His Father's Eyes

A Story by JLe

A story about making mistakes and regretting what you never had... Love doesn't always work out the way we think it will.

The house had a decrepit look to it, and it was hard to believe someone really lived there. Irving looked at the crumpled piece of paper in his hand yet again, then turned his gaze back to the house. It must have been the sixth or seventh time he'd repeated this action; even so, he couldn’t make any sense of it. According to Harry’s note, this was the house Irving was looking for. Of course, Harry could be wrong. Harry was often wrong, but when he had handed Irving this slip of paper he had looked so confident, so sure of himself, that Irving thought he must be right.

At a loss for what to do next, Irving looked up and down the street. All around him were well-kept lawns and spotless windows with flowerboxes. It was certainly not a run-down neighbourhood. This house, number fifty-six, stood out like a sore thumb. Irving looked at the piece of paper again, as if he hoped it would tell him what to do.

“I should at least ring the doorbell, shouldn’t I?” he asked no one in particular. Harry’s sprawled handwriting seemed to agree that he should, at the very least, ring the doorbell. “Yes, yes… if there is a doorbell,” Irving muttered, stuffing the paper into his pocket.

A concrete path led up to the front porch of number fifty-six. It was cracked and, in places, overgrown with weeds. Irving wondered at the state of the lawn; the grass was waist-high, and the empty shell of a Volkswagen Beetle stood abandoned right in the middle of it. He spotted what he thought was a shopping cart turned upside down - all he could do was shake his head and sigh.

As he had suspected, there was no doorbell. It seemed to have been ripped out of the wall, maybe as an act of pointless vandalism, or maybe as a way to ward off visitors. Of course, Irving hadn’t come this far to be deterred by a missing doorbell. He knocked and waited patiently. When there was no answer, he knocked again. A muffled bang was followed by an equally muffled voice. Irving heard the door unlock and it was opened just a couple of inches. A pair of puffy red eyes peered out at him.

“Whaddaya want?” the man said in a gruff voice. Irving, who always knew what to say, no matter what the occasion might be, suddenly found himself speechless.

“Hello,” he croaked at last.

“Whaddaya want?” the man said again.

“Is- is this the Fitzpatrick residence?” Irving asked.

“S’pose,” muttered the man. “Whaddaya want?”

“M-mr Fitzpatrick - you are Donald Fitzpatrick?”

“Yeah.”

“Mr Fitzpatrick,” Irving said, feeling a bit more confident now, “I’m afraid I have some bad news.”

“’Bout what?” Fitzpatrick eyed Irving suspiciously. He wasn’t used to people knocking on his door in the middle of the day.

“Rose Wilde." He could have sworn he saw Fitzpatrick’s heart stop beating for a moment; his eyes widened and his lips parted slightly. Fitzpatrick slammed the door shut. Irving’s jaw dropped and he banged on the door. “Mr Fitzpatrick, please!”

“Who are you anyway?” Fitzpatrick yelled through the door. Irving stopped banging and, looking up and down the street again, straightened his tie.

“My name is Irving Wilde. I'm Rose’s son.” Fitzpatrick remained silent. After a moment or two, he opened the door again.

“Rose is in trouble?” he asked. Irving looked at his feet.

“You could say that."

“S’pose you better come inside.” Fitzpatrick stepped aside. Irving thanked him and crossed the threshold.

The inside of the house stood in stark contrast to the outside. Irving had expected it to be a mess, but it was neat and perfectly clean. He turned to look at Fitzpatrick, whose appearance was better suited to the overgrown lawn and abandoned Volkswagen. His clothes were dirty and tattered, his hair unwashed and there was a smell of sweat and stale drink about him. There was something familiar about Fitzpatrick that Irving couldn’t quite put his finger on - something about the eyes, he thought, but he didn’t know. If Irving was studying the man whose house he was in, Fitzpatrick was studying the man who was in his house even more closely. His stare made Irving uncomfortable, which he tried to indicate in every way possible without spelling it out, but Fitzpatrick didn’t seem to care. At long last, however, he seemed to have made up his mind about Irving and broke his piercing gaze.

“S’pose I better offer you some coffee,” he said.

“If it isn’t too much trouble…” Irving said, trying to be polite.

“Well, it isn’t not trouble, is it?” Fitzpatrick said gruffly. “Kitchen’s in here.” Irving followed him into a sparsely decorated kitchen; the cupboard doors hadn’t even been painted, Irving noted.

“Mr Fitzpatrick, I’m sorry if this is an inconvenience-.”

“It isn’t not an inconvenience, is it?”

“Then I apologize profusely,” Irving said dryly, “but my mother was very adamant that I find you. She wants to see you.” Fitzpatrick, who had his back to Irving, turned and stared at him, his hand shoved halfway into a jar of instant coffee.

“She here?” he asked, something like hope rising in his eyes.

“No,” said Irving apologetically. “She’s in Los Angeles. She… perhaps we should sit down.”

“Not going to LA because she’s had some sort of idea come into her head,” Fitzpatrick muttered perfectly loud.

“Maybe if you knew what it’s about, you’d change your mind." Much like a defiant teenager, Fitzpatrick slammed two cups of instant coffee onto the kitchen table and sat down with his arms crossed. Irving sat down opposite him.

“D’you know who I am?” Fitzpatrick barked at him.

“Donald Fitzpatrick?”

“Don’t be a smartass. D’you know what business I have with your mother?”

“N-no... I just know she wants to see you. Urgently.”

“Crazy b***h hasn’t even said who I am.” At this, Irving took offence.

“Yeah, but that crazy b***h has a brain tumour, so whatever your business is with her, you should be so lucky she still remembers it,” he spat, slamming his cup down in the same fashion as Fitzpatrick had. Fitzpatrick looked like he had deflated completely.

“She… she dying?” he asked in the softest tone he could muster. Irving nodded.

“Mr Fitzpatrick, I don’t know who you are or why Mother wants to see you so badly, but it took a long time to find you, and it would mean the world to a lonely old woman if you came to LA with me.” Fitzpatrick rubbed his chin pensively.

“How’d we get there?” he asked.

“By car,” Irving said, and added, “unfortunately.”

“As for paying for stuff…”

“It’s all taken care of,” Irving assured him. He rubbed his chin again.

“S’pose if Rose asked, I’ll go.” Irving smiled, sighing with relief.

“Thank you, Mr Fitzpatrick.” He politely finished the dirtiest tasting cup of coffee he’d ever had.

Irving Wilde’s mother was a difficult woman. She was the kind of woman who made a regal impression on people; she was tall and thin, with a long neck and slim, elegant fingers. There was something birdlike about her features, and her skin seemed taut and wrinkled at the same time. When she went out, she always wore black - she found black to be the most sophisticated of all the colours - and she was never seen without pearls around her neck, pearls that she habitually rolled between her long fingers. Her husband, the late John Wilde, came from a long line of very wealthy John Wildes. No one knew for certain where Rose came from, but wealth had certainly become her. Rose Wilde was infamously hard to please.

Rose Wilde was born Rosemary O’Brian into an Irish-American family in Boston. Her parents were hard-working, decent people who tried to provide for their ever-growing family as best they could. There was never enough money to last till the next pay check, but Rose’s mother, Alice, had a knack for cooking dinner for ten from breadcrumbs and turnips. The O’Brians had eight children; they would have had ten but for one miscarriage and Jack, the stillborn. Rose was the youngest, born just a year before Jack. Once Jack had been born and never lived, Alice and her husband, Charlie, lost all interest in having babies.

South Boston, at this time, was teeming with families like the O’Brians: families of Irish descent with hard-working mothers and fathers and far too many children. The Fitzpatricks, however, were different. They had only one child, a son called Donald, Jr. Everybody knew the reason they didn’t have more children was because Mrs Fitzpatrick, Eilís, as she was called, had taken to drink and couldn’t have more children. At least, that’s what they thought they knew. As with all rumours, this was only partly true. Eilís had taken to drink, but it wasn’t her alcoholism that had rendered her unable to have children - it was her inability to have children that had rendered her alcoholic.

Donald Fitzpatrick, Sr. was a gentle man who loved his wife dearly. He was the kind of man whose hair had turned grey in his twenties, and as his appearance had aged, so had his manners. When he met Eilís, she was surprised to find that he was actually two years younger than her. They married only a few months after they’d met (to the disapproval of both sides of the family) and moved into a one bedroom apartment, where they soon set about making babies. It was clear from the start that it would not be easy. Eilís suffered through three miscarriages, enough to drive any woman over the edge, before finally giving birth to Donald, Jr. Trouble didn’t end with Donnie, however.

“There are some… complications,” the obstetrician told Donald, Sr. Eilís was bleeding profusely; the doctors saw no way to save her other than a hysterectomy.

Three miscarriages and losing what she considered to be the very core of her womanhood drove Eilís to heavy drinking and a life of bitterness and depression. Children are quick to discover if they are not wanted, and Donnie was no exception. His mother thought of him as a burden and had as little to do with him as possible, and even though his gentle father loved and cared for him, Donnie would never be able to live his life to the fullest after having felt his own mother’s scorn and rejection, and who could blame him? All children need a mother’s love as well as a father’s love.

Rosemary O’Brian certainly had motherly and fatherly love in abundance, but as the youngest of eight (second youngest if you counted Jack, the stillborn) she could never shake the feeling that her older siblings were being favoured (much like the older siblings couldn’t shake the feeling that their younger brothers and sisters were being spoiled). It was this that brought Donnie Fitzpatrick and Rose O’Brian together: a sense of being overlooked by those they thought mattered most. They met like most kids do, just playing in the park. Over the years, their friendship blossomed. It was a remarkable relationship, and most of the gossiping neighbours assumed they would end up marrying.

Donnie was terrible at sharing his feelings with other people. Even as a teenager, he was quiet, gruff and reclusive. But he knew he was in love with Rosemary, deeply and irrevocably in love. She was the only person he’d met who understood why he was the way he was, the only person who put up with his rough demeanour long enough to get to know him. One of these days, he thought, one of these days I’ll tell her. Or maybe, he imagined, he would just take her by the hand and kiss her right on those soft, pink lips of hers. Donnie daydreamed a lot, and kissing Rose was an often reoccurring daydream. In his imagination, Rose always reciprocated; Donnie could never have imagined how their first kiss would actually end.

One of the perks of being the youngest of eight children is that sneaking out is made easy for you. Rose was an expert at sneaking out after her parents had fallen asleep. Lately, Rosemary had been sneaking out more frequently than usual, and it wasn’t just to see Donnie. She had met someone, a handsome, tall, kind gentleman at the hotel where her mother worked. Rose would sometimes pick up shifts waiting on tables in the restaurant. It wasn’t really work as far as Rose was concerned; the hotel was in the Beacon Hill area of Boston, and therefore attracted a wealthier clientele. Rose thrived in the company of big money, and it was her spontaneity around wealth that first caught John Wilde’s eye.

John Wilde was ten years older than Rose, but the difference in age didn’t matter to either of them. Alice and Charlie did not approve of their romance and took great pains to prevent them from seeing each other, but they didn’t take into consideration Rosemary’s expertise in sneaking out. When her parents had gone to bed, she crept down the stairs of their cramped house and went out the back door. The rest was easy; Beacon Hill was only a bus ride away. John Wilde took her to expensive restaurants and bought her flowers; they went for rides on the swan boats in the Public Garden and shared sweet kisses hidden behind flowerbeds and willow trees. It was just what Rose had always dreamed of, and when John asked if she would come back to California with him and be his wife, she said yes and spent the night with him, happily allowing him to take her virginity.

Donnie knew nothing about this new love of Rose’s. It had been a while since they saw each other, longer than usual, and Donnie was planning to make this night unforgettable. He had taken a job cleaning rich people’s gutters and saved up money to take Rose for a boat ride in the Public Garden. She always talked about those damn swan boats, so now he would take her to go on one. Then he would take her by the hand and kiss her. He looked at his reflection in the mirror and decided to comb his hair one more time. If there was ever a night when everything had to be perfect, that night was tonight.

She looked perfect, like she always did. When he said he was taking her to the Public Garden, she was surprised to say the least. It was lovely, she told him when they stepped ashore after their boat ride. Donnie was disappointed in her reaction; he had thought she would be thrilled after all that she had said about those damn swan boats. For a moment they stood quietly, awkwardly waiting for the other to speak. Donnie decided it was now or never; he took her by the hand and kissed her. Her lips were softer than he could ever have dreamed, but there was no reciprocation.

“Oh, Donnie…” she said and looked at her feet. “I wish you hadn’t.”

“I wish you had,” Donnie said. He felt like something was compressing his chest.

“I couldn’t, Donnie.” A tear trickled down her cheek.

“Why?” he asked and boldly added, “I love you, Rosemary.”

“Don’t you get it? I love someone else." They fell quiet for a moment. "We’re running away together.”

“What?” This was not what he had expected.

“He’s taking me to Los Angeles,” she said. “We’re getting married.”

And that is just what they did. One night Rosemary snuck out of the cramped house in South Boston only to never return. In Los Angeles, she changed her name to Rose Wilde and quickly settled in to her new husband’s sumptuous lifestyle. It wasn’t long, however, before she realised that once they were married, John Wilde felt no need to romance her like he had done in Boston. She began to grow lonely. John seemed forever busy with work, forever entertaining important guests he didn’t want Rose to meet. It would bore her, he said. Maybe, she thought, I’ve made a mistake. More and more often she would feel a longing for her family, their house in South Boston and, most of all, for Donnie.

In Boston, Donnie was completely unaware that Rose’s marriage hadn’t turned out to be the picture perfect dream she had hoped. He was, however, working on a plan. All he needed was enough money to get to LA. Bus tickets were fairly cheap. It would take a long time to travel across the country by bus, and he would have to make numerous stops along the way, but it didn’t matter. If he could get to LA, if he could only get to Rose, all would be well. He would convince her she had made a mistake, and she would leave her husband, who Donnie was sure she didn’t really love anyway. Then they would go off somewhere exciting together: maybe New York, maybe San Francisco, maybe New Orleans. They would have children, and Rose would be the mother Donnie never had.

It just so happened that when Donnie came knocking on the Wildes’ door, John Wilde was away on business. Rose was having an unusually bad day, and when she saw Donnie all she felt was relief. It was raining, and Donnie was soaking wet.

“Oh, Donnie!” she said and threw her arms around him. “You’re soaking wet, come inside! I’ll lend you some of John’s clothes.” She led him through their spacious house, up the stairs to the master bedroom. He took her by the hand and kissed her; this time, she reciprocated. They made love in her husband’s bed.

Donnie woke to find himself alone. After a few wrong-turns, he found Rose in the kitchen. She looked so small next to the large marble counters and kitchen appliances. For a moment he pretended this was their life, that they were the ones who were married and that John Wilde had never existed. He smiled, but Rose didn’t smile back. The expression on her face was one he had seen before, in the Public Garden in Boston.

“I’m afraid I made a terrible mistake,” she said. Donnie couldn’t bear to look at her, so he turned around and walked out of her house. He would never let his heart deceive him again, he told himself as he got on a bus to San Francisco. It was the last time they saw each other - at least it was for many years to come.

When John Wilde came home from work one day three months later, he found his wife curled up on the sofa, crying.

“I’m pregnant,” Rose told him.

“My dear Rosie, that’s wonderful!” John exclaimed. “Why in hell are you crying?” Because it’s not yours, Rose thought.

“I’m just so happy,” she said instead. Her husband lifted her up in his arms and kissed her softly on the cheek.

Six months later, Irving was born. On paper, his name was Irving Wilde, but in Rose’s heart he bore the name Fitzpatrick. Every time she looked into her son’s eyes, she was reminded of the biggest mistake she had ever made.

“Well, Harry, you were right,” Irving said to his brother. Fitzpatrick had asked to make a stop at a gas station (he needed to use the bathroom and was, in his own words, “not a goddamn dog that pisses on any goddamn tree that’s available”), so Irving had taken the opportunity to call ahead from the gas station’s pay phone. “He was right where you said he would be.”

“Gee, Irv, you don’t need to sound so surprised,” Harry said. Harry, who was three years younger than Irving, was a successful lawyer by day and a joke of a private investigator by night.

“Boy, you should see where this guy lives. The house was falling apart! I don’t know what mom wants with him.”

“She’s still not telling me who he is,” Harry muttered.

“S’pose we’ll find out soon enough. We should be in LA in a couple of hours. Get her ready, will you? She’ll be wanting her pearls.”

The drive from San Francisco to LA had been a very quiet one. They’d stopped for the night at a motel that was half-full and had a one-legged receptionist. Fitzpatrick had asked him how he lost his leg, and when the receptionist told him he and his wife had been shot by burglars (the wife didn’t survive), he offered his condolences. It was the most Irving had heard Fitzpatrick say in one breath since he’d met him. They had burgers and fries at a roadside diner that was only a stone’s throw away from the motel. Fitzpatrick ate with great appreciation, as if he hadn’t had a hamburger for years.

“You look familiar,” Fitzpatrick said without looking up from his dinner.

“I was thinking the same thing about you,” Irving said.

“Funny,” said Fitzpatrick in a way that conveyed no humour at all.

“How do you know my mother?”

“I knew her in Boston." This struck Irving as odd - his mother hated everything about Boston.

They reached Los Angeles sometime in the late afternoon. Rose had asked to see Fitzpatrick as soon as they’d arrived, so Irving drove to his mother’s house. Fitzpatrick recognized the house perfectly well. There was a strange, tugging sensation in his chest; he wasn’t sure if it meant he should turn and run, or that he was pleased about the prospect of seeing Rose again. Irving showed him upstairs - nothing much had changed since the first time he’d visited - and stopped him outside the closed door of the master bedroom.

“Now, Mr Fitzpatrick,” Irving said, “if you knew my mother in Boston it must’ve been quite some time since you saw her. I don’t know what she was like back then, but her… illness makes her very tired and a bit scatter-brained at times.”

“Alright,” Fitzpatrick said. Irving tried to think of something else to say, but there was nothing, so he opened the door and showed their guest inside.

“Irving, my dear Irving!” Rose sat in bed, propped up by numerous pillows. Her arms were stretched out; Irving gave her a hug and a kiss.

“Hello, mother,” he said affectionately. “I brought you Mr Fitzpatrick from San Francisco.” Rose looked over his shoulder, her eyes searching the room.

“Donnie,” she said, “at last.” Fitzpatrick walked over to the foot of the bed. Irving was surprised to see he was smiling.

“Hello, Rosemary."

“You were always the only man brave enough to call me Rosemary.” She raised a warning finger. She looked at Irving, her smile fading. “Well? Harry is in the kitchen. I think sandwiches would be appropriate. Run along, now, Irving!” Irving opened his mouth to protest, but a warning glance from his mother was enough to send him on his way.

“You’re in your element,” Fitzpatrick said. Rose laughed.

“I suppose Irving told you I’m dying?” She smoothed an invisible crease on her sheets.

“Yes."

“Come sit, Donnie." She patted a spot next to her on the bed. Fitzpatrick knew better than to disobey. “You do understand, don’t you, Donnie, that Irving is your son.”

“I knew he looked familiar,” was all he said. Rose smiled.

“Will you do me a favour?”

“Coming here wasn’t a favour?” She raised her eyebrows.

“See that chest of drawers over there?” she said and pointed. “In the top left drawer, there are three wooden boxes. Two are marked I and H, for Irving and Harry. One isn’t marked at all. Bring me that one - be a doll.” He fetched the box and gave it to her; she ran her fingers over the wood.

“I realised, Donnie, that I made a terrible mistake many years ago. You see, I thought what I wanted was to be married to someone like John. Boy, Donnie, was I wrong about that.”

“Oh, really?” Donnie kept his eyes on the box.

“Oh, yes. What I really wanted was to be married to you.”

“Isn’t that something?” he said.

“It sure is something." Her eyes sought his, but he stared resolutely at the wooden box. “Here I am on my deathbed, and all I want now, Donnie, is for you to look at me.” This was hard for him to do. I will not let my heart deceive me, he thought, and looked up at her face.

“Here we are on your deathbed, and I’m looking at you, Rose.” She reached out her hand and cradled his cheek. How long had he waited to feel her touch again?

“Well, I used to think people begging for forgiveness like this was flat out corny, but the thing is, it’d be nice if you could forgive me. It’d be the bee’s knees, if you did, because I think I could forgive myself if you forgave me first.”

“It would be the cat’s pyjamas, wouldn’t it?”

“The cat’s meow, even,” she agreed. “When I die, Donnie, when I’m dead and buried, it’d be swell if you could open this box. See, I’ve taken to writing lately, and there are some letters for you in here. But no peeking!”

“Cross my heart." He took the box.

“And hope to die?” She winked. “Oh, Donnie, I’m so sorry. I really am. Can you ever forgive me?”

“Did you think I wouldn’t? Can't you see that I love you? Do you see there is nothing I wouldn’t forgive you for?”

“Gosh,” she said and broke into tears, “it sure is nice to hear you say that. Do you know that I love you too? Isn’t that just swell?”

“Just swell,” he said and gave her a kiss. “If only you’d thought of it a bit sooner.”

Rose died in her sleep. Donnie was lying next to her when she went, and after she’d gone he held her very tightly and whispered words of love and grief into her ear. Then, he cried for a very long time; he cried for Rose, her boys, his boy Irving; for the time they could’ve had and the life that should have been theirs. It seemed unfair to him that some people have it all and never know it - people like his mother who had a husband she loved and a child she had fought for, only to toss it all aside like a used tissue and drink her life away. It was unfair that John Wilde had stolen Rose away from Boston, that he’d been the one to feel her arms around him when Donnie was the one who truly loved her. It was unfair that John Wilde had raised Donnie’s son, and that Irving would never look at Donnie with the same love and admiration that he had in his eyes when he spoke of John Wilde. All of these things were wildly unfair, but what was most unfair was that Rose had been taken away from them.

Donnie opened the wooden box Rose had given him after her funeral. There were hundreds of letters in it, it seemed. When Rose had said she’d taken to writing lately, she meant she had been writing him letters for just over forty years, since before Irving was born. She had documented everything about her life, and even more about Irving’s life (“He’s named his teddy bear Don! Isn’t that just the bee’s knees?”). She had included pictures of her son, from the day he was born to the day he was forty, there was a picture for every occasion, every milestone of Irving’s life. Donnie picked up a picture of five-year-old Irving blowing out the candles on his birthday cake while his mother beamed with pride. Looking closer, he realised why Irving had seemed so familiar to him: Irving had his father’s eyes.

© 2012 JLe

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Samuel Dickens

Your writing is remarkable--some of the best I've seen on this site. A very skilled writer who also has the gift of the story-teller--that's you.
Now, a bit of constructive criticism, if you don't mind. You say "Irving said", and "He said", etc quite a lot. As you adhere to the "new speaker new line" rule, I think you could omit a few of them, especially when dealing with only two speakers.
I spotted a few typos--HALLWAY instead of HALFWAY, and then "isn't not".