by P. C. Zick
"I wish you'd told me before now," he said.
"I wanted to, believe me, but I promised Pam."
"Yeah, you take your promises pretty seriously, don't you? That's something we don't have in common. What do you think about Rick?" he asked.
"Rick?" I hadn't expected that question. "He seems like an all right guy, I guess. We only talked for a few minutes. What happened to John?" John had been Gary's partner for the past several years, and I had been waiting to ask Gary where he was.
"I guess even when I'm living like you always said I should, I still can't keep my promises. John got fed up just like everyone else and left." Gary stared at the floor. "I can't seem to be faithful for very long."
"Even Rick?"
"It's too soon to tell, Cuz." Gary dug deeper into his thumb pulling back skin at the edge of the nail. "Sorry, Ed; but I need to go to bed. Make yourself at home. The guest room is quite comfortable." Gary patted me on the shoulder sadly, and then turned to walk down the hallway to his room at the end.
I sat for a long time with the lights low. I thought about Kristina's call and what Gary said about his inability to remain faithful. My mind began to drift back through the years. I wondered if Pam told Kristina why they left Gary. My uneasiness with Kristina's arrival was reinforced by something I remembered Pam telling me when she left Gary back then.
I asked Pam if she was certain that she wanted sole custody of Kristina since she had never been very maternal with her young daughter.
"You bet, Eddie. She'll be my trump card if I need one in the future," she said.
Gary tried to book a flight from Las Vegas to New Orleans the next day, but since it was Thanksgiving, it was impossible. The best he could do was book a red eye flight leaving Las Vegas at midnight, arriving in New Orleans around 8:30 Friday morning.
Gary cooked a gourmet Thanksgiving meal unlike anything we'd ever had growing up in Michigan. Instead of turkey, we had roast duck, and instead of pumpkin pie, we had a pumpkin soufflé. The Townsend women would have been clucking and buzzing over this meal, for sure.
He and Rick invited several friends over for dinner. During the meal, a festive atmosphere reigned. Gary participated and told jokes, and to everyone but me, it looked as if he was having a carefree time. But I noticed the distant look in his eyes while the others talked. And he continued to pick at his thumb until it was raw.
Late in the afternoon while Rick and the others cleaned up Gary's fanciful mess, I asked Gary if we could go out and walk around Bourbon Street. Whenever we spent time together with both our families when we were younger, a walk around the block became our ritual. Usually at the Townsend gatherings, we left to escape our fathers. Today, we just wanted time alone.
"So how do you think Kristina found you?" I asked as we stepped out into the late afternoon shadows and headed down Royal.
"Pam must have told her something. I didn't really think to ask when she first called, and when I called her back about the flight, I forgot. I'll be honest with you, I'm a little uneasy about her visit, even though I'm anxious to see her."
"Is Rick going to the airport with you?"
"I don't think so, Ed. I thought it'd be better if you came. If you're there, we might get through those first awkward moments a little more easily. You're family, and you were friends with Pam. Something no one else in the family managed. Do you mind?" Again, he turned to me.
"No, I suppose it would be better to have a third party. I’m honored. By the way, did she mention a stepfather?"
"No, we really didn't talk about her life. Why?"
"In one of Pam's last calls, she mentioned that she was getting married again to an Oscar Timmons."
"Maybe Oscar could make her happy."
"Or maybe no one could," I said.
We turned onto Bourbon Street still keeping up our usual pace.
"I'd take you to my favorite bar, but it's not open on the holidays. All those gay boys go home and play normal on Thanksgiving, you know," Gary said without bitterness, and then he winked at me. "Instead I'm taking you to the classiest joint on Bourbon Street."
"And the girls will still come and dance just for you." I poked his ribs. He threw back his head and laughed heartily.
"That's right, Cuz. Wacky world, ain't it?"
We spent the next hour in a strip club drinking beer and reconnecting. It never took Gary and me very long to go back to that relationship we had always shared. The strippers did pay more attention to Gary than to me. We finally decided that we had given the others enough time to get the place cleaned up, so we downed the last of our drafts. With a wink in my direction, Gary slipped a bill into the G-string of the stripper performing just for him before we walked out the door and into the nightlife of Bourbon Street.
As I did every night before falling asleep, I wrote in my journal, not about my life, but about ideas for my next novel. This night in New Orleans where the uneasiness remained on my shoulders, I pondered several ideas before settling on one that I had tossed around on a previous visit to New Orleans.
When he stepped down from the stage, groping hands reached to possess him. He smiled warmly, looking in the audience for that one person whose opinion mattered. Finally, he spotted him walking away toward the exit, sadly shaking his head.
CHAPTER TWO
The next morning, I could hear Gary moving around the apartment before dawn. Once I smelled the rich chicory coffee brewing, I knew sleep would be impossible for me, too. We left for the airport earlier than needed, but waiting there for an hour seemed easier than pacing in the apartment.
Gary told me that he’d given Kristina a detailed physical description of both of us so it would be easy for her to find us when she came off the plane. Gary need not have wasted his breath. The minute we saw Kristina, we both knew her. She looked exactly like a female version of Gary with her dark hair and chiseled jaw line and high cheekbones. She had Pam's blue eyes and the beginnings of her voluptuous body, but that was the only resemblance between mother and daughter. However, no one would doubt the familial relationship of the father and daughter as they walked toward one another.
At first, they shook hands, but then Gary saw how ridiculous that gesture seemed. He reached out with both arms to embrace his daughter. Kristina returned the hug. Then Gary held her at arm's length looking into her eyes.
"I can't believe it, Kristina. No matter how many times I tried to imagine you, I just couldn't," Gary said.
"Please call me Kris."
"OK, Kris, this is my cousin, Ed Townsend."
"Kris, it's good to see you again, although the last time I saw you, I was a little taller." I tried to keep my tone light, although seeing a female version of Gary left me shaken.
"Nice to meet you, Ed." Kris reached out to shake my hand. "You know I think I have a vague memory of talking to you on the phone once. Is that possible?" She reached up and touched the side of my face as she had done sixteen years ago when she was just two. I shuddered.
"Good memory. Yes, we did talk once when you were about seven. I tried to explain who I was, but I don't think you understood." It surprised me she remembered and seemed so little changed when she made that one gesture with her hand.
The next few minutes were taken up with the incidentals of traveling. Kris certainly wasn't traveling light. We picked up four suitcases off the carousel before heading out to the car.
"Have you ever been to New Orleans?" Gary asked Kris as we settled into his Prelude.
"No, I've never been this far east before," Kris answered.
"You have; you just don't remember. There's time for all that later though." Gary seemed unsure of what to say next, and Kris didn't offer anything more.
For the rest of the trip, I talked about my drive from Gainesville, my writing, my mother, Claire, Philip, Aunt Susan, anything to permeate the silence. Both Kris and Gary responded or asked questions, probably relieved that I was filling up the dead air.
Once back in the apartment, Gar
y and I helped Kris settle into the guest room. Since I planned to leave on Sunday, I moved my things out of the spare bedroom to make room for Kris' baggage. I left my luggage in Gary's room to give Kris as much privacy as she needed.
We gathered back in the living room. Gary filled us in on some of the happenings in town during the weekend, trying to get a feel for what Kris might want to do. She wasn't interested in art, but the mention of some of the old cemeteries in town seemed to get her attention.
"I'd really like to walk down the famous Bourbon Street tonight," she said. We looked at her with surprise.
"Bourbon Street really isn't for young ladies with two old men," I finally said.
"Come on, Cousin Ed, you're not old." The way she said "Cousin Ed" made it sound like she was flirting with me.
"Why don't we just go out tonight for dinner and then see what happens," Gary said. "And I guess it wouldn't hurt anyone if you saw your first strip club while visiting New Orleans."
"I hate to break the news to you, but it won't be my first strip club. I grew up in Las Vegas, remember," Kris said.
"What was it like? Growing up in Vegas?" I asked.
"It's all I know; I guess it's not a typical environment from what I've seen on TV and in the movies."
Kris then told us something about her childhood. When she mentioned her mother, her face turned into a hard mask, and the eyes glistened. Her jaw became like the rocky edge of a cliff and gave away her bitterness. A nerve twitched at the back of her jaw, near the ear.
She talked mainly to me, occasionally touching my arm and looking at me with wide eyes during some of the more poignant moments. She touched my heart as she used to when she was only two. Back then, I would pick her up in my arms, and she would gently touch my face. I felt the same way I had then; I wanted to protect her. When Pam took her away, I lost my opportunity. Now I had a second chance. Through much of her story, I forgot about Gary.
When she wasn't looking at the floor, her eyes met mine. Gary sat beside her on the couch also looking at the same spot on the floor, shaking his head from time to time. He looked as guilty as the little boy caught with his hand in his mommy's penny jar. He wouldn't leave his thumb alone. I wondered briefly if he would get an infection in the now open wound.
Pam never made it to California as she planned. Kris said she didn't remember anything about Michigan. She only remembered living in Las Vegas. At first, Pam worked as a stripper, but her heavy drinking and smoking finally took its toll on her body and face. She began dealing blackjack then. Kris often came to the clubs with her.
She could remember the other strippers babysitting for her while her mom did her show or dealt cards. Then when Kris was around seven, Pam began dating Oscar Timmons, owner of the club where she worked. The year Kristina turned eight, Pam and Oscar were married. Timmons adopted her soon after, giving Kris his last name.
"What name had you gone by until then?" I asked.
"My mom's maiden name," she said. "Oscar never liked me when I was a kid so I'm not sure how Mom convinced him to adopt me. Probably a fifth of vodka had something to do with it." Kris clenched her jaw and looked at the floor before continuing.
Oscar liked to slap Pam and Kris around some, we learned as she continued. Nothing that Kris did was ever right according to her stepfather, and Pam mostly sided with Oscar. After a year of marriage, Pam became pregnant and when their son was born, Kris ceased to exist for both Oscar and Pam. Oscar didn't even bother to slap her anymore.
Kris became a child of the streets by the age of twelve. Around that time when she did come home, Oscar often came into her bedroom at night, she told us. He mostly liked to watch her. Sometimes he would try to kiss her, but Kris said she managed to hold him off with insults to his manhood, and he'd leave angry. However, the older Kris got, the more he pushed.
Her eyes filled with tears at the memory of those times. She refused to tell us anything more about Oscar. Instead, she told us about the streets of Las Vegas for a young, good-looking girl.
"Didn't your mother have a curfew for you?" Gary asked as the tales of Kris' exploits became more and more unbelievable.
"Are you kidding? She was just glad I wasn't around to cause problems with Oscar and Oscar Junior. She was jealous of Oscar and me. She knew he visited my room sometimes. But most nights when I did come home, she'd be so smashed that she didn't even know who I was. One night she even tried to get into bed with me, calling me 'Gary.' That's when I got curious about my real father. That and the night that Oscar . . ." She stopped, and we both looked at her. I didn't want to hear anymore. I doubt Gary did either. Neither of us asked for details.
I had no idea what to say to her. I only had a burning desire to kill this Oscar Timmons jerk, wherever he might be. Instead, I put my arm around her shoulders and held her close until she found the strength to continue.
She said Pam never told her anything about Gary. When Kris asked about her father, Pam would say, "He's dead. Now shut up about it." But Kris had a sneaking suspicion that her father was alive, especially after the incident in the bedroom. She knew she didn't look much like her mother except the eyes, so she began wondering whom she did look like.
She began by snooping through her mother's things. Finally, after weeks of going through the house when Oscar and Pam were either out or passed out, she found a cigar box tucked away in the top of her mother's closet. There were wedding pictures of a much younger version of Pam with a young man who looked very familiar. Then she found some newspaper articles about Miss America of 1974 and a wedding announcement from 1975 for Elizabeth Jackson, former Miss America, and Gary Townsend of Ann Arbor, Michigan. The article gave Gary's place of employment, parent's names, and just enough information for Kris to begin searching for the man she was beginning to believe was her father.
"I called a couple of places like General Motors. The article said you were an ad exec there. I told personnel I was an old college girlfriend. They bought it and told me you had moved to New Orleans, but they said they couldn't give out any other information. Luckily, your number is listed in the New Orleans directory. So, you were married to my mother and had a daughter named Kristina?" she asked needlessly, although she looked as if she did need this final confirmation.
"Yes. When we divorced, she forced me to sign some papers she had drawn up. One of the conditions for her to keep quiet about my personal life was having me give up my parental rights." Gary paused not sure how to justify or apologize for his actions, which seemed cowardly in light of the life that Kris had been forced to live for the past fifteen years.
"Why did you do that?" Kris asked as she turned to look directly at Gary for the first time since she had begun her story.
"I don't expect you to comprehend, Kris. I just ask that you try to understand. Times were different then, you had to know my parents . . ." Gary stopped and began his vigil with the floor again.
He seemed incapable of continuing, so I gave Kristina a bit of our early history. A memory from 1959 stood out in particular.
I remembered running down the field clutching the football under my arm. The shouts in the stands sounded like one loud roar. I crossed the line to make the touchdown that put Ypsilanti High School in the state championship game. I knew cheering loudest would be Gary who attended all of my games. He was my biggest fan. Even though it meant that he had to suffer through the painful accusations from his father whenever I excelled on the athletic field, he still came to applaud for me.
My parents and I lived in Ypsilanti, just down the road from Ann Arbor, but miles apart socially and economically. Ypsilanti, whose motto was, "The town that works," housed several automobile factories on the eastern or Detroit side. Eastern Michigan University formed the boundary on the Ann Arbor side. In between lived the blue-collar class created in the years just before and following World War II.
On the other side of the tracks, Ann Arbor housed the white-collar professional class that had grown out of the large medical and
scientific research facilities at the University of Michigan.
As a senior, I was finishing the football season with a bang, but I was happy my career as an athlete was ending. I preferred gentler pursuits such as reading and writing. However, I kept my preferences private from the rest of the family because they wouldn't understand. Gary already received his share of abuse and ridicule for not having the athletic abilities and inclinations of his father and now me. However, he made up for those deficiencies by becoming a leader at Pioneer High School and dating all of the prettiest girls in his class, although he refused to tie himself down to just one steady girlfriend. He also managed to look the part of the athlete by lifting weights obsessively, even when he and I just hung out in his room after family dinners. Philip always approved of that and kept buying him more and more equipment. It was the only thing the two of them had in common.
I looked up into the stands where I knew my father and Uncle Philip would be sitting side by side each analyzing and criticizing my every move while bragging to those around them about their star athlete. Uncle Philip would be trying to take all the glory by saying I had inherited his genes, and my father, quieter and grumpier, would make sure everyone knew I was actually his son. Aunt Susan, their sister, would be trying to referee as Aunt Claire and my mother ignored them.
When I came out of the locker room after the game, they all waited to take me out for a victory dinner. It looked like I wouldn't be going out with my girlfriend after all. I wouldn't put her through a dinner with the whole family just yet. We hadn't been dating long enough. Besides, I wasn't ready for her to meet Gary. Without even trying, Gary attracted every girl I ever dated and left me wondering if they only went out with me to get a little closer to the handsome and elusive Gary Townsend.
My father, Stanley, and his brother, Philip, stood side-by-side waiting for me to join them after I had received congratulations from all of the other families waiting for their sons. The contrast between the two brothers was as different as Ypsilanti and Ann Arbor, their respective homes.