Duncan's Diary

by Christopher C. Payne

  I made it through the day, and I had my daughters for the night, so I decided it would be a good idea if we went shopping. I needed to start the process of gathering Christmas presents that should be delivered in just a couple of weeks. Having three daughters presents me with limited knowledge on what their desires are for gifts. I have now found it is easier to ask them and let them help me pick things out versus trying the guessing game.

  I do have to give my wife credit in this department. She used to do all the shopping; and even though I disagreed with her approach of quantity over quality, it was much easier having her take care of all the gathering of items than doing it myself. My oldest said to me one time, “Dad, it is nice, but you are the only one who has ever really gotten me a name-brand item that was not from a discount store.” Her reference was to the jeans that I had purchased for her at Nordstrom’s on or around her birthday.

  I don’t think my wife had ever stepped in Nordstrom’s, as she preferred the knockoffs that were equal in value—she wouldn’t pay the high markups. She failed to realize that every once in a while, it was nice to just have the real thing. Kids especially in high school are so in tune with what everyone is wearing. The groups you associate with are too often plugged into your status in the clothing line.

  I took my two younger ones to Limited Too, and they tried on jeans, shirts, sweats, and sweaters. Even with the 50 percent discount that the store was promoting, I still spent close to $400. I must say that the bulk of the shopping was complete, and it was nice to head home and start the process of wrapping presents.

  For the first time without their mother, the following Saturday we expeditiously picked out a Christmas tree. After strapping it on the truck, we headed home to set it up. It was a great week to soothe my nerves, having the distraction of decorating and the excitement of the holidays that only comes through the eyes and mind of a child. We had spent some time together going to yard sales this summer, so with forethought I had purchased some Christmas decorations. We had the ability to spruce up the house in holiday spirit, and it looked very festive.

  We were a little short on tree ornaments, so we took construction paper and with scissors and a stapler made a great streamer that wrapped around the tree in multi-colored fashion. We hung stockings over the fireplace; and with the few knick knacks from the yard sale, the house was transformed into holiday mode.

  After much debate, I conceded to giving my wife the kids on Christmas Eve. She had them for the rest of the vacation holidays after. I took the kids for the week before Christmas Eve. While the house in Burlingame looked festive, we had planned on spending the actual holiday up in Twain Harte. The little ski resort Dodge Ridge was opening up the weekend before Christmas, so it would be a nice outing to take the kids out for our first ski trip of the season.

  My seven-year-old had become quite the accomplished skier; and while my oldest was naturally athletic, she had spent less time on the slopes. She still had some learning to do. All three kids could go down all the blue slopes, so it was always fun hanging out with them. It was a very good athletic family activity. So many family events are sitting around eating and/or watching TV or a movie. It is nice sharing something that is active. Skiing allows that interaction and involvement. Granted, I still boarded, but we could all go down and up the hill together.

  I wonder at times what I would do without my kids keeping me in tune with what is important. They gave me a constant reminder that the simple things in life provide happiness. While I am driving, my seven-year-old will reach up to my shoulders behind my seat and rub them softly as only a child can do. It still melts my heart every time she does this. She is attempting to reach out and do something for me to express her love in a kind, gentle way.

  My older daughter looks at me in the eye, every once in a while, and asks, “Dad, are you okay? Is there anything wrong that you want to talk about?” Their intuition and perception is uncanny.

  The holidays with the kids were uneventful. We skied, as planned, saw a movie, and set up the fake Christmas tree in Twain Harte for the first time that had come with the purchase of the house. The two little ones didn’t understand the concept of the fake Christmas tree no matter how many times I explained it. They had never seen one in their entire lives. We and everyone we knew always went through the process of cutting down and/or purchasing a live tree.

  Even though the tree wasn’t real, it was quite life-like; and I think that confused them even more. It was a far cry from my days growing up with my grandmother where we annually pulled out the silver wired tree and set up the translucent limbs. I, as my kids, had never known anything else as a child, so it was not until I grew up that I realized not all Christmas trees were silver. The fakeness takes something away from Christmas, I believe. Even though I don’t mind the pretend trees that are green, I strongly feel that on Christmas there should be no tree in the living room that is shiny and silver.

  As with my kids and all kids, it is ironic how traditions and isolation of childhood keeps you from knowing the differences that are prevalent in the world. I am sure there are millions of kids that have never even had a Christmas tree nor a present under it. Wouldn’t they be happy with a warm meal on the table to eat versus crying over not getting the latest fad toy that was being marketed as the “can’t do without holiday treat.” It’s all a matter of perspective and luck of the draw on where you were born and what status you fell into as the egg happened to hatch and you were created, I guess.

  It ended up being a nice holiday and was much less stressful than I remembered its having been in a long time. My ex-wife always operated under the mindset that the holiday season had to be perfect and worked that point to death. Perfect presents, perfect meal, perfect wrapping. She warped the holiday into a stress-filled week of last-minute shopping and continued complaining of not finding this or not getting that. It was nice just relaxing and going with the flow that year and not dealing with the turmoil of her family and her never reachable, lofty expectations.

  I did try to be aware of the kids being pulled in two directions that year, as it was the first Christmas that we spent as a divided unit. I think it went well, and the kids seemed to enjoy both celebrations with me and with their mom. They, in turn, gave me the distraction that I needed at such a tumultuous time in my life. The plan was to spend that week with the kids, drop them off Christmas Eve at their mom’s parents’, and, then, head out that night for my planned trip to the Dominican Republic. It would be my second trip, and my first one had been an eye-opening experience that injected me with thoughts that had led me to where I am today.

  The only disappointment, I believe, was the kids were a little distraught in the quantity of gifts as most of my concentration had been on clothes. Money was all too tight this year, and the normal inundation of needless trinkets went by the wayside. I did manage to get them a couple of Wii games that were Karaoke-oriented. The two little ones enjoyed being the center of attention, and they always liked putting on a show. I had just gotten my younger one an American Girl doll for her birthday in November. That was No. 1 on the list for both of them, but I felt it was unneeded to indulge them in one yet again. More than $100 for a doll seemed extravagant.

  I instead tried to focus on hot chocolate, making pies, and spending time together watching Christmas movies, and reading Christmas books. One tradition that my wife’s family had instilled in me was watching White Christmas, and I still enjoyed that with the kids that year. As I get older, I have more respect and admiration for older movies and the simplistic nature of how they are approached.

  I do enjoy the special effects of The Dark Knight and the elaborate scenes that can be played out now in computer animation, but the older movies are just easy to watch and bring you back to a time in life where things didn’t seem to be so complicated.

  I dropped the kids off at my ex-wife’s parent’s house, and she was not there yet. She was attending church service with her mother. Her father coldly let the kid
s in the door. I tried helping them up the stairs to the condominium he shared with his wife of more than 50 years. The exchange was awkward and sad for the kids, as he was rudely non-communicative and horrible to deal with. It is not that hard to understand, since he had been filled with lies from my former wife and, with her being his daughter, he most likely felt protective of her.

  My wife never seemed to understand the effect that her lies had on her, the kids, and on me, as well as everyone she spoke to. She spread deception as easily as creamy peanut butter, and lies flowed from her with no thought or concern. This was probably the single biggest surprise in my divorce – her ability to distort facts so fluidly until even she believed the words that came from her mouth.

  I tried to put this behind me as I kissed the girls good-bye, gave them huge hugs, and headed off to my week in the Caribbean. The sunny beaches and removal of daily distractions would be a nice reprieve from the grind that I had been going through. I would miss the girls, but it would be nice to just get away.

  Still Doesn’t Add Up

  Sudhir awoke to his normal routine, and once he arrived at work, he went about trying to figure out how to look busy. He checked the finance section on Yahoo to see how things were shaping up, read the latest headlines of how Obama was facing a tough uphill climb on the economy, and how tax cuts would save the day. He had to admit that he considered himself lucky in his conservative approach to investing. He didn’t risk anything, and he didn’t gain a lot; but he also had not lost much in the recent downturn.

  His job was secure, and he couldn’t say the same for several of his relatives and friends. Sudhir would always have a job as long as he had seniority, and there was a need for a police officer. This was one good thing about working for the city.

  Sudhir had spent the last several months doing odds and ends while everyone knew he remained focused on Jill’s case and the missing person aspect. He was now starting to get pressure to move on and let the case die by the wayside. There were other activities surfacing, and he had proven his skills with the big assignment. His captain now wanted to see if he could apply those skills as other crimes surfaced.

  Even with the jump-start in his career and the newfound respect, he couldn’t help but feel the failure that he had let Jill, her family, and himself down by not apprehending anyone. He still kept his prime suspect in the back of his mind, but the weekend work that he had put together remained in his truck sealed away as he still refused to believe that the fragile strings holding the pieces together actually made any sense. That, added with his direct knowledge of certain activities, made it impossible for him to fathom that his hypothesis was anything more than a drunken fluke of coincidences that in the end didn’t add up.

  Still, he refused to relinquish the file. While he had stated he would accept new assignments, he would never give up his hold on the hope that someday he would find out the truth about Jill and what happened. He was sure by now she had moved out of this world and into the next by some torturous method that he was unable to comprehend, but he would never be able to live with himself if he gave up hope for finding out the truth.

  Sudhir, instead, focused on his personal life and waited for the next case to be passed his way. He helped out with minor infractions in the meantime. People tended to revert to their normal daily routine activities. He did the same calling on his retail-owner disputes and domestic violence eruptions that had evaded the everyday patrol personnel.

  He planned a weekend in January to the wine country and had plans of giving the trip to Janine for Christmas. He had found a great bed and breakfast for a two-night stay, planned dinner Saturday night on the wine train, and had lined up his parents to watch the kids. The details were all in place down to ensuring that there was a hot tub, and he had a planned wine tour booked at one of the larger wineries.

  Neither he nor Janine was heavy wine drinkers, but it is beautiful country. They both enjoyed getting away although they had not done a weekend stay in years now. Kids tend to distract you from your marriage and personal life as all your focus stays on them. Ironically, one day you wake up and realize they don’t want to even talk to you let alone have you in their daily activities.

  Then, they go away to college and come home one day married. Suddenly, they have the realization that you were not as stupid as they thought you were. You then develop a mature relationship, and the next thing you know, you are a grandparent, then, you die. He had life all mapped out from beginning to end it seemed. He loved his kids and still appreciated their allowing him to be so involved in who they were, but it was easy to see that in a few short years they would not need him in the same way they did today.

  It was in this deep thought that Sudhir went about checking the activities for any missing persons that involved a Volvo SUV or where a lady from the ages of 20 to 40 had disappeared. He had added this to his daily routine about three months ago after getting nowhere with Jill’s case. While it had led him to Manteca on a wild goose chase involving a blonde girl named Brenda, he had not found anything else that had connected to his cases in any way. At least not in any way that he was able to see from the facts that he viewed off the daily wires.

  He pulled up the last week’s activity, including the last couple of days having neglected this for a while. He noticed an oddity that felt somewhere along the lines of getting hit by a semi-truck. There was a case of a missing person in Burlingame. A lady named Hannah had allegedly been abducted and had not been seen for a couple of weeks. She fit the profiled age range and was attractive from what he could gather off the dot matrix photo, but that was not what had caught his eye.

  Apparently she had been known as an acquaintance of Duncan’s, and it noted that he had been questioned. The report stated that he appeared odd, but seemed to hold up well during the interview. They had no reason to believe he was of any further use in the case. Sudhir fell into his seat and, instinctively, reached in his drawer and without even hiding the fact poured himself a shot of whiskey. He downed it in one quick gulp.

  They say an oddity is one thing, but recurring coincidences at some point form a pattern. Even if that pattern is something that does not initially make sense, there is most likely a reason for the pattern having formed. Duncan surfacing again like this was not expected, and it shocked Sudhir into now thinking again that there was too much circumstantial evidence starting to add up pointing at his being involved in this circle of issues.

  Hannah had two girls and had lived in the area for several years. Her good friend Sarah had been watching the girls for a weekend as Hannah was going away and was expected to return on Sunday afternoon to pick them up.

  When she had not returned, Sarah had called the police station worried; and upon further investigation, Duncan’s name had surfaced as having been dating her a few times over the recent weeks. He had been questioned, had a good alibi, and seemed like a straight-forward person, so the two detectives had moved on. Her ex-husband was also in the process of being questioned even though their association had not been recent. He was not the most upstanding guy and was not diligently paying his child support to say the least.

  Life is a mixture of circular events that travel around and around and around. The earth circles the sun, while the moon is circling the earth, and they both spin upon themselves, leaving you wondering at some point where it is that you really stand in life. Everything is constantly moving directionally toward its end, so how can you ever know for sure at what point you currently stand. You don’t know the timing of your death, what tomorrow holds, or what will happen a mere split second from the time you read this single word until you move to the next word, and so on.

  Sudhir felt his world crumbling around him as the disintegrating pieces were piling up at his feet. His puzzle was being pulled apart. His wife was living a different life, his friend was adding up slowly to look like a killer, and Sudhir couldn’t keep his grip on what was happening. He remembered his last visit to his parent’s house, and th
e gossip session that ensued.

  His parent’s friends who had two boys were recently in the mix of trying to give back their grandchild to one of the boys who had just been released from prison. The boy had shot somebody over a drug deal, taken the body to a reservoir, tied a few bricks to it, and dumped it in the water. The only reason the body had surfaced was due to the low water levels from the lack of rain.

  The boy spent the last seven years in prison while his stripper girlfriend had dumped off their child with his parents for safe-keeping. His parents loved the child, but were in their late 60’s; and the burden of keeping a child full-time was taking its toll. This was a boy that Sudhir had watched grow up. He had seen him in church camp, attended youth group with him, and watched as the boy blossomed into a young adult.

  Sudhir had moved on and lost track of the specifics of several younger kids, but now he discovered this young man was getting out of prison for murder. Who are these people that we call friends in life? Who is the person that lives next door to you that you wave to as you pull into the driveway? This is the same person that you feed the dog for as they go on vacation.

  Does anyone know who anyone is, or is everyone some fake shell of a human being that hides away their true feelings? Do we only allow the beast out of its inner sanctum when the lights are turned down and the door is shut when nobody knows what is occurring in our individual sanctuaries called home? Internet porn is so lucrative. Do we even have to ask ourselves why? How many husbands scan the Internet for seduction as their wives lie in bed, pretending not to hear the fluttering of the rhythmic beat of masturbation to some dark seductive enticements that can be viewed for $19.99 a month?

  God, this world we live in is such a lie of false propaganda blown through a television tube, telling us how great things are. We condemn the Islamic community for their harsh treatment of woman while we in the civilized world treat them like mere fixtures to be viewed at will for pleasure.