Finding Jessie: A Mystery Romance (18 page)

“My father was the perfect role model for me, even when his marriage to my biological mother broke up. He found in Nora, a woman who could love a man unconditionally, and a woman who could love the confused youth that was me when she became my stepmother.

“I was afraid of her at first, but my innocent preconceived notions could not hide what a good and wonderful wife she was to my father. He was happy every single day since he married Nora.

He took a sip of water, his throat suddenly dry from emotion rising.

“I am overwhelmed when people tell me, especially Nora, that I follow in my father’s footsteps. That is a high compliment coming from Nora, whom I wish was my real mother, so deeply do I love and respect her, because he did love and respect her that much. Dad once told me that if Nora was ever gone missing from him, that he would walk to the ends of the earth to find her, and sift through every grain of sand, on every beach in the entire world, until she was safe in his arms again.”

Nora sobbed at this. Sam continued speaking, while Jessie held Nora’s hand.

“Dad was a nearly perfect man,” Sam continued, “patient to a fault, and with the most compassion in a man that I have ever seen. If he did have a fault, it would be that he cared too much for his fellow man, not that he was any poorer for it. The more money or food or help that he gave away, the more was showered on him in reward. Not always from the same people, but he believed in the old adage that what you sow, you reap. I believe that atheists call it ‘what goes around, comes around.’”

More polite laughter ensued. Sam spoke more, wanting to get it all out of his heart and to his father’s friends.

“A stranger was only a friend that Dad hadn’t met yet, and he never passed someone broken down on the road without stopping to help. He never turned away people who came to our door asking for food, or a place to stay for a while. He even hated to kill our animals for food and would apologize to them in the slaughter house and say that if not for the craving of his body for meat, he would have cared for that cow or that pig forever and ever. Oh, he did like that steak and bacon too much, so I guess the cows and the pigs got him back in the end with that heart attack.”

Again the farmers laughed. Sam was glad that they did. His father had lived a good life and he did not want to be sad. He did not want his father’s friends to be sad.

“Dad had joy in his heart and the willingness to share it. With everyone he met. Some of you might think he was this way because he was a Christian. I know he was this way because he wanted to be a good person. All of the time. He wanted to teach me how to be a good person all of the time, despite my belief leanings and my left-wing Democrat politics.

“I can’t ever measure up to my father, either in the things he did in his life, or the things he believed in, without need of proof, like God and Heaven and angels. He knew how to make the smallest good things seem like major blessings fallen down from Heaven. The bad things that happened in his life, he felt were the direct result of his own shortcomings or mistakes. He never blamed God for anything bad and always thanked him for anything good. Dad was a very, very humble man. I am so honored and privileged to be named after him. And it was my profound joy to be his son.”

Sam wiped the tears from his eyes again and paused for a moment to get his breath, as he tried not to cry in front of them all.

“I would like to share with you, the most important lesson that my dad ever taught me. One day, when I was about twenty-two, he said he wanted to have a talk with me, about women. It was not the facts of life talk I thought I was going to get.”

A few men laughed.

“No. It was a talk about listening. I was in law school at the time, at Harvard. He had sacrificed a lot of his blood and hopes and the sweat of his brow, to send me there, to the best school in the world. Even with scholarships, it cost the Earth to pay for my Ivy.

“I was all puffed up with my new self-importance of becoming a civil rights lawyer. Dad told me I needed to stop talking to hear myself talk like some self-righteous comic-book superhero, and to start listening, really listening, to what other people said.

“He said some people will say what they mean and you won’t have to guess at their agendas. Those people are rare. He said that some people will tell you what you want to hear, and those are the people who cannot be honest with either you or themselves. I was to avoid becoming entangled with those people.

“And some people, women-people who really care for you, he said, will tell you every little thing that is in their hearts if you will only listen. He said to learn to listen to those words from women will greatly enhance your life, will open up new horizons and new ideas to you. He said that if you want to learn what makes the world tick, ask a woman. Then listen. If you want to know the truth about yourself, ask a woman. Then listen. But then again, if you want to know what makes a tiny kernel grow into a mighty cornstalk, ask a man.”

Most of the farmers laughed at his joke.

“Thank you all for coming to mourn my dad’s death today but more importantly, to celebrate his life. I hope that after this service that you will all come and join us for a celebration of his life at the farm, his and Nora’s farm. We’ll have some pictures out and some home movies going on the VCR in the living room.

“There will be plenty of food and drink for everyone. I want you all to feel free to stay as long as you like and sing my dad’s favorite songs with me at the piano and have a little drink in his honor, if you wish, too. I heard that Nora’s made some of those blue-ribbon-winning lemon bars, too, if you still have room left after all of the other food and drink.”

There was a murmur of appreciation at the mention of food and drink.

“Just a final thought. My dad and I never ever told each other ‘I love you.’ But that’s because we lived it, by truly listening to the words that we said to each other.

“I hope that
truth
, his secret of a purposeful and useful life, will sink in for you. I wish that each of you will go from this place today, knowing that by listening to each other, really listening, and thinking before we reply, that we can make the world a better place. From the bottom of my heart, and from Nora’s heart, and from my sweet gal, Jessie, from her heart, too, thank you all for coming today to honor my father, Sam Gold.”

He returned to the pew and a few of his father’s friends who were still alive spoke in turn, on his behalf.

Finally, there was a closing song, and then the procession to the house with his father’s ashes in the urn in Nora’s lap. Sam was driving Nora’s car because she was crying too hard to drive it herself. Jessie sat in the back seat and put her hand on Nora’s shoulder. Nora’s eyes glistened with grief, and Jessie saw how she would look if ever she lost her own Sam. Jessie’s heart twisted. Sam said comforting things to Nora, all the way to the farm.

When they reached the farm, Sam opened the front door and put the refrigerated food out with the non-perishable foods on the many tables. Nora put Sam’s urn on the fireplace mantel and popped a VCR tape into the TV. The first tape that was playing was their wedding. Many friends came in the house with food and kisses and hugs and condolences for both Nora and Sam.

Sam sat at the piano and played and sang a version of
Cat’s in the Cradle
,
Daddy’s Song
by the Monkees and
Daddy Don’t You Walk So Fast
and other songs with the theme of fatherhood in them. Jessie knew that he had been thinking about all this, the whole way on the trip from Massachusetts. There he was at the piano bench, singing and playing, Nora at his side with her arm around him in a not-motherly way.

Jessie sighed and got herself plenty to eat before her inner green-eyed monster read too much into their physical closeness. Nora wasn’t much older than Sam, maybe seven years. Nora must have been quite a hot little number when she became Sam’s stepmother, decades before today. Sam would be busy for quite some time, keeping Nora from crying herself sick, but Jessie decided she would let Nora have custody of him, for now.

Jessie chatted with friends of theirs, for there was no other family except Sam and Nora. She watched videos of Sam and his father plowing and harvesting and swimming and fishing and all of those other things that country dads do with their sons. She had jealous pangs and pushed them down. He had a wonderful upbringing. And it certainly showed.

Jessie watched the chronological videos of Sam’s life with his dad and stepmother and by the end of two hours, she knew, yes knew, by the way that Sam looked at Nora in those videos that he had slept with her sometime between high school and college.

Jessie wasn’t extremely upset when she figured it out, because it had all happened a long time ago. She just wanted to make sure it wasn’t going to happen again.

Late that night, after everyone had left the house, except for the three of them, Sam and Jessie went to bed in his old room. They heard Nora go to the master bedroom down the hall and quietly shut the door. If anything was going to happen between them, it would be tonight. After a time, Jessie closed her eyes in the dark and let Sam think she was asleep. But she wasn’t.

Down the hall, Nora began crying again.

Sam got up and put on his bathrobe over his plaid pajamas and went to her room. He opened the door without knocking, or even checking if she, Jessie, was asleep before he left the bed.

Jessie held her breath. She could hear every word they were saying and she was shocked.

“Nora, you’ve got to stop this. I love Jessie. I know you miss my dad, and you thought you were going to be with me, but I can’t
be
him, and I can’t be with you ever, ever again. I won’t betray Jessie with you, as I betrayed my father with you.”

Jessie almost screamed when she heard that part.

Nora murmured something that Jessie barely heard. “One dance, just one dance, please, Sam?”

There was a long pause of no sound at all.

“One,” came Sam’s voice from down the hall.

Jessie gripped her pillow and nearly bit it. Jessie heard Nora put on a scratchy record and turn the volume on low. She must have had an old record player in her bedroom.

The record had been played many times. It was the scratchy song,
Unchained Melody
by the Righteous Brothers. It was hard for Jessie not to get up and scream at Sam to come to bed. Jessie trembled as she listened to them dance, shuffling their bare feet on the squeaky wooden floor in time to the romantic music. When the song ended, Nora asked for another dance.

He said
no
and then Jessie knew, without seeing…yes, she
knew
that they kissed each other, from the long silence that drove her nearly wild with jealousy. Then there was a soft sigh from Nora, as loud as thunder to Jessie’s straining ears and held breath.

“He left the farm to you, Sam,” came Nora’s voice.

Then Sam’s voice. “I know he did, but I don’t want it. Just find a buyer and you can have half the money. I would like to have the other half.”

There was a pause in conversation, then Sam said, “Don’t, Nora. I told you, Jessie is everything to me. There’s no way I am going to jeopardize that.”

“We can be together now, Sam,” Nora insisted.

Jessie nearly fell out of the bed.

“Nora, I was once a very foolish eighteen year old. I had a serious lapse in judgment that I ask you to please chalk up to my youthful inexperience and the inability to say no. But there is no way in hell anything is going to happen between us, not ever again. In fact, when I go, this is the last time we will ever see each other.”

At her weeping pleas, he added, “Just use your half of the money from the sale of the farm and go live at the beach or something. Find someone new. You’re still young and there is a big world waiting for you outside of Ohio farm country.”

“I don’t want to be alone,” she said tearfully.

“Nobody does.”

“You’ve been a bachelor all of your life. I thought…”