Father of the Bride

by Jennifer Dione

  "Thank God, she really knows what I like, you," I looked down at the jewelry he had bought me for our date, "you're still figuring it out."

  "I know you loved the necklace I got you years ago for your sixteenth birthday because you never take it off." He said eyeing the necklace around my neck with a look of jealousy in his eye.

  "Yes, I do love it because it's simple."

  "Baby, we aren't simple anymore. I bought that necklace for you on a grocery store income, it's time to upgrade."

  "Maybe I like simple, maybe I don't want to upgrade, maybe I don't want things to change."

  "Oh, things are going to change sweetie.”

  Chapter 9

  I went to mass with Yaya in the morning. I wasn't catholic because she had always given me a choice on things like this growing up. She told me that my grandparents had been Christian, my mom was not religious and I had decided to not be religious either. I hadn't seen her in a few days and I hadn't even spoken to her on the phone since I saw my dad. She told me she didn't have time to meet for breakfast and if I wanted to see her I better come to mass.

  I put on my best little catholic school girl outfit and sat through mass, well knelled, and stood, and knelled, and stood, and sat through mass. When it was over she said she was going to get her nails done and I should come with her. I decided a free manicure and pedicure wouldn't hurt.

  She didn't bring up my dad, instead she talked to me about her latest trip to India.

  "Just for three days, nowhere near long enough, but I did get to see a few of my friends and I even met this really handsome, really tall, and really dark Indian man with a lot of money and a lot of wives."

  "So, what are you trying to be wife number five?"

  "Actually, it would be wife number nine."

  "Shame on you for dealing with a man with so many wives at home."

  "Well, I dealt with men with one wife at home, what's the difference, one, eight, it's all the same."

  The woman who was doing our pedicures blushed and tried to hold in her laughter.

  "Shame on you Yaya, and you just left the Lord's house."

  "The Lord already knows what's in my heart, no sense in trying to hide it from him, and I really don't care what anyone else thinks about it. The man has private planes, not a private plane, multiple private planes."

  The woman who was doing our pedicures, laughed out loud now, and smiled at my aunt approvingly.

  "Do you want to hear about it or not?"

  She didn't even try to play dumb like I thought she would. I would've bet money she was going to say, 'Hear about what?'

  "Yes, I do want to hear about it."

  "Well, he is rich, I'm sure you'll approve of that."

  "Well, he better be, I know my sister didn't mess around with any broke men."

  I started to remind her that she insinuated that he was broke many times, but decided against it.

  "But is he poor rich, or rich rich?" She asked.

  "I didn't know there were different categories of rich."

  "Sure there are, that's why I always say you have a lot to learn."

  "Well he has a Master's in business management and he owns a construction company."

  "Yeah, he's poor rich, but at least he has some money, and at least he has an education. So what was his excuse for never being there for you, since he has so much money, and has done so well for himself?"

  I proceeded to tell her his story, and her face was twisted in disbelief the entire time.

  "I really wish my sister was still here to fact check this man's story. You do know that this man could tell you anything and you have no way of knowing whether he is telling the truth or not?"

  "I do know that, and I also know that he could be telling me the truth and you or I have no way of knowing that either. The best thing for me to do is just trust that he is being honest with me and if he's not the truth always comes to the light, right?"

  "Right, so when do I get to meet him?"

  "Whenever you're ready."

  "Well once he agrees to walk you down the aisle, I'll meet him, because that was the entire point of trying to find him, is to ask him to give you away at your wedding right?"

  "Right, but you do realize that even if he decides that he doesn't want to do that he will still be invited to the wedding and I'll still try to maintain a relationship with him."

  "I do understand that and I also encourage that, he is your father, but you do also understand that not everyone in your family is going to accept him and you are going to have to be OK with that?"

  "I get it Auntie."

  "OK, so what did he say?"

  "What do you mean?'"

  "When you asked him to walk you down the aisle."

  "I haven't even asked him yet Auntie."

  "Well what are you waiting for?"

  "I mean, I think that he should at least meet my fiancé before I ask him to give me away at my wedding, like he should at least know who he is giving me away too, right?"

  "I guess, I mean, if he decides that he doesn't like your fiancé, are you not going to marry him?"

  "I never thought about that. He doesn't seem like the type that wouldn't like my fiancé for no reason, he doesn't even know him, he has no reason not to like him." I gave her an accusing look.

  "Oh, kind of how I don't even know your father, so I should have no reason not to like him either, huh?"

  "Yeah, just like that."

  "Well, I want you to know that I don't dislike the man, I don't know him, so there is no possible way that I dislike him. I'm suspicious of him."

  "Why? It's not like he is the one who came searching for me, maybe then you could expect that he had some type of ulterior motive. I'm the one that went looking for him. If anything, he could be worried that I am trying to scam him in some way. Here he is this older, wealthy man with no family, and here I come out of the wood work, some young, struggling, college student and intern, who just happens to reach out to her father a few months before he very expensive wedding. I mean, what if he thinks I googled him found out he is rich and am now playing the innocent role like I have no idea."

  "Did you do that?"

  "Of course not Auntie. I'm just trying to show you how crazy it sounds for you to be suspicious of him. I have nothing to offer him but a father-daughter relationship that he has missed out on all the years, and that's all I really want from him in return."

  "Alright, Yely, OK. Who are you trying to convince me or yourself?"

  Chapter 10

  About a week passed of me juggling my already hectic schedule at work and school. Only now I also had to squeeze in daily meet ups with my father.

  We went all types of places in that first week after meeting, the zoo on Monday, Central Park on Tuesday, the theater Wednesday, we went bowling on Thursday and ice skating on Friday, some of these things he had never done, others he had, but the point wasn't where we were going it was what we were learning about each other.

  I learned that his favorite color had been purple since he was a small child and that his father and older brother had given him a hard time about it all while he was growing up, until his brother was killed when he was 21 and my father was 17. Right before he went off to college, where he met my mom.

  I told him my favorite color was black, and that my aunt had tried to force me to like any other color growing up, pink, purple, sky blue, but there was something about the color black that I loved.

  I learned that he had an artistic side too. He like to write poems and occasionally draw, he never thought he was very good at it, despite winning multiple state and national competitions while in high school. Since then the only person he had ever felt comfortable showing his art and poems to was my mother. She encouraged him, telling him that he was really good and he should devote more time and practice into his craft.

  "She told me that one day I could be the modern-day black Leonardo De Vinci, Pablo Picasso, or Vincent Van Gogh." He laughed at this i
dea, "I paint and write poems more now that I am retired. I only do it for fun." He promised that he would show me his art work and let me read a poem or two at some point.

  On Tuesday I learned that his father had sexually abused him and his brothers and sisters, his sister had blamed all of them including her mother for the abuse, and he felt that in a way she was justified in feeling that way.

  "We all knew what was happening, my brother and I knew what was happening because it was happening to us. Our mother knew, to this day she would deny it. The problem with my sister is that she was the favorite for him, my brother and I only got touched a small percentage compared to how much she went through. I still think that's why my brother had mental health issues. He was severely depressed and had extreme anxiety around men who were loud and overbearing like my father. He killed himself we were all home when it happened. He shot his self in the head with one of our father's guns. We all heard the gun shot. My sister was the first to find him. My mom was next. She wouldn't let me see, I thank her for that. My father refused to go check on him, he wouldn't even call an ambulance. He didn't even go to his funeral.He said he was a coward who was only looking for attention and everyone else were just fools who were giving him exactly what he wanted. That's when my sister moved away and cut off all communication with all of us. Luckily, I was too old for my father to try to abuse anymore so he simply beat my mother until the day I went away to college, I haven't talked to him since. When I finally got some money I sent my mom enough to move away from him and never go back. If my sister ever comes back into my life, I have some money for her too. I heard through the grapevine that she is doing pretty good for herself, she married a successful business man and she stays home and takes care of her kids full time, and I'm sure she protects them with every ounce of her being."

  On Wednesday he told me more about his and my mother's relationship. He told me how she wanted to get married to him but her sister and the rest of her family urged her to finish her education first, lest she end up pregnant and dependent on a man.

  “They didn't even want to meet me until I graduated college and had a good paying job. She told her family about me proposing and they took the ring away and told her that she could never speak to me again. Your mother was people-pleaser but I think I brought out the rebel in her. I could never figure out whether that was a good or bad thing. She wanted me even more after they told her she couldn't see me. She would sneak me in her dorm and before you know it she was pregnant with you. She was happy up until that point because she knew that she could hide me. She could hide a relationship from them easily, but she couldn't hide a baby, she couldn't hide a pregnancy, that's when she decided she wanted to have an abortion and that's when our love affair started going left. I wouldn't let her, I told her if that's what she wanted to do she had every right, because it is her body. But I didn't believe in it and I didn't want to have anything to do with it. She said I should still be there to support her because even though I didn't believe in it I had a part in making the situation and I should be willing to see it through to the end. I told her I was but I wasn't in agreement with the end she had in mind. I blamed her mother, she was the one who took her off of birth control after I proposed thinking that would deter us from having sex. All I can think about now, is how I'm so happy I stood up for myself and stood up for you and didn't let her go through with it. What would I do if I didn't have you?”

  On Thursday, I found out that he had tried for a long to find me, after not being able to get in touch with my mother via phone or mail for over a month he decided to come back to Jersey and find her.

  “My boss gave me six weeks paternity leave. I went to every hospital in the area, no one would give me any information because they said that I was not family and they couldn't give out patient whereabouts or information. Thinking back I do think I went to the right hospital, well I had to have gone to right hospital at some point simply because I went to every hospital in Jersey and the surrounding area. There was this one hospital in New York, there was a nurse who kept telling me that she wished she could help me, and she felt so bad for me, but that there were hospital rules that she had to follow or she would lose her job. She really looked like she felt bad for me, but I was angry, I told her 'If you feel so bad for me, you should help me, I don't want you to feel bad for me, I want you to help me.' I remember she gave me her number, she kind of slide it to me. Me being so angry and dumb and not thinking straight, I threw it back at her and told her I was not interested in a new girl, I was looking for my girl and my baby. Now I realize she was probably trying to tell me to reach out to her later so that she could give me any information that she had, but like I said I was young and dumb. I didn't even know if you were a girl or a boy. I was so lost and desperate. I started to curse your mother, not even knowing that she had passed on, now I know that she probably heard everything I have ever said about her. I hope she can forgive me.”

  He looked at the sky when he said those last words. “I decided that she had went ahead and given you up for adoption and I started calling all of the adoption agencies and foster care agencies I could find within a 250-mile radius from New Jersey. I knew my rights. I was your father I had a say in whether you were given up for adoption and since I had been active in your mother's life while she was pregnant, sending her money, buying things for you and sending them to her, calling her and mailing her back and forth I could prove my case. Everywhere I called said they and had no one by her name complete an adoption process there, that's when I started calling all of the adoption agencies in the whole USA, I was going to find my baby. No one had any information on her or you. I almost gave up, but I kept looking for you through the years, I think it was about 4 years ago when I truly gave up, one your twenty first birthday, or what I thought was you're twenty first birthday, turns out you had been twenty-one for about a month by then. I just couldn't hold on to the pain, the hurt, the loss. I figured that if you were adopted you would be in the phase of your life where you would be looking for your birth parents anyway. If it was meant to be you would find me. I’m just glad that you are a lot smarter than me, because I searched for twenty-one years and found nothing, you searched for what? About nine months and found me no problem.”

  On Friday I found out that he hadn't intentionally remained unmarried and without any more children and that he dated quite a lot. Being a single man with no children and a good job and eventually his own company had attracted a lot of women to him. He could never trust them, he even go engaged once and he called it off at the last minute because he knew it wasn't right. “I just had a feeling, I mean I really loved this girl, she had a daughter and a son, in my head I'm thinking, 'Yeah this is great I get a ready-made family I don't even have to go through the hassle of trying to have my own children I can just love and spoil her children like my own.' I knew that it wasn't the same, I told her about your mother and about you and she seemed sympathetic at first. When I told her that we should look for you together now that we were getting married. She told me that I needed to let it go. You were only ten at this time I was nowhere near close to being at the point in my life when I was ready to let it go. She also accused me of not actually wanting to look for you so that I can find you, however crazy that sounds. But she felt that I was actually looking for you because I was hopeful that your mom had not given you up for adoption and I really wanted to find her and that I would then leave her and go be back with my real family, my first family. I actually started thinking about the idea that your mother had not given you up for adoption and that you two were off somewhere living an amazing life without me. I thought about whether or not your mother had told you about me, or if she had told you good things or bad things about me. I wondered if she had ever gotten married like she wanted to or if she had had any more children. I thought about if I could find you, or find her, would she even be willing to let me be a part of your life. I wanted you to be a part of my wedding. My fiancé at the time didn't thi
nk that was a good idea and again she told me to let it go. Then I started thinking more and more about what she had said about if I found you and you were in fact still with your mother I would run off and be with you and leave her and her children stranded and I started to think about if that was actually a possibility. Like, if I did find you and you were with your mother would I want to leave her to be with you and your mother and I came to the conclusion that I would. Then I came to the conclusion that I was still in love with your mother and still dealing with the pain and the loss of you and I was only trying to cover that up by marrying another woman who reminded me of her, and who already had children so that I could put you in the back of my mind and move on with my life. I decided that I didn't want to do that. I didn't want to replace you. I left her and I went back to searching for you. She hated me for it, she wished me luck though, that I would find your mother and live happily ever after. If only she knew what I know now.”

  Every day after I spent time with my father I would meet with Mya to practice or go have drinks, or Omar to go out or just spend time together in the house, or my Auntie Yaya to go get a Dominican blowout, a facial, or a message because my body wasn't use to all the dancing I was doing and I needed to relax. Every now and then she would talk 'wedding' with me but I was pretty sure all of them were sick of hearing about my father and his stories. I knew for a fact that Yaya and Mya didn't believe a word of what he was saying to me. Omar even started to become skeptical after the last story he told me on Friday. On Saturday we spent all day in the house, because on Sunday he had to be up at 5am to catch a flight to Florida for a meeting.

  “He didn't marry the woman because he felt like the only reason he was marrying her was because he was trying to replace you and your mother?”

  “Yes, and this is what she told him, so basically she messed it up for herself by even bringing it up.”

  “I just don't think these are the types of stories that you should be hearing almost two months before you get married.”