15: Several Surprises
Originally emailed on Jul. 23, 1998
Hey there.
Life continues to be interesting in the wake of my mother's death. The coroner has only just released my mother's body as of today. She'll be cremated without a ceremony this afternoon, and there will be a memorial on Monday.
My father is still missing, and is apparently being considered a fugitive from justice, although it's not clear to me just what crime he's committed. They have good evidence that he was gone for at least two days before my mother died, and her death was caused by a simple heart attack. The coroner believes no foul play was involved in her death. But my father's absence is not just one of his binges, it appears, but a pre-meditated abandonment. So far, we've found out by going through drawers and files at the house that he had emptied their checking and savings accounts (none too large to begin with), and mortgaged the house recently on one of those top-heavy mortgages they advertise on TV -- in other words, the house is mortgaged for 118% of its appraised value.
There are two pieces of evidence that indicate he was gone before she died. She apparently died on a Monday, and his car was towed from a Greyhound station in Detroit, where it had been parked in a handicap spot, the Saturday before. One piece of mail that came to their house this week was an envelope with the pawn tickets for her three rings; apparently once he had the money for them he wasn't opposed to her paying to retrieve them. The pawn tickets were also dated that Saturday.
Nobody knows what happened to him after he parked his car at the bus station. As one cop put it to me, very earnestly, "The amateur might assume he got on a bus. But as professionals, we know that's just one possibility among many we need to explore. Did he have an accomplice who met him there? Did he take a cab to the airport? Perhaps he had even planted another car to change into, a car no one could identify with him."
I said, "But isn't the most likely scenario that he drove to Detroit, parked at the bus station, and got on a bus? It's the simplest explanation that fits all the known facts."
"Ma'am," said the cop, "If you were a law enforcement professional, you'd know the simplest answer is often not our most likely avenue of investigation." So much for Occam's Razor.
My sister EmmyLou has been dealing with most of the details of the situation. She still lives near where we grew up, and so has been checking for the mail and seeing that the lawn is mowed at the house, that kind of thing. I know it has caused her great pain to admit to me that our father has abandoned our mother. I can hear her protective coating of denial cracking from here. Poor thing.
We are arguing about what to do about the details. It's not clear to either of us what the legal standing of our parents' property is, so we don't know whether we can dispose of it or rent the house out, or whether we are somehow obligated to maintain it as it is. The police have not been helpful, so EmmyLou thinks we may need to consult a lawyer.
Personally, I think we should just ignore it. Why should we take responsibility for an over-mortgaged house and the worthless junk it's full of? I'm sure not taking on any mortgage payments. EmmyLou thinks we ought to keep it as it is for awhile at least, in case our father comes back and wants to live in it. "EmmyLou," I said, "I think he's given us abundant evidence that he has no intention of coming back." But she still thinks this may all just be a big misunderstanding.
We are in agreement that we should get my mother's rings out of hock, but that turns out to be legally tricky, too. I thought that anybody could walk into a pawn shop with a pawn ticket, pay off the loan, and pick up the item. Wrong. It turns out that only the person who left it, and others they authorized at the time, can pick it up. My father authorized only my mother to pick up the rings, and, even though she's dead, the pawn shop doesn't want to release the rings to us until something legal happens saying they can. They have agreed to waive the deadline -- apparently you have to get stuff out of hock by a certain date or the pawn shop can re-sell it -- and hold the rings for us until things are settled legally. They believe us at the pawn shop. They just want to do things by the book. Who knew there were such things as scrupulous pawn brokers? In the movies they always work out of dingy, cluttered storefronts in bad neighborhoods, and the shop is run by a sweaty guy in a dirty white tank top with a two-day beard and a cheap unlit cigar between his teeth, and most of what's on the shelves is obviously stolen. But this place is clean and well-lit, cluttered but orderly, and the young men who work there all wear clean T-shirts in matching blue with the name of the shop embroidered on the pocket. The pawn shop is probably the most decent and respectable place my father ever hung out in.
Of course, this whole situation has sent me screaming back into Al-Anon. I hadn't been in awhile, but all the catch-phrases and 12-step cliches came right back. I've been going to a meeting almost every day. I find it comforting, and take a sick satisfaction in winning the (informal) prize for Best Alcoholic Family Horror Story of the Week.
On another topic, Sam called this morning about 8:00 to ask whether he could come get the boys right away. "If it's OK, I'll take the day off work, and then we can have a three-day weekend together."
I said, "You're taking the day off work to spend with the boys?"
"Yeah," Sam said. "If it's OK with you." As if he does this kind of thing all the time.
"It's OK with me," I said, "except that I was going to do their laundry this afternoon. I don't have enough clean things to pack for them for the whole weekend."
"Oh, send the laundry along," Sam said. "I'll do it tonight."
"Send their laundry?" I said. "You mean, a few pairs of underwear to get through the weekend?"
"No," Sam said, "if I'm doing laundry I might as well run full loads. I'll deliver the boys and their clean laundry to you on Sunday afternoon."
"Huh," I said. "OK. I'll get them ready."
"Boys, your father has lost his job," I imagined telling them as I went upstairs to get them. Or, "Boys, your father is coming to get you early but he may have been taken over by space alien pod-beings, so keep an eye on him." But I poked my head into their room and said, "Get dressed quick, fellas. Your Dad is coming to get you."
"Now?" Mark said.
"Soon," I said.
"I thought he was coming tonight," Mark said.
"I thought so, too, but he just called and said he could take the day off work and he'd like to get you early. I thought you'd like to see him, so I told him he could."
"Don't you have to do our laundry?" Mark asked. "You said we couldn't go see Godzilla this afternoon because you had to do our laundry for the weekend."
"Your Dad is going to do it, honey," I said.
"Dad is going to do our laundry," he said flatly.
"That's right, so let's get it into the laundry bag for him, OK? He'll be here soon."
Sam, my six-year-old, was already grabbing dirty clothes from the floor and stuffing them into the laundry bag, but Mark is often skeptical of his father's attempts to make nice. "Why does he want to see us early?" he asked.
"I don't know," I said. "Maybe he likes you."
"Maybe," Mark said. "Do I have to go?"
That stumped me. "I don't know, honey. I don't suppose you have to go, but I do think it's nice for you to spend time with your father."
"I'm not gonna go," Mark said.
"OK," I said. "You can tell your father that when he gets here."
But when Sam arrived, Michael was with him, and when Mark saw Michael he said, "Maybe I'll go, Mom, OK?"
"OK," I said. "You let them in and I'll go get your laundry for your Dad."
I was surprised to see Michael and Sam together. I hadn't talked to Michael since our camping trip, but I got the impression then that he was thinking of breaking up with Sam. When I came back downstairs, Sam and Michael were standing in the living room. "Here's Mark's laundry," I said, handing it to Sam. "It's a nice surprise to see you, Michael," I added, raising my eyebrows at him.
"It's nice to see you, too, Louella," he said. "I wish we had some time to talk. Maybe we could have dinner one night this week, just the two of us?"
"That would be nice," I said. We were like grownups talking in code around children, but Sam's not a child and he knew we wanted to talk about him. He was busy rough-housing with the boys, trying to act like he had no idea what was going on between me and Michael.
"How about Wednesday?" Michael said. "I'll treat you to Italian. Sam will watch the boys for us, right, Sam?"
"You want me to watch the boys so you can talk about me over dinner with my ex-wife? What kind of idiot do you think I am?" Sam answered. He was smiling but there was a bite to his words.
"I think you're the kind of idiot who is dying for more time with his sons and will jump at the chance to spend an evening with them mid-week," Michael answered.
"Oh, yeah," Sam said, "I am that kind of idiot. We'll come by around six, OK, Louella?"
"I'll make it easy on you and give the boys their dinner before you come," I answered.
As they were leaving, Sam said, "Can I have a minute alone with you, Louella?"
"Sure," I said. "What's up?"
"Well, I wanted to give you this," he said, handing me an envelope. "And ask you to, you know, be fair about me with Michael. After he talked to you last time, he was about ready to break up with me. It took me the better part of two weeks to calm him down."
"Sam, I have been fair," I said. "I don't need to defend myself for answering Michael's questions about our relationship honestly. And you must know I refused to answer some of his questions, and advised him to make his own judgment about you. So don't act like I'm on some kind of crusade to ruin your relationship with innuendo and lies. But as long as we're on the topic of giving each other advice, we both know this special long weekend is for Michael's benefit. You're putting on another show of good fatherhood so he won't leave you. I wish you'd think about the boys more, not play with their affections this way. Mark takes it especially hard."
"Mark? Mark loves to see me."
"Sam, Mark had decided not to go with you this weekend until he saw that Michael was with you. I won't say any more than that. Enjoy your weekend."
"Enjoy yours, Louella," Sam said. "Is Ed waiting to come in the back door as soon as the car drives away? At least I'm not a hypocrite, hiding my relationship from the boys, only having my boyfriend stay over when they're not with me, like a teenager whose parents are away for the weekend. Are you trying to teach them that sex is something to hide, to be ashamed of?"
"Sam, go away," I said. "The boys are waiting."
Sam and I had a good marriage. It was much better to be married to him than it is to be divorced from him. Except for the part where he was cheating on me with men all the time, but I didn't know about that, so I was happy. And our divorce itself was friendly and by mutual agreement. I thought we'd be some kind of ideal divorced couple, continuing to share decisions about raising our kids, both committed to them, still partners in some important way. But the divorce seems to have turned us into adversaries.
I opened the envelope Sam had given me. Child support through June, and half of July in advance, and, according to the note, "a little something for you and Ed to enjoy": a gift certificate for dinner and a movie. A bribe. One check and it's a bribe for both Michael and me.
Well, with the boys gone I can make a lunch-time Al-Anon meeting, and I feel like I need it. Well, I need something: either an Al-Anon meeting or a six-pack of beer. And an Al-Anon meeting is cheaper.
© Copyright 1997-2001 Su Penn. Design by David Dierauer.
