Odd Adventures with your Other Father

by Prentiss, Norman

  “That’s nice,” she said, and it was a sweet picture, Dad Shawn with his mouth closed but his lips forming a generous smile, his cheeks puffed and red and an affectionate gleam in his eyes. “Did your son take this one?”

  “No, I did.” Celia’s grandmother couldn’t be telling the truth here. In the rare instances when he mentioned them, Dad Shawn didn’t speak fondly of his partner’s parents. At best he’d say something neutral, and then quickly change the subject. Celia couldn’t imagine a time when he’d smile like that at Dad Jack’s mother.

  And yet, she had the picture. The image was faded behind the plastic sleeve, which had the unavoidable scuff marks of a wallet insert. Celia could tell the photo hadn’t been freshly placed there for her benefit; Grandmother Pruett always kept the picture with her.

  “Some of your son, too?” Celia asked.

  “Oh, she might have a few of those.” Her grandfather nudged his wife with his shoulder after he spoke.

  “Stop,” to him. Then to Celia: “A lot more at home, but I have these.” She turned the wallet toward herself again, then flipped back a few of the photo sleeves. “Here.”

  On the top sleeve, she’d put two pictures in the same slot. On the right was a grade school portrait, Dad Jack when he must have been six or seven, seated on a small chair and holding a picture book open on his lap. It was a cute photo, and nothing like any she’d ever seen of him. Dad Shawn hadn’t known him then, had no photographs from this early in her other father’s life.

  The other picture was from high school, and he was close to the same age Celia was now. It was a headshot—for the yearbook, no doubt—his curly hair parted on one side in an effort to comb it straight. He smiled, making no attempt to hide the braces on his teeth. His ears stuck out a bit, and he seemed awkward—the way Celia felt sometimes herself—lacking the carefree, confident expression of his later pictures.

  On the sleeve beneath these pictures was a single outdoor shot. The occasion was easy to identify, since Dad Jack wore a cap and gown for his college graduation. This is the other father she recognized: handsome, tall and full of life.

  He died a few months after Celia’s fourth birthday, so her actual memories of him were vague: a voice with no words attached; a feeling of comfort and warmth. All her other impressions came from the photographs in the family souvenir box, and from the quick, scattered anecdotes she’d heard growing up, until Dad Shawn deemed her mature enough to hear longer stories—the elaborate, fantastic adventures.

  Celia reached toward the wallet, overcome by that strange impulse that touching a picture will bring you closer to its subject. “If you loan these to me, I could scan them.”

  “We have a scanner at home,” her grandfather said. “We don’t know how to work the darn thing.”

  “These are my only copies.” Her grandmother seemed nervous then, almost as if she feared Celia would pull them out of the sleeves and race from the building. Her fingers shifted, revealing more of the left edge of the lower photograph.

  Another graduate waited to the side, respectful, trying to stay out of the frame.

  “Oh,” Celia said, and her grandmother immediately knew why she’d registered such surprise.

  “That’s the first picture I took of them together. Of course, I didn’t realize they were together at the time . . . ”

  “None of us did,” her grandfather said.

  Celia couldn’t help reading the unintentional symbolism of the graduation photograph. Dad Shawn had no place in the picture, appearing only by accident. He was nothing more than their son’s casual friend, banished to the periphery. She guessed that Grandmother Pruett always covered his face with her finger when she showed this family photo.

  And that’s why, Celia always understood, that’s why he doesn’t contact them anymore. They’d never fully accepted the relationship, hadn’t been supportive all along but were civil, at least on the surface, as long as their son was alive. Afterward, there’d been a falling out. Things were said, maybe, that shouldn’t have been—on both sides.

  But Celia had still wanted to meet her grandparents. She could learn new things about her other father that she wouldn’t learn otherwise. See the house where he grew up, see more photos and hear stories about different parts of his life. The only risk was that Dad Shawn would be upset with her afterward. She’d have to convince him that it wasn’t a betrayal. It was about getting closer to Dad Jack, not his parents. Celia didn’t need more relatives. She could say she didn’t even like her grandparents—wasn’t that what her father would want to hear?

  “This is our favorite,” grandmother Pruett said. And she flipped down all the other pictures to show the one on top—the one she’d see most often, anytime she opened this section of her wallet. A photograph of both her fathers from their later years together, she guessed, because Dad Jack’s hair is peppered with premature gray. It was the best picture of them that Celia had ever seen. Their arms are around each other’s shoulders, but it’s not simply the hug of two male friends. They are closer than brothers, too. Celia is not sure what specifically gives the impression, but it’s unmistakable: this is a couple; they are clearly in love.

  Not only with each other. In the crook of Dad Jack’s other arm, the one not hugging his partner, rests a pink blanket that is wrapped around a tiny shape. He holds it with such care, as if life surprised him with an extra source of love. Dad Shawn, returning his hug, shared the same overwhelming, nervous new affection. They’ve always had each other, but they have something else now.

  A baby. Its small head visible at the open end of the wrapped blanket, eyes still unaccustomed to seeing, puzzled as her grandmother snaps a picture.

  Me, Celia thought.

  #

  Celia wished she’d ordered the shells or elbow noodles. Spaghetti strands were awkward to eat in front of others, and their conversation hit an awkward patch as well.

  But she had to say it. Her grandparents’ version of events didn’t fit what she’d learned, directly and indirectly, from her father. They were glossing over the truth. Pretending. “You didn’t approve of their relationship.”

  “Of course we did.” Grandmother Pruett’s reply was automatic and definitive. She continued slicing a piece of steak as she spoke.

  Her grandfather set down a piece of bread that he was using to mop up the last traces of his lasagna. “We’re Southern Baptists. We eventually came around, but it took us a while to get used to the idea.”

  “Oh, not long at all.” A pasted on smile, with a hint of irritation coloring her grandmother’s voice. Like an actor angry that her scene partner decided to improvise instead of following the script. “Once we saw how much they were in love, we were happy for them.”

  “No, we were kind of a mess at first,” her grandfather said. “I thought of it as mental illness, and Charlotte referred to her son as having birth defects.”

  “Oh, don’t tell her that—” with no attempt to hide her irritation this time.

  “You did. It was a tough time for us.” Celia was beginning to think, maybe she could call him Pop Pop. He was her ally, now, against the rose-colored past her grandmother hoped to offer. He would tell the full truth.

  And then her grandmother’s reserve broke down. This wasn’t the proper time or place—they were in public, and though her husband was finished eating, she was barely halfway through her meal—but the issue was raised and it needed to be addressed. She set down her knife and fork, lifted the cloth napkin from her lap and lay it gently across her plate. “It was a different world,” she said. “I’m not proud of how we reacted. But Jonathan . . . Jack”—she corrected herself, substituting the name Celia would be used to—“he didn’t exactly break the news to us gently. I was hoping he might move back home for a few years after college. It’s hard for a mother to let go of her only son. Instead, he won that prize money, and the two boys went on their road trip. Boys, that’s how we thought of them then, and it was difficult to let our boy run off
like that.”

  “It was tougher on Charlotte,” Pop Pop said. “All of it was. I don’t think Jack or Shawn ever realized that.”

  Celia felt embarrassed. She’d come here to learn about her father, and hadn’t fully realized the painful memories she’d be asking her grandparents to revisit. He was their son. He’d died too soon.

  She took a sip of water. She was done eating, too, and she wanted to leave the restaurant. But she wasn’t sure she wanted to leave with her grandparents—essentially, two strangers she’d imposed upon. This had been a terrible idea.

  “You know what helped me more than anything?” her grandmother said. “The postcards they sent.” She made quote marks with her fingers on the word they. “Jonathan, for all his claims to be a writer, apparently couldn’t be bothered to write his parents. We never got one letter while he was away at college. During the boys’ year-long trip, though, we got postcards from all across the country. They were signed ‘Jack and Shawn’—but the message was mostly in Shawn’s handwriting. We knew it was his doing: he bought the cards, started the message, and made Jonathan scribble a little something at the end.”

  “She kept them all. We’ll show you, back at the house.”

  “We loved it when they visited us,” Grandmother Pruett said. “Shawn was so kind, and obviously such a good influence on Jonathan. How could we object if our son fell in love with someone like him?”

  “He made sure Jack remembered both our birthdays,” her grandfather added, “called us on Mothers’ and Fathers’ Day. He basically kept us all together. Until . . . ”

  He waved a hand in the air, as if nothing more needed to be said. Celia’s grandmother sat straight in her chair, arms in her lap. She almost looked like she was praying.

  The rift between Dad Shawn and his partner’s parents. Celia assumed it had been there all along, but apparently they’d been a lot closer for a while.

  She tried to ask delicately. “So there was a falling out . . .?”

  “Oh yes,” her grandmother said. “But don’t blame your father—Shawn, I mean. We certainly don’t blame him.”

  What a strange statement. It had never occurred to Celia to blame Dad Shawn. He was a kind person, like they said. If there was any fault, she’d assumed it was on the side of her grandparents—Dad’s Shawn’s in-laws, essentially. They were from an older generation, less accepting of non-traditional families. There’d been some dispute about her fathers’ relationship. The Pruetts might have tried to change them, cure what they saw as a “mental illness.” They might have protested when her fathers first decided to adopt a child. Or, as Dad Jack grew ill, there were likely fights about how to handle his medical care—his parents had all the rights at that time, and his partner of almost twenty years held no recognized legal status.

  Celia’s grandfather noticed her confusion, attempted to explain. “It’s tough when the person you’re . . . well, I’ll say married to, because that’s what it was. It’s tough when the person you’re married to is ill. Hard for a relationship to stay the same.”

  Celia was even more confused. The falling out was with Dad Jack’s parents. Her fathers had never had a falling out with each other.

  Had they?

  She looked from one of them to the other. “But he broke off contact with you.”

  “Yes, but not because of anything we did,” her grandfather said. “More out of shame, I imagine. Abandoning Jack like that, when they needed each other the most.”

  CONVERSION THERAPY

  An Odd Adventure with Your Other Father

  “You weren’t supposed to find that picture, Celia. Certainly, there’s a story behind it. There’s a story behind all the souvenirs I saved from that year of travels with your other father. But I planned to save this particular story for when you were older—and even then I’m not sure I’d have nerve to tell it whole.

  “A surprising admission, I know, considering the stories I’ve shared already, about demons or dark magic or a forgotten colony of Blemmyae. Those were nightmares, and it’s supposed to be my job to protect you from nightmares.

  “Still, I admit you have a strong constitution for such things. You get that from Jack, no doubt—that same bright-eyed inquisitiveness, seeking fresh images and experiences, no matter how terrible or disturbing. Both of you, you’d open a gold-plated jewelry box and instead of treasure hope to find a rat skull or wriggling worms inside.

  “Your laughter proves my point. You’re so much like him, which is why I suppress my own fatherly scruples, leaving in the most gruesome details whenever I tell these adventures.

  “It’s why I’m weakening now, even though this story is different. No, it’s not more gruesome than those others. More personal, though. And with some of the adult themes they’ll keep censoring out of your schoolbooks, until you reach college in a few years.

  “Okay, you’ve worn me down. I’ll try. I warn you, though: some of this will get pretty uncomfortable for me, and won’t be easy for you to hear, either:”

  #

  This image comes from August of 1985. There’s not a lot of pictures of the two of us together. Jack hated those timer snapshots, where you balance the camera on some ledge and try to hold your smiles until the final beep. “Tourist shots,” Jack would say. “We’re not tourists.”

  This one’s rare for another reason, too, since we’re both dressed up: black suits, stiff white shirts and dark-blue ties, with a church archway behind us. We look like groom and groom.

  When the woman returned the camera to Jack, she said: “You think you’re happy. One day, you’ll look at this photo and realize how miserable you both were at this moment.”

  What a strange thing for a person to say, I remember thinking. She’d be delighted to carve our happiness away—and she fully expects us to sharpen the knife for her.

  (The idea must seem even stranger to you, Celia, since your world’s more tolerant than ours was then. If Jack were here today, we could get married anywhere in the country, if we wanted. Marriage seemed an impossible dream back then, especially in the religious South.)

  The woman, Gloria Leavendale, smiled the self-satisfied smile of a religious zealot. Her teeth were bright, her thin mouth outlined with a light coat of lipstick. Aside from faint wrinkles beneath her eyes, her fair skin was smooth—I guessed she was thirty-five or forty. Her hair was her most striking feature, brushed in careful, golden waves that gleamed even in the church’s somber lighting. No doubt this hair was a source of sinful pride; she would probably rationalize her beautician’s bill, thinking an attractive appearance aided in her holy mission.

  She kept smiling, and a forked tongue darted through her teeth. Pale skin crusted into lizard scales, and the precious golden hair thickened into a nest of snakes that slithered around her gorgon’s head.

  #

  As a rule, I like to avoid confrontation. That was true even then, when I was fresh out of college. I knew people like Gloria Leavendale saw homosexuality as a sickness to be cured, and I wasn’t going out of my way to encounter somebody who hated me. Sometimes Jack was, though. And he was driving.

  He had a knack for finding places to go. In this instance, a brochure in an Oglethorpe, Georgia, convenience store prompted the excursion. We’d barely recovered from that incident in Asheville . . .

  (No, Celia, not the one with the town of hunchbacks. The one with the lake creature, remember?)

  Anyway, I hoped we’d have a few days of calm, but Jack had other ideas. The convenience store had one of those community bulletin boards by the checkout. They let customers post anything: lawnmowers or cars for sale, apartments for rent; guitar or piano lessons offered; help wanted ads. Instead of removing the out-of-date notices, people simply thumb-tacked the latest stuff on top. A real mess, and I wouldn’t have looked twice, but Jack went right to the board, where some fake-smile face peered over a “Missing Dog” notice. I’m not sure what caught his eye, since the black-and-white picture didn’t benefit from the presume
d allure of Gloria’s golden hair, but once he pulled up a few thumbtacks and moved aside a pizza shop coupon, I understood the attraction.

  The headline was printed in heavy red letters. “GAY? TROUBLED?” At the bottom of the brochure, in softer gray: “LET US HELP.”

  “That certainly fits us,” Jack said. He tore the glossy pamphlet from under a cluster of staples, then we headed out to our VW Beetle with the groceries and a bag of ice for the soda cooler.

  We iced up the cooler and loaded our purchases next to it in the car’s tiny back seat—couldn’t use the trunk since it was fastened down with a bent coat hanger to keep the hood from flying up when we drove.

  I held a cool Pepsi can to the back of my neck while Jack sat behind the wheel, lost in thought.

  “Let’s get going,” I said. The sooner we hit the main roads, the better our chances that air through the windows might blow fast enough to lose some of its swelter.

  “Not yet. Map time.” I was afraid he’d say this. We were supposed to head to Athens—hang out in the University of Georgia town awhile, less crowded at the moment since most students were on summer break. One of our Chesapeake friends, David Kerr, offered to put us up for a week or two. This would be another perfectly good plan, put on hold. As Jack studied his new brochure, I slipped into my role as navigator.

  I maintained a file box of Triple-A TripTiks and city/state maps. The TripTiks outlined routes we’d planned in advance. No such thing as MapQuest or GPS systems in 1985, of course; I went to the Towson Triple-A office and they made these neat spiral-bound booklets for different stages of our journey. They were compact and easy to follow. Too bad we hardly used them.

  The city maps were rich in detail, but not designed to be spread out wide in the front seat of a Beetle. I did it anyway, locating our present location in Oglethorpe, then folding a few quadrants back.

  “It’s affiliated with Liberty Baptist Church, near Crawfordville,” Jack said. “Should be thirty miles or so to the southeast.” He continued to study his brochure. While I calculated the best route, Jack read key phrases aloud, adding his own comments: