It's In the Music

Jo, a tall green-eyed redhead with long curly hair that swung as she walked, got ready to visit her dad in the Wintergreen Nursing Facility. She sighed as she went out the front door of her home on Apple Street. Another day talking to someone with dementia. I love my dad but it’s hard to see him like this. He used to be so strong and vigorous. I miss the old him.

She drove to the facility and walked in the front entrance. This is going to be a tricky conversation today. I hope I have enough patience to get an answer from him.

The previous day, Josephine had talked with her cousin, Martha, a short woman who regularly dyed her gray hair brown because she was still working and didn’t want to be classified as an older employee. Martha had asked if she knew of any secret siblings either one of them might have. She had heard something in her mother’s conversation with a friend that seemed to hint at Martha or Jo not being an only child. This would have been a surprise but not a shock to either one of them since it was a subject both Josephine and Martha talked about often. They discussed how it felt to be raised without siblings, and their conclusion was always that it was a blessing and a curse.

They knew they had both been spoiled by their parents, of course, but by the same token they felt that they, alone, took the brunt of all the negative parent-child relationship incidents that occurred in childhood. For instance, they had no one to blame but themselves for anything “that kid” did wrong, such as breaking their mom’s favorite vase or coloring on the wall just because it seemed like a fun thing to do at the time.

Martha’s tall dark-haired father, Wesley, had been a handsome man with a rhythmic stride who had been a favorite of the ladies. He had been a musician in a famous jazz band in Chicago back in the day. Jo’s dad arranged for her to take piano lessons from him. The piano in his home studio was, of course, a baby grand that seemed massive to Jo, which made her lessons even more magical as she sat on the bench with her feet barely reaching the pedals, and pictured herself on stage in a concert hall.

Martha’s mom, Jackie, was a good cook and always offered lunch to Josephine’s family after the lessons were over. After a delicious meal, the two dads took their daughters on an adventure to give the moms a break.

Jo and Marty really loved riding in the back of an old Plymouth while their fun-loving dads drove through orange groves, and they all laughed at the bumps and ruts they plowed over and into, occasionally clipping a tree. Their dads sang songs as the girls bounced around untethered in the back seat. Sometimes Wesley and Bill took the girls over to Mathilda’s house, the oldest lady on the block, who had a swimming pool, where they swam in the bright warm sun and were served milk and homemade cookies.

This happened about once a month depending on Uncle Bill’s piano lesson schedule. It was a two-hour drive, so once a month was a perfectly fine space of time between visits.

After they graduated from high school, Jo and Marty went their separate ways and each got married and started having children. For some unremembered reason they didn’t connect for over twenty years when Josephine found Martha’s Facebook account online. Jo called Marty and they started talking as if they had never lost contact. Both were happy to talk on the phone about their childhood adventures and eventually they met in person in the small town where Martha still lived.

They continued to talk on the phone for three years when one day Marty asked Jo if she knew whether she had a secret sibling. Josephine said, “Say what? What do you mean? No, I do not.”

Marty said, “Well, I overheard my mom talking with your mom about someone having a secret sibling and I, of course, thought they were talking about you. But now I’m not so sure. Maybe they were referring to me.”

Josephine replied, “I never heard anything like that, and I don’t think it’s true for either of us. But if it is, I’m sure one of them would have accidentally blabbed at some point. I don’t know about your mother but mine would have told me during the time when our two families were arguing about Cousin Donnie. Do you remember that?”

Martha said, “Oh, yes. That was the time you had to make room for him in your house because his dad went to rehab, and no one could find his mother. Your mom was really put out about it because she didn’t want to keep Donnie. I remember that. What ever happened to him?”

Josephine said, “Yeah, she had the house all set up perfectly, and he was a rowdy teenager … dirty, loud, and generally a pain. I don’t know what happened to him. One day I came home from school, and he was just … gone. I do remember that your mom and my mom had words about the situation.”

Marty replied, “Yup. My mother thought your mom was being too harsh and should have had a better attitude about caring for Donnie, and your mom kept trying to explain that she was not mentally capable of taking care of a wild child, especially one that wasn’t hers.”

Jo said, “I remember my mom criticizing your mom for not understanding the situation, especially when she had never taken care of another child while she was raising you.”

Marty responded, “Yeah, then the conversations got bizarre with them accusing each other of having only girls but not recognizing the boy. I didn’t understand the implication then, but now I’m asking you … what boy?”

Jo answered, “I don’t know. Neither of my parents told me anything about that. Why? Are you suspicious of something?”

Marty suddenly got quiet, as if she was mulling things over before speaking, “Uhm, yes. I think one of us might have a secret sibling, and I strongly suspect it’s me. Are you sure you didn’t hear anything?”

Jo responded, “No, I didn’t.”

Marty cut her off and said, “Actually, I’m not being entirely truthful with you. I think I have a brother somewhere. I’ve been wondering if, now that we have raised our own kids, who are cousins and don’t know of this possibility, should I try to find out the truth or not? What do you think?”

Jo fell silent while she was thinking, then said, “Well, I think I don’t care at my age and stage right now. But to be honest, I don’t think you have a brother. However, good luck to you if you want to find your supposed sib. Our kids will survive the news if it turns out that there’s another uncle in the mix.”

Marty said, “I do want to know. I have suspected for a long time that one exists, not because of anything I overheard, but because I feel it. There’s someone out there who I feel I have a connection with. I just feel it. I have no explanation for this feeling other than I feel it.”

Jo sighed and said, “Okay, I wish you luck. Let me know if I can help, but I honestly don’t think I can.”

Marty immediately replied, “Well, actually, there is something you can do. You can ask your dad. He’s the only one left alive who would know if anything like this might be true.”

Jo said, “Right. But he’s in a nursing home and has dementia. Conversations with him are very difficult and, even if he says it’s true, I’m not sure we should believe him. Also, the talks with him are very short because he can’t remember much of anything anymore. I seriously doubt that any answer he gave could be trusted. I’m sorry. I wish I could be of more help.”

Marty pleaded, “Please try, would you? Next time you visit him just ask if I have a brother. Use a simple sentence so he can understand the question. Would you do that for me? Please…”

Jo didn’t hesitate. “Of course, I’ll try. But I might not get any answer at all, so be prepared for that.”

“Okay. Thanks. Talk to you later.”

“Okay. Bye.”

Jo had made the promise to her cousin and was not looking forward to asking the question. Her conversations with her dad were short and sweet because his mind flitted like a butterfly from one random memory to another and they were not connected in a straight line indicating a date or stage of life, or names of people, or anything of much consequence. Except when he invited Jo to accompany him on the ship where he spent most of his life. He had been a ship’s engineer and seemed to remember most of the ocean voyages he took, but little else in his past. Sometimes he invited Jo to go with him up the coast of California to Oregon, and at the end of the pretend trip, he invariably asked her what she was doing on the ship. She always answered, “The Captain let me on board.” He would then nod which signaled the end of that day’s adventure.

So, on a mild day in May, Jo sat by her dad in his wheelchair in the lobby of the nursing home. She made small talk about his room, the food, and what he did the previous day. Then he raised his drooping head and looked into her eyes. He sees me. Maybe this is a good time to ask a question.

She said, “Dad, I have a question for you.”

Her dad nodded, indicating that he was listening.

Jo continued, “Remember Martha, my cousin?

“Yes.”

“Did she have a brother?”

“It’s in the music.”

And just like that, he was gone. His eyes looked above Jo’s head, and he was, once again, in his own world. Then he asked if she wanted to go up the coast on the ship.

Jo replied, “Of course.”

And off they went on another fantasized trip. After they got back to the dock, Jo decided to try one more time to get a coherent answer from her dad and asked, “Did Martha have a brother?”

He didn’t answer. So, that was all the information she was going to get that day. Marty’s going to be very disappointed, but I’ll tell her anyway, even though it’s such a small piece of confusing information. I wish I could have gotten more out of him.

When Jo got home, she called her cousin. “I could only get a cryptic sentence out of him. I’m sorry, Marty, but I tried and tried and that was all he was going to say.”

Marty sounded disappointed. “Okay, thanks. I’ll talk to my husband about it. He’s in my mom’s room cleaning out her things. It has taken us two months to go through all her stuff after she died. I wish I had asked her about a secret sibling before she passed.”

Jo hung up. Well, that was an exercise in futility. Oh, well.

Two days later, Jo picked up the phone and Marty blurted out, “Guess what? We were going through my mom’s boxes and found something! I started looking through some of my dad’s sheet music and one page was too thick. It had been glued to another page and, after carefully peeling the edges apart … you guessed it, inside was the birth certificate of my older brother!”

Marty continued talking at a rapid pace. “And then I found some newspaper clippings in another box. You remember that my dad was in a famous band in Chicago? Well, apparently, he married the singer of the band, and they had a baby boy. They were divorced two years later.”

Marty paused and said, “I’m sure my mom knew all about it and she and my dad decided not to tell me but kept the birth certificate and news article for me to find after they were gone. So, my mom knew about it all along!”

Jo exclaimed, “Holy cow! That’s great news. Are you going to contact him?”

“Already did. He lives in San Francisco and is happily married, and we are going to visit him next week. I’m so excited! Thank you so much, Jo, for giving it a try with your dad, dementia and all.”

Jo said, “No problem.”

Two weeks later, Jo got another phone call from Marty. “The visit went great, and we are going to keep in touch. I’m so glad to have found him. We had a lot to talk about.”

Jo replied with a great sense of relief, “So, it was in the music.”