Love of My Life

             This is an excerpt of one of my novels.

                                                             Lexi

      It’s hard losing your father. Daddy was my standard of what a man should be. Some of my friends had fathers who were always working, always busy, and often grumpy. That was the ones who had fathers, which was still most of them when I was younger, and a lot fewer by the time I was in high school. But my dad was different.

      Dad wasn’t married to his job. He had a good one, but when he left the office, he was finished with work. Mom and I were his whole world. My dad was the one who took my friends and me to the movies, who came to every hockey game, who was proud to take me to the father-daughter dances at school.

      But now he was dead. He won’t be there for my high school and college graduations. He won’t walk me down the aisle on my wedding day. More important than that, though, he isn’t here now, every day, and I miss him. I wish I’d been a better daughter. I especially wish the last words I’d said to him hadn’t been, “I hate you!”

      “Thomas Christopher Morton,” the headstone reads. “March 12, 1954- September 11, 2001. Loving son, husband, and father. Taken too soon.”

      It doesn’t begin to describe him. He deserves more than a couple of phrases.

      I was born in 1985, in the middle of a snowstorm. My mother always said she and dad were ecstatic. They’d been married for six years, and had been trying for four to have a baby. I guess it’s normal, under the circumstances, to spoil your child. I’m not sure that I really was, though.

      I always had the impression they were hoping for a boy, although no one ever said. Still, parents love the child when it arrives, no matter what it is. At least that’s what Gran said. She’s Dad’s mother, so she probably knows him better than anyone. She never gave me any hint that I was anything but the child they always wanted.

      I would like to have had brothers and sisters. I never understood why my parents didn’t have more children. I once asked Dad, and he said sometimes things didn’t work out that way. Then he grinned and said I probably wouldn’t have as many of the things I had if they’d had more kids. Still, I thought it might have been less lonely.

      I remember when I was very small, Daddy would pick me up and swing me above his head, and then hug me close every time he came home from work. I loved riding on his shoulders, too. When he was home, everything we did was fun.

      I did ask him once, when I was about seven, if he ever wished I was a boy, instead, and he replied, “No, I never have. I’m so relieved you’re a girl.”

      I didn’t quite understand that, but I didn’t ask.

      Although he did typical dad things, like fixing drippy faucets and mowing the lawn, at least part of his weekend usually involved going somewhere, either with mom and me or just me. Since Mom didn’t like the zoo, that was a trip for just Daddy and me.

      Of course, once I was in school, the weekend play dates with Dad decreased because I often did things with my friends. But he was usually available to drive a group of us to the movies. Often, especially once we girls were about nine or ten, he would drop us off at the theater rather than coming with us to see the movie. He’d say he had some errands to run, but he was always there when the movie was over. Sometimes he’d treat my friends and me to dinner afterwards. No one else’s mom or dad ever did that, so he was the popular transport parent.

      Dad was a good sport about things. I remember when I was very little, I had a tea party once with my dolls. It must have been on a rainy weekend, because I made Daddy participate. I have the image of him sitting in one of my much-too-small-for-him wooden play chairs, pretending to drink tea out of a tiny, plastic tea cup etched in my mind. He even carried on conversations with my dolls, pretending they answered him.

      Dad was handsome, too. I guess he was close to six feet tall. He was slimmer than my friends’ dads. Many of them had big round stomachs that dripped over their belts. My dad wasn’t built like that. In fact, he was actually thinner than some of the boys in my high school.

      His hair was light brown, and he had green eyes. I had my mother’s blonde hair, but my dad’s green eyes. The thing I liked about him was that he didn’t have hair all over his chest. My friend, Carla once asked me if he shaved his chest. He didn’t.

      It sounds weird, but I think some of my friends in high school had a crush on my dad. The boys I knew weren’t sure what to make of him. On one hand, he was kind of a pal, the one who could discuss sports and joke, but who became a little distant when they wanted to date me. I had only started dating a few months before Dad died, and there were a few times I was afraid he’d scare them off.

      I think Dad never lost his sense of fun. Sometimes once people are grown up they think they have to act serious and important. They have to constantly show kids that they’re the boss. Dad wasn’t like that. Mom would probably be horrified if she knew some of the things he told me about his childhood.

      He told me all about some crazy things he did as a child. His oldest brother was always getting in trouble. Because his parents had to help Uncle Danny a lot with his school work, Dad could get away with things. No one ever noticed that he did because they just expected that he was the “good child.” He was a good student, and he didn’t get into trouble, so I guess they didn’t even pay that much attention.

      He used to sneak out of the house at night after his parents went to bed. He didn’t simply go downstairs and walk out the front door. There was an access door to the attic through his closet ceiling. He’d go up there. There was a window that had a tree next to it. He would go out through the window and climb down the tree. Once he was out, he’d meet up with friends who also were able to sneak out of their houses.

      “So, I already know that trick. Don’t think you can get away with it,” he said.

      He knew there was no chance of my doing it, since there was no closet access to the attic in my room or any tree close enough to the house. And I wasn’t good at tree climbing, anyway.

 

      Whenever I asked about my uncles, Dad would say they were older, and he didn’t do much with them. Because he quickly changed the subject, I sometimes wondered if he liked them.

      “Of course I do. They’re my brothers,” he’d reply.

      I had met Uncle Danny a few times, and my grandmother had pictures of all three of her sons, so I knew Uncle Frank was real, but I never met him. Dad said he lived in Wyoming. Once, when I said I’d like to go out there to visit him, Dad got a strange look on his face.

      “When you’re an adult, you can make that choice for yourself.”

      “Why don’t you want to visit him?”

      “Some things are better left alone. Besides, I don’t know quite where he lives.”

      “I’m sure Grandma knows.”

      “Lexi, just leave it.”

      Dad and I shared so many secrets, I was hurt that he had one about his brother and wouldn’t tell me.

      The only time we ever saw Uncle Danny was when he was at Gran’s when we were visiting. He seemed to idolize Dad, and acted more like a younger brother. Dad would talk to him, but mainly just to answer whatever Uncle Danny asked. Dad never started those conversations. If Uncle Danny didn’t, Dad would only say hello and talk with someone else. I never knew whether Dad didn’t really like Uncle Danny or just didn’t know what to say to him. I couldn’t imagine Dad not liking someone in the family. He was so kind to people.

      I once asked Mom. She said she couldn’t imagine Dad not liking his own brother. She thought it must be different having a brother like Danny.

 

      Mom and Dad sometimes seemed not to get along. They were okay when I was little, but then when I started school, Mom got a job. She didn’t act happy about it. She worked for a TV station. She started dieting a lot, but I didn’t see any change in her looks. She would complain about the other women who were on air when she wasn’t, and it seemed at times that she took it out on Dad.

      They tried not to say anything in front of me, but when there are only three people living in a house and two of them are arguing, it’s hard not to know it. Dad would try to be supportive, but that just made her mad.

      Most of my complaints concerned Mom, anyway. The first word out of her mouth where I was concerned was usually, “No.” I could usually get Dad to say yes to something she’d said no to, but he always said he’d have to talk to Mom about it first.

      They didn’t fight all the time. Really, it wasn’t a fight. It was Mom complaining. Nothing Dad did was enough.

      When I was little, I didn’t really notice it as much. But as I got to Middle School age, I realized what was going on. I could see Dad wasn’t happy, and I tried to do things with him that didn’t include Mom. I don’t know if he suspected what I was doing, but I know he looked a lot happier when it was just the two of us, or Dad with my friends and me.

      Mom mostly wasn’t self-absorbed. She did things for us. She tried to create a good relationship with me. But you could see that underneath it all, she was unhappy.

      “You have such a nice figure,” she said to me as I entered my teen years. “Always be careful of what you eat so you won’t have to worry when you get older. When you’re a woman, so much of getting ahead is based on how you look.”

      That was so different from what everyone else told me. They’d say education was important, and inner beauty – what comes from being good to others – is what was important. I knew that looks were important, but I wasn’t going to make mine the end-all and be-all of my life. I think Mom was told too much when she was my age that she was pretty, and once she was married, people didn’t tell her that as much. It made her feel like she’d failed.

      She continued to nit-pick, nag and complain in subtle ways. Dad was frustrated. Then things changed. Dad started going to training classes for work. I didn’t know what he needed training in. He was a terrific graphic designer

      He said there were always new things to learn, and he had to keep current with technology. So, he’d go to New York or Philadelphia from time to time instead of to the office. He’d get home a little later, but he’d be home the same day.

      Dad started doing things with me a little more. He said that now that I was in Middle School I was old enough to do things he couldn’t do with me when I was little. He would sometimes go to a movie with me, just the two of us. He would call it our Father-Daughter evening. The evening would involve having dinner together before the theatre. Once in a while we would go to a play instead of a movie. I know he had to leave work early to manage these things, but I guess because he went to his technology workshops, he got to do that.

      When he and I went out, he often let me get something to eat that my mother would’ve objected to, like a large dessert or an expensive main course. Sometimes it was just a junk food meal instead that she never would’ve approved of. I could just hear her telling me I’d lose my figure if I continued to eat like that. Dad would say that we just wouldn’t mention the details to Mom.

      Dad had a knack for making me feel special. He and I had had so much fun together that I sometimes wished my mother never came on our outings. I said that once, and he got very serious and silent. He looked like I’d hurt him.

      “Your mother loves you very much. You’re at an age where you probably don’t see that. She works very hard, and everything she does is for your benefit. If I thought I was raising a diva, I wouldn’t continue to take you places yourself. I don’t like to see you acting like you’re better than anyone else, especially someone who has done so much for you.”

      “She’s always nagging me!”

      “That’s part of her job. And she’s there when I’m not, so she sees things you do that need to be corrected.”

      Lesson learned: don’t say anything bad about Mom to Dad.

      That lesson also let me know how much he loved her. No matter how much she frustrated both of us, he loved her.

      He started once or twice a year going to something farther away, like Boston or Chicago, that kept him away for two or three days. Once he even stayed overnight in New York. It didn’t take long for those overnight trips to become more frequent.

      One of my friends said that maybe Dad was really having an affair. I couldn’t imagine my dad would do that, especially after the way he defended her. He seemed happier for a few days after he returned from one of his trips.

      It didn’t seem to matter to Mom whether or not Dad was happy. She didn’t notice his happiness. I wanted to hit her or something. I was worried that they’d get a divorce. I knew most of my friends whose parents had divorced lived with their mothers. I didn’t want to lose Dad. If I got to choose, I’d go with him.

      “Are you and Mom getting a divorce?” I asked him one day when we were at the zoo.

      “No! What ever put that idea in your head?”

      “You and Mom don’t seem happy. You’re always going away. Mom is always picking on you.”

      He laughed. “Mom is just going through some things. I guess she’s not terribly happy. As for my going away, that’s for work. I honestly need to learn things using the computer and new techniques for design. Things change. If I don’t go to the conferences, I wouldn’t know how to do some things. If I don’t keep up, my boss might think someone younger might be better. You wouldn’t want me to lose my job, would you?”

      “No.”

      He hugged me. “Lexi, I promise, I’ll always take care of you and your mother. I’ll make sure you’re provided for.”

      Well, then, my friend was wrong. I was glad about that. I just wished my mother would get satisfied with her life.

      I did get my way about that eventually. After years of complaining, Mom came home one day and announced she had a new job with a different TV station, and she’d be on-air. We went out to celebrate. It was good that Mom was finally happy.

      Life got back to normal after that, except something was going on with Dad. He had a conference in New York, and when he came home, he was kind of preoccupied. I knew they were talking about something after I went to bed, but I couldn’t hear what they were saying, except when mom said something about not wanting to move and uproot me from school. I wondered if Dad was getting a new job.

      Nothing more was said after that late night discussion that I know of until about two weeks before Dad died. He came home and asked what we thought about moving to New York. His company was merging with one in New York City. Once again, Mom didn’t want me to have to change schools halfway through high school. No one asked me. I thought it would be great, but before I could say anything, Dad said we didn’t have to move, especially since Mom was now in a job she loved. He did say his commute would be longer.

      That was the way he was: Sacrificing for her. She got to be miserable and take it out on us while Dad quietly took on all of the blame without complaint. No one would know if he was annoyed, or if his life had become more difficult. He wouldn’t let on. But by that one statement, I knew. And I hated my mother for that. To me, her sins kept piling up against Dad.

      I longed to experience life in New York, but Mom’s priorities, as usual, came first. They were going to decide without me, just like always.

      Dad was really excited, though, to work in New York City and meet the big wigs in the city. He told me he might get a promotion and a pay raise if everything went well. His boss had told him that.

      “Will we move?” I asked.

      “Probably not,” he said. “If we do, it’ll be after you graduate from high school.”

      “Won’t that make it tough for you?”

      He shrugged as if it was nothing. “I can take the train. It’d be more relaxing than driving to work every day.”

      “Could we visit the city sometime? I’ve never been to New York except on a class trip, and then it was only the Statue of Liberty and Chinatown.”

      “I think I could arrange that. There’s a lot more to New York than that. And you’ll be able to see where I’ll be working. Maybe next weekend,” he said.

      That conversation was on Sunday, September 9. Who knew how much my life would change only two days later.

      Dad was friends with most of the people in the neighborhood. He was always there to lend a hand when someone needed help. He also had friends he kept in touch with from his college days as well as from when he was growing up.

      One friend he’d known all his life was a woman named Marty. I always thought that was a strange name for a woman, but Dad said it was a nickname she used because she didn’t like her real name. As I got older I wondered if it bothered Mom that Dad had a friend who was a woman. She always said it didn’t.

 

      Marty had a son named Christopher who was about seven years younger than I. That meant that, on the rare occasions they visited, he was too young for me to play with. He was a cute little kid, and I was nice to him, but there was very little that the two of us could do together.

      I hadn’t seen Marty and Chris in several years when Dad died. I had actually forgotten about them, so I was surprised when I saw Marty at the memorial service. I guess I shouldn’t have been. Any of his other friends who lived nearby were there.

      Boys and girls I was friends with came to the memorial service, too. Many of the girls cried more than I did. I guess I’d done a lot of my crying when I first heard the news, but as the weeks passed, it seemed less and less real, even though he wasn’t at home. The fact that we were never able to get a body – as far as I was concerned, we didn’t get anything – made it feel more like he’d disappeared than died. Maybe that was just easier for me to cope with. I could keep hope alive if I believed that somehow he’d escaped and was wandering around the country with no memory.

      My father died in the twin towers on September 11, 2001. Why he was there has never made sense to me, but he had been excited to go. He didn’t work in New York yet. Mom said he had gone there with his boss to help with a merger between the company he worked for and another company. I didn’t see why he needed to go. He worked in marketing and design. He wasn’t one of the big wheelers and dealers. But he went, and both he and his boss were killed.

      I forgot my excitement about us eventually moving to the city after I graduated high school. I wasn’t even disappointed that the disaster meant I would have to postpone my trip to New York City indefinitely. Since I wouldn’t be able to go with dad, I didn’t care if I ever went there. I just know that, even though he was killed, too, I’ll never forgive his boss for making Dad go.

      I’ll never forget the night before. Matt Granger, one of my friends’ brothers, had asked me out. I was thrilled. He was a college sophomore, and was going to be home the following weekend.  I didn’t even know he liked me. He was definitely one of the cute guys, and I knew him a little from being at my friend, Janine’s house.

      My happiness was crushed, however, when I announced to my mother that he’d asked me out.

      “No,” she said.

      “What? Why? I already told him I’d go out with him.”

      “Lexi, you’re sixteen. He’s in college. He’s too old for you.”

      “He’s only three years older.”

      “He’s in college. You’re in high school. Why would he want to go out with a high school girl?”           

      “Why? Do you think I’m so ugly no boy would want to be seen with me?”

      “Don’t take that tone, young lady.”

      She always said that when she had already decided not to give in.

      “Mom –”

      “What do you know about him?”

      “He’s Janine’s brother.”

      “And what do you have in common with a nineteen-year-old?”

      “I don’t know! That’s why you go out. To find out.”

      “That’s not the way you do it. You go out with someone because you have things in common. You’re too young. You should be dating high school boys and leave the college boys for when you’re in college.”

      “You make it sound like I’m going to marry him! It’s only a date.”

      “You heard your mother,” Dad said. I was stunned. I was still trying to plan how I could wheedle a yes from him.

      “But Dad –”

      “No. I have to wonder about a college boy who would date a high school girl, especially one he barely knows. It has nothing to do with your looks. Or maybe it has more to do with your looks than you realize. You’re a beautiful girl. We don’t want you getting in over your head.”

      “Dad, I’m not going to have sex on a first date,” I said. I couldn’t believe my fun-loving dad could be so old-fashioned. “Besides, I’ve had high school boys try, and they got nowhere.”

      Instead of them being proud of my level-headedness, both of them looked horrified. I hoped that look wouldn’t make them not let me go out with high school boys, either.

      “You are not going out with a college boy, and that’s final,” Dad said.

      “You’re going to make me call him and tell him I can’t go?”

      “Unless you’d prefer to be rude and wait until Saturday and have me tell him,” Dad said.

      “I hate you!” I said and dashed up the stairs to my room.

      When I had myself composed and had worked out just the right compromise between blaming my wretched parents and being inconsolable over having to break the date, I called Matt to give him the news. Despite my embarrassment, he was understanding and even reassured me, saying that in two years when I was a college freshman and he was a senior, he’d asked me out and they’d have nothing to say about it.

      The next morning my dad was gone before I ever got up for school. I never got the chance to say I was sorry. I’ll never forgive myself for that.

      When I think about my dad, I remember all of the good things: the times we went places together, the way I could confide in him, the stories he used to tell me. I’m sure there were times he disciplined me, but I remember my mom doing most of the discipline things. When I think of the last time I was in his presence, all I can see is what a stubborn brat I was being. My parents were trying to protect me, even though I knew enough not to need protecting.

      I felt I didn’t deserve the consoling I received from family and friends. I had told him I hated him. I didn’t hate him, but now he’d never know that.

      The disaster at the towers was a disaster for the country. But for me it was personal. I was blissfully ignorant all day, only hearing about the events without knowing that was precisely where my dad had gone. Only when I came home from school did I discover that on that beautiful, cloudless late summer day, a nameless enemy had killed my father.

      “He was with Mr. Jackson at a meeting. They had gone up to the observatory in the South Tower,” my mother said. “There was no chance that they survived. There is no way he could’ve gotten out.”

      Mom sounded calm as she told me. Her eyes were red and she looked as miserable as I’ve ever seen anyone look, but she’d done her crying for the time being.

      “You’re sure he was there?”

      “Mr. Jackson managed to get a call through to his wife, which is a miracle. He called after the planes hit. He told her there was no way for them to get out unless helicopters could land on the roof. There was some hope of that happening at the time. He told her he loved her and started to say something about your dad when the line went dead. I guess your dad couldn’t get through on his phone.”

      “He didn’t have it,” I said.

      “What?”

      “I saw it on the edge of the sink this morning and put it on his night stand.”

      The news was full of the day’s disasters, but I couldn’t watch. My dad forgot his phone and couldn’t even call to tell Mom he loved us. Or her, anyway.

      We waited a little over a week before we did anything. By that time there was no chance that they would find more survivors, and it didn’t look like there were many bodies to find, especially ones from the upper stories. Dad hadn’t jumped. He would’ve gone down with the building and likely burned. If they found a finger or a shoe, it would be lucky. I did expect them to at least find his bones.

      Knowing there would be no body, we thought we might have a memorial service. That’s what Mrs. Jackson was doing.

      But we waited. Mom couldn’t bring herself to do it without some absolute proof. We both hoped that maybe what Mr. Jackson was about to tell his wife was that dad had managed to get out, or hadn’t gone up because he’d stopped somewhere. I at least hoped that, if he was in the building, he hadn’t gone up with his boss, and was one of those people taken to a hospital. He could be a John Doe, with no memory. At least, I hoped he could.

      It took several months. The people taken to the hospital had been identified, and Dad wasn’t one of them. The rubble had been sifted through.  They had asked Mom for something with his DNA. She gave them hair from his hairbrush.

      One day, an official brought Mom a package with all that was left of my father: His wallet: charred and dirty, with partially melted credit cards. I wept when I discovered what was in the package. How could that survive when nothing else had? It was something, I guess, something to let us know he had been here.

      I wondered how the wallet could have survived when his bones and other things hadn’t. There was no money in it. I couldn’t imagine that someone had stolen the money out of his wallet. Mom said it had probably burnt. But then, why hadn’t the wallet?

      I still have not been to New York. I don’t know if I’ll ever have the courage to go to see where my father died. But I wonder what he did on that last day. Did he stop in a coffee shop? Did he and his boss ever meet the people he was going to meet? I know he wasn’t in an elevator or on the point of impact floors. His boss called from the observation deck. Dad couldn’t call because he forgot his phone. He couldn’t borrow his boss’s phone because the cell towers went out while his boss was on the phone.      

 

      With her proof, Mom had all of the official documents drawn up. She was given a death certificate, and a few weeks later received a check from his life insurance company. She made preparations for a memorial service and had a plaque mounted on the family plot. I hadn’t even known there was a family plot.

      Dad’s family and friends along with Mom’s family and a lot of my friends came. Anyone who knew dad was there. What surprised me was when Marty came. I had thought Dad had said she lived out west, so I didn’t expect to see her.

      “Of course, I had to come,” she told Mom. “He was my oldest friend. I feel so bad for you.”

      “Don’t you live in Nevada?” I asked.

      “California,” she replied. “But it wouldn’t have mattered if we were in Siberia. I would have come.”

      She was concerned for Mom, asking if she needed anything, if there was anything she could do. Mom assured her we were fine, she had her job and things would be all right. We’d had enough time to get over the shock.

      Marty was upset. She wasn’t so much sad as – I don’t know. It was more like a guilty look than one of sorrow, as if she knew something. Silly, the way people can be misread. I guess everyone’s sorrow looks a little different. Maybe it was just that she wanted to do something for us, and there was nothing she could do. She couldn’t bring dad back, and that’s the only thing that would have helped.

      I would never get over the shock, I thought.

      When the day ended, the friends and family went back to their lives. I’ll never be able to go back to my life. Mine was forever changed on that day. I have to live with the shame of my last words to him. I can only hope he can forgive me, wherever he is.