Origins of the Universe and What It All Means

by Carole Firstman

  The first time Charlotte visited my father’s house, he offered cash gifts so that she’d be able to (in his words) “feed her family” during what he presumed to be “a period of financial desperation” for poor, unemployed Charlotte. At first she refused. Then she accepted. Several times, over several visits. Twenty dollars here, fifty dollars there.

  It seemed that each of them, the old man and the young woman, had tacitly agreed on their rules of engagement—she allowed him the fantasy of a potential intimate relationship (although during her visits they mostly sat on the couch and talked, as if he were a forgotten nursing home resident and she a candy-striper), and he concluded each visit by insisting she take the crisp bills he fanned from his wallet. I’m not sure which bothered me more: the fact that she took advantage of my dad, or the fact that he painted himself a neglected, lonely old man in need of attention. Taking his money was one thing—her bad, his choice. But the woe-is-me scenario reflected poorly on me—look how the old coot’s family ignores him. (Which, of course, my brother and I were trying to do. This is why the whole thing drives me nuts. If I paid more attention to my father, he wouldn’t need to buy friends. But he drives me crazy. So I ignore him. I avoid him. And when someone like Charlotte comes around, well—I look bad. And it feels like my father’s situation is my fault.)

  After a while, David and Penny and I made a point of being at home when Charlotte was scheduled to visit, if for no other reason than to show this woman that my dad was not a neglected shut-in to be pitied but a man surrounded by grown children and grandchildren. Nothing changed. The gifts continued.

  When the gift ante reached five hundred dollars a pop, my brother intervened by asking Charlotte to stay away. But instead of going away, she resorted to calling right before coming over, then hanging up if David or I answered. She called daily, several times a day, often into the night. Each time my brother or his wife answered, the line clicked and went silent.

  Finally, my sister-in-law took charge. She happened to be there when Charlotte dropped by. At the end of Charlotte’s visit, when my father opened his wallet in the driveway, Penny, who is characteristically good-natured, kind, and soft-spoken, followed them outside and stood in the middle of the lawn (behind my father so he couldn’t see what she was doing), flipping a double-fisted bird and mouthing, “Fuck you, fucking bitch! Go to fucking hell, you fucking whore,” to Charlotte and her teenage daughter as they stood next to the open door of their car. Charlotte blinked her eyes a few times and accepted the cash. She never came back. She now works at Walmart around the corner from us, right next door to the Save Mart where I shop.

  Forty-Six

  The deal with Sandy Lynn Milmoe started midway through the Charlotte debacle.

  “I want to show you something,” my father said to me one afternoon. He led me into his living room to show off his latest project, a montage of butterflies tacked to the wall. At Kinko’s he’d photocopied and enlarged dozens of butterfly illustrations he’d found in various books and magazines—now cut to shape and Scotch-taped above and all around the mantle. He pointed to some of the smaller images and recited the species names. He swept an open palm near the biggest butterfly of all, an original painting on sixteen-by-twenty-inch art paper.

  “I painted that one myself,” he said.

  The painting looked vaguely familiar. It reminded me of something you’d see in a textbook: detailed and accurately rendered. Unframed, the painting leaned against the wall above the mantle, a thick, heavy-grade piece of art paper propped in place behind the largest of several expensive Wedgwood china bowls and a clear crystal ball the size of a grapefruit.

  “Papilio rutulus,” he said. “Native to North America.”

  I would later learn that he’d painted the butterfly back in the 1950s, intended as a gift for a student of his while he taught at Stanford during grad school. The girl’s name was Sandy. I would also learn that the girl had refused his gift and so it remained in his possession.

  It was the montage collection he’d wanted me to see, though, not his painting. Copied cutouts adhered to the wall at various heights and angles. Each butterfly pointed slightly outward from the painting, all headed this way and that, creating the illusion of a herd, perhaps startled, chaotically scattering away from the giant butterfly at center. In the foreground, nestled between Wedgwood bowls, bouquets of red and yellow plastic flowers sprouted from cut-glass vases weighted with light blue marbles.

  He waved one arm in a Vanna-like sweep. “It feels like a garden in here,” he said.

  “Nice,” I lied.

  He rattled off a few more species names and brief descriptions: Morpho menelaus with its iridescent blue wings; Ornithoptera goliath with green wings the color of your mother’s eyes; Vanessa cardui, which is called the Painted Lady. At some point he offered to make additional butterfly copies for me to tape onto my own wall at home, which I politely declined.

  I paced the room while marveling at this recreation of the Garden of Eden. Through the open doorway, I noticed a slew of photos spread across his dining-room table. I stepped into the next room to get a better look. Covering the table was an array of identical eight-by-ten black-and-white portraits of a young woman wearing cat-eye glasses and a string of pearls outside her buttoned-up Peter Pan–style collar. Circa 1950. She looked like a young June Cleaver, prim and proper and eager to do all the things June would do, like vacuum in heels while the pot roast bakes and the blue willow china awaits patiently, expectantly, on a starched and ironed tablecloth.

  “Who’s that?” I asked.

  My father explained that these were photocopy enlargements made from a smaller photograph of a girl he’d dated years before he met my mother, back when he’d taught at Stanford. “Sandy Lynn Milmoe,” he said. “Milmoe was her maiden name. We’ve been corresponding.”

  I’d never heard this Sandy name before, although I’ve heard the names of many of his past girlfriends—Pat, Rosalie, Fretta, Gerramina, Whoever and What’s-Her-Name—those who came before and after my mother, and also those with whom he’d had relationships while married to my mother. Like the elements of the universe viewed through the Hubble Telescope, my father has always bared himself for anyone’s observations, with neither hesitation nor reservation. His open-book style, his eagerness to share both the sweet and sordid intricacies of his life—this has led me to believe that from his perspective, his life choices are nothing to be ashamed of, and therefore, within reason. Maintaining extramarital relationships; girlfriends living with us while he was married to my mother; making his wife and baby live in a tent in the back yard; asking his young daughter if she’d ever pose for Playboy; pining for and showering gifts on unavailable women—perhaps he hides nothing because in his mind he has nothing to hide, he’s done nothing wrong. These rationalizations constantly incubate in the back of my mind, not his. They quietly morph, crowd unnoticed, and spread beyond the boundary that separates my sense of agency from my sense of personal responsibility. What to you appears a clear-cut delineation of responsibility—giving money to Charlotte is his own choice—triggers a reflex on my part, a need to fix the problem as I see it, even if my father sees no problem at all.

  Who is this Sandy person, and what mess will I need to clean up now?

  “Corresponding?” I asked.

  He offered to let me read the letters—in fact, he urged me to read them—that day and many times thereafter. He was proud of this connection he’d reestablished.

  The phone rang just as he handed me a manila file folder labeled SANDY LYNN MILMOE.

  I picked it up. “Hello,” I said into the receiver.

  Silence. Click. Surely it was Charlotte trying to get through to my father, but I didn’t want him to know. Even though I had planned to keep my visit that day very short, I didn’t want her keeping my father company, either.

  “Who?” I said into the disconnected line. “Jack? No Jack here. You must have the wrong number.”

  Forty-Seven
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  The folder contained several letters, both to and from Sandy. And as I read the first letter (which I’ll share with you), I crossed the line from rational person to raving lunatic. I’m still trying to figure out why I reacted so strongly. I’m ashamed to admit it now, but I went pretty bonkers.

  The first letter, even at a glance, seemed quite long for an initial query meant to reestablish an old acquaintance from fifty years past. The Facebook or email equivalents I’ve personally sent and received are typically pretty short—Hey, So-and-so, is this you? Do you remember me? If so, I hope to hear back from you. Not so with my dad. This letter (typed on a typewriter rather than a computer) ran two pages long, single-spaced with eighth-inch margins.

  July 9, 2008

  Dear Sandy,

  You will remember me as a Stanford acquaintance, laboratory instructor in biology, admirer and confidant. We dated a few times, and I was highly enamored with you. I was delighted when you told me you are Jewish, and responded by telling you that I am half Jewish.

  Here we go, I thought to myself. Rushing in with a big bang, zero to a hundred in no time flat, Save Mart style. Jewish, three lines in?

  My dad was Philburn Firstman (1905-1993). He was born in Chicago, and came to California when he was eleven with his parents, who settled in Highland Park, a suburb of LA.

  He’d inserted my grandfather’s dates as if he were rattling off the dates of Susan B. Anthony from one of his favorite coins. And just five sentences in, we get a genealogy lesson that links to Judaism.

  The Firstmans came to the United States in the mid-1880s from Lithuania. Some of them spell their surname Fürstman, and they are all Jews. My great-grandfather, Max Firstman, and his wife, Sarah, were Orthodox. He died in 1939, and Sarah died in 1941. She taught me a few words in Yiddish, which I still remember. I am very proud of my Jewish heritage, so much so that I went to the Jewish Temple on Fairfax, in LA, to take the course of instruction to become converted to Judaism in 1967.

  As I sat on my father’s couch reading (in the very spot Charlotte had often occupied), he sat in the wingback chair across the coffee table, watching me.

  Contrary to what the letter says, he’d never identified with his Jewish heritage, at least not to my knowledge. The reason he (and my mother) went to temple in 1967 was because he was having an affair with my mother’s best friend, Fretta (who lived in the detached granny flat behind our house), who happened to be Jewish. My father dropped out of the classes after a while (after some sort of confrontation between Fretta and my mother), but my mother completed her own conversion. I was raised Jewish as a result—I attended Hebrew school, completed my confirmation in tenth grade, attended synagogue services every Friday night for some twenty years, and even had a full-blown Jewish wedding (the first time around), huppa and all. My father, on the other hand, dropped out of the religion when Fretta moved out of our house. Today, my father could not recite the Sabbath blessing over the wine if his life depended on it. (He often drinks Mogen David, though, which makes him the only person I’ve met, Jewish or not, who actually consumes it as a cocktail rather than choking down few ceremonial sips.) So why mention his Jewish heritage to this long-lost woman?

  “Interesting,” I said, hoping he’d stop staring at me.

  He offered to turn on the reading lamp, or perhaps I’d like a glass of wine. Or a flashlight? He had plenty of those around, and maybe I’d like one. To see better.

  “No,” I said, “no flashlight.”

  You invited me to attend your graduation from Stanford in June of 1959. I couldn’t attend because I was embroiled in marrying a student at City College of San Francisco. The marriage didn’t work and ended in annulment, but the worst part was that it precluded me from seeing you graduate.

  “Embroiled?” I asked.

  Thinking I had trouble seeing the text, he jumped up and fumbled for one of several flashlights he kept on top of and underneath the coffee table, which was cluttered with several crystal bowls of hard candy, a box of Kleenex, a half-dozen crumpled tissues, four-by-six-inch glue-top notepads, pencils and pens and Smithsonian and Scientific American magazines, quite a few DVD boxes, a glass dragon sculpture, and a Native American–style urn filled with artificial flowers.

  “No flashlight,” I said. “I can read it just fine.”

  In 1959 you sent me your “goodbye” letter, along with your portrait photo...

  Ah, the black-and-white portrait, photocopied and arranged on the dining-room table.

  ...on the back of which you wrote Gute Glück immer! with your name, Sandy.

  “Good luck always”—in German. I would later make the connection that simply because this woman had included a phrase in German, he presumed an explanation—via a huge leap in logic—as to why she ended up marrying someone else. German equals Jewish equals no third or fourth date. In his mind, she had given him a version of the “It’s not you, it’s me” breakup line.

  I was brokenhearted, of course, but I soon realized that your marriage to Gary L. Seaborne was the best thing for your long-term happiness. He gave you more affluence and security than I could possibly have given you at that time. I surmise that Gary was Jewish, and an established widower, with kids, and with property in both Mexico and California (but I’m just guessing).

  And if she’s Jewish, he reasoned, he would disclose his own Jewishness in this letter as a point of common ground.

  I’m also guessing that he was employed with Stanford, either as a teacher, or with SRI. Is Richard Lee Seaborne your son by Gary Seaborne? I assume that by now he is married, and the Internet tells me he lived at various places in Huntington Beach and Foster City. The Internet also tells me that you lived in various places in Foster City, and that you married Samuel Schulenburg in 1977. He is two years older than you; you were married in Santa Clara, and you just celebrated your 31st anniversary on July 3. Congratulations! I am happy that you are well established.

  My dad had recently asked me if I knew how to find people “using the computer” because he wanted to reconnect with an old friend. I’d shuffled him off, lied and said I didn’t know how to search names, not because I thought he was up to anything sinister, but partly out of my own laziness and partly because I generally try to keep my interactions with my father as brief as possible—even the simplest interactions with him require a mental complexity on my part that feels like tremendous work. He’d evidently gotten someone to Google this woman’s name, though, probably my brother. Or my mother.

  But here’s the deal: so far, this stuff about why she married this guy, the husband being Jewish and a widower with kids and where he works and them owning property in Mexico...it’s pure assumption on his part. With no evidence, he creates these fantasies (here, with Charlotte, with countless others) that account for:

  a)why he’s alone

  b)the possibility of his not being alone in the near future.

  This happened because of that. Cause and effect. Direct correlation: I’m alone now, these forty years later, because you are Jewish. Ah, that explains it. (She’s not, Dad. She’s Catholic. But we don’t know that yet.)

  And what about the word “embroiled” from the previous paragraph? Embroiled? Doesn’t this term, in the context of this letter, speak volumes? Might your current use of that word, Daddy dear, shed light on your perpetual loneliness? The state of your current life, your sudden but desperate need to reach out to this woman after all these years? What the hell?

  The last time I saw you in person was an accidental encounter at the San Francisco Opera House, where I took my mother to share with me the opera Wozzeck. You sat with friends (or relatives) in the seat row just ahead of ours. I didn’t get much out of the opera, but I enjoyed seeing the back of your head during the 2-1/2 hours of the opera.

  Stared at the back of her head? Aha! He was crazy then and he’s crazy now, I thought. Evidence of his insanity.

  In 1974 I think I saw you driving a pickup truck with kids in the back of the truck wh
ile I was driving through the city of Cuernavaca, Mexico. I was with my Mexican fiancée. Was that you? All of these years I have wondered. We married in 1976.

  I hope this woman’s husband isn’t a member of the NRA.

  I met my dear Mexican wife, Marina (1941-2005),...

  Again, the dates.

  ...through a correspondence club for meeting Latin women.

  Marina: mail-order bride number two, after number one—a young, spicy-hot number named Gerramina—didn’t work out and fled back to Mexico after six months. He had been engaged to both women at the same time, via correspondence. He went to Mexico to meet them both in person for the first time, decided G was prettier than M—gorgeous, in fact—and called it off with M. G didn’t work out, but luckily for my dad, M was still game.

  She was from the city of Irapuato, in Guanajuato. We were married 29 years before she died. We had a daughter, Liza, who died of cancer in 1999, just nine days before her 21st birthday. Her demise was devastating to me;...

  Demise: one of his oft-used words. Classic. So him. What would I think if I were this woman? What if I were to receive a letter like this out of the blue?

  ...at that time I didn’t have faith in personal immortality, as I do now. Modern Null Physics supports the view that we humans are multidimensional, and that there is a dimension of us which is non-physical, and immortal.

  Modern Null Physics. What a comforting thought regarding your dead daughter.

  As I read, the phone rang again.

  “Hello?” I answered.