by Rob Kaufman
June held onto the bed rails and struggled to pull herself up. Once she was standing, she hobbled to the end of the bed, placed her pocketbook gently on the mattress beside Jonathan’s feet, and looked directly at him.
“The week before Philip and I were to meet, my husband’s contact found information about Dee Previn. She died about ten years ago in a car accident on Route 91 while on her way from New York City to Boston for a family reunion. At that time she was the Senior Lab Director at Spectrum Diagnostics in Manhattan, one of the top DNA testing labs in the country. She’d worked there for almost thirty years.” June leaned forward, keeping her eyes on Jonathan’s. “Jesse’s contact dug further and discovered that for ten years Dee had received a check for one thousand dollars from Angela every month. The payments started right around the time Little Philip was born and continued until he turned eleven.” She glanced toward the door, then back to Jonathan. “It didn’t all come together until I met with Philip last week and saw his face and his eyes. When I saw his beautiful smile and his kind-hearted expression, it all clicked.”
June stopped talking for a moment and walked to the door. Jonathan placed his hand over his heart, its pounding so strong he thought it would beat out of his chest.
“I should have known when she took Little Philip and ran away to another state she was up to something. She didn’t want me to see him grow up because if I did, I’d know the truth — that she paid this Dee Previn woman to manipulate the results of your paternity test. It became obvious when I thought about the night of the insemination, how she kept me out of the bathroom while filling the syringe. She didn’t need your sperm. She already had what she needed, frozen from fifteen years before when she worked at the sperm bank in Boston.”
Jonathan watched June step into the hallway and gesture for someone to come closer. When the man entered the room, Jonathan moaned as if someone was squeezing his chest and wouldn’t let go.
What he saw seemed impossible. The man standing before him was Philip, looking exactly as he did thirty five years ago. This had to be a vision; some sort of delusion brought upon by extreme anxiety. But when he saw June and Katy standing behind the man, both wiping tears from their cheeks, he knew this vision was real.
“Philip?” Jonathan groaned, reaching out his hand. He tried to say more, but no sound came out.
The man picked up the chair beside the bed and moved it closer to Jonathan. He sat down and took Jonathan’s hand.
“Hello, Jonathan. Yes, I’m Philip.” He squeezed Jonathan’s hand and glanced at June. “And as June informed me, I’m also Philip’s son.”
Even his voice was the same. Jonathan moaned again, the emotion coming in such waves and with such force he could barely catch his breath. His hand shook as he softly touched Philip’s face with the back of his fingers, tracing across the eyelids of his deep brown eyes, down the length of his perfectly straight nose. He used his fingertips to brush Philip’s cheek, to gently press his lips. He touched him as he’d touched his Philip a thousand times before, decades and decades ago in another lifetime.
With his free hand, Philip fished around his pocket and took out an old photograph. Jonathan could hardly pull his gaze from Philip’s face to look at it, but when he did, he gasped and felt the warm tears rolling down the side of his face. It was a photo Angela had taken of them in front of her apartment building on that cold, fall day.
“I found this photo while going through my mother’s stuff a few weeks ago. I’d never seen a picture of my father before, but I knew right away which of the two men he was. I mean, I look just like him. My mother always told me he died in a car crash before I was born. She said he was the love of her life since college and that’s why he’d left us money, so we’d be taken care of. It wasn’t until last week, when I met June, that I learned the truth — the whole story, including how you were the one who took care of us for all those years.”
He squeezed Jonathan’s hand, his eyes filling with tears. “I am so sorry, Jonathan. For everything. For what my mother did. For how my father died. For waiting so long to thank you for your generosity. And for never getting to meet you until today.”
He let his head fall upon their clasped hands. Jonathan struggled to see through his tears and bit down on his bottom lip when he saw how Philip’s feathery blond hair fell over his face, just like his father’s used to do. He lifted Philip’s face by his chin and brushed the hair from his eyes.
“Philip. don’t. You have nothing to be sorry for.” He took a labored breath. A chill passed through his entire body forcing him to shiver and squeeze Philip’s hand tighter. “You’re with me now, and that’s all that matters.”
The cold continued to flow through him until it stopped suddenly in his chest and pierced his heart like an icicle. Jonathan flinched. He held onto Philip’s hand as another sharp pain pinched his heart and enormous pressure crushed his chest.
Katy gently pushed June aside and was about to press the emergency button behind the bed but stopped when Jonathan looked up at her and shook his head.
“No,” Jonathan said with a faint smile. “Please, no.”
He closed his eyes and let the numbness sweep over him. “Your father’s here,” he whispered. “He’s been waiting for me.”
He couldn’t be sure if Mozart’s Symphony #39 came from inside his head or radiated from somewhere within the brilliantly lit distance; the warm, enveloping expanse from which Philip approached. The only thing he knew for certain was that for the first time in his life, or his death, he was where he should be.