The Prodigal Daughter Read online

  The Prodigal Daughter

  J.P. Garland

  Copyright © 2019 Joseph P. Garland

  All rights reserved.

  The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the express written permission of the author.

  Cover photo by Velizar Ivanov on Unsplash.com

  Contents

  Eve Kendall and Me

  A Sister’s Lie

  The Lake Shore Limited

  Ghosts

  A Dying Man’s Room

  Going Home

  Home Again

  Mel’s Folks

  Marriage

  Eve Kendall and Me

  Eve Kendall. Why I am on a train heading from New York to Chicago can be understood in reference to Eve Kendall. She was a character played by Eva Marie Saint in Alfred Hitchcock’s “North by Northwest.” She meets Roger O. Thornhill—Cary Grant—on a train from New York to Chicago. He happens to be on the run from the police (and James Mason) and sneaks onto the Twentieth Century Limited at Grand Central. They meet in the dining car and, realizing his predicament, she hides him in her compartment. Where they spend the night. And it being Hitchcock, a lot of stuff happens. This is the one that ends up at Mount Rushmore.

  That movie, which I first saw when I was sixteen or seventeen, is one of my favorites. But I did not want to be Eve Kendall. I wanted to be Roger Thornhill doing whatever he was doing to the gorgeous blonde Eve Kendall. It led to a lifelong love of train travel.

  Me? My name is Beth Jenkins. I am twenty-nine and work as a graphic designer in a large Manhattan law firm. I grew up northwest of Chicago.

  And the train? I was going to my former house. I was going because I received a call two days before from my dear sister Marcie. My father—who I neither saw nor spoke to in over three years—wanted very much to see me, she said. He was fading fast and it was time for us to make peace.

  Why hadn’t we spoken in three years? I am gay. When I was last “home” at Christmas over three years before, I was not in a committed relationship but one reason I moved to New York was the hostility I knew I would face were I to come out, not only from my parents but from the rest of my conservative Catholic family too. So, I kept it a secret. There was no need to do otherwise.

  When I visited once or twice a year, I fielded the inevitable how’s-your-love-life questions with vague answers. Again, it did not much matter. I had not met the woman with whom I wanted to spend my live, and there was not the when-will-you-tell-them? pressure a lot of gays go through. I was in Elmwood Park for Christmas, as I say, over three years ago. My mom and dad were there with my two sisters, the aforementioned Marcie and Sheila, and their husbands, and Tim, my only brother, plus Dorothy, his wife. Marcie and Sheila each then had two kids—they each have one more now—who were there too, it being Christmas. Dorothy was seven months pregnant with their first.

  That last fact is what started it. It was a bit mild for a Chicago Christmas and I went to church with everyone. After presents were opened, I took a walk with my sisters and Dorothy. It’s a quiet neighborhood with little houses close to one another. The lack of traffic makes it conducive to walking in the street and waving at the neighbors as we go.

  We were doing fine on this walk until Marcie and Sheila decided to put pressure on me to finally get married and get pregnant so I could become part of the “family.” Move to Chicago and we’d have weekends at the house. Marcie said: “You won’t be really part of this family until you have a little girl or a little boy of your own.” The balance of the walk—thankfully cut short by Dorothy’s condition—was a tag team on my love life.

  As I say, I had plenty of practice deflecting this kind of talk and I thought I succeeded until about ten minutes after we were back at the house and sitting in the living room. My father was on his second, maybe his third, Scotch when he did it.

  “Beth, sweetheart. We are all sick and tired of you waiting to just settle down with someone. Your mother and I would love another grandchild. Enough of your excuses. Don’t tell me you’ve not had the chance to meet some—”

  “Daddy. I do not want to talk about it.”

  Marcie could not resist jumping in: “You avoid the topic so much, maybe you turned into a lesbian since you got to New York.” And she laughed.

  To which my father, “No daughter of mine is turning into one.” He turned to me and with a smirk said, “Your mother and I raised you right. Just tell us you’re trying to find the right man,” and he turned back to the others with a triumphal air.

  I was in an armchair with a vodka tonic in my hand. My second. I should not have. I knew it. But I could not take this anymore. Every holiday. Just tell us you’re trying to find the right man.

  The delay in my response caused the others to shift to other topics and I could—should—have waited. I didn’t.

  “Marcie’s half right. I’m a lesbian but I was one before I ever left for New York.”

  You could hear a pin drop in the sudden silence except for Dorothy asking Sheila, “What’d she say?” and I didn’t catch Sheila’s response only Dorothy’s not entirely unkind stare.

  I took a large sip of my drink and sat back. My father was the first to say anything. He again turned to me.

  “You’re kidding. Seriously. You’ve always been normal.”

  “Father. Everyone. I am not kidding. I’ve never been with a man. I never want to be with a man. I only care about women. I don’t have a steady one now, but my dream is to have one someday.”

  The silence drew my mother from the kitchen. Wiping her hands on her apron, she looked around and asked what was wrong. My father was frozen in place, staring at me.

  He was still staring at me when he said, “Your daughter decided to tell us, on Christmas, that she’s a homosexual. On Christmas. That she only likes other women.” His attention turned to his wife. “She doesn’t intend to be part of this family. That she doesn’t intend to have children. That—”

  Which is when he ran out of things to say about me.

  “Is this true?” My mother, now looking at me. I cannot say where anyone else was looking but I can say they were silent and waiting to see what happened next.

  What happened next is that I put my glass down and rose. I knew they were all staring at me and I took a step towards my mother, but no more. Her hands were still wrapped in her apron and I did not have the time to read what she was thinking.

  “Mother, it is true. It’s been true. Not about the kids. I don’t know about that. But, yes, I am a lesbian and I’ve always been a lesbian.”

  “But what about Jerry? You went to your prom with him.”

  “I went to the prom with him because we both needed a date. So that’s all it was. Friends. I have never gone out on a date with a man.”

  “Then how do you know?”

  “I just know.”

  “But if—”

  “Mother.” And I looked at each of the others, one looking more stunned than the next, except for my father. He only looked disgusted. “It is who I am. It was who I was when I lived here. When I went to Northwestern. It’s me today and it’ll be me tomorrow.”

  “You can just leave now. I’m ashamed that you have my name.” I turned to the source of this declaration.

  “It’s not just your name. Father. It’s mine too. Do not make me ashamed to have it.”

  Then Marcie stepped in. “Beth, I think everyone’s a bit surprised. We didn’t notice anything different a
bout you all these years. So—”

  Again, I said something I probably should not have but I do not regret it.

  “There’s nothing ‘different’ about me from any of you. It’s who I am. If you can’t—”

  “Beth, we all need to relax now. Everyone’s a bit surprised is all.” That was my brother.

  And it might have worked had not my father decided to smash it all. “I’m not eating with her.”

  Silence. When my father said something, it was law.

  “I spoke to Father Mike”—long our Parish priest—“about the gays. ‘Burn in hell.’ That’s what he said. It’s in the Bible he said. And I agree with him. As far as I’m concerned you can get the next train back to that sinkhole where you live.” Which, of course, I did, my brother getting in trouble for driving me to Union Station downtown, where I managed to get a seat in coach on the overnight train to New York where I scrunched up in an uncomfortable seat on one of those trains sleeping and waking until we got to Penn Station the next day.

  A Sister’s Lie

  That was over three years ago, and I had not spoken to my mom or my dad since. Plenty of calls from my sisters and brother who had slowly moved from rejection to resignation and almost to tolerance—“just make nice with them and it’ll be okay”/“You don’t have to mean it, just tell them you’ve straightened out and are going out on dates with eligible guys”—but not a word, not even a written word at Christmas, from my parents.

  Early on I asked Marcie whether I should call mom because I missed her and talking to her and I wanted to know how she was doing, but Marcie said our dad made it clear that while he couldn’t keep his kids from talking to me, he damn well could keep his wife and she would never defy him and she would tell him right off if we spoke or even if I tried to contact her. So, I didn’t.

  When Marcie called in mid-April, I figured it was just to chat, our having tacitly agreed not to speak of “my issue” again. But it was about him. He had a fall and took a turn for the worse. They discovered cancer eating away. Not much more time. He keeps asking for you. It’d mean the world to him. He’s seen things, and he’s changed. He’s asking for you.

  In one significant respect, things were very different for me since that Christmas. Now I was in love. Now I had someone I could imagine spending my life with. I lived with Melissa Jones. She came from Florida and had a liveliness that complemented my midwestern hardiness. She was a lawyer in the firm where I worked and if I did not fall in love with her at first sight it was well before the tenth. Within three months of the day she asked me to help prepare a client’s PowerPoint presentation, she was moved into my place in Bushwick, Brooklyn. I was as happy as I’d ever been, and each day still is better than the last. On my own with a woman I loved—and I surely loved her—and with an interesting job in graphic design.

  We are where my story began.

  With Marcie’s call. I am not a fan of flying, as a rule, especially the hassles and the delays. I prefer the train, outmoded as that may sound. I like being on a train with its click-clack and slight swaying. Plus, my whole Eve Kendall fixation.

  Marcie’s call was on Tuesday. I could catch the Lake Shore Limited at Penn Station mid-afternoon on Thursday. I’d get into in Chicago just before ten on Friday. I could then take the commuter train to Elmwood Park where Tim would pick me up and take me to the house.

  When she called, I told Marcie, “I will let you know if I can make it.” She did not appreciate this response, but it is the one she got. I told Mel on the subway home. She knew the situation about my family and always insisted that I keep my options open.

  As we sat on the rocking L train, she told me what I knew. That I had to go.

  “You’ll never forgive yourself if you don’t.”

  “Will you come with me?”

  “That’d just pour gasoline on the fire, me being with you.”

  But I insisted that I needed her moral support for the trip and that if they couldn’t accept her, they couldn’t accept me.

  And it was decided. I called Marcie when we got home. I told her “I” was coming. They’d know about Mel when they saw Mel.

  We left work early on Thursday with the blessings of our bosses and got a cab together to the dive known as Penn Station. It was easy to get our tickets at a kiosk and with sandwiches and snacks we got from a deli near the office and a bottle of wine from a liquor store we found our car and our little roomette about fifteen minutes before departure.

  We reserved a sleeper compartment, what Amtrak calls a “roomette.” The train-car has a center aisle and there are compartments on both sides. In the roomette, there’s a toilet to the left, which you can cover with a table, and two chairs against the window, facing one another. A foldable table pulls out and can be placed between the chairs. For sleeping, the chairs are pulled together creating a bed.

  Not unlike Eve Kendall’s train, there’s a second bed that the porter pulls down from the ceiling, with straps to prevent the occupant from falling out in the night. Our compartment was on the left side of the train, which meant we had a view of the Hudson River as we headed to Albany, which we would reach in just under three hours. It was nice and well cleaned when we got there.

  In no time we were out of the tunnel with a view of the palisades on the New Jersey side of the river. We opened and poured the wine and opened a bag of nuts.

  “It’ll be a mob scene I expect. My brother and sisters and their kids. Who knows who else.” I told her what I could but in the end, it was not much. For each, it was little more than For/Against/Neutral. I guessed for some but, sadly, I had no confidence that any members of my family were on the “For” side. Mel did not have that problem.

  Soon, though, and with little more to be said, we reverted to how we often are when in the apartment: Comfortable just being with each other as read with occasional conversation.

  About an hour after we left, I put my book down, gazing out the window as the sun reflected off the Hudson, thinking of my journey. I had, I think, a typical Chicago upbringing. Irish Catholic through and through. My dad was a retired Chicago cop. My mom was a teacher until she quit to have kids. My siblings still made regular pilgrimages to the house, at least once or twice a month, for big Sunday dinners cooked by mom from scratch.

  I went to college—Northwestern—near home and lived there for the duration. There was not enough money to do anything else. I knew I was gay at my all-girls Catholic high school but kept it a secret. I was afraid to be outed. While I did not participate in the bullying of the two or three classmates who were thought to be “lesbos”—no one dared come out—I’ve always hated my cowardice where a word or two of support would have mattered.

  Since I lived at home for college, there were not many opportunities for developing a relationship with another woman. I went on some dates with men, but they were perfunctory and done only so I could tell my parents that I went on dates with men.

  I had to get away. I had a degree in graphics design and as between New York and San Francisco, I picked the former. I found an apartment in Brooklyn and a job at a small firm in Manhattan before switching to the law firm after a couple of years. I met some women via Internet sites. None evolved into relationships. Some showed initial promise that faded, and others had no pretense and were nothing more than mutual, great fun. As my experience grew, so did my enjoyment of sex. I am afraid that I lost my virginity nonchalantly to a beautiful blonde from Atlanta named Skye in her apartment, although I did not admit to it being my first until it was done. It hooked me, and Skye still reminds me that she will always have a special place for me. And she always will.

  I met Mel—Melissa Stark—as I say about nine months before my trip back to Chicago. Though I did not announce it, my orientation was suspected in the firm and it had the benefit of dissuading young attorneys from being anything but friendly with me. Law firms are little corporations with their little fiefdoms, but those of us in the graphics department were like a satellite o
f the lawyers so we were treated as an asset not as a threat.

  Attorneys came by regularly when there was an office or court presentation to be done. So, Mel’s appearance was the norm. I do not recall having seen her before that afternoon she came in and had no idea who she was except that she was a lawyer, given her de facto uniform. I hit it off with her but no more and no less than any number of other lawyers. Then she sent me a box of chocolates after the presentation went well. It had a little note asking me out—she knew my orientation—and we went to dinner at a nice place near work filled with lawyers and bankers relaxing after long days and the rest is where we were.

  And where we were was the Lake Shore Limited train, sitting in a roomette with a fair amount of merlot in our systems heading to Chicago to visit my ailing father.

  After a long wait when they changed locomotives in Albany, Mel and I settled in. It was after seven. We took out our sandwiches and had even more of our wine before touring the train. We got decafs in the dining car and sat and eased down there in the company of strangers.

  At about eight-thirty, we settled in in our roomette. It was early, but we put on our pajamas. We kept the shades up before putting the chairs together for one of our beds. Mel pulled down a blanket, and we snuggled quietly, feeling the rocking. We watched a movie and laughed and snarked. As usual, we finished off the wine.

  When it ended, I pulled out my sketch pad, and Mel took out some knitting. For the first time in years, I drew my family members. But the images were not of them today or even when I last saw them. They were of them when I was young. When I was still part of the family. I drew them as they were in or a little after college.

  My parents too. The image that came to mind for them was even earlier, when we sat around the house opening Christmas presents. I must have been twelve or thirteen. The quiet one. Images burned into my brain, and it was those images that flowed through my pencil as the train rocked.