The phone disturbs Cliff Walker. He lets it ring. She has been calling all night and he feels too guilty to talk to her.
Cliff pours another scotch. Finally the ringing stops. He toys with the idea of shooting himself. He downs his drink, walks to the window. Of course, it would be raining. Rain depressed him, and obviously he is already depressed enough to think about buying a gun. He hates guns. But at this moment, he hates himself more than he hates guns. The last time he handled a gun was in the army in 1945. He was in a Pacific jungle surrounded by threatening sounds. He picked one of the sounds at random and shot it. He swore he heard a groan. He dropped his gun and fled straight into the army psycho ward.
The phone rings again. Cliff wants to answer it, wants to tell his wife Jane how sorry he is for screwing up the marriage. And the early life of his daughter Sally, who was only three when she and her mother left for California in 1959. His last contact with them was the sound of Jane’s shoes rushing through the Cincinnati airport to the exit gate. The clicking of heels still haunts him.
For years after that, Sally refused to see him, or even talk to him. Jane had done a job on him. Sally had even convinced him that he was the son-of-a-bitch her mother said he was: losing his market consulting firm in early 1957, squandering what little money was left, pawning his wife’s collection of first-edition books, embarrassing her with friends. At first she blamed it on his war experience, although Cliff's problem did not really surface until after Sally was born, after Jane had shut him out of the bedroom, convinced him he was inadequate as a husband. He repeatedly refused to return to the army hospital or seek therapy of any kind. They argued continuously. There was a lot of name calling, mainly from him, though his wife took sadistic delight in calling him a sexual wimp in search of his mother. Jane was the new enemy framed in the sight of his imaginary gun, the source of his humiliation. She came to be disgusted at his demands and his delirium, his moments of rage. She said she feared what he might do to himself--or to her and Sally. He sought relief in the bottle. Then he wrecked the car, with his daughter asleep in the back seat--which was the only reason she was not hurt. Jane decided it was time that she and Sally sought the sanctuary of her mother’s house in San Francisco.
He now believed that he was the weak sister she said he was. Cliff sought psychiatric help at a Cincinnati clinic; he could no longer afford an uptown shrink. After many sessions he learned that he had two problems: the damage resulting from his war wounds, plus the experience of growing up with a father who rejected him because he would not bend to his demands. Now he shifted all the blame to the father who had refused to acknowledge him even after he returned from the army hospital, managed to get through college, settle in Ohio, get married, and start a business. What really rankled Cliff was his father’s refusal to see his granddaughter. Word got back to Cliff that the man, who had fathered six sons, said, “Why the hell couldn’t he have a grandson?” Jane’s response: “What do you expect of an ignorant, selfish man who never did a thing for anybody, a man who sanctioned his wife only because the poor woman could propagate boys--farmhands. Don't expect me to be the wife your mother was."
It took a while, but in time Cliff realized that he had become his father: he drank too much, lost his business, blamed his wife for lack of support. Ultimately he came to hate himself, and self-hate evolved into self-destruction, which might have been realized had he not spent those weekly sessions in therapy. He thanked Jane for that, for leaving him alone to try to reconstruct himself. It was a struggle that took many painful years, but, in the spring of 1969, Cliff is convinced that he is a changed man, not a complete man but a better man.
Suddenly this call from his wife, the woman he continued to love.
It is just past midnight when he picks up the phone. The voice is not that of his wife; it is Sally, now sixteen. She heard about the clinic, his new job, his new life. She wants to see him. He thanks her with tears in his voice. They arrange for her to visit him. She will come alone, she says.
Cliff walks into the airport as though entering a bad dream. At 43, he is an aging specter walking the corridors in a shroud of fog, untouched by the crowd. Terminal, he thought. They named it right, a tomb where life ended with a hushed goodbye.
Habit guides him through the uneasy wait to a troubled corner of his mind, to an out-of-focus memory of footsteps echoing through a granite tunnel, a baby’s cry fading in the darkness. Fingers tighten on his pulse, he listens for a sign.
Over the silence a number sounds, her flight arriving gate nine.
The fog gone, window sun burning in his eyes, tears wash away the trance. He trails the welcome line, trembling, a sign, like pain. When he sees the silhouette, a ghost frozen in the glare, he stops--unaccustomed to arrivals. He recalls the cry, waves a slow, a limp salute.
She walks to him, heels clicking hurriedly. He knows the walk. Through saltwater eyes he blinks at the sun in her hair until he sees the face he knew he would never see again. Then she is next to him, touching him. He knows the touch.
Sally smiles a smile of haunted years, whispers hello. He knows the voice.
Awkwardly he holds her in his arms, knows the scent, tries to speak her name. All he manages is a stuttering, “You are your mother.” She kisses him, lightly on the cheek, wipes away his tears.
“She was wrong,” cries Sally. “She said you wouldn’t know me. Mom was wrong.”
Again the cry was Jane’s cry.
"I did know you. Except for the gray around the ears, you're as tall and, yes, as handsome as Mom said. And the eyes. Mom said she fell in love with those sleepy eyes."
Cliff could only stare at his daughter.
“Dad, please forgive me for not coming sooner. I wanted to but Mom felt you would not be ready to see me, or even want to see me--that you might reject me.”
“Sally, I’ve been ready to see you since the day I cleaned up my act.”
“Then let’s make the most of it, Dad.”
“Yes,” he says.
“Let’s get to know each other…and love each other,” says Sally, “before I get to be an old woman.” She laughs.
This warmth is new to Cliff. He takes her hand.
Sally leads him from the tomb .
End
