fifteen- Children gone, their fathers too

Friday May 28, 2010

Frank sits on a cold planter in front of Audrey’s building.  Though he shouldn’t be, since she can’t deny that he’s her father, he’s still amazed that she agreed to meet him for dinner.  He’s even more awed that she invited him to pick her up from work.  She had never, and he had been convinced would never, told him where she worked, who for, and if she liked it.  She never told him where she was living and how cozy but really her it was; how her walls were just thin enough that she could hear her neighbors talking, screaming, and having fervent sex, in this strict order.  How she used to listen, ashamed and unashamedly, and feel horribly left out.  How she liked having Henry over so she could join in on the revelry.  These small details that families with grown children need to survive, to stay connected in a world of quick e-mails, quickly thought up and quickly forgotten, and wireless telephone wires, had all but floated away in the wake of their mutual ignorance.

But now he’s sitting on a cold planter in front of his daughter’s building, difficultly waiting for her to walk out of the glass double doors, or the glass revolving doors—or she could run out, straight to him with excitement.  He would like that.  He would like to go back a decade and be himself years younger, a few procedures older, sitting anxiously in his old blue Mustang with the top down so he could look cool in front of the other parents.  Parked in front of the school steps and the radio playing purposefully loud, classic rock or those Beastie Boys he could never understand; waiting for his fair little Audrey to come bounding down the stone steps towards the car smiling greatly like a weary desert wanderer come across something bright and blue; a Fata-Morgana that proved actual.

But the coldness of the planter on his seat keeps him from wandering too far.  He knows he can’t go back, that they can’t go back no matter the outcome of this date.  He has lost his little girl, though with his second shot at maturity he has begun to realize that he sent that little girl away—to a cheap clinic.  There is no going back, or getting back.  Everything is new and has to be.  He has to meet her again, now as a woman.  What he’s lost is time and that time was spent; formative and forgone.  He doesn’t know Audrey, not now.

Not this striking woman walking towards him, out through the revolving doors.  She isn’t wearing work clothes—what he’d imagined she would be wearing coming out of work.  She’s wearing jeans, designer, a white blouse he’d seen before, maybe in a department store, and black pumps.  She’s gorgeous with her face barely made up and her hair, long wavy tones of brown.  And then the belt.  It’s the last, ironically, that he notices.  “Damn, that’s a big buckle!” he thinks aloud.  He stands up and stretches his arms wide…

On dark and long Morrison Bridge, Henry walks home alone.  Though he has cars, a motorcycle, and a bike, he’s the kind who takes advantage of friendly weather.  He walks home often.  It’s not a long walk and he’s in fantastic shape.  And though he won’t admit it, not even to Audrey, he’s a heavy thinker.

It’s right here, exactly one year from now that he’ll be.  A year from now, he won’t be alone.  He’ll be encircled by a crowd of people and bright lights.  He’ll be surrounded by blue uniforms, blue and red turret lights washing over his Old-Spiced cheeks.  It’s here on long and dark Morrison Bridge.  Henry will be lying on his back, in his own pool.  A year from now, Henry will die.

Saturday May 28, 2011

“Here’s his license.  Hurt, Henry.  No witnesses, just the girl who found him.”  A portly Portland Police Officer hands the license to a colleague in a black J.C. Penny suit.

“The girl tripped over the kid?”  He’s on the husky side himself, but a detective.  He points to a girl sitting in the open rear of an ambulance.

“No sir, she was on her bike, going pretty fast, didn’t see the body till it was too late and squeezed the brakes.  The bike threw her over and she sprained her wrist, some bruises too.”  The subordinate pats on his light blue uniform, identifying the locations of the girl’s injuries.

“Uh-huh.  Henry Hurt.  Alright, thanks.”  The detective walks away from him and towards Henry.

Hours later, 10 cigarettes later, four cups of coffee later, Detective Michelle (pronounced Mee-ke-ly to sound more masculine) stares at a Post-It with a name and a number.  He has just finished his second phone call, a long one with Henry’s parents, and readies himself for the third.  He anticipates this one to be the hardest.

While educating himself with everything Henry Hurt, one important fact he learned was that Henry knew a lot of women.  He had a girlfriend, another girlfriend the first didn’t know about, and a woman named Mrs. Pearce who Michelle was told Henry had met with recently, for the first time in several months.  Her name was mentioned in the first phone call with Henry’s live-in girlfriend.  She was a sweet girl with a sweet voice and through fits of tears she felt obliged to tell him about Henry’s involvement with Mrs. Pearce. 

Months ago, Henry had been seeing both this girlfriend and Mrs. Pearce.  He had gotten the latter pregnant and they decided on termination.  Inevitably, they stopped seeing each other.  Just days ago Mrs. Pearce called Henry and the two met for lunch.  Just days ago Mrs. Pearce revealed to him that she didn’t go through with it, was still pregnant, and due very soon.  She had planned to keep it a secret, it seems only her husband knew, but she was compelled to confess to Henry.  It was his child, after all; his unborn son.

One of the top five sources of stress among police officers is cases that involve children.  This is true in most departments, even the Portland Police Bureau.  Though this child was yet to be born, Michelle still felt sorry for him.  His father died tonight.

Michelle picks up the phone and dials.  It’s early morning, so after several rings:

“Hello?”  A woman answers, groggily.

“Good morning—Mrs. Pearce?”

“Yes? It’s late!”

“I’m sorry, Mam.  I’m with the PPB.  Detective Tom Michelle.  Uh—“

“I’m listening, Tom.  I’m sitting down too, so just out with it.”  Mrs. Pearce has an aggressive voice, aggressive but still charmingly feminine.  It matches her short black bob.

“I’m calling about Mr. Henry Hurt.  I know about your relationship with him and—“

“Tom, I don’t mean to be frank, but I don’t have any relationship with him anymore, aside from what’s growing in my belly, which I’m pretty sure you know about.  Other than that, I don’t know anything about Henry anymore.”  She sits back and massages the massive bump.  The bump responds with playful pounding.  Mrs. Pearce giggles.

“Mam, Mr. Hurt is dead…”  Michelle is silent, and listens vigilantly for noise in the earpiece.  “Mam?  Mrs. Pearce?”

“I’m sorry, Detective.  Please call me back tomorrow.”  She hangs up.

In the living room of the three story condo, Mrs. Pearce calls for her husband.  It takes minutes for him to wake up and find her in the dark house.  When he does, the look she gives him fades his sleepy resentment.

“What is it?”  He speaks too loud in the quiet room.  He’s unaware of himself.  He only sees his wife’s face dripping tears, her hand firm on her belly and the baby inside.

“I want to name him Henry,” she forces weakly through her crying.

It takes almost an hour for her to calm enough to tell him: that Henry is dead.  Though he doesn’t agree, he understands her choice.  This is his wife, but it his not his child; it’s not his child to name.  But he will love him.  Henry Pearce, like his father, will be loved by many.  He will be the evidence of his father’s contact with this world; what he took, what he left behind.

Friday May 28, 2010

Audrey pushes through the revolving doors.  She’s excited.  Not to see Frank, but for Frank to see her.  In front of the panoramic bathroom mirror, she guessed what he would think and say.  She wondered aloud, mimicking his very Oregonian accent, “Damn, that’s a big buckle! Where’d you get that, Princess?!  Have you been riding bulls?”

She changed especially for Frank.  It was obvious that Frank thought he still knew her; that she was the same girl who used to run down the prep-school steps towards his big blue car, the same girl who used to love driving off with her dad making faces at the kids boarding the boxy school bus.  She changed to let Frank know.  She changed.

But it’s her that’s surprised when she sees the old man outside her building.  She still remembers Lloyd Center.  The man was a designer mid-life crisis, plastic and off-putting.  His can tan made her itch.  This is not the same man.

Frank stands up as she approaches.  Audrey winces as he stretches his arms out.  He’s in jeans, but they look like Levi’s and clearly untouched by an iron.  His chest and arms push subtly through a ¾ sleeve t-shirt, a baseball tee, white with blue arms. 

“He’s wearing flip-flops!”  Audrey exclaims.

“And he brought me flowers…” Audrey acknowledges the small bouquet in one of his hands.  Four or five white gardenias with light pink rims, mellow halos.  She reaches out for the flowers and ignores the hug.  Frank is apparently unaffected.

“So where to Frank?”  Audrey says casually, awkwardly.

“I’m sorry.”  The old man looks her squarely, reverently.  “I was no good as a dad when you needed one terribly.  A good one, no less.”

Audrey is stunned.  She tries to reply.

“You don’t need to say anything yet, Princess.  We have a lot of time to talk.  Just know that you set me straight the last time we saw each other.  Just try to call me dad and we’ll go from there.”  Frank steps to the side of Audrey and offers her his arm.

Audrey, still surprised but wrapped in a warm kind of numbness, takes his arm without hesitation.

“So where to, Dad?”  She says softly.

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