by Wyborn Senna
African-American Elvis was up next. Correctly dressed, right down to his blue suede shoes, he shook, rattled, and rolled to the Carl Perkins classic and got a standing ovation from the crowd.
The procession of Elvis impersonators continued, as did the songs. Last up was the only female Elvis impersonator of the night, a gangly woman with a short haircut who chose to sing “First In Line” from the 1956 album Elvis. This was yet another album Logan remembered fondly. The cover art was as simple as the album’s title, utilizing a photo of Elvis shown in profile, wearing a striped shirt, chin tilted up, singing and playing guitar, the backdrop a firelit gold, his first name in red letters down the left-hand side. Logan thought, when he was younger, Elvis was singing to his first name on the album cover. The artwork made it look as though if he jumped forward a space, he could take a bite out of the “S”.
The female singer was only moderately good. Her voice wasn’t low enough, even though the song had been set in a higher key. Afterward, the emcee ran out, removed the microphone from the stand, and went over to the grand piano. “Who wants to sing?”
“He does!” Bea shouted, grabbing Ryan’s arm.
“This guy does!” Noah bellowed. He stood up and tried to pull Ryan to his feet.
The emcee squinted at them. “That guy? Well, OK, come on up!”
Ryan ran up the side stairs to the stage, where the emcee sized him up. “Well, you’re not dressed like Elvis, but you sure as shit look like him.”
The crowd applauded. Ryan, in his blue hoodie and jeans, took a bow.
“What are you going to sing?”
“Just a sec.”
Ryan went over to the pianist. “What songs were on Elvis’ Christmas Album?”
The pianist, a slender man with a soul patch, took a deep breath. “‘Blue Christmas’, ‘Here Comes Santa Claus’, ‘I Believe’, ‘I’ll Be Home For Christmas’, ‘It Is No Secret What God Can Do’, ‘O Little Town of Bethlehem’, ‘Santa Claus Is Back In Town’, ‘Santa Bring My Baby Back To Me’, ‘Silent Night’, ‘Take My Hand Precious Lord’, and ‘White Christmas’.”
“Dude, do you know you just rattled those off in alphabetical order?”
“That’s how I remember them, kid.”
“‘O Little Town of Bethlehem’ in the key of G.”
The pianist nodded, and Ryan walked to the center of the stage. The lights dimmed and turned blue. Though Ryan had never heard Elvis sing the song, his rendition sent shivers through Logan, who listened to the song every night before he slept.
“O little town of Bethlehem, how still we see thee lie! Above thy deep and dreamless sleep the silent stars go by. Yet in thy dark streets shineth the everlasting Light. The hopes and fears of all the years are met in thee tonight.”
Ryan smiled. He was certain he remembered the song in its entirety from church at Christmastime. “For Christ is born of Mary, and gathered all above. While mortals sleep, the angels keep their watch of wond’ring love. O morning stars, together proclaim the holy birth, And praises sing to God the King, and peace to men on earth!”
He looked out into the audience and was astonished to see not only Bea crying, but other people, as well. He kept going. “How silently, how silently, the wondrous Gift is giv’n; So God imparts to human hearts the blessings of His Heav’n. No ear may hear His coming, but in this world of sin, where meek souls will receive Him still, the dear Christ enters in.”
Bea wiped her eyes. Noah moved a seat closer and took her hand.
“Where children pure and happy pray to the blessed Child, Where misery cries out to Thee, Son of the mother mild; Where charity stands watching and faith holds wide the door, The dark night wakes, the glory breaks, and Christmas comes once more.”
Bea reached out her other hand and took Logan’s. The three of them sat there, united in the moment, as Ryan finished the song.
“O holy Child of Bethlehem, descend to us, we pray; Cast out our sin, and enter in, be born in us today. We hear the Christmas angels the great glad tidings tell; oh, come to us, abide with us, our Lord Emmanuel!”
Bar Fifty-Six was silent for a heartbeat before it erupted.
A group seated in back began to chant, “Elvis, Elvis, Elvis!”
Ryan stepped down from the stage and was rushed by friends and strangers. Some reached out to grab him, but he couldn’t, for the life of him, figure out why. He thought he had done well, but the sheer force of goodwill surrounding him gave him pause.
Chapter 37
The kitchen was dark, illuminated only by a slice of light from the Tiffany-style pendant chandelier over the round table in the dining area. Dr. Wendall Johns lifted the plastic magnet shaped like a slice of watermelon off the fridge and took his nephew’s note to the table, where he read it thrice and shook his head in disbelief. Logan never went anywhere, but the note was proof that change was in the air.
At Bar Fifty-Six with new friends. Back soon. Love, L.
It was ten o’clock. His dinner with Nancy had been followed by a stroll through the shops at Caesars Palace. Wendall had been good friends with Nancy’s late husband and felt his friend might not be too upset Nancy and he had become close because things had remained strictly platonic. Nancy worked at Fremont Tech downtown and saved carefully to buy something fabulous once a year to add to either her home or wardrobe. Tonight, she selected a bright khaki, grainy nubuck leather and suede clutch with an ornamental fox head from Burberry that matched one of her favorite cool-weather coats. Warren picked up a box of pre-embargo Cuban Partagas from Colosseum Cigars, which he like to smoke on his open patio facing the golf course behind his home.
Warren was still at the table, thinking, when the front door opened and he heard a burst of excited chatter. In the foyer, Logan held up his hand so they’d wait. When he found his uncle, he grinned and disappeared, reappearing moments later with the three teenagers in tow. The kid who looked like Elvis spoke first, but Warren barely heard what he said. Counting back seventeen years, to the late eighties, he realized this magnificent young man must be Elvis and Zella’s son, and it took his breath away.
A pretty blond girl who stood between the miraculous young man and a sandy-haired tall kid stepped forward. It was clear to Warren she was repeating a question she’d already asked.
“Yes, yes, I’m Dr. Johns.” He rose halfway up from his club chair in greeting and then sank back down. “Please, have a seat.” The table seated six, so there was room for all of them if you included the invisible ghost of a legend who died in the summer of seventy-seven.
Noah sat directly across the table from Dr. Johns with Ryan and one empty seat to his left and Bea and Logan to his right. “We took Logan to Bar Fifty-Six.”
Dr. Johns picked up the note on the table. “Yes.”
Logan pulled his tablet from the inside pocket of his jacket and started typing.
“Thank you for the note on the fridge, Logan. I would have been worried if you hadn’t left one. That was considerate.” He accepted the tablet. It read: I had fun.
Warren typed, really glad, and passed it back to him.
Ryan placed his hands flat on the table. Mentally, Warren placed The King’s rings on the young man’s fingers. He put a treasure Elvis had bought backstage before one of his early concerts on Ryan’s ring finger, and the imaginary, fourteen-karat gold horseshoe with single-cut diamonds seemed to sparkle in the glow of the light from the stained-glass chandelier. Next, he placed an opulent ring on Ryan’s pinkie finger—a crystal opal surrounded by a cluster of diamonds. Elvis’s Rising Sun ring went on the young man’s other ring finger. It featured a horse head, designed after Elvis’s beloved Palomino in fourteen-karat gold, with diamond eyes and a diamond horseshoe around its neck. Ryan was speaking, but Warren didn’t hear him. Again, it was Bea’s voice that cut through his reverie. “We were saying, we think Ryan’s mother came to see you to try and get pregnant.”
Warren tried to focus on Bea but was distracted as a perfect dark lock of hair f
ell squarely down the middle of Ryan’s forehead. He had The King’s same gorgeous, thick, dark, luxuriant hair made to be styled in a pompadour, the same soft face with prominent cheekbones, the same shape to his brow bone area, the same broad forehead, the same cheeks, the same relatively small mouth, the same full lips, the same left side lip curl, the same broad jaw, the same rounded chin, the same low-riding eyelids, the same startling half-mast blue eyes, the same slightly raised eyebrows, the same broad nose that tapered at the tip.
“You keep looking at him,” Bea noted. “Did you know his mother?”
Warren tore his eyes away from Ryan and looked at Bea. “Whose mother?”
“His. Ryan’s.”
The doctor played dumb. “What’s your last name?” He knew Zella had married Eugene Wyatt. She had sent him Christmas cards until the mid-nineties, when they ground to a halt as life took over, the road behind them fading in the rearview mirror.
“Wyatt,” Ryan told him, giving the doctor chills. Ryan’s voice and inflections were pure Californian, but if you’d raised him in Memphis, he and Elvis would’ve sounded as alike as two kernels off the same cob of corn.
Warren stood up and went into the kitchen, where he’d left his new cigars. He snapped on the overhead lights, took the cigar box out of the bag lying on the counter, opened the box, removed a cigar, found a suitable knife among the utensils in the top drawer of a cabinet, and cleanly cut the tip off on the cutting board by the sink.
The teenagers filtered into the kitchen and watched him.
“So you don’t remember anyone named Wyatt?” Bea asked.
Noah hiked up his pants. “Maybe she used her maiden name?”
Warren removed the ring wrapper from the cigar, stalling. “What might that be?”
Ryan moved closer. “Her name was Zella Stuart.”
Beneath the kitchen’s fluorescent lights, Logan saw how much grayer his uncle had gotten, how the salt and pepper years were passing as surely as water erodes stone, how he seemed wearier and frailer.
Warren dug around in the top drawer closest to the sink and pulled out a box of wooden matches. “No. Doesn’t sound familiar.” He lit his cigar and headed toward the sliding glass door that led to the patio. He turned back. “Excuse me.”
Then he stepped outside, sliding the glass door shut behind him.
Chapter 38
Logan no longer needed Uncle Warren to drop the needle on Elvis’ Christmas Album for him when he went to bed. He was able to do it himself. Tonight, however, instead of side one, he listened to side two, which kicked off with “O Little Town of Bethlehem”, followed by “Silent Night”, “There’ll Be Peace in the Valley For Me”, and three other songs. He climbed into bed and peeled off his socks by digging the toes of one foot down the back of the sock on the opposite foot, kicking, and repeating. He was cold and unsettled, so he got out of bed and got another comforter from the closet, fanning it out so it landed flat atop his mussed covers. Then he climbed back in, but he was still restless. He got up and went over to his mirror. What had changed? Why am I feeling so alive? His face had color, and his brown eyes had a brightness to them he’d never seen before. Maybe it was because he’d went out and had a good time with kids his own age. They had made him feel welcome and accepted and hadn’t even given him a hard time when he passed on the beer. But was it just a fluke? And if he ventured out again, would he be treated as he had been tonight, or would he be mocked like he was when he was a child?
The clothes he wore were different now. Nancy saw to that. And he was clean, thanks to being able to shower in a tub that wasn’t filled with items Ramona had meant to put away. His hair was cut every month at a barbershop on Winchester, and his fingernails were short and clean. He had even learned to shave the sparse facial hair that was beginning to appear.
Barefoot, he crept downstairs. The light in the dining area had been turned off, but the stove light was on in the kitchen. Logan peered around the corner into the living room. He watched as Uncle Wendall buried a folder filled with paperwork beneath old newspapers, catalogs, and junk mail in a bin next to the fireplace. The receptacle held flammables used to get logs blazing. Whatever Uncle Wendall hid in the bin was meant to burn.
Logan snuck back upstairs just as “Silent Night” was ending, and by the time “It’s No Secret What God Can Do” was coming to an end, he realized Uncle Wendell was standing in his open doorway. The room was dark, but Logan pretended to be asleep. Side two had come to an end. The needle lifted up and returned to the beginning of the side for a replay. At some point during the night, when Logan was younger, Uncle Wendell would come in, lift the needle, and turn the stereo off. But he didn’t do it now. Instead, he stood and listened to “O Little Town of Bethlehem”. Midway through the song, he left the doorway and headed down the hallway.
Logan heard his uncle’s bedroom door shut. He waited through “Silent Night” and “There’ll Be Peace in the Valley” before he dared to get up. Then he went downstairs, poked around in the fireplace bin ‘til he found the folder, and looked inside.
He was looking at the medical records for Ryan’s mother.
Scanning them, he found what he was looking for on a slip of blue paper tucked toward the back of the stack of pages. It read, “Elvis Presley, T-8A-14226, 8/19/74.”
Chapter 39
With his success in Vegas, Ryan and Noah went to karaoke contests held at bars throughout Los Angeles, generally on school nights, but Ryan tried to perform early and get back home by his ten o’clock curfew, and the Wyatts were none the wiser. In addition to singing in public, the trip to Vegas had thrown fuel on Ryan’s urge to find his biological father. Most afternoons, he found himself in Bea’s bedroom, where they surfed websites and forums. One Tuesday not long after their trip, Ryan practiced hip swivels in the mirror while Bea read recent messages on FindUrBiologicalFather.net, SpermDaddy.com, and DonorSiblingsUnite.com. Ryan had posted his picture and information on the sites, hoping someone who had donated sperm in Vegas prior to 1988 would contact him.
“I connected with my real dad this past weekend,” Bea read aloud, “and he was everything I dreamed he would be and more. He said he didn’t want a family because he travels for work so much and is never in one place for long, but now that he’s met me, he plans to keep in touch.”
Ryan stopped swiveling. “Wow.”
“Yeah. And Mary Eisenhart from Missouri is still ranting about the fact that sperm banks protect donor confidentiality, but no one considers how that affects kids.”
Ryan came over and jumped on the bed.
Bea shoved the laptop at him. “Here. You read.”
She got up, went to her drawer of meds, took out a few vials, popped the caps, threw a few tablets into her mouth, drank some water, and returned the vials to the drawer.
Ryan read her a story posted by a woman with the handle Dubby905.
“When my husband couldn’t get me pregnant, I went to a sperm bank. I never told my husband our daughter isn’t his. When we wanted a second child, I used the same donor so my children would be related. I will never tell my family what I did, and I’m not sorry. How could I be, when I have such a wonderful life with two beautiful kids and a husband who loves me?”
Bea flopped down on the bed. “Aw!”
Ryan opened another window on the screen. “I wanted to show you this one.”
A picture of a blond woman in her early twenties appeared beside her message.
“If you really want to find out who your dad is, find the donor card. My mom kept a medical card from New Jersey Cryogenics in her recipe box. I found it one day when I was looking for a brownie recipe. Yes, brownies—wink! Anyway, I asked my mom about it. She told me a long time ago that I was conceived via artificial insemination, so it was no big deal. She kept the card because she thought we might need it for medical reasons, in case I got sick and we had to check out the donor’s medical history. So, the card had a donor number on it, which was my dad’s number. If yo
u can find your card and get your dad’s number, you will be a lot closer to figuring out who he is (if you want to). Me, I don’t care too much. Just thought I’d share this as another way to find out who your dad is (if you want to know).”
Bea slumped back into the pillows. Her words were beginning to slur. “Did you find your donor card?”
“No, but I’ll keep looking. If mom kept Dr. Johns’s card, maybe she kept a donor card, too.”
Bea closed her eyes. “Fat lot of help Dr. Johns was.”
Ryan read another entry, this one by a young man calling himself BaySurfer.
“I’ve been searching for my biological father for six years. My parents don’t care about me and never did. They never told me I was a sperm donor baby, and it’s probably good they didn’t. I would have left home years ago. As it is, I have lost years I could have been searching for him, and I will never forgive them for lying to me my whole life.”
Another entry, this one by a woman just offering her first name, Megan, read, “I just found out my dad isn’t my dad, and I am pissed. I am an only child and always wanted brothers and sisters. What if I have half-brothers and half-sisters out there who are looking for me? How do I find them?”
Then there was an anonymous note from a sperm donor posted in a forum titled, “From Us Dads to You”. “I know some of you are asking yourselves, is my dad thinking about me, wherever he is? The answer is a resounding YES. Sure, some guys are donors in college or whatever, and they move on and they have lives and they do seem to forget. But if they were really honest with themselves, they would have to admit that once in a while, even if it is very infrequently, they do wonder if they have any kids out there they don’t know about, and if they do, where they are and how they might be doing. Do they look like me? Do they have any similar traits? Do they have similar interests? Do they have similar talents? There will always be a yearning to know.”
