The loss of my father, when I was seven, was something for which I only ever had one person to blame. My father. My father was driving drunk. He’d never done anything like it before. It was entirely out of character. But it happened. And I could either hate him for it, or I could try to understand it. Your father was driving under the influence and lost control of the car.
But this. The knowledge that my father never willingly got behind the wheel of a car drunk, that he was left dead on the side of the road by this woman, framed for his own death, his legacy tarnished. The fact that I grew up believing he’d been the one to cause the accident. There is so much blame hanging in the air, waiting for me to snatch it and pin it on Evelyn’s chest.
And the way she is sitting in front of me, remorseful but not exactly sorry, makes it clear she’s ready to be pinned.
This blame is like a flint to my years of aching. And it erupts into fury.
My body goes white-hot. My eyes tear. My hands ball into fists, and I step away because I am afraid of what I might do.
And then, because stepping away from her feels too generous, I edge back to where she is, and I push her against the sofa, and I say, “I’m glad you have no one left. I’m glad there’s no one alive to love you.”
I let go of her, surprised at myself. She sits back up. She watches me.
“You think that giving me your story makes up for any of it?” I ask her. “All this time, you’ve been making me sit here, listening to your life, so that you could confess, and you think that your biography makes up for it?”
“No,” she says. “I think you know me well enough by now to know I’m not nearly naive enough to believe in absolution.”
“What, then?”
Evelyn reaches out and shows me the paper in her hand.
“I found this in Harry’s pants pocket. The night he died. My guess is that he’d read it and it was the reason he’d been drinking so much to begin with. It was from your father.”
“So?”
“So I . . . I found great peace in my daughter knowing the truth about me. There was immense comfort in knowing the real her. I wanted to . . . I think I’m the only person alive who can give that to you. Can give it to your dad. I want you to know who he truly was.”
“I know who he was to me,” I say, while realizing that that’s not exactly true.
“I thought you would want to know all of him. Take it, Monique. Read the letter. If you don’t want it, you don’t have to keep it. But I always planned on sending it to you. I always thought you deserved to know.”
I snatch it from her, not wanting even to extend the kindness of taking it gently. I sit down. I open it. There are what can only be bloodstains on the top of the page. I wonder briefly if it’s my father’s blood. Or Harry’s. I decide not to think about it.
Before I can read even one line, I look up at her.
“Can you leave?” I say.
Evelyn nods and walks out of her own office. She shuts the door behind her. I look down. There is so much to reframe in my mind.
My father did nothing wrong.
My father didn’t cause his own death.
I’ve spent years of my life seeing him from that angle, making peace with him through that lens.
And now, for the first time in nearly thirty years, I have new words, fresh thoughts, from my father.
Dear Harry,
I love you. I love you in a way that I never thought possible. I have spent so much of my life thinking that this type of love was a myth. And now here it is, so real I can touch it, and I finally understand what the Beatles were singing about all those years.
I do not want you to move to Europe. But I also know that what I may not want may very well be the best thing for you. So despite my desires, I think you should go.
I cannot and will not be able to give you the life you are dreaming of here in Los Angeles.
I cannot marry Celia St. James—although I do agree with you that she is a stunningly beautiful woman, and if I’m being honest, I did nurse a small crush on her in Royal Wedding.
But the fact remains that though I have never loved my wife the way I love you, I will never leave her. I love my family too much to fracture us for even a moment of time. My daughter, whom I desperately hope you can one day meet, is my reason for living. And I know that she is happiest with me and her mom. I know that she will live her best life only if I stay where I am.
Angela is perhaps not the love of my life. I know that now, now that I’ve felt real passion. But I think, in many ways, she means to me what Evelyn means to you. She is my best friend, my confidante, my companion. I admire the forthrightness with which you and Evelyn discuss your sexuality, your desires. But it is not how Angela and I work, and I’m not sure I’d want to change that. We do not have a vibrant sex life, but I love her the way one loves a partner. I would never forgive myself for causing her pain. And I would find myself desperate to call her, to hear her thoughts, to know how she is, every moment of every day if I was not with her.
My family is my heart. And I cannot break us up. Not even for the type of love that I have found with you, my Harry.
Go to Europe. If you believe it is what is best for your family.
And know that here, in Los Angeles, I am with mine, thinking of you.
Forever yours,
James
I put down the letter. I stare straight ahead into the air. And then, and only then, it hits me.
My father was in love with a man.
I DON’T KNOW HOW LONG I sit on the couch, staring at the ceiling. I think of my memories of my dad, the way he would throw me up in the air in the backyard, the way he would every once in a while let me eat banana splits for breakfast.
Those memories have always been tinged by how he died. They have always had a bittersweetness to them because I believed it was his mistakes that took him from me too soon.
And now I don’t know what to make of him. I don’t know how to think of him. A defining trait is gone and is replaced by so much more—for better or for worse.
At some point, after I start replaying the same images over and over in my mind—memories of my father alive, imagined images of his final moments and his death—I realize I can’t sit still anymore.
So I stand up, I walk into the hallway, and I start looking for Evelyn. I find her in the kitchen with Grace.
“So this is why I’m here?” I say, holding the letter in the air.
“Grace, would you mind giving us a moment?”
Grace gets up from her stool. “Sure.” She disappears down the hall.
When she’s gone, Evelyn looks at me. “It’s not the only reason I wanted to meet you. I tracked you down to give you the letter, obviously. And I had been looking for a way to introduce myself to you that wasn’t quite so out of the blue, quite so shocking.”
“Vivant helped you with that, clearly.”
“It gave me a pretense, yes. I felt more comfortable having a major magazine send you than calling you up on the phone and trying to explain how I knew who you were.”
“So you figured you’d just lure me here with the promise of a bestseller.”
“No,” she says, shaking her head. “Once I started researching you, I read most of your work. Specifically, I read your right-to-die piece.”