*

*

Chapter 27: Visitation

            The smell of cigar smoke woke me.  It was such a familiar odor that, at first, my sleep-muddled brain didn’t register that the apartment had not reeked of smoke for over a month.  As my mind cleared, I had the eerie sensation of being watched.  I sat up and peered into the darkness.  At first, all I saw was a cloud of smoke moving like a slow tornado around the wicker rocker in the corner of my room.  The cloud began to pulse inward.  Each time it pulled in, the shape of the cloud altered.  It was rather like watching a bad science fiction movie.  I was too unnerved to move or scream.  Finally, the mist resolved itself into a semi-transparent shape that was trying to look like my father.  I heard a voice then, thin and transparent like the smoke.

            “This isn’t so easy,” it said.

            “Father?” I croaked from a dry throat.

            “Yes, my little bird,” he said.  His face assembled and then fell back into mist.  Parts of him came together, feet, an arm, a knee, and then disassembled.  “I get the voice, then the face goes,” he said.

            “Father, why are you here?  What do you want?” I whispered.  “Shall I get Angelina?”

            “No.  Let her rest.”  He paused, then in a thin thread of a voice he said, “I’m sorry, Teresa.”

            “Why?  What do you mean?”

            “I should have loved you better.”  His voice was so faint that I almost thought I was imagining it.  His face faded, then his legs and feet.  The last part I saw was his hand holding the cigar.  And then the mist dissipated.

            I fell back on the bed, clutching my chest to contain my pounding heart.  Of course, there was no more sleep for me that night.  I huddled in my bed with all the lights on.  Every few seconds I’d look at the chair, but no mist reappeared.  In the hours before daylight, I struggled to cope with the experience.  Should I tell Angelina?  Would she believe me?  For that matter, did I believe what I heard, or was I possibly creating a long-hoped for scenario in which I received, at last, an acknowledgement from Father?

            Memories of his rejection came to me in fresh waves of feeling.  The straight A report cards he’d only grunted at, and set aside, the piano recitals he’d missed or slept through.  He’d never missed one of Junior’s baseball or football games.  The excuses Father made for my delinquent brother still left me sour and angry.  Beyond the hurt and pain of my childhood, I always carried a volcano of rage inside me.  Even after the fright of his ghostly appearance, I felt the same fury.

            Once that volcano exploded once, when he brought Angelina, his new wife, home from Italy only months after Mother’s death.  I confronted Father in his office at work.  I came in without knocking, brushing past Mrs. Romano, the secretary.  I shut the door. 

            “Teresa?” he said, raising his thick eyebrows, surprised to see me.

            “How dare you!” I hissed, knowing that Mrs. Romano was surely trying to listen in.  “How dare you bring that woman home, and mother barely in her grave for three months!”

            He stared at me, then scowled.

            “It’s obvious that she was your mistress.  For how long?  How long were you cheating on mother while she was dying?”

            “Teresa, be careful what you say.  I’m still your father,” he began. 

            “Yes,” I said, my voice shaking, “and you disgust me.”  I began to sob furious tears.  I rushed out past a gaping Mrs. Romano, down the hall and out of the building.

            Eventually Angelina’s patience and good nature won me over.  But I closed my painful heart against my father.  And now, here he was, in spirit, anyway, offering an apology.  Would I accept it?