The Greatest Story Ever Told

Gill didn’t know why she wanted to save her father, but she did. The happy memories she had were bright spots in her mind. The white toy elephant he gave her after his trip to Arizona. She realized now he probably got it at the airport, one of those last-ten-minute gifts for your child you forgot to get. Nevertheless, she remembered holding the elephant in the air, and Jacob kissed her on the forehead, and then kissed her mother Adrienne. She looked at the elephant now seated next to the alarm clock on her bedside table. It was drooping, one ear nearly detached, one foot stained with coffee Adrienne spilled in the car. Gill picked it up, smiled, and then put it in a shoebox in her closet.

–

Gill was sitting at the top of the yellow slide at the park near their house. She looked at the orange sun and the green leaves on the tree in front of her view. Her eyes could see its heat and her skin could feel its warmth. She slid down the slide, giggling and screaming.

“Mom! Dad!”

Gill looked up to see their response but there was none. She looked at her parents sitting on a bench beside the park, they were smiling and laughing, nuzzling into each other as close as they could get. Adrienne’s green eyes were an emerald in the setting sun. Jacobs brown hair was on fire in the light. There was a radiating energy around them too, Gill could tell. Not an energy that could be seen, but rather felt and the visual of the waves could be imagined around them. Gill looked upon her parents and thought her fate would be the same as theirs. She would grow up, and fall in “love” or whatever that was called, and she would be happy. She skipped over to her parents.

“Mom, Dad, I love you.”

“We love you too, honey.” 

–

Adrienne made pancakes and eggs, and placed Aunt Jemima’s maple syrup next to Gill’s plate.

“When am I going to see Dad?” Gill asked. Adrienne choked on her coffee. 

“Now’s not the time to talk about that, hun.”

“Why not? I haven’t seen Dad in 3 months.”

“He’s away right now.”

“You told me that, but not where.”

“If I knew I would tell you.”

“Where’s my letter?” Adrienne took a long drag of her coffee and refilled the pot. 

“I was going to bring it to him.” Gill clambered. 

“You know where he is!”

“Yes–”

“Where?”

“He’s not ready to see you, hun.”

“Oh…” Gill’s eyes drooped to the table. She’d barely touched her eggs. Adrienne settled beside her and rubbed her back. 

“It’s not your fault honey. Dad is having a tough time with things going on in his head. He’ll be back. He’ll be back.”

“I want to help him.”

You can’t, Gill. The moment the brownstone shoots through the needle and into the veins, it clutches you with a monstrous God hand that never unclenches its grasp. The only way to get out is by giving up a part of yourself. She’d seen it with her uncle.

“The reason I want to give your letter to him is for that reason. I believe you will.”

“I’m going to write another!”

–

Adrienne walked into Gill’s room with a sober ambience and a creased brow. “What’s wrong, Mom?” Gill asked. Adrienne settled down next to Gill. 

“It’s your father.” Gill felt the tide waver behind her eyes. 

“It was about time Mom.” Her father was as absent as the moon in the morning. When she thought of him, the memory was as faded as when you do see it. 

“It’s not that, Gill. He phoned me, and he said he wants to see us again. He said he wants to set everything right, that he was selfish and obsessive over his dream that it blinded him into chasing something that wasn’t as important as us. Do you forgive him, Gill, do you?”

Gill saw the tears gather in her mother’s eyes. Of course she forgave him. He’s the only father she ever had. She remembered the nights they’d stay up watching Family Feud and the cotton candy ice cream that would put her to bed. She’d wake up in her yellow quilt comforter, not remembering how she got there, but knowing that her dad carried her in his arms and kissed her goodnight and wished sweet dreams to her. Gill knew that her dad loved her, and she knew that she loved him. 

“Yes, Mom.” Adrienne wiped a stream of tears from the left side of her cheek. 

“You want to see him?”

“Yes, Mom.”

“Ok, Honey.”

–

Jacob sat on a bench in a park beside Gill and Adrienne’s house. The few dollars and coins he had saved bought him a disposable razor and a travel sized shaving cream. He slicked his hair back with water, and he found an oversized collared shirt and undersized pair of pants for two dollars in the Goodwill bin. 

Jacob was more nervous than the day his ex-wife gave birth. As his knees bounced up and down against the concrete table, he wondered if Gill would even recognize him. He wondered if Adrienne would look at him in disgust. He wondered if they both only agreed to meet him so they could tell him how horrible of a father and husband he was. 

They did say yes, after all, and it was wrong to assume that Adrienne and Gill could hold such contempt in their heart. The fact they were meeting with him at all was a good sign, even if it was only out of pity. 

Where did I go wrong? As Jacob looked out at the family birthday party across the park, he thought about the vanity required to leave your family to write a novel. How selfish could I be? When his college professor told him the importance of writing The Greatest Story Ever Told: 

You must pour the entirety of your being into the little pages, to encapsulate a small universe in leather bindings. Other stories have written cities, countries, worlds, solar systems, and even galaxies, but none have gone as far as the universe. A story that can be told across space and time, a story that is told by infinity.

Jacob thought at the time that only he could have the power to harness a universe. The universe, an infinite entity, in the palm of his hand. Perhaps, with the responsibility he assigned himself, he inherited all the greed of the universe as well.

Jacob almost sat up to leave when he saw them. Gill’s blond hair, waving with brown streaks in the sunlight. She was tall now, too tall. Jacob started to cry realizing all the time that had passed when she had grown from the little girl in his memory to her now. Adrienne, too, her dark hair and olive oil skin was a sight like he discovered one of the wonders of the world again. They approached him. Gill in a blue dress, and Adrienne in a black shirt and black jeans. 

The wind blew Gill’s loose locks across her face. Her eyes met his and she looked down at the ground. They sat in silence for a minute until Jacob worked up the courage to say, “Hi, Gill.”

“Hey, Dad,” Gill looked up at him then back at her feet, “Are you sober?”

“Yes, Honey.”

“How long?”

“Almost three years.” 

“Ok.” She paused. Her eyes were like lonely oceans. “I don’t know if I can see you all the time. It hurts me when I see you, and think about you. I thought you were dead when Mom and I found you in the camp with needle scabs in your arms. Sometimes I wish that you were.”

Jacob’s eyes welled. “I didn’t know you were there.” 

“I was. But it’s okay, Dad. It will be hard, but I can see you every now and then.” 

Jacob's heart swelled inside. He thought these were the greatest words his ears ever relayed to his brain, and he thought this sight was the greatest thing his eyes ever laid on. Who allowed me to be this lucky? Jacob wiped a loose tear from his face. “Thank you, Honey,” he paused, “You don’t have to see me at all, I would understand. I’ll still think about you and love you from wherever I am. I don’t need to see you for both of those to be true. My world spins because you live on it.”

Gill smiled. “Ok, Dad.” It was an eternal smile, one that might’ve existed since the beginning of time. “Mom is waiting for me. I better go.” 

“Ok, Honey, here’s where to find me.” Jacob handed her an address to an empty lot he was to move his stuff to. Gill walked away and Adrienne approached him. 

“I almost didn’t let you see her.”

“I’m happy that you did.” 

“You left me to raise her on my own. You know how selfish you are Jacob?”

“I know Adrienne, you have to believe me that I know. I thought within my hands I had a story that should be told to everyone, and I needed to be on my own to finish it.”

“You thought it could support us financially?”

“No, I just wanted someone to read it, even if they found it after we died.”

“You never could put anyone before yourself, could you Jacob?”

“Back then, no. I’ve changed Adrienne. In my desertion of you two, I realized how much I want to be with the both of you. I felt myself weighed down by this responsibility to write the Greatest Story Ever Told, and even though I reached for you both I could barely raise a finger. That weight is gone now, Adrienne, and I’m hurtling through space towards you.”

“How do I know that’s real?”

“Because, the most important things in the universe are love and beauty. You, and Gill, are both. I’m almost finished with the story, and I will get a job as a high school teacher and submit it to journals and agents. If I don’t get it published, I will ask Gill to keep submitting for me. I want to come back, Adrienne, but I understand if it takes time.” 

“It will, Jacob. I’ve always loved you, but this will take time. We know where to find you now. Goodbye.” 

“Goodbye.”

–

Gill didn’t know why she wanted to save her father, she wasn’t even sure that she loved him. As he laid on his hospital bed after another overdose, there was no pain to be felt. He had left her, neglected to raise her, and financially and emotionally troubled her mom.

Something in the blood between the three of them kept them connected. Certain DNA strands, but also a metaphysical bond. The strings that bond them are forged by the fire of universal love. When people are in the universe together, of a common make up, love will outlast anything they face. 

Earlier in the night, Jacob told Gill to finish his manuscript if he were to die. Gill dismissed him but in her head she thought, Are you fucking serious? Finish the novel that ruined our family? Ruined you? There was nothing to be finished because none of what he wrote mattered. They were all going to wilt away under the same sun as it cracked their skin and bones the same way it would crack the leather and the paper of a book that no one read. 

“None of it fucking matters, Dad.”

Of course none of it matters, Gill. Only you. As I draw my last breaths, I see the thoughts that passed through my brain were only an illusion painted by the artists before us. Nothing I held dear was my own. Yet you existed outside of me, a nebula of love and beauty that I couldn’t even fathom to grasp. The reason I lived was purely to witness you. You were my moon. My Greatest Story Ever Told.

“Gill.”

“Dad?”

My story has come to an end.