REMAINS OF THE DAY
My legacy is a packet of loose items held in a bank vault, not even
bound in string:
1. My father's Social Security card, useless because bronzed, and who
would believe it if I tried to steal the identity of a man dead 54
years; and besides, my older son has my father's name, so to steal
that name would mess up the kid for years. No wonder there is a
saying: Schvar zu sein a Yid, hard to be a Jew, because sometimes
blood is the only thing that keeps us honest.
2. Marine Corps discharge papers: honorably released from service
November 1919, AEF in France, two non-com stripes, certified marksman,
actually the lowest qualifier for the Corps.
Then a long pause until January 1934...
3. A judge's permission for my father to get married again, this time
to my mother, because he'd spent several years behaving himself and
two witnesses said so, I met them both, likely they were perjurers.
He'd been divorced in 1927 when the only grounds were extreme cruelty
and adultery. My mother stood in the wings, ready for her close-up,
set to appear for the first time without make-up, not the stuff of
Angelina and Brad, just another bad romance gone worse by being
legitimated at last. Everyone in their families knew what had gone
one, nobody cared. Love is love. Where they has been none you make
your own.
4. A letter from the Chief of Police of a small town in Maine,
itemizing the things returned to my mother that were taken from my
father's body when he died in a hotel dining room in July 1954. Loose
dollar bills, change, a wallet and ID. And a disclaimer: "As to your
last question, Mrs. Wolman, I'm sorry but I do not know the identity
of the woman your husband was with when he died."
But we all did, sooner if not later.
5. And a letter out of chronology from a woman in Brooklyn,
condolences dated 20 July 1954, a show of grief from the woman who
said that when she looked at her baby she thought of my father. I
passed the letter to my normally impassive then-wife, and her eyes
bugged out as though she were a Toon in "Roger Rabbit."
Ms. Fassbender invented the 8th type of ambiguity: do I or do I not
have a half-sibling 8 years my junior. God knows it would be easy to
find out. This has been my urban legend since 1991 but I've never
followed up with a trip to the Brooklyn Hall of Records. I didn't
really want to know. I left the mystery for my mythological
biographer.
KTW/7-15-10
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Ken Wolman http://awfulrowing.wordpress.com/
"All writers are hunters, and parents are the most available prey."
--Francine du Plessix Gray
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