Chapter 6

When Jon finished with the restroom and after a few stops around the floor, he was carrying some brochures about a robotics device that seemed like it could stand some Lambdatron input. Stepping around a corner, he saw one of the most amazing sights of his life: his father and his wife, arms around each other in a big hug, tears on both their faces.

Holyyyyyy shit, he thought. Now what do I do?

There was nothing to do but take it straight ahead and hope for the best, he realized, and after hesitating for only a moment he had to admit that there didn't seem to be any bad feelings. He walked up to the two of them and said gently, "Hi, Dad, I see you and Tanisha have met."

"Jon," his father said genially as he turned to him, "You're looking well. Lost some weight, I see."

"Yeah, some," Jon admitted, shocked at how well this had gone so far, meaning there had not been any explosion of temper yet. "You're looking pretty good yourself."

"I think so," Pete smiled. "The last few months I've felt better than I have in years. So it was Lambdatron where you wound up, huh? Your wife was just telling me about the work you two did on the controller."

"We worked pretty hard on it the second summer we were there as interns," Jon admitted. "After we graduated and went to work there full time we got pulled into a classified project, so we haven't had as much to do with some of the follow-on work."

"I'll admit, it was my own fault as much as anyone's that we got so far behind the times with it," Pete sighed. "I suppose it was your doing that put Lambdatron onto us."

"Well, a little," Jon shrugged. "I think it came more out of our president's research into my background before we were hired there in the first place."

"Well, however it worked out, you probably saved the company in the long run," his father smiled. "I'll admit, it wasn't the way I would have liked to have seen it happen, but it worked out."

This is just totally unbelievable, Jon thought. What in hell has gotten into him? "There's any number of reasons I couldn't have done it if I'd been working at Hadley-Monroe," he said, remembering the screaming fit his father had thrown when Jon had announced he wouldn't be working there the summer following his sophomore year at Georgia Tech. He'd made the announcement in a phone call because he didn't want a scene at his father's office. "I wouldn't have had the tech support I had at Lambdatron, and I wouldn't have had Tanisha to work with me."

Angela had been monitoring the whole scene, about as amazed as Jon and Tanisha. She'd known that both Jon and Tanisha had been hiding from their families, and knew a lot of the details. "Around Lambdatron," she announced, "Most people seem to think that Jon and Tanisha working together are worth four or five people working by themselves. I can't tell you the details and I don't know them all myself, but it's pretty well agreed that they've saved Lambdatron as well. At least once."

"That's stretching it some," Jon said. "We'd have been hurt, yes, but saved is a little too big a word."

"That's not what Stan tells me," Angela said flatly. "And we really should get off that subject before we say something we shouldn't."

"Angela's right," Tanisha said. "That whole project is classified."

"So, Dad," Jon said, as much to change the subject as anything else, "I take it you're still at Hadley-Monroe."

"Yes, and a little to my surprise, now that I look back on it," his father agreed. "But things have really come back together since my surgery."

"Surgery?" Jon asked.

"Yes," Pete sighed. "Jon, I know you've been talking around it, but I wasn't in very good shape when you left, and it got worse later." He shook his head and went on, "Really, under the circumstances, I can't blame you for what you did, because I can look back now and see that I was an awful asshole for a long time."

For the sake of courtesy, Jon didn't want to come right out and agree, although Pete's description of himself was as accurate as it had been surprising. "What happened?" he asked, curious as well as trying to be gentle.

"It's a long story," he said. "After your mother left, well, things really went downhill. I was in a pretty poor temper before that and it got worse afterward. There were, well, some incidents at the office, and I was pretty well told to straighten up or get out, to put it mildly. The only reason I managed to stay on for another year or so was that I was assigned a couple of projects I could work on by myself. Since I wasn't getting on very well with people, my normal routine was to come in just before quitting time and work into the small hours of the morning. That way, I didn't have to deal with people, and it cut my headaches back enough that I could get along."

"Headaches?" Jon frowned. "I remember you complaining of them now and then."

"They were more than now and then, they were all the time, even when you were at home," Pete shook his head. "They got worse after you left. By the time your mother left, they were constant, and there wasn't anything I could do about them. You've heard of blinding headaches? There were times I was literally blind, and that scared me and got me even more angry. I mean, I was blaming everybody but myself for everything."

"I remember," Jon said softly. They were not good memories -- although that anger and his father's tantrums had led directly to his being married to Tanisha, and a lot of other things that had made his life what it was today. "So, what happened?"

"We have a cleaning lady at my office, Doris," he explained. "Sometimes she was the only person I'd talk to for days, and the way I was by then I still don't have any idea why she would have wanted to be friendly with me. One night, a little over a year ago, she came in to my office and found me collapsed on the floor. To make a long story short, she called an ambulance. I don't really remember how I got there, but Doris was the one who pushed things. I wound up at Loyola Medical Center, where they gave me an MRI and found a benign brain tumor about the size of a walnut. Dr. Shackle, my surgeon, said it had to have been growing there for ten years or more."

"Oh, my God," Tanisha said. "And you had no idea?"

"No idea," he shook his head. "Hell, I quit going to doctors about it years before. They weren't doing me any good, so why bother? You know how it is. I was being the typical male, suck up the pain and don't complain. I did that for years and ran my whole family off in the process."

My god, ten years, Jon thought. He could remember back to being a kid, say, ten or twelve years ago, and Pete had been a pretty good father in what had been a close family. It had been, well, eight or nine years ago that things started to go sour. "Dad," Jon started, having no idea what to say. "I'm ... well, I mean..."

"No, I can't blame you," Pete smiled. "I have no one but myself to blame. It looks like it worked out pretty good for you, anyway."

"It did," Jon sighed. "Not without some pain along the way, but it did. So, did they get it all out?"

"It looks like it," Pete smiled. "I'll have to have annual MRIs for a few more years, but I just had one a couple weeks ago and there's no sign of it coming back so far."

"Well, that's good news," Jon sighed, shaking his head at his thoughts of what might have been -- and might well not have been. It was scary to contemplate how different his own life would be, and it almost certainly would not have included Tanisha or Lambdatron. "Everything's back to all right at work, then?"

"Oh, yes," Pete smiled. "If anything, better than ever. I had to take a couple months off while I recovered from surgery, and then for a while I could only work half days. We're working on a couple new applications for your controller box. That's a mighty adaptable little gadget. It opens the doors to a lot of things on a production basis."

"Well, we're pretty proud of it for our first real shot out of the locker," Jon smiled. "It's too bad we can't tell you about some of the things we've been involved with since."

"It'd be nice to hear it," Pete smiled. "It's good to know you've done me proud in spite of myself. So, do you hear anything about the rest of the family?"

"Oh, yeah," Jon smiled, glad to be back on somewhat more familiar territory. "We're all out in Arizona now. Tanisha and I are in Tempe, of course. Everybody else is up in Flagstaff, Mom, Crystal, and Nanci, so we see them every now and then. Crystal got married back in November. Dad, uh, Mom remarried last spring..."

"Doesn't surprise me," Pete nodded. "The last time I saw her, at the divorce hearing, I had the impression she was thinking about it, at least with nothing being said."

"I think we knew it was coming by then," Jon admitted, fudging the truth just slightly; it had been dead clear a lot longer than that.

"Well, I hope she's happy with it," Pete smiled. "I'm sorry I treated her as badly as I did, but then, looking back on it, I think she toughed it out for longer than she should have. So, did Crystal marry that Randy guy she used to hang out with?"

"No, a guy by the name of Noah Whittaker," Jon explained. "We all call him Preach. You remember that raft trip we took down in Tennessee the year I got out of high school? He was the trip leader on that trip."

Pete shook his head. "No, I don't think I remember him. I can remember an awful lot from that day, including being as uncomfortable as hell and those two guys attacking Crystal, but not that. I'm a little surprised that Nanci is out there with your mother and Crystal."

"You think you're surprised," Jon shook his head. "Think how surprised we were when she showed up out there last April, down to her last dime and her car running on fumes, with a black eye and bruises she'd gotten from her last boyfriend. But she has really cleaned up her act out there. I mean, you wouldn't think she was the same person."

"That's good," Pete sighed. "I've been pretty sure you and Crystal and your mother could take care of yourselves, but Nanci? I haven't heard from her for a couple years, and, well, I didn't have a lot of hope for her, especially after I got my head fixed and could think clearly about her. So, I'll bet she's had a new boyfriend or two by now."

"Surprisingly enough, no," Jon smiled. "Oh, there's this guy she's friendly with, but it's mostly just friends. I mean, things could change but I don't think they will any time soon. Long story on that, but it's a long story on everything."

"We probably ought to take the time to sit down and get reacquainted," Pete nodded. "I mean, standing here in your booth really isn't the place we should be doing this. Are you two doing anything tonight?"

"Nothing we can't put off," Jon said, still totally dazed at how differently things had gone from what he'd expected.

"Look, why don't I call Doris and have her throw something together?" Pete suggested. "I'm sure she'd like to meet you two, but it'll have to be early since she has to work tonight."