The Truth of the Matter

Toward the end of November 1984, Scott lingered in that comfortable place between the end of sleep and the beginning of consciousness as if, by now, instinct made him dread waking up.

And instinct was right.

As he opened his eyes and stared at the pale blue ceiling, the awareness slammed into him. 

Today, as the counsellor had suggested, he tried to isolate how this related to his physical body. Was it like losing a leg? No, not by half. 

This was more as if some shadowy nightmare had ripped his heart out while he slept and replaced it with a squashed, inadequate organ which functioned to circulate his blood but had no connection whatsoever to his emotions.

The guilt landed next, that he had not been there to comfort his mother when she took her last breath, not heard her final words, not said goodbye properly. Several months had passed now, so it was not true that time heals all wounds. His grief felt as raw and inescapable as ever.

Scott rolled over and closed his eyes, huddled into himself with the intention of escaping back into sleep. The alarm clock had not rung yet, so he still had time.

But as he lay there, his mind selected the too familiar video and pressed play.

A cremation because that was what his relatives told him his mother would have wanted. Why had they never discussed this important consideration? Had he thought she would live forever? People died when they died, which could be at anytime on any day or night. He should have prepared.

Everyone looked unfamiliar because they were wearing black as they entered the crematorium chapel, hushed voices, then the minister talking, not one word of which Scott could hear though he attempted to listen.

All eyes turned on him, expecting him to do his part.

He felt the urge to run out the door and keep running as if he could leave it all behind him.

Instead, Scott picked up the envelope next to him on the seat and walked up to stand facing them all. “Thank you for coming along,” he said then took out and unfolded the letter.

“Dear Mother,” he began, “From childhood, I remember the softness of your voice that could uplift and reassure, the cleverness of your mind that could solve any problem, and the warmth of your heart that surrounded me with love.”

He carried on reading without glancing up, exactly as he had practiced over and over again. He was not sharing this with any of his relatives or his mother’s friends, colleagues and acquaintances. 

Rather, he merely wanted them to witness this letter, as if that would help ease his guilt, the words maybe carried along with everyone’s prayers to the little garden in Heaven where he imagined his mother was tending all of her favourite flowers.

The video rolled on, pausing on the moment before the coffin rolled through the somber curtain, then it transitioned to outside where people kept coming to talk to him.

Unable to understand much of what they said, Scott nodded or accepted a handshake or commiserating pat on the shoulder. 

“That letter,” his oldest uncle commented. “Not very traditional.”

Scott wrenched himself out of bed and plunged into the shower as if the powerful spray of water could wash away the mix of anger and confusion those words made him feel.

Since his hair got wet, he applied shampoo, scrunched up his eyes and washed his hair, inhaling the cleansing scent, focusing on how his thick hair and scalp felt under his fingers, then gave himself a quick wash all over.

When he returned to his bedroom, he picked up the alarm clock to turn off the ringer, but it wasn’t set. He looked at the time. He was going to be late for work.

Then he remembered it was Thanksgiving. His jaw clenched. What the blazes did he have to be thankful for now?

Friends, colleagues, people who had known his mother, all had asked what he was doing for Thanksgiving, offered him a place at their table even, but he lied to each and every one of them. Let them think he still had family to go to, to spend time with, despite his mother’s death.

He rummaged in a drawer for clean underwear and fresh socks than dragged on his exercise clothes and sat to put on socks and tennis shoes. The gym would be closed today, but the beach would probably be completely deserted.

Everything had gone badly wrong when his oldest uncle phoned up to invite him for a round of golf.

Though Scott was only a perfunctory golfer, he agreed, sensing that there was more behind the invitation. 

From one hole to the next, Uncle Jason had inquired about his life. How was he doing at work? Was he dating anyone? What were his plans for the future?

Scott almost felt as if he was being interviewed. When he attempted a counter-question, this was shut down and disregarded.

Finally, as they rode the golf cart away from the last hole, his uncle having won by a clear margin, Uncle Jason said, “You seem to be doing your best, which I’m glad to hear.”

Not knowing what to say to that, Scott just waited.

“As a family,” his uncle continued, “we are desperately sad to lose your mother.”

“Yes,” Scott agreed, again at a loss for words.

“But you will have found the paperwork, I’m sure, among her effects.”

“Paperwork?” Scott asked since this had come out of the blue.

Uncle Jason glanced over at him. “The papers from when you were born,” he said.

“My birth certificate?” Scott hazarded, not at all sure where this was going.

His uncle cleared his throat. “And the other stuff.”

Scott remembered the suggestion someone had made that the whole family assist him to help clear his mother’s apartment before the next rent was due to be paid. Everyone would come and make a clean sweep, take only a weekend or maybe two at the most.

The answer, which he delivered immediately, had been a firm and definite No Thank You. His mother was always a private person. He felt sure she wouldn’t want the locusts descending on her little apartment.

He wondered now whether that offer had been because of this “other stuff”.

When his uncle parked the golf cart, he turned to Scott and said, “Young man, I am the Patriarch of this family and with great privilege comes great responsibilities.”

Scott tried to keep his face impassive, but didn’t like the direction this was going.

“You must have found the paperwork that told you everything,” Uncle Jason insisted.

“Only my birth certificate, unless you can remind me of anything in particular.”

Uncle Jason held his gaze for a long time but was the first to look away as he muttered, “Those are legal papers, she couldn’t have lost or destroyed them.”

“Please,” Scott said, “tell me what you’re talking about.”

His uncle looked down and muttered something inaudible.

“Sorry, I can’t hear you.” He couldn’t keep the impatience out of his tone.

Head raised and with a fierce heat in his eyes, Uncle Jason said, “The adoption papers. Did your mother never tell you? We were worried this might happen. She was always so irresponsible and disorganized.”

“Tell me what?” Scott asked, getting angry at the description of his mother.

“That you’re adopted, of course,” his uncle said, “so you are not a blood relation.”

Scott remembered studying his birth certificate which he had not seen before, only the reissued one which had fewer details. His mother’s name was on it and his own name, but the father’s name was left blank. He opened his mouth to explain this, but some instinct held him back.

Adoption? What the heck was this about?

Shaking his head, Uncle Jason said, “I don’t like being the bearer of bad news, but as Patriarch, I must inform you that because you are not blood of our blood, we won’t be welcoming you to our family gatherings anymore.”

“What?” Scott asked, hardly believing his own ears.

“We did offer to help sort out your mother’s belongings, but you turned us down. We did that out of decency, not from obligation. Now that you are no longer having to pay rent on your mother’s apartment, it’s time to face the truth of the matter.”

Trying to make sense of all this unexpected information, Scott said, “But Aunt Mildred isn’t family if you’re talking about blood ties.”

“She married in to the family,” his uncle said, “even you should understand that.”

Scott sat in silence, trying to figure everything out. His mind felt challenged as if given a random heap of puzzle pieces but no clue as to what the assembled jigsaw should look like.

“Everyone sends their best wishes, of course,” Uncle Jason continued, “for your future. Hopefully you’ll make something of yourself, but that has nothing to do with us anymore.”

At this point, Scott felt so confused that he decided this had to be a nightmare so he would wake up soon. If it wasn’t a bad dream, he needed to ask this golfer who looked and sounded like his uncle but wasn’t making any sense at all where the real Uncle Jason had gone.

This was the man who had taught him the right way to hold a golf club, broached that fatherly talk about dating and marriage which embarrassed them both, and provided an accessible source of advice about everything from job interviews and financial planning to filling out scholarship forms for college.

Not the worst day of his life, certainly, but right up near the top.

The phone rang in the kitchen. He ran for it, unable to prevent a surge of hope. Maybe it had all been a mistake. Perhaps his uncle had some sort of mental instability or this was just a very bad joke.

He grabbed the yellow handset from its base on the wall just inside the kitchen door.

“Hello, lover,” a sexy female voice said, “do you want to undress me over the phone?”

Scott eyed the receiver as if it had turned into a snake in his hand. Without saying a word, he put it back on the two-pronged cradle.

Disgust lost its hold on him as he realized that the stranger phoning must be more desperate than he was due to being alone on Thanksgiving Day. He pitied her but if the phone rang again, he wasn’t going to answer.

He tried to ignore his huge disappointment that it wasn’t one of his relatives inviting him over. Or maybe he should call them his mother’s family now. 

After having a glass of water and eating a banana that was not quite as ripe as he preferred, Scott left the apartment and rode his old bicycle to the beach. The bike was so old that he didn’t bother to lock it. If someone was so desperate as to steal it, they were welcome to it.

The sound of the crashing waves, blue, white, grey and green, improved his mood along with the crying gulls riding the wind. Though warmed up by the short ride, he did all his usual stretches.

Starting with a brisk walk along the beach above the tide line, he tried to leave everything behind as if it didn’t matter. Let the waves riding in and going out again wash it all away.

So, what if it was Thanksgiving? He had tomorrow off, too, had booked it months ago because he always used to help put up the outdoor lights for all his uncles and aunts and even some of the grownup cousins.

A four-day weekend now with nothing to do.

Maybe he should have wasted some time talking to that odd woman on the phone.

But Imogen who he shared an office with came to mind. She had finished work on Tuesday to catch a flight to arrive at her parents on Wednesday.

Swinging his arms as he continued the brisk walk, Scott decided he would much rather talk to her, not some stranger.

And, being in a blue funk on Tuesday, he had actually told Imogen that he had nowhere to go and nothing to do for the entire Thanksgiving weekend. She was the only person who knew other than his relatives, well, his mother’s family. Awful enough without his mother, but worse without spending time with aunts, uncles, and cousins, singing the first carols together around the piano.

He told Imogen how when the Patriarch gave him the bad news that he didn’t belong to the family anymore and actually never really had, he could have mentioned and later produced his birth certificate, but whatever reason his mother had told them the story of Scott being adopted, whatever secret lay behind that, maybe deserved to stay hidden.

Out of respect to his mother, he had kept silent and would continue to do so.

As he broke into a run, he remembered the words Imogen had spoken with such careless ease, as if this was an obvious truth that everyone knew.

“Friends are the family you choose for yourself, remember.”

Since his mother’s death, Scott had not seen so much of his friends because he had withdrawn into his own world of misery, but what if he got back in touch? And maybe he would invite Imogen along, see if she was interested in anything that he and his friends enjoyed. They had wide interests and not everything appealed to everyone, but there was always room for one more.

He thought back to the last family gathering that he attended, a huge beach party on the Fourth of July. The memory made him ache for all the connections that he had lost, the family tree he used to feel attached to, which now was fenced with barbed wire and hazard signs.

What if he brought his friends together in a similar way from time to time? Not on the days when they might have their own family commitments but other times, in the orbit of those times of year. Also, they could establish their own special days, celebrate the unique combination of their personalities and maybe highlight their skills and abilities. 

How many of his friends played a musical instrument or sang, for example? He didn’t have any idea, but he would make it his first step to find out. They could jam together at the beach or in a park. Maybe, just maybe one of them would have a piano and some of his friends would be interested in carol singing. It was only Thanksgiving, still plenty of time to organize a get together before Christmas.

Running strongly toward the distant jetty, with not a soul on the beach apart from himself, Scott pictured Imogen racing alongside him, and all of his friends—and her friends, too—following them, running together like some tribe from the dawn of time.