The Question of the Absentee Father

by E. J. Copperman

  I had no idea what he meant by that. I knew Mother did look at things, but I seriously doubted that was the question being asked. So I stayed silent.

  “I guess I shouldn’t have asked that,” Arthur went on. “Well, it’s almost time for Cake Boss.” He disconnected the call.

  I replaced the receiver on its cradle and looked at Ms. Washburn. “My uncle Arthur is a confusing man,” I said.

  “Why am I not surprised?”

  six

  My father did not call. We waited an hour, including three exercise sessions and three bottles of spring water for me, one diet soda for Ms. Washburn, but the phone in the Questions Answered office did not ring. Ms. Washburn appeared to be working on collecting information that might help, and was absorbed in her work so I did not interrupt her.

  I knew there were alternate tactics I could try, but my mind was occupied with the idea of my father calling. I have sometimes missed the sound of a ringing telephone if engrossed in some other pursuit and did not want to have that happen now. If Reuben Hoenig called I could answer my mother’s question and move on. That was my single goal at this moment.

  So I spent time answering the few emails I had received that were worthy of attention. Most proclaimed that I had won some clearly bogus lottery (there is no such thing as the Coca-Cola Lottery) and were deleted immediately. Others were general information posts from a list I have joined, ASpire, which consists of other people whose behaviors have identified them as having Asperger’s Syndrome. I do not post on the list very often but I do read some of the entries and find that I tend to compare myself to the person posting, picturing a wide spectrum of autism and trying to determine whether the posting person is closer to “normal” or further to the right than I am. I realize I should not be competitive in those areas and don’t know which side I would prefer to be on, but I confess that I do make the comparison.

  Ms. Washburn entered something into her computer and stood up. She stretched, having sat for longer than I would have. She does not exercise every twenty minutes, although she appears to be in excellent condition.

  “I’m on to something, Samuel,” she said. I recognized this expression as meaning she had found an avenue of investigation that we had not previously considered. It had taken some time to learn many of these imprecise word chains, but it saves a good deal of time in more conversations than one might expect. It’s really more of an exercise in memorization than analysis of syntax. “I’ve been tracing your father’s progress from the time he left New Jersey twenty-seven years ago, and although I have a lot of gaps, I think I see a pattern. He might very well be living under a new name.”

  I stood and walked to her station, assuming she would want to show me her research on the computer screen at her desk. But Ms. Washburn remained standing and stretched her right hand behind her head, then tilting to the left, a move I believe intended to loosen her shoulder. “What have you found that leads you to that conclusion?” I asked.

  “There are records of Reuben Hoenig living here in Piscataway at that time, which makes sense,” Ms. Washburn said, her flexibility allowing her to speak with her head almost at the height of her waist. She straightened up and reversed the stretch. “His name was on the mortgage for your house and never came off, even after your mother paid it off. The deed and the title to your house are in both their names.”

  I couldn’t understand why immediately, but that information made me feel a bit angry. “How does that lead to your belief that my father took another name?” I asked.

  “It leads to a trail,” Ms. Washburn said. “It’s not a straight line. From here the next records I could find of your father are from Tulsa, Oklahoma, just like your mother said. He surfaced there a month or so after he left here and went to work for a company called Round ’Em Up, like in the movie City Slickers.”

  I must have stared at her blankly because the title was not familiar.

  “Well, don’t worry about it. The idea was that this company would bring tourists out there and make believe they were on a cattle drive. They’d bring the cattle to another location on their vacations, and then the next group would come and bring them back.”

  “That seems extremely inefficient,” I pointed out. “The cattle simply move back and forth between two ranches.”

  “It’s the experience, Samuel.” Ms. Washburn stood straight and performed a yoga move centering her hands in her midsection and breathing slowly and deliberately. She did not close her eyes, but it looked like she should. “Anyway, that’s not important. Your father, according to his employment records, only lasted in that job, marketing to travel agents, for five months.”

  “Why would travel agents want to move cattle from one ranch to another?” I asked.

  Ms. Washburn relaxed the pose and sat down in her chair again, apparently refreshed. “Again, don’t worry about that part. The point is that your father shows up again, three weeks after his employment ended at Round ’Em Up, in Portland, Oregon.”

  “Portland?” I asked. “My mother said he’d been in Seattle, Washington.”

  “Eventually,” Ms. Washburn said. “It’s only about a three-hour drive from Portland to Seattle. In Portland your father was working for a company that sold parts to manufacturers of payphones. He was earning pretty well, too, but again he left soon, only three months later, and that’s when he went to Seattle.”

  “I appreciate the effort, Ms. Washburn,” I said. It is good to say something complimentary to a person before pointing out a problem. “But this has all been merely an elaboration on information we already had. I do not understand how it leads to my father being in the area of North Hollywood, California, and living, as you say, under an assumed name. What did you find that led you to that conclusion?”

  “Ah. That’s the interesting part.” I would have expected it would be, but said nothing. Ms. Washburn rubbed her hands together and typed on her keyboard. “Look here.”

  I leaned over her shoulder to get a better vantage point for her computer screen. Projected on it was a chart of statistics. At the top was the logo of a corporation, although from this angle I could not make it out. Flat screens like that on Ms. Washburn’s computer are directionally based and therefore are clearly visible only to a person sitting directly in front of them.

  “This is a copy of some payroll records from the Rayborn Corporation of Seattle, Washington,” Ms. Washburn said. “I think these radio stations digitized their records and maybe didn’t realize they were accessible from the outside. They’re from the same year your father was working there as an advertising salesman for a radio station, KRQL, a very low-wattage AM station that at the time had programming about local news and some sports. As you can see, your father’s name is listed among the employees who were paid every two weeks.” She pointed at a spot on the image which did display the name Reuben Hoenig.

  “So you have established that he worked for Rayborn while in Seattle,” I said. I did not ask again how that led to a move to Southern California under a name that was not his own because it had become clear that Ms. Washburn wanted to convey that information in her own way, which I had found was usually effective. I would let her talk. It’s not always easy for me to do, but in Ms. Washburn’s case I have found it is often the best plan.

  “Yes, and then all of a sudden he stops getting paid, but he’s never taken off the books.” Ms. Washburn scrolled down to a second screen. “See, this is the same payroll a month later. Your father’s name is on it but there is no amount next to the name.”

  “That is odd. Why keep a man on the payroll if he is not being paid?”

  “That’s what I was wondering. But look at the handwritten scroll next to his name.”

  “I’m not able to read it,” I told her. Cursive writing is at best a challenge for me, but cursive writing on an image from twenty years before, on a screen at the wrong angle, was impossible.

/>   “It says, ‘Trans. Mendoza.’ In the records of Rayborn were references to a Mendoza Communications, which owned a few small stations in Southern California in a town called Reseda.”

  I did not have to consult a map. “Reseda, California, is less than a thirty-minute drive from North Hollywood,” I said.

  “You’ve obviously never driven in the Los Angeles area, but yes, they’re very close,” Ms. Washburn said. I did not feel it was necessary to remind her I had never traveled outside the tri-state area of New Jersey, New York, and Pennsylvania.

  “And here’s the thing: Less than a week after your father disappears from the Rayborn payroll, another man named George Kaplan appears on the Mendoza payroll, with the notation that he was transferred from Seattle.”

  My hand went to my temples, which is something that happens unconsciously when I am thinking. “There were no other transfers from Seattle to Reseda at that time?” I asked.

  “No other transfers to Reseda that year,” Ms. Washburn emphasized. “And the payroll records show Reuben Hoenig on the roster without pay while George Kaplan starts on the payroll the second he goes to Reseda.”

  It didn’t seem to be adding up. “How could they transfer Kaplan to Reseda if he hadn’t been on the payroll before the transfer?” I asked.

  “The same way they could stop paying your father and keep him listed as an employee,” Ms. Washburn said. “If he went to California under the name George Kaplan.”

  “Can you find an address for George Kaplan?” I asked Ms. Washburn.

  She began typing into her system as the phone on my desk rang. I walked over and checked the Caller ID feature, which showed a number I did not recognize.

  It was a California exchange, based in the Los Angeles area.

  “Ms. Washburn, please monitor this call,” I said.

  She looked up. “Is it your father?”

  “I don’t know. Please pick up when I pick up.”

  Ms. Washburn’s eyebrows lowered. “Samuel, are you sure you want me to hear—”

  “Please.”

  I reached for the received and saw her do the same. I nodded and we picked up our desk phones simultaneously.

  “Questions Answered,” I said. I have trained myself to do so, as the statement really does not mean anything as the opening to a conversation.

  The voice on the other end was male and harsh, as if its owner had a mildly sore throat. “Is this Sam Hoenig?” it asked.

  I did not introduce myself, as the question had been posed. “I am Samuel Hoenig,” I said. “Proprietor of Questions Answered. How may I help you?”

  Ms. Washburn looked at me with something like confusion on her face. She said nothing, although I was certain she had employed the mute feature on her phone.

  “This is Reuben Hoenig, your father,” the man said.

  It was what I had expected, of course. But the words sounded strange. I was not able to adequately analyze the problem, other than I had never heard anyone identify himself to me that way before. But that was not the issue at hand right now.

  “Would you please give me your address?” I asked. It was the simplest and fastest way to answer Mother’s question. Ms. Washburn’s expression, however, became more serious, bordering on disapproval.

  “What?” Once again my conversation seemed to have taken someone by surprise. I did not know what another person might have said to the father he had not seen since the age of four.

  “Your address, please. My mother has requested that I find it, and I promised her I would do so. Please tell me your address.” I reached for the pad of notepaper and the pen I kept to my right hand side on the desk.

  “I’m not going to tell you my address,” the man answered.

  That seemed strange. “Why not?” I asked.

  “Because I don’t want your mother to know where I am,” he said.

  That was even less reasonable than his previous statement. “Mr. Hoenig,” I said, “I am unable to think of a reason you wouldn’t want your wife to know your location. I am aware that you are somewhere near North Hollywood or Reseda, California, but my mother has requested your exact location. She is concerned about you based on your own words and feels it is important to get in touch with you directly. If you will not give me your address, may I assume that the telephone number you called on is your own private cellular telephone?”

  “Why do you talk like that?” the man asked.

  I speak in the same way that everyone else who speaks does, with thoughts coming from my brain and through my vocal system, so the question had the effect of making me pause momentarily to think. Ms. Washburn, I noticed, frowned at the question, probably considering Reuben Hoenig to be rude.

  Still, it was not a sentiment I had never heard expressed before, so after a moment I realized what he was really asking. “There are those who would say I have a disorder known as Asperger’s Syndrome or a ‘high-functioning’ form of autism,” I explained. “Now may I have your address, or should I give my mother this phone number?”

  “It’s not my phone,” the man said, although even my somewhat undeveloped ability to read tone of voice told me he was lying. “Sam, you have to realize I don’t want your mother to be able to find me. It’s been a long time and she’s not part of my life anymore. Neither are you. So tell her to stop trying to find me and move on with her life, okay?”

  I did not care for the way he was casually speaking about my mother, whom he had left more than a quarter-century earlier. “This contact was not initiated by my mother,” I reminded him. “This began because you sent her a letter in the mail.”

  “A letter!” The man appeared to have some difficulty remembering or misunderstood what I was saying. “When?”

  I saw no reason to answer the question. “Sir, I have made a promise to my mother that I would find you, and I will. If you refuse to give me your location information, I will be forced to acquire it through other means.”

  “What?”

  “I will find you whether you tell me where you are, or not,” I explained. “It will be easier if you tell me.”

  “Are you threatening me?” he asked.

  “I do not believe I am,” I said. “It would depend on your definition of a threat. If you are afraid of my being able to find you, then I suppose it is a threat, because I will find you. If you think I’m suggesting you might come to some form of bodily harm—”

  The man disconnected the call.

  After a moment I replaced the receiver and considered the idea that more than one person had ended a phone call with me very abruptly today. I looked at Ms. Washburn, who was also putting her phone back onto its cradle.

  “Well, that did not go very well, Samuel,” she said. “I’m sorry.”

  “I don’t see how it was your fault.”

  “It’s something people say. Your father was rude.”

  “No, he wasn’t.” I told Ms. Washburn. “My father did not display any behavior at all. The man on the phone was not my father.”

  seven

  “How do you know he wasn’t your father?” Mother asked.

  We were sitting in the living room of my mother’s house, she on the sofa with Ms. Washburn, who had driven me home, on the opposite side. I was seated in the armchair where I could see both women most clearly. I had not been home more than ten minutes and Ms. Washburn had said we should give Mother this news in person like any other client. It was one hour and twenty-three minutes before we would normally be eating dinner. The sun was still visible in the front window behind Mother and Ms. Washburn from my vantage point.

  I had not explained my reasoning to Ms. Washburn because she had insisted upon leaving immediately and we usually do not converse in the car while she is driving. In addition, she had said she wanted to hear my explanation at the same time as Mother. I am not sure what her rationale behin
d that sentiment was, but I assumed it was valid.

  “There were a number of gaps in his conversation that made such an indication,” I answered. “He reacted with some surprise, which I believe was genuine, when I referred to the letter you received from him yesterday. Apparently he was not aware it had been sent, and possibly not aware it had been written. You are certain, I assume, that you recognize my father’s handwriting on that letter.”

  Mother nodded. “No question,” she said.

  “I expected as much. So if my father wrote that letter and the man on the phone was unaware that it existed, the man was not my father.”

  “Could he have some kind of medical condition, a memory issue that might have made him shaky about the letter?” Ms. Washburn asked.

  “It is always possible, but better not to make that assumption,” I said. “We could decide that anyone we speak to has memory issues and then nothing they say would have any credibility at all.”

  Mother seemed to wince a bit at the thought. “But Reuben did say this would be the last time I’d hear from him,” she said. “I think he’s dying or he wouldn’t have said that. Something that serious could involve neurological conditions.”

  “There was more that convinced me,” I told them. “He asked me why I speak the way I do.”

  They sat for a moment and looked at me. I thought the point had been made clearly, but it was obvious Ms. Washburn and Mother did not share that belief. “Surely my father knew I was not a typical boy, even when he left,” I continued when I made that realization. “I know I had not received a diagnosis at four, Mother, but I still contend my ‘unusual’ behavior was a factor in my father’s decision to leave New Jersey.”

  “Oh, Samuel,” Mother began.

  I did not let her finish. “You are not hurting my feelings, Mother. I am aware that I was not an easy child to raise because I would deal with situations in ways that other children wouldn’t. For some people that is a challenge, and that is how you saw it. You met the challenge. My father was, in my estimation, a person for whom it would have been more difficult to handle. I don’t believe I am the only reason he left us, but I do think my behavior was not helping to keep him here.”