Page 71 of Engineering a Love Story

And I can’t help it, I laugh. He wants to go forward without caring what the impact is. To childishly keep sneaking around, being duplicitous at work, pretending to be oblivious to the potential fallout, not willing to change or sacrifice anything. Expecting me to wait here endlessly for his calls. In my daydream, the tweedy guy wasn’t ever sneaking up back staircases.

This is just settling again. Seth is offering only scraps, and it’s not enough.

“I don’t know what you want me to say.” Seth sounds confused.

“Nothing.” I quiet my laughter and speak gently. “You don’t have to say anything. I wish you only good things. Truly.”

Forty-Three

In the days after the election, Boston sinks into a gray November cold. A biting wind pulls down the final, reluctant leaves, and the river is choppy and inhospitable. Daylight savings takes the evening light, though I’m still able to cycle most mornings, white puffs escaping my body in time with my pumping legs.

Everyone tunes in daily to the election news. Recounts in Florida inch along. And then they don’t. There are court cases and petitions. All of it is uncommonly tedious and yet stunning that weeks pass and we still don’t know who our next president will be.

As Thanksgiving approaches, I assess my options. Since Ash and I always spent the holiday at the lake with his family, it’s been years since I’ve celebrated it with my father. One of my uncles used to host—and I assume, still does. A scruffy buffet of Thanksgiving dishes, some homemade and others store bought. To return to that scene now, alone, feels like showcasing my failure, and I’m not ready for it.

I decide to visit my father the weekend before Thanksgiving and make no plans to travel for the holiday itself. I tell him I’m going to eat turkey with friends in the city, though I don’t expect this to be true.

I make the two-hour drive to Western Mass early on Saturday. My exit comes at the crest of a hill, and the road that winds into my hometown first crosses the river and then passes the factory where my father works. It hadn’t appeared productive the last time I was out, but it looks even more abandoned now, sinking into a state of broken windows and blackened bricks.

My father is behind his house in his workshop, which is really only an aluminum shed, the kind you buy at the hardware store, assemble yourself, and are supposed to use to store a lawnmower or snowblower. He added a small workbench inside of this one and there’s just enough room for his table saw. Out here, when he’s in the right mood, he builds things: plant stands, small bookshelves, side tables. Sometimes even decorative items, like wooden flowers that can sit in a windowsill, though his nature doesn’t allow too much of that.

His talent is known in the neighborhood, though he downplays it. People stop by to see if he can repair a chair or a bookshelf and he helps them, though he’s often abrupt and dismissive. He seems to intuitively see the angles and lines he needs to cut, and he doesn’t understand why everyone can’t do the same.

The shed smells of sawdust and gasoline from the lawn mower that still sits in one corner, and he shows me a toybox he’s making for the daughter of one of my cousins. He also mentions another cousin has been working with him, building headboards and coffee tables. They’re even attempting chairs with trimmed spindles. This cousin is moving his work to his own garage, as it outgrows the space in the shed. I wonder if my father might do this as well, once the factory shuts for good.

News of other family members is less promising. He says my cousin Randy is taking too many of the painkillers he’d been prescribed when he first went on disability from the factory. “I don’t know what he thinks he’s up to.”

Many of my other cousins have children who are now themselves almost grown. “John’s got Theresa and Sam living with him,” he says, referencing his eldest brother and John’s daughter and granddaughter. “Sam is pregnant.” I do the math in my head. Theresa is a few years older than I am and had been one of my favorite cousins when we were younger. I used to follow her around, waiting for the days she deigned to play with me. She had Sam before she finished high school, and we lost touch. Somehow, she’ll be a grandmother now, though I can’t quite make those calculations come out right.

My father makes bologna sandwiches, and we sit at the small table in his kitchen to eat. Our conversation flows reasonably well. The election occupies us for a bit, though I’m surprised when he says he voted for Bush. “Isn’t that the wrong party?”

“I’m not in any party,” he says. “What did any of those people ever do for me? At least Bush seems like he’ll be tough. Unlike that pussy Gore.”

“Tough how? And on whom? And you can’t say that, can’t call him—or anyone—that.” My father holds my eyes for a moment, and I’m ready to meet his challenge, but then he swats his hand at the air and looks away.

When we finish eating, I suggest a walk in the neighborhood as a way to absorb time, and he’s oddly talkative as we walk. We pass a particularly rundown ranch painted an unfortunate shade of mint green, and he mentions a friend of my mother’s lived there when they were all in high school.

“Your mother’s house was in the other part of town, you know.” My mother grew up the only child of older parents who lived in the town center in a Victorian that was statelier than the boxy houses in this neighborhood. “Her parents were pretty strict. She used to stay at Nancy’s here so we could see each other.”

I’m quiet as he speaks, curious to see where his rambling talk might lead. We so seldom speak of my mother.

A few blocks later, we pass a young woman pushing a stroller that might be half the size of my car. After she’s behind us, my father comments on how much the baby gear has changed since Wade and I were little. “You should see the stuff at John’s house.” He tells me about the decidedly low-tech stroller they used with Wade. “Your mother would walk with it from the awful apartment we lived in then to see me at the shop. I got paid on Thursdays, and she’d come pick up my paycheck, I can’t remember why exactly. The guys used to give me the business, you know, ball-and-chain taking my money.” He laughs darkly. “But I never minded. She was so pretty, she lit up the damn place.”

His voice sounds sad. I have no idea if he misses my mother, though he hasn’t had a relationship since she passed. Or even a date, as far as I know. I sneak his story into my pocket to examine it later. Maybe there are more stories he’ll share.

I’m opening my car door when he says the briefest of apologies. “Sorry if I’ve been a pill about all this, Chels. I’m an old man and should keep my opinions to myself.”

I’m unable to stifle a small laugh; he’s never kept his opinions to himself. “You’re not old.” He’s barely fifty. “And I didn’t mean to make a mess of things. I know you liked Ash.”

“I never cared about him one way or the other.” He shrugs. “Never seemed like he had much of a personality. But you shouldn’t have married him. You were too young.”

“What? You never said that.” I’d been certain my father wanted me to marry Ash, that he thought I needed Ash to keep me safe. Is it possible I was the only one who believed that?

My father pushes his hands into the pockets of his jeans. “You seemed so sure. You’re always so sure about everything. What you wanted, where you wanted to live. Clearly not here. And I get it. What do I know. I thought you were happy with those people. You’ve always known what’s best for you.”

I’m shocked into silence.

“Don’t stay away so long,” he says. And I promise I won’t.