Chapter 11

"Well, obviously," Jon sighed, "None of the rest of us thought he might have a brain tumor either, including him. But it sure explains an awful lot, especially his temper and his wanting to be left alone in the later years, as well as a lot of other stuff."

Karin shook her head again. "And I didn't do a thing to help, just made it worse. My God!"

"Well, all of us did," Jon said. "So don't go taking all the blame on yourself. We were just trying to lead our own lives and not have to put up with him being angry all the time. I was no better than any of the rest of us. I sure as hell didn't want to put up with the crap he was putting out all the time, and, even leaving Tanisha out of it, I figured that living without him was going to be better than having to work with him. So, I left town and burned the bridges behind me."

"I ... well, I can't imagine him as being anything but bitter about all of us abandoning him," Karin said sadly.

"He doesn't appear to be," Tanisha put in, trying to lift some of the aura of instant family guilt that had settled on the room. She, Al, and Preach weren't directly part of it, but it was easy to tell that all of them felt it. "In fact, he's aware that he drove you off and seemed rather apologetic about it to me. I think it's safe to say he wishes it hadn't happened, but he seems to have made his peace with it."

"How's he doing, anyway?" Nanci asked.

"Pretty well, as far as I can see," Tanisha replied. "He seemed pretty healthy to me. He has a small condo in a building not far from Hadley-Monroe. He told us that he often walks to work for the sake of the exercise. We didn't actually go by his office but Jon said it wasn't far."

"He's lost a lot of weight," Jon added. "He's still probably a little heavier than I am, but he looks healthier than I've ever seen him. I guess a lot of his weight went away in the last year or so before the operation when he couldn't bring himself to eat. It had to have been pretty bad, and I think he was shading it some for us. He said his temper had gotten so bad he had to do all his work after hours at the office, or he said he would have been fired."

"I often wondered how he managed to hang on there even when I was still with him," Karen said. "My God, if I'd only known!"

"There are a lot of 'if onlys' in this world, Karin," Preach spoke up. "And there are nowhere near as many 'do-overs'. I have a good many myself. Like it or not, you have to move ahead from where you are. In this case, it sounds like everything turned out well for everyone."

"Yeah, but still," Karin complained, "I'm going to be kicking myself for a long time over this." She turned to her husband. "Don't get me wrong, Al. I still love you and nothing has changed, but even though I left Pete for a good reason, now that I've found this out I feel like I shirked my responsibility to him."

"You couldn't have known, Karin," Al told her. "Hell, I still think every day, that if only I'd gotten Louise to a doctor a few months earlier, she'd still be with us and none of this that we have today would have happened. But like Preach just said, there aren't a lot of do-overs."

"I suppose," she sighed. "But that doesn't change what perhaps I should have done." She let out another sigh, and continued. "You say he's doing pretty well, now?"

"Oh, yeah," Jon smiled. "In fact, I'd have to say he's about as happy as I ever remember him."

"In spite of everything, I think Jon is right," Tanisha agreed. "Like I said, the man I met doesn't match up with any of the stories I've heard about him. But, he said he knew he had been an awful asshole -- his words, not mine -- to all of you for a long time. He's sorry he had to put you through it, and Karin, if it will make you feel any better, he says now that he's a little surprised you hung on as long as you did."

"Well," Karin said, a look of relief on her face, "That makes me feel a little better, but even with what you told me I can't get rid of the image of him sitting alone and bitter in his apartment thinking about what could have been."

"He's moved on, I think," Jon told her. "He pretty much came out and said he prefers being alone, not that it should be a big surprise to any of us, because, as I think back, he was something of a loner even before the brain tumor came along."

"Well, yes, you're right on that," Karin said. "He always was something of a loner, even back when I first met him. He never was very social at the best of times. He preferred being buried in his work, or in a book, or in his computer or something."

"I guess some things don't change," Jon smiled. "There are books all over his apartment and a big computer. He apparently watches quite a bit of TV. But he's not a total loner. He has this friend he spends some time with, name is Doris. She often comes over and cooks dinner. She's a real nice lady. They're real friendly, but I don't think there's anything serious going on there. The way he put it is they're just a couple of single people who know they don't have to be alone all the time."

"Well, that's good," Karin nodded. "Is she someone he knows from work?"

"Sort of," Jon said. "She's one of the night-shift janitors. In fact, she was the one who found him collapsed on the floor of his office, and called the ambulance. She took off work to be with him while he recovered from his surgery at his place, and from what she said it wasn't easy."

"Damn," Karin said. "And that's something else I should have done, and would have done if I'd known about it. I mean, even though we were divorced, well, I should have been there rather than having some stranger nurse him out of the goodness of her heart."

"Don't feel so bad, Mom," Nanci said. "I was still in Chicago back then and I should have done it too, but I never checked up on him." She shook her head and sighed. "Should have done it in more ways than one, in fact. But thinking back to it, after the way he treated me I don't know if I would have done it if I had known about it, at least not back then."

"Should'a, could'a, would'a," Preach pointed out. "At least he had someone, and we can all thank God for that. This Doris sounds like a really loving, caring person."

"She is," Tanisha said. "And that's another thing. In fact it almost scares me. I almost had a heart attack when I walked into the apartment and met her. She is so much like my mother that it's not funny, I almost thought she'd come back from the grave. I mean, same looks, same build, almost the same face, the same dark skin, almost the same voice and manner of speech. But she's so much more warm and open than my mother I actually found myself envying him a little."

"I've never heard you mention your mother," Preach observed. "That must have really shook you."

"You have no idea," Tanisha said. "My mother, well, she was loving, but she was very subdued and undemonstrative compared to my father. Doris is, well, I told Jon she's like I wish my mother would have been. Just by being herself Doris pulled some strings I'd forgotten I even had."

"Tanisha," Karin said. "That had to have been hard."

"It was hard, at least for about ten minutes before I had to pull myself up short and tell myself she wasn't my mother," Tanisha sighed. "But after the stories I've heard about Pete's racism, to have him close friends with Doris ... well, like I said, she's as dark as I am, it took some getting used to. But she's very open and warm, and you can see they're good friends who think a lot of each other."

"Well, that's good," Karin nodded. "I'm glad he's got someone who will give him some human contact. He was never much for friends, and he was always an awful homebody."

"Well, he admits he was always a homebody, as you put it, and he even said he's sorry he held you back," Jon grinned. "When we told him about you becoming a boatman out here, he said he wasn't surprised but thought maybe you might be getting a little old to be doing something like that."

"You told him about us?" Karin said.

"Quite a bit," Jon told her. "He isn't surprised in the least about Crystal becoming a boatman, but Nanci becoming one, too ... well, that just about knocked his socks off. But then, I think back a few years and it about knocks my socks off, too."

Nanci stuck her tongue out at him, then said, "Don't think I don't look in the mirror once in a while and have troubles keeping my socks on too. I mean, when I think back to what I was doing a year ago..." she sighed. "It was a whole different life, and one I'm not proud of in the least. A year ago I would have never dreamed I'd be doing what I'm doing right now. So he thinks it's pretty cool, huh?"

"I wouldn't go that far," Tanisha smiled. "Unexpected, yes, and better than what you had been doing, at least what he knew of it, yes. That doesn't mean he doesn't think the whole bunch of you are a little crazy for doing it, but his attitude seems to be if that's what you like he's OK with it."

"Jon," Karin broke in, "I meant, did you tell him, well, about Al and Crystal and me?"

"He knows you and Al are married, and he sends his best regards," Jon replied, knowing what his mother was pushing toward but wanting to make a point. "Crystal, well, he's a little surprised that she didn't marry Randy, and he's as surprised as all of us that Crystal married a minister, no offense Preach."

"That's not the first time I've heard that, and maybe not the five hundred and first," Preach grinned. "I ought to be getting used to it by now."

"Yeah, but still," Jon smiled, and turned to his mother. "No, Mom. Tanisha and I agreed even before we left for Chicago that if we happened to run into him we would not tell him about Al being Crystal's father instead of him. Even when we discovered how much things had changed for him, we didn't even hint about it. Tanisha and I agreed it wasn't our business to tell him. It has to be yours, not Al's, not Crystal's, but yours. You know why I feel that way; we've talked about it before, and there's no point in dragging it out in front of everyone again."

"So you're throwing the ball back to me."

"No, I'm not," Jon replied firmly. "It's been your ball all along. It would have been out of place and very rude for us to have done it. He may be your ex-husband, but he's still my father, and I think he deserves that much respect in spite of everything that happened that wasn't his fault. I won't do that to him, no matter how much things have changed."