by Cat Bauer
“Carla,” I say. “She's my … was my best friend.”
“Really?” Sean contemplates this for a moment. He wipes his hands on his jeans. “What a small world.”
Well, this is about as far away from what I thought would happen as it can get. We are both acting like the executioner is sitting next to us, ready to throw the switch. I have never been so nervous in my life. I cannot focus. I try to grab on to one of my thoughts, but they are wispy, like smoke. Finally Sean asks, “Is that why you came? To see the Imagine mosaic?”
“No …” I shift in my chair. I take a breath. I may as well come right out and ask him. I unzip my back-pack. I take out the harlequin. I can tell by the look on Sean's face that he recognizes it immediately. I hold it out to him. My hand is shaking so much, I drop it.
Slowly Sean leans over and picks the harlequin up off the floor. He stares at the doll for a long, long time and doesn't look at me. Then he examines the card around the doll's collar. He reads out loud: “Happy Birthday Two-Year-Old!” He turns the doll over, fiddling with its clothes, straightening its baton. He murmurs, “He jests at scars that never felt a wound….” He talks to the doll, not me. He is quoting Shakespeare. He is quoting from Romeo and Juliet. In a moment, he will tell me he's my father. I am so dizzy, I can hardly breathe.
“Read the inside.” My voice cracks.
He flips open the card. He reads: “A harlequin for my Harleykins. Papa loves you forever and a day.” His voice is low. He has no problem reading the scrib-bled handwriting. Then he is quiet. His head is down, so I can't tell what he's thinking. When he finally speaks, he says, “I don't get it.”
“What?” The word bursts out of me. This is not what I was expecting to hear.
He coughs and shrugs. “I said, I don't get it.”
My heart has tumbled somewhere around my feet. He is not making this easy on me. “I found this hidden in my storage area. Don't you recognize it?”
He shakes his head. Now he looks at me. “No … should I?”
I think he is lying straight to my face. My voice trembles. “Isn't this your handwriting?”
“Not even close.” He is still shaking his head, no, no, no. “What do you think, Harley? Do you think I'm your father? Is that what Peppy told you?”
“My mother doesn't even know I'm here.” This is horrible. This is not at all the way I planned it. I never thought he'd deny being my father. “But it's got to be you!” Do not break. Do not break. I feel my face getting ready to cry. A tear escapes from my eye and travels down my cheek. “I'm sorry,” I sniff. “I don't mean to start bawling all over the place.”
“It's okay.” Sean reaches across the miniature cardboard meadow and touches my arm. Now the silence falls in his corner. He taps his fingers on the table. He looks over at me and manages sort of a half grin. “This is pretty much freaking me out. How about you?”
I nod, afraid to speak.
Sean stands up. “Are you sure you don't want a Coke? I'm gonna have a beer.”
“Okay.” My voice is a peep. I watch him disappear and concentrate on not crying. He has left the room to get himself together, I think. Now he will come back in here and tell me the truth.
Sean returns with the drinks. He does not sit down. He pops open the beer can. I open the soda but do not drink. He leans against the wall. “There goes my deadline.” He laughs, but not like something is funny. “Seriously, Harley. I've got to get to work….” His voice trails off, as if he is hoping I will get up out of the chair and disappear from his life.
I am getting desperate. I try again. “What about the stuff you wrote my mother in the yearbook, about the wild times you had?” I plant myself in the chair like I am going nowhere.
Sean is startled. “Harley, that was a long time ago. Lenape Lakes is like another planet.” He is looking everywhere around the room but at me.
“But did you … did you go out with my mother?” Sean is uncomfortable. “Your mother and I were very good … friends.”
“Friends? What does that mean, friends?” Now I am the lawyer and he is the accused. I force him to listen. I tell him about finding the harlequin, the birth certificate, the marriage certificate, the blue eyes—the whole bit. I outline my adoption theory carefully, step by step, somehow hoping I can convince him that he is my father by the overwhelming evidence.
When I get done, he asks, “What has Peppy told you?”
“She tells me nothing. Now you're telling me nothing. I'm not stupid, you know. I know something's going on.”
“Look, Harley.” He coughs again and takes a swig of beer. I think he has a nervous cough. “There are answers to everything you've just told me. Did you ever think that maybe Peppy and Roger weren't married when you were born? And they changed the birth certificate later, after Roger had another job? Things were different back then. Having a kid when you weren't married wasn't the coolest thing to do. It still isn't. Especially in a town like Lenape.”
Can it be as simple as that? That they weren't married? His words are like water thrown in my face. I never thought of this. Have I made a total fool of myself? It is getting hard for me to think, I am so confused.
“What about my blue eyes?” I am trying hard not to cry.
“Your grandparents could have had blue eyes; it skipped a generation, then went to you.”
I am listening through a tunnel. I swear, he has an answer for everything. “Are you saying I came all this way for nothing?” My voice sounds far away.
Sean's grin is lopsided. “Well, I wouldn't say for nothing. You look so much like Peppy, it's like I stepped back twenty years. I'm glad I got the chance to meet you.” His words tell me this conversation is over.
My ears are ringing like I just sat through an entire concert, right in front of the amplifier. What an idiot I've been, wanting a father so bad that I stole Carla's. Maybe there really is something wrong with me. I created a fantasy world and moved right in. The tears that sting my eyes are hot.
I lean over to pick up my harlequin and his glass eyes stop me. A harlequin for my Harleykins … The faded card around his neck is a flag, waving. Wait a minute…. I straighten up and turn to Sean, the harlequin evidence in my hand. “I saw your face when I handed you this doll. I think you recognized it.”
Sean looks away. He is thinking fast. “Harley, I've always liked harlequins. It's from the commedia dell'arte, you know, the Italian theater—”
He is rambling. I do not let up. “Why aren't you answering me?” Here come the tears.
“I'm trying, Harley. I'm trying to tell you there are other explanations for everything you've said.”
I am so upset, my words are cracking all over the place. “Really? Well, explain this: Somebody wrote this note. Someone is my father. Someone loved me when I was two years old enough to give me this doll!” The sob in my voice scares me. “Where is that man now? Or are you trying to tell me he doesn't exist?”
Sean doesn't answer. He stands there, surprised.
I keep going. “Look in my eyes.” This is the end of it, all my hopes splattered on the floor. “Look in my eyes and tell me you didn't write this note!”
Sean opens his mouth but says nothing. After a long, trembly moment, I know he is not going to answer me. I hear a high-pitched sound and realize it is coming from inside my head. The ground below my feet is crumbling. I've got to get out of here. I've got to get away. I do not think. I just run. My feet separate from my body and dash off down the hallway. I hear Sean call after me, “Harley! Harley, wait!”
I trip up to the front door. I fumble with the dead bolt. It sticks from years and layers of paint. I yank hard. I hear Sean's footsteps following after me. I finally get the door open when he appears behind me. He catches the door with the top of his hand. “Harley, wait.” He gently pushes it shut. “Wait.” I try again to pull it open, but his hand is hard against it, blocking my exit. I stand, my back stiffening, facing the closed door.
“Let me out, Sean.” My
hand is tight on the doorknob. “Please.”
I wait for him to open the door, but he doesn't make a move. Instead I hear these words, hesitant, behind me: “I can't let you go like this.” I can feel his breath, hot on my hair. Now it is Sean's voice that is shaking; he is having a hard time getting the words out of his mouth. He speaks to my back. “Harley, I was with your mother the night of the John Lennon concert, not Roger. I went with your mother to the hospital.” Sean takes a breath. I am very still, waiting to hear what will come next. “I was there the night you were born.”
The world is shifting in front of me. My knees are weak and trembling, like I just got off a roller coaster and left my heart up in the air. I want to tell him to knock it off; I can't take any more disappointments. Sean takes my hand and forces my blue eyes to look into his own. I see a tiny mirror of my face reflected in his pupils. He says, “The man who wrote the note exists, Harley.” Then he closes his eyes; my face disappears and all I see are tired crevices around his eyelids, splashed with tears. In that moment, I realize why I have been painting blue-eyed ponds: for him. He takes a deep breath like he is saying a prayer, and confirms: “For what it's worth, that man is me.”
My other hand drops off the door handle. “What are you saying?”
Sean's face is different now, older and worn. He breathes out and leans against the wall, as if his body is too heavy for his legs. Then he straightens up and reaches for his jacket, hanging on a post by the door. “Come on, Harley. Let's get some air. We have a lot of catching up to do.”
We have been walking and crying and talking on the cobblestone streets and have wound up at Fourteenth Street. Now we are inside the subway train, going to Strawberry Fields, jammed together on the seats and rubbing up against complete strangers. A man reading the Wall Street Journal sits next to me, his legs spread far apart. He reeks of cologne, and I will probably smell like him before this ride is over.
Sean is telling me pieces of the past, starting back when he and Peppy and Roger and Ronnie were all in high school. I am listening to the story like I'm watching old reruns on television; it doesn't seem quite real. He says, “I had been going out with Ronnie for a couple of years, and Peppy had been with Roger forever. But in our senior year, I wound up in art class with Peppy. We worked on a collage together, and, well … that was that. I knew right away it was a big one.” My mouth is practically falling off my face; I can't believe what I am hearing. “Peppy was so sweet and shy….”
“Peppy?” He is talking about another woman, not my mother.
“She was always blushing. Like you.”
I feel my face turn red. This is the second time I've heard about Peppy being shy. From shy to shouting. I wonder if people can change so much with time. I try to imagine the woman who is my mother kissing this man sitting next to me in the subway and, I'm sorry, it's impossible.
“After high school, things got messy, with the four of us breaking up and getting back together. You know, stuff you do when you're seventeen, eighteen. Ronnie was still in school.” As he says this, I realize he is talking about people not much older than me. I can't even think about it, it is too strange. “After a while, things settled down; Peppy got a job as a secretary at the chemical plant, and I started art school here in the city. Except for that, we were together all the time. Even though Roger worked with Peppy, he backed off. Everything was great.”
The train stops at Forty-second Street and most people tumble out, but another load piles right back in. Sean takes a breath. “This is the hard part.” He looks away from me, then continues. “One night I ran into Ronnie over at Gilgard's in Wynokie. You know it?” I nod, anxious now, waiting to hear what I already suspect. Sean coughs. “Well, anyway, that night … we … we … How should I put this?”
“You slept together?” I lower my voice, suddenly the adult.
“Yeah.” Sean shakes his head. “It was just that once. I refused to take her calls after that. I would hang up on her, I felt so rotten.” There is guilt in his eyes, but I am thinking, Here is a man who is used to getting away with things. Charming, like a snake.
Sean coughs his nervous cough. “I never told Peppy what happened. Not then, anyway. Things were too good. I was getting a few art gigs. Me and Peppy were in the city all the time. Everything was fine until one day Peppy found out she was pregnant. We didn't know what to do. We didn't tell a soul. I wanted to be an artist and get out of Lenape. I wasn't ready to be a father. But we talked about it and decided to go ahead and have the baby. We figured we were strong enough for anything….” Sean shakes his head. “God, we were stupid. Young and stupid.”
I feel like he is telling a story of some other strange family, a family who lives in a make-believe city like Hollywood or New York. I look around to see if anyone is listening. No one is paying attention to us; everyone is reading newspapers or staring into space. Sean's voice brings me back. “And then, one day the phone rings and it's Ronnie … who tells me she is pregnant. At first I thought she was playing some kind of sick joke. But it was true.”
“What?” I am stunned. Sean has got my full attention now.
He speaks quietly. “Peppy broke down and told Roger what had happened. And Roger came up with the solution: if I would agree to leave town, he would marry Peppy and raise the baby as his own.” Sean's face is grim. “It didn't surprise me. I knew he was still in love with her.” He takes a breath. “Well, Roger had the job at the chemical plant, and I was this struggling art student. What was I supposed to do? Stay there with two kids from two different women?”
Clackety-clack. The steel wheels roll. I can feel my shock at Sean's words slowly burning into anger. The baby he is talking about is me. The two kids from two different women are Carla and me. Everything is suddenly clear, like I've been looking through blurry binoculars and just found the focus. “What about accepting your responsibilities, Dad?” The words jump out of my mouth.
Sean looks like I just slapped him across the face. “Roger made me swear never to tell anyone the truth, and I agreed. I thought I was doing what was best for you. But it was the hardest decision I've made in my life.” His voice is full of apologies, but right now I have no room for forgiveness. All I am thinking is, These people are supposed to be grown-ups? To me, they are worse than anybody I know.
A black guy dressed all in white enters the car. “I AM HUNGRY AND HOMELESS,” he shouts above the screeching brakes. “ANYTHING YOU CAN GIVE TO HELP WILL BE APPRECIATED. THANK YOU AND GOD BLESS.” He holds out a dirty Styrofoam cup and totters through the subway car. Nobody looks up from their newspapers. No one gives him a dime. As he passes by, his dark brown eyes look right into mine. Up close, he does not look much older than me.
“Peppy told me that Roger was at the John Lennon concert, not you. What is that, another lie?” My words are sharp, accusing.
Sean takes a deep breath. “The night you were born, Peppy came into the city so we could see each other one last time. You weren't due for a few more weeks. Peppy went into labor right in the middle of the concert. When we had to tell the hospital what name to put on the birth certificate, it was impossible for either of us to say Roger was the father. Holding you in my arms … seeing my child … I couldn't do it. But it forced Roger to change the birth certificate later. I don't think he ever got over it.”
Sean looks at me, and I can see his eyes are wet, but I am having a hard time summoning up any sympathy. Now his voice is low. “The last time I saw you was when you were two years old. Roger was at work, and Peppy was home taking care of you. I bought you that harlequin down in the Village. It reminded me of you. I called you Harleykins. It was the only time I broke my promise, but I just had to see you. I had no idea that Peppy had kept it hidden all these years.”
My feelings are so mixed up, I don't know whether I want to laugh or scream. It is anger that wins. “And Carla?”
“Carla and Ronnie still don't know the truth. They think I'm just some jerk who deserted the family to b
e an artist.” He considers this. “Well, I guess I am.”
This explains so much. So much. Why Peppy is so angry. Why Roger is so mean. Finally the train pulls up to Seventy-second Street and lurches to a stop. The reality of what these people have done slams me hard in the chest, and I am burning mad. I jump up and push my way through the crowd, Sean following behind me. I step off the train as soon as the doors slide open.
“Why didn't you just tell me the truth?” I hammer the words back at Sean. People stop and stare at me, but I don't care. “You all made me feel like I was crazy. Do you know what it feels like to know something and have everyone around you tell you that you're wrong? I don't think it was the right thing to do!” I take off down the corridor that leads to the exit.
Sean chases after me and grabs my hand. He lets a few stragglers move past us. “We all thought we were doing what was best. You have to understand, Harley, how much I loved your mother. When I saw your face … You look so much like her, except for your eyes. Your eyes are mine.”
We are the only ones in this part of the tunnel now. I yank my hand away from him. “You loved her so much, you slept with another woman? You didn't do what was best, you did what was easiest! Look in my eyes now. What do you see?” I move right in front of Sean's face, but he looks away. “Yeah, these are your eyes, all right.”
My voice is getting loud. Three people at the other end of the tunnel stare at us. Sean glances over at them, and they look away. “Harley, my life is not easy. I sleep in a loft. Sometimes there are months when I don't work. It's no kind of life for a kid. It's why I left you with Roger.”
“What kind of life do you think I've been living?” I am really furious now. “Did you ever bother to check? Look!” I pull my hair back and show him the red welt. “I am walking around with a slap on my face. This is the kind of man you left me with. A drunk who beats me. And you worry about sleeping in a loft?”
“Harley, I'm sorry—”
“You're sorry? For which part, Sean? For lying? For leaving? For making me think I was crazy? Well, there's one thing I know: I'm not the crazy person here. I found out the truth without any help from you or Roger or Peppy or anyone else. I found out the truth by myself. None of you can face the truth, but I can. And the truth is that there is only one person I can depend on and that is me.”
