July 14, 1987

A belated birthday card with a dollar bill and a handwritten message inside: Dad, this card may be a day late, but it's not a dollar short!

The card had prompted his visit.

He stayed a few hours and they were possibly the best I have ever spent with him. He was there for a change. Not distracted, preoccupied, glooming. He was interested in me for a change. Asked about my work, my life, my family. He chattered and chuckled with my children and actually conversed with my wife. Only once did he descend into his usual doleful musings about loving and losing my mother.

He spoke of a photo snapped early in their marriage. He a young nightclub drummer, she a young nightclub singer. They were holding hands and she looked ineffably beautiful.

He still adores that girl in the snapshot; still pines for that girl in the snapshot's love.

There is that in his voice and his eyes when he speaks of these things that makes me believe him in my heart. There is this, too: He has never, never in 35 years, said anything about her that was not shining praise. She, for her part, has never in as many years said anything about him that was not bitter or recriminatory or hateful.

His may be a form of delusional madness, but hers seems the greater sickness.

I will never know for certain either way. I am interested only in knowing the truth, not in ascribing blame. But this mystery will remain impenetrable. Each of them harbors a discrete version of the past grown more real in nearly four decades of estrangement than the unalloyed truth itself, whatever that truth may be. Within each of their minds, each feels utterly free from fault.

He, according to him, worked two jobs and was faithful and devoted. She, according to him, just up and left for no reason.

He, according to her, never worked two jobs in his life and was a philandering and neglectful bastard. She, according to her, endured all she could take till she could not take any more.

Would that I could sue them solely for the sake of veracity. Could force them into court and make them swear on a stack of Bibles. Could grill them on the stand without mercy. Could make them produce witnesses in defense of their testimonies. Maybe then I could get to the bottom of it all once and for all.

From what I have seen and known of my mother, however, it is easy to believe her capable of becoming disenchanted with married life at the still tender age of 25, wanting oh so much more for herself, including more limelight maybe (she, the former child star). Easy to believe her upping and leaving a husband who was working two jobs ... or three jobs ... or four.

From what I have seen and known of my father, it is easy to believe him not impervious to the attentions of other women. Attentions more or less easily provoked with the help of booze and nacreous drums. It is easy, too, to believe he believes a distorted vision of the past to the point where fantasy has obliterated fact. Yet the pain in his voice, in his eyes, is audible, visible, as he speaks of losing my mother's love.

My mother. His first wife. That gleaming girl holding his hand in the snapshot. That girl who never was.

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