A Long Healing Come Slowly

ONE: NEWS

March 6th, Monday, 1967

Michael turned the handle timidly on the solid oak door and entered as he had done for years. Dolores Hernandez, Stephen Lloyd’s secretary for that past twenty years, looked up from the pending duties spread before her. “Hello, Michael. Come on in and have a seat. It’ll be a few minutes. Your father’s in a meeting.”

Dolores wore her coal-black wavy hair up in a bun this afternoon revealing a familiar oval shaped head. Her smooth and attractive ebony face had gracefully aged, as some faces age during her tenure at Lloyd International. Her maturity complimented the woman Michael thought of as his second mother. As an infant, his mother, Susan, loved to bring him to the office to show off Michael’s latest outfit, his newest growth spurt or trick, or to let them hear his adorable gibberish. Even as a toddler, he loved touching Dolores’s face. While sitting on her lap he’d shove his stubby fingers between her square, white teeth, prompting her to curl her thin lips around his small fists and blow. These funny noises made him laugh out loud. Michael had come to know the tenderness of the dark faced woman, to smell her body and perfume so that she, like Susan, bore a fragrance he welcomed among his most enduring remembrances. Dolores even changed his diaper when that task needed an experienced hand and his mother was preoccupied with his father.

A large, single, Akoya pearl with a pinkish hue dotted each of Dolores’s ear lobes, and the matching pearl necklace set her dark blue suit in fierce contrast to her day’s dress. Each added to the woman a Victorian charm and lent the impression that she thought each visitor was important to the Lloyd Empire. The whole of Dolores Hernandez conferred to the office an atmosphere of regality. Rarely had a day passed without Michael easing into the office just to experience her presence and those tangible and intangible qualities she brought to his father’s and his own world.

And so, today, Michael stood before her focusing on her left pearl earring to keep his emotions under control. Dolores’s graceful but worry lined neck, almost hidden by those pearls, sat upon firm shoulders not yet slumped with the accumulated weight that each year brought to most women’s lives. Dolores noted Michael’s evasive look.

“Come in, Michael,” she repeated, her curiosity rising. “You’re out of school early today, aren’t you?” Dolores’s eyes always brightened to a deeper Congo hue at his presence. Something was wrong.

“Yes, Ma’am.” Michael’s quick and distant answer and the tears forming at the corners of his swollen, red lined eyes sparked deeper concern in the woman behind the desk.

Michael Lloyd stood six foot one and weighed 194 pounds. He too, like his father, played strong safety on the football team, but in baseball, Michael played first base. Those were the facts noted on the players’ programs sold at the games’ concession stands. What wasn’t on the programs was that he kept his dark hair short—team rules, his football helmet fit better when he kept it that length. He was a handsome kid with small, green eyes, and like his father, he was very intelligent. As is often the case, though, life is more than stats. It is pain and wonder and sorrow and joy. Today it was this blunt forced news that attacked him, the communication of his friend’s death. Michael had not even thought to tell Victoria, his girl friend.

Standing front and center before Dolores, she observed the pain in those eyes. Observant to a fault, Dolores detected something else, something more than the usual fissures and blemishes accompanying the late teenage years. Dolores couldn’t remember seeing the severity of such a tempest just below his beautiful facial features. When had she last seen his coat and tie so untidy or his soul in such destitution? The Lord only knew what it was and little escaped her memory. Perhaps he’d wrecked his car? The dog maybe? Mr. Lloyd depended upon these qualities, and they paid handsome dividends when required.

“Mrs. Hernandez, I really need to talk to my father,” he rubbed his right index finger along the edge of her desk. She had long since given up on him calling her Dolores.

‘My father’. Hmmm. It had always just been ‘father’, not ‘my father’, or even ‘dad’. Father wasn’t an option at the Lloyd’s. “Is everything alright, Michael?” she spoke in the certain anticipation that he would share this burden with her—at some point. And with a little of her coaxing he seldom disappointed. Dolores waited, a bit impatiently for Michael’s usual energy and fun and purpose to come bounding into the office following in his wake.

“Yes, Ma’am. I just . . . I needed to . . . uh, . . . to speak with my father.”

He’d said it again, My father. This isn’t good. What can it be? “Let me, um, call him for you. I’m sure he’ll want to talk to you.” Her eyes beckoned to him one final time. They pled to understand what loomed behind this un-Michael like demeanor.

The boy glanced up at the wall clock, and through painful eyes, clouded with the watery mists of the loss of a friend, he thought it registered 11:40. It was close to lunch.

“Mr. Lloyd, I’m sorry to interrupt you, but Michael’s here. I think you should speak to him.” Dolores’s words pulled Michael’s introspection back to the reality he had wrestled all morning not to face.

Michael heard his father’s muffled ‘yes, I’ll be right there,’ through the receiver. Within seconds, Stephen Lloyd opened the heavy meeting room door to greet his son.

Stephen Michael Lloyd, son of the multimillionaire hotel magnet, Marcus Josiah Fonteneau Lloyd, stood 6 foot 2 inches and weighed a touch over 200 pounds. He weighed more when he played football for A&M and before he transferred to TCU where he and Susan were married. That was right before the war. With the ensuing years he’d lost little of his muscled tone, although he worked out several times a week at the health club in the basement of the Fonteneau Building. His semi short, dark brown hair had grayed to a frosty brown since his first years at college. The graying added to his handsome, rugged features.

Three parallel horizontal lines had been etched into his forehead over the years while two deep-set vertical strokes rose above his nose rose. These two creases underlined his more anxious moods, developed from the strains of life.

His eyes, perhaps more than any other facial feature, seized one’s attention. Bottle green, deep set and piercing, they reflected his soul. One must pass through their forbidding regions to gain entrance to the man.

Years of strain added a slight linear ridge to the edges of each eye reaching almost into his hairline. His sturdy nose revealed signs of prolonged athletic wear and tear in college. It had become a bit swollen at the bridge, but wasn’t detracting or self-effacing. His flat cheeks sported two slightly curved vertical lines, the longest met his jaw, and the briefest slashed the cradled his mouth. Neither imposed.

His mouth was a study in intellect and moderation. It projected a thin upper lip with slight dip at the middle. The lower margin was thicker. His rugged chin jutted unobtrusively from his face a modest distance.

No single feature of Stephen’s manly face dominated, and every member, line, and aspect agreed with every other to the benefit of the whole. The slightest hint of a beard shaded the areas between his nose, mouth, and chin. Many a lunch hour had been spent among the general secretarial pool discussing this beautiful man.