Distant Lover

by Gloria Mallette

  “There’s a reason.”

  “And that would be?”

  “I’ll get to that,” Carline said, “but . . .”

  Rolling her eyes, Tandi huffed.

  “. . . first, about me and your father. It was summer. It was my older cousin, Melvin, who introduced me to Sporty. He didn’t want me to be the fifth wheel at a party a group of us were going to that night. Sporty and I fell in love the moment we met. We were inseparable the rest of the summer, and we did a lot more than hold hands. At the end of the summer, after crying my heart out, I went back to Richmond and Sporty went back to college—Wilberforce, I believe.”

  Sporty nodded.

  “And?” Tandi asked.

  Carline looked to Sporty. “We wrote each other, we called back and forth. I lived each day waiting for Sporty to visit me in Richmond for Christmas.”

  “So your mother allowed you to see a college man?”

  “She didn’t like it at first, but after she spoke to him on the telephone, she warmed up to him and said it was okay . . .”

  “What a trusting mother you had.”

  “. . . as long as we didn’t have sex.” Carline ignored Tandi’s remark. “Of course, I couldn’t tell her that we had already had sex, and stupid me, I hadn’t realized that I had been missing my period. I never thought about the possibility of getting pregnant. I hid my pregnancy from my parents for months.”

  Tandi rolled her eyes.

  Carline saw her. “I know. Suffice it to say I was almost three months along before I knew. I was scared out of my mind, and Sporty was devastated. He had only one more year to do at Wilberforce.”

  Sporty sniffled. Carline ran her thumb across the back of his hand.

  Tandi sucked her teeth. This story was no different than the story of so many young people whose lives were changed because of unwanted pregnancies. “So, you got married. You had Glynn and me, and then what?”

  “Actually, we didn’t get married.”

  “Not then.”

  “Not ever.”

  That surprised Tandi. “You were never married?”

  “No.”

  Tandi’s arms fell onto her lap. She looked at Sporty. Hanging his head is what he should have been doing.

  “Why didn’t you marry her?”

  “He wanted to marry me,” Carline said, jumping to his defense.

  “Then why didn’t he?”

  “There was college, and—”

  “Wait a darn minute.” Tandi wasn’t letting that college bit get by her. “My father didn’t get his degree from Wilberforce, he got it from Queens College when I was twelve years old, so, unless I’m wrong, he came back home while you were pregnant. Why didn’t you marry?”

  Carline looked down at Sporty’s hand. “When I was six months pregnant, my parents brought me back to New York to meet Sporty’s parents.”

  “In other words, there was a demand, marry my daughter or—”

  “Or go to jail for statutory rape. There were angry words and threats from both families and a lot of crying from me. Sporty wanted to finish school first, but my father was adamant. I guess because he loved me and, in an effort to bring peace, Sporty said he’d marry me right away, but—” Carline said, looking painfully at Sporty. His lashes were wet. His shoulders began to shake. She put her arm around him.

  Tandi looked away. She couldn’t bear seeing Sporty like this. It unnerved her, while Carline’s mothering him made her uneasy. “For God’s sake! Would you go on!”

  Carline removed her arm from around Sporty, while he struggled to still himself. “It all went wrong when Sporty’s mother asked my parents where they were from, who their people were.”

  “So? Were there horrible secrets about some uncle who was taken by aliens with four eyes and was himself pregnant or something?” Tandi wasn’t trying to be funny, but she was half expecting Carline’s explanation to be outrageously stupid.

  “If it were as outrageous as that, we would have been okay, but it was what we didn’t know that destroyed us.” Carline again sought the courage to go on by looking to Sporty. He couldn’t help her. He was again looking at Tandi. “Tandi, Sporty and I are first cousins on my father’s side.”

  Tandi didn’t blink once. She couldn’t, she was stunned. Sporty and Carline both waited anxiously for her to say something, but she couldn’t speak.

  “I swear to God,” Carline said, “we didn’t know that my father and Sporty’s father were brothers.”

  Tandi looked from one to the other. “That’s insane.”

  “But true,” Carline said.

  “How do you not know something like that? You’re blood!” Tandi went back to trudging around the kitchen. “Your fathers were brothers. You said yourself that your parents met. Were they blind? Did they not see each other?”

  “They—”

  “Were there no family reunions? Picnics? Christmas gatherings?”

  “Never,” Carline answered. “My father was nine when he lost touch with his brother. They were separated when their mother died. My father moved with an aunt to Baltimore. My uncle, Sporty’s father who was seven at the time, stayed with his grandmother—his mother’s mother—who lived alone. She died a few years later. No one informed my great-aunt. Sporty’s father was put into a foster home and was eventually adopted. The brothers never saw each other again in life.”

  Tandi gasped. “Oh, my God. Daddy, please tell me this isn’t true.”

  Sporty’s answer was the tears that rolled down his cheeks.

  “It wasn’t until I got pregnant that they came together and started talking and comparing notes about their childhood. It was when they told each other that their original surname was Masterson that they realized who they were and what Sporty and I had done—unknowingly.”

  Tandi stared at Sporty. “This is incredible. Daddy, how could you not tell me and Glynn about this?”

  Sporty shielded his eyes with his good hand.

  “Back then I thought, we all thought, it was incest,” Carline explained, “but that’s—”

  “Back then?” Tandi asked. “Oh, you don’t think so now? What’s different?”

  Carline glanced at Sporty. “We’re not sister and brother.”

  “No, but you are first cousins.”

  “Yes, but we are not sister and brother,” Carline stressed. “The bloodline is thinner with cousins. We’re like distant relatives.”

  Tandi couldn’t believe what she was hearing. “I think a lot of people and biologists will disagree with you. Let me enlighten you both: You are not distant enough.”

  Another awkward moment of silence filled the room. Carline and Sporty could look at each other, but they couldn’t look at Tandi.

  “Yeah, and?” Tandi asked impatiently. “What did your families do?”

  “Our families,” Carline resumed, “argued a lot back then, which is why marriage between me and Sporty was out of the question. Sporty and I were forbidden to see each other, and both of our parents demanded that I have an abortion.”

  “Needless to say, you didn’t. What if Glynn or I had been born deformed or insane or something?”

  “Let me ask you one, Tandi. Do you understand abortion and how it brutally rips a baby from the womb?”

  “Yes, I do, but the circumstances . . .”

  “. . . were extenuating,” Carline said, finishing Tandi’s sentence. “I loved Sporty and he loved me. We didn’t know who we were until it was too late. Our parents scared us to death with stories of what could happen to our baby—like you said, retardation and such. On top of that, they pounded into our heads that we had sinned, that we would burn in hell. I couldn’t accept that. I didn’t want to believe any of what they were saying. I wanted our baby. I didn’t care how he came out, as long as he was alive. Thank God, nothing was wrong with Glynn.”

  “But didn’t you even, for a minute, consider the other consequences of your union?”

  “Tandi, if Sporty and I had known that we were c
ousins the day we met, we would have never gotten together.”

  “Ignorance is no excuse! Once you were told, you could have made other choices. Daddy, you had to know differently. You were older. I can’t believe—”

  “It was too late!” Sporty shouted. “Can’t you understand that?”

  Tandi glared at Sporty. His trembling chin unnerved her. Even when he had his stroke, he didn’t seem to suffer such deep abiding anguish. He didn’t cry one time that she knew of. All these years, was this the pain that festered in his soul and made him so bitter, so cruel? Was this why he put her through hell? His hell? Was that why he was looking at her now like he could, through the power of telekinesis, make her understand what he had gone through?

  “Your father didn’t think we should have the baby,” Carline said, speaking for Sporty. “He was afraid it might be retarded, too.”

  “Oh, so one of you did have a little sense. I’m not surprised he wouldn’t want such a child, but was it okay with him that the two of you were together at all?”

  “Yes,” Sporty answered for himself.

  “My God, that’s a sin.”

  “No,” Sporty croaked. “How could it be a sin when we didn’t know in the beginning that we were related?”

  “But you found out before it was too late. You could have altered the course of all of our lives.”

  “No, Tandida, it really was too late. What Carline and I were feeling, we couldn’t just shut off like a faucet. Don’t you understand that? Everything in life doesn’t go by rules. We should have been able to get married.” Sporty began to weep.

  Tandi could sit no longer. She didn’t know this man who spoke of a forbidden love with a woman he had cloistered away in his soul. This man, this emotional man, should have been her father.

  Gently patting Sporty’s hand, Carline consoled him. “When my parents took me back to Richmond,” she began to explain, “they set up an appointment for an abortion and even took me to the hospital, but I ran away when they weren’t looking. I hid out at a friend’s house, and Sporty met me there. With his college money, we ran off to Los Angeles, had our baby, and lived together as husband and wife. No one questioned us, no one cared.”

  Tandi was more confused than ever. “So if you both defied your parents and you made a life together, how is it that you ended up leaving us and we all ended up back in New York?”

  “I-I couldn’t—” Carline brought her hand to her mouth.

  “Don’t stop now. What happened?”

  Carline wept into her hand.

  “Tandida, it’s been hard for Lorraine,” Sporty explained.

  “And it hasn’t been hard for me? Do you think my life was a lark growing up?”

  Sporty didn’t back down from Tandi’s anger. “None of us had it easy.”

  “You know something, Daddy? I really don’t wanna hear from you. You’ve had thirty-four years to tell me about this, but never did. I want to hear from her, Mrs. Hughes, about that part of my life that is so secret. You can do that for me, can’t you, Mrs. Hughes?”

  Carline couldn’t answer. She was too upset.

  “Okay,” Tandi said, “I guess I have to figure this one out myself. Let’s see.” She put her finger to her lip in an exaggerated motion to show that she was thinking. “I know I was born in California, because that’s on my birth certificate, but that’s about all I know. How old was I when I was brought to New York? What happened in California?”

  Sporty answered, “A year and a half after we were in California, Lorraine’s father found us through a girlfriend of hers where we lived. He came to tell us that Lorraine’s mother had died of a heart attack. He said our sin had killed her.”

  Carline stifled her urge to cry aloud.

  “He told Lorraine to never come back home, that she was no longer his daughter, and that I was nothing to him. He made Lorraine feel so guilty, so bad, that she ran away from me and Glynn. I came home one day and she was gone. A single line written on a piece of paper taped to the door of our apartment said, ‘I can’t. I’m sorry.’ ”

  Carline gave in to her anguish. Her shoulders shook with her weeping.

  Tandi wasn’t about to let either Carline or Sporty’s anguish deter her from finally learning the truth. “Where was Glynn?”

  “Lorraine had left him with the lady on the first floor. I waited, hoping, praying that she’d come back. I looked for her for six months.”

  “I’m so sorry I put you through that,” Carline said. “I wasn’t strong.”

  “God, I wish you’d stop saying that. It’s really annoying me.” It seemed that neither Sporty nor Carline heard her. Sporty was looking at Carline in such a way, it was clear he was still in love with her. When Sporty realized Tandi was watching him, he quickly dropped his eyes, but Tandi cared not at all that revealing their past was shaming him or tearing him up inside. She had to know more.

  “Mrs. Hughes, where did you go?”

  Carline stuck her finger under her nose and inhaled deeply through her mouth, trying to pull herself together.

  “Your mother was alone,” Sporty said. “She—”

  “I ended up on the street, in the gutter. I was on drugs,” Carline said flatly. “I had to prostitute myself to get what I needed.”

  “Oh, God,” Tandi said, going back to pacing. “This goes from bad to horrific. So I’m a crack baby or something?”

  Neither Carline nor Sporty sought comfort or support from each other either by a glance or the touch of a hand. Both their eyes were downcast.

  “God, help me,” Tandi said. “So at what point in all of this was I born? You must have gotten back together.”

  Still Carline and Sporty didn’t look at each other. After a tense heartbeat, Sporty tore his gaze from the floor. “We never got back together.”

  Carline shrank inside herself. She closed her eyes.

  “What are you saying?” Tandi asked incredulously. “Was I fucking hatched?”

  Carline covered her face completely, which scared Tandi even more. “Tell me!”

  Tears rolled down Sporty’s face. “Before I left California, I told a neighbor if she should ever see Lorraine again, to tell her that I had taken Glynn back to New York. If it wasn’t for Gert, the only friend I had in the world, I don’t know what I would have done. She let me stay with her. After some months went by, I settled in my own place. I sent my address to the neighbor in case Lorraine wanted to come to me.”

  Sporty was dancing around Tandi’s question, and it was irritating her. She grabbed a pot top out of the dish rack and banged it twice on the counter, making a crashing, earsplitting racket.

  Both Carline and Sporty jumped, both stared wide-eyed at Tandi.

  “Look! I’m getting tired of this bullshit. I don’t care which one of you tells me, but right now, one of you had better tell me, this instant, about my birth.”

  Carline didn’t respond. Her stooped shoulders, her bowed head told Tandi she was trying to hide inside herself.

  “Tandida, my family wanted nothing to do with me or Carline.”

  “Oh, big surprise. Finally I understand why we never had family around.”

  “That’s right. I was all alone, except for Gert. I got myself a job, and went on with my life without my family.”

  “I got that. But is it that simple? You went on smoothly with your life? I don’t think so, Daddy. Somewhere along the line I was born. Somewhere, somehow you decided to keep this incredible story to yourself. And somewhere along the way, you became a very bitter, ugly man, and at some point, you chose to be mad at me.”

  Carline raised her head. “He wasn’t mad at you. It was me he was angry with.”

  “Apparently so, but I’m the one who lived with him, which brings me back to the question, how did I get into this blissful picture?”

  “Your mother—”

  “I’ll tell her,” Carline said, placing her hand on Sporty’s arm. “I owe her—no, I owe you—that.”

  “Is this m
an, Glynn Belson, Senior, my father or not?”

  56

  “No. Sporty is not your father.”

  There, it was said. Tandi had at first held her breath, but then she let out the breath that for so long had been cramping her heart. She didn’t know if she should laugh or cry. She felt like doing both, but she couldn’t get her face to crack an expression. Calmly, she stood and went over to the window and looked out onto the backyard. It was really late. The curtains and shades were drawn at the back windows in the house across the way. Who’s to say that some deep, dark secrets were not rearing their ugly heads, in otherwise unwitting lives, in that house, secrets that may forever remain behind those drawn shades, perhaps as they should be? Tandi drew the curtain closed and turned back to face the woman who had risen from the dead to give her answers to questions that hurt more than the not knowing.

  “I know we’ve hurt you,” Carline said.

  Tandi simply looked at Carline. That was an understatement. Suddenly, she felt as if she was plucked from a sauna and shoved into an ice chest packed with dry ice that chilled and burned her all at once.

  “Why is his name on my birth certificate?” she asked, indicating Sporty.

  “I put Sporty’s name on your birth certificate because I wanted him to be your father, and I didn’t want you to have no one to turn to.”

  Tandi raised her eyes upward. “Oh, God, will I ever wake up from this nightmare?”

  “Tandi, I understand how you must feel. I—”

  “You don’t know how I feel. You were never kept in the dark about your identity. You always knew, without a doubt, who your parents were.”

  “Yes, but—”

  “There is no but! You just told me I have no father. That—”

  “Sporty is your—”

  “He is not, damnit! You just said so,” Tandi cried.

  Sporty shielded the tears that rolled down his cheeks.

  Tandi hugged herself. “Jesus. This is so weird. I’m relieved to finally. . . finally know for sure what I’ve always suspected—I have no father. I feel oddly vindicated for questioning that all these years, but damn, I don’t feel good about it.” She was tearing. “I feel terrible. I feel sick. Oh, my God, I feel sick. My life has been a lie from the day I took my first breath.”