A Fool's Journey

by Judy Penz Sheluk

  “You said each style had a behavioral consequence.”

  “There are always exceptions, but in general children of authoritarian parents have lower self-esteem. They grow up to associate obedience and success with love, and they are very good at following rules. However, because they have rarely been given options, instead being told exactly what to do and when to do it, they may lack self-discipline, which can lead to problems when the parent is not around to supervise their behavior. There’s also an increased risk of anxiety or depression.”

  I thought back to my own childhood. My father had never been abusive, but there had definitely been house rules that I’d been expected to follow. “I don’t agree with psychological battering, but isn’t it important for children to have established boundaries?”

  “Absolutely,” Jeanine said, “but most developmental experts agree that authoritarian parenting is too punitive and lacks the warmth, unconditional love, and nurturing that children need.”

  “I take it the permissive parent is the polar opposite of the authoritative parent.”

  “Exactly. In this parent-child relationship there are few boundaries. The emphasis is on freedom versus regulation, friendship versus parenting. The parent rarely enforces any sort of punishment as a consequence of poor behavior. In fact, the parent will sometimes resort to bribing their kids with toys, candy, or another reward to get them to behave, i.e. ‘if you stop stomping your feet, I’ll buy you an ice cream cone.” It sounds idyllic for the child, and in truth, these types of parents are very nurturing, but the outcomes have proven to be poor. Without rules and guidelines, these children never learn limits, and studies have also linked permissive parenting to low achievement. If there are no expectations to meet, there’s nothing to strive for. As a result, they can be ill-prepared for the real world, where there is an expectation of taking charge and accepting responsibility for actions or inactions.”

  Neither style sounded like my father. I found myself intrigued on a personal level. “What about the authoritative style?”

  “This is the one recommended by parenting experts. Here, the parents have high expectations, but they also provide the necessary resources, tools, and emotional support to ensure the child’s success. They encourage independence and ask for the child’s opinion, but unlike the permissive parent, they don’t rely on it as a means of making a decision, and unlike the authoritarian, they are open to discussing options. There are limits, expectations, and consequences. When necessary, discipline is fair, consistent, and measured. These children are self-confident in their ability to learn new skills and have good emotional and social interactions with others.” Jeanine smiled. “Something tells me your father was an authoritative figure. Not that I’m trying to pry.”

  I smiled back. “I take it as a compliment. And yes, he did try to raise me that way. Certainly no amount of foot stomping or holding my breath would have resulted in getting a reward, and while he was strict, he was always fair, and never abusive, emotionally or otherwise. But let’s get back to your household and your parents. Which style did they favor?”

  “A fair question, and a good one. In a lot of ways, it was like Brandon and I were raised in two different households. Then again, we were very different kids. If my parents asked me to do something, I did it without question.”

  “I gather that wasn’t the case with Brandon.”

  “I was eight years younger, so a lot of stuff went over my head, but I saw early on that defiance never led to a good outcome. As a result, Brandon was always being compared to me. ‘Why can’t you be more like your sister?’ That sort of thing.”

  “He must have resented you.”

  “You would think so, but no, he didn’t. If anything, he tried to protect me. There were lots of examples, but the one that stands out would have happened when I was about eight. I dragged a kitchen chair over to the countertop and climbed up on it. My objective was to get my mom’s blue-and-white teapot to take to my teddy bear tea party, but I slipped and the teapot crashed to the floor, breaking into a thousand pieces. Brandon heard it and came flying in, a look of terror on his face. He told me to run to my room and keep my mouth shut.”

  “Let me guess, he cleaned everything up and took the blame for the teapot.”

  Jeanine nodded, her expression grave. “My father gave him the belt that day while I watched and listened to every flick as the leather hit his back, but Brandon never cried. My guess is he never even flinched, which, of course, enraged my father all the more. Later on, it occurred to me that my father knew it was my fault. Why would a sixteen-year-old boy want a teapot? So watching Brandon get the strap for my misdeed was my punishment, too. That’s the day the dynamics started to change.”

  “In what way?”

  “Until that day, Brandon had always made an effort to follow the rules. Though he defied Dad, he was otherwise quiet, studious, and tidy. He was also a bit of dreamer, another thing that drove my father nuts. But after that day, Brandon pulled the ‘you’re not my father card.’ Whatever Dad asked Brandon to do, from pass the salt to shovel the driveway, that became his stock reply.” Jeanine gave a dry laugh. “You can imagine how that played out. My father couldn’t argue the fact. It was true. And Brandon had already demonstrated that no amount of physical punishment was going to make him give in.”

  “Where was your mother in all this?”

  “She’d try to make up for it by being too permissive when Dad wasn’t around, which only served to confuse him. But she fell in line when Dad was around.”

  “The newspaper article also said Brandon had been a straight-A student, at least until his second year of college. That must have pleased your folks, if nothing else.”

  “Yes and no. Certainly they never had to worry about Brandon’s marks. That boy was brilliant. I had to study night and day to make the honor roll, and even then I didn’t always succeed. Half the time, Brandon didn’t even bring his books home, and when he did, he’d just leave them in his backpack by the front door. It was one more thing to get under my father’s skin, especially since he couldn’t say much about it. Brandon was consistently in the top quarter of his class, often the top of it. He could have had his pick of any college or university, but Dad insisted on Cedar County College in Lakeside, and no residency for him either. Brandon was forced to commute back and forth on the GO.”

  Taking the GO train to Toronto was one thing. The GO bus to Lakeside would involve multiple stops and a very slow ride both ways. I could imagine a young Brandon making the daily journey and resenting every minute of it, the resentment for his stepfather intensifying with every trip. “Was money an object?”

  “Dad claimed it was a financial decision, but I know it was just his way of being in control.” She shook her head. “Maybe if he’d given Brandon a little more freedom, allowed him to go somewhere out of province, or at least out of the county, he wouldn’t have felt the need to run away to find himself.”

  “Brandon’s marks slipped to the point of flunking out in his second year and he dropped out. Why do you think that was?”

  “I wish I knew. He just kept withdrawing deeper into himself. By the time he left, his closest friends hadn’t talked to him since before Christmas.”

  “Drugs?”

  “It fits in theory, but I don’t think so, at least not beyond the experimentation stage. I certainly never saw any evidence of it and if he had a problem, my father would have been the first one to deal with it—and not in a constructive manner.”

  “Something changed him enough to start flunking out.”

  “I know that he became increasingly obsessed with finding his biological father. It was the source of many arguments between him and our mother, but she refused to tell him who the guy was, or why it was such a big secret. Sometimes I think if she’d told him, Brandon wouldn’t have left home. But then I think, what good comes out of laying blame? It’s not going to change the outcome, is it?”

  The bitterness in Jeanine�
�s voice surprised me. It was time to hit her with the question I’d been saving for just such a moment.

  “Did Brandon ever talk about going on a fool’s journey?”

  “A fool’s journey?” Jeanine’s brow wrinkled in concentration. “No, although…”

  “Although?”

  “My father. As far back as I remember, he would taunt Brandon by calling him a fool. ‘Don’t be such a fool.’ ‘Only a fool would do something like that.’ Sometimes Brandon would bait him, say stuff like, ‘look what the fool did, got himself an A-plus in Calculus.’ But mostly he’d just slink into his room and slam the door, trying to shut it all out.”

  Her answer came a little too fast, and the skeptical side of me remained unconvinced. “The tattoo your brother got, it’s the top half of The Fool, the first card in the tarot deck. Some people claim the tarot is The Fool’s Journey.”

  “I don’t know anything about tarot,” Jeanine said, defensive, her face flushed.

  “But you knew something.” Relentless, picking at the scab and not entirely proud of it.

  A big sigh and then, “Yes, I knew what the tattoo was, or at least, what it was going to be. Brandon talked to me about it for weeks before actually going under the needle. For all his bravado, I think he was worried about Dad’s reaction. My father doesn’t have much use for tattoos, calls them trailer trash art.” Jeanine grimaced. “He can be a bit of a bigot, as you’ll find out for yourself when you interview him.” A pained look flicked across her face and I wondered how much she and her mother had endured over the years, or if all the vitriol had been targeted at his stepson.

  “Did your father find out about the tattoo?”

  “Not at the time. Brandon kept his arms covered. But he showed me. He was so proud of it, said he was going back the following week to get the outline finished. He kept going on about the tattoo artist, some guy named Sam who was totally into tarot, too.”

  “A guy named Sam?” I asked the next question, already knowing the answer. “Did the police ever find him?”

  Jeanine bit her lip. “I didn’t tell the police or my parents about that tattoo for two years. It’s my one regret, and it’s a big one. I wanted to keep Brandon’s secret. I never thought he’d stay away forever. I assumed that he’d come home stronger than when he left, that he really would find himself a new beginning. When he didn’t call or write…when the police said there were no other leads to follow up…that’s when I told them, that’s when they had me describe it for the police sketch artist. Not that it did any good. By the time they linked it to Such & Such Tattoo, the business had gone under and Dave Samuels had died.”

  “Dave Samuels?”

  “The tattoo artist and the owner of Such & Such. His name was Dave Samuels, Sam for short, I guess. Sorry, I’m usually more articulate.”

  Dave Samuels. Sam Sanchez. A whole lot of Sams going on. I wondered what it meant, or if it meant anything. I pushed the thought aside for the moment. The delay in telling the police about the tattoo at least explained why Sam Sanchez had never been interviewed.

  “You just said blaming your mother wouldn’t change the outcome. And yet you blame yourself. Why? You were just a kid at the time, doing what you thought was right to protect your brother. You’re an innocent bystander.”

  “I stopped being innocent the day Brandon got the belt on my behalf. Any hope for staying a kid died when Brandon left home. You grow up in a hurry when your parents are at each other’s throats blaming one another twenty-four seven, or when they stop talking and the silence becomes deafening. I never thought of Brandon as a half brother, and for all his ‘you’re not my father’ talk to my dad and the fact he wasn’t adopted, I know he never thought of me as anything else but his little sister. We loved each other. We had each other’s backs.”

  “You still miss him.” A statement, not a question.

  “Every day of my life. It’s why I started the Facebook page, not that it ever resulted in anything. It’s also the reason I went into social work, to help other families that are going through what my family did. But you have to want help, to accept that you don’t have all the answers. My mother just closed off from the world. My father went on with his life as though nothing had changed. Sometimes I question if they really want to find Brandon.”

  An odd thing to say. “Why do you think that?”

  “I don’t know. They didn’t file a missing person report until early August, four months after he left home. And when Nana Ellie got the call from the man claiming to be Brandon, I had the very distinct impression my father was more upset with the possibility of him turning up than it being a scam.” Jeanine’s hand flicked an imaginary strand of hair from her face and I noticed a small tattoo on the inside of her wrist for the first time. I couldn’t be sure, but it looked like one of her origami birds. I wondered when—and where—she’d gotten it.

  “What about your mother? What was her reaction to the call?”

  “You’ll have to ask her. We stopped communicating years ago. Now if you’ll excuse me, my ten o’clock should be here in six minutes.” Jeanine got up and opened the door. I walked out under the canopy of origami birds and heard the pointy-nosed receptionist sniff loudly as I made my way out of the windowless waiting room, down the stairs, and onto Edward Street. Inside Spinners, the cyclists were doing calf and quad stretches next to their bikes, fluffy white towels draped around their necks, smiles plastered on their sweat-drenched faces. I envied their feeling of accomplishment, their work done, mine just beginning. A thought struck me and I grinned at the irony of it. Maybe I was the one on a fool’s journey.

  14

  Back home, I went through the ritual of writing everything down in my journal, closing my eyes every now and again as I tried to recall an exact quote or an expression on Jeanine’s face during the interview. She’d been more open with me than I’d expected, and yet, as had been the case with Sam Sanchez, I was left with the distinct feeling she was holding something back.

  But what? I believed her when she said she didn’t know anything about tarot and The Fool’s Journey. I tapped my pen against the table. Could it relate to her mother? Perhaps the reason they stopped communicating? It would be something else to ask Lorna. I just hoped she was prepared to answer.

  Chantelle might not be a morning person, but she’s punctual. I like that in a person. I gave her my journal to look over while I got the coffee and muffins ready.

  “Good notes,” Chantelle said, when she finished. “Comprehensive. Your recall never fails to amaze me, but wouldn’t it be easier to tape the conversations?”

  “Definitely, but someone like Sam Sanchez would have clammed up if I’d suggested it. Jeanine, too, I suspect. And it wouldn’t be ethical to record them without their knowledge. Anyway, writing it down like this helps me to crystallize my thoughts. Now that you’ve read the notes, what’s your first impression?”

  “Sam Sanchez is an interesting character. You wrote that you thought she was holding something back. Any idea what it might be, now that you’ve had a day to think it over?”

  “It has to be Dave Samuels. She spoke of him as if her were a mentor, but I think he was more of a father figure.”

  “That could explain the Cowgirls Don’t Cry tattoo. Have you seen the video? Really good.”

  “I have, and I had no idea you liked country music. How did I not know that?”

  “To be honest, country is more Lance the Loser’s thing, but I’m a big Reba fan. Did you ever watch her TV show where she plays a divorced mom with three kids?”

  I shook my head.

  “Her teenage daughter gets pregnant, marries the teenaged boyfriend, and the two of them move into Reba’s house while they finish high school. Reba’s ex-husband is a dentist and his new wife thinks she’s Reba’s best friend.” Chantelle blushed. “I loved that show. I actually own all six seasons on DVD.”

  “Good to know,” I said, without any intention of borrowing it. Chantelle caught my sarcasm
.

  “Apparently not. So—what did Misty say?”

  Sometimes Chantelle changes directions fast enough to give me whiplash. “What did she say about what?”

  “About Brandon going on a fool’s journey.”

  “I, uh, I haven’t told her yet.” I felt like an idiot. It was such an obvious thing to do.

  “Have you looked at the website? She did a great job of setting up the ‘Find Brandon’ page.”

  I shook my head.

  “There’s no time like the present,” Chantelle said, pushing my tablet towards me.

  I opened the browser to our home page. Two clicks took me to the headline: Help Us Find Brandon Colbeck, along with a brief summary. She’d also included his photograph and the age-progressed sketches, all three clearly labeled, as well as the sketch of the half-finished tattoo with a caption indicating it was The Fool, and a link to the article in the Marketville Post. No comments or shares yet, but it had only been posted for a few hours. At the bottom of the page there was link to Misty’s Message page, with “To Read More About The Fool in Tarot, click here” in bold italicized text. I clicked.

  The post included a large image of the Rider-Waite card in the upper left corner.

  The Fool (0)

  The first card in the Major Arcana, The Fool depicts a young man dancing on the edge of a mountain cliff, his face tilted with reverence toward the sun. Notice the attention to detail: the small white dog leaping with abandon by his right foot, the boy’s wavy golden hair topped with a small cap sporting a flowing purple feather—we will see the same feather on the child in the nineteenth card, The Sun—the jewel-toned flowered tunic over a white long-sleeved shirt, the bright yellow calf-length boots, the single white rose in one hand, the long stick slung over his shoulder, a small brown bag tied to the end of it. Some believe the bag contains his life experiences, others his memories of past lives; whatever the case, he carries it lightly, without any sense of burden.