"In case you haven't noticed," she said defiantly, "I didn't run away, I went to see my uncle. An uncle I didn't even know I had!" she spat at her father. "Because you wouldn't tell me. And don't tell me you didn't know, because I won't believe you."
"No," he said. "I knew. Of course I knew." He rubbed his face with his hands. How had it come to this? "This is all very complicated. It's not that we didn't think you didn't deserve to know, but there's more to it than that. A lot more."
"No, to me it's very simple. I have a mother who went away. I don't know why she did. I don't know anything about her, or her family. I have a father who knows all about her, her reasons, and all about her family, but he won't tell me anything. He won't let me talk to my mother, won't even show me pictures. Now, look at me and tell me to my face that you wouldn't feel the same way if you were in my shoes. Look at me and honestly tell me." She now stared at him, her gaze piercing him with an urgency and resoluteness that he wasn't used to from her.
He didn't know what to say. She was right, he would most probably feel the same way. But she just didn't see the whole picture, and Adam knew she wouldn't understand if he just gave her more vague allusions.
When he didn't say anything for a few seconds, her voice became more resigned, bitter. "You see, that's what I thought. And you know why? You know exactly what it's like. You know what it's like to grow up without a mother, don't you? Is this what you're trying to do?" she asked, angrily raising her voice again. "Punishing me for your fucked up childhood, making me go through the same thing just because your mother killed herself?"
Adam's brow furrowed. Those words, those accusations drove deep—deeper than Elya realized and probably intended. He could feel tears welling up in his eyes, and he didn't know if they were tears of anger or sorrow or hurt.
"How dare you," he growled, his eyes dark with rage and disappointment. "You don't get to speak about my mother that way. You don't know what it was like. You don't have the faintest idea, Elya. And, believe me, you don't wanna know." His voice suddenly cracked and he stopped to gain control over his emotions again. More quietly, he repeated, "You don't wanna know." He wiped away the one stray tear that had rolled down his cheek in the heat of the moment.
There was dead silence. Elya was painfully aware she had gone too far. She stole a glance at her father and very meekly said, "I'm sorry, Dad. I shouldn't have said that."
He sniffled his nose once, then coldly said, "That's right, you shouldn't." He stood up and left the room, the door's lock clicking into place very softly behind him.
She stared at it for a long time, her own eyes filling with tears that she let seep down her face freely. She knew she had just disappointed him. Disappointed him in more ways than she could imagine. "I'm sorry, Dad, so sorry," she whispered again, aware that he wasn't able to hear it.
She knew she just couldn't leave it at that. Deep down inside she also knew that her father was having a hard enough time as it was, how could she go and give him even more grief? But it was just so hard to see all that above all the unfairness that she felt thrown at her sometimes.
She quickly wiped at her cheeks with her palms, rearranging the few loose strands of hair that had fallen in her face from the ponytail at the back of her neck. She tiptoed down the stairs and went into the living room, finding her father sitting on the couch, his head in his hands.
Wordlessly, she sat down next to him. She lightly touched his arm, repeating what she had said earlier. "I'm sorry, I'm so sorry. Please don't be mad at me." She felt tears well up in her eyes again and tried to blink them back but wasn't having much success with it.
He sat up and put his arm around her shoulder, drawing her to him. "It's okay," he softly said, stroking her upper arm with one hand. "Oh Elya, what are we gonna do?" he sighed.
She leaned her head against his shoulder. "I don't know, Dad," she said in a teary voice. "Stick together, maybe?"
"I wish it was that easy." His voice was heavy with a burden that she wished he didn't have to carry.
Elya removed her head from her father's shoulder and sat up. "Why is it so hard for you to tell me about Mom? If I knew, maybe it'd be easier for me to understand why you can't talk about her. I just wanna understand. Don't you see that?" she softly asked.
"Of course I see that, Honey," Adam told her. "And don't you think I would tell you all the things that explain it if I could? And please don't ever think I'm punishing you, because that couldn't be farther from the truth. I know you want answers, answers I can't give you. I have tried, I have tried so hard to do my best, tried so hard all these years. Maybe one day you'll understand. I know that isn't much comfort right now, but it's the best I can do."
"Can you at least tell me about the sculptures and the paintings?" Elya softly prodded. "Are they all from you?"
Adam had to smile slightly at the memory. There were such a lot of bittersweet memories in his past, in their past—his and Joan's. Very slowly, he began to tell his daughter about how he had started welding and sculpting when he was barely her age. How Joan had been the first person to see what it meant to him, to see the beauty in his artwork. How she had won his heart before he even knew it himself. He told her the things he hadn't told her before from Joan's and his past.
He also told her how he had stopped doing any of it—sculpting, drawing, painting—after Joan had left. It had always felt like something that connected him to her, and once she had severed that connection, his urge and ability to capture inspiration in metal form or images had slowly faded until they had reached the point of non-existence.
Elya listened quietly, but curiously. When he had finished, she asked, "Can't we put up one of those beautiful drawings of her that you did? You know, to remember that she's out there somewhere? I'm sick of pretending she doesn't exist. Maybe then it won't be so hard to think about her, talk about her." She looked at her father questioningly.
His face took on a thoughtful expression. She could see that he wasn't enthusiastic about the suggestion, but she could also see him struggling with refusing her request.
"Please," she added.
"Okay," he finally said. "We'll pick one together, how about that?"
Elya now smiled. "That would be awesome, Dad."
Adam also smiled. It wasn't often that he was considered 'awesome' by his daughter. And he thought he might as well start somewhere, while they were talking about old times and old memories. "So, you met your uncle Kevin then, huh?"
Elya gave him a surprised look. She never would have expected her father to start talking about him on his own. "Yeah. He seems like a cool guy. How did he end up in the wheelchair? I think he mentioned an accident or something like that."
"Yes, he was in a car crash. Must be close to twenty years now. Your mother was still a teenager then." Adam leaned back on the couch and suddenly remembered something. He got up and got the phone and a little notebook. "How about we give your other uncle, Luke, a call?"