A Reunion
JEAN STAFFORD
L
IKE
cooled-off lovers meeting again after a long separation, we
were' excessively courteous.
y.,r
e plied 'our interrogations with a well–
bred inattention to their answers and we diligently observed all those
amenitie.s which are calculated to tame a difficult encounter. My
father's letter (his calligraphy, I had noted, had neither become less
neat nor more mature) had .not stated his reason for inviting me to
visit him. Moreover, in my reply, I had not told him why I was
accepting, and I concluded that we were each activated by no mor.e
than curiosity, as the lovers would be, to know what alterations the
years had accomplished in the other.
I learned that for seven years my father had, as usual, done a
little reading, been occasionally
ill,
entertained a few guests, and had
largely spent his time gardening. He learned that I had had an .equal
share of bad and good luck. Throughout the first hour of our reunion,
coinciding happily (and by no means accidentally) with dinner, we
exchanged, like the calling cards of strangers, the names of his guests
and the names of the places where I had lived. We pursued the recent
tributaries of our lives and never once returned to seek the old
meanderings of our mutual experience.
Proud of his garden and because there was a full moon that
night, my father took me out after our coffee to show me the gladiolas
and the dahlias which had commenced to bloom a week or so before.
As
he stooped amongst them to caress their petals, I noticed for the
first time that he was an old man. Livid and sharp as one of
his
trees
in winter, his large and noble nose and
his
insistent cheekbones had
been uncovered nearly to the skeleton, yet, elsewhere, particularly in
the hands that quivered as they reached toward the flowers, the skin
was too ample an integument and stood up in limp ridges over the
bones. He was a small man. Now he seemed even smaller, and he had
dried up everywhere save in his brown eyes. He was like one of the
bearded weeds that every summer invaded
his
garden; had I touched
his skin, I thought, I would have found it harsh like the hollyhock
leaf. Into
his
voice, which had always been half an octave higher
