“I don’t rightly know what Samantha was expecting from her mother exactly, but what she got was anything but what she’d anticipated. Though the missus never said anything directly it was for that very reason that I figured it out. While I sat in the front room, oblivious that there was even a problem, Samantha was told that she should talk to me about this problem and that it was best she leave. Now, I don’t mean leave so that the missus could break the news to me gently, no sir, I mean leave the house and not come back.
“They say there are steps to accepting something, denial and anger and all that, and while I can’t tell you if that’s true or nothin’ I can tell you that it works only for the people who want to change eventually and the people who have to change. In this case the missus didn’t ascribe to either wantin’ to change or believin’ she had to change, so she forced the change on Samantha entirely and pushed her out. Samantha argued, she pleaded, and she begged. I’m surprised she didn’t come downstairs to talk to me about it at that point, I like to think that I’d at least be leveled headed enough to step back and at least talk it over with the missus. Come to some sort of agreement. But she didn’t and I wasn’t given the chance.” He lowered his head and I could tell he was beginning to cry a bit.
There’s always something strange about being the newcomer I guess. Patterns that everyone else understands as normal are looked at with curiosity or something; I guess that’s why I was able to see through these people’s lies so easily. Or maybe it wasn’t, I’ll never know for sure, but they were being forthcoming with information that they had never told the other people in the school. Besides that some of these secrets were still being kept close, as by Claire little demonstration when Jessica accidentally accused her of being a liar. My suspicions were that, if anyone walked into the room right at that moment, Tim would shut his mouth and pretend he’d never said anything. I knew he wanted to talk about it, otherwise he wouldn’t be, but why he wanted to talk to me specifically was the strange part. I guess everyone knew that, once the storm was over and I was recuperating in the hospital, I would find my way back home and never visit again. In all honesty it had been what I was planning, though clearly something changed.
***
It took some time for Tim to regroup and collect his thoughts again. I waited patiently, hoping that no one interrupted out conversation. Every few seconds someone shifted or s shadow moved and, to make things worse, just as he began talking the heater went out. Five minutes later, after listening to Tim curse at the machine for being defective, or complaining that someone hid the extra batteries, or any number of other things, Tim was ready to talk about his past again. I sat and waited, silently listening to his story and his rational for his lie. “You see, when the missus asked Samantha to leave, it wasn’t with the understanding that she would break the news to me. Samantha’s mother wanted Samantha, our daughter, to stop hurting herself. If the best way to do that was to make her aware that we wouldn’t stand for it and that, until she changed her ways, we couldn’t always be there to clean up her messes. It was practical and I agreed with the idea to an extent, but I never wanted to turn Samantha away completely.
“And that’s exactly what the missus had planned. She turned Samantha out on the street, gave her some money to start her off, and then pretended she never existed. When I eventually began to worry about our little girl the missus always responded with ‘what child? I ain’t never had a child befor’!’” Tim stopped once again and I was halfway tempted to step out of my blankets to do something, though I didn’t know exactly what that something would be. However, there were too many questions running through my head to even begin to act.
‘What ifs?’ and ‘What abouts?’ and even the occasional suggestion and in the end I decided to sit and wait until he was ready to start again. “Well, as you can imagine, I was confused and only a little depressed. She tried very hard to make me forget that I was missing a daughter, sometimes by making it very hard to remember that I even had a daughter. In some ways I blame the missus for the entire thing, and in some ways I blame Samantha, and in many ways I blame myself. It’s just one of the no win situations I guess, though I wish I had been a more active role in the entire thing.
“Now don’t get me wrong, I tried my best to set things right. I even felt that, because Samantha got kicked out of the house behind my back, I could get her back in behind the missus’. Everything I tried seemed to lead to nothing though. Like I said, by the time I realized something was wrong it was already too late. I talked to friends and friends of friends and followed every lead and tip I could think of. I checked phone books and police blotters the counties over trying to find her and I found two things: diddly and squat.
“It seems like every story I hear about that ends with a reunion of family either ends with outside intervention or when everyone is on their last strands of hope. A happy reuniting of family that ends in a big dinner that covers a table better than any thanksgiving ever could. I rested all of my dreams on sitting down to that table, the missus and Samantha both spending equal time over the baby while I sat and watched getting full on turkey and pride.
“Then the missus passed away, complications due to some disease the doctors claimed not to have been aware of despite the fact that her family had a known history for whatever it was. Something to do with her heart they said. Something they couldn’t have known about they said. Something that, despite their best efforts, took her away from me and my dreams of reunion dinner along with it.
“I spent months in shock, waiting for the missus to step back in the front door with a large smile on her face. I half expected the doctors to step inside after her, give me a cigar and tell me it was a large hoax created just to mess with me. I half hoped Samantha was in on the whole thing. But, of course, none of my expectation and hopes turned out to be true, so I plugged along as best I could. I learned to take care of myself and filled the holes in the day that had been spent with the missus looking for my daughter. I expanded my search and looked into the shadier corners of town for information. I followed new leads and attempted to dig up more information on old ones. I did everything I could to find and find her I did.
“They told me it was complications at birth that caused the mother of my grandchild to pass away. From the explanation of her symptoms it seemed more like she’d simply given up. The father was no where to be found and, expecting for the possibility or yours truly, there was no family to turn to for help with raising the child. She’d felt that there was no reason to continue living. I found her remains in a small locker in the middle of the city; she’d been cremated to save space and money. I guess I couldn’t have asked for a better burial for Samantha, the city’d done their best at making sure she was remembered properly for my granddaughter at the very least. Though I wish she could have been sent to lie next to the missus’ grave and my future eternal home, the city is where she is and the city is where she’ll stay.
“So my dreams were shattered by the loss of my wife, and as I tried to glue them back together with the hope that I would meet my daughter once again they were shattered upon seeing her lock box of ashes. I was in a sorry state; I contemplated suicide for many days after that point. It even got to the point that the few family friends I had left were stopping by regularly to make sure that I was still around and that I had everything taken care of. I wasn’t nice to them and I regret treating them so poorly, though I will appreciate their kindness until the day I die.
“Life moved slowly after that point, I did what I could to track my grandchild but there was little desire by that point. Of the four places at the reunion table only two would be filled, and it wasn’t like I knew the child or anything. I didn’t even know he or she even was a possibility until months after it was conceived and, even then, I didn’t know what gender the little child was. If I did search there was the possibility that I could be looking for the wrong gender completely. The hospital tried to help, but they’d kept poor records of the woman who couldn’t pay and eventually died in their care. I don’t blame them, it was just unfortunate.
“I wallowed for a year, not really knowing what to do with myself and not really knowing where to figure that out. I was relieved of my duties at every job I had and was mostly working for a temp agency doing whatever they had me do. It was then that I first picked up a mop and started down the road that would eventually get me here, but that’s jumping a little ahead of myself.
“You see, one of my friends had said that she would keep an eye and an ear open for any signs of my grandchild. There were no guarantees of course, but she worked at the local police station and could get in contact with people, pull a few strings, and ask a few favors, all of that stuff. She worked harder than I expected and harder than I really was aware of. She continued to poke and prod until she found a lead. It was a lead that started at the very hospital Samantha died in and a lead that directed her attention to the area of the country. A little girl had been shipped off to a foster home in the area, she didn’t have a father and her mother died in child birth. It looked promising and she passed the information off to me.
“I let it simmer in the back of my mind for a while, I wasn’t about to move anywhere simply because of a hunch. But the idea stuck for some reason and I spent more and more time thinking about the idea that I could find my grandchild, possibly granddaughter. These thoughts turned into ideas and plans and I eventually found myself relying on hopes and rebuilding my life around moving closer to this child that I had never met. Eventually I did, I found a job and a place to live, I did research and contacted agencies to try and find this little girl.
“I spent months working and it all came together one day a year ago. I was informed that my granddaughter lived in this town with a lovely couple who has one child of their own. I quickly relocated and found myself a job in this school to make ends meet. I’ve worked here and kept my eyes open for the little girl so that I at least can have seen her once in my life.” At that very moment Jessica ran into the room, jumping up and down from the excitement of skating.
I thought the conversation was over, someone had interrupted us. If he kept coming someone would know that he didn’t go to this school as child and that the entire life that he had told the school district was, in fact, a lie. “Hi!” She said to both of us and, before either of us could respond, ran to the coloring supplies and began to draw.
“And oh boy is she a lovely little girl.”
No comments:
Post a Comment