The Secret

The Gerber daisies are such a harsh contrast. Why on earth would she have picked those, of all the flowers she could have chosen? It’s Valentine’s Day for Christ’s sake. She could’ve done roses or tulips. Instead, she picks pathetic Gerber daisies. She’s always been a disgrace, but you’d think she would at least have a sense of decorum; show a little respect for the dead.

The predictable thoughts they harbored were as reliable as their diligence toward one upping themselves in their blood-lust. They were murderers of the worst degree. They didn’t have the decency to take the heartbeat. They aimed at the heart, but left the beat. The body always follows when you take out the heart and leave the beat, but it’s slower. More painful. That was their style.

I was numb to their tactics. A lifetime of preparation had brought me to that point, so I didn’t think twice about it. After all, I’m competitive. If I hadn’t learned to let those kinds of opinions strengthen me, they would’ve defeated me, and one thing I am not is a quitter.

The eulogy was somber enough, as though anyone understood a word I said through the unhindered sobs. Abrupt death is the hardest to take, but the easiest to prepare for, so I suppose I should have expected this. That was his style. He prepared you for the least amount of pain, which I suppose is why he attracted such shallow wretches.

All wasn’t lost. In the midst of the crap pile of a situation, I still had her. She was beautiful in every way. She was full of joy, smart, clever, unassuming, with a graceful kind of charm that one only possesses when raised with an air of confidence and style. I loved her. She was my distraction. I needed her to believe that I was not the person that they accused me of being. I needed her to believe that I did not antagonize them nor elicit their response.

I hadn’t known she existed, nor she I, for the first two decades of our lives. It was strange to come to know this person who is so like me in so many ways, that shares half of my genetic make-up, and yet, seems to fit in so well with this alternate universe that my father had occupied. She readily accepted me from the moment she was privy to the secret, and we had become the best of buds. I’d come to visit her on several occasions in the deep southern bayous, and she had come to visit me on occasion in my music city downtown condo.

I was thrilled to get to know her, as she also helped me to get to know him better. He had always been so private. I had been shocked by his willingness to discuss such deep topics mere days before his passing. She was shocked to find it out, too. It seemed I brought out a side of him that the rest of them hadn’t tapped into. Still, as she opened up to me, I began to piece together the puzzle in a greater way. She was wound into the fabric of his life, and his being. I may carry his DNA, but not his memories. She had all the memories. She experienced life with him. She was the recipient of what had been stolen from me, and I wanted as much from her as she was willing to share with me.

The next year passed slowly. Or maybe it was quick. I can’t really tell when I look back. It all seems to run together. All I know is that we covered a lot of ground. She had been the one to call me and tell me the news. As though I knew what was coming, I’d gotten up that evening and closed my door to drown out the sound of the late phone call. I’d never done that before, or since. The next morning that voicemail message turned my world upside down. That fleeting sense of normalcy that I’d only begun to grasp had melted on my fingertips like a snowflake. And like a snowflake, it had left behind a cold, wet spot.

Later that year, the big one hit Louisiana. I found a small comfort in it. My father had always been stubborn. The whole apple and the tree thing. When everyone would evacuate to higher ground, he wouldn’t. Did you ever see those evacuations on television? There are like all the cars in the world headed outbound of the city. But, if you look long enough, you’ll see like three cars headed into the city. My dad was in one of those cars. He’d head to his local watering hole and ride out the danger. Damned be the warnings. He wasn’t going out like that.

Yeah, he didn’t go out like that. And knowing that he’d gone out six months before the one that people would have been able to use that damn line, “I told you so,” was probably genuinely part of his plan. He never did anything to please other people. It happened sometimes that it was just a byproduct of his honor.

He was a musician in the other music city. The Oz of the two. He was a likeable guy. The church had been so full of people during his funeral that some had to stand in the back. I had no idea he was so beloved. I hadn’t been raised by this man and knew almost nothing about him, except that everything he said and did reminded me of normalcy. However, I’m fairly certain that I’m the only one on the planet that would use that word in relation to him. He was unique; one of the good guys who didn’t play by anyone else’s rules, but didn’t use it as a security blanket or an excuse, either.

After the storm, I tried all the more to cultivate my relationship with my sister. After all, she was the last link I had to him. Anything else I learned would be through this lens. I couldn’t help but want to preserve it.

My father had been an excellent musician. The stories I’d heard at his funeral were astounding. People were so willing to share their pieces of him with the bastard child that he’d taken into the fold. My favorite story, or at least the one that sticks out the most, was a wedding that he’d played. Apparently, the bride had changed her mind at the last minute about one of the songs. Of course, there was no contingencies for the change, and so the musicians were at a loss. My dad grabbed some paper and within minutes had written out the sheet music for each and every instrument that made up that band, and the bride was able to have her special song. 

Due to this kind of talent and compassion, and being a simple man, he had lots to give, including money. He was extremely frugal, having a bedspread from thirty years ago that, ‘still worked.’ But, he had tons of money in the bank.

So, it should have come as no surprise when the family began evasive maneuvers on account of it. I halfway expected it. They were always money hungry. It is the muse to their blood-lust. 

The newspaper had included me in the obituary. As elated as I was by it, I know it hadn’t been on account of any favors to me. It had been a stab at my mother’s secret. However, since I was the only one that no one ever bothered to ask how I felt about anything, and since I was the most affected by it, and the only involved person that bore no guilt, then I didn’t much care at the time how it would affect anyone else. In fact, I didn’t really think about it until later.

I’d like to have seen the look on their faces when they realized their petty little stab would complicate their claim on the full amount of his estate. How quickly did it take for them to devise their countermove? Oh, but they took such great pains to do it; such a sleight of hand. How could I have known?

Approximately a year after his death, I opened my social media account. As I began scrolling through it, I noticed something strange on my top friends list. It took a second to register. Two seconds. Ten seconds. She was gone. Gone from the list that she had caused me to create in the first place. Gone from the life that she had intruded upon with a craftiness that far exceeded her predecessors. She had held his memories, but her heart did not beat to his drum. She had denied me from her life for the sake of the money, as I eventually came to understand. She cut me, and her partial familial birthright, her blood-lust, was born.