––––––––
As I stood watching Neal get out of my mother’s Mercedes, I couldn’t think of an appropriate word to describe how I felt. Saying I was uncomfortable was a gross understatement, and terrified would have nailed it closer on the head. But once I caught Neal’s expression, my jangled nerves calmed instantly.
Neal looked more than distraught. Broken, battered. Like his whole world had disintegrated before his eyes. Emerging from under all those years of thickly applied veneer was a sensitive, hurt little boy. That boy now peeked through the cracks in the veneer; what stood before me was the brother I remembered from my childhood—the boy that would hold my hand tightly against the fearful mysteries of life, confident I would protect him. I knew without a doubt he had fought with our mother—and lost. But I also knew something Neal probably didn’t. That whatever battle he felt he’d lost against my mother only proved him the victor and my mother the loser. Again. Part of me wanted to know every gory detail of their fight, but another part would opt to cover my ears and tune it all out.
Before I could delve into thoughts about Neal’s living situation—Would he be forced to move out? Would he want to? Where would he go?—Julie drove up and parked behind my car. Neal awkwardly stopped midstride down the walkway, halfway to where I stood on the front stoop. He spun around and watched Julie get out of her car and approach us, looking a lot like a deer caught in someone’s headlights.
I decided to be gracious and made the first move. I walked over to him and gave him a hug. He wrapped his arms around me, hesitantly at first, then released into a nearly crushing embrace that scrunched my lungs and made it hard to breath. Even so, the intimacy felt so good, so long in coming, and a sob erupted from my crushed chest. I needed this—this connection with someone in my family, needed to feel that not all the cords had been severed. I didn’t have a clue what this portended for the dynamics of our relationship—Neal’s and mine, or that of our entire family.
I was so tired of lines drawn and sides taken. Tired of forced loyalties and unspoken expectations. I wanted to be free, released from this cage of obligations. Why couldn’t we be honest, speak the truth, tell what was in our hearts without fatal judgment? Why were relationships so complicated? Why so many lies, hidden agendas?
Neal released me and wiped his eyes. He had a hard time looking directly at me. He mumbled something about being sorry, but I waved him off and turned to Julie, who stood a few feet away.
Neal turned to her. “Julie. I’m sorry for the other day. I didn’t know . . .” He fumbled with words, trying to string them into sentences, but Julie rested her hand on his arm and tipped her head in sympathy.
“Don’t sweat it. Listen. This is plain uncomfortable for all of us. But, you need to prepare yourself for worse. First of all, like I said . . .” She turned to Neal and studied him. He was nicely dressed, clean-shaven, hair played down. Rather businesslike. “I have no clue how he’ll react. Probably with anger. Probably deny it. But he’s very weak, and I doubt he’ll put up much of a fuss. Maybe he’ll even laugh it off as a joke. Who knows? Just . . . don’t expect much, okay?”
I could only imagine how nervous Neal felt, a storm of emotion. Here, about to meet his real father for the first and possibly the last time, no doubt Julie having told him what kind of man Ed Hutchinson was, so who knew how that made Neal feel? Was it worse to have an unknown father or to have one who proved to be a bastard? Where did that leave you?
The question made me think about my dad and how he’d searched for his real father, no doubt with high expectations and hope. Yet, reuniting with his father and seeing what a disgusting individual he was had sent my dad reeling into despair and exacerbated his sense of unworthiness. I no longer believed that discovery had caused him to develop leukemia, but no doubt it had broken his heart. At least Neal hadn’t spent a lifetime wondering and searching and waiting for his heroic father to magically appear one day on his doorstep with a Hershey bar in his hand. So, in some way, maybe it was good that Neal only now had learned the truth.
Would Ed Hutchinson have wanted anything to do with Neal, had my mother told him she was pregnant with his child? Would it have changed anything? Would Neal have been spurned and ignored, making him feel as unworthy as our father felt? Or would that truth at least have centered him, explained why he was different from his siblings, setting him apart in some way? I was back to the essential question the conundrum posed: Was learning the truth what set you free—regardless of its import? Nevertheless, being a bastard son in a family could hardly have made Neal feel special.
I pushed all these thoughts from my mind as Julie opened the door. A middle-aged Oriental woman in pale loose clothing came around the corner into the hallway and greeted us. She narrowed her eyes a little and spoke in a hushed tone.
“He’s in his den. But, best if you didn’t stay long. He’s having trouble breathing.” She gestured and stepped out of the way so we could pass. I’m not sure what Julie had told this woman, but I doubt it was much. Neal followed behind me, all of us silent, our footsteps on the wood floor sounding loud and ominous. The aroma of coffee wafted on the stuffy air. I fought the urge to open some windows.
Ed Hutchinson sat in his leather padded chair in the dim light emanating from the ceiling fixture with a crocheted shawl around his shoulders. He wore a mask over his face, breathing oxygen, no doubt, from the tank at his side. A pallor extended from his face down his neck, and his forehead beaded with sweat even though the room was cool. In his ratty cotton bathrobe and slippers, with a day’s growth of hair on his face, he looked a mess. Much worse than the last time I’d seen him—only a few weeks ago?
As we entered the room, he caught a glance of me behind Julie. He pulled down his mask and immediately broke out in a deep, raspy cough that made me cringe.
“Hey, good to see you, gorgeous. Nice of you to come back. Lisa, right?”
I nodded, not sure of what to say. “I’m sorry you’re not feeling better. I know you’re not up to company . . .”
He calmed his coughing and stuck the mask on his face, eager to suck in the oxygen it offered. He waved us over, and his eyes lit on Neal. A quick study of his face brought him to the conclusion that he was my brother.
“So . . . which one is this? Your younger brother, right?” He spoke through the mask, and the words sounded as if they came from underwater. I noticed he hadn’t acknowledged Julie at all. She retreated with her back against the wall paneling, quiet, waiting. I thought she’d do all the talking, but it looked as if she was bowing out of that job. I wondered what emotions were running through her, knowing she’d never felt much affection for her father. Knowing Neal would probably be disappointed. Maybe feeling sorry that she couldn’t have had a more loving father herself. Maybe, in that way, we were all orphans in that room.
What followed was surreal. It was as though I were watching a movie on a level with Gone with the Wind, the camera close up on my brother’s face as he drank in Ed’s features, as he introduced himself and the words tumbled out. My eyes riveted on Neal’s shaky hand as he extended it to Ed, and hours seemed to pass before Ed reluctantly reached out in kind, and grasped Neal’s hand with the desperation of a man sinking beneath waves and flailing for rescue.
I backed away, feeling excluded from the moment, and joined Julie at the wall. Tears obstructed my vision, and I couldn’t hear much. To my surprise, Ed listened, wide-eyed, with almost rapt attention as Neal spoke. Absent were the anger and disbelief I had expected. Was Ed all that surprised, or had he somehow known or suspected Neal was his? I couldn’t tell. His previously cocky, teasing manner fell from his features like a mask to the floor, and what remained was a visage vulnerable and pained.
I could almost see Ed flip through the years, as if thumbing through pages in a book, trying to find a particular passage, one suddenly important and desperately needed. His puffy eyes glowed with infused memory as he no doubt drew up moments trapped in past years somewhere lodged deep in his mind, cobwebbed and buried under piles of inconsequential life experiences. Images of my mother in his arms, in his bed. Images of my angry father perhaps?
Had Nathan Sitteroff confronted Ed Hutchinson—at work, on a dark street corner? How had my father gone to work at all—facing his boss with this toxic knowledge? Had my father almost spit out the words, the accusing truth of Neal’s parentage, only to suck them back in and keep them hidden? Why—to use as a weapon, as leverage for some later time? I tried to put myself in my father’s shoes: hurt, angry, betrayed, guilty, ashamed. All those emotions roiling as he looked at Ed’s face. Those nine long months, as my mother’s belly grew with life, my father looked on—albeit at a distance, from what Julie had told me—and knew Ed was the father. The question that plagued me was, why hadn’t my father thrown this fact in Ed Hutchinson’s face?
And then it made perfect sense in some odd way. My father hadn’t wanted to give Ed any more power over his life and our family than he’d already wielded. And opening that door would only have led to a path of shame and embarrassment for all of us. Had my father, rather than burdening us with disgrace, decided to carry it all upon himself? Was this some ultimate sacrifice—his carrying this secret to his deathbed, until he could no longer keep it inside, blurting it out to Shirley Hutchinson in his eleventh hour, his only friend and confidant left in the world?
Ed’s violent coughing shook me. Neal rested a tentative hand on Ed’s shoulder, but the hospice nurse came rushing into the room and gently pushed my brother aside. She helped reposition the oxygen mask over Ed’s tear-streaked face, although that did little to ease his distress. I feared that our visit and Neal’s startling revelation had worked Ed into a hazardous state. Julie’s look said we should leave. Neal’s face had written all over it a sense of lost time and a desperation to gather up those lost moments, the way someone might break a strand of pearls and rush about trying to find each one before they rolled into the floor vents.
Over the din of Ed’s hacking, the nurse spoke up. “Visit is over. You leave now, okay?”
I nodded and moved toward the doorway. Neal raised his hand.
“I’m staying.” His eyes pleaded with the nurse, who studied him for a moment.
“Long as you stay out of the way,” she said.
Neal backed up a few steps and let her fuss with Ed. I met Neal’s eyes and understood. Maybe Ed would recover enough to talk with him longer. Maybe not. Neal wasn’t going to miss this chance, his perhaps last chance, to get to know his father.
I walked out with Julie, the fresh summer air smelling of damp mowed grass hitting me the moment I opened the front door. Sprinklers on neighboring yards flung water over lawns, and the sun shone so brightly I had to pull out my sunglasses and put them on to stop squinting. The brilliance of the day contrasted in more than one way to the dimness of Ed’s den we had just left behind.
I felt as if I had been thrust into light, coming out of a long gloomy tunnel, one dank and claustrophobic, only to emerge into a vast open space of clean, pure air. I’m sure my feelings had everything to do with Neal’s unexpected humility and the refreshing awareness that one door to enlightenment had opened—for him, at least. A door Neal hadn’t even known he’d faced, locked and tucked away in some unobtrusive corner of a forgotten room for twenty-five years. A door only four people had known about—and two of them now dead—my father and Shirley Hutchinson. Julie could have kept this knowledge locked away in her heart and none would have been the wiser.
Wiser. I wondered at that expression.
How wise is it to be burdened with a truth like this? I thought of all the thousands of adopted children, not unlike my father, who spend years searching for their birth mother, dredging up pain and anger, hurting adoptive parents in the process. Just how wise is such a search for truth? How many of those children actually found their mothers, and upon finding them, were glad with the results? I would venture to guess that most—if they didn’t come to a frustrating dead end, having wasted valuable time and resources in their search—met up with a parent who had given them away for the most obvious reason: they didn’t want a child. Maybe some lucky few uncovered a mother brimming with remorse and joy at reuniting with their long-lost child. But more likely than not, their sudden appearance into the life of a woman who had spent years trying to forget the past only stirred up bad feelings. Shame, perhaps, at the heart of many, for whatever reason. For a careless pregnancy, for an immature attitude of irresponsibility?
Who wanted to be reminded of a painful mistake, perhaps finally forgotten, only to be rudely reminded?
So as I sat on the curb next to Julie, who stared blankly out at the street full of her own ruminations, I put myself on the inquisition stand. What right did I have to go digging up the past, looking for a father’s story that might only cause pain? Had my mother been right all along? Would the “bad” column outweigh the “good” column? Would Neal’s painful discovery of his true father be weighty enough to offset the tremendous boulder of destruction I had laid on the scales? Not only had my family been essentially torn apart by my search for truth, but I may have made life even harder for Raff, rather than help alleviate his pain. Creating this tsunami of a disturbance in our family might be the force that would cause Raff’s downfall. Is it possible that, in some cases, truth is better off left unexplored? And did that mean you were living a lie, and not just in denial?
We seem to believe truth is paramount, and that a quest for truth is the noblest of aspirations. But maybe that’s the lie. Maybe living in denial is often the smart and healthy thing to do.
Let sleeping dogs lie.
I grunted. Seemed there was more than one way to take that saying.
A half hour passed before Neal came out the front door. He looked exhausted and drained. I know he wanted to say something to me, but I could tell his brain was processing his newfound understanding of his place in the universe. With a slight wave to both of us, distracted and unfocused, he got into his car and drove slowly down the street.
A sigh sipped out of my body, almost like a ghost or entity of its own making. I felt it hovering incriminatingly in the air, like Scrooge’s ghost of Christmas future, silently gesturing with a hand to show me the hurtful results of my many life choices. “Come,” it seemed to say to me. “See the carnage of your search for truth. See what happened when the guard stepped aside and opened the door to enlightenment.”
And then, as in Dickens’s tale, I pleaded with the spirit. “Please tell me I can change these things, that they are not set in stone.” I wondered if T. S. Eliot was right when he said there was time for a hundred indecisions and visions and revisions, all before the taking of toast and tea. Only time would tell if my actions were foolhardy and reckless.
I felt a sudden urgency, as if I had no time to waste. Today was Tuesday August 4. In two days, Raff would turn thirty-four, a birthday he had made a vow to miss. What was Raff thinking at this moment? Had Neal told him anything about Ed Hutchinson?
I had to know. I had to weasel my way in to see my older brother and, if necessary, face the Jabberwock with him—whether he wanted me to or not.
How? I had no idea.