Unfinished Symphony (Logan 3)

Holly remained after the festivities. I joined them for dinner twice over the following ten days, and once I took May for a bike ride out to the beach and we had lunch with Holly. I saw that Cary was right, she and Kenneth had grown closer. They both seemed very happy.

Cary was working on the detailing of Kenneth's sailboat. The equipment had arrived and he was installing it all himself. A projected maiden voyage was proposed, one that would take the four of us for a day's trip. The boat was in the water now and people from town who had heard about it from Kenneth were coming around to see it. Mr. Longthorpe, a banker, was interested enough in Cary's work to initiate a discussion about his building a boat for him, too. Cary began to design another boat, and we were all very excited for him. I told Grandma Olivia, but she just said it was something only men who had money and time to waste would find interesting. Nothing that involved recreation was important to her. She considered entertainers, sports figures and the like to be frivolous people who had just not grown up. When I talked further with her about it, I understood these were ideas she had inherited from her rather Puritanical father, but ideas she clung to like a holy rod to help her pass through the trials and tribulations that in her mind were the realities this life bestowed upon us. She believed religiously that the Creator put us on this earth just to be tested, just to suffer and endure. That was the closest she came to any religious affiliations, although she entertained the minister and made contributions to the local church. She never ended a lecture or an explanation without referring to the importance of protecting the family, guarding the reputation. That was the only armor we had to ward off "the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune."

I was beginning to think she might not be all wrong. A mutual respect and kind of truce had developed between us, especially as it looked almost certain now that I would be the class valedictorian. She had arranged for me to have an interview with the head mistress of one of the New England prep schools. In her mind I was following her prescription for the perfect life and she was preparing me to walk in her footsteps.

As the school year moved into its final quarter, plans for the annual variety show were being developed and I was approached by the show's director to perform again. I agreed and we began rehearsals soon afterward. The night of the second rehearsal, I came out of the school, expecting to find Raymond waiting as usual. He wasn't there yet, but it wasn't because he was late. My part had ended earlier than I had expected and I had decided to step out and get some fresh air while I waited.

I noticed an automobile across the street and a man sitting the steering wheel. For a few moments I stood. gazing at the man and the car without fully realizing who it was. When the realization came, I felt as if I had stepped into a pool of ice water. My legs actually turned numb. He rolled his window down and beckoned to me. I didn't move and he beckoned more emphatically. There was no one else around. I hesitated and then crossed the street to the car and Teddy Jackson, my real father, smiled at me and nodded.

"I've been looking for an opportunity to speak to you," he said, "ever since you sent Adam to me. Can we talk for a few minutes?"

I glanced at my watch. Raymond wouldn't be here for at least another fifteen minutes, I thought.

I

shrugged.

"Why?"

"We both know you know why," he said, holding his smile. He stopped smiling when I didn't move. "Please."

He leaned over and opened the passenger's door and I went around the car and got in.

"Well," he began, both of us looking forward and not at each other, "I think I rehearsed and replayed this conversation in my mind a thousand times." He turned to me. "How did you finally find out?"

"What difference does it make?" I countered.

"I was under the impression Haille never told anyone. It was a secret she took with her to the grave. Did someone else tell you?"

I looked at him, my eyes burning with the fire in my heart.

"You're afraid someone else in this town may expose you? Is that it?" I shot back at him.

He stared and then he looked through the windshield again.

"I have a family, a wife who doesn't know any of this, a very successful legal practice. I have some reason to be afraid," he admitted. "However, I don't feel good about that. I don't like continuing to be a coward, especially when I see how well you've turned out, how beautiful and talented you are. I'd like to stake claim to you."

"I'm not a piece of property, some acre of land or something to possess," I said. "You don't stake a claim on a daughter."

"I didn't mean for it to sound that way. What I meant was, I'd like to be proud, too. You didn't tell Adam anything, but he was quite upset. He didn't know what to think."

"What did you tell him?"

"I didn't. The coward won out in me again," he said. "I acted just as confused. He's smart though. He didn't buy it and one of these days, he and I are going to have a heart to heart. I guess he won't think it's so wonderful to be a Jackson then," he added a bit mournfully.

"He's spoiled and arrogant," I said. "He needs to be brought down a few pegs, maybe a dozen."

"Yes, he is something of a snob. I will definitely stake claim to that. That's my fault." He paused, gazed at me and then nodded. "I guess I owe you some sort of explanation."

"I don't want anything from you," I said.

"I'd like to tell you some of it. Please."

I said nothing. I just sat there, half wanting to lunge out of the car, and half wanting to lunge at him and demand why he was such a coward all these years. I wanted to pound his chest and pummel his face and scream and scream and scream about the lies, the deceptions, the people who suffered while he built his precious law practice and wonderfully secure family.

"Nearly nineteen years ago, I was a lot less mature than I am now. Not any less than other young men my age," he added, "but I was impulsive and full of myself. My career had begun. I was successful rather quickly, which is not always a good thing; but in my case, I handled it well, invested well, built more and more of a fortune, married a beautiful woman and had my first child.

"Your mother," he continued with a smile, "was the most attractive young woman in this town then, and very seductive. She had a way of directing herself at you that kind of melted your resistance, filled you with fantasies. She was," he said with a laugh, "a terrific flirt."