The Inheritance Paradox
Twenty-Three (My Story)
I RESOLVED not to write the story Tuesday night because I had serious work to catch up on Wednesday. I got started on Wednesday night and then finished it Thursday night.
According to Mary Sinclair, Dad had continued the affair into the fall and winter, but then this Gloria went to the church and publicly accused him of getting her pregnant. The Board of Trustees met with Dad soon thereafter and expelled him from the church. He went home, packed what he could in the Corvair and left town. I was sure he’d scraped the clergy sticker off his car, too. Mary thought he was also sick, and from what Dad had said in one of his stories, it must have been a couple of months later that he got the confirmed diagnosis that his cancer was terminal.
I can’t and won’t try to justify Dad’s actions. There must have been a hundred ways to handle the situation, including talking things out with his wife and confirming the girl’s story. It was only a week later that she’d confessed that she wasn’t really pregnant but was tired of waiting for Dad to divorce and marry her. Dad was already waiting for his doctor to tell him what was wrong with him, had left Mary, and was living in his car. It was all terrible.
But I can’t let any of that color my image of the kind and devoted husband and father I knew him to be in my life. I suppose, somehow, that past history and the miraculous cure of his cancer when he was counting his days on earth, are what shaped his relationship with Mom and his utter devotion to his family from that day forward.
It’s probably also why he had so many fantasies of time travel in which he could express his wanton behavior, kill enemies, raise or at least give birth to families that he never got to grow old with. It all made a peculiar kind of sense. I called Megan early Friday morning the Fourth of July after I’d emailed her a transcript of what I’d written.
“God! I want to sympathize with that woman, but I’m equally glad her life turned out well with her second husband and children. And she gave you this box of all his things? I want you to scan the letters and send them to me,” she said.
“I haven’t read them all. The early ones I read were kind of typical teenage love letters. The last couple were filled with sadness. I’d guess she knew she was dying,” I said.
“Have you started hunting down her relatives?” Megan asked. “You have to admit the most likely candidate for your wife’s grandmother is Rachel Erickson.”
“Wouldn’t she have told Dad if she was pregnant?”
“It sounds like it’s just the opposite of what his lover, Gloria, did. Gloria made the whole thing public, lied about being pregnant, and destroyed his marriage and ministry. Rachel was committed to not damaging his ministry. I suppose in a way, they both did harm, but I consider Rachel to be the one acting out of love.”
“Well, I’ll start searching for traces of the family on Monday. We have pictures of the younger siblings in the yearbook that was in the box. The school used the high school yearbook to record all the elementary schools’ info and class photos, too. I suppose I should cross-check to see if any ended up back in Battle Creek, but I’d guess the better lead will be in St. Louis.”
“Now, I’ve got some news,” Megan said.
“Yeah?”
“Val’s family has the same genome markers we do. We’re distantly related,” she said.
“How distantly? This isn’t pointing to Dad as Val’s grandfather, is it?” I demanded.
“No, not that near. But the genetic marker is strong enough to point to a common branch as little as a hundred or a hundred-fifty years ago.”
“Well, that’s not so bad.”
“For that relationship, it’s not bad at all. But we noted that Val and Zach both had perfect attendance in school. Well, I talked to Val’s mother, Ruby, and got the other kids’ health records. She was really helpful and interested in the results of the study. I haven’t mentioned the relationship yet. But she and all four kids have always had stellar health. Don, on the other hand, had cancer, but is in remission. We can still see at least one of the known genes that is a marker toward hereditary cancer vulnerability. That’s not to say it causes cancer, but that people with that marker often get cancer.”
“That’s interesting,” I said, not knowing where Megan was going with this information.
“Don’s tests show some amount of qRNA floating as a free agent in his body, even though he doesn’t have the gene. Do you see what this means, Nat?”
“No. Is that unusual?”
“I cross-checked Brenda’s samples and she also has a trace element of qRNA unassociated with the gene. Preliminarily, I’m suggesting to my colleagues that the qRNA can be passed from person to person without inheriting it! This is huge, Nat. It means we could formulate a type of inoculation that would introduce the messenger RNA and enhance people’s ability to fight off disease. Not just one variety of disease, but any kind of attack on the immune system,” she said.
“That’s amazing, Meg! You could eradicate human susceptibility to disease!”
“Maybe. I think we could develop the ability to do it. Whether anyone would accept it with the current mindset in America against vaccines in general, is doubtful. But I’m going to pursue the development of a means of transferring it. Maybe someday in the future, people will be more willing to have science improve their health.”
My conversation with Meg was stunning and I filled Brenda in on it before I went out to the garage to help Zach with the car. I hadn’t been able to get out there recently and the progress he was making was impressive.
“This is really looking good,” I said.
“I’m just glad the garage has such sturdy rafters and construction,” Zach laughed.
“What happened?”
“Oh, it wasn’t anything that happened as much as what we did,” he said. “When Gramps pulled the carpet and uncovered the rust and weak spots in the floor, I went under and looked closer at the chassis. Mostly okay, but it had some pretty intense rust. This week, I had some of the guys come out and help Val and me pull the body off the chassis. We had it suspended all the way up on the rafters. Then everyone attacked the chassis with wire brushes, and we repaired the floor from the underside.”
“That sounds like an incredibly big job.”
“I’ve got pictures of it. Thursday morning, Val and I did a full spray paint coat of rust inhibiting black paint on the entire frame. We only just set the body back on the chassis this morning before Val had to go join her family for a gathering at her house. I still need to bolt it together.”
“Can I help with that?”
“I was hoping you would. I’m beginning to feel a little pressed about getting it finished in time.”
“In time? Don’t you think you’ll have it done before snow flies? We can extend the time a little.”
“Not that, Dad. Um… I need to get this done before…” He stopped and turned to look me in the eye. I could see moisture in his. “Val needs to head for California in five weeks. California feels like a lot of miles away. If I can get the final touches on the car done, I can drive her out there.”
“Oh, Zach!” I said, understanding for the first time his sense of urgency. “How much work do we need to get done?”
“Once we finish getting the body and chassis bolted together, I can start focusing on finalizing the engine rebuild. I’ve been doing that at night after Val goes home. We should be able to drop it in by the end of next week, but you know I’m not backing out of helping Gram and Gramps move. And we’ll help with the sale tomorrow. Then there’s all the finish work to do. Upholstery, carpet, dash. I might leave the back seat out for the trip, just so we’re sure to have room for Val’s things she’s moving.”
“Tires?” I asked, kicking one that was leaning against the wall.
“Yeah. Thanks for the reminder. That’ll be a few hundred dollars.”
“Stack them in the back of the station wagon Monday morning. I’ll take them in and have new ones mounted and balanced.”
“Dad, really?” he asked. I wasn’t expecting him to rush to me and wrap me in a big hug. “Thank you!”
“Zach, when I can do something as simple as this that helps you out so much, I will never fail to do it.”
“Thanks, Dad. I was just trying to figure out how I was going to get it done. I figured I’d have to mount the old ones and then drive to the tire store to have them replaced.”
“I didn’t realize how difficult it must be, not having a car while you’ve been fixing your car.”
“Mom’s been great about letting me use her car unless Lisa has places to go, too. I don’t want to limit what Lisa does just because I need to run to the auto parts store. Some days, Val can have her mom’s car, but she’s got three siblings who need to be carted around, so she usually walks or bicycles over here,” Zach said.
“It’s pretty serious between the two of you, isn’t it?” I asked gently.
“Yeah. Neither of us realized that when we started dating this spring. It’s going to be really difficult being two thousand miles apart. We’re determined to do it, though. For her, getting that degree in Symbolic Systems and Engineering is as important as me getting certified in auto rebuild.”
“And not incompatible, I think.”
“She says having hands-on work on the Corvair is giving her a real inside view of how the engineering works. She’d like to work on the next generation of transportation while I’m restoring classics.”
“Do you love her?” I asked. He broke out in a broad grin.
“Oh, yeah. I didn’t realize it at first. We’ve been friends for as long as we’ve been in school, but we just started dating this year. And… and then… we just realized we were made for each other.”
“Then do whatever you need to do to be with her,” I said, tacitly giving him my blessing if he decided to move to California.
I worked with him the rest of the morning, then Brenda, Lisa, and I went to Mom and Dad’s house to make the final arrangements for the big sale in the morning.
Even as well as we thought we’d prepared, Saturday was chaotic. Zach and Val took the morning off to help us move everything outside, then guard it from early birds hoping to get first choice before the sale officially started. We had rented three long tables to display things on, as well as clothing racks. Besides all that, there was a ton of furniture Mom and Dad had no room for in the new cottage or just wanted to replace with something new.
By nine o’clock, people were lined up to attack the tables. They pawed through all the possessions, making ridiculously low offers for antiques, and trying to walk away with anything they thought they could steal. Brenda was in charge of the cash box. Mom was answering questions about things. Lisa was running around rearranging things on the tables and straightening the clothing racks. Zach and Val stayed until noon, just watching the people and tables to be sure things weren’t walked off with.
I stood at the head of the drive, monitoring traffic, and telling people who saw the new for sale sign in the yard that the house was not yet open for viewing and they should call their real estate agents.
Dad sat on a bench near the sidewalk talking to neighbors who stopped by to wish them well and ask about their new home. He was dressed in his usual black, but this time it was black cargo shorts and a black T-shirt. He looked pretty cool if you didn’t glance down at his black socks and shoes.
Of course, there were a few neighbors who complained about the traffic and some customers who complained about there being no place to park, but mostly, it was an uneventful and profitable day. I’d had a pizza delivered about one o’clock and we ate as we could. By three o’clock, things were pretty picked over. A guy with a trailer had offered $200 for the rest of the furniture, and since we intended to send the rest to a donation drive anyway, we accepted and helped him load.
By four o’clock, the remainder was packed in boxes and a charitable donation truck we’d scheduled pulled up to clear out everything else.
I plopped down beside Dad on the bench he’d occupied most of the day and talked about the positives and negatives of having sold all these things. The positive was having made more than $1,000 they didn’t have before. The negative was having artwork they’d spent hundreds for sold for tens. Dad was pretty stoic.
“It’s just stuff,” he said. “In my life, I’ve left more valuable stuff behind.”
I immediately flashed to the box we’d received from Mary.
“What kind of stuff?” I asked.
“Well, sometimes I acquired things in other ages that I lost or couldn’t bring with me. A sword or rifle, a bit of jewelry, a few gold coins. Of course, none of that was stuff I really owned. It all belonged to the doctor.”
“Dad, do I have any half-siblings?” I said out of the blue. He snapped his head around to look at me.
“Have you not been listening to me all this time? I spent a year time traveling that took twelve years off my life. I made twenty-five trips. If we assumed just one child per trip, that would be twenty-five kids. With multiple births and times when I spent a couple of years, I estimate maybe forty or fifty of them. That would be forty or fifty half-siblings. For Pete’s sake! I’ve told you I tried to populate the world,” he said.
I hadn’t heard him so agitated in all the time he’d been sharing the stories.
“I’m sorry, Dad. I know all those, or at least the ones you’ve told me about. They’re just so hard to track. I was just wondering if there’d been any in the past fifty or sixty years. I don’t think any the less of you for that,” I said.
He sighed.
“Let’s take the women to Olive Garden for dinner,” he said abruptly. “Call Zach and Val to come and join us.”
He stood and I understood the subject was closed.
We had a good time with the seven of us at the family Italian restaurant. There were stories of all the happenings at the sale. Dad told about the people who stopped to wish them well. Mom said she almost had a tear escape when she saw her old dressing table and mirror go for $25. But the little girl the parents bought it for thought it belonged to a princess, and she would get to be a princess, too.
“We couldn’t have done today without you,” Dad said. “You all did so much for us. Lynn and I would have been a wreck without you, and we’d have been robbed blind.”
“I can’t believe one of our neighbors wanted to buy that $300 crystal decanter set for $25 and was upset that I wouldn’t drop the price,” Mom said. “Well, I did drop the price when that dealer came later in the day, but I still got $200. Frankly, I just didn’t want to think of it sitting in the Davises’ house.”
“That’s always a real problem with this kind of sale,” Brenda said.
“Look! I bought something, too!” Lisa said. She showed a bangle bracelet on her wrist.
“Oh, honey! I would have given you that if I knew you wanted it,” Mom said.
“Nope. I bought it. And I paid full price!”
“What did that cost you, Lis?” Zach asked.
“Um… Seventy-five cents,” she squeaked. We all got a laugh out of that.
“I’m sorry we weren’t there for the whole day,” Val said. “Zach taught me how to tune the engine!”
“It will be running like a top soon, Gramps,” Zach said.
“You be careful driving that Corvair. You know, Nader totally destroyed their value. Never believed him myself. Drove mine for ten years,” Dad said.
“You know that’s why I chose it, Gramps. Love you.”
Dad paid for dinner for all of us and we had hugs all around. I drove Mom and Dad back to the house, which seemed big and empty now. Dad asked me to come in for a while. Mom said she was going to watch TV for a while and Dad led me to his library.
All the books had been packed, and the room was pretty bare, but the little box of treasures sat on his desk.
“I’m not a good man,” he began, pulling the box toward him. “You wanted to know about half-siblings. Well, there were a lot of them. Some of them from women I didn’t even know more than the name of. For a period of time, I simply refused to believe any of it was true. Wells thought I kept souvenirs in this box to remind me of all the women I’d had. It was really to remind me of the terrible person I was.”
“Dad, nothing in the stories indicates you were a terrible person,” I jumped in.
“I haven’t told them all. Some I didn’t even tell you as a child. I wasn’t a good man before I met your mother, and through that first year, I did despicable things. Before I met your mother, I was accused of getting another woman pregnant. It turned out she lied. But the truth was, I could have gotten her pregnant. At the same time, I witnessed some incredible history, even when I was at my worst. It started with this quill,” he said, pulling a rather ratty quill pen from the box and handing it to me.
Please feel free to send comments to the author at devon@devonlayne.com.
