The Fireman's Homecoming

“Clark Bradens? Why’d he come up?”

“Some folks want to throw him a nice party when George retires and he takes up as fire chief. I say it’s a fine thing to celebrate a son coming home like that. Others, well...they don’t see it that way. All they can see is a young high school punk coasting on his papa’s coattails. Honestly.” Melba wiped her hands on a dishtowel. “How many years has it been, and since when isn’t a man allowed to grow up and get it right?”

“Who says he’s grown up and gotten it right?” Melba could hardly believe Dad was standing behind her. He’d gotten up out of the recliner all on his own?

“He seemed nice enough to me.”

“When’d you meet him?”

Dad was fine, Dad wasn’t so fine. It was like living on an emotional Ping-Pong table. “I just told you I ran into him this morning.” Her frustration ran away with her better sense, because she heard herself add, “You yelled at him last night when he brought me food in your hospital room.”

“I couldn’t have yelled at him. He’d have no business visiting me.”

“I just said he was bringing me food. I met him in the hospital cafeteria and he offered to get Dellio’s for me but a fire alarm made him late.”

Dad shuffled into the kitchen and plopped himself down on the nearest chair. “He’s going to be fire chief.” He did not say it like a person pleased with the idea. In fact, his words had a “there goes the neighborhood” tone.

Melba started to say “We just talked about that,” but shut her mouth in resignation. Instead, she caught Barney’s eye over her father’s head, and they shared a split second of silent concern.

“Did you really holler at that boy? Or rather, since he is older than your daughter, did you really holler at that man?” Barney asked.

“I just said I didn’t yell at that Bradens boy,” Dad snapped.

“Have the world your way, then.” Barney huffed. It was what she said whenever Dad’s version of the world didn’t line up with reality. Melba hoped she’d someday acquire the ability to let it roll off her the way Barney did. “Get on out of this kitchen, you grumpy old man. Dinner won’t be ready for another fifty minutes.”

Melba reached out to help her father out of his chair, but he brushed her off. With considerable effort, Dad pushed himself up and shuffled, grumbling, back to the recliner. She stared after him and shook her head. “Should I be glad he’s moving around, or annoyed at his mood?”

Barney laughed and pulled a package of brown-and-serve rolls out of the freezer. “Both.”

Melba got a cookie sheet out of the cabinet and took the package from Barney. “He really did haul off at Clark in the hospital room,” she said quietly as she broke apart the rolls and arranged them on the cookie sheet. “It was scary, actually. Came out of nowhere. He yelled at Clark like they knew each other.”

Barney leaned back against the counter. “You know George Bradens and your father have never gotten along—not for a long time, anyway. Too easy to get a flood of bad water under the bridge in a small town like this. I heard they were close when they were younger.”

A thought struck Melba. “Clark looks a lot like his dad, doesn’t he?”

“With all that Bradens red hair, I expect he does. I ain’t ever seen a photo of young George but I can picture it easy enough.”

Melba moved closer. “Dad kept thinking I was Mom last night. Do you suppose he thought Clark was George, thought it was back then?”

“Could be.”

“The question is, then, what could have happened in the past that made Dad so angry at George?”

“Who knows?” Barney nodded in the direction of the living room. “But take care, hon. Sometimes it don’t pay to dig up past hurts like that.”

Too late, Melba thought. The digging’s been started for me. Only I don’t know if Dad realizes he’s the one who picked up the shovel.

* * *

Melba pulled on her robe and padded downstairs like a woman about to face the noose. She’d been up half the night, her mind a storm of questions about what her father had said at the hospital when they’d been alone. She’d tried to put it out of her mind, knowing Dad didn’t want to talk about it. Help me let it go, she’d prayed nearly hourly since Dad had come home, but to no avail. With the thin pale rays of dawn came the realization that it could no longer be avoided.

She knew as she smelled coffee that there would never be a better time. He was up, sitting with coffee in his recliner. She was still up, having barely slept. And Barney wasn’t due for another hour. Give me the right words, Father. This is going to need so much grace and I’m running on empty.

“Morning, Dad.”

He turned toward her, and she marveled at the health in his features. He looked like Dad again, not that ghost of Dad who’d thrashed around his hospital bed. “Mornin’ Melbadoll.” He smiled, and she fought the urge to just let the day slide into peaceful normalcy.

It won’t. It can’t until you talk about this, she argued with herself while she fixed a cup of tea and dragged herself into the living room to perch on the ottoman by Dad’s chair. “I need to ask you something, Dad.”

He raised an eyebrow and sipped his coffee. “Shoot.”

She’d rehearsed twelve ways to ask this, but couldn’t think of one. “I know people say stuff when they’re sick, and you had a high fever, but you said something to me in the hospital.”

“Okay, maybe I could be nicer about that Bradens boy, but...”

“No, Dad, it doesn’t have anything to do with that.” She couldn’t resist adding, “But yes, you could be nicer.” She stirred her tea, trying to come up with the right words. “This is...something you said to me. Actually—” this hurt to say “—I think you thought you were talking to Mom, the way you said it.” When his eyes grew anxious, she added, “You were pretty sick and on a lot of medication.”

“You look so much like her.” He said it with such tenderness, then shifted his gaze away from her to out the window.

“I like that, you know? It used to bug me in school when everyone would say, ‘Oh, you must be Maria’s daughter,’ but I like it now.” Melba squinted her eyes shut, pulling up a thread of courage from the place deep inside her chest that hadn’t settled since the hospital. “Dad, you looked at me, called me Maria, and said ‘She ought to know she’s not mine.’”

Melba watched her father’s body take in the words. Even with his face away from her, it was like a shock wave, hitting his shoulders, flinching his fingers, pushing on his chest. Part of her wanted him to not remember, to dismiss it as another of his “gone away” moments, but the telltale movements left no doubt. She was almost afraid for him to turn toward her.

When he did, his face was so full of pain and heartbreak it pummeled the breath from her lungs. “I didn’t say that.” It was a last-ditch denial.

“Yes, Dad, you did. And I think we should talk about it, don’t you?”

He turned away from her again. The fingers around his coffee cup began to twitch. “I didn’t say...” The coffee cup tumbled out of his grasp before she could catch it, spilling coffee on his lap. He yelped at the heat, the flash of anger she’d grown to fear surging up in him. “Don’t give me hot coffee like that!” he snapped at her, forgetting it was he who’d served himself this morning. To think she’d been pleased at his self-sufficiency.

By the time Melba had gotten Dad cleaned up and calmed down, they were both exhausted and irritable. When she arrived, Barney’s frown told Melba they looked as bad as they felt. Melba looked up from her third cup of tea as she clung to her last nerve while Dad shouted things at the news broadcasters from a too-loud television in the living room.

“Last night not go so well?” Barney said, nodding toward the blasting news headlines on the other side of the kitchen door.

“No, the night went fine. This morning, not so much.”

“Did he fall?”

“No. It’s my fault. I tried to get him to explain something he said to me in the hospital and it...” Melba pushed out a breath that felt like concrete in her lungs. “It didn’t go well.” She hated that she felt tears twist up her throat. “He’s so...here sometimes, and then the next second he’s...” She swallowed, unable to come up with a suitable alternative to “gone.”

Barney sat down. “I know,” she said, putting a hand over Melba’s. “This is hard. For you most of all. You gotta have faith God’s going to walk you through this, and I know you do, but that don’t mean it isn’t tough to see some mornings.” She frowned at Melba’s face, asking, “How much sleep did you get last night?”

I must look a sight, Melba thought. She was still in her pajamas and hadn’t put her contacts in or brushed her hair. “Not a whole lot.”

Barney patted Melba’s hand. “Why don’t you go upstairs and nap a bit. I’ll take care of Mr. Personality in there and see if I can’t lighten the mood.”

“Actually—” Melba stifled a yawn “—I think the best thing for me would be a run. A little sunshine and fresh air ought to do me a world of good.”

“Never could see the point in that, but if that’s your ticket, then by all means. Go burn off stress.”