Don't Worry, He Won't Get Far on Foot

by John Callahan

  A few days later, outside of class, I found some excuse to ask her a question about homework and ended by asking her out. She said she was busy but would go out with me in about ten days. A classic put-off, I thought.

  But ten days later Lou said a girl named Janet had called while I was out.

  We went to dinner and I fell in love. I hadn’t felt anything like this in years; but I was nervous. I was sober, which meant that for the first time ever my feelings were all present and accounted for, nervousness and self-doubt included. Worse, I was in the middle of the search, in a state of increasing tension and anxiety. I avoided making love with her for almost two months, an eternity by my standards.

  Even so she made me feel terrific. We made my attendants sick by constantly staring deeply into each other’s eyes; when not actually together, we spent four of five hours a night on the phone with each other.

  It was a glorious summer. We flew around town in my wheelchair, Janet perched on my lap in a pretty white dress. With her perfect breasts and lush tresses she got plenty of lecherous glances, much to my discomfort. I spent a fortune on restaurants: our favorite was a Greek taverna where the old proprietress would come out of the kitchen to greet us and pinch Janet’s cheeks.

  Sex with Janet, as I should have known, turned out to be special. We made love for hours. Janet had been raised in Africa, where her father worked for an oil company. She was relaxed about everything physical, which was a good thing. Sometimes, with no bottled confidence to keep them away, feelings of self-doubt and embarrassment washed over me and the old John Henry refused to stand up. She laughed at me and refused to let me make a big neurotic deal of it and spend days pouting and agonizing. “We don’t have a problem, John,” she’d say. “You have a problem.”

  One morning I was performing oral sex on her when the door burst open. There stood our favorite skinny homosexual, Lou, with a breakfast tray loaded with sweet rolls. When he realized what he’d burst in on, he fell to his knees in shock. Danishes flew everywhere. He scurried around on his knees scooping up buns and shouting, “I’M SORRY! I’M SORRY!” at the top of his lungs. On his way out, still on his knees, his foot caught in the door and he couldn’t close it. He kept trying to pull it shut against his sneaker.

  Laughter and orgasm are great bedfellows. When he had finally made his exit, Janet said, “John, you’ve got to promise me one thing.”

  “What’s that?”

  “That you’ll have him do that every morning at the same time.”

  Everything about Janet was just right, including the way she greeted me mockingly every day with “Well, how’s your self-esteem today, Callahan?” But the more perfect she seemed to me, the more old fears began to surface and familiar mechanisms click into operation. I began to see her as not so attractive after all. I told myself she didn’t understand what I was doing and had become an impediment to my search for my mother. I withdrew emotionally. Finally, three months into our affair, I suggested that maybe we should both be more “open” and start seeing other people.

  Janet smelled a rat. “Goddamn it, Callahan, I’m not your social worker, I’m your girlfriend! Don’t try that pop psychology crap on me!” And she walked out, for good.

  Lou and I worked our way through a whole list of Maggie Lynches without any luck. Some fit our profile more closely than others; but one seemed a perfect fit. The date of birth was identical. She was a red-haired Catholic from Kansas. She lived alone in San Diego.

  I called and went through my spiel. “Hello? I really don’t know how to begin . . . I don’t quite know how to put this, but there’s a possibility that I’m your son.”

  “I never had a child,” she answered wistfully. “I wish you were my son, though.”

  I had been so absolutely convinced that I didn’t quite believe her, kind though she sounded. I decided to try something.

  I confronted Morton with everything I had except the results of my phone call. “You’ve got her!” he exclaimed, throwing up his hands. Convinced the woman in San Diego was my mother, he gave up and turned over the whole file.

  I took it home and that night Lou and I pored over it on the kitchen table. Here were the names and addresses of every member of my mother’s family. Oddly the dossier didn’t have a current address for her.

  “My” Maggie Lynch had been a county auditor living near Omaha. She was the youngest of nine kids, the older ones born in Ireland, the younger ones in the United States. Her father was a farmer from County Cork. After her father’s death she had stayed home and cared for her mother, and so her most marriageable years had passed her by.

  She had become pregnant by an army major three years her junior. The ages of his legitimate children suggested that he was married either at the time or within a few months. At that time and place, the scandal of pregnancy would have meant ostracism and probably the loss of her job.

  She had come to Portland to have me in secret. Nobody knew as much, not even her own sisters. When she left Portland, she did not return to Nebraska. She settled in Denver instead, took out a real estate license, and began an entirely new life.

  I knew so much! I had eight aunts and uncles! They were Catholic! They were Irish, and so was I! I didn’t have to pretend, in order to seem one of the Callahan tribe. My mother had a tremendous sense of humor, so I came by mine naturally!

  I had visions of a big reunion. What a wonderful thing! They would kill the fatted calf. “We’re all reconciled to it now. Come on out. Be part of the family.” My whole shabby life could be left behind.

  I spent several days just digesting and relishing the facts. I spent most of this time alone. I was about to meet the woman who had haunted my thoughts for years. Somehow I knew she would accept me! For months I had felt her presence growing closer and closer. Now the veil would be torn away and everything revealed.

  After long discussion Lou and I settled on one of her brothers to telephone. We wanted the least chance of being stonewalled right at the outset. If the brother was at his office, his wife—an in-law—would probably answer and would be likely to be less shocked at such a revelation.

  The tension was unbearable. I went into the kitchen as Lou dialed. In spite of everything my ears were straining, so I turned on both the hot and the cold water and fiddled loudly with pots and pans.

  But I could still hear Lou’s professionally smiling voice. “My name is Lou Ross and we’re doing a survey. . . . I understand you are married to the brother of Maggie Lynch. . . .”

  His cheerful patter went on for what seemed like hours. Finally he hung up, his survey-taker’s smile still in place. He turned toward me.

  “Your mother died in a car accident when you were twelve.”

  “Then why are you smiling?”

  “I don’t know.”

  I rolled out into the autumn night. It was raining, but I couldn’t feel it. All my senses and emotions were deadened. I felt utterly numb and as empty as if someone had ripped my guts out. This sweet woman. . . . The idyllic relationship we were going to have. . . . It was as if I had known her all my life and she had died suddenly. I just sat there in the rain in shock wondering how I should feel. Finally Lou helped me to bed, where I turned once again to my Higher Power—this time in rage.

  I’m not usually given to the little “guardian angel” fantasies common among Catholics. I don’t want to make too much of the fact that at about the time she died, I started drinking, smoking, and cutting school, cheating on tests, cultivating cynicism and provoking messy fights with my father; or that I’ve distinctly felt an invisible hand guiding me at times, such as the moment I bottomed out on alcohol, and have thought it might be hers. But, much later, when tears finally came, I mourned her as though I had known her, on some level unexplained.

  The next day I called the adoptive-rights group and told my counselor there what had happened. He said, “Quick, call your father’s side.” Otherwise, he warned, I was in for a prolonged depression.

  Once again
Lou smiled into the phone as he dialed. The number he had was in the name of my father’s wife. “Hello? We’re taking a survey . . .”

  Lou hung up. “My God, I don’t believe this!”

  “What?”

  “He’s dead too.”

  My father had died of a heart attack at age thirty-six, when I was three.

  I stopped going to classes and went into a virtually catatonic state for several days. I stared at the wall. When thinking at all, I thought of ending it right there with a 12-gauge shotgun. What did I have to live for? Miraculously, though, I never considered taking a drink. Instead, I slowly began to use the Twelve Steps to gain perspective and relieve the pain.

  Bit by bit, sanity returned. Surely there was something I could salvage out of all this. This time I picked up the phone myself and called one of my mother’s older sisters, now age seventy, living in New Mexico.

  It was a mistake. When I identified myself, she told me in no uncertain terms that no such person as myself could exist: my mother had lived and died a spinster and a virgin. All the facts I had amassed had no effect on her. I tried to ignore her stubbornness and asked other questions: had my mother been artistic? Why, yes as a matter of fact . . . but then she remembered she was talking to a total stranger who had no right to ask such questions. Finally she hung up.

  I tried again.

  My father, whose name was John as it happened, had two legitimate children, John and Megan, who were in turn raised by a stepfather. I was delighted at the thought that I had a half brother, happier still that his son, my nephew, was also named John! I called my half brother, a lawyer, and introduced myself.

  “Hi. My name is John Callahan. I’m a student at Portland State University in Portland, Oregon, and you’re my half brother. We have the same father.”

  I marshaled all the facts. When he had heard me out, he said, “I didn’t know anything about my father. I don’t remember him.” He kept asking why I wanted to know these things, which obviously signified nothing in his life. His voice was cold. “You’ll have to promise never to tell this to my sister. And especially not to my mother. It would kill her.”

  She already knew. She had received a fake “survey” call from Lou two days earlier. And she had earnestly requested that my half brother not be called. The shock would kill him, she had said.

  Soon after, I received a formal letter from his law partner, a much older man who acted like a surrogate father. He listed all the damage my inquiry could do and called upon me to cease and desist. There was also a veiled threat: “Things could get very rough for you if you pursue this.”

  I had now announced my existence to both sides of my natural family and received identical messages: never call us again! However, I wasn’t yet in a quitting mood.

  Further tracking revealed, in the files of a Denver newspaper, an account of my mother’s fatal accident. She had driven off a notorious mountain cliff above Denver in a car full of priests and women members of a Catholic lay order. The article mentioned that she had been a successful realtor, active in politics and (I would have expected no less) a strong Kennedy supporter. It also described her as devoted to the care of inner-city orphans.

  I was able to identify the priest who had buried her and traced him to a nursing home. I was warned that he was quite senile and so he sounded. But when I said I was Maggie Lynch’s bastard son, his voice suddenly became firm.

  “Yes, I remember her. I buried her in ‘63. Your mother was an outstanding person, John. Sounds like you are, too. I’ll give you the name of her best friend. It was Teresa Dugan.”

  Then, as suddenly as it had come, the strength and firmness vanished from his voice, and it was to a feeble old man that I said good-bye.

  Teresa Dugan had been one of the lay sisters who worked with my mother. Her initial reaction was one of anger and disbelief. “This isn’t funny. Maggie Lynch never married.”

  “I know, but . . .”

  “This is absurd. Your mother never had sexual relations with anybody. I knew your mother for many years. She never mentioned anything about you. You can’t exist.”

  My long barrage of facts only half-convinced her. I said, “I’ll send you pictures and a letter.”

  “Maggie Lynch was a tremendous woman, a very dear friend of mine, and I’ll thank you to get off the phone and never call here again.”

  The next day I had my picture taken and sent it off with a complete account of what Lou and I had uncovered.

  Evidently that photograph changed everything. Teresa Dugan wrote me back a letter that is still one of my most treasured possessions. “What a nice-looking boy! It’s like having a piece of Maggie left on earth. . . . Your mother was the most resilient, the strongest person I’ve ever met.” She went on and on, drawing an intimate and affectionate portrait, in effect introducing me to my own mother.

  By an incredible stroke of luck, Teresa Dugan was also an enthusiastic amateur photographer. She announced, too, that she was sending me a package. When her parcel, as big as a hatbox and heavy, arrived, I gave Lou the keys to the van and told him to get lost for a while. I sat for hours with the package unopened on my lap. My God, I was thinking, this is finally the moment.

  I said a prayer, took a deep breath, and ripped the package open. And there she was.

  The photos showed a beautiful, red-haired woman. Her eyes shone with intelligence and humor. Here at last was the unknown toward whom, for so many years, I had directed conflicting emotions of tenderness and anger, hatred and love.

  She looked a lot like me! She had my forehead! She looked like the memory of myself in the mirror. There she was, alone or (more often) surrounded by friends, holding a cigarette or a can of beer, smiling and laughing. Teresa wrote, “If she had been alive and you had found her, she would have welcomed you with open arms.”

  It was agony to think I’d never meet her, though adoptees who do meet their natural parents sometimes regret it, becoming disillusioned and depressed. But I knew I would have liked this Maggie Lynch.

  Everything the photographs showed, and everything Teresa’s captions said, seemed to bear upon me. She had a sense of humor. She was successful—someday I was going to be successful. The fact that she made money meant that I could make money too. She had a charismatic personality. And she was deeply spiritual in her approach to life. I was not created out of thin air. I had a heritage, and it was a fine one.

  When I was a child, I sometimes screamed at my adoptive parents, “I’m going to go get my real mother!” Now I had done it, but not at all in a spirit of childish vindictiveness. I felt that I had gone into the search with my feelings out of control and ended it with new calmness and strength. My adoptive mother, Rosemary Callahan, had been resistant to my search, perhaps feeling threatened, but now to my surprise she said she felt the search had brought her very close to Maggie Lynch.

  Like many orphans, I had been cared for during the first six months of my life by Sister Julie, a famous nursing sister in Portland, who, it was said, remembered every infant who had ever passed through her ward. My parents kept newspaper clippings about her and made sure I remembered her. Not long after Teresa Dugan’s package reached me, Providence Hospital gave a fiftieth-anniversary party for this wonderful woman, and I went to pay my respects, along with hundreds of others. I was now a thirty-year-old in a wheelchair, but Sister Julie recognized me without having to be introduced.

  “Why, John Callahan! I remember you! You had the bluest eyes and you were always smiling.”

  I told Sister Julie about my search and its conclusion, and this wise old woman told me what I must do next.

  The cathedral was nearly empty when I wheeled myself in later that afternoon. But there was a janitor cleaning up one of the aisles, and I had him drop the coins into the box for me and light two candles. While he went to get the priest, I sat calmly in the warmth of their flames. The priest came and I arranged to have a High Mass said for both my parents. I could let them go now. That chapter
of my life was closed; it was time to move on to new things.

  One thing more: when anybody asks me now whether I have ever had someone close to me die, I say yes.

  Chapter 8

  In Portland many of the regular city buses are equipped with wheelchair lifts. Not long after the search for my birth parents ended, I chanced to be boarding one of these at rush hour. The bus lowers itself on its air shocks, a lift platform comes down to the curb and then rises to the level of the interior floor, slowly.

  Too slowly for the patience of this particular driver, a very large, crew-cut woman clad mostly in leather. In the most abusive terms, she let me and the whole busload of passengers know just how free she was of liberal guilt about cripples who tied up traffic and put her behind schedule just as she was winding up her day and (no doubt) hankering to stomp on down to the Rubyfruit Café.

  Though furious, I said nothing. Instead, that evening I drew a cartoon of a construction site protected by a big security fence. I put signs all over it: “Keep Out” “Danger” “Trespassers Will Be Prosecuted” And then, right in the middle, the biggest sign of all, “WARNING! THIS AREA PATROLLED BY LESBIANS.”

  I later included it in the weekly batch of cartoons I was sending to Penthouse magazine. After a full year of turning me down, they bought it, along with one other. Relieving frustration was one reason for drawing it, of course; I was turning everything in my life into gags, hoping to better myself. It was also true that my money had run out and my grocery budget was scarcely forty dollars a month.

  I draw cartoons naturally. Rather than being learned, it just seemed to unfold, like a fifth limb. I am driven to it, and I feel it comes through from somewhere else. During the act I feel almost like an animal who is performing some primitive natural function. Someday a pathologist will be squinting through a microscope at hunks of my cadaver, and he’ll exclaim, “By God, Jenkins! These are not human cells at all! These are the cells of a cartoonist!”