Letter #40
Subject:
Hi, Simba! How do I begin to tell you?
Date: July, 1976
-
Bangler’s
Cove, Maine
1:12
am
-
Simba Baby, it feels so strange to be sitting
here in our kitchen without you and Ta-Ta or Baby Caitlyn here. I even miss the click of Laird’s nails and the smell
of wet fur! I automatically turned on the dog run heat lamps and I hate to turn them off. They’re wrapped in a sea fog
despite the date on the calendar and they look like red Christmas lights somehow. I feel so drained Baby!
Remember how it felt when I walked into the locked VA ward? I mean, how I told you what it felt like? I’m not
making sense. Maybe I should go back to bed, but its too cold and too empty without you! Now I’m crying,
and I’m afraid you can tell!
Lionel, honey. The house, it was so
simple and lived in for so many years. I found myself looking at his face, trying to find some look that I see on my own you
know? Was he sorry for what he’d done? Did he hate me? Did he expect me to hate him? I think I did, a little, growing
up, but he’s so big, just an inch or two shorter than you but wide! Like a football half-back!
His wife met us at the door. She knew Chaplin Chapmann and she welcomed us warmly, so she knew why we were there, but
her face, I couldn’t read it. She didn’t resent me, I could tell that. On the hallway into the living room there
were pictures on both sides of the wall. They have five children and nine grandchildren of their own, and I tried to see if
I could feel any connection, but they were just scrubbed, fresh, hopeful American faces. Not one of them even looked like
mine. I don’t think I quite felt so much like my mother’s child as I did then!
Then we walked in and he stood up. He wiped his hands on the side of his slacks and he smiled nervously as he reached
out his hand to me. We shook hands like strangers. Like strangers, Simba! This man is my father and we
shook hands like strangers!
♥
Harkness Hill Farms
4:09 pm
-
My
Darling forgive me! You needed me to be there and I wasn’t twice! I just now got your email! Troy
got a marble stuck up his nose and we had to rush to the emergency room. Poor Laird bit one of the aides when he tried to
stop him from going in with Troy. It wasn’t serious but he’s in the pound and I had to see the Judge. As soon
as he gets out of quarantine, I’m bring us all home! I knew I missed and need you but I’m not doing a very good
job of it.
How are YOU? That’s the important thing!!! Call
me!!! As soon as you read this, no matter the time. Promise!
♥
Bangler’s
Cove, Maine
11:09
am
-
Dearest Simba,
I tried but no one answered. That’s usual for a farm, I imagine the Angus and the fields don’t care about
the needs of their caregivers. I’m alright, Honey, honest. I called Dr. Sharon, and this is the second time he’s
pulled that stunt! The first time he did it for attention. I think he’s afraid because I’m gone again and you
have to give attention to his baby sister. As soon as I press this for ‘send’ I’m calling a cab and going
to the airport. We’ll wait for our ‘jailbird’ together. I miss and love you all so much.
Smoother Troy with loves and kisses; he’s just a little guy whose desperately afraid. We’ll work out the
discipline later. I don’t think a minor upset is going to scar him for life. I want to tell you more about meeting my
real father and his family. It wasn’t anything as bad as I expected. It seemed to help that he could see what a happy
childhood I had and for me to see that he wasn’t a bad man, just desperately afraid and frightened that he’d be
eaten alive by a Machine bigger than any of us.
“
The sum of the whole being a greater part than any of its individual part. “
That was the first line I memorized from Daddy’s book, but it didn’t start to make sense until last week!
We hugged goodbye at the door, and I shook hands with his wife, the exact opposite of when Dr. Chapmann and I arrived, funny
isn’t it? We’ve agreed to be put on one another’s Christmas Card list but I don’t want to look any
further than that right now, and neither does he. He never told his children, just his wife, and I’m not sure that I
even want to see that shock and questioning on their faces over a half sister they never even guessed they had. I wouldn’t
want them to think that their Daddy was a ‘rapist’. He was scared and wrong and acting on brute impulse with the
other three men. He admits how wrong he was, that he wasn’t the first one, but he didn’t say no either, but I
wouldn’t be here if he hadn’t done such an unthinkable act would I, Simba? And no you, no Troy? No Daddy Beau.
It may have started wrong, but I’m a person. Not an act! Even a bestial act. I’ve come to grips with that
like never before, and frankly I’d like to just put it behind me
and not even say anything to Troy, as much as I would like him to have
a black grandfather. It would demand too high a price of the family he made for himself in America after all those horrible
years of mindless violence. I don’t know how you feel about it, but I just want to continue to use your daddy
as baby’s grandfather, even if its only in pictures and a family legend. I’ve seen for myself how powerful that
can be, when the
stories are told in love.
Tell me what you think when I get there, okay? And hold me! Hold me till I get warm again! I feel like ice inside.
The fire’s gone out, but now I’m afraid to feel, for fear I’ll uncover the anger that hurt me so badly as
a child. I don’t want that any more! That was what let those two teenaged punks shoot a defenseless man in the face
with a shotgun and then set his body on fire so we couldn’t even bury what was left of his body!
I have an unread email from Becky Kelso I want to read, then I’m coming home Baby. I miss you so much!
Sunni
-
As she pressed the ‘Send’ button an odd sense of burden fell from her shoulders. The probe of
a ship’s Claxton sounded twice in the thick, low lying fog as she shivered, feeling a familiar figure standing
just behind her. She felt if she turned quickly enough she’d see Beau Webb standing there with a smile on his face,
his arms open as she always remembered seeing them from childhood.
“ Hi, Daddy. “ She whispered in genuine
welcome, making room for him beside her in her mind.
Then she reached for the mouse to click on the ‘Inbox’ button.
“ I’m going to wait here till the cab arrives, in case Lionel gets in to see the
computer screen, okay daddy? “
‘ I’m not going anywhere. ‘ His memory seemed to promise and she
felt herself being wrapped in the arms of love as the summer fog broke on the shore and sunlight flooded the narrow cove with
unexpected brilliance and promise.
-
-
The
End
