Slim to None Page 21

  "Jane? She came before me?"

  He nods his head, hanging it a little as if ashamed. "Jane was why Majorie left town. Only I didn’t know it then. She was pregnant and her father turned her out, sent her off to live with her aunt in Wyoming."

  "So not only were they your good family, but they were your real family. Now it’s starting to make sense," I mutter under my breath.

  "What’s that?" he asks.

  I shake my head. "Nothing."

  "I didn’t even know she was back in town. I’d gone to the park one Saturday to escape for a couple of hours after your mother and I had had another huge fight. I was sitting alone on a swing, rocking back and forth, my feet planted on the ground. Then I heard her calling out Janie’s name. I looked up and saw Marjorie standing there, hands on her hips, a little girl right before her. And then I knew."

  God, if this wasn’t to do with my twisted fate, I’d almost shed a tear at how sad this is. It’s like Prince Charles never getting to marry that butchy Camilla.

  "We talked for hours that day. Hours. By the time I left there, I felt as if I had my life back. Something had been missing from me since Marjorie was taken away. But still I stayed with your mother because it was the right thing to do."

  "And me," I barely choke out.

  "And my Abbie muffin." I roll my eyes. This muffin thing is about plucking my last nerve. I feel as if he gave up nicknaming rights when he ditched me.

  "But there were children. That day. At the mall. More than just Janie."

  He reaches for a sip of a drink by his nightstand and sucks on the straw till he chokes. Oh, God, can’t have him keeling over now with me here—I’ll be blamed for it for sure.

  He nods again, hanging that head again, too. "Yes, there were. Are."

  "You were a bigamist."

  He pauses, the air thick with unspoken words and my unexpressed anger. I look up at Joe Namath, hoping for my own Hail Mary pass.

  His sigh sounds like the air being let out of a tire: quiet, slow, drawn out. "Was I dishonest? Yes. To everyone. Completely dishonest. And I can’t excuse it away, not at all. The only thing I can say is I loved Marjorie and then she was taken away from me. And I tried with your mother, God, did I try with her. But it became impossible. Life with her was unbearable. I was weak—I turned to Marjorie to find some love in my life. I know it was wrong. But I did it."

  "And the other children?"

  "Maggie came next. Then Megan. And even though I know it was wrong, I didn’t regret it for a minute. It was what was meant to be. But what I did forever regret was you—-"

  "Me? You regretted me?"

  I sag against the wall, a fallen soufflé.

  "No, no, Muffin. I didn’t regret you, not ever. I regretted what I did to you."

  "So when did you decide that you wanted to leave me for them?"

  Again, the deep breath, followed by a long silence. The announcers are talking about an interception that happened. I always laugh at the urgent immediacy of football, but looking back on it, what did it matter? One more insignificant blip in time. Same here, all of this stuff. We’re all living in the past right now, it seems.

  "That night. The night I left. Your mother had found out everything. Everything. She was out for blood. You heard her. How could you not? She wanted to tell you. I begged her not to. The last thing I wanted to do was drag you into the whole mess."

  I puff out a sarcastic laugh. "Don’t you think I was already in the middle of it?"

  He flutters his hand as if to say let me continue.

  "I wanted so much to do something, to bring you into this family to be part of something good. But your mother decided to use you as a tool against me. That night after she confronted me, she told me to get out immediately. If I didn’t leave then and there, never to return, she vowed she’d drag you through the entire mess. She said she’d be sure that you were so publicly humiliated that you’d never speak to me again anyhow. She didn’t care if neighbors found out, if people at your school learned about it. As far as she was concerned, the more the merrier. She decided if she was going to be unhappy, then so was everyone else. So I had to make a choice, on the spot. At that very moment, I chose to leave in order to keep you from having to live my mistake forever. It’s something I’ve had to live with my whole life, something that has pained me every day of my being alive."

  My legs feel as limp as overcooked spaghetti, so I plop down in the recliner again and lay back, taking this all in. My eyes fixed on an oily stain on the ceiling and I mumble, "And the shopping mall?"

  "God, Abbie. I didn’t know what to do. I had no idea you’d be there. I had no idea how to handle it. My family knew nothing about you. Even Marjorie—she knew I’d been married but she didn’t know about you. I never had the heart to tell her. So then there you were, and I panicked. Not only did I know that I could never have contact with you without your being destroyed by it one way or the other, but I didn’t dare risk screwing it up with my...new...family."

  "So my mother held me hostage with the threat of humiliation and you were too cowardly to stand up to her, betrayal or no," I say through gritted teeth. This certainly explains so much to me. I don’t know that I feel better about any of it, but at least now I can start to understand it.

  "I so wanted a family. A real family, lots of kids, a house filled with laughter," my father continues. "Your mother refused to consider it. But even as she refused it, she squeezed the life out of the one we had, so that we could never survive intact. I knew you had your Gigi, I knew Gigi would take care of you. I knew you’d be okay."

  "So you gave up a family so you could have a family? A better family?"

  He shakes his head with effort. "It all sounds so shallow when you say it like that. I don’t know if I can ever make right what I did. I only wanted you to know it had nothing to do with you."

  "You know mother always talked about your other family with poisoned barbs on her tongue. ‘The Others,’ she’d spit. I knew about you for sure, after everything that happened how couldn’t I? I wasn’t a stupid child. I knew them as your ‘better family.’ That was the family you wanted. The one you couldn’t—or wouldn’t—discard."

  "I tried one more time. A few years had passed. I hoped your mother would realize by then that you deserved to have your father in your life. When I showed up at the house, she told me if I didn’t get off the property immediately she’d call the police. Then she threw some books and things at me as I turned to leave."

  "What about Gigi?"

  "I tried to set up meetings with Gigi. But she was so angry at me, and didn’t want you to be hurt any more than you already were. She told me I’d caused enough trouble for one child’s lifetime."

  Now it’s my turn to sigh. It all seems so upside down. Upside down cake. I once had a spectacular mango upside down cake while on vacation in Jamaica. Drenched in caramelized mangos and saturated with Jamaican rum. Yet that oddly doesn’t even appeal to me right now. Come to think of it, the more I realize how my mother’s obsession with food led not only to her downfall but my entire family’s, the more I’m aware of the danger of that obsession. Here I am, practically reliving my mother’s life: fixated over my weight, even though I’m actually fat, whereas she was only fearful of become fat. It’s as if I need mental gastric bypass surgery in order to radically alter my thinking and clear my mental passageways. How could I ever let myself allow my size to regulate my life so much? And when phrased in that way, how vain and downright silly it sounds to do so.

  "So I have half sisters..." What an alien concept. Me, the girl with no family.

  He nods his frail head. "Three. All of whom want to get to know you. And they have kids now, too." I don’t know if I’m ready for holidays with this ‘family’ yet. But is there any harm in meeting the girls who got my father? Maybe I could work on ga
ining family instead of gaining weight for once?

  "I’ve got nieces and nephews?" I catch myself. "Sort of."

  "I finally told everyone about you about ten years ago. They all wanted to try to find you, but by then I had no idea where to track you down. Your grandmother was gone, your mother too. You obviously were married, with a new name, a new identity. I’d given up hope of ever finding you again. Until the picture—"

  Oh, no. Not the picture.

  "—And I saw that face. That beautiful face I never thought I’d see again. It gave a man his dying wish, to try to make things right again. Oh, Abbie—"

  His eyes are glistening and I can’t bear to watch an old man cry. He called me beautiful. Beautiful? I never think of myself as beautiful. I just think of myself as Abbie.

  I’m not sure what I’m supposed to do. I don’t have much experience with pouring out my emotions like this, like a pitcher of syrup onto a plate of pancakes, especially with someone who I’ve resented for much of my life. How do I reconcile myself with these competing emotions? On the one hand I know that he deserves some sort of credit for trying to right his wrongs, albeit a little late in the game. But on the other hand, I’m not sure exactly how to feel for him. If I sit back and look at this from a completely impartial perspective, everything about it is awfully sad. Lost loves found, too late. Children abandoned in order to reclaim that love, leaving a void never to be filled for either of us.

  "Do you think you can ever find it in your heart to forgive me for ruining your life, Abbie?"

  Ruining my life? Gee, my life is hardly ruined. For that matter, even though things are a bit of a mess right now, my life is—was, until my husband walked out on me—just about perfect, I’m starting to realize.

  I hold my hand up to him to stop. "Hey. Look. Nothing’s ruined about my life. I have a great life. I have a loving husband, a great dog. My job was the best. Nothing’s ruined for me. And honestly, I was too stubborn to let you ruin everything, back when having a father really mattered to me. So really, I’m fine."

  He reaches out and touches his hand to my chin, directing my head toward him. "You’re fine, but are you happy?"

  I think about it for a minute. "Happy is relative. Sure, there are things in my life I could fix. But overall, I’m just fine."

  "Fine?"

  "Yeah, fine."

  "Happy?"

  I’m silent some more. "Let’s just say I’m working on it." And I am working on it. After all, I came here, didn’t I? Wasn’t that a good start? And what about all the other changes I’m going to make? Starting with right now. Becoming a better me, overall. Trying to bury old hatchets (with the possible exception of Barry). If I really want to start over and turn over a new leaf—or should I say fold over the egg whites—then maybe I need to try to swallow this all. Try to see things from my father’s perspective. Maybe not forget, but find it in me to forgive him. After all, what good does it do me to hold this against this old man in front of me. Will I ever feel warm and fuzzy about him? Probably not. Too much has happened for me to just out and out embrace him. But I suppose I need to give him some credit for at least trying, at this late date. And maybe it is this late simply because circumstances forbade it earlier.

  I hoist myself out of the seat yet again. Man, recliners these days really swallow a girl up. Although this recliner is probably about as old as I am. And if I’m to be honest with myself a girl of my girth isn’t exactly made to gracefully exit one of these things. Once I heft myself out of the thing, I step forward toward my father and his imploring eyes. The same eyes I remember staring into when he read me storybooks as a child. The same eyes that looked at me that night in the kitchen and then looked away as he walked out the door. God, Abbie, just stop it. Don’t focus on what was. Focus on what is. What will be. Enough of the past.

  "Look, Dad." I choke out the word ‘dad,’ so uncomfortable is it passing my lips, like a snake swallowing a large mammal. Dad. Wow, who’d have ever expected me to speak that word under any circumstances in a personal reference. Except maybe regarding William, who wants so much to be a daddy himself. God, what a mess I’ve made of things. "So I’ll be honest here and tell you I don’t exactly know what it is I should say. Is there a part of me who has hated you for all of these years for walking away from me? You bet. But is there a part of me that feels terribly sad about what you must’ve gone through? Sure. I hate that everything happened the way it did. And part of me will never quite understand how you could have given me up if you really loved me—"

  "You have to know I did—" I hold my hands up to stop him. No need for him to beg.

  "Okay, I can appreciate your feelings about this. But still, this is an awful lot to swallow, even for someone who has to swallow a lot on a daily basis for her job. But my gut tells me I have to just trust that this is how it was meant to be, that something set this all in motion, so I have to let it all play out now. I mean I don’t know that I can see trimming the Christmas tree with your family quite yet but—"

  I look over at him and tears are streaming down his crevassed face. It reminds me of snowmelt seeking a path down a mountainside. And then he starts to cry, loud gasping sobs that send Janie rushing in to see if I’ve dismembered him or something.

  "Daddy? Everything okay?"

  My father—our father—can’t speak, so overcome is he with emotion. Even I’m fighting back tears, struggling to figure out what to say to my half-sister. Wow, how weird is that to consider her anything but the enemy. Not that she had anything more to do with this than I did.

  "It’s okay," I reach out to pat her hand, which is resting on to of my father’s hand. "It’s just a little much." Tears are pooling in my eyes. I feel really foolish crying in front of everyone. I am just not one to emote. Just when I think I can suppress my tears long enough till I can get out of here, Janie reaches out for me and folds me into a hug.

  "I don’t know how to thank you for being a big enough woman to do this for Daddy," she whispers to me. Um—big enough woman? I hope she didn’t mean that the way it came out!

  I hold my hands up to indicate it’s nothing. Of course I know better. It’s something. Something really big. A paradigm shift in how I’m thinking, how I’m feeling.

  We all talk a little longer, but I realize I have to be heading back to the city. We make plans to get together again soon; maybe if and when William comes back I can bring him along. As I’m picking up my coat and purse to leave, my father grabs my hand.

  "You’ve given me the greatest gift a man could get," he chokes out. "You’ll never know how much this means to me. I love you, Muffin. Always have, always will."

  I wish I could eek out the words ‘I love you’ but I’m not there yet, if ever. Instead I just envelope his hands with mine and squeeze. "Take care, Daddy." I figure calling him that is enough for now.

  Uh—oh! Mommy’s on a diet and we’re all gonna die!

  refrigerator magnet

  Blend Tragedy with Heartache, Simmer on Low

  I admit, my husband once dubbed me "our lady of immediate gratification" for a good reason. After what I’ve just been through, though, you can hardly blame me for a little binge-eating. I couldn’t resist the temptation. Call me spineless, it’s okay. I’ve heard worse. And it wasn’t anything too much—-just a little cookie. Or two. Full of healthful things like nuts (proteins) and chocolate (some studies purport its health benefits, right?). I mean, why not. It’s a teeny weeny (well, maybe not quite teeny weeny, but not as big as Mrs. Fields’ or anything) cookie. Or two. How bad can it be?

  Just for good measure I chewed each bite thirty-two (or is it thirty-six?) times. Which took away some of the charm of the cookie, since once it’s been masticated to within an inch of its life like that, it’s not exactly the little chunk of baked heaven it was when it first went into my mouth. What can I say? My willpower won’t. I will
admit I’ve noticed a disturbing food trend with me: what I eat never involves what I should eat, but rather what I want to eat. I have to figure out how to want to eat what I should eat. Good luck with that one. The fact that I struggle to stick with one simple diet is the theme of my column this week, so I suppose for the contraband cookie I should be thankful for the inspiration it provided me.

  A.D.D. DIETER

  I’ve done a little research and I’ve finally hit upon the reason I cannot stick to a diet. And I realize that like any other physiological problem, I can’t really help it. You see, I’m ADD when it comes to dieting. Attention Deficit Disorder. Dieting just simply cannot hold my attention for long.

  Well, it’s no wonder! And here I thought it was lack of self-control or something pathetic like that. I’m so relieved to know my hands are tied in this situation. But in truth it doesn’t help when I’m surrounded by friends who must not be ADD in the diet department. In fact, now that I think about it, perhaps they’re actually ADD eaters. They must lose interest in eating as readily as I lose interest in dieting! Of course that’s starting to tick me off over the years as I’ve watched them transforming into sylph-like shadows of their former selves.

  A colleague of mine has been counting carbs and now she’s so skinny that when I saw her a few weeks ago in this cute little June Cleaver-type dress, I complemented her on how slender she looked. She blushed as she told me her dress was from her trousseau. Now at first I wondered, what does a former Canadian prime minister have to do with her dress. But then I realized that she didn’t say Trudeau, but trousseau, which is a quaint antiquated term referring to things you wear on your honeymoon or something like that. So here’s this woman, old enough to be referring to her dress as having come from a trousseau, and she’s been able to whittle herself down to the cinched waist of a Barbie doll, the size she was when she was first married, long ago. And part of me hates her for that.