One day around Christmas, when I studied in college graduating class, I came home for the holidays. Parents were going on holidays in Boston, and I stayed two brothers to look for a shop. The day before the trip my father took me into his office, situated at the rear of the store. The room was so small that it fit a piano and a couch. Bed supply was nowhere to go, otherwise we would sit on the floor or near the piano. His father went to the piano and took from the back wall of the box from under the cigars. Opening it, he showed me clippings from newspaper articles. At that time I was reading a detective Nancy Drew, so the clippings of newspaper articles are not made right impression on me.
- What is it? - I wondered.
- This article written by me and several letters to the editor that were published - seriously answered his father.
I read all the newspaper clippings, and under each article was signed "Walter Chapman, Esq.
- Why you never told me about this? "- Surprise me.
- Do not want to know your mother - my father replied. - She has always insisted that I was not educated to write articles. I dreamed of becoming a politician, but she persuaded me. I think she was afraid that the failure crushing me. However, I am writing articles in magazines and newspapers, but keep it a secret from her. I decided that one day I will give this box to the closest person that is you.
After you have read, I looked at my father and noticed that his eyes shining tears.
- Yes, I dreamed of a better percentage, - he said.
- And in the last time you sent somewhere article? - I asked.
- Yes, I sent a few of their comments and suggestions in a religious magazine on the more careful selection of members of the church committee - said the father. - But it has been three months and the answer I had not yet received.
I do not know how to comfort my beloved father, the talents and aspirations which had not even suspected.
- Wait, maybe the answer will come soon - I said.
- All right, all right - smiling and winking at me, "he said, closed-box, a cigar and put it behind the piano.
The next morning our parents got on a bus, next to the railway station, Haverhill, from where trains depart for Boston, and my brothers were in the store. All day I was thinking about a cigar box and the passion for his father. Brethren, I nothing said, I wanted the mystery of his father he did not know anybody. Mystery box of cigars belonged only to me.
In the evening I looked out the window shop and suddenly saw his mother coming out of the bus. She was alone, without a father. His mother crossed the area, and quickly went to the door of our shop.
- What happened? - Chorused my brothers. - Where is father?
- Father died - in tears, she replied, and went to the kitchen. At painful amazement we followed her mother. It
told me that when they walked through the crowd to move through the station Park Street, his father suddenly fell. A woman, obviously, the nurse bent over him, and then, glancing at her and said: "He's dead."
Mother speechless stood over his father's body lying motionless, and the people, bypassing them, hurrying about their business. Came up and the priest said: "I'll call the police" - and disappeared. His mother stood beside his father for nearly an hour until he finally came to the ambulance. His body was taken to the morgue, and his mother drove him to pick up personal belongings. Then she sat on a bus and returned home.
When my mother told us about his father's death, her voice and her hands trembled, but she did not cry, trying to restrain himself. We have always admired her composure.
Soon came into the store buyer and asked us:
- And where the old man?
- He died - I replied.
- Oh, Lord ... - Muttered by the buyer.
I never thought about his father as an old man, and the problem customer I was unpleasantly surprised. However, on reflection I concluded that he was right: my father was 70 years old, and mother - 60. But my father never complained about his health, looked cheerful and happy ... And now he was gone. I never hear his jokes, songs that he sang softly in the evening closing the shutters of the shop. "Old Man" left us.
On the morning of the funeral I was sitting at a table in the store, looking through cards of condolences sent on the death of her father, and laying them in a scrapbook. Suddenly my eye fell on the latest issue of the religious magazine that was lying on the table. Normally I never look in those magazines, considering them to be boring, but at that time decided to look through it. But suddenly there was printed an article my father? And really found it!
I grabbed the magazine, ran into her father's study, closed the door and burst into tears, Actually, I always try to keep myself in hand, but an article on me a deep impression. I read it and wept, her tears. Then pulled out the piano cigar box and found a letter among the clippings on two pages, addressed to my father, in which the editor thanking him for sending me the proposal. At the bottom was the signature: Henry Cabot senior.
Have passed since many years, but I still had not told anyone about the box from under the cigars. Let it remain our secret with her father.
/ Florence Littauer /
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