A Letter from the Pool House

 A Letter from the Pool House                                   

Lilies sent their perfume from the yard next door and it was distracting to say the least. The last time I’d  been subjected to those particular flowers was at dad’s funeral. The oppressive melancholy perfume was a tad lighter out in the garden but it was still a type of hit. I’d just moved in two weeks ago so hadn’t been in the neighbourhood long enough to pick up it’s personality.

I tried to focus on the letter, it was an assignment for my contemporary lit class. After returning to my home town, I’d signed up for some courses. Apparently I’d been ‘drifting long enough’. This admonishment came from the mouth of my younger sister Emily, Em. This pool house was on her property and renting to me was her way of helping me ‘get myself together’.

The project was to write a letter to my past or future self, it was up to me to decide which of the egos required more advice. I had considered just flipping a coin until the scent from next door brought back the funeral and more importantly reminders of the man. Dear old dad.

He was Robert Senior, I was just Bob. No Junior or Robert the Second for this kid, from the start he separated himself from who I was. Naming me after him was mom’s idea. She had some kind of hope that we’d be closer if we shared a moniker, but you can’t change someone’s psyche just because they share initials with a baby. He and Mom hadn’t been together for long when she got pregnant with me, ‘up the stump’ he called it. Charming eh? They’d only been on a few dates and when she broke the news, her dad broke a chair and demanded there be a quickie marriage.

They stayed together long enough to have two more kids, my sister Emily, and my brother David who died at seven years old of Leukemia. Six months after he was laid in a small coffin, dad had dropped mom and us two kids off at her mother’s place and started a life without us.

In terms of time and distance that was back in 1980, in a state county three over from where I sit. I bent my head and considered where I’d start this letter to young Bob, then the emotions started to flow and my fingers flew over the keys of the old HP.

 Bob: if I had one thing to tell you from the future is this, ‘don’t get attached’. This may sound cruel and you might say ‘how can you be so cold?’ I’ll tell you how. If you spend your childhood, as you did, with a man who blames you for being saddled with a family, you figure out pretty quick how to stay out of his way.

I don’t know how old you’ll be when you read this, maybe you already look up to him. I get it. He was handsome and funny, smart in business and an all-round athlete, as a package he’s the perfect man. He should have been a good husband and father. The behind-the-scenes Robert Sr. however had little personality quirks that the guys at the golf course didn’t see, or the women he ‘visited’ picked up on.

For your sake I wish mom could have been around a bit longer after we moved in with Mee-maw. When David dies, you’ll be 10 years old. This means you’ll be the ‘man of the family’ weeks after you hit the double digits. Emily at 9 came from the womb a sharp tack, she had more of his charm too. That girl could flash her dimples and the world would rush up to hand her whatever she wanted.

You, on the other hand were a scrawny kid, all elbows, big feet and so many freckles you could join them together with a  pencil. A shy child always hidden away scribbling your little stories until it was time for dinner. All the way through school you aced English and history but math and sciences eluded you, other side of the brain I guess. You were never picked on, though you wondered why, slinking through the hallways eluding the jocks and pretty girls. Well, you know all this, you were there, still are in some ways.

What you don’t know, couldn’t know then was how Mom’s death would spin you. We weren’t told as children how she died, too young for ‘that kind of information’ was how Mee-maw put it. I found out the whole truth just a couple of years ago. We’re, or I’m 30 years old now. Holy Cow I hear you saying. It isn’t that old really, but I feel ancient. Anyway, back to the story.  

Turns out Mom was doing some hustling. She didn’t have much money then, dad wasn’t giving her any, she’d have had to track him down first anyway. Mee-maw had her pension, the house and what Grandpop left her. Raising two children and supporting her daughter hadn’t been in her retirement plans. So, when Mom was caught taking money out of a strangers’ wallet after their business was completed, he turned her into Sheriff Martin. Fred Martin and mom had gone to school together and he was dismayed at having to charge her with theft and prostitution. His job came first though so he went ahead and put her in cells. Sometime that first night she wrote a note and then hung herself with a bed sheet from the bars.

So, all of a sudden, she was dead and you and Em were going to stay where you were. The first couple years went by in a fog, and it wasn’t until your twelfth birthday that things changed. Em was eleven and still charming the birds from the trees. She had learned piano and was singing a perfect alto in two choirs, church, and school. People in town figured she could ‘go places’. All the attention was on her for the next couple of years and you, you got lost along the way.

You’ll start stealing around your birthday, there wasn’t a party that year so you decided to pick up a gift for yourself. Markstrom’s department store was ripe for the picking. The couple that owned it were a trusting, new to the community Swedish couple. The store had, if I recall correctly wooden floors, high shelves full of foods, toys, and candies you’d never seen before. You wore your jeans that day, they were nice and loose because Mee-maw bought them big enough for you to grow into. They might have been embarrassing at school but for this project they were perfect.

Just a reminder that by twelve you’d gone through some changes. The freckles had faded, you’d shot up and out and your red hair had deepened to a dark auburn. The girls who used to tease you were taking a second look now. You weren’t paying any attention, yet. So, back to the store. I wish I could tap you on the shoulder and say, ‘don’t do it, someone is watching you, put it back.’ But I doubt that kid would have paid any mind of a stranger, hell I know he wouldn’t have.

Torger Markstrom had been a goalie on the Swedish junior team as a youth, his hands were faster than any television gun slinger. When his big sun-tanned mitt wrapped itself around your wrist you didn’t see it coming. He pulled you along to the front of the store and made you empty your pockets onto the counter. There was the usual Saturday crowd of shopping mothers’ in there, standing in line and watching the whole show with gleeful interest. You could hear murmurs about the ‘stealing running in the family’ and something about ‘loose morals goes along for the ride’. Your shoulders were hunched up to your ears so you don’t pick up all the comments. At this point everyone in the store including Torger is waiting to hear what you have to say for yourself. I recall that it wasn’t what an apology usually sounds like, and definitely leaned towards the profane. The upshot was that you were hauled to the very same sheriffs’ office as Mom was and put into the very same cell, though there’s no way you could have known about the second bit.

Torger decided in the end not to charge you with theft as you hadn’t actually left the building with the stuff, he did talk to Mee-maw though. As you know she was the law in our house, and tougher with it. So, you got a whooping and had to give up your weekends for the next six months at the store. Torger had you sweeping, carrying groceries and whatever else he could find for you. It wasn’t so bad but ultimately it wasn’t enough.

By the time sixteen rolls around you’ll have gone on some kind of tear. In and out of youth detention units for theft and driving without a licence among other things. Emily wasn’t speaking to you,  she was on her own path by this point anyway. Nashville had come calling and she was determined to get out of town, she even took a different last name. She tried to say it was for show business but you knew the truth in your heart. Having the same last name as the county criminal wouldn’t have been good for her career.

When you weren’t in jail you were at Mee-maw’s place. She didn’t really want you there, at least that was your gut feeling, she never said as much. She was aging pretty fast, well by the time you were 20, she’d be nearing 75. Too old for all the stress you were putting on her heart. When she did die, she was alone but for the cat. You were out with some buddies at the bar and Em was making a music video for her latest single. You used her death as an excuse to get drunk for a week, including at the lawyers’ and the church funeral service. Em sang a song at the reception afterwards then hopped into the record company’s limo and left. There you stood, alone and feeling sick, unsure what the future held for an angry young man.

With half of the proceedings from the house and pensions sitting in the bank you had some decisions to make. Emily had tried to persuade you to go back to school, get some training and a real job. You’ll decide that’s not for you, not yet anyway. You decided to find your father and get some things set straight.

By the time you reached twenty-seven you’d worked construction in nearly all the states. Days off were spent in libraries going through old newspapers for word of him. You even tried contacting his former business associates, finally, success. After work at a construction job back east you hit the bar with some of the crew. On the television above the taps, the Yankees were playing the Red Sox. The play was slow so your eyes drifted to the ads. On the board above left field was your name. Well, his name at least in letters ten feet high. It advertised his company, phone number and all. You wrote it on the back of a coaster without comment, shoving it into your back pocket.

Two weeks later you were sitting in a lush reception area of Robert Lake and Associates. The pretty, dark-haired receptionist only raised a tapered brow when you gave her your name. She had likely heard a lot stranger things in an advertising company. When he opened the door to his office you stood up to meet him eye to eye. You wanted him to see how much you’d grown, that you were a man now and he didn’t intimidate you anymore. His grey eyes took in your build, your determined chin and steely gaze, he just nodded and walked forward, hand stretched out like you were a business client.

From that first meeting, you decided that though he was still handsome with tanned skin, silver hair with suspiciously even black wings. At nearly 53, he was still a stone-cold bastard, he hadn’t even asked about Emily or Mom. I spelled out our lives after he left, the highs and lows, the painful deaths of Mee-maw and Mom. I even admitted my law-breaking years. The only sign of recognition of us as family was when I mentioned Em’s career. He recognized her name, of course he would, she was a star at this point. He was totally in awe that a daughter of his was famous. I shot out that he gave up that right a long time ago, that I wasn’t the only reason she took a different name.

We finished lunch and shook hands on the pavement outside while he waited for his car. The mutual feeling was that we’d keep in touch, but there would be no warm and fuzzy father and son bonding. I realized as I walked away from him that day that I used to think my life would have been different if I’d had a dad, I was wrong. If I’d had a good dad however, someone who cared, who disciplined when it was needed, that would have been different.

I worked for a couple more years building homes for people, never getting the irony that it was something I strived for. Last December I received an email from Emily asking me to join her in Tennessee for the holiday. I wrote back and accepted, figuring it was time that we talked. It was a good Christmas, and we had a lot of effective, honest conversations. There were tears over those we’d lost, admonishments and forgiveness for deeds of the past. Her invitation to stay in the pool house at the ranch was a welcome one. I’d missed having family and knew if I were settled somewhere I could start anew.

So young Bob, here I sit on a warm Nashville afternoon, iced tea at my elbow, ruminating on all the choices I’ve made, all the decisions good and bad that have brought me to where I am. I don’t mean the pool house, but where I am in life. Do I wish there had been someone around we would have taken advice from? Hell, yeah but would we have listened. I’ll wrap up this letter with one correction, remember when I said at the beginning, ‘don’t get attached’. I was wrong. Humans need connections and attachments, love, and respect. I hate that we had to wait until 30 to figure this out.

I saved the document and sent it to my prof before I drove myself batty with the edits. I picked up my glass and made my way through the sliding doors to the kitchen. I was cooking dinner tonight and Em would be home any time now. We had a close bond with enough physical distance between us for privacy. She was going on tour in two days so this was my last chance for several months to spend time with her. I wasn’t sure yet how long I’d stay here, but for the first time in ages my feet weren’t itchy.