Fluke (35 page)

All I could do was nod at him.
 
My birth weight had the same numbers as the time I was born.
 
This man, my father, knew this and recited it from memory.

My father.

No doubting it now.

Fuck.

“Would you like to go inside and talk?” he asked me.
 
I nodded my head, still unable to speak, unable to think beyond my astonishment at the speed with which things were moving.
 
He turned and began walking back up the concrete path to his front door, so I followed him.

This man was my father.
 
I repeated it to myself, like a chant, as I shuffled behind him.
 
It seemed unreal to me.

I traced his path, pushing the door shut behind me, following him to what served as his living room.
 
A black and white movie was playing on his television set in the corner, and a tall lamp in the opposite corner bathed the room with its soft yellow light, which had been visible from the car.
 
My mouth was dry, and when he told me to have a seat, I just nodded again, and sat.

“I really don’t know where to begin,” he told me.
 
“It was so long ago, and I was a very messed up young man in those days,” he said, his eyes moving alternately between the floor and my general direction.
 
My head was light, and I hoped that I wouldn’t do something silly, like faint.
 
I felt like I might.

“My name is Frank, but I guess you already know that since you’re here,” he continued, searching for words himself.
 
He looked up at me as if waiting on something.

Tell him your name, Adam-boy…he’s your father, but he doesn’t know your name.

“Adam,” I said, in a near-whisper.
 
“Adam,” I told him again a little louder, having barely croaked it out the first time.

“Adam,” he said, repeating my name, seeming to mull it over in his mind for several moments.
 
“It’s a good name.”
 
He studied his shoes some more, but my eyes hardly left him.
 
This was my father, and I never realized in my life…never knew I would have any
inclination to know anything about him.
 
But, as strange as our situation was, I was interested in hearing every word that came from him.

“Adam, it’s been almost 27 years, and I’ve thought about you most every part of that time.” He paused, and I noticed that his eyes looked a little watery.
 
“Would you like something to drink or anything?” he asked me suddenly, lifting his eyes from the floor.

I just shook my head no.
 
I saw an ashtray on the table and managed to ask, “Mind if I smoke?”

“No, not at all, Adam.”

I lit a cigarette with hands that trembled and tried to relax.
 
A drink actually sounded very appealing at that moment, but if I had one, I didn’t think I’d be able to stop.

“Well, I don’t suppose you ever knew your real mother.
 
We hardly knew one another, and, at the time, we thought that giving you up to a family better prepared to take care of you was in your best interest.
 
Believe me when I say that I would have been no good to you.

Your real mother, biological mother that is, passed away just a couple of years after you were born.
 
She lived long enough to pass word along to me that you were okay.
 
She didn’t tell me your name, or where you lived, or who your family was.
 
All she would tell me was a few details about your birth, which I told you outside.
 
She knew that I was worthless as far as taking care of you.
 
We didn’t know each other well, like I said, but we knew each other well enough to know that neither of us was any good for you.”

He stopped here, and his countenance was very sad in appearance.
 
I looked at the floor myself and moved my feet.
 
He began again:

“Adam.
 
I don’t guess that I could ever apologize enough to you.
 
You probably don’t want me to, anyway.
 
I did clean myself up over these years, but it was much too late to ever do anything for you.
 
You had a family, and I was very thankful for that.” He finished this, and looked at me, studying the younger version of himself that now sat in a chair in his very living room.

I didn’t say a word, just smoked and stared at the man who created me.
 
I thought of Sara, sleeping in the hotel room.
 
I felt torn apart inside…half of me wanted to burst into tears, and half of me
wanted to smash the ashtray over this man’s head for what he had done to Sara.
 
I was about to ask him about Sara when he spoke.

“How did you come to find me?” he asked, and I lowered my eyes.
 
I didn’t know what to do, or what to tell him.
 
I studied his face for a second trying to formulate the answer in my mind.
 
The only way I could think to say it, however, was simply.
 
To just lay it out there.

“Mr. Chance…” I began, struggling, fighting for the words.

“Please, call me Frank,” he said.

“Um, well, Frank…I’m here because of the woman I love.
 
Sara
DuBeau
.” I couldn’t restrain the emotion in my voice as I said this, and immediately he flinched and lowered his face again.
 
This time the tears flowed openly, and I just watched while he cried and tried to get control of himself.
 
He moaned several times, and I could hear him faintly whisper “Oh God!” to himself when he did.
 
After a while, he began to tell me the story of how it happened.

“I don’t know how many times I came close to killing myself because of what I did.” He said.
 
“Charles…he was my friend.
 
And, Sara loved me, and I loved her, I really did.” He shrank before my very eyes, shoulders hunched and sagging as he recounted to me many details of his life back then.

He told me that he and the
DuBeaus
were friends.
 
He had grown up with Charles, and he had been one of the few people that remained his friend even though something different in Frank’s personality had caused most people to keep their distance.
 
He had been, at times, violent, and had tendencies to do things that were considered crazy.
 
Over the course of time he had begun to realize that he wasn’t, as they say, all there.
 
The people that had made fun of him all through school saying things like “Frank’s a bottle short of a six-pack” were right.
 
He did have something wrong in his mind.
 
He had rebelled against everyone when he was young, but when the things with little Sara started happening he finally realized that they were all right about him.

Charles was the one that had grown protective of Frank.
 
He treated him like family, sticking up for him when people attacked him.
 
“Charles was my best friend in the world,” he told me, and I believed him.

Frank happened to be very handy when it came to carpentry so, even though he never went far with schooling or education, he managed to always have a job.
 
Charles and he remained friends, and lived next to each other as they grew into young men, Charles marrying a beautiful young lady named Maggie.
 
Maggie believed in Charles, and therefore, she believed in Frank, too.
 
Like Charles, she took him under her wing and made him family.

Before long, Sara was born.
 
Frank was a member of the family in the
DuBeaus
’ eyes, and Sara referred to him as “
Unca
Fank
” almost as soon as she learned to speak.
 
Frank grew protective of them all.
 
He had no real family of his own, and he cherished the one that had, in essence, adopted him.
 
He still had episodes, but he hadn’t come to realize how seriously disturbed he actually was.

“I watched Sara grow from a baby into a little girl,” Frank told me.
 
His eyes were watery as he said it.
 
I had been listening to him speak for close to an hour.
 
“But, that is when I started to have other feelings, too.
 
I began to think differently about my Sara.
 
Somehow, I was having these horrible thoughts.
 
I won’t tell you what they were; they are too awful to repeat out loud.
 
I began to sort of black out when they started.
 
There would be periods where I remembered thinking these things, but I didn’t remember what I had done while thinking them.
 
I thought they were just daydreams.

“At some point I finally grew conscious to the beast I had become.
 
They were never just daydreams that I was having; they were real.
 
I had hurt the only people that cared about me.” He cried while telling me, and I found myself crying for Sara, for what had happened.
 
He told me how he couldn’t ever face the
DuBeaus
again when he realized what he was doing.
 
He entered himself into therapy, and proceeded to spend most of his adult life working through it.
 
He had left without a word to them as to where he was going or what he would do.
 
He left without a good-bye, knowing he could never look them in the eyes again.
 
He told me these things, and seeing the pain in his face, in his eyes, I believed him.

Goddamn it all
, I believed him.

He told me that he spent his life alone, except for doctors, fearing how he might hurt anyone that ever came into his life.
 
He had never married or really dated after that.
 
Except for me, he hadn’t had any children.
 
Before Sara was born he had dated a girl locally
for several months that had moved on to Florida.
 
Less than 8 months later, I was born, the product of their brief fling together.
 
That was the extent of his parenthood before his interaction with Sara.

I began to feel sorry for the man sitting in front of me.
 
I tried to not let myself feel anything positive for him, but I found that I couldn’t stop it.
 
The sincerity with which he spoke arrested me.
 
He had spent the past twenty years trying to fix the things that were wrong with him.
 
He spent every day apologizing for the things he had done.

I left his house with a heavy heart.
 
We didn’t shake hands; we didn’t exchange any words.
 
He simply told me that if he could ever do anything for either of us, to help repair the damage he had done, that he would gladly do it.
 
He said he would spend the rest of his life doing it.
 
And, again, I believed him.
 
I had simply nodded my head, mumbled that I had to go, and I left.

Now I was going to be back with Sara in a matter of minutes, and my meeting with Frank Chance had left me little in the way of knowing what I was going to do and what was going to happen.
 

No lights were on in our hotel room when I pulled into the parking lot.
 
I walked slowly to the door, sliding the card, and opening it when the light turned green.
 
Sara was still asleep, exactly how I had left her hours before.

Once again, I undressed. When I finished I got on the bed next to Sara and watched her sleep for several minutes before rolling onto my back and staring at the ceiling.
 
I thought about Sara and what she had gone through.
 
I thought about the equally shocking event of having met my father tonight.
 
I thought about the strange way fate had brought Sara and I together, already having been connected to one another through my biological father.
 
And, of course, I thought about our relationship together.
 
A million questions ran through my mind, but no answers.
 
I drifted off to sleep without knowing it, dreaming of all the same things that I had been thinking of, my sleep being indistinguishable from my being awake.