Jennifer (Eisenhauer) Richardson is an Associate Professor in Arts Administration, Education, and Policy at The Ohio State University and an affiliated faculty member with the Disability Studies Program. Her poetry and prose have appeared in Wordgathering, South Loop Review, Visual Culture and Gender, Disability Studies Quarterly and Breath and Shadow (forthcoming). Her essay appearing in South Loop Review was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Her academic writing is widely published in multiple journals and books. Her visual artwork has been featured in Aquifer: The Florida Review and Hospital Drive. ---------
Meeting Time
***
We never had a proper introduction. I arrived a few hours after my future father-in-law Doug’s funeral ended, walked into the living room with the mustard shag carpeting, and joined the circle of family seated in a sampling of chairs from other rooms. There were welcoming smiles stretched across expressions of loss, tears resting on lower lids and lashes, fists clenching pain concealed in stomachs. People’s names vanished from my memory as they escaped their lips. They asked about my flight from Pennsylvania to California, my family, and how I met Doug’s son Jack, who I had been dating only for a few months, at graduate school. My skin absorbed the sadness in the room through every pore. I pleaded with myself not to cry. I am not allowed. We didn’t even know each other. I heard his voice only one time on a phone call as he said hello and called for Jack to come to the phone. His cancer left him breathless and unable to speak. This trip was originally so that I could meet him, but instead I was met only by the pain of his absence. ***
I decide that I am going to read Doug’s letters. For thirteen years since Doug passed away, the letters have been bundled with a yellow ribbon and kept in a wooden box I bought for Jack before we were married. My dust rag brushes the surface of the box, but I never disturb the contents. I know the letters were from Doug to a cousin but know nothing else about them. Jack won’t read them. I don’t know if he ever will. It is too difficult. He mourns his father quietly in the gaps left by his absence. So many things he wishes he could have shared with his father: our marriage, the publication of his first paper, being a professor, and adopting our daughter. Jack is wounded and there is no bandage that can repair him. I must know what it is within Doug that Jack misses. It is only in understanding who Jack has lost that I can stop his bleeding. I approach Jack carefully, “Is it okay if I read the letters your father wrote…the ones in the box…the ones you don’t read?” For Jack these letters are an aching reminder of his father’s voice. Hearing that voice only accentuates the void that now separates them. He knows I want to hear his father speak to me, but he doesn’t want to be part of that conversation. ***
I mourn Doug even though we have never met. I never got to talk to him, to hear the questions he might ask, to feel his eyes look directly at me. On the morning of December 18th, 1999, the phone rang. Doug had passed away. Jack lost his father and I lost the opportunity to ever truly know my father-in-law. Having no memory of him leaves me outside trying to excavate the surface of how parts of him are now part of those that I love. Jack mentions him occasionally. His grief, even many years later, drowns his ability to speak of him. When Jack is anxious about doctors, his grief rises to the surface, but mostly it is a murmur that I know is there and cannot always fully detect. Doug’s passing leaves a shadow of sadness that impacts Jack as well as me. My mourning must be done secretly and covertly. Jack couldn’t bear to both mourn and comfort.From the few memories of Doug that Jack has shared, he has spoken of his love for his father’s humor, intelligence, and kindness. He knew how successful his father was as a lawyer, but even with Doug’s briefcase open at home Jack knew that he could always go up to him to talk. Doug would arrive at Dodger’s and Laker’s games in his suits from work and at the time Jack found it embarrassing, but now he realizes that this reflects his dad, formal on the outside and gentle and sincere on the inside. Doug was a light presence, at ease, and always a loving father.
***
I decide to read Doug’s letters in Ohio State’s library reading room. Doug would have liked it here. Low shelves of books separate the long wooden tables. Some are old volumes with resilient leather spines, others in languages I cannot read. At the front of the room a white draped figure, a copy of the Nike of Samothrace statue, commands attention in the room like a frustrated schoolteacher looking down at her class of unruly pupils. The craftsman style table lamps cast an orange glow throughout the space and in the background the isolated snap of an air conditioning vent, the rustle of pages, click of a pen, and trickle of fingers moving quickly across laptop keys form a syncopated rhythm. Above me balconies backed only by solid walls, dental moldings, and a frieze made to look like an old French structure are met by the gazes of new college students in the doorways surprised to see this space restored in the middle of Ohio. I pull the letters from my bag, laying them in a neat pile on the library table. My finger traces the cursive letters, noticing their poise and gentleness, feeling the brush of his hand on the paper. On each one he placed a photograph he had taken mostly of his travels in France and of his home in a suburb of Los Angeles. He traveled to France every year, originally to learn French and then because of his deep love for French culture. I imagine him carefully measuring the margins, centering the photographs, adding handwritten titles and dates. My font and margin, all typed and bland, is not full of personality like the cursive writing I peek at on the outside of his envelopes.
I begin to read. Yes, I am awaiting further testing on December first to see whether or not the unexplainable shadows in my lungs were just an infection or something more sinister. Tears hover ready to roll down my cheek, ready to drip on my hands, ready to puddle on the wooden table. I bring my focus back to the room and the architecture and the towering winged figure and the clock. I am too late to help.
***
Many things are difficult for me to do now, but writing letters, although not easy for me, is something I particularly enjoy. Some people prefer the immediacy of the telephone or even e-mail and while I use both of those methods, there is something about the old fashionedness of written correspondence with friends and relatives that makes it especially enjoyable. Perhaps the very fact that it takes more time and effort and that you have time to “see” the recipient of your letter in your mind’s eye as you write somewhat more slowly makes the difference. ***
Years after the funeral, Jack and I are on the plane to Los Angeles flying over Kansas to visit Jack’s family. The summer heat has formed a hazy matte finish over a grid of fields and crop circles. The seats are close together and we are feeling restless. In anticipation of returning to Doug’s home, I pull the letters from my carryon bag to feel closer to him. The radiation should take care of the bone tumor, but the problem is according to my doctor, that if the cancer has metastasized from the esophagus to the bone of my leg, there are undoubtedly lots of cancer cells throughout my body waiting to attach somewhere else. I imagine the cancer cells floating throughout his body waiting for the moment of their expression, waiting to cling to this organ or that. I look at Jack sitting so close to me and turn the letter away from his view. While he knows I am reading these letters, in this moment I don’t want him to know what I read. These cancer cells know no present and past, beginning or end. They wait, forever spreading over the consciousness of our family. ***
We walk into the foyer of Jack’s family home exhausted from our flight pulling our train of mismatched suitcases behind us. The towering grandfather clock reminds me to turn my watch back three hours. The dark wood cradles clear glass panels and I remember the story about Jack throwing a shoe at his brother and breaking the glass. Small wooden arches stretch across the top framing a sun and moon that rotates above the clock’s face. It is a massive spire of family history, Doug’s own Gothic cathedral tower. The reflective surface of the pendulum renders me squatty, deformed, blurry, and not entirely present. The pendulum is not moving. The clock has not been wound.
***
I have been having quite a bit of discomfort in my leg. My “reconstructed digestive system” seems to be working o.k., but the metastatic cancer in my leg continues to give me pain. Only my family and my doctors know this because I always tell everyone I’m “doing fine.” And in a sense I am. I regard every day as a gift and I try to enjoy every day to the fullest–taking each day as it comes. This is sometimes hard to do when the pain is so persistent, but there are things worse than pain…So I just smile a lot and say I’m doing fine and perhaps I am. The pain may be muscles or nerves and not tumor at all!...I still plan to go to Paris, however. I have all my reservations–leaving on May 26 and I’ll be there until June 9. But I know my way around Paris, and if I can’t do more I can always hobble down to a sidewalk café and watch the world go by.
***
I sit alone in the living room with the mustard shag carpeting, where I first met Doug’s family. The time change leaves me exhausted. This room reminds me of period rooms in museums with antique furniture and belongings roped off from curious onlookers. Everything claims its place tiptoeing in the silence. Doug’s glass turtles on the table, without a single fingerprint on them, look up at me curiously. Hardback books of classic novels with leather spines and gold inlay look foreign to my paperback eyes. Old family paintings by Dutch artists greet contemporary photographs of family on the top of the grand piano. Doug loved classical music and even as a child kept a notebook of his observations of the music. I imagine an earthquake disturbing this precision, rattling the small glass bowls on the end table. The grandfather clock has been wound and the chime interrupts me bringing me back again to the silence.
***
Dark wood surrounds me on every surface in Doug’s office. Wooden floors, elegant paneling, leather bound books on dark wooden shelves and his desk with a black writing pad form a masculine cocoon interrupted here and there by a more feminine rug and tapestry. It is a crowded room filled with intimidating historical figures. The names of Louis XIV, Winston Churchill, Thomas Jefferson, John F. Kennedy stand orderly, erect, and strong on the shelves, figures I know only through words. Shelves are lined with books about California history. He was a lover of history and the former president of the California Historical Society. On the wall is an image of him standing with his law firm, a son of a movie theater manager who traveled across the country to attend Harvard Law School. As a corporate attorney, one of his early cases was in handling the contract law for Gene Autry to purchase the Anaheim Angels.
I can imagine his profile highlighted by the morning sun as he sits at this desk writing letters and paying bills, the plant by the window his companion. For a moment, I stand beside the desk chair, place my hand on the leather writing pad, and imagine him writing. The pen scratches across the textured paper. Loops become letters, then words. I listen to hear him read his words and hear only the sound of the ticking clock on the desk. I reach for him and hesitate. I place my hand to his back and can barely feel the hindered air moving through his lungs. Am I too close? I turn in embarrassment. I will let him to his writing.
***
This photo is a snapshot of one of the five bridges of Paris that I missed when trying to photograph them all in 1997 and then took last May, when I was in Paris – on crutches. I am very glad I was able to go. From now on my “visits” to France will be in my mind’s eye through memories…. It is now five o’clock. Night is falling already as I sit in this corner of the bedroom, which was so sunny an hour ago. One often sees a beautiful sunset from here.
Fondly,
Doug
***
Jack and I are staying in his parents’ bedroom. Tomorrow we will fly home to Ohio. The windowpanes frame sections of the landscape transforming them into photographs. Only the slight movement of palm trees speaks in the present tense. From this perch on his bed, I travel for miles looking over hills and treetops, past multiple shades of green, soaring past the jagged fronds of palms that explode like firecrackers from the ground below. I stare at the distant mountain as a glow accentuates its ragged profile, a remembrance of a sun not gone, just moving. Jack told me earlier that this is the backside of the mountain with the Hollywood sign, its modest side. As the sun continues to set, a scattering of glitter on the landscape from building lights shows new depths and crevices previously obscured.
Doug’s letters are tucked away in my bag. His fingerprints surround me in this house as I follow the path he left behind. He leaves an indentation; I see through his eyes. In his letters, he says goodbye to Paris as he said goodbye to so many people and places in the last months of his life. I heard him say hello one time and now I too have the opportunity to say goodbye. I don ’ t know what it feels like to lose your father, but my deeper understanding of Doug now connects Jack and me. We can truly share the meaning of Doug’s absence.
I am lying in Doug’s bed where he died. My body pivots, curling on my side to face Doug’s side of the bed, my head embraced by the soft pillow with the crisp white linen. I remember being in my parents’ bed with its distinct but comforting odors surrounded by family photographs some faces of which I barely recognized. Exhaling, his fingertips grasp my hand. I cannot hear him. Does he call me daughter? Inhaling, it is nice to meet you. Exhaling, I let him go.