My Father's Secret
I was hard at work, directing a demolition crew in Copperwell, when the call came in from the Puritan Falls Hospital emergency room.
"Your father has been in an accident," an unknown voice notified me.
I didn't know whether the caller was a doctor, a nurse, a chaplain or one of the many volunteers who tirelessly labored to keep the hospital running smoothly. And, frankly, I didn't care.
"I'll be right there," I replied, not taking the time to ask for details.
After placing my senior foreman in charge of the demolition, I hopped into my car and headed for the hospital. When I arrived at the emergency room, I spoke directly with Dr. Sarah Ryerson, the physician in charge.
"Your father lost control of his vehicle and went into a tree," the doctor informed me. "He sustained a serious blow to his head, and he's in a coma."
Dr. Ryerson did not candy-coat her prognosis, and while she did not actually state that the coma was irreversible, she did say there was only a slim chance my father would recover.
I had just begun to digest the devastating news about my parent when a hospital caseworker asked to speak with me.
"Are there any family members you'd like me to call?" the nicely attired and meticulously groomed middle-aged woman asked.
"No. My mother passed away many years ago. There's only my father and I left."
"What about a clergyman? Would you like me to contact your father's minister or priest?"
I felt that tiny twinge of guilt many agnostics experience at such times when I told the caseworker that neither my father nor I had any religious affiliations.
The woman's composure faltered momentarily with the next question.
"Does your father have a living will?"
My head snapped up in surprise.
"It's just a formality," she quickly reassured me. "In cases where a patient is in a coma, we need to know his or her wishes as to what measures, if any, are to be taken to resuscitate."
I knew the request for a copy of a living will was for the hospital's protection against a potential law suit, but I still found talk of life-and-death situations a bit disconcerting. The caseworker waited several minutes before rephrasing her request.
"If your father has a living will, we'll need to have a copy of it."
"I honestly don't know if he has one or not. We've never discussed it. On my way home from the hospital, I'll stop at his house and look through his papers."
"Thank you. If you don't find anything, perhaps you might want to call his lawyer."
The caseworker did not understand that my father was not the type of man to have a lawyer. He distrusted attorneys, courts, judges and law enforcement officers equally.
After the caseworker left, I stayed by my father's bedside for more than seven hours. During that time he remained immobile except for an occasional involuntary muscle twitch. When I walked out of his room, it occurred to me that I might never see him alive again.
I was too exhausted upon leaving the hospital to stop at my father's house, so I decided to go there the following morning instead. It bothered me that I was not more emotionally upset about my father's condition. I suppose the reason for my lack of tears was that my father and I never shared a very close parent-child relationship. We never played a game of catch out in the back yard, went to a ballgame together or showed any physical affection toward each other. Although he had never been abusive or cruel, my father had been a stern disciplinarian. I always respected him, I realized with sudden insight, but I didn't love him.
* * *
The following morning I phoned my foreman and gave him explicit instructions for the day's demolition. After stopping at the local diner for a pancake breakfast, I drove to my father's house. It was as it had been for as long as I could remember. The same multicolored brown shag carpet covered the living room floor. The same tired linoleum was in the kitchen. Hardwood floors, bearing the weight of years of paste wax build-up, were in the dining room, foyer and hallway. The outdated furniture, appliances and window treatments were enough to give every designer on HGTV nightmares.
I owned a large, successful construction company, I thought guiltily. I ought to have done some remodeling of my father's house. It was the least I could do for the man who raised me single-handedly after my mother died.
At the thought of my mother, I felt a familiar emptiness, an aching need to fill the void her death had created. I could still see her pain-racked form lying in her bed, praying for death. It was so unfair. Why were my only memories of my mother those of her when she was dying? Why couldn't I recall all the wonderful things we did together before she became sick? If it weren't for my father's recollections, I would have no knowledge of the loving woman who had given me life.
When I walked into the living room, I spotted the family photographs on the fireplace mantel. My parents' wedding picture was flanked by my kindergarten school photograph and my high school graduation portrait. I was pleased—as I always was whenever I looked at the wedding picture—to see that my mother and father looked so happy, so much in love. They had that at least, even if it didn't last long. That's more than I could say for myself; I had never been lucky enough to fall in love.
"This isn't the time to open that can of worms," I told myself and turned toward the staircase that led up to the bedrooms on the second floor.
My father's dresser contained clothes and little else. The drawer of his night table was empty except for a pair of reading glasses, a three-month-old issue of Popular Mechanics and a half-eaten bag of shelled peanuts. If my father's important papers were kept in his bedroom, they would have to be in the closet, the only other storage place in the room.
On the top shelf, beneath a cardboard box of old clothes, I discovered a fireproof metal lockbox. I took it down and brought it to the kitchen where, with the help of a Craftsman screwdriver, I was able to break open the lock. Inside were the documents most people wanted to keep safe: the deed to the house, my father's birth certificate, the title to his Ford, my mother's death certificate and my parents' marriage license. Beneath the documents were several photographs of my mother as a young woman, but there was no will or living will.
As I picked up the documents and photographs to put them back in the metal box, a newspaper clipping fell to the floor. I carefully unfolded the yellowed, brittle paper and scanned the article. The headline read NEW JERSEY BOY MISSING. The clipping told the tragic story of Robby Glendenning, a four-year-old who had disappeared from a crowded beach on Cape Cod. The child's mother had been changing her infant son's diaper, and when she turned around the toddler was nowhere to be found. The article spanned three columns, detailing the efforts of the investigators to find the child, but little Robby never turned up.
One nagging question came to my mind: why would my father keep such an article?
* * *
After leaving my father's house, I returned to the hospital and learned that there had been no change in his condition. I kept a silent vigil at his bedside the rest of the morning and then went to the coffee shop across from the hospital to get some lunch. I ordered a cheeseburger platter, and while I waited for it to be cooked, I began reading the day's edition of The Puritan Falls Gazette.
I was reminded of the article in my father's lockbox. Why had he kept it all these years? Perhaps the Glendennings were once close friends of the family. If so, why hadn't my father ever spoken of them?
My curiosity finally got the better of me. After finishing my burger and fries, I drove to the Gazette's office on Essex Street. The archived articles were computerized, so a quick search yielded immediate results.
There were four articles in all devoted to the missing New Jersey boy, one of which I had already read. Unfortunately, the other three provided no additional information. However, one contained a photograph of the child. Although the picture was grainy, I noticed it bore a strong resemblance to my kindergarten picture. Could he be related to me in some way? As the only child of two only children, I always wished for siblings, cousins, aunts and uncles. Perhaps this missing boy was a link to a distant family I'd never known.
With only a foolish hope to guide me, I got into my car and drove the two hundred and sixty miles to the small northern New Jersey town where Robby Glendenning's family lived. According to the Morris County phone book, there was only one Glendenning in the area, a J. Glendenning, who lived in a town called Lincoln Park. I took the chance that the man or woman might be related to the missing child and rang the bell.
An elderly woman answered. A look of surprise came to her face when she saw me standing on the stoop.
"Are you Mrs. Glendenning?" I inquired.
"Yes. I'm Julia Glendenning."
"Are you related to a little boy named Robby Glendenning, who went missing twenty-five years ago?"
"Poor Robby was my husband's nephew. Why do you ask?"
I told her about my interest in learning of a possible connection I might have with the child.
"I'd really appreciate it if you could help me," I concluded.
"Come in, won't you?" she said and showed me into the living room. "I have something that might interest you."
She took a photograph album off the bookcase and opened it to a picture of two men, one who bore a strong resemblance to me.
"This is my husband and his brother, Robert."
"Robby's father?"
"Yes, and I'm sure you can see how much he looks like you."
"Were there any other brothers and sisters in the family?"
"My husband had a sister. She joined the Navy—no, wait. It was the Coast Guard. She was stationed in Woods Hole, I believe. She put in her time and then retired to Florida. She never married."
"Tell me, did they ever find the boy?"
"No, not a trace of him. I suppose he drowned."
"Do his parents still live here in New Jersey?"
The older woman shook her head.
"My sister-in-law blamed herself for her son's disappearance. She believed she ought to have kept closer watch on him. That Christmas she ...."
Julia's voice trailed off, and she did not continue for several moments.
"Her husband found her in the garage, sitting in the front seat of the car with the engine running."
"He lost both his wife and his child?"
"Yes. It was no wonder he began to drink. He became an alcoholic, and the state took his surviving boy away from him. The child was sent to live with his maternal grandparents in Pennsylvania. With his family gone, poor Robert drank himself to death."
"And your husband?" I asked.
"He passed away three years ago. Cancer."
I looked down at the picture of the two smiling young men and felt a great sadness, even though I'd never met either of them.
"I'm sorry to hear that."
"And you believe you might be related to the Glendennings?"
"If it were just the physical resemblance, I'd say I might be wrong, that it could be just a coincidence. But I keep going back to the question of why my father had the newspaper clipping of the boy's disappearance in his lockbox, and I can't think of any other plausible explanation. He had to have known this family."
* * *
After toying with the idea of contacting the retired sister in Florida, I decided against it. Instead, I would search my own past, hoping to find the answers I sought there. I had once built a house for a woman who was a genealogist and would now elicit her help in finding my roots.
She began by searching online sources for my name and the date I was born. She read several newspaper articles and then raised her eyebrows in surprise.
"You look damn good for a corpse."
"What do you mean?"
"According to your obituary, you died of a congenital heart condition when you were four days old."
"That must be someone else with my name. Strange coincidence, huh?"
"I'll keep looking and see what I can turn up," she promised as I stood up to leave.
"I appreciate it."
What started as an impulse to discover a possible connection between me and a missing child was turning into a quest for learning my own identity.
* * *
I didn't go home to my condominium that evening. Instead, I returned to my father's house.
If only walls could talk, I thought wistfully, the mystery might be solved.
But this was no fictional whodunit. I feared there would be no tidy explanation at the end of it all.
The genealogist phoned me later that night to tell me that neither my mother nor my father had been related to the Glendennings, or if they were, there was no paper trail connecting them. There was no way she could ascertain if there had been an illegitimate offspring at one time, an illegal adoption or an unfaithful spouse. It was just as well since I didn't want to think that my mother might have had an affair with one of the smiling Glendenning brothers.
Maybe I should just forget about the newspaper clipping, I thought wearily as I got ready for bed.
Then, the next morning, as I was leaving my boyhood home to go to the hospital, I saw my father's elderly neighbor picking up her newspaper off the front stoop.
"Good morning, Mrs. Winchester," I called.
She returned my greeting.
"I was sorry to hear about your father. How's he doing?"
"Still in a coma, I'm afraid."
"I'll keep him in my prayers."
As she was about to enter her house, I called to her again.
"How long have you known my parents?"
"Since you were a little boy," she replied. "They moved in after the Jensens moved to Maine."
"That's funny. I thought they bought the house before I was born."
"No, you were about four or five when your family moved in. I remember you going off to kindergarten that fall."
I mumbled a farewell, got into my car and drove to the hospital.
The nurse smiled when she saw me, and announced cheerfully, "Your father opened his eyes during the night."
I was relieved—not for my father but for myself, for only the old man lying in the hospital bed in the intensive care unit of Puritan Falls Hospital could confirm my growing suspicions.
The smile on my father's face when I walked into his room tugged at my heart. He was genuinely delighted to see me. From amidst a tangle of tubes and wires, he stared up at me, his eyes brimming with tears. He looked old, frail and worn down by life, and I didn't have the heart to interrogate him. The questions could wait, I decided, until he was fully recovered.
* * *
Three and a half weeks later my father was released from the hospital. I picked him up early that morning and drove him home. When he was comfortably settled in his La-Z-Boy recliner, I took the old newspaper clipping out of my pocket and held it in front of his face. His complexion paled, and his eyes closed as though he were in pain.
"You've been going through my papers."
It was a simple statement, not an accusation.
"I should never have kept that clipping. I should have known someday you'd find it."
A million questions raced through my brain, but a single one came to my lips.
"Why?"
"My dear wife, God rest her soul, couldn't have children. She had ovarian cancer when she was sixteen, and the doctors performed a hysterectomy."
I saw the agony on his face, and I felt pity for the poor old man.
"I adored her, and we were truly happy at first, but then the cancer came back. I took her to the best doctors in Boston, but there was no hope. There was no way I could save her, but I could give her what she'd always wanted: a child."
"Why me?"
"Pure chance. I went to Cape Cod on a hot summer day because it was crowded with tourists. I waited more than two hours, choosing and then rejecting likely candidates. Then I saw your mother take you and your brother into the beach house. You walked out of the doorway, and I knew it was my chance. When I took your hand, you didn't object, so I quickly disappeared into the crowd. My wife and I then moved to Puritan Falls where no one suspected that you were the missing boy."
"And my moth—I mean your wife went along with the kidnapping?"
"No, not at first. But then she had less than a year to live. She made me promise that when she was gone, I'd return you to your family."
"But you didn't."
Tears fell down the old man's cheeks.
"I couldn't. With my wife gone, I had no one else."
"Did you ever wonder what happened to my real parents?" I asked, as I felt the anger rise inside me.
"No, I didn't," he admitted.
"My mother committed suicide, and my father drank himself to death. They were warm, happy, loving people, and their lives were utterly destroyed by what you did."
"But my wife ...."
"I sympathize with your loss, but you had no right to ruin my parents' lives or mine for the sake of your wife's happiness. I have a brother out there somewhere that I've never met."
"I'm sorry."
It was a common expression that often helped smooth over minor wounds, but in this instance it was grossly inadequate. The old man could never undo all the harm he'd done; he could never restore all he'd taken from me and my family. In that moment, I truly hated him.
As I thought of my orphaned brother and of my poor mother and father, my rage grew. I leapt to my feet and placed my strong hands around the frail old man's throat. He looked up at me, knowing he was about to die. He was not afraid. In fact, it appeared as though he welcomed death. Was it because he saw it as a means of being reunited with the woman he loved? I would not give him that satisfaction, so I immediately pulled my hands away.
"Go ahead and kill me," he cried. "I have nothing to live for anyway."
I no longer hated him. On the contrary, I felt absolutely nothing for him. He was not my father; he was simply a man I had known all my life.
"No, I won't kill you. I don't want to spend what's left of my life in prison."
The old man visibly shrunk. His shoulders hunched over, and he began to weep.
"I'm sorry. I'm so sorry."
Had I been a better man, a more forgiving one, I would have offered him some comfort. But I was not so charitable. I turned and without another word I left the house. It was still morning, and I had plenty of time to make the drive to New Jersey. Once there, I intended to begin my search for the brother I'd never known. Perhaps with his help and that of Julia Glendenning and my aunt in Florida, I'd bring together what remained of my family.
Salem, I really think you should cut down on the sunblock when you go to the beach.
