Deena Goldstone - Surprise Me

“Stefan!”

“Hey, Dad. How’s it goin’?” his son called as he neared, as if they had seen each other the previous week instead of almost five years ago. He looked pretty much the same — scruffy, unkempt, wearing old jeans and a zip-up sweatshirt with the arms missing.

“What are you doing here?”

“Visiting you.”

Daniel took Stefan into town with him and they sat at his customary round table in Bev’s Bakery and Stefan started talking and didn’t stop. Fairly quickly Daniel understood that his son had “found God,” or a reasonable facsimile as far as Stefan was concerned.

“It’s like this, Dad. When the car broke down in Youngstown, it wasn’t some kind of random thing.”

“What were you doing in Youngstown?”

“On my way back to Colorado Springs. That’s where I was going.”

“Oh, Stefan…” Daniel murmurs.

“But there was a plan in place that was so much bigger than me.”

“Really?”

“See, I had to stay there and get the car fixed, but I didn’t have the money for a new transmission, of course, and so I had to find some sort of job to make the money, you know, and there we had the same old problem of me finding a job, so what could I do? I hadda sorta start asking people on the street to help me.”

“You mean as in panhandling?”

“Well…that’s an old-fashioned word, Dad. Not so good.”

“Okay, how’s begging —is that better?”

Stefan put a hand on Daniel’s shoulder, calm, not rising to the bait as he would have in years past. “Wait a minute, Dad, here’s where the story gets better.”

Daniel sat back in his chair and looked around for Bev. Maybe she could come over and bring them some more coffee or talk to Stefan about something else entirely, because Daniel distinctly didn’t want to hear the rest of this story. But Bev was busy with customers, and so Daniel had no choice but to say, “Well, I hope so.” And that sparked another nonstop monologue from his son.

“So I’m walking back and forth in front of this sort of restaurant holding a paper cup. You know, so people could put coins in, or if they’re really nice a dollar bill here and there, and this guy comes up to me and the first thing he does is put some change in my cup and then he says, ‘Have you eaten lately?’ You get that, Dad, he’s interested in whether I’ve had something to eat.”

“A kind person.”

“Yes!” And Stefan’s eyes were shining. “Exactly! So I go with him into the restaurant and he buys me lunch and then he takes me back to the place he works and shows me this sort of dormitory with lots of cots lined up in rows and tells me I can sleep there if I need to. And I did. I was, like, exhausted ’cause I’d been sleeping in doorways and out in parks, you know.”

Daniel was now even more uncomfortable with where this was going but he said nothing, and his son continued talking.

“So when I wake up, this guy, his name is Peter Fairchild, comes to get me and takes me to this meeting room, there in the building, and that’s when I find out that I have been rescued, in more ways than one, by this charity called Trustings.” And here Stefan spoke the next sentence like a mantra: “ ‘We trust ourselves, we trust each other.’ Have you heard of it?”

“Should I have?”

“Well, maybe not here in rural New Hampshire, but in any big city, sure. We’re nationwide!”

Daniel nodded, and that was enough for Stefan to continue describing what sounded suspiciously like a cult, or at least an offshoot of the seventies version of a cult, est, founded by that charlatan Werner Erhard.

Stefan had been living there since, taking “classes,” learning about the “personal blocks” to his success.

“That’s what they talk about a lot, Dad — what are our personal blocks to our success? How we all have unresolved issues, you know, things that keep us from the ultimate. That’s what we’re all striving for—‘the ultimate’—don’t you think, Dad? Like your personal blocks are pretty obvious.”

“Really?” If it were anyone else but his son, Daniel would have been up and out of Bev’s Bakery in a heartbeat — he doesn’t listen to this kind of psychobabble — but he didn’t move. He told himself that his son was reaching out and he had to stay put and listen.

“Well, your agoraphobia, for one. That’s a pretty big block.”

“And there’s more, I presume?”

“Well, yeah, and that’s why I’m here.”

“To list all my blocks?”

“No, no.” And here Stefan actually chuckled. “To help you get past one of your major blocks.”

“And that would be?”

“Alina.”

“Oh.” And just her name jolted Daniel, and Stefan saw it, and so sat back and was quiet for a minute, to let the air clear before his final statement.

“I’m here to broker a deal between you and Alina,” he said quietly, but with confidence. “That’s what we call it—‘broker a deal.’ ”

—

LATER THAT DAY DANIEL FINDS HIMSELF sitting in Alina’s white-on-white living room, with Stefan on one side of him and Alina standing across the room, leaning against the fireplace, her arms crossed defiantly. Stefan is the only one of the three who is cheerful. Unnaturally so.

“Think of your own personal blocks like those blocks of stone that make up your fireplace, Alina.”

She says nothing. Her scowl deepens.

“They’re big,” Stefan continues, unfazed by his sister’s obvious hostility. “Sometimes they’re boulders, much too heavy to move by yourself. So we help each other move our personal blocks. Dad is your personal block—”

“Oh, please, Stefan,” Alina finally says. “If you expect me to participate in some kind of—”

“Let’s let Stefan finish,” Daniel says gently.

“Oh, thanks, Dad! I knew you’d see the sense of this!”

“I wouldn’t go that far, but you came all this way, so I think your sister and I should give you a fair hearing.”

“Okay, so Dad, you’re Alina’s personal block and she’s yours, and the only thing to do is for each of you to say why and then put your shoulders together to move the blocks.” Stefan says all this as if it’s self-evident. He’s smiling with accomplishment, so pleased with himself.

“Ladies first,” Daniel says.

“Stefan, this is complete drivel,” Alina says without a moment’s consideration. Case closed. Discussion over, as far as she’s concerned. And she walks swiftly across the room, reaches for the door into her studio, ready to be gone from this tinderbox of emotion.

But Stefan stops her. “Please,” he says, placing a hand on her arm, “we need to talk as a family. You need to tell Dad why you’re so mad at him.”

And Alina turns slowly, very slowly, and looks at her father, a large man with his forearms on his thighs, his hands hanging between his knees, his eyes searching out hers.

“Stefan, you don’t want to do this.” Her voice is low, heavy with warning.

“All three of us. It’s our work. It’s what we have to do. Tell Dad why you’re so angry.”

Alina shakes her head, but Stefan pushes. “Tell him! Go on! He can take it. You need to give it! Talk!”

“I’m not just angry at him, I’m furious, I’m livid, incensed, enraged, irate! Okay, you got it? You heard it? Now leave me alone.” And she tries to push past her brother, to escape into her studio, to be done with all this, but he won’t let her.

“You need to tell him why.”

“Why?” And it’s then that her tightly controlled demeanor cracks and words gush forth from her mouth like an explosion. “Because he left us! That’s why. Isn’t that enough for you? Abandonment!” She’s yelling now. “One day he was there and the next, gone! Without any explanation, without a thought for what we might have been feeling. You don’t remember because you were too young, but I remember! Every day, every hour I would pray to God — yes, I used to do that — please, God, if I am very good and cause no trouble to anyone and honor you and do my chores, then he”—and here she points at Daniel, sitting motionless, absorbing every vitriolic word she’s hurling—“he will come walking up the front path to our apartment house and open the front door and sweep me up into his arms and tell me it was all a mistake and he will be there forever and forever and he will never leave. But no! All that mattered was what he wanted. All that mattered was his life! We were just kids — we were expendable! He didn’t think of us when he upped and left, and we didn’t matter all those years after when we never heard from him and he almost never visited and he certainly never came and got us, now did he? Is that enough ‘why’ for you, Stefan?!” And with that, Alina shoves Stefan aside rudely and flees into her studio and slams the door shut.