Chapter 74
His father wrote again when Marcus was forty-six. The second letter in his life. Winston was seventy-two, in Toronto, with a daughter from a second marriage and a grandchild he mentioned with what seemed like genuine warmth.
He had read the second book. He had seen Marcus's name somewhere an interview in a Caribbean newspaper, a mention in a diaspora publication and had bought the book and read it.
The letter was longer than the first one had been, thirty years ago. It was not an apology, exactly or it was an apology that came in the form of acknowledgement rather than direct statement, which Marcus understood was the language available to a man who had never had practice in the direct kind.
He wrote that he had made choices he could not undo. He wrote that the book had made him understand what those choices had cost and what Marcus's mother had carried. He wrote that he was proud of Marcus, knowing he had no right to the pride and offering it anyway as something Marcus could do with what he chose.
Marcus sat with the letter for a week. He showed it to Nia.
'What do you want to do?' she said.
He thought about it carefully. He thought about what he had told his students about forgiveness that it was not the same as approval, not the same as reconciliation, not the same as welcoming someone back into a position they had vacated. It was something you did for yourself, to free yourself from the weight of the unresolved.
He wrote back. He wrote briefly and honestly. He said: I received your letter. I understand what it cost to write. I hold no anger toward you. I want you to know that I have had a good life. A genuinely good life. The absence of you in my early years was something my mother and Auntie Beverley and others more than filled. I want for you what I want for all people: that your remaining years are full of something that matters.
He sent it. He did not expect a reply and did not receive one.
He wrote in his journal: 'The clean ending. Not the warm one. The clean one is the honest one and sometimes the honest one is what there is. That is enough.