Skeletons Out of the Closet

by M. Katherton

  “Nothing.” I lied. “Still getting used to being back in school. And I had a fight with my mom last night so I’m just a little off today.”

  “But your mom is so cool.” She claimed as if that was enough justification for us to get along all the time. Being a young mom seemed to make her automatically cool amongst my friends, most of which had parents in their forties. Having a young mom did not exempt me from punishment or disagreements though. She was just as much of a parent as their middle-aged parents.

  “I don’t really wanna talk about it.” I shut her down, too tired to make up some elaborate story about why we had fought because I didn’t want to talk about the real one.

  “Fine. But I’m here if you need to talk about it.” Kendra pushed her blonde overgrown bangs out of her face in defeat.

  Kendra and I had been friends since we got partnered up for a geography project during our freshman year. I was in a vulnerable place at the time after falling out with my childhood best friend Emelia and took up any opportunity for friendship presented to me. Kendra was a good friend in the way that she was always up for a good time but being supportive was not her forte. She always claimed she was here for me but whenever I did try to confide in her, she always turned the conversation back to herself. Therefore, after a while I stopped talking to her about things that were personal to me. I told her about school dilemmas I had or asked her about clothes I considered buying but never anything deep. I liked Kendra but I doubted she would be the maid of honor at my wedding or my college roommate though she seemed to think we would be best friends until we wore adult diapers.

  After school, I pulled Facebook back up and found Caroline Owenby’s page again only to hit another roadblock. Everything was private besides her profile picture and a public post she shared about a missing cat in her neighborhood. I searched the neighborhood of the missing cat and found it was just two miles from my house. If Caroline was my dad’s wife, perhaps they were strangers I unknowingly passed in the grocery store or sat in line behind in fast food drive-thrus.

  There was still no proof that Caroline Owenby had any connection to my father though. While the last name was not as common as Jones or Smith, the internet was proof that there were plenty of Owenbys in the world. Not to mention, there was even a possibility James Owenby was not actually my dad. Maybe Mom was with multiple dudes around my conception or perhaps they had just taken a photo at the Valentine’s Dance together but had no romantic relationship. Maybe she scribbled him out in her yearbook because he called her a slut when she was pregnant or maybe he was hated school-wide for being the worst student council president or a football player that had screwed up and lost an important playoff game. However, no one else was scratched out. He had to be my father.

  If I wanted answers, I would have to further my search beyond Facebook. I searched Caroline Owenby on Whitepages to find her exact address. Her age was 31, close enough to my dad’s age for her to be his wife and one of her listed relatives was James A Owenby. I searched their names together and found a wedding registry from 2011 with an adorable engagement photo of him proposing to her at Niagara Falls. He was undoubtedly the same James Owenby from the Lakewood High School yearbook. Though the photos were taken almost ten years apart, he had the same haircut and color, the same build, and an unmistakable dimple in his chin, similar to my own. I assumed the baby on Caroline’s Facebook page with his. I wondered if they had any other children or if he had knocked up any other women before Caroline and I had a bunch of random half-siblings I didn’t know existed.

  I found Caroline’s Twitter and Instagram accounts but like Facebook, both were private. At first I thought maybe she was hiding something but after more searching, I found out she was an eighth grade social studies teacher in a neighboring school district, making the private accounts more understandable. James did not have any identifiable social media accounts. Maybe he was trying to hide from people from his past: my mother, me, and any other women and possible offspring he had wronged.

  I considered messaging Caroline and asking if she knew if her husband had fathered a child in 2001 but perhaps he had never told her. Maybe he had repressed the pregnancy so far down that he didn’t even remember it. Mom tried to act like my biological father didn’t exist so James was pretty much off the hook if he wanted to be. Whenever I brought friends over, Mom referred to Ross as my dad. While it wasn’t wrong as he was the only dad I ever knew, he didn’t impregnate my mother with me. I had another dad and I was certain he was James Owenby.

  I ended my search for the day when Mom called me down for dinner. Tomorrow I would continue digging and maybe eventually muster up the courage to reach out to Caroline. I needed to consider the best way to go about this and try a little harder to find a way to contact James directly before I went through his wife. Caroline and James looked happy together in their engagement photos. Despite whatever horrible thing he had done to my mother to make her hate him so much, I was not going to wreck his new life by pulling all the skeletons out of the closet.

  Sunday, January 13th, 2019

  On Sunday, we went to my grandparents’ house to celebrate Grandma’s 57th birthday. However, while everyone else looked forward to seeing Grandma and eating cake and barbecue, I hoped I would be able to snoop around a little and see if I could find anything else about my dad. There had to be more photos of Mom and James Owenby besides the Valentine’s Dance photo that had somehow accidentally gotten mixed in with photos of Mom’s first dance recital and Kathleen’s kindergarten graduation that I had been assigned to sort over the summer.

  Kathleen brought over ribs from Grandma’s favorite local barbecue joint and Mom picked up a grocery store chocolate pie after the one she tried to bake at home came out lumpy and weird. The eight of us sat around the vintage wooden table that had once been Mom’s great-grandmother’s and caught up on daily life though we had all just seen each other a few weeks ago on Christmas Eve. Kathleen informed us that she was up for another promotion at work, climbing the corporate ladder like it was nothing. Kathleen was two years older than Mom but had never settled down to marry or have children of her own. Therefore, I had no biological cousins that I knew of. At least not yet. I wished I could catch Kathleen alone and ask what she knew about my dad because she was blunt and told things exactly how they were. If anyone in the family would spill the beans about James Owenby, it was her. However, asking her about it in the same vicinity as my mom was too risky.

  After dinner, when the adults cracked out the alcohol, I went to the guestroom with Macy and Spencer to play board games. After Mom and Kathleen both moved out, Grandma and Grandpa turned Kathleen’s bedroom into an office and Mom’s bedroom into a guestroom. Though most of her personal effects were gone, I did notice a box labeled “Vanessa” in the bottom of the closet. While Macy and Spencer got invested in a game of Monopoly Jr., I helped myself.

  It contained mostly old school things – her high school diploma, old report cards filled with Bs and Cs, and copies of doctor’s notes from when Mom missed school when she was pregnant. However, as I kept digging, there were a few photos at the bottom. One was Mom’s senior photo from the yearbook that her parents still purchased despite how much she hated it, another was her with a group of friends that I might be able to identify if I studied the yearbook more intensely, and the last was a black and white photobooth strip of her and James. The strip had four low-quality photos: one of them kissing but the other three of them smiling and making goofy faces. They were definitely dating and he was likely my father. Not wanting to risk Macy or Spencer seeing it, I folded it up and stuck it in my back pocket. Grandma and Grandpa would never notice it was gone.

  Monday, January 14th, 2019

  At lunch, Kendra invited me to another one of Lana’s basketball games. I figured these invites would continue until the end of basketball season, which could be months from now if Lakewood went to the playoffs. I would try to go to one or two more to humor her but tonight I wasn’t up fo
r it so I lied and pretended I had to babysit Macy and Spencer. Aware of Mom’s unpredictable real estate agent life, Kendra bought it.

  In eighth period psychology, Mr. Wallace took us to the computer lab to work on our research paper about mental illnesses due in two weeks. I was assigned schizophrenia and had already worked on it a little at home so I figured losing fifty minutes of computer lab time would not be detrimental to my grade. Therefore, as Mr. Wallace sat behind the teacher’s desk, probably watching superhero movies as his room was filled with various Marvel posters, I ditched schizophrenia and searched the school district archive for James Owenby.

  I considered that maybe the reason he left my mom was because he couldn’t risk the pregnancy ruining his reputation. I wondered if he was student council president or captain of the football team or on track to be valedictorian but after looking through the club pages of the yearbook and not seeing him anywhere, he seemed to be an average guy. That didn’t mean I would pass up an opportunity to look at the district newspaper archives just in case though.

  My search for James Owenby only yielded one match, an article from 1994 where he won the Brackett Elementary School jump rope contest at field day, completing 126 jumps. Though that was an interesting fun fact about my possible dad, I doubted he had turned jump roping into a career so this was just another dead end. I got out of the district archives and headed back to google, taking a quick glance at Mr. Wallace to make sure he wasn’t making the rounds.

  I searched for James Owenby again, omitting the word pastor and trying different keywords. After twenty minutes of digging through useless results, I found a LinkedIn page that looked promising. It claimed he had graduated from Texas State University in 2006 with a degree in computer science and now worked as a web developer at some company I had never heard of in Dallas. When I searched his name with the company name, it brought up his bio on a “Meet the Team” tab on the website.

  His picture looked like an older version of the James Owenby in the Lakewood yearbook. Most of the information wasn’t new to me, mentioning his college degree and that he had a wife named Caroline and a son named Taylor, but it also included that his favorite pastime was bowling and that he was on a league team called Strike After Strike. After another web search, I discovered the tournaments were on Friday nights at Sunshine Bowling.

  “Jessica, you’re supposed to be working on your project. You can look at bowling leagues on your own time.” Mr. Wallace’s voice startled me from behind. I had gotten so excited about finding more information about my dad that I neglected to keep tabs on Mr. Wallace.

  “Oh. Sorry.” I apologized, my face reddening as I quickly clicked out of the tab as if he caught me watching porn.

  “But for whatever it’s worth, Deerpoint Street Lanes has more competitive teams. My wife and I bowl there every weekend.” He added, hinting he was not furious with me. With Mr. Wallace’s goofy, laid-back nature, it did not surprise me that he was a bowler. I wished he bowled at Sunshine Bowling so I could ask if he knew a guy named James Owenby but instead, holding up the assumption I was interested in joining a bowling league myself, I chirped,

  “Thanks! I’ll keep that in mind.”

  After getting Macy and Spencer off the bus and started on their homework that afternoon, I searched the Strike After Strike bowling team again. I found a public Instagram page full of photos. They wore fluorescent green button-down shirts with a purple lightning bolt on the back and every photo featured at least one pitcher of beer. The team was composed of mostly middle-aged white guys but I picked out James right away. In one picture, he held a trophy in one hand and a foot-long chili cheese dog in the other, smiling like he had just won the lottery. Despite my mother’s claims that he was an asshole, he seemed like a fun-loving, upbeat guy.

  I wanted to know more about his relationship with Mom before I took any further action to contact him. Though he seemed harmless in the Instagram pictures, maybe he had a secret other side where he abused or threatened women. I knew Mom would be unlikely to provide me with the information I needed so I texted Kathleen asking if we could meet up for dinner soon. Though I considered my aunt and I to be somewhat close, we didn't hang out just the two of us often so it raised suspicions. After convincing her that everything was okay and that I just wanted to talk, we agreed to meet at Alfredo's on Thursday at six.

  Thursday, January 17th, 2019

  Alfredo’s Pizza and Pasta had been my family’s favorite restaurant for as long as I could remember. We'd had countless family dinners, birthday celebrations and Mom even had her rehearsal dinner there when she got married. Though most of my memories from the wedding are hazy, I still remember a drunk Kathleen practicing her maid of honor speech, horrifying Ross’ more conservative relatives. Tonight, over ten years later, I sat across from a much more grown-up Kathleen. She was still in her work clothes which consisted of an eggplant purple cardigan, a white button-down blouse, and black slacks. We ordered a cheese pizza to share and a pan of alfredo pasta.

  “What’s up, Peanut?” She asked, still using the nickname my family called me when I was little. Mom had finally quit using it a few years ago after fourteen-year-old me told her I hated it but Kathleen, Grandma, and Grandpa still used it from time to time. I still wasn’t a fan but was too polite to tell them that.

  I took a deep breath, staring down at the red and white checkered table cloth instead of at her. Once I spit it out, I could never take it back. Though I had worked in solitude during the last few weeks of my search for my dad, in a few moments it would no longer be my dirty little secret anymore.

  “I’m curious about my dad.” I opened up, nerves swirling around inside of me.

  Kathleen’s brown eyes widened as if the restaurant owner suddenly announced all the pizza was poisonous. She took a slow drink of water then cleared her throat.

  “I don’t know about this, Jess. You should ask your mom. It's not really my place to talk about…well, all of that.”

  “Please. She won’t tell me anything. I can’t ask Grandma and Grandpa. You’re my only hope. Please.”

  She sighed, considering my guilt trip. I thought back to all the times when Kathleen babysat me when I was little and would let me have a piece of candy before dinner or let me stay up thirty minutes past my bedtime. It wouldn't be the first time she went behind Mom’s back

  “Let me get a beer. I can’t do this sober. You want one?”

  I shook my head no. I had already lied to my mom about having dinner with friends from school. If I drank underage and she found out, I would never be allowed to leave the house again.

  Kathleen returned with a Budweiser a minute later and took a huge slug. “Okay. I’m ready now. What do you want to know?”

  “What happened between them? I found her high school yearbook and she scratched him out completely. At least, the guy I think was him. Whenever I try to ask about him, she gets mad and defensive every time. I don’t know what he could have done to make her hate him so much.”

  Kathleen took another drink before answering. Hopefully she wouldn’t get too drunk to drive home because she lived all the way across town and Mom would be suspicious if I was out too late.

  “Vanessa and James had a weird relationship.” She admitted, confirming that she also thought James Owenby was my father. “Very on again, off again. I came home from college about every two or three weekends and every time their relationship status was different. He loves me, he loves me not kind of thing. They obviously made some very adult choices. It wasn’t a one-time thing. They were always fooling around. No protection most of the time. I wasn't surprised when Vanessa got pregnant.”

  Hearing about my mother’s teenage sex life was uncomfortable. I was seventeen and still a virgin, mostly because I had not met the right guy yet but slightly because I was afraid of the same fate.

  “Anyway, in March she missed her period. I had just walked out of a college English class and she called me sobbing hysterically. I came home tha
t weekend, took her to a doctor. Sure enough, she was pregnant. She made me promise not to tell Mom and Dad and I didn’t. She told them a few weeks later and they freaked out. James also freaked out. He told her to get an abortion and that he would take money out of his college savings and pay for it. He offered to drive her to the clinic and everything. But she didn’t want to. She wanted to keep the baby, which she did obviously. She cut James off for good. He tried to reach out to her a few times but she wasn’t having it. To this day, I don’t think she would spit on him if he was on fire. She hates him.”

  This revelation shattered my world. The smell of the uneaten pizza in front of me made me nauseous and my vision blurred. Instead of just seeing one Kathleen, there were three of her, all looking concerned.

  “Are you okay?”

  “Yeah. Just shocked.” I stuttered, the whole restaurant feeling like it was spinning. I grabbed onto the edge of the plastic booth, trying to steady myself.

  “Do you want me to drive you home?”

  I shook my head no and picked up a piece of pizza. Though my appetite had vanished, Kathleen paid for it so I was going to clear my plate. We ate silently for a few minutes, suffocating in the awkwardness of the information she had just revealed.

  “Anything else you want to talk about?” Kathleen questioned once we both finished eating.

  “Did Mom ever consider aborting me?”

  “Of course not.” She answered confidently. “You’re everything to her. Always have been. You were the best thing that happened to her. Turned her life completely around.”

  I had no doubt that Mom loved and wanted me. Now that I realized that not telling me about my father was done to protect me and not just her being difficult, I wasn’t so mad at her for withholding that information from me anymore. Though I had never met James and he had likely changed his stance on babies now that he had a son with Caroline, knowing that he wanted Mom to terminate her pregnancy still stung.