Page 15 of An Unfinished Story
The typist worked his way through the crowd, saying hello to people he’d known most of his life. Four generations of Grants. No one had more cousins and uncles and aunts, nephews and nieces. To his dismay, nearly all of them mentioned something about his writing career. After hugging and kissing and making small talk with half of them, he finally made it to his mother.
Sadie was not born a Grant, but to marry one was to cut your roots low and be replanted into dangerous Grant soil. He saw his mother as a brave yet aloof southern equestrienne riding the white flag of surrender into a bloodbath of familial dysfunction, the female Don Quixote of Florida.
Sadie was a doll. Born a doll and had always been a doll. A southern belle without the accent—at least without much of one. As southern belle as you can be growing up in Florida. For every native of Florida who had shucked an oyster, cracked open a boiled peanut, or polished off a bowl of grits, there was a snowbird’s child next to them saying, “What in the world are gator bites?” No, you couldn’t really be a southerner, not with all the northern and midwestern influence. But Sadie was a doll, as innocent as a flower, and everyone in St. Pete loved her. How could you not love someone who couldn’t stop smiling?
“I’m so glad you came,” she said loud enough to be heard over the kids screaming in the castle twenty feet away.
“Me too.” Whitaker kissed her cheek and detected the familiar hints of gardenia from the perfume she’d worn for as long as he could remember. He was careful not to mess up her hair, which she’d kept the same way for forty years, a sort of bulbous helmet hardened by hair spray. The only change over the years was from brown to gray. Whitaker appreciated that his mom had let her hair gray without hiding behind dye. This devil-may-care attitude carried over to much of her life. She wasn’t afraid to show her gray hair, and she damn sure wasn’t afraid to show the scars and weaknesses of her family. In her aloof, high-pitched tone, she would ask, “Why be ashamed of being human, Whitaker?”
If only that insouciance had rubbed off on him. If he looked back, maybe it had, but years of fighting an artist’s battles had made him start to overthink things and worry too much.
Doña Quixote looked down at the present in his hand. “Do I need to inspect it? No more fireworks, right? And you know Miles can’t have dairy.”
Whitaker sipped the beer someone had handed him. “No dairy. No gunpowder.” She didn’t say a word about anything sharp.
Sadie moved in and whispered into his ear. “Be nice to your father. He wants to talk to you about something.”
“What did I do now?”
“Nothing, honey. Just hear him out.”
What in the world could that mean?Whitaker wondered.
When he finally ran into his dad, Whitaker’s clenched teeth compromised his fake smile. He could feel the rest of his family watching this encounter, as if Whitaker were part of a bomb squad approaching a man in a suicide vest. Or was Whitaker the one in the vest?
Both men were known to fly off the handle. The last time they’d been together, Whitaker had unleashed a rant that had cut to the core of his father. Though he thought the man deserved his fair share of harsh words, even Whitaker knew he’d stepped over the line, and he’d even gone as far as apologizing the next day. Somewhere down there, deep into the sludge, his father was a good man. It was a lot of sludge, though. Epic quantities of thick, PTSD-riddled sludge.
Jack stood two inches shorter than Whitaker, but he always looked down on him. Even if Jack were four feet tall, he’d still look down on his son. Though he’d been as strapping as Whitaker in his early years, according to Sadie, Jack had aged rapidly after the war. He had lost most of his hair and walked with a slight limp from a helicopter crash in the Mekong Delta. The hardhead that he was, he refused to use a cane. When the army had shipped him home from Saigon with his broken leg, he’d also brought back an unknown stomach worm that ran his immune system into the ground and nearly killed him.
Though the man had some rough edges, he’d been a good father. Perhaps overly stern, but certainly better than many others out there.
Staff Sergeant Jack Grant reached up and tugged at Whitaker’s longish hair. His mane was by no means of ponytail length, but he’d let it go wild since the divorce. “I’d forgotten I had another daughter. Should I call you Whitney? You haven’t seen your brother, have you?”
“Off to a good start, aren’t you?” Whitaker said. “I’d forgotten where my humor came from.”
Jack adjusted his VIETNAMVEThat. “Just pulling your chain, son.” He offered a hand, and the men shook.
“Mom says you want to talk about something?”
Jack looked around and nodded. “Why don’t we talk on the boat?”
Before he could say no, Whitaker found himself following his limping father around the side of the house. The landscaping could have won awards. They entered the backyard through a white vinyl gate, passed the saltwater pool, and walked down the short dock to Jack’s pride and joy, a forty-one-foot Regulator sport fisher with four 425 engines hanging off the transom. Climbing aboard, Whitaker took a seat on the bow, and his father dug two cold beers out of the cooler.
He tossed one to Whitaker. “Finally got our first sailfish of the year yesterday.”
Catching the can, Whitaker said, “Nice.”
“She was a big one. Almost worth mounting. Pulled in a couple hog snappers too. It’s that time of year.”
Whitaker hated talking about fishing with his dad. Though he’d inherited his father’s sense of humor, he’d not acquired his father’s love of fishing. In fact, much to Jack’s disappointment, Whitaker was prone to seasickness and had only once dared to go deep-sea fishing with Jack. With his father’s Poseidon eyes on him, Whitaker had spent the majority of the day heaving over the rail.
Jack took a seat on the bow cushion across from Whitaker and cracked open his own beer. “I’ve been thinking.” He paused, waving at a stand-up paddleboarder cutting through the channel.
“That’s good to hear, Dad. I was worried you were going senile.”
“No, the hamster’s still spinning the wheel up there. At least for now.” Jack smiled, confirmation that somewhere deep within his father’s grim reaper shell was the slightest bit of light. What was funny and sad at the same time was that little light was what Whitaker wanted most in the world. To see that light, to feel a bit of love and approval from his father, was up there or even beyond the importance of writing another book.
They both watched a sailboat maneuver the narrow inlet and then Jack asked, “What would you think about coming to work for me?”
