Page 95 of Nothing Less than Magic
“I’m sure he did it for us.” I trace the carved marble with my finger. “Besides, he did love Dad.”
“We all did. I guess that’s why it’s so hard to understand.” Lolly whispers the last part, even though there’s no one around. The cemetery is eerily empty. “What do we do now?”
“Let them go.” For me, that’s forgiving my father and cease holding him accountable for everything bad that’s ever happened to me since he took his own life.
Lolly surprises me by sitting down in the soggy grass at the foot of their headstones. She pats the space next to her, and I get down there with her.
“I’ll go first,” she says, and lays her hands on the cold marble. “Mom, Dad, we’re here. I know it took us a while, but we’re here now. Chelsea says we have to let you go. But I don’t want to let you go. I want to remember you the way you were, the way Dad was when he taught me how to write my name one letter at a time. The way Mom always had a tissue rolled up in her sleeve to wipe our runny noses. That’s what I want to remember. The rest . . . well, I’m going to blame that on Dad having a bad day.”
I pierce her with a look.A bad day?
Okay, if it’s her way of making peace, then so be it. And for the record, I know what she’s doing. Her glib attitude doesn’t fool me. I can see the tears behind her words. I can feel the hurt.
“It’s your turn now, Chelsea.”
I don’t say anything at first. I underestimated how difficult this would be. Initially, I thought twenty-four years of pent-up anger, confusion, and heartache would tumble out of me like a storm, and the words would never stop. And somewhere between my pain and my love, I would find forgiveness.
“I don’t know where to start,” I say. “I guess anger is a good place. I don’t know if I can ever stop being angry with you, Dad, for what you did. It was . . . it is . . . unforgivable. It’s safe to say, and I say it with authority because I’m a psychologist now, that you’re the reason for all of Lolly’s and my abandonment issues. It’s also safe to say that we don’t know how we’re supposed to feel about you. If we love you, we feel a deep abiding guilt, a betrayal of Mom and of ourselves. And if we hate you, we also feel a deep abiding guilt. It’s a lose-lose situation. And frankly, it’s exhausting.
“But like Lolly, I also can’t stop remembering all the good. I know you loved us, which only makes it harder to understand why you did what you did. Having said that, the bad can’t erase the good. And ultimately, all this anger and sadness isn’t helping anyone. It’s like a bag of weights dragging us to the bottom of an endless well. So, again, like Lolly, I’m letting the bad go and only embracing the positive. I love you, Daddy. I love you, Mom.” I get to my feet and wrap my arms around both headstones. “Rest in peace.”
Lolly and I are both crying our eyes out. Ugly, racking sobs. When I try to hug her, she walks away. I go back to the car by myself. Then wait, because she’s driven and has the keys. When she shows up ten minutes later, she acts like nothing has happened and everything is fine.
“What’s going on with you?” I ask as she noses out of the parking lot.
“I need to clean the house before the kids get home tomorrow.”
Since when does she clean? I don’t say it, though, not even as a joke, because I’m back to walking on eggshells with her again. “Too bad. I thought we could go to lunch, just the two of us.”
“No can do.”
“Okay. It’s too bad, though, I was looking forward to catching up.”
Her response is to turn the radio on. It’s talk radio, and they’re playing a clip from one of my TED Talks. It’s my lecture on visualization and how, if you train your mind to focus on something you want, the more likely it is to come true.
I reach forward and turn it off.
“Hey, I was listening to that.”
“You don’t have to listen to me on the radio, because I’m right here.” My voice is raised, and I’m tired of holding back. “What the hell crawled up your ass?”
“What! It’s been a very emotional day.”
I can’t disagree with that. I expected weightlessness to come from letting go, like my whole body would be purged of darkness and I would emerge into the light. Cleansed. Free. I feel all those things. But I also feel like there’s a piece missing, like maybe Knox and Misty and Sadie and even Officer Toomey were trying to tell me something, something that could change the entire direction of my life.
Lolly pulls off PCH into a rutted dirt parking lot.
“What are you doing?” My voice is warbly from bouncing up and down. Either the suspension on Lolly’s car is shot, or it’s about to be.
“You said you wanted lunch.” She spreads her arms in front of her. “Come on.” She’s out and walking before I can say a word.
The restaurant is a cross between a dive bar and a hideaway for wayward surfers. Dick Dale’s “Miserlou” is playing at an unhealthy volume. And fish netting, glass ball floats, and pictures of surfers covered in a thick layer of dust is the sole décor. While it may be kitschy enough, it’s too clichéd to be cool—or even vintage surf culture. Even in Malibu. Which is all fine by me. But it’s the last place I would expect Lolly to frequent, and judging by the friendly waves and shouts of “Hey, Lols” from the staff, she comes here a lot.
A guy with shaggy blond hair seats us by a window with a view of the beach. The tables are of the wooden picnic variety. To doll them up, someone pasted whimsical maps of the best surfing spots in America on the surface, then covered the top with clear resin. The blond-headed guy hands us two greasy menus and disappears.
“How’d you find this place?”
She pushes her menu to the edge of the table. “It’s right off the road.”
