Waiting
By Katherine Noble
6/10/18
John has been waiting. The girl should have arrived hours ago. 93.5 minutes, to be precise. John likes precision. He likes his world neat- boxed and lined and put away for later. He does not like leftover girls who fell into one’s life and reminded one of messy death and were entirely unknown quantities. He does not like telegrams that stated, in their clean little lines, with a “STOP” at the end of each thought, the most disruptive news of his life, with no heed to schedules or lives or feelings-
“Hello.”
John looks up. Up past gingham skirts and knobby knees and sunburnt ski-slope nose and long, long, tangled brown hair. Brown. Not chocolate or caramel or chestnut. Boring, plain, unassuming brown, tangled like the tales of the Chinatown fortune teller. He realizes he hasn’t spoken yet and the girl is staring at him.
“Hello,” he says because that’s the only thing he can think to say-this girl has thrown him off.
“John?” she asks, biting her lip, as if unsure he is the man she has been told to look for.
“Yes,” he should say something else, should fill the space between them with something, some sort of apology or disclaimer or explanation.
“Are you hungry?” he asks, finally standing. Now she looks up at him, rather than through. It is a satisfactory change. He feels more level.
“Yes. They had peanuts on that train. I mean not literally. Well, yeah, literally. But also metamorph… metaphorically!”
“I see.”
He leads her out of the busy station. She doesn’t let him hold her bags, so his hands dangle useless at his sides as she strides along breezily.
“How do you like the city?” he asks her, not as much because he wants to know, but as he hopes to make her feel more comfortable. She’s probably just as disconcerted by this arrangement as he is.
“Well, it’s certainly loud. But other than that, it doesn’t seem terribly different. Everything’s just amplified. There are animals- they just look like us. And I’m certain I saw some grass earlier- though that element has generally not increased.” She laughs, crooked teeth shining in the yellow light of the restaurant. He thinks he might smile.
John takes her home and shows her the room. It is small and plain, and as he looks at her look at it, he is ashamed. There is nothing here for a child, least of all a girl-child.
“We can… get some more things for you,” John mumbles, straightening the edge of the bedspread, “My housekeeper, Miss Arlene, she’ll.. She knows what you’ll need. But if you’d, uh, like, to make a list for her. Yes.”
“Thank you.” She says quietly, setting her worn brown case at the edge of the bed. She sits and stares out the window. A view of a brick wall.
He cannot leave. He knows they must talk about It. Some day. But, he thinks, not this day. He is tired, she is tired, the whole damn apartment is tired. He looks at his space through new eyes, sees every crack and crumble, thinks of every way in which it lacks. And looking in the mirror that night he realizes there are wrinkles on his face. He is old paper worn thin at the edges, a story known by heart, an ending expected.
And maybe, he thinks, that is why It happened. Because he is not the man to make anyone’s heartstrings flutter or cheeks flush, never was. He was always just ‘a real nice boy’. Always got the compliments that have nothing to do with anything anyone in this world cares about. He was never handsome or brave or smart or special in any way. Just nice. But he thought, he hoped, that if he was kind, and if he worked hard and cared for her, the story might have a different ending. But fairy tales never change, and the Prince always gets the Princess. And he was never her Prince.
The first few weeks are stiff and uneasy. Silence reigns supreme. They don’t talk about It. She is signed up for school and he goes to work everyday as usual, but he finds himself never rushing to come home, always thinking of one last thing he has to do, one extra task to delay the inevitable return.
The girl-Cecily- is not earth shattering, and that is why she is dangerous. She moves into his life quietly and efficiently. Next to his eyeglasses, a pair of new-fangled cherry red sunglasses. Two toothbrushes in the cup by the sink. In the pantry for the first time ever rest jars of jam and strings of chestnuts for roasting and sacks of potatoes and even a metal tin filled with dry shortbread cookies.
She goes to school and every day comes back with new stories, new friends, new adventures she tells him of as they sit each evening, her knitting, him reading the paper. Her knees are always scratched, her braids always falling to pieces, and her notebooks always full of scribbles, but she keeps her room clean and her bed made and sticks to the rules and he is okay with it.
Then she finds a box of kittens on the street. Her eyes plead with him. John sneezes.
“Oh the poor dears.” She cooes, lifting one up to cuddle it.
“You’ll dirty your dress.” He grumbles, keeping his distance. “We’ll be late to church.”
“Oh Papa, we can’t just leave them here.” for a moment it’s just him looking at her, heart punctured and all the air rushing out-then she realizes what she’s said and her eyes are wide and so very wet as she looks at him and then quickly away. She buries her face in the mangy little creature’s fur and before he knows it he’s making room for four more in 14A.
“I’m sorry.” She says later, four greys and a calico washed and fed and sleeping in old cigar boxes lined with rags. He keeps his eyes on the nut he’s cracking.
“I was just worked up, and you know they sounded like babies and-” Her eyes are welling up again and he’d do anything to stop it, to make her forget about the hurt again, to make her smile again but. But. He is an old man and what does he know about the heart of a 17 year old girl and what words does he possibly have to say I’m sorry in a way that means anything. I’m sorry I left, even if that woman lied and cheated and hurt. You didn’t. I’m sorry I didn’t come back, that you only knew me through checks and birthday cards and telegrams. I’m sorry that she left you too. I’m sorry that you were all alone with that sick, sick baby, that you had to watch everyone leave and when it was over you didn’t even have home, you got sent to a big new city where your only lifeline is a coward and an old, old fool-
“I didn’t mean to, I promise, it just slipped out, please don’t be cross at me!” And he comes back to reality to find to his consternation that she’s worked herself up about it and he’s flustered so he says the first stupid thing that comes to his lips.
“It’s all right Cecily. Dear.” The endearment is strange and thick on his tongue, but it is a taste he could get used to, if only for the smile it brings to her face.
“In all honesty- I do not think I deserve that title. What kind of father have I been? Leaving you all to fend for the farm alone while I ran away from it all-”
“No.” She says fiercely, hugging her knees to her chest. “It’s not your fault, we both know that. You did what you had to do. If you hadn’t, we’d all have gone sooner.”
“But I never even tried,” He whispers hopelessly, “I told myself I couldn’t go back to it, to her-but she might have been different. We might have made it work.”
“She wasn’t. She never even talked about you or anything. Took down all the pictures, packed away your fishing rod and boots, and, and, everything. One day I just woke up and it was like you’d never even been there in the first place. When they told me I was going to a Mr. John Wicker, I didn’t remember you for a moment. She had us all go by Cochrane, you know. That was loads of fun at school. Cochrane.” Cecily finished bitterly.
“You can… call me Papa. If you like.” He is hesitant with his words and she is hesitant in her acceptance.
“One day.” She says slowly, “I don’t know if it’ll roll off the tongue quite yet. But I think I want to. I’ll try.”
“Some warm milk before bed?” He offers, and she nods.
Before she goes to bed, she loops her arms around his neck and he nervously plants a kiss on the top of her head. She smiles and he feels like perhaps there is now an occupant in one of the previously empty rooms of his heart.
“Papa! They’re playing a new moving picture at the the theatre downtown. One of the girls in history told me about, said it was quite good!” He is already handing her the nickel she needs but she doesn’t take it, instead looking at the floor.
“What is it?” He asks, brushing the cat away from rubbing up against his leg. She scoops the calico up in her arms, stroking her in a way she most certainly doesn’t deserve, given the current condition of the curtains.
“Well, I thought you might like to go see it with me?” It’s a question, a suggestion most delicately phrased. A moving picture. Hm. And he lifts himself out of the old green chair he’s spent every Saturday for years in and he does something different.
The film is a little strange. All about a young girl who got swept from Kansas to, to… who knows what the place is called, but its bizarre, all bright yellows and greens and singing midgets. And all she wants is her little dog, and her soft bed, and to be home, even if home was never the place of one’s dreams.
When they arrive home and he sits down and has a proper think, he sees there were some parallels to be drawn there, but he is tired and ready to sleep. And so he did.
Cecily wants to go to college. Radcliffe. John has never heard of it before, never even thought of it. She’s a bright girl, sure, but college… she tells him it’s in Massachusetts and that she can study Shakespeare and history and botany and German and he smiles through it all and says he’ll think about it. He says this but he knows he’ll let her go from the moment she asks.
She was never his to keep. She has big dreams and hopes, and she loves him, he knows that now, but he is not her father, or her rock, or her home. He is her relative, her friend, her Papa. He can never take back the years he wasn’t there, can never fill a hole that she has already mended. She learned to be on her own, and he is not a necessity to her existence.
Sometimes you don’t recognize the empty space until someone comes and fills it and then leaves. He’d just grown accustomed to her presence, that’s all. He tells himself that over and over again, through dress fittings and packing and shopping for new books and more packing and last-minute runs to the pharmacy and department store and lord, so much packing.
He tells himself that as he sends checks, as he opens his home to a gaggle of giggling girls for a ‘graduation party’, as he promises to write about how the cats are every week, as he tells her to study hard and learn much, as she hopes he won’t be too pleased to have more of Miss Arlene’s cooking instead of her novice attempts.
And then they are taking a cab, a rare occasion, but a necessary one given her luggage situation, and he fumbles for her hand and he realizes his own is shaking and she smiles at him like the sun and he is giving her one last kiss at the station and she tells him to go, she doesn’t want him late for work. He doesn’t look back as he walks away from the little bench he sat at what feels like a lifetime ago-
And there he leaves her, and there she sits, waiting for the train to come in.
M. Katherine Noble 