from installment 2: Avon Mikaides is a delightful girl, and definitely the daughter of Lewis’s father, Joseph. But she has had their father all her short life, whereas he did not. It seems what binds Avon and Joseph together is the very thing that ripped Lewis and Joseph apart. Now, it confronts Lewis himself.
Installment 3
His Father’s Daughter
Lewis sat by the window sipping the coffee that Avon brought him. The cup was soothing. He could feel the warmth of the brew through the glazed china, spreading through his fingertips and muscles to his heart. It eased the arthritic ache that had seized it. Gradually the chill waned. The panorama still lay before him. The sea resounded with the joy of its own being, proclaiming its presence in the susurrrant sighs of wave upon sand. Lewis' chair was angled so he could gaze out and allow himself to be mesmerized by the march and dance of the waves. They seemed at once peaceful and indomitable; relentless and reassuring. The sun was lowering now, and indigo was the color above the water. A few crests, catching random. rays, showed bronze in the dying light. An afternoon star had climbed into view, its cold gleaming sphere standing out against the darkening sky. Lewis fixed on it in wonder.
Afternoon and evening stars. North star. Constellations to guide a ship by night. Riding the sea. leviathans below, God's Heavens above, men aboard to crew a vessel who knows where and back again. The sea a broad road to places unknown, touching all shores. linking all continents. The ocean, the sea, Joseph's mistress, and now an ageless siren enticing Lewis as well.
This was a favorite room of Papa Joe’s. The shuttered wall was his own device, Avon explained, designed so he could always see his beloved ocean. He would come here first thing in the morning to watch the sun rise and take a reading of the weather. He spent hours here, reading, watching, listening. With his ocean.
Avon went to fetch the papers Joseph left that referred to Lewis, the papers that began this episode in their lives.
Lewis turned his head away from the window. Yes, he could still hear the water. The ocean was everywhere. He sighed again and let his eye wander around the room.
Avon was devoted to hearth and home, even in Joseph's absence. She was young to be facing this. She must still be in high school. he considered vaguely. Yes, he remembered, she had indicated as much, saying they would allow her to finish up in the summer. She had much to attend to with Joseph dying, yet the house was tidy and sweet-smelling and welcoming.
"They did a commendable job raising her," he found himself murmuring, annoyed to realize Joseph had a hand in it.
She returned, delicate hands clasping a thin brown folder, its edges worn and soft with age. She pulled an ottoman over and sat beside the arm of his chair, her curl-capped head at his elbow. She drew her knees up and tucked her legs under.
"These are the papers. When I first found them, I read them all through. I didn't understand them. Mr. Daniels read them, and he said he thought they meant Papa Joe had another family somewhere. I didn't know what to think of that. I let him take the papers, he did some research, and he found out you were still in New Hampshire. He found out for sure you were Papa Joe's son. My brother." Her eyes glinted with the light from the lamp across the room, darkened orbs trying to absorb the enormity of what had been discovered.
"That's when you wrote me."
She shook her head. "Not quite. You see, at first I was scared. Papa Joe never, ever said anything about another family, not anything. I didn't know what you'd be like, or if you were for real, or why we'd never heard from you, or anything! I suppose I knew, somehow, that it must have been that Papa Joe left you, but I didn't want that to be true. Then I found another paper in with the will." Her voice wavered. Tears glistened at the base of her lashes. "It was a note, a sort of memo, in Papa Joe ' s handwriting. It said that when he died, you were to be told. It even had your address with it."
A rumble sounds outside Lewis' fortress, the ominous roll of drums preceding a battering ram.
"I thought writing me was your own idea." He scowled.
"I couldn't think of any other way to say it in the letter, That letter was awfully hard to write, Mr. Mi --
Lewis. And I didn't even know you were a professor then."
As if that excused anything!. Who does she think she is, confusing my life this way? Then it returned to him that it was not exactly her fault. He stretched out his hand. "May I see the papers?"
"Certainly. If you like, I can leave you alone while you read them. I have some things to do upstairs."
He glanced at the folder. his heart accelerating. Anger? Trepidation?
"That might be best. Thank you, Avon."
He barely noticed her leave the room. His eyes were on the water again, as if demanding the answers of its depths instead of facing the colder contents of this folder. What answers can I find? he scoffed. This puzzle makes no more sense than when Joseph first left. Things aren't what they seem and never have been. He sighed and with unsteady fingers turned the cardboard cover. Inside were but a few yellowing sheets of paper.
There was the note instructing he be notified of Joseph's death.
The list of addresses, also in what Avon said was Joseph's handwriting. The list was long, with each address crossed out as the succeeding one was added. The last one, however, was not crossed out. Recognition prickled Lewis' spine. The addresses were those of all the places he'd ever lived. The house on Kale Street where Joseph left them so long ago. His grandparents' farm, where his mother took him to live when he was ten. Then the four places they lived in Keene during those years when mother just barely--and not always--had the jump on the next month's rent. His college addresses, every year a different dormitory. Graduate school, off-campus. The place he first lived after he received his professorship. Last, in black ink, written in neat print fifteen years ago, the address of the large clapboard house he'd bought for himself and his mother.
Every place he ever lived. Joseph had known where he was every night of his life. Yet for forty-seven years he never knew where his father was. He stared at the list, confounded by it.
A voice wells up within the fortress, weeping.
There were two other sheets of paper, fragile, once scented, with spider traces penned on them. It was a letter from his Aunt Nicola, his father's older sister, dead these nine years.
It was dated 1957, the year he completed graduate school. He gave it a cursory glance and passed on to the last item in the folder. It was an envelope, once opened, resealed by time and abandonment. There was no thickness to it. It might be empty. Perhaps that was what Avon and Mr. Daniels assumed, for they had obviously left it unopened. He turned it over.
It was addressed in a fine hand, one he had missed seeing, for its writer also died, seven years ago. He stared at it, unbelieving, then opened the envelope gingerly. He drew out a film-like sheet covered with the same careful writing. There was no signature, no closing. From the content, none were necessary. Joseph would have needed no more signature than Lewis to know this note came from Mary Mikaides. wife and mother.
He read it, several times. He read with more care the letter from Aunt Nicola. At length he sat back in the chair, folder fallen open on one knee, and stared far away out to sea, the tides of his emotions as stirred and tumultuous as the waves of the ocean itself.
He slept in the room that was Joseph's. It occurred to him to be disturbed about it, but his mind was far too busy with what he'd learned for anything else to matter.
Next morning at breakfast. unable to contain her curiosity, Avon asked about the papers. "Could you make them out. Lewis? Did they make sense?" She stood across the table from him. pouring them each a final cup of coffee.
His face expressionless, he countered her questions with a request of his own. "Avon. tell me about your Papa Joe."
A swift smile lit her face. "Papa Joe was wonderful! He was nicer than other fathers. Easier to get along with. And more understanding. Some people thought he was too lenient in a lot of ways. Maybe he was. but it was because he understood about things."
"Such as?"
"Things like freedom. And privacy."
"Freedom and privacy?" Lewis echoed. He hadn't expected her description to take this direction. Like Joseph, she was full of the unexpected. She explained.
"When I was a little girl--about nine or ten--I had a special place I used to go. It was over among the rocks, just above the high water mark. It was safe to get to, if you knew how, but Mom used to pester me all the time to stay away from there. She was afraid I'd fall or get stuck or hurt or something. One day, she was scolding me for going up there, and she stopped scolding and asked me, 'Why do you go up there, anyway? What's so special about it?'
"I couldn't answer her. I couldn't find the words to explain. But Papa Joe was there, and he called me over. He said, ‘Tell me about this place you climb to every day.' So I told him where it was.
"Then he asked, “What do you do there?'
'"I sit,' I told him. 'Sometimes I collect rocks or shells. Sometimes I just stare down into the pools of water and let my hands dangle in to see if any fish will come and nibble. Sometimes I just sit.’
"'Are you careful about climbing up there?' he asked.
“ 'Yes,' I answered, 'and I watch the tide like you taught me so I don't get caught up on the rocks.'
"He laughed. He had a big hearty laugh that could make everyone in a room feel welcome to be there. Then he said to Mom, 'She's all right. She just needs her privacy. Give her freedom to come and go, trust her. She'll always come back. She'll be all right.'
"Mom turned around and looked at him when he said that. 'Just like you,' she said.
"And he laughed, and said, 'Ah, she's her father's daughter, all right.' Then they both laughed.
"You know, it sounded like music when they laughed together." The line of her jaw had grown soft during her narrative. She swallowed and blinked back tears. Catching Lewis' eye, she said simply, "I miss them both. "
Lewis looked away for a moment, then he asked, "How did they meet?" He tried not to be brusque. He needed to know.
The voice within the fortress demands the facts, now; all the facts that were denied it all these years.
"Papa Joe was in the Merchant Marines. He joined up after he left the regular Navy. He met my mother during one of his leaves.”
"And he married her?"
"Oh, no, not right away. He 'took up' with her every time he had leave, but it was five years before they got married. Not 'til he left the Marines."
"Five years? It took her that long to convince him to leave the sea?"
Avon laughed. "Papa Joe never left the sea! Mom didn't ask him to. No, she told me once that she knew if she let him go, he'd always come back." She paused. "Why, that's what she meant! No wonder she said I was just like him!" She shook her head in hindsight.
Lewis was caught up in his own reverie. So, she let him go, and he always came back to her. My mother forbade him the sea, and he never came back. Can it really have been so simple?
The inner voice is struck into awed silence. The tower is beginning to sag beneath the battering ram of unfamiliar emotions.
Minutes passed, the clock ticking loudly until it whirred and suddenly struck nine. Each started and turned to the other guiltily...but it had been a companionable silence.
Avon drained her coffee cup and set it before her.
"Lewis?" Her voice was hesitant.
"Yes?"
"Would you take a walk with me? On the beach?"
He scowled. He did not bring the sort of clothes he would need for such an expedition.
Her eyes pleaded with him.
It would bring him closer to the sea ... to her... To Joseph? queries that inner voice.
The wet sand looked firm, one giant concrete slab. Yet his boots left ridged caterpillar tracks. They were accompanied by the shallow impressions of her soft-soled sneakers. Large prints, small prints; side-by-side and intertwined. As Lewis stood still for breath and gazed back at them. he felt that rusty old crank give another turn. Was this what a brother felt?
Avon wandered back from a side excursion she made. She brought a gift, a precious, unbroken sand dollar. scrubbed by the ocean’s perpetual undulation.
"Here," she said. "A souvenir."
Lewis looked into her eyes and thanked her in the deep voice known so well to his students. Once upon a time, female students were prone to fall in love with that voice over the reading of a romantic sonnet. Young Lewis was just as prone to avoid those female students with monk-like diligence.
Why? Today he asked himself. Why? What was there in this person to stir up such disconcerting questions of relations and relationships? Was it simply because she was his sister?
Hard-packed sand gave way to rock and boulder. They rounded one spectacularly-placed stone that loomed high over their heads. Smaller rocks lay strewn behind it. forming a rough. curving wall in its shadow, a miniature seawall holding back a pool of clear chill water.
Avon lead the way to two smooth-topped stones in the lee of the boulder. They sat, Lewis perspiring from the exertion of the walk. While he rested, Avon searched the pool’s floor for more treasure. She spied an unopened mussel and two minute starfish which she pointed out to Lewis. A crab scuttled along by the edge of the rocks.
Clouds scudded across the sky, blown landward by the morning sea air. Sunlight took on a frozen effect, lighting without warmth the rocky shore. As the wind whistled about. their shelter, Lewis was put in mind of a poem from Alice In Wonderland. In comic voice he began to recite:
"The sun was shining on the sea, Shining with all his might. He did his very best to make The billows smooth and bright And this was odd, because it was The middle of the night ... "
Syllable after syllable bounced about the small chamber, then out into the air where it was overwhelmed by the pounding of the surf.
" ... 'The time has come,' the Walrus said, 'To talk of many things: Of shoes -- and ships -- and sealing wax -- Of cabbages -- and kings And why the sea is boiling hot And whether pigs have wings.' .. ,"
With sudden movement Avon reached down and plucked something from the pool. It was a smallish clam, and she held it up with a grin.
Lewis smiled, too, and addressed his final verses to the
tiny mollusk:
'I weep for you,' the Walrus said: 'I deeply sympathize.' With sobs and tears he sorted out Those of the largest size, Holding his pocket-handkerchief Before his streaming eyes.
'O Oysters,' said the Carpenter. 'You've had a pleasant run! Shall we be trotting home again?' But answer came there none -- And this was scarcely odd. because They'd eaten every one."
They laughed together. The sound reverberated, dancing about them. Avon snapped her mouth closed, covering it with her hand.