Hearts Of Nepal Collection

Chapter 10

John sat on the stoop of his mother’s home, eyeing the wallet photo of his mom, Bob and him, then glanced at the brown bungalow across the street. Bob Murphy’s house. Should he show him the photo perched between his fingers right now? He wasn’t sure. He looked around him. The neighborhood was quiet. People had gone off to work and the kids were at school.

Ignoring the urge for one of Sanjay’s little white helpers, he took up the cup of coffee beside him and sucked down a gulp. His sister would be arriving with the real estate lady anytime now. He sighed, knowing Peg wanted him to stay in town, to be an uncle to her children, but he knew he wasn’t uncle material. Besides, all the memories would be more than he could handle. No, it was best to close this chapter of his life. Sometimes, you just couldn’t come home again.

He looked out over the front yard, watching his mother’s purple and red tulips and yellow daffodils sway in a soft breeze. The bird feeder was swinging gently off the limb of the maple that had stood guard over the driveway since before he was born. The old gray giant was coming into full foliage now, putting out leafy buds. His mother had used it as a backdrop for family photos over the years—his graduation at Oak Creek High, a prom picture of him and Vanessa, and Peg’s going-away-to-college photo that still hung on the wall over the TV. And in the fall, when it dropped its leaves, he’d pile them up high in the front yard and dive into them with his friend, Ted, who’d lived a few doors down. Ted had moved on a long time ago to the East Coast somewhere. Bangor or some such place.

Across the street, he heard a screen door clap shut. He looked up and saw Bob in his bibbed overalls, wearing a Denver Rockies baseball cap. The man who was heading for his flowerbeds had lived across the street from them for the last forty-odd years, and he was a fixture in the Patterson household. John had looked up to him in his youth, listening to tales of a world far away when they were out hiking or fishing or hunting. There, in the wilds outside Oak Creek, the old fair-haired army veteran would look down at John with deep blue eyes, the way a father would a son, as he mused on a world of magical mountains and vast gray oceans.

At the time, John thought nothing of Bob’s involvement in his family. Bob was simply there, like the sun rising every morning, a constant. Nor did John think it strange the way Bob looked at his mother, Esther. It was just the way adult friends looked at each other. After all, Bob had been married during those years when he was growing up. But now looking at the picture in his hand and through the lens of time, John wondered. He thought about Bob’s being at the hospital when he arrived and then how the man had acted at calling hours…how he had lovingly touched John’s mother’s face with a trembling finger and laid a rose in the casket beside her.

John tucked the photo away, dusted off his jeans and hoofed it across the street. “Hey.”

Bob tossed his hand spade on the ground next to the raised flowerbed and looked up. He held John in his gaze a moment, then cleared his throat. “Hey yourself.”

John glanced over the manicured lawn and flowering shrubs as he debated bringing the photo up. “Yard’s looking good.”

“It’s getting there,” Bob said, getting up off his knees. He took his gardening gloves off, slapped them over his leg and peeked over at Esther’s house. “So, you home for a while, or are ya heading right back to the mountains?”

John followed Bob’s glance back to his home and scratched his neck. “Going back in a couple weeks, I think.” He looked at Bob and saw a subtle change in the man’s craggy, sandpapered face. A touch of gray was just starting to show in his light, caramel brown beard. They stood in the awkward silence a moment, neither of them seeming to know what to say next. Finally, John nodded toward the house and said, “I guess Peg’s gonna put it on the market.”

Bob nodded and looked away. “Yeah, I guess that’s the only thing to do, what with you going back to Nepal, is it?” When John nodded, Bob sighed and continued, “Sort of sad when all you’ve worked for your whole life is tallied up in a real estate deal, but that’s the way of it.” He looked away. “Your mom was a hell of a lady. I’m gonna miss her.”

“She thought a lot of you, too. I want you to know I appreciate all you’ve done for her over the years,” John said.

Bob nodded. “Thanks, means a lot. She thought the world of you. Talked you up all the time to anyone who’d listen.”

John looked down and shuffled his feet. The opportunity to ask about the photo yawned in front of him. He was about to pluck the photo out of his pocket when Bob said, “How’s Peggy doing? Didn’t have much chance to talk to her at the funeral.”

“She’s getting by,” John said, doubling back. “The grandkids are having a hard time. They loved their grandma.”

“That they did,” Bob said. “They were over here two, three times a week keeping her busy.”

John nodded, envisioning his mother fussing over his niece and nephew. His mother was a doter and had been since he was born, making sure he was taking care of himself—that he was eating enough in Nepal, wearing sunscreen in the summer, and dressing appropriately in the winter. He smiled. He could just imagine what she was like with her grandchildren. Feeding them all kinds of naughty, sweet things his sister wouldn’t approve of.

Finally, he said, “They’ll miss her apple pies the most.”

“Yes, your mom made a mean apple pie,” Bob agreed. “Your mom was a good woman, John, and my best friend.”

John put his hand on Bob’s shoulder and squeezed it as his sister’s car came around the corner. “Hey, look, I guess we’re having a family get-together at Peg’s this Saturday. If you want to join us, I’m sure she wouldn’t mind.”

Bob smiled. “Thanks, John. I’d like that.”

John shut the front door behind him and locked his mother’s house up as Bob Murphy swung his old Ford pick-up out of his driveway and pulled up in front. Climbing in beside the man, he popped a couple of Advil and buckled himself in. Not that the over-the-counter pain remedy would do him much good. What he needed was the numbing effect of the opioid that lived in a little gray bottle beside his bed in Pokhara. He wondered, not for the first time, if he could’ve snuck it on the plane with him. And if he’d gotten caught, he’d have missed seeing his mother one last time because he’d have been thrown in jail. He didn’t need to be reminded that the Nepalese government didn’t toy around with d**g offenses.

Bob glanced at him as he pulled away from the curb and headed down the street. “Good day for it.”

John nodded. “It is,” he muttered. He didn’t really want to attend this so-called family gathering Peg had thrown together, but he figured he owed it to his sister. She had been the better of the two of them, looking after their mom. For her, family came first and connections were important; for him, not so much. He didn’t know why he felt this ambivalence toward his family, but he never cared to explore it. It just was what it was. He looked out the window at the passing homes with their neatly tended front yards, white picket fences, and American flags waving on the porches. A slice of old Americana, a part of him he had left behind a long time ago. For the most part, nothing had changed, save for the loss of Dan Gowan’s gnarled old oak tree and Carl Lyman’s breezeway addition. People in this quiet neighborhood seemed to have been frozen in the generation of Eisenhower, holding to the ways of the grand old party of Lincoln.

What was really on his mind was Bob. Last night, as he’d lain in bed, he’d thought about the man’s behavior at the funeral and toward him the other day, and as the night wore on, the ember of suspicion he’d ignored over the years ignited. Having no children of his own, Bob had been more than just a good neighbor and friend to the family, more than just a father figure who delighted in spending time with John. Finally, he said, “So, you and my mom, were you, um…more than just friends after your wife died?”

Silence enveloped the cab. Finally, Bob eyed him sidelong and said, “And if we were?”

“I suppose it’s none of my biz, but I’d like to know.”

Bob tapped his fingers on the steering wheel. “We were best friends, John. And yes, I loved her. Can we leave it at that?”

“I guess,” John said as Bob came to a red light and downshifted. As they waited for the light to change, John’s cell phone vibrated in his pocket. He pulled it out and saw a message from his sister asking him to pick up a bag of ice at the store on his way. He shook his head and said to Bob, “You mind stopping off at Kelly’s? Peg needs ice.”

“No problem,” Bob said. The light turned green and they started off. They left the old neighborhood behind and connected with the main route leading through town. The old homesteads and tree-lined streets steadily morphed into one and two-story brick buildings with colorful wood-clad storefronts. Signs for The Stampeding Buffalo Bar and Grille, Jamieson’s Pharmacy, Barber Realty, and Haskins and Johnson Esquire passed them by. Bob pointed out the new library and the ever-popular Sander’s Coffee House.

“Took long enough, but Sanders finally discovered Oak Creek,” he said as they passed the flapping green entry canvas canopy over Sander’s front door. He drove past it and John could see the place was hopping with teens and young couples. “Won’t be long before Star-Mart comes a knocking, I suppose. Although why we need them around town, I don’t know,” Bob said, coming to Kelly’s. He pulled into the lot and hunted for a place to park. “They’re plenty busy today. You want me to go in and get it?”

“No, that’s fine,” John said as Bob craned his neck around while driving down a long line of parked cars. At last he saw a truck pulling out, and he quickly filled the space left behind.

“Well, at least let me buy,” Bob said opening his driver’s side door.

John got out, joined the man, and they zigzagged their way around the parked cars to the front door of the brick-and-mortar building. Kelly’s had been a landmark of Oak Creek since before he was born and it hadn’t changed much, save for the band of ribbon windows that now ran along the front of the building, displaying posters of the week’s best buys written in big black and red letters. Even though he’d been home now for three weeks, the shock of the modern world suddenly hit him. Then again, when he’d arrived back on familiar ground, his thoughts were focused on his mother. Now, everything around him in this sleepy little town vied for attention. From the breeze carrying barbeque from the firehouse fundraiser, to the music of Tim McGraw drifting out from Sander’s Coffee House, to the strip mall across the street, teeming with cars and people going here and there, the gas station down the road advertising pizza for $2.99 a slice and beer for $5.99 a sixer, and the whitewashed steeple of the Emmanuel Baptist Church peeking over the trees, he was overwhelmed, and he found himself longing for the simplicity of the tiny bucolic mountain villages of Nepal.

Once inside Kelly’s, they headed for the back of the store, passing people in the aisles who were picking canned goods off the shelves. As one of them turned to see them, John grabbed a bag of ice out of the freezer case. For a moment he was shell-shocked. Vanessa Hall. Holy s**t! He hadn’t seen her since the night before she’d left for college. They’d been inseparable the last two years of high school; he practically lived at her house. Her father joked he should’ve been able to claim John as a dependent on his taxes.

But as inseparable as they’d been, their aspirations went in separate directions. Vanessa had her sights set on medical school, wanted to be a surgeon like her father and so she had left him. With her gone, he saw nothing left for him in Oak Creek. Angry and hurt, he struck into the world making promises to himself he couldn’t keep.

He pretended to look away as she neared him, but he couldn’t stop himself from furtively glancing at her. She was wearing dark blue medical scrubs and she’d lost a few pounds since high school, accentuating her soft birdlike shoulders, cheeks and jaw. Short thick auburn hair brushed her ears. Soft green eyes hid behind delicate wire-framed glasses. She hadn’t aged a day!

“Oh, my God…John Patterson?” she said, almost as if she didn’t believe it was him. She set the can of whatever she was buying in her cart without looking away.

As she took a good long look at him, he caught a whiff of fragrant floral cologne and it took him back to when they were together. “Hey Van. Long time.”

“It has been,” she said. “I heard about your mom. So sorry about that.”

“Yeah, it was a bit unexpected,” he said, wondering if she had been at the funeral. He hadn’t seen her.

“You doing okay?”

He shrugged as his heart pounded. Why was he feeling like this? “Getting by. I see you’re wearing scrubs. You a big-shot doctor now?”

“No, just a medical assistant here at the clinic.”

John nodded, and for a moment they stood in awkward silence, staring at each other. Finally, he turned to Bob and cleared his throat. “Umm…this is Bob, my neighbor across the street. You remember him, right?”

Bob put his hand out. As she shook the man’s hand, John noticed her ring finger was bare.

“So, you live around here?” John said.

“Yep. Over on Maple Drive,” she said as a blond-haired young man came around the corner.

John felt his stomach twitch as he eyed the young man coming their way.

“This is my son, Jason,” Vanessa said. “Jason, this is John and his friend, Bob. You remember me telling you about John, right?”

Jason turned and smiled and as he did, all the spit left John’s mouth. It was like he was looking in a mirror and seeing himself twenty years ago. Suddenly, the memory of him taking Vanessa to bed coalesced into a moment of undeniable clarity.

Finally, he said, “Hi, Jason.”

The kid stuck his hand out. “Hey.”

John shook Jason’s hand, and glancing at Van, he saw a knowing look on her face. Jesus! He felt the room close in around him, caging him in as he fought for something more to say, anything to hide the shock racing through his veins. He shifted the bag of ice he was carrying into his other hand, looked at Vanessa who was staring back at him.

Jesus!Finally, Vanessa spoke up. “Jason just got accepted into Michigan State’s medical program.”

“Is that right?” John said, thankful for being rescued while questions continued to pile up in his mind. If Jason were his son, Vanessa would’ve gotten in touch with him… wouldn’t she? He scraped his memory. Had she called or written and he’d ignored it, thinking what was the use—he was in Nepal back then and she was in the States. They were going in the opposite directions twenty years ago. He tried to tell himself that he was imagining things, but try as he might, he couldn’t escape the sobering thought that he had a son who was standing right in front of him.

Bob said, “Looks like you’re following in your mom’s footsteps.”

Jason smiled. “Actually, I’m into forensics, which is a little bit different, but yes, I guess I am.”

“Congratulations,” Bob said. “Your mother must be very proud of you.”

“She is,” Vanessa piped up. She turned to John and peered down at the bag of ice he was carrying. “Well, it looks like your ice is melting, so we’ll let you guys get on. So nice to see you again, Bob.”

“And you as well,” Bob said. To Jason he said, “Good luck and study hard, young man.”

“I will,” Jason said. He turned to John. “Nice chatting with ya.”

“Same here,” John said. “Van, take care of yourself.”

“So you’re heading back to the mountains, I take it?”

John nodded.

“Well, maybe we could get together for coffee sometime before you go back…you know, catch up.”

“Sure,” John said, and he felt the air run out of him. Did he really want to have that conversation?

Bob turned into Peg’s looping driveway and parked behind a string of cars. As Bob set the parking brake and turned off the engine, John sat with his mind awash with the chance meeting he’d had with Vanessa and its implications. He looked out at the sprawling cedar-clad contemporary home with its clerestory windows. Peg had married well and lived a life a world apart from him. He opened the door and got out. Bob followed with their ice, and they headed for the front porch where his sister’s husband, Stu, was waiting for him.

“Come on in,” the man said, taking the ice from Bob. He led them down the hallway into the spacious kitchen where Peg was rifling through the refrigerator.

She turned around with a bowl in her hands, set it down and walked over to John. “I was beginning to worry about you.”

John looked around, saw the crowd gathered outside on the back deck, and felt his body stiffen. He shrugged. “Traffic, and the store was busy as hell, sorry.”

“No matter, you’re here,” Peg said as his nephew Tommy came rushing in through the sliding glass door. He rushed up to John, calling his name, and wrapped his little arms around John’s waist.

John tousled the boy’s short blond hair. “Hey there, champ. Having fun?”

“Yeah, we’re playing on my new trampoline,” the boy said, looking up at him. “Come out and see it! It’s really neat.”

“He’ll be out in a minute,” Peg said to Tommy. “You go out and play.” To John, she said, “You want a beer? How about you, Bob?”

“Sure,” John said.

“Thanks, and thanks for inviting me,” Bob put in.

“No, thank you for coming. You were so good to our mom,” Peg said, going back to the refrigerator. She pulled out a couple bottles of Coors and handed them to John and Bob. “There’s plenty of food outside, so help yourselves.”

“Nice home,” Bob said, looking around at the sprawl of glass-faced cabinets. “That maple?”

“Yes. We wanted to keep the kitchen airy and light,” Peg said.

Bob nodded, then went over and ran his hand along the oatmeal-hued granite countertop. “Your mom loved to cook and bake. She must have been tickled pink in here.”

Peg smiled. “You don’t know the half of it. Come on, let’s all go outside,” she said, and led them out onto the back deck.

John pulled the sliding glass door shut behind him and stood off to one side, nursing his beer. At the far end of the cedar deck sat his uncle Ed and his wife Margret with their son Ed junior and daughter-in-law Julie. Aunt Lucy sat at the table next to them with members of his mother’s bridge group. The younger grandkids were bouncing around in what looked like an MMA fight cage in the back yard. Aunt Lucy’s teenage daughters floated on rafts in the large kidney-shaped pool. Helen, the woman who’d picked him up at the airport, was talking to his other uncle, Michael, and his wife Ellen by the barbeque pit that was sending up mesquite aromas into the puffy, cloud-ridden sky. When Michael spotted him, he waved him over.

John liked Michael. The man was a straight shooter and told it how it was, and at six-four and two-seventy he never had to be called twice to the dinner table. He strode on over and put his hand out to Mike.

“Hey, manning the goodies, I see,” John said. To Helen and Ellen, he nodded a hello.

Mike sucked a gulp of beer and chuckled. “You know me. Don’t want to see any casualties.” He grabbed a pair of tongs, and as he turned a couple of steaks over on the grill, added, “I was just telling Helen here a few stories about your mom when you were growing up.”

“I bet,” John said and smiled at the ladies.

Mike turned back to John as Stu joined them and said, “You remember how she used to give you that ‘vacant look,’ as if there was nobody home upstairs when we were talking with our friends, which generally at the time was about nothing good, then later on she’d nail us to the wall.”

“Yeah, I called it her Betty White look. She was dumb like a fox.”

“Damn right,” Mike said. “And then there was that time when one of her co-workers told her she’d made a mistake and button-holed her in front of the boss. Bad move. She hauled off and whacked him.”

Helen’s jaw dropped and John heard her gasp. Ellen just smiled.

“Yeah, I was like thirteen at the time. She came home pissed and scared. Thought she was gonna get canned. I’d never seen her mad like that before. Now I know where certain people in the family get their tempers,” John said.

Mike c****d his brow and eyed John as he worked the grille. “Yeah, we know. Turned out Chet, I think that was his name, apologized to her afterward. Well, the steaks are just about up. You take yours well done, right, John?”

“Right, unlike you who likes to chase it around the plate,” John said.

“Okay, I’m gonna call the g**g to the buffet table in ten,” Stu said, “So why don’t you guys go over with Helen and have a seat and I’ll bring it over when it’s done. And someone needs to rein in my wife. She’s been going nonstop since we got up.”

“I’ll get her,” John said. He glanced over at Bob, who was chatting with Ed. All his life, he’d taken the story of how his father had died after he was born at face value, and why wouldn’t he? His mom was an honest woman, had drilled the importance of telling the truth into him no matter what the consequences were. Your name is the most important thing in your life, she’d told him. Protect it at all costs. If you ruin it by telling lies, you’ll never get it back.

But now, looking at Bob, remembering how the man looked at his mother at the funeral home, a niggling thought began to grow in his mind. Was there more to the story of how dear old dad had died than what he’d been told? He walked over to his sister and pulled her aside.

“You got a minute?”

Peg turned to him. “Sure, what’s up?”

“You remember anything about Dad?”

She narrowed her eyes searchingly at him. “That’s out of the blue.”

“I know, but do you?”

She pursed her lips. “I was only two at the time, so I’m afraid I know as much as you do. Why are you asking this now?”

“This,” John said, pulling out the photo and showing it to her.

Peg looked at the photo a moment, then gave it back nonplused. “What about it?”

John eyed her intently. “What about it? Really?”

“It’s a picture.”

“Of Bob holding me! Don’t you think that’s odd?”

“Not really. I mean Bob and his wife, God rest her soul, have been a part of our family like forever.”

John shook his head, glanced at Bob again. “Never mind.”

She tilted her head and eyed him. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah, I’m fine,” he said.

After dinner, John sat with Stu, Peg, Mike, Helen and Ellen around the table, swapping stories about Esther. The memories that came flooding out from around the table had them in tears of laughter and grief. As John listened to the tales, he mused on the picture in his pocket, then Vanessa, and finally whether he’d made a grave mistake leaving home to chase his dreams. His mother would’ve scolded him for these thoughts, but she was gone now. There was no going back, and to tell the truth, he wasn’t sure he wouldn’t still have made the same decision. He looked around, watching Peg’s children, Tommy and Terry, and as he did so, he thought of Vanessa’s son.

He clenched his fist and for the third time, he did the math in his head. The first time he’d slept with Vanessa was three months before she left for college. Jason was what, maybe twenty-one or two? That would make him a serious contender as the boy’s father. The question in his mind was, did he want to know the truth if Vanessa would tell it? It would change everything he thought he knew about himself. And if he was the boy’s father, then what? It wasn’t like he could suddenly barge into the kid’s life.

While he mused on these things, his niece, Terry, snuck over and tapped him on the arm. He eyed the sweet blond-haired girl, who ingratiated herself to him the most. She looked up at him with her china blue eyes and imploring smile and put her arms up. He smiled and plopped her onto his lap.

As she wriggled around, she looked down at his leg. The cuff of his pants had pulled up, offering his niece a good look at his prosthetic foot. “What happened to your leg?”

John rolled his pant leg up a little further so she could see the entire prosthetic, much to her mother’s chagrin. “I had an accident,” he said.

“Does it hurt?” Terry said.

John shrugged. “Sometimes.”

His niece was quiet a minute and he could see her turning thoughts over in her head. Finally, she said, “I’m sorry. Maybe the doctors can give you medicine and make the pain go away.”

John smiled and pulled his niece close to him. “I have medicine, but you know what?”

“What?” Terry said, wide-eyed.

“I don’t think I’ll be needing it anymore.”

“Oh, good.” She paused then added, “Mommy says you’re going back to the mountains. Why? Don’t you like being here with us?”

John felt the sting of her words all the way down to his gut. “Of course I like being here with you. It’s just that I work over there and people depend on me.”

“You could find work over here,” she persisted.

John swallowed, trying to think of a way to get out of this painful conversation. “Maybe someday I will,” he said, not believing it for a minute. “Right now, your uncle needs to go to the bathroom, though.” Which was also a lie, but one he had to give. Otherwise, he’d be forced to make another one he didn’t want to make.

The little girl slid off his lap, and as he headed for the back door to the house, he had a strong feeling that once he left, he’d never see her again, and that bothered him a lot.