Because Page 5

  Feeling the awkwardness of the moment, the doorman quickly offered to carry the backpack, but Monique just flung it over her shoulders and said, “It’s okay. I got it!” She then reached back in to grab a black computer bag, which she slung over her other shoulder.

  “I can take that for you.” The doorman extended both his arms. Monique was just about to hand it to him, but quickly changed her mind when she saw his hand. “No, no, that’s fine. I’m used to it.”

  Robert jumped in, “Just close the door and let’s get this over with.”

  Monique gave the doorman an embarrassed smile as he closed the car door. “I’m sorry,” she whispered to him.

  The doorman smiled back. “You don’t have to say that. I truly understand. I do. Come. Please, let’s go inside.”

  They entered the hotel lobby. It was alive and buzzing with people gathering, coming and going. Monique walked beside Robert as he tightly gripped the wheels of his wheelchair and pushed it forward. The wheelchair’s shiny silver leg and foot holders glistened as they reflected the light from the impressive lobby chandeliers.

  Robert was dressed in a black T-shirt and dark navy pants that were folded and pinned closed at the knees. Earlier, Monique had tried to get him to dress up, but Robert defiantly refused. “You say they want me, then they will have me the way I am!” he had said.

  In contrast, Monique was radiant. She was dressed in a deep red V-neck sweater, an attractive tailored navy jacket and a knee-high flowing black skirt. With her long dark hair pulled back loosely with a large, beautiful African-designed silver clip, she looked ten years younger than her forty-four years.

  “Monique, Monique!” A short, sturdy, and impeccably groomed Chinese man in his thirties came to greet them. “You look great in that backpack, Monique!” He spoke with absolutely no detectible accent whatsoever.

  “Ah, Robert, wonderful to see you again!”

  “Yeah,” replied Robert sourly.

  Monique quickly jumped in. “Robert, you remember Greg Wong, the president of Elevation?”

  Greg held his hand out to Robert, who lifted his right hand from the push ring of his wheelchair and said, “I don’t think you want to shake this grubby paw.”

  Oh my God! Monique thought. Robert had opened his mouth only twice and still could not muster a single pleasantry.

  Yet, Greg surprised her when he took Robert’s hand and said with a laughing voice, “Well, we’ll be even then, because you don’t know where my hand has been either. Great to see you again, Robert!”

  Greg’s comeback stunned Robert too. He let Greg quickly shake his hand while Monique laughed an ah-he-got-you kind of laugh. Monique was used to Robert always being the one who could find ways to ease any tense situation. She smiled at her husband, hoping he would appreciate what Greg had just done, but Robert just lowered his head and put his hands quickly back onto the wheels of his chair.

  “Sorry, Monique, but I must get back in there. And, Robert, we all are looking forward to hearing you.” Greg looked at his watch. “I’m meeting with the team for fifteen minutes, but you can go into the room and set up. There is a technician in the room although, Monique, I’m sure you won’t be needing one. So please, do what you need to do, and oh, we are in the Leaning Tower of Pizza room.”

  As Greg walked off, a pleasant yet distinct smell of cologne trailed after him. Robert waved his hand as if to clear the air.

  “If they all smell as much as him, I may die of asphyxiation in that room.”

  Monique ignored Robert and turned to the doorman. “Leaning Tower of Pizza?”

  The doorman laughed. “Pisa not Pizza! The rooms are all named after and themed around the Wonders of the World. The tower is a great room, but the Taj Mahal is my personal favourite. Really, do try to take a peek at it if you can before you leave. I’m sure they put you in the Leaning Tower of Pisa because it has the best acoustics for presentations. Come on, follow me.”

  The hotel was a large circular building and the lobby hallway circled around all the conference and meeting rooms. The Leaning Tower of Pisa was halfway around. They passed the rooms called Stonehenge, Great Wall of China, Colosseum, and Niagara Falls and as just they passed the Taj Mahal, the doorman stopped.

  “I wish you could see it now.” He pointed to the door. “Please make sure you see it before you leave today. You won’t be disappointed!”

  They stopped at the Leaning Tower of Pisa room. As the doorman opened the door, they were hit with the rousing sound of Steppenwolf’s “Born to be Wild.”

  “Oh, looks like they are checking the sound.” The doorman raised his voice over the loud music. He then took the computer bag from Monique and placed it on a table near the door and, just before he exited, he turned around and bowed slightly, saying, “I pray your day is successful and may you have a wonderful experience today!”

  “Thank you so much!” Monique touched the doorman’s shoulder as he was leaving.

  “Great! The Leaning Tower of Pisa,” said Robert as the doorman left the room. “They put your company in a room that’s named after something that looks like it’s about to fall down.”

  Standing by the door, Monique tried to muster a smile as she watched Robert push that mysterious brown leather bag deeper between his left leg and the chair. The same leather bag that he forbade her to touch and yanked from her when she was about to put it in the backpack earlier. The music seemed harsh for the early morning. She couldn’t make out the exact lyrics, only the hurting words of: making something happen...firing a gun...and exploding into oblivion...

  It hurt her even more as Robert stopped his chair and chirped with a swagger, “Yep, Steppenwolf’s got the right idea.”

  9. PRESENT DAY – JENNY’S RESIDENCE

  “Hey, Mom...Just calling to say hi...wondering...Oh my God, of course you’re probably gone already...but—Hey, Daddy, if you’re still there, pick up...Mom? Dad, you there? Pick up! Okay, I’ll try Mom at her work number...Bye, love ya!”

  Jenny called her parents’ house and left a rambling message. She felt a sudden panic come over her and started bouncing from side to side, saying out loud, “Daddy, where the hell are you?” Then, in a lightning second, she took her hand and hit herself a little too hard on the head. “Oh my God, you idiot—You freaking idiot! Today’s Friday. Dad’s talk—they are at the hotel by now—” She then tried to take a deep breath to calm herself. “Stop panicking! Daddy’s not going to kill himself!”

  Jenny quickly covered her mouth in a gasp. She couldn’t believe those words actually fell out of her. Kill himself! She couldn’t believe she had that thought about her father. “Daddy would never do that!”

  But the image of her father from her last visit home told a different story. When she hugged her mother goodbye at the door, her father was sitting in his wheelchair with his back to her and he didn’t even turn around when she said, “Bye, Daddy, love ya!” He just waved his hand.

  Her father was always big on “hellos” and “goodbyes.” He had always taught her, “Eye contact, Little Rock. Please don’t just walk into the house and go straight into your room without us seeing each other and saying ‘hi’.” He was constantly reminding her that when someone came home, you drop everything to welcome them and when someone leaves, you go to the door to say goodbye and wave until you can no longer see them.

  Why? Why didn’t I just go back into the living room, look in his eyes and hug him or maybe even chastise him like he would have done to me if I didn’t come to the door to say goodbye?

  Jenny’s eyes spied the letter on the floor. She picked it up and looked at her father’s last line. “Open arms of all that is...” What did he mean ‘all that is’? Is what? she wondered. Seeing the red journal on the table, a panic seized her again. It was the echo of the last conversation they had at suppertime together, when her mother spoke about her father’s talk for her company’s event.

  Jenny had looked to her father and saw his blank expression, so she smiled
and said, “That’s great, Daddy!” Robert just nodded his head and replied with a sarcastic sigh, “Yeah, it’s great!” and then wheeled himself from the dinner table to the living room.

  Jenny leaned over and whispered to her mother, “Really, Mom? I mean, do you think he’s ready?”

  Monique quickly put her hand to her lips. “Shhh!” She then quickly changed the subject by directing her daughter into the back bedroom with the intention of showing her a new dress she had just bought for the company’s big event.

  The moment they walked into the bedroom, her mother closed the door and leaned her back against it.

  “Jen, I don’t want to scare you but I’m starting to get worried about Daddy. He told me not to tell you tonight, but he just found out that he may lose his left leg too if it doesn’t show any signs of improvement in the next two weeks.”

  “Oh, my God, Mom, I didn’t know! Oh, what an idiot I am! There I was asking Daddy when will he get the cast off and get that new leg so we could start running again.”

  “It’s okay, honey, you couldn’t have known.”

  “Mom, do you think Daddy is ready to do this thing—this talk about...you know?”

  “Honey, your father needs something...something else to focus on, other than—Look, he needs something, Jen. Every day he seems to—I don’t know, become more and more...lost.”

  “But Mom, does he want to do it?”

  “I don’t know, Jen, he doesn’t really talk to me. But this presentation for my company was planned months before the accident. And your father has cancelled everything—all his workshops, any meetings. He never returns anyone’s calls...But this...this talk, even though he acts as if he doesn’t want to do it, he hasn’t said no. He still sees me planning and talking about it and he never really stops me.”

  Monique rubbed her eyes hard and then sat down on the bed beside her daughter.

  “He has so much to share. Your father is an amazing man, Jen. He needs to know that and feel that again. And maybe if he could talk about his climbing, maybe that will instill some new passion in him. Lots of people make their living speaking about that mountain stuff, you know...”

  Jenny stared at her mom with curious wonder and shook her head ever so slightly.

  “Jenny, why are you looking at me like that?”

  “You know, Mom, I’ve never heard you use that word ‘passion’ before. It was what Daddy always called his climbing.”

  “Just because I don’t use it, doesn’t mean I don’t understand it.”

  Monique leaned over and touched her daughter’s leg, “Oh baby...I...I really regret the way I acted with your father whenever he came back from his climbs. I was happy he was back, but I was kind of resentful he had left.”

  “I know, Mom. It wasn’t hard to see.”

  “I was wrong in so many ways, Jen. I feel so ashamed of myself now. Don’t get me wrong, it was really hard when your father was gone on those mountains...and I know I was difficult to be around when he came back. It always took me weeks before I could forgive him for leaving us...But now, Jen, I think those mountains might be the only thing that will help him.”

  “It’s okay, Mom.” Jenny patted her mother’s hand.

  “But now I need your help,” Monique said as she put a hand on her daughter’s cheek and gently pushed a lock of Jenny’s hair behind her ear. “Look, Jenny, I need you to go back in there and try to encourage your father about doing this. He listens to you. He needs to hear it from you.”

  Jenny stood up and then smiled a huge I’ve-got-an-idea smile. Jenny had lots of experience of getting through to her father and convincing him to agree with something she wanted him to do. Like that time when she was fourteen and had to ask her dad to help convince her mother to let her go for a week with her best friend’s family to Disney World.

  “I’ll try, Mom.”

  Monique reached out and held her daughter as tight as her arms had strength to.

  “Daddy’s so lucky to have you, Mom.”

  Monique needed to hear those words from her daughter. For the last few months, she had been the absolute pillar of hope. From that very first moment of seeing her husband lying in a bed in a Kathmandu clinic, she never wavered. Even the first time the sheets were removed and she saw the sickly sight of her husband’s completely shattered-beyond-recognition legs, she stayed positive. And even today, living and sharing a home with the hurtful monster that possessed the caring loving husband she had once known, Monique still had never spoken a hopeless word or let herself feel defeated.

  But in her daughter’s arms, Monique’s hopeful armour finally cracked and the warrior wife and mother cried for the first time.

  Jenny held her mom and kept repeating, “I love you, Mom. I love you.”

  After a few minutes, Monique sat back down on the bed, completely spent from the emotions she had just released. Jenny faced her mother with a smile—that crazy happy smile that could win over anyone.

  “Don’t worry, Mom,” she said. “Daddy’s going to be all right.”

  Her mom’s whole body smiled back at her daughter. “Okay, baby.” Pointing at Jenny’s smile, she said, “Now, you go give some of that to your daddy.”

  Jenny left the bedroom and gave her mom a little wave as she closed the door. She could see her dad from the hallway. She took a long, deep breath and then walked with a focused purpose into the living room. She tried to look as playful as possible, swaying her arms and, with a carefree bounce, she threw herself onto the couch.

  She leaned over to the iPod dock on the side table, picked up her purse from the floor and pulled out her iPod. Scrolling through her playlists, she stopped when she found one labelled ‘Daddy’s Garden.’ She had this for the many car trips they shared over the years. ‘Daddy’s Garden’ was a list of songs Robert had found and sent to Jenny. Every time he found a song he thought his daughter would like he would say, “That is definitely one for the garden, Little Rock. Let it bloom!”

  Her father had once explained that, “Anytime you hear a song that makes you feel something, it will then create a memory inside of you. The more you feel, the longer it stays inside of you. The feeling of some songs can last your whole life...It’s just like something saved to the hard drive on your computer, Jen. You may not see it on your desktop, you may have forgotten you downloaded it, but it is always there, ready to be accessed—this emotional recording. And I call it a garden because once a song makes you feel something, that song is now planted inside you and like anything that is planted, well, it starts to grow inside of you...To me, Jen, every great song I love is like some beautiful flower, and every time I hear the song again, it’s like this little flower inside of me starts to bloom and opens up the memory of that feeling again. And so, the more songs I have, the bigger my garden of feelings is.”

  Oh man, she thought, which song? Her little fingers spun the long list up and down and wow, there it was “Lost” by Michael Bublé. It’s perfect! That was a song from the CD her dad sent her when she had lost her two band mates a couple years ago.

  As she put the iPod in the dock, she glanced back at her father. It was strange to see him sit there in his wheelchair under the lamp where his big comfy La-Z-Boy chair once was. They used to call that chair ‘The Head Quarters.’ It was her father’s mission control centre whenever he was planning his mountain climbs. He always had books, maps, letters and sometimes a crampon or rope he was fixing. ‘The Head Quarters’ had been moved into the garage as Robert felt there was no use for it anymore.

  Her plan was set.

  Jenny started the song softly, barely audible, as if to show she was not about to disturb her dad’s reading. She was secretly hoping her father would ask for her to play it louder so he could hear, but he had not even looked up when she came into the room. So, she lay down on her stomach with her legs kicking up on the big green sofa and pretended to read a magazine about health products.

  She felt her father look up towards her, but she acted a
s if she was engrossed in her reading, making sounds like “Oh,” “Wow” and “Hmmm, didn’t know that.” Jenny always knew how to get her dad’s attention.

  She then slowly turned the music louder and started singing along. She also knew how to get into her dad’s heart. Halfway through the song, Jenny felt the moment was right and she turned up the volume and Mr. Bublé and Jenny sang together words about life just tearing you down, and yet something stays the same...

  And as the music built, Jenny got up from the couch and started moving directly towards her father, who had not budged from his book. Jenny reached down and took her father’s hand. Oh, how many times since Jenny was a little girl had they held hands just like this? It would always lead to the magical moment of a daddy and his little girl twirling together. Sometimes, Monique would jokingly pout and jest, “I’m jealous, Jenny, you always get the man.”

  Jenny swayed and took her father’s hands in hers. She started to pull his wheelchair into the centre of the living room. “Come on, Dad, let’s get lost together.”

  “Jenny.” Her father broke the mood. “Please. I have a headache. Can you turn that music off?”

  It was like a dagger piercing her heart! Her father was always the one to ask her to sing louder and after Jenny moved out, he would almost beg her to sing just one more song before she left to go home.

  Jenny froze for a moment but regrouped quickly. “Sorry, Daddy, but I’m just so excited that you’re going to tell your stories at mom’s company event. I wish I could be there! Those people are so lucky. It will be like you’re taking them climbing with—”

  Robert snapped and cut his daughter off. “—And what? And talk about the last goddamn time I ever climbed? Talk about something I can never do again?”

  Yes, Jenny remembered that night: of hiding her own tears after experiencing her father’s reaction, his harsh words, “the last goddamn time I ever climbed.” She painfully recalled feeling her mom cry in her arms and then she realized there was yet another thing she had lost: she would never stand in his arms again and feel that father’s hug—the place Jenny had always felt was the safest place on the planet! As she looked down at the red journal, she had to rub her eyes to keep them from bursting into tears.