The Trouble Way (43 page)

I
’ve mentioned those traumatic things that stick with a kid forever, like my Dad not stopping for me to go to the bathroom on that cross-country trip, or when he burned my little dancing paper man, a craft project I made when I was in the first grade. Christ, that’s over a half-century ago.

What sort of trauma is Bella going to experience from this? Her Grandpa of five years, her entire life, shut out of her life in a matter of minutes. No communication, none. I am disappointed and frustrated, as Bella said to me when she was three, is an understatement. She couldn
’t have known what that meant. I’m sure she was repeating something Polly had said to her. Now I feel that same emotion toward that horrible person, Polly.

I thought I
’d seen all the goonies I was going to see and still I get blindsided by my sweetie’s mother. “It’s no single fair,” as my sister’s grandson said when he was four.

Bella is the person I have always wanted to be like, a good person. I had no good examples my entire life until she wrapped her long, little, toes around my finger when she was hardly more than zero. She taught me what a good person is by her honesty and intelligence and now she is going to have to deal with her own lunatics and there is scant little I can do about it.

The least I can do is to attempt to insure Bella knows that I didn’t abandon her. Every correspondence that I attempt to make to Polly, I make a duplication. I am sure her Mom will not pass anything I send on to Bella. Every little gift I send to Bella, I buy two. Every email I send, I print and put in a special folder. I save the duplicates, and when Bella is at an age where she can receive her own mail, I will send them all to her to open as new. I have a Will that has Bella’s name included where she will know that I didn’t abandon her when she was five.

I just didn
’t see it coming.

I hope that things get better before my
“numbers” run out and it is “Will” time. But I know lunatics and I know there is not much you can depend on when dealing with them. Look at that lunatic I married out of high school. Christ, I still feel the aftershocks of the run-in with that nut.

I
’d been thinking of picking Bella up after school from the day Polly asked me to do it several months before school started. I even bought three workbooks that I could use for Bella’s homework to help her in Kindergarten, one in math, one in spelling, and the third, I forget and am too sad to look to see what it is. I bought an entire series of “Little House on the Prairie,” so I could read to her until Polly got off work to pick her up. That purchase is still in the unopened Amazon shipping container for the same reason, oppressive, disabling, lonesomeness for her.

Bella
’s uncle, her Grandfather, and her Grandmother are all a bubble off plumb. I knew Polly was weird, but not hateful.

Bella
’s grandfather bought a horse for the kids. He kept it in the basement. No field, no yard ... in the basement in an urban house.

I suspect Bella
’s step-grandfather is the one who abused Polly. I wasn’t sure until another of Polly’s relatives, her equally nutty aunt, Dolly, filled us in on that and said it was her step-dad who molested Polly. Dolly couldn’t stop talking about how badly she felt about Polly. She ran on for hours whenever we happened to happen upon her. We often saw her at the Farmer’s Market. She would corner Priscilla and me and talk endlessly about Polly’s unfortunate experiences when she was little, living with that lunatic father-in-law.

The strange way Polly treated him, never wearing make-up and dressing unattractively around him led both Priscilla and me to suspect that he is the culprit even before Polly
’s nutty aunt Dolly spilled the beans about that and quite a few other strange happenings in Polly’s early life. Dolly always swore us to secrecy and insisted we never discuss what she told us with Polly.

The Grandmother didn
’t even come to see Bella after she was born. Grandma was visiting a relative across town. I suspect she didn’t approve of Bella because Polly was not married and Bella is half-Black. I know I should say inter-racial, but I’m imagining Grandma didn’t see it that way.

Polly
’s step-dad had a Star of David emblem put on Bella’s grandmother’s grave even though none of the family is Jewish. Explain that. Did he think it was pretty? My suspicion is that he was still molesting Polly after her mom passed away and that was just one little way of doing that.

Once he showed up at Polly
’s house un-announced after her mother had died. He’d driven a good distance, from Colorado. Polly turned him away without inviting him in. Freaked her out, the way she explained it but she never said exactly why.

Polly is on medication for a psychological malady of some sort. I think malady
’s may run in her family. I hope it skips Bella.

Bella
’s dad had another woman pregnant at the same time. In fact, Bella’s dad had five other children in Africa unknown at the time to Polly, all from different moms. Bella has a half-brother who was born a few days from when Bella was.

I
’d have to judge Grandma and Daddy as having lost the napkin under their wobbly leg a yong, yong, yong time ago, as Bella would say. The degree of lunacy around is astounding. It’s enough to make God drink out of a cat dish, my old girlfriend from California often said.

Priscilla and I saw Bella before her Grandmother did.

It wasn’t until the Grandmother was dying of cancer a few months later that she decided she must see her granddaughter. Bella and her Mom had to fly across country to see the dying woman. Keep in mind, Polly had a minimum wage job and could ill afford to fly anyplace but Grandma had to see Bella. After all, Grandma was dying.

You just can
’t get away from the nuts. I thought I did when I finally met Priscilla and Bella. I thought I was through with the nonsense and could be happy.

As for how to deal with Polly, I have contacted a lawyer and have drawn up papers to sue Polly for the five years of daycare she never paid a cent for. The lawyer said that we had an implied contract to exchange daycare services for the privilege of having continued contact with Bella. He said I had a better than even chance to recover fifteen or twenty thousand dollars in fees for the services I provided. If she doesn
’t pay, her assets -- which consists mainly of a used Toyota -- could have a lien put on them. I have the lawyer’s letter in my possession and only have to put a stamp on it and drop it off at the post office. See what she thinks of
my
little fantasy. I haven’t made up my mind on that but I’m leaning toward sending it.

Now, I have to worry about using up
“all the numbers,” before I die, without ever being able to talk to my sweetie again. It is too much. I think that maybe I should have lost grip on that branch and died in the river and I’d be better off.

There is a giant aching hollow in my heart. I wanted to be in Bella
’s memory when she got old, when she remembered the good times when she was little and went to Papa’s house and watched endless Dora videos with him.

“
I love you more than anything in the whole wide world.”

Priscilla handed me the phone.
She was beaming. Her dimples fully activated.

“
I think you will want to take this.”

“Hello.”

“Papa, what are you doing right now?”

“
Dava!”

END

About the author

R
aised in the rural community of Knappa, near Astoria, Oregon
. J
oined the Air Force in the sixties, attended Oregon College of Education and Oregon State University in the ‘70s, and Spokane Community College in 2003. Retired from retail management and working for the states of Oregon and Iowa. He lives with his wife, Paula, in West Des Moines, IA.

“
The Trouble Way,” a romance novel, follows his coming of age fiction, “A Bed of Needles.”