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Celia,
who has been estranged from her father for several years, chose to respond to
his unexpected email by asking if he would be willing to attend her wedding as
a guest but alone, without his second wife and their daughter. She asked Rob to come with her to visit
her mother for the weekend, to break this news to her. After all, Mom was the one who took it
upon herself to inform Don about Celia’s engagement, without Celia’s
permission.
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Rob and Celia had driven down from Columbus late last night
and, after a quick hello to her mother and sister, had gone to bed, Celia in
her old bedroom and Rob on the sofa.
Even though Celia had not yet heard back from Don as to whether he would
agree to come to the wedding alone, she wanted to tell her mother that she had
invited him and she did not want to do it by phone. Rob supported this choice wholeheartedly, because it was a
more gentle way of introducing the idea that Celia would hereafter be in touch
with her father on a regular basis, whether he attended the wedding or
not.
When Rob awoke early Saturday morning, he listened to the
chorus of birds outside the open living room window and tried to figure out
what his role was here. Support
for Celia, one, he thought; a voice of reason, two; and frankly, Celia’s mom
really liked Rob. He wasn’t sure
why, beyond that he was male and this family of women desperately needed an
infusion of male perspective. It
seemed to balance things out somehow.
He walked quietly into the kitchen to begin the coffee, a
routine he had started when he had visited after Christmas for almost a
week. They liked it when the
coffee was started. Rob wondered
if Celia’s father had been the coffee-starter when he had lived here. In the last two weeks Celia had
opened up about her father as never before, talking about summer evenings spent
at the community pool, eating popsicles; and his crossword puzzles he did with
his coffee in the morning, asking the family for help and pretending that they
did. He also had a temper, and
when he didn’t get his way he could be a beast. He had never laid a hand on any of them, but Mom, his
primary target, had been afraid of him.
For a long time, Celia had admitted to him recently, the
temper and yelling at Mom had been her dominant memory and experience of
Don. After receiving his very
human and normal-sounding email, Celia began to wonder about Mom’s role in
their marital dysfunction. Perhaps
it was more complex than she could have understood at age twelve, when Don
left. She further admitted that
while she had missed her father terribly after he left, none of them missed
that walking-on-eggshells feeling that they could set him off at any
minute.
Rob sorted through the mugs in the cupboard and lined up on
the counter the few that had neither teddy bears nor warm thoughts-of-the-day
on them. Maybe I’ll make breakfast
for everyone, he thought, as Celia came down the stairs and into the
kitchen.
She hugged and kissed him, and he did so in return.
“Rob. Would you
do me a favor?” Celia asked.
“Of course,” he said, imagining a run to the market for
chocolate syrup for her coffee.
“Will you tell Mom that I invited Don to the wedding?
Without me? I mean, take her out
to breakfast yourself and, you know, wine and dine her like you do…”
How
does Rob respond?
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