Follow Me (43 page)

Dear Sally, I wonder if you’re making progress on your book. You know, I’m proud of you. Even though we’ve never met, I’m
proud that you are willing to make yourself vulnerable by putting your name on the cover of a book. I’m sure you don’t need
me to warn you to be prepared. I just read a piece in which the reviewer declared it a shame that so many trees were sacrificed
for such an awful book. And how about all the insults floating around in cyberspace, the complaints, the stupid rankings.
I need a refrigerator, it’s time to replace my old refrigerator, so I’ve tried checking on the Internet to see what is available,
and you know, every model has its critics, loads of dissatisfied consumers who take revenge by denouncing their purchase on
one site or another. Those anonymous evaluations are probably all scripted by the competition. It’s impossible to sort out
the judgments. We’re going to wake up and there will be no reliable source of information left, we’ll be asked to cast our
vote for every fact to establish its veracity. Forget research. Forget rationality and evidence. It reminds me of the woman
who wrote in to our local paper this week, she took the time to write to the editor and hold forth on intelligent design.
She believes in intelligent design, she says, because she wants to believe in intelligent design, because believing in intelligent
design is better than not believing in intelligent design. Such profundity is worth a place on the editorial page of our local
paper. Meanwhile, no mention is made about the conditions at Guantánamo. And in the
Times,
the
New York Times,
did you see the article on evolution? Research shows we’re still evolving, that’s the gist of it, nothing unexpected there,
but oh boy did it raise hackles on, on
creationism.org
. Check out that site if you’re interested in seeing a blueprint for ignorance,
creationism.org
, which is full of rants against atheist science teachers who dare to introduce students to Darwin. Instead of Darwin we’re
supposed to teach that protein formation was intelligently designed from the very beginning, we’re supposed to be sure of
life’s origins, and there’s the difference, scientists offer theories which are tested with evidence while fanatics offer
pronouncements that we aren’t allowed to question. Don’t get me going. I’m already going. Going and going. Listen to that,
my neighbor is home from work, I know when she comes home because she turns up the volume on her iPod speaker. You can’t hurry
love, oh, you just have to wait, yeah, yeah, mmm. The walls are thin around here. But I don’t mind. I like hearing evidence
of people living their lives with enthusiasm. You can’t hurry love, uh-huh, mm-hmm, it’s a game of give and take. I like evidence
in all forms, new evidence on top of old, and not because I need to know things with certainty, really, it’s just the opposite.
Don’t we appreciate the complexities of life better when we look hard at the world and at ourselves? Doesn’t education teach
us a respect for mystery? I hope so. That’s what I believe. And I’d meant to add, when I was telling you about watching your
mother’s face in the flash as the lightbulb blinked back on, I was telling you about that, and I said, I think I said I was
sure I understood her. But understanding, real understanding, involves an awareness of our limitations, the limitations of
our knowledge. There are things we can’t know, and the deepest knowledge makes us more aware of this. When I said that I came
to understand your mother, I wasn’t trying to suggest that, that there were no surprises left. No, not at all, I knew she
wouldn’t stop surprising me, I mean, if we’d stayed together, if we’d lived our lives together, she wouldn’t have stopped
surprising me. It was an understanding of that, a perception of a quality of being, a… I guess I can’t explain it adequately.
Well, the point is, we didn’t stay together. I loved her. She was pregnant. I deserted her. And now I’ll tell you why.

All right, here we go. In November of that year, early in November, November 5, 1974, to be exact, your grandmother Mrs. Sally
Bliss, Sally Bliss Senior, she was waiting for me on the porch of my apartment when I came home from a two-day haul. She was
standing on the porch. It was raining hard. Rain was streaming between the shingles of the roof and forming a sheer curtain
around the front and sides of the porch, I remember, so I didn’t recognize your grandmother at first. I saw the shadow of
a person there as I walked up the front steps, and I smelled cigarette smoke mixed with the rain. I knew it wasn’t Penny because
Penny didn’t smoke, but not until I stepped under the cover of the porch roof did I recognize your grandmother standing there.
She was holding a cigarette, sucking on the stub of a cigarette, taking one last drag. And of course I thought that we’d been
found out, she’d discovered that her daughter was pregnant. She wanted Penelope to finish school, to graduate with a degree
in theater, and then it would be a short step either to Broadway or Hollywood. That was your grandmother’s dream for your
mother. She wanted Penelope to be a star. She was convinced that it would be easy for her, all Penny had to do was bring her
college degree along with her talent and beauty to her first audition. Sure. That’s the way it works. Huh. Anyway, it wasn’t
in the plan for her to get pregnant, not in Sally’s plan for her daughter. I’d come along and messed things up. But your grandmother
wasn’t waiting on the porch to blame me for messing things up. There was another reason for her visit. I remember when I moved
under the cover of the roof, I said, Hello, Mrs. Bliss. I always called her Mrs. Bliss, though I knew she’d never been married
herself. And I invited her to come inside, to have a cup of coffee. The rain was dripping and hissing and splashing, what
a downpour, I don’t think I’ve ever seen it rain as hard as it was raining then, that day your grandmother appeared on my
porch. I remember the cigarette seemed to fall out of her hands, I don’t think she’d meant to drop it, but she went ahead
and ground it out with her heel. And as she stepped inside, she tripped over the lip of the doorway, I recall. She managed
to catch herself, to grab the pole of the coatrack and keep herself from falling flat, luckily. This part of it is still clear
in my memory. But, um, what follows, I… I don’t know, it’s hard to remember the sequence, exactly as it happened. I had an
electric burner, and at some point I put the water on to boil, though I’m not sure if this was before or after your grandmother
spoke. I really don’t know whether she was holding her cup of coffee while she announced to me… but maybe
announced
isn’t the right word. I mean, she spent a while with me in the room that evening. She talked about how she’d had a baby when
she was sixteen. She explained that she’d left the infant with her family and run away from home. She told me everything,
but in what order, I’m not sure. She told me about her sister, your great-aunt Trudy. She’d been searching for Sally and had
finally found her that summer. Whatever her sister said was enough to arouse her suspicions, your grandmother’s suspicions.
There was money involved, some sizable amount of money. Your grandmother had been under the impression that money she’d been
sending regularly over the years had been given to her son. But her sister appeared early in the summer and told her that
the money Sally had been sending had never reached her son. It was because of her sister’s visit that your grandmother decided
she needed to know what had happened to her child. So for the first time in several decades she went back to visit the town
in Pennsylvania where she’d grown up. Her own parents were no longer living, and she couldn’t track down her cousin, the one,
his name was Daniel, Daniel Werner, who was the father of the baby. He had disappeared, and no one knew or was willing to
say where he’d gone. But it was communicated to Sally that Daniel Werner had taken the baby after Sally left home, he’d tried
to raise it, but he couldn’t do it, he couldn’t handle a baby on his own, and after two years, less than two, he gave the
child up. The Werner family maintained that Daniel Werner put the child up for adoption. And that’s the point where Sally
managed to connect her story to mine. Is this all making sense? What your grandmother came over to tell me that night made
it necessary for me to leave. But please understand that this isn’t about blaming her. It wasn’t her fault. She didn’t invent
anything. She received all her information from sources that should have been absolutely reliable. She was persuaded to believe…
now it’s going to sound absurd, I know, but back then, the discovery was presented as incontestable. You see, she became convinced,
and she convinced me, that I was her son, the son she’d left behind. It’s unfathomable, really. But she believed, and she
persuaded me to believe, that I was her firstborn child. Well, maybe I should give you a moment to consider it.

Okay. So your grandmother, she’d gone out of her way to collect the facts. She’d spoken to a sister of Daniel’s, her cousin,
that’s who first gave her information about her son. She’d asked her cousin if the child had been adopted by a couple from
Pittsburgh named Boyle. Her cousin wasn’t sure about the name, but she said it sounded familiar. Sally went to the county
clerk’s office the next day and talked to a woman who worked there. She was a sister-in-law of your grandmother’s cousin.
This, I think, is significant, that there was a family connection to the county clerk’s office. The woman promised to find
the relevant documents for your grandmother. She said there had been a fire in 1957, some of the county’s documents had been
destroyed and others moved to another storage area. You know, I’ve since found out that there was no fire in Peterkin in 1957.
But I’m getting ahead of myself. The woman, the sister-in-law of your grandmother’s cousin, said she’d search for the documents
relating to the adoption of Sally’s son, and she’d contact Sally as soon as she found them. There was no point in Sally hanging
around. She returned home and waited to hear from the woman. She waited several weeks. Though she suspected that I was her
son, she had to confirm it. She was finally able to confirm it when her cousin’s sister-in-law sent her an official letter
verifying that Daniel Werner had given up custody of the child. And she sent her a copy of my adoption certificate from the
diocese in Pittsburgh. I’m not sure how the woman got a hold of that. Anyway, your grandmother had no reason to doubt the
authenticity of these documents. Still, she took the trouble to collect even more proof. She drove to Pittsburgh, where she
spoke with an administrator in charge of the records of the Catholic Diocese, and though your grandmother wasn’t allowed to
see the original papers, the woman there was willing to assure your grandmother that the adoption certificate she’d received
was accurate in all regards. Well, there was no two ways about it, your grandmother was convinced that the child she’d left
on the kitchen table in 1947 was me. How could she not be convinced? The evidence seemed indisput —, indisputable. She’d be
convinced of it for the rest of her life. I have to say, as absurd as it sounds, I mean, me being her son and falling in love
with her daughter, a coincidence like that might be acceptable in a bad movie but not in life, in modern life, in my life,
in your mother’s life. A coincidence so outrageous, you can be sure I doubted it. Everything your grandmother told me, I said
it couldn’t be true. But she kept adding up the facts for me. Her certainty about the matter was overwhelming. I watched her
sip her coffee from one of my old chipped mugs. Or maybe she’d already finished her coffee by then, I don’t know. Maybe I
hadn’t even prepared her coffee yet. What I remember most is being engulfed by despair, a sickening despair. Oh, can you even
imagine what it was like for me to hear your grandmother sit there and tell me that your mother, the woman I loved, was my
sister? My sister. I’d come home from a two-day haul only to discover that I’d been thrown into the midst of an incestuous
epic tragedy. What could I say? Your grandmother had a story to tell. It was a convincing story. She told it to me, and then
she asked me what I would do. I said I’d leave, I promised to leave the city the very next day. She agreed that there was
no other option, and she advised me not to contact Penelope. I don’t think she knew at that point that her daughter was pregnant,
or if she did she didn’t want to talk about it. She asked me to stay in touch, to address my letters to a PO box. And she
said, can you, can you believe it, she said she loved me. She was my mother, and she loved me. She made me promise to write
to her as soon as I’d settled again. And then, and then, geesh, she gave me a manila envelope. It was sealed, no, it was clipped
shut but not sealed, as I recall. I opened it after she’d gone, and it turned out to be stuffed with money, with hundreds
of dollars, hundreds and hundreds of dollars. There was a fortune, more than two thousand dollars in that envelope, and your
grandmother left it with me as a parting gift. She told me that long ago an old man she’d known, a good man, she said, had
given her the money, and she’d been saving it for something special. Well, I was something special. She wanted to make up
for… for not taking care of me during my life. It all made too much sense. Even in the downpour I could hear the engine of
her car as she drove away. I just stood there, dumbstruck. I was impressed by her conviction. What do I remember about that
moment? I remember that satyrs and nymphs filled the room, dancing around me, taunting — taunting me with laughter. Sure.
And flames, red-hot flames flickered around my feet. I went running into the storm and tore out my eyes and howled at the
gods. No, I didn’t. I spent the night emptying a whole bottle of Smirnoff, I drank and drank and with each bitter gulp I became
more comfortable with my despair. It suited me, I thought. I was a loser, of course I was a loser, I lost everything that
mattered, I’d always been a loser, and I didn’t deserve to live. So early the next morning, in a drunken stupor, I followed
what seemed the inevitable course. I headed over to the pedestrian bridge, the one, you know it, I’m sure, the one that spans
the Tuskee gorge. It was just a few years old in 1974, that bridge. I went there, and, and I jumped into the river. Well,
I kind of jumped and kind of fell. It was as much of an accident as it was intentional. I didn’t really want to kill myself.
Truly, I don’t welcome pain in any form. But I was close to incoherent while I was hanging on to the rail. I was thinking
that a man in my situation was supposed to jump. I was thinking about how I could put an end to all my troubles by jumping.
And then I slipped and fell. I fell and plunged into the river. The thick, red, cold soup of the Tuskee. Does it still glow
in the dark? It’s a long way from the bridge to the river, isn’t it? The Tuskee, the icy, red Tuskee. But here’s the thing.
Unbelievably, the river didn’t like the taste of me and spit me out. It spit me right out, puh, over the wall into the parking
lot of the utility company. One moment I was drowning, and the next moment I was sputtering on the pavement. Somehow I survived
my own foolishness. Your grandmother insisted it was a miracle that saved me. I think it was the rain. It had been raining
for days, the river had backed up and started to flood the gorge. Whatever. The river made it impossible not to survive. And
here I am, after all these years, still alive to tell the tale. To be truthful, I remember climbing over the rail, and then
I remember waking up in a dirty puddle in the parking lot. I don’t remember falling, actually. I don’t remember hitting the
water. But I do remember coming to my senses and recognizing that my life was over, though I was too much of a loser to succeed
in dying. So I did what I’d promised your grandmother I’d do, and I left the city. I drove to Detroit. And I… I lived in Detroit
for a year, nearly a year, working as a dishwasher. Then I moved to Chicago. There’s more to tell, I want to fill you in on
the rest of it, the years between then and now. This story continues. But it’s late, I’m exhausted, and I see I’m almost at
the end of the tape. Well, good-bye for now.