Wilyem Clark
10-23-2015, 03:06 PM
When their mother finally died (and her death was a lengthy and egregious process), Thomas and Lidia dove into the distasteful task of fossicking through her belongings, culling out salvageable and sentimental items, and lumping together charitable donations and undisguised refuse. Until the very end, their mother—Alice—had clutched to her bosom and declared sacrosanct an old handbag, woven out of coarse hemp fiber, an article she had put to daily toting use since the day she bought it back in the 1960s. She owned other bags—purses, grips, satchels, and the like—some more fashionable than utilitarian, but this one was her consistent companion, an extension of her personality almost. It was with her when she drew and exhaled her last breath in the hospice, safely stowed in the lower drawer of the bedside table. Now her children, formerly forbidden to poke around in its depths, unclasped the leather strap that protected the handbag’s contents and excavated its treasures.
Among those treasures: a zippered change purse (containing fifty-three cents, a washer, a button, and two old subway tokens), a wallet, a bundle of coin wrappers, a cosmetics case, a compact with mirror, a comb, an emergency sewing kit, a pair of sunglasses in a nylon sleeve, a playbill from a show she attended eight years earlier, gum, address book, expired shopping lists, miscellaneous receipts, and a melange of assorted disposable keepsakes that can only be described as “et cetera.” Then, under a stratum of folded unsoiled tissues that had been deposited over countless eons like sediment in a river bed, they uncovered an envelope, and inside: a letter and an unfamiliar gold ring.
Holding the letter between them, son and daughter read:
My dearest hatchlings, T. and L.—
How I wish I could have broached this subject while alive—yet I found it impossible to bring up the slightest mention of the matter. Even in the shadow of your father’s passing, right after our 30th wedding anniversary, the idea of talking about the issue seemed offensive and disrespectful of his memory. I am a weak woman for holding back, and my punishment has been years of anguish. Now, however, I feel the truth must come out, notwithstanding how painful it may prove to be.
Long ago, before your father and I got hitched, I supported myself by working at Conti’s Department Store. In those days, online stores were nonexistent, and mail order was considered too slow and cumbersome for many people. Department stores were the rage, and a wide spectrum of shoppers flocked to them. My station was behind the Perfumes and Powders counter. Soon after I began my stint there, I attracted the attention of a young man employed in Men’s Accessories. His name was John Sharpe, and he epitomized his family name. He was a snappy dresser, and always showed up at the job meticulously groomed. Management could have placed him on a rotating pedestal and had him serve as fashion icon and emblem for the entire enterprise. He had dark and chiseled features, searingly keen eyes, and he walked with what we shopgirls called “mambo hips.” All the female assistants swooned over him; why he singled me out is still a mystery to me.
We dated in our free hours. It shames me to admit that I two-timed with John while I dangled your father on a separate string. If you recall, he was in school then, earning his degree. We were separated by about a hundred miles of roadway. So on weekends, your future father would drive home and I’d devote myself to him, but throughout the remainder of the week, I had John to keep me company.
John was an excellent dancer. We’d go out to the clubs and shake our bones to whatever music happened to be hitting the top of the charts. We grew intimate, and sooner than later, we gave into our urges. And this is where my telling of the story becomes difficult.
I became pregnant. Immediately, I informed John, but instead of being dismayed, he grew ecstatic. “This is our chance to break free,” he told me. “We’ll quit our jobs and travel abroad. Live the lives of nomads. Raise the kid in an open, organic environment, exposed to many cultures. It will be an education no university can match.” I couldn’t fathom how I would survive such an abrupt change. I hadn’t suspected John was such an idealist, though I knew him to be a carefree soul, and more than somewhat irresponsible. That point got hammered home when he took his savings and squandered them on the ring I’ve enclosed in the envelope—an engagement ring, which he presented to me with a formal proposal shortly after I announced my maternal condition.
He knelt beside me during a lunch break that we spent, as usual, in the park. It was a late spring day. The sunlight, as it fell on me, felt heavy. I was being buried in snowdrifts of heat. He intended to resign from his position that afternoon, and he expected me to do the same. Then we would take off on our “idyllic wanderings” as he put it. But how could I agree? How could I adapt to a gypsy’s life in foreign ports and pastures when I had lived in staid middle-class stability since birth? And how would I be able to raise a child under such demanding, fluctuating circumstances? The places he had in mind! Bali and Bora Bora were just two destinations in his impetuous, impractical, exotic itinerary. I had to decline.
He deflated on the spot, but only for a moment. “Keep the ring,” he insisted. “It will be our eternal connection, if we can’t be united in the here and now.” True to his word, he turned in his receipt pad and took off on vagabond travels right away. He only made it as far as San Francisco, where he fell off a cliff and died. Fell or jumped, I don’t know, he left no indication.
I called your father up only hours after John’s failed proposition. We had discussed marriage, and he was more enthusiastic about it than I was. When he heard I was finally ready to commit, he was delighted and eager to consummate our alliance. That very weekend, during his regular visit, we jumped the gun a bit on the legalities. So you see, I succeeded in keeping my indiscretion hidden from him. There was no engagement period, and therefore no engagement ring. As you know, we plucked our initial wedding bands out of cereal boxes. As for the piece of jewelry before you, it has inhabited the bottom of my bag since I acquired it, and I have come to regard it as a strange good luck charm, for it heralded the arrival of one of the two people I love most in the world, and—illogically, I admit—I credit it with my family’s health and prosperity.
You must believe me when I say I have always cared for your father more ardently and sincerely than that passing flower, John Sharpe. Regarding my lapse in judgment, I apologize for it; but I do not regret the product of our illegitimate union. The ring is a second-rate memento—when I look into your face, Thomas, I see traces of the man I might have thrown away my normal nature for, and I feel neither remorse nor repentance, but joy in having created you, jewel of my heart!
If you are reading this, I trust I am beyond the reach of human pronouncements and retaliation. Should God wish to discipline me, he may, but I sense the phase of atonement is over and done with. Flourish, my children, in all aspects of life! I remain your frail yet always adoring mother,
—Alice
Among those treasures: a zippered change purse (containing fifty-three cents, a washer, a button, and two old subway tokens), a wallet, a bundle of coin wrappers, a cosmetics case, a compact with mirror, a comb, an emergency sewing kit, a pair of sunglasses in a nylon sleeve, a playbill from a show she attended eight years earlier, gum, address book, expired shopping lists, miscellaneous receipts, and a melange of assorted disposable keepsakes that can only be described as “et cetera.” Then, under a stratum of folded unsoiled tissues that had been deposited over countless eons like sediment in a river bed, they uncovered an envelope, and inside: a letter and an unfamiliar gold ring.
Holding the letter between them, son and daughter read:
My dearest hatchlings, T. and L.—
How I wish I could have broached this subject while alive—yet I found it impossible to bring up the slightest mention of the matter. Even in the shadow of your father’s passing, right after our 30th wedding anniversary, the idea of talking about the issue seemed offensive and disrespectful of his memory. I am a weak woman for holding back, and my punishment has been years of anguish. Now, however, I feel the truth must come out, notwithstanding how painful it may prove to be.
Long ago, before your father and I got hitched, I supported myself by working at Conti’s Department Store. In those days, online stores were nonexistent, and mail order was considered too slow and cumbersome for many people. Department stores were the rage, and a wide spectrum of shoppers flocked to them. My station was behind the Perfumes and Powders counter. Soon after I began my stint there, I attracted the attention of a young man employed in Men’s Accessories. His name was John Sharpe, and he epitomized his family name. He was a snappy dresser, and always showed up at the job meticulously groomed. Management could have placed him on a rotating pedestal and had him serve as fashion icon and emblem for the entire enterprise. He had dark and chiseled features, searingly keen eyes, and he walked with what we shopgirls called “mambo hips.” All the female assistants swooned over him; why he singled me out is still a mystery to me.
We dated in our free hours. It shames me to admit that I two-timed with John while I dangled your father on a separate string. If you recall, he was in school then, earning his degree. We were separated by about a hundred miles of roadway. So on weekends, your future father would drive home and I’d devote myself to him, but throughout the remainder of the week, I had John to keep me company.
John was an excellent dancer. We’d go out to the clubs and shake our bones to whatever music happened to be hitting the top of the charts. We grew intimate, and sooner than later, we gave into our urges. And this is where my telling of the story becomes difficult.
I became pregnant. Immediately, I informed John, but instead of being dismayed, he grew ecstatic. “This is our chance to break free,” he told me. “We’ll quit our jobs and travel abroad. Live the lives of nomads. Raise the kid in an open, organic environment, exposed to many cultures. It will be an education no university can match.” I couldn’t fathom how I would survive such an abrupt change. I hadn’t suspected John was such an idealist, though I knew him to be a carefree soul, and more than somewhat irresponsible. That point got hammered home when he took his savings and squandered them on the ring I’ve enclosed in the envelope—an engagement ring, which he presented to me with a formal proposal shortly after I announced my maternal condition.
He knelt beside me during a lunch break that we spent, as usual, in the park. It was a late spring day. The sunlight, as it fell on me, felt heavy. I was being buried in snowdrifts of heat. He intended to resign from his position that afternoon, and he expected me to do the same. Then we would take off on our “idyllic wanderings” as he put it. But how could I agree? How could I adapt to a gypsy’s life in foreign ports and pastures when I had lived in staid middle-class stability since birth? And how would I be able to raise a child under such demanding, fluctuating circumstances? The places he had in mind! Bali and Bora Bora were just two destinations in his impetuous, impractical, exotic itinerary. I had to decline.
He deflated on the spot, but only for a moment. “Keep the ring,” he insisted. “It will be our eternal connection, if we can’t be united in the here and now.” True to his word, he turned in his receipt pad and took off on vagabond travels right away. He only made it as far as San Francisco, where he fell off a cliff and died. Fell or jumped, I don’t know, he left no indication.
I called your father up only hours after John’s failed proposition. We had discussed marriage, and he was more enthusiastic about it than I was. When he heard I was finally ready to commit, he was delighted and eager to consummate our alliance. That very weekend, during his regular visit, we jumped the gun a bit on the legalities. So you see, I succeeded in keeping my indiscretion hidden from him. There was no engagement period, and therefore no engagement ring. As you know, we plucked our initial wedding bands out of cereal boxes. As for the piece of jewelry before you, it has inhabited the bottom of my bag since I acquired it, and I have come to regard it as a strange good luck charm, for it heralded the arrival of one of the two people I love most in the world, and—illogically, I admit—I credit it with my family’s health and prosperity.
You must believe me when I say I have always cared for your father more ardently and sincerely than that passing flower, John Sharpe. Regarding my lapse in judgment, I apologize for it; but I do not regret the product of our illegitimate union. The ring is a second-rate memento—when I look into your face, Thomas, I see traces of the man I might have thrown away my normal nature for, and I feel neither remorse nor repentance, but joy in having created you, jewel of my heart!
If you are reading this, I trust I am beyond the reach of human pronouncements and retaliation. Should God wish to discipline me, he may, but I sense the phase of atonement is over and done with. Flourish, my children, in all aspects of life! I remain your frail yet always adoring mother,
—Alice