Authors: Marjorie Celona
XXII.
Dear Shannon,
I guess first of all thank you for writing. Yes, I am your father. Sorry it took me
so long to get back to you. Never imagined I would hear from you and it took me a
bit to figure out what to say.
Well, hi there. I live twenty minutes north of Niagara Falls with my wife Nancy and
our two sons Kip and Arthur. I work as a mechanic and Nancy stays at home with the
boys but she’s got a little eBay business on the side. The boys are six and two. I
am forty-two years old. I was born in Powell River, left when I was fifteen and never
went back. I have an older brother, Dominic, who I haven’t seen or spoken to in years,
though last I heard he’s moved back home. Our parents died a couple of years ago.
Long-time smokers, both of them. My father worked at the mill. We weren’t close. Speaking
of parents, my wife’s mother is living with us right now. She had a stroke last year
and has dementia. Twice this morning she asked if I was here to deliver a pizza!
Yeah, I’ve got blond hair.
I don’t think there’s anything unusual about my sense of smell. Nothing that I’ve
ever noticed anyway. Does your blindness bother you? You write about it as if it doesn’t.
I keep writing things and then erasing them. It sounds like you’re a lot like me—you’ve
got the wandering spirit. You’re restless. I always had a hard time staying in one
place for too long. Your mother is the opposite way.
Your mother was real sick right after you were born—I mean, sick as in beyond upset,
as in changed. She didn’t abandon you because she didn’t love you. I just want you
to know that. I need to tell you a few things. I hope I can explain this well.
Our son died the day before you were born. Eugene was almost three years old. It was
my fault. I was having a lot of problems—okay, look, I’m just going to be honest with
you and not candy coat anything. With the help of my brother, I’d gotten myself addicted
to drugs pretty bad and your mother and I were fighting about it nonstop. The night
it happened I was supposed to go in for work but all I wanted was to drive into town
and get a fix.
There’s a kind of superiority you feel when you’re high sometimes, like nothing can
go wrong. That’s why I used to get high. I used to love that feeling. I longed for
it. Your mom and I left Eugene alone for a bit so we could take a drive and sort some
things out. We drove to the water and talked and I hate to admit this, even to myself,
but I was just waiting for these guys to show up who I knew would have some stuff.
The other thing I want to tell you is that your mom was only eighteen. She was just
a kid. We were both kids. Kids on the beach. And all I really cared about was getting
high. It’s in your blood—your poison blood, your mother used to say to me—so keep
that in mind. Drugs grab hold of you like you wouldn’t believe.
The guys showed up and I got your mom a little stoned so I could enjoy myself without
her yelling at me. Well, I got too high. I didn’t mean to get that high. I don’t even
know how many hours went by, but I had to call my brother to come and drive us home.
When we got back, Eugene was sick, really sick. He’d managed to get the tops off a
couple of bottles of cough syrup—knowing us, they probably weren’t even on properly—and
he drank the whole thing. We just thought he was sick from it, you know? He threw
up and your mom took him into the bedroom and they went to sleep.
The whole time I was itching for another fix and at some point I realized that the
cigar box where I kept my stuff was on the floor of the living room and that Eugene
had gone through that, too. And God knows how much of it he ate. This is hard for
me to say. Once, when he walked in on me, I told him I was eating powdered sugar—do
you see? Do you see how horribly I fucked up here? Our boy just thought he was eating
sugar. I keep saying our boy but he was your mother’s son—I mean, I wasn’t his real
father—somehow this makes me feel like more of a monster. He died in his sleep, in
your mother’s arms. As I said, this was the day before you were born. I don’t know
if you’ve ever seen someone lose the one thing that’s really keeping them connected
to this earth, but all the life just shot out of her when she realized Eugene was
dead.
I did sixty days in Kent and three years in William Head for killing our son.
I was charged with Failure to Provide the Necessities of Life to a Child, and Criminal
Negligence Causing Death. I pled guilty to the first charge, and the Crown did not
prosecute me on the second. I was lucky, Shannon, though I’m not sure why.
I want you to know how much of an accident this was. We loved Eugene. I loved him
like he was my own son. We were in such a fog that night. I can’t tell you how many
times I’ve gone back into my mind and tried to search for the part of myself that
let us leave him alone that night. Whatever part of myself let me make that choice
is a part of myself I want to destroy. I go hunting for it late at night. I want to
find it and make sure it never takes over me again.
Your mother didn’t do any time. I told the police that she had nothing to do with
our leaving Eugene alone. I mean, it was my fault, but I didn’t want anyone to think
for a second that she had anything to do with it.
Your mother’s name is Yula. I can’t tell you enough good things about her. She’s a
small person with a heart so big she doesn’t know what to do with it. I’ve never met
someone who feels so much. No one will ever love you like Yula loves you—her own father
said that to me one time.
Gee, what else. She was born without her left pinky finger. On her right ankle she
has a little tattoo of a peace sign. She likes chocolate doughnuts. She had it pretty
rough growing up. Her mom died in a motorcycle accident when she was sixteen and her
dad was a peculiar and moody man. He was always threatening to kill himself.
We lived in a little pine cabin across from her parents’ house on Mount Finlayson.
I am not in touch with her anymore, but I’m going to tell you where we used to live
and there’s some chance that if you go out there, that’s where she’ll be. Her kind
doesn’t leave. It’s 2317 Finlayson Arm Road. It’s right past the entrance to Goldstream
Provincial Park, up the Malahat. She has had nothing but a horrible dark time since
Eugene’s death, and I know that meeting you would be like the sun coming up.
I don’t want you to think that I left your mother because I didn’t love her anymore.
It’s just that—well, first of all, I was in prison for almost three years and that’s
such a long time to be away from someone. But also she didn’t want to see me anyway
after Eugene died. She tried to kill herself right after she left you. While she was
still in the hospital she wrote me a letter saying she needed to never hear from me
again. I gave her that. I figured it was the least I could do.
I’m not sure that I am a bad person at my core. But I have done such bad things. I
don’t know where one starts and the other stops.
I was not there when she left you. But I know for certain she did it because she wanted
to give you a better life. She didn’t want you to know that you were born to people
who had fucked up their lives so bad. She thought you would be better off without
her.
Your mother is not the bad person. I am. None of this would have happened if it weren’t
for me.
I don’t know what it is like for you to read this letter. Or how any of this sounds.
Your mother chose to give you a fresh start in this world. I hope that’s what you
got. She thought the least she could do for you was to give you some relief from us,
your parents.
Well, what is there to say?
When you’re up, you’re really up, you know? When low, really low. You sound like you’re
in one of the low places. Despite my initial surprise, I am glad you got in touch,
though it is breaking my heart to have to tell you these things. I thought about lying
or not writing back, but I don’t want to do the wrong thing anymore.
I guess the only other thing to tell you is that your mother wanted to name you Jo,
after her mom.
Send a picture of yourself, okay? Here’s one of me. I used to look a lot younger,
I promise you that.
I want to keep writing to you but I fear I’ve run out of things to say. My wife’s
mother is driving me crazy. Every time she walks into the kitchen, she washes her
hands three times and then takes a sip of water and spits it into the sink like it’s
mouthwash. It’s been kind of a weird day. For instance I woke up and looked out our
kitchen window and Kip’s soccer ball, which had been in the very back of the yard
(in the long grass, impossible for it to roll) was now around the other side of the
shed, on the patio, by the patio furniture. Impossible for it to have gotten there
on its own. How did it get there? This has been bothering me for hours. My wife is
upstairs watching a movie with the sound on loud and the only place to escape the
noise is in the basement, where I’ve set up a little office space for myself. I like
to read down here. Never was much of a reader but I’ve gotten into it a bit lately,
nonfiction mostly, biographies and history books and the like.
I think about you every day, do you know that? How would you know that. Well, you
know that now.
I’m going to give you a P.O. box number should you wish to write me again. My wife
doesn’t know about you—and, for reasons that are too complicated to get into, I don’t
wish to spring this on her right now. Maybe at some point in the future I will come
out to B.C. and I can meet you. I miss the ocean. Do you love it as much as I do?
Because you ended your letter with a joke, I feel compelled to respond in kind, but
I don’t know any jokes, except for one about a snail.
So a snail buys a new VW Beetle but he decides that it’s missing something. So he
takes it to an auto body shop and he says to the guy, “Hey, guy, I got a question.
Could you paint a bunch of S’s all over my car?”
And the guy says, “Well, sure, Snail, I guess we can do that. Come back tomorrow and
it’ll be ready for you.” So the snail goes home and makes himself a bowl of chicken
noodle soup and falls asleep watching a rerun of
Cheers
. And the next day he goes to the auto body shop and there’s his VW Beetle, all ready
for him in the lot, and he goes up to the counter to pay, and the guy behind the counter
says, “Hey, Snail, glad to see you again. But I got a question—why do you want a bunch
of S’s all over your car?”
And the snail leans in to the guy and he says, “Well, guy, so that when all the pretty
girls see me driving by, they’ll say, ‘Hey, look at that ESCARGOT!’”
With love,
Harrison
XXIII.
t
here’s no wind and it’s hot this morning, even though it’s barely nine o’clock. I’ve
got on Lydia-Rose’s old Sonic Youth shirt and my penguin pajama bottoms, and Miranda
walks beside me in her bathrobe, a mug of coffee steaming in her hand. Lydia-Rose
stands on the sidewalk, wipes the sleep out of her eyes, and watches Winkie noodle
around, looking for somewhere to pee. It’s the end of August. All summer we’ve started
our days like this—first coffee, then oatmeal, and after Winkie starts barking (though
we never hear anything), we walk outside to check the mail. You’d think we’d have
given up by now, quietly abandoned the ritual and never spoken of it again, but this
is what has brought us together as a family once more: this slow walk from our front
door to the row of mailboxes on the sidewalk, the little key in my hand, our mailbox,
day after day, stuffed with junk mail, bills, pleas for charity donations, credit
card applications, the local newspaper, Lydia-Rose’s glossy new driver’s license,
the latest issue of
Rolling Stone,
Miranda’s paychecks, but never, until today, a letter from my father.
Miranda opens the mailbox and we stare at the single envelope inside, our address
written in small shaky letters, my name underlined above it. She puts her hand on
my shoulder but does not speak.
“What’s going on?” says Lydia-Rose. Winkie trundles over to where
we’re standing, her tongue hanging out the side of her mouth from the heat.
“Should we go in?” Miranda asks, but I shake my head. I hold the envelope and weigh
it in my hands. I’m trying to gauge the odds of it saying,
Dear Shannon, Thanks for the letter but I’m not your father. Good luck to you.
“Open it, honey,” Miranda says. “You can handle whatever is inside.”
We stand in a herd on the sidewalk in the hot sun. I fold and unfold the letter, stare
at his shaky handwriting, which is even messier and more unruly than my own. It looks
like someone was shaking him while he wrote it; it looks like there was an earthquake
going on. It looks like he wrote it on his knee while being jostled side to side on
a city bus.
I read the letter to myself at first, my back to them, my shoulders hunched. I study
the little black-and-white photograph, attached to the letter with a paper clip. My
father.
In the photo, a man sits in a white plastic patio chair on someone’s back deck. He’s
wearing a baseball cap and has a big bushy beard. His white-blond hair pokes out from
under the cap, and the curls frame his face. He looks too thin. He is wearing jeans
and a plaid flannel shirt, his feet bare. He holds a can of diet 7-Up. There’s an
ashtray by his foot, a cigarette balanced at the edge of it, the smoke drifting toward
his pant leg. The sky behind him is overcast. There are no trees, just a large barren
field. He isn’t looking at whoever is taking the photograph. He’s looking up. Whatever
he’s looking at holds his full attention. Maybe a bird. He has big, strong-looking
hands. He looks tired.
I stare at the photograph for a long time, then turn and read the letter out loud
to Miranda and Lydia-Rose. Miranda’s face pales when I get to the part about Eugene.
As I read, she looks up at the sky, as though she is searching for him.