Innocent-resentments (Of All Men) Revised Novelette

I just wanted to let you know how much I enjoyed your short story, “Uni’s Street Corner” in Lake Area Business this month. Thanks for sharing this wonderful piece!! Gloria Stafford, Minnetrista, MN

Innocent—
Resentments (Of All Men)









A Novelette


By Dennis L. Siluk, Ed.D.
Three Time Poet Laureate and Andean Scholar



Parts in English, Spanish, Illustrated


Advance on the Story:

Perhaps the overall theme in this long short story is as it is quoted in the dialogue, “The Family was, and then it wasn’t” Simple as that, and to be honest, I can’t find a more interwoven one than that... Not so unusual nowadays. As far as the plots, or overall plot goes, one might find it falling under another dialogue quote in the story: “When I was poor, we were all knitted together like bees in a honeycomb, once I became rich and tried to help, they all flew away, thinking they were all innocent with their resentments.” We see five families all knitted together, in 1982, and through innocence and resentments, we see them unravel, with each chapter having its own narrator shifting from one period to another, as it progressively exiles each family from one another. And if there is to be any insight in this story, let it be Biblical: “Verily I say unto you, it shall be more tolerable for the land of Sodom and Gomorrah in the Day of Judgment (for in those latter days) the children shall rise up against their parents….” Matt 10.

Fragility: breaking through traditional teachings to truth and the word life…



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“Verily I say unto you, it shall be more tolerable for the land of Sodom and Gomorrah in the Day of Judgment (for in those latter days) the children shall rise up against their parents….” Matthew 10-21 “And ye shall be hated of all men for my name’s sake…” Matthew 10-22 “But when they persecute you…flee….” Matthew 10-23


A Non-fiction story, only the names have been changed…








Part One of Two Parts


Innocent-Resentment


1970s—St. Paul, Minnesota


Narrated by: the Person Behind

Chapter One


(Introductory Chapter)




They weren’t born yet, Sergei Wright, Pavlenko Wright and Natasha Wright-Hides, it was Christopher Wright, who was to be their father, a poor Midwestern boy, that is, it was Christopher Wright and his mother, Teresa Wright, whose husband had left her before even Christopher was born, the children’s grandmother to be, so by the time the grandchildren would have their own children, she’d be able to say, before she died July 1, 2003—say, what her son Christopher would be able to say, seven years after she might have said it, which he did say for her: “Once upon a time there was a family, named Wright, that lived in St. Paul, that lived in St. Paul, Minnesota, and then once upon a time they weren’t.” It’s as simple as that. But let me tell you how it all begins and perhaps we can figure out the why?


They lived in Minnesota—the three children, where their father worked as a Case Manager and Psychological Counselor, for the Federal Bureau of Prisons. Separated from his wife Carla, Christopher (recovering alcoholic), lived with his mother, Teresa Wright. Carla (bipolar, and borderline schizophrenic) took the three kids, Sergei, Pavlenko (twins: twelve years old), and Natasha (ten-years old), up to 1984, and had to have them put into a foster home thereafter, each separated from the other, as it was also the year, Christopher was beginning his life of sobriety, after twenty-years of alcoholism.
It would seem, both boys became found of their foster home parents more than their blood parents, gave them the everlasting respect, they had intended to give to the blood parents, but no longer could or would, or wanted to. This was the beginning of held-in resentments towards their father, mother, innocent or not, and even grandmother.


____________†___________
Foster Home, 1992, Minnesota

Narrated by: Pavlenko Wright

Chapter two




So this is what I, Pavlenko Wright, know about what was taking place in my life, and my brother’s life, and my sister’s life, and my father and mother’s life—I didn’t know my father was a drunk, and mother was mentally ill until I grew up, and big enough to know about such things, but evidently they were both of that nature I just mentioned long before I was born. And when I got to know about them better, my father said he’d take me out of the foster care—the homes—but he lied, and never did—that’s what I know. Oh he said the house he bought for us burnt down, and it’s true, but that was just another excuse. So when I saw—I mean, when we saw, when Sergei and I had seen him—and told him we both felt the same way, I mean all three of us felt the same way—my brother and I and Natasha, my sister, it was hard for him to believe, believe that that day I sat in the car, back in 1989, and told him what I had to tell him, what was on my mind for so very long, but it didn’t come out right, it came out sideways, and I was so very angry—and then I stepped out of the car, and forever, telling him forever, I’d never want to speak to him again, never and forever.

(Long hesitation, taking in a deep breath) At first, back in 1984, we all thought father was trying to set things up to take us, and perhaps he was. Whatever the case, we didn’t know any better. It wasn’t until we grew up that we realized that that object of alcoholism was his soul excuse to unburden himself with us—and I remember thinking: So, since pa has failed to do what he says he wanted to do, promised us he’d do, I’m the innocent one here, the only uncontaminated one, I was always faithful to his scheme, believing him to the bitter end, God forbid the bitter end. It was me, I was the bereaved, the betrayed son, waiting, and waiting, and forgiving for the sake of hope, I was a child, then a teenager, then an adult, still waiting, and then at sixteen, he said “Okay, I’ll now take you,” the second time, and he was in an apartment, so it couldn’t burn down and he’d have an excuse not to take us, to take me, and I said “No need to, I’m happy where I’m at,” he was surprised, and Sergei said the same thing: oh, yes, Sergei and I felt the same way but he wouldn’t believe Sergei would feel the way I felt, but he knows know I didn’t lie.

Well he said, I think he said, “You can’t get blood out of a turnip,” or maybe I said that, thinking he said that, maybe I dreamed he said that, or whatever he said, he meant that—and I just looked at him, I was on a roll, talking faster than I could think, I often did that back then, until I got my medication. “I did the best I could with what I had at the time,” he said. Well it wasn’t like it cost him anything to say that after the fact, now grown up. But I still felt after a while of waiting he had no use for us kids, never had, never will. Oh yes, it was pa, he had the whole world on his side now that he came out with it: that he was a recovering alcoholic, and if there was any hope before, ever was any, it was gone now because his sobriety was priority. And he was a Catholic, and now he was turning into a Baptist, and in-between he was some kind of Jesus Christ freak, and made sure all three of us kids got baptized, and took us to church—like it or not, but he said it was his duty, like it or not, and we all wanted to appease him, so he’d take us, but that too didn’t help either, it was sobriety now that was priority—oh I said that, already said that. And I suppose because of all this, I don’t have any use for him now. I guess some folks just have different ideas of honesty, like my father. He did the best he could—he said, he said that a few times, but for it to have been the best he could do, it would have had to have been stopping his lying to take us—that would have been better than hope. I can hear the words he said clear as I can hear the birds chipper in the trees out at the Como Park, as I can hear these voices in my head: “I’m working on it son, it’ll take a while.” Then in 1988, he said “Okay, I got an apartment, you can move in?” And I said to him, “No, I’m happy where I’m at,” a few years too late. Without a loss, I now could tell him what I couldn’t tell him before, he missed the cue, if you know what I mean, and it was too late. And it’s not everybody can makeup for their mistakes, when they no longer are needed, and he wasn’t needed any longer.

____________†___________
Columbus, Ohio—2010

Narrated by: Sergei Wright


Chapter Four




Pavlenko and I met last at my wedding, in Columbus, Ohio, he was all dressed up and danced a lot with his newly wed wife, they had been married less than a year, back in 1994. I came over to him, said: ·Paw’s going to be here soon, he called awhile ago, he’s at the motel.”
“I don’t want to talk to him,” Pavlenko said to me.
“So just don’t talk to him, but don’t cause any fuss on my wedding day” I said. We all knew how Pavlenko felt about paw, I mean I knew, and my second wife knew and my sister knew. So did paw. And he knew we all knew. And we all knew he also knew, or did know. So that was fine. So Pavlenko’s part in my wedding festivities was set.
The wedding was held at the old redbrick Episcopal Church, in the mid part of the city’s residential center here in Columbus, and downstairs was the reception area. In the backroom was the dance floor. No windows at all in the lower section of the church, just all duplicated sunlight, lots of overhead lighting I mean. When my father came, he said something, introduced himself over the microphone, said hello to Pavlenko, and his wife, and they hesitated but said hello back—I was a little surprised, and on the dance floor paw tried to take his picture, and that annoyed Pavlenko. I was still staring straight at Pavlenko not to make a fuss. Down the road a few months, he’d demand from Natasha the pictures he took and gave to her, she wasn’t mad at him, at that time, at paw or Pavlenko, but that caused some friction. And she told him not to act like a kid, and that annoyed him even more, and Boris told him the same thing, and that annoyed him beyond reproach. Boris is my sister’s husband, big bulky guy, looks like that guy that is always fighting Popeye, I think his name is Brutus. And paw showed up at the dinner, didn’t eat much, I don’t know why: and I thought right then and there, as I’m thinking now: for all those years of carnal sins, lies and more lies, as if he was building a pyramid to stack them on, condoning his lies—he must have had a good memory back then, to be able to recall them at will: not realizing how alone I felt all those years, wishing he was there, I can’t stop reminding myself, forgiving him, he chose our death before taking us. I know now people can really be unkind.
Anyhow, he crossed the floor to dance with my wife, as if gravity lifted him up, very light on his feet for his age; he was a good dancer, better than I. And I saw him coming out of the bathroom as Pavlenko was coming around the corner, and he was mad as hell because paw wanted to somehow talk to him, but Pavlenko wouldn’t, or couldn’t because of his anger. Oh, Pavlenko didn’t, wouldn’t admit it was because he didn’t take him when he could have, he pretended like I pretended it was for other reasons—we even came to believe those other made-up reasons. Because admitting not taking us, was too hurtful, too shameful, too much to endure, too belittling. He didn’t realize when we went to school, we had to tell everyone something, make up something why we couldn’t be raised by our own parents. Anyhow, between the shadows on the dance floor, I lost track of pa, then I heard he went back to his motel. That’s when I got wondering—thinking dad was too confident and comfortable not knowing I also was angry at him, not just Pavlenko

Pa. Pa. Pa.

what now?



____________†___________
St. Louis, Missouri, Ohio—2010


Narrated by: Karin O’Hara-Wright

Chapter Five




Pavlenko and my father are sitting in the living room. Pavlenko is fiddling with the television hand controls again, pa is lighting up a cigarette, holding it in his right hand, watching Pavlenko fiddling with the controls—I’d wish he’d not do that, he drops it all the time, and the batteries fall out, and I’ve had to tape it a few times back together, I’ll have to buy a new one sooner than later, not sure why he does that. They see me pacing back and forth from the kitchen to the living room—they don’t know I’m thinking, at least my husband don’t know what I’m thinking although maybe my father does, I’ve talked it over with him: Pavlenko, he told me a while ago, and it sticks in my mind, that he went to see his father one time at the hospital, back in ’94, when he was dying, and he sat out on the stools outside his room and his father asked for him to come in but he didn’t, I just came upon the reason why: he didn’t really come to see his father, for exactly the reason to see his father for the last time he came to see his father—to hear about his father that he was dead, once and for all, now I know, and believe: because he couldn’t have forgiven him of those lost childhood years without him saying something to me, he even tried to stop himself from going to the hospital, but that failed, he wanted something, perhaps to be part of the inheritance, he was well off and not married, worth a million dollars or more.
I brought them each a beer, then some popcorn. They kind of watch me; I think pa wants to talk to Pavlenko alone. We’ve had some separations in our marriage, like Pavlenko’s father and mother had, he’s been gone a good while, and I’ve had to support my daughter on my own; he’s just like his father, and too close to the woods to see the trees.
“Where’s Mary Ann?” Pavlenko says.
“She’s licking the cake mix,” I tell him. When I was a child I loved doing that, especially with the frosting. It always tastes better in the batter, than before it’s on the cake, I wonder why?
“Your father and I need another beer?” says Pavlenko to me.
Especially at night, the frosting is better than in the morning for some reason.
“Waiting!” says Pavlenko. He drinks when my father is here because I won’t say anything, and he knows he shouldn’t drink with all that medication he’s on—he’s like his mother somewhat, it can trigger a relapse. I wish Mary Ann was bigger, and then I wouldn’t have to worry about both of them. Pavlenko used to take care of himself, now he’s fat and unkempt. You can’t preach one thing, and do another, I mean, you look worse than the person you’re talking about, and it makes you think he’s living a secret life of hate, and if he can hate so easily, and not forgive, how can he expect to be forgiven for his misconduct? After his father’s gone, if or when it happens and I’m around, and Pavlenko’s around, I becoming convinced something will have to be done, he will be free of his hate, but I think guilt will set in. If only he could give up and surrender and do away with his resentments, he’s no longer that innocent boy. How can his child need him, or I need him then? You don’t need to need. It’s a choice. He doesn’t see, got to be a strong woman—any woman married to him would have to be a strong women. Otherwise, you’re lost. I thought.
“Come out and get the beer yourself, if you want one!” I say. He’ll go on talking to my father, complaining about his dad—some more, I met him once, he said hello to me and Pavlenko, he didn’t seem all that bad to me. He doesn’t let Mary Ann write him on the internet, like her cousin, does. And now I understand Sergei Jr., and his grandfather stopped writing one another—not sure why, maybe it’s a Wright trait.
“Come here, Karin!” Pavlenko says.
“What for?” I ask.
“I’m hungry, that’s why! I and your pa want some more popcorn!”
“Make the damn popcorn yourself, pa don’t like popcorn like you do! You lazy son of…you know what I mean.”
“Why are you getting so mad?” asked my husband.
“What?” I exclaim.
“Mad, mad, why are you so mad?”
“Don’t mind me. Besides, I don’t like football, perhaps that’s it! Just eat your popcorn and drink your beer” I say, more calmly now, now that he’s named my behavior, must have learned that from his psychologist father. I think of what we’ll do, when my daughter is all grown up and gone and she has children of her own. We don’t have anything in common, and I don’t care to take care of someone who can hate so long, so hard, so carefree. And then what, what will take place with my grandkids? He has me to where I’m afraid to contact his father to open up a relationship between my daughter and him—he doesn’t even know I’d like to try to do that. What will happen if he dislikes my daughter’s selection of husbands (?) I think often, if I’m curse with this in the future. My father has asked: “What right do you two have not to share your children with his father? How do you know he doesn’t want to have a relationship with his granddaughter? Just because he says so, Pavlenko says so, doesn’t make it so, or make it right.” Then my father also says, “What goes around comes around,” and I’m afraid of that also—since I’m supporting his behavior unwillingly, encouraging it, enabling it by saying noting, and going along with the program, his program. I mean, he didn’t seem like a bad person to let your child get to know—not any worse than his son, when I first met him. I couldn’t even talk to him to get to know him, lest I start trouble with my husband. His hate has to be my hate that is what he was saying—indirectly and silently saying without saying a word, and that is what I’m really mad about, and can’t say to him, just like he couldn’t say to his father why he was really mad. You see, it’s contagious.

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St. Paul, Minnesota—2005

Natasha Wright-Hides & Carla Lawson

((Ex-Wright) (Natasha’s mother))

(Talking-to her mother by phone)


Chapter Six


Pa, He could have done so much for us—or maybe more, we all wanted more of him I guess, more than he could give to us, had to give, or didn’t heave time to give between his drinking, and working and seeing us, and putting up with you mother, and then the separation, and then came the foster homes, for my brothers and me, he did take me for a year when I was sixteen-years old, and then I got pregnant, and he told me not to have an abortion, it was against God’s laws. And the abortion clinic and the State of Minnesota Social Worker all wanted me to kill it—and mother, you didn’t care, and didn’t seem to care, one way or the other. He persuaded me, not to get one, not you or the social workers, he said in essence: “You’re quite young to make such a decision, a kid making a kid’s decision, but just remember, whatever decision you make you can live with, because you make have a long life ahead of you,” although he didn’t insist, or force me to have my first of two children, gave me a choice, that—for that reason, I’m glad my two boys are now eleven and twelve years old; I’m thirty. So if you’re wondering why there isn’t any room in me for him for him, he just wasn’t that important in my life ma. He just made sure nothing happened badly—when he could, when he was around, and if it didn’t interfere with what he was doing at the time he was doing it, that is, if he wasn’t drinking or sobering up, and he was either drinking and sobering up all the time, but I suppose as he once said, “I didn’t have a father around he left when I was too young to remember, but from what my mother says, it was better that way, and as I look back now, it is better to have no father than the wrong father.” For me, he wasn’t the wrong father; he was to the contrary, the right one, just under the weather all the time if you know what I mean: hammering away at trying to succeed. Whatever breath he drew at the time, it didn’t do us three children any good, mentally all that much good, I know now he paid his child support, I think and we had insurance I think he paid for that, he told me once he did. If he knew he was about to take us, he’d be in a panic everything wasn’t’ perfect, he felt if it wasn’t perfect, that it all would cave in on him. We all waited, I was even fanning myself, waiting, so it seems. I said: if he’d just leave us alone, we’d forget he was around, but all of a sudden he came knocking at the doors of the foster homes we all were at, keeping his path always clean so he could move fast when he got a weekend to take us, oh he took us many a weekends, I suppose we all forgot that, if it had just been permanent, he even took on special trips alone, he took me to Bayfield, and Sergei to Gull Lake alone, and Pavlenko to West Fargo, North Dakota alone. He had promised us he’d take each one of us on a special trip, and he did, he kept that promise. And you mother, when I was with you, it would be just me, and you on a rolling rock, as if on a rolling rock falling down a hill into some kind of depression or dreamland, throwing fits and I was so young I didn’t know what to do. You were no better. But I was, or felt I was, alone. If I could just feel better about him it would be different—although he used to take me to the movies and plays down at the theater downtown and concerts, and then I didn’t feel alone. And you ma, had all those fits and spells and would pass out from that illness you have—I can’t even say the word you call it because it’s too big, and you’d do strange things, like opening up car doors that were not your car and the police would ask “What’s wrong with your mother?” then look at me strangely and say “She is your mother, isn’t she?” and I’d be crying, and we’d be on the street all alone, just me and you and the police, and I felt as if I was taking care of you, not you me, and the officers and the police car and the parked car you were trying to get into were on the streets and I was so young, and I even called dad up a few times, and most of the times he’d come and see that all was well, he even seen you in the hospital a few times, and took us kids home with him. And one time the boys went with him and I had to stay with one of your sisters while you recovered in the hospital. And I would have to write the policeman a note saying “I’m slow.” Father didn’t know all this was going on when it was going on. I told him when I saw him on those weekends.

He just sold the four-plex we live in, I’m glad. Boris got him in a bear hug a few months ago and squeezed the daylights out of him, and I was afraid he was going to kick us out of the apartment, and then he sold it. He owns half the neighborhood, Boris calls him the landlord king, used to work for him, they’re kind of mad at each other now. He says when he dies he’s going to give me his gold chain, but I don’t think he will any longer. Boris says he’s going to spend it all before he dies and we’ll get nothing.
The trees in the back yard look like naked chickens, they’re bare already, and it’s just the beginning of winter. I’m getting fat again ma. The squirrels run across our back porch all the time now, looking for food. Pavlenko doesn’t call us anymore, he and Boris don’t get along. Sergei used to call, but seldom calls anymore. The kids are getting too big to play with, and I’m thirty-year old now.
(It was just me and him, me and dad living in the apartment on East 9th Street, before I got married. I like it there, it was peaceful, no worries. Picking me up with his car and taking me here and there and was so proud to have me. I even remember telling him once, ‘I don’t want to be married anymore with Boris, he’ll never amount to much, and dad said, ‘If it comes to that, you can stay with me now, and the boy also, but give it a second chance, if you feel that way later, fine.’ I think he meant it, but I still think he was fearful of it. Funny, my mind never goes quiet anymore.)


Carla Lawson (Ex-Wright)


I got my own troubles Natasha…are you there? Wake up!

1) I got to pay the electric bill here at this home, or apartment.
2) The apartment is so small I can’t even exercise in it.
3) In this house, or building people are coming and going all the time, and I have to be ready at 12:15 p.m., to eat each morning, and have to buy my own supper and breakfast if I want those other two meals. And I smoke so much my throat hurts.
4) I hear people in their beds all night long crying, and complaining, talking, some even have lovers. And I hear people in my head that aren’t really there.
5) I’m tired.
7) I got fish, three goldfish, and now I want to flush them down the toilet, they’re too much work, too much trouble, every breath I take I think about those gold fish that have no memory of what I do for them, feed them and keep their water clean, and warm—not too warm, and I tell them, told them “Go somewhere else if you don’t like it here!”
8) It’s really a daily job here, I have to clean up the room, empty the garbage—take it down those flights of stairs and go around to the back of the building and throw it in the high trash dispenser. I also take care of some events here for the building and its residents and that takes a lot out of me, and they inspect my room, and I have to pay one forth of my welfare check to live here, so don’t complain to me about this and that, this is a hole, it just doesn’t stink, plus in this place the people are uptight all the time, two thirds of them. And some of the older men sit around the lobby like buzzards and look at you as if they want to rape you: just give them the chance. Be happy your father wasn’t like them. You always did like him better than me anyhow, but I always wanted you more than the boys because we understand one another better.

(Click: the phone is hung up…!)



____________†___________
St. Paul, Minnesota—2005


Narration by the Person Behind

Chapter Seven


(A Week later) Carla Lawson (who has, since her divorce from her husband some fifteen-years prior, taken back her maiden name) sits back in a wooden chair by her window looking out it, down three floors. Eyes drooping, remembering her years of marriage, her husband’s drinking, and staying out late, the years he was in the Army, in Germany, and when she had joined him. The number of times she ran away from him, then came back, her hospital visits, her medications…. “I can’t love them boys like I love my daughter, I’m scared of the boys now, they terrify me,” she says out loud to herself, mumbling, motionless. Then moving her head in circles, as if to draw circles in the cloud she sees outside, lights up a cigarette—as often she does, one after the other—she’s not supposed to smoke in her room, but she does, everybody does she tells the visiting nurse. She sees her ex-husband entering the room, remembers his shape, handsome, rigid, he enters the room, and slips through her day-dream so fast she’s trying to backtrack and bring him back into her dream, but other intervening thoughts enter the path he was on before he reaches her window—and he vanishes. His high drunken faces come back to her in burps, fragmented images, pale eyes, high-blooded face. “I told her you weren’t a bad father,” she said staring out the window, “shut up!” seeing someone peeking into her conversation; she says, continues to look out the window, staring and not seeing, quieter than a mouse, “you got no affection or gentleness, you never had any” she says, then looks around to see if that peeping tom is still peeping inside her head, “You could have been better!” she tries to explain. She rubs her eyes, puts her hands on her knees, she says hardly, savagely, in silence—not one spoken word: it’s getting ready to rain, and I got to go downstairs and give account to those damn board members, I should never had elected to be the treasure.

She wakes up from her sleep; she dozed off for a moment. Last time he called, Christopher Wright called her, was a year ago, talking about Natasha and Boris hitting the kids too much, and the state would not intervene. And the last time she called him was a year before that, trying to convince him to tell Natasha to call her because they were fighting and she wanted to make up she even told him “Natasha’s the only one I care about.” This now was fading in her mind, as she gained her composure sitting in that chair.


She now glances behind her to see if the peeping tom has manifested himself to a physical being, somewhere in her three-hundred and fifty square foot apartment, “Well……” she says, it’s not real after all, awry she stands up as if to gain the rest of her composure to go downstairs to meet the board members of the establishment.

“I wonder what he’s doing now?” she questions, in a mumble.











____________†___________
St. Paul, Minnesota—
2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011


Narrated by Carla Larson

Chapter Eight


I wonder what he’s doing now.

I wonder what he’s doing now.

I wonder what he’s doing now.

I wonder what he’s doing now.

I wonder what he’s doing now.

I wonder what he’s doing now….


____________†___________
Lima, Peru, 2010

Narrated by Christopher Wright

Chapter Nine




“When I was poor, we were all knitted together like bees in a honeycomb, once I became rich and tried to help, they all flew away, thinking they were all innocent with their resentments: and it was time for me to pay for my sins.”


____________†___________
Minnesota, 2004
(A phone conversation between Delilah and her sister Mini, in 2010 between Minnesota and Huancayo, Peru…)

Narrated by Delilah Wright
(Step-mother to the three children)

Chapter Ten







Did you know, a day in late summer of 2004, Christopher checked out one of his apartments Boris had worked on—he was his one of three of his handymen, putting in a new kitchen floor of tiles, there was small cracks between the tiles showing, consequently, a job done too fast, and overlooked—in essence, not well done at all. Within the hour, he had called his daughter up; they lived across the street from us back then, in one of our apartment buildings. That is, Christopher owned six buildings at that time—since Boris was a handyman, caretaker of two of his buildings, this one in question, being the one we lived in ourselves and the apartment was next to ours on the second floor.
Natasha had two boys, one eight, the other six, Christopher’s grandchildren, we saw them quite often in those days and they took quite a liking for their grandfather, and he them, the youngest Willie, would ask his dad, often asked his dad, perhaps too often: “Why does grandpa work so hard and you just lie around?” I used to laugh at that, Boris being such a large man, and lazy as the day is long, pert near, or close to, two-hundred and seventy-five pounds, let’s say, almost six-foot. And when Christopher explained to his daughter it was a bad job, she took offense, told her husband, “He yelled at me, and said you did a very bad job,” and Boris came over like a mad elephant and tried to kill my husband, tried to break his ribs, I jumped on his back, and then I said, “Give me the key to the cellar room, you can still wash your cloths here, but you’ll have to ask you father for the key from now on, I no longer trust your intentions.” And had it been up to me I would have called the police and had him arrested for assault, but Christopher insisted he didn’t want to, I think the reason being, the kids would have no father for a while, and he understood that better than anybody—because he never had a father, and a lazy no good for nothing father, one that loved his kids even if he slapped them in the back of the head too often, was better than no father at all, as long as he didn’t damaged the kids none. He didn’t drink any, and he didn’t beat the kids to pulp, he just slapped the back of their heads too often too much. But that never hurt the kids all that much; it just gave them better reflexes, so it appeared.
“You’ll never see your grandkids again,” said Boris to Christopher, in a near whisper, as he left the house, walking down those wooden stairs like a lopsided elephant, with a smirk on his face.
I didn’t know he had said that until Christopher, until he told me a year or so later, sometime later, and from thereon, they never spoke to us again, and if the kids tried to greet their grandfather, either Boris or the daughter, would slap the kids on the back of the head to apparently stop them.
“What did I do,” asked my mother-in-law, one day, Teresa to her son, because they wouldn’t speak to her either. And Christopher simple said, “It’s all right, you didn’t do anything, you didn’t need to do anything.”
It was like Boris and Natasha had to knock everything down in front of them, like they couldn’t stand just anything that had to do with us thereafter, except giving bloody noses—passing through our yard to get to the nearby bar and visit their friends, and smirk some more if they saw us on the porch. Not sure why they even cross over that way. For the first year they walked around the house to get to Rice Street, or the local bar, now it was through the yard as if they were going to inherit it, and the daughter was simply notifying us of that. Boris was more apprehensive of doing it, so it looked on his face. But somehow I always think daughters no matter how much they tell everyone they hate their fathers, they don’t mean it, they say it to make a point to someone impress someone else — maybe I’m wrong. They weren’t sorry for a thing, and I wondered why Christopher didn’t get Boris on an assault, he said, “If I did, the kids would never forgive me, nor ever really understand, and it’s better for the kids, they’ll learn someday by accident.” And so that’s what he said, and that’s kind of what I figured.

____________†___________
Columbus, Ohio, 1998 (Now 2010)

Narrated by Sergei Wright

Chapter Eleven




“Once a bastard, always a bastard,” that’s what my brother said father was. That’s what I told everybody he said, about my dad back then and what I tell them now if they ask me. I even tell them “You’re lucky if you don’t know him.” I told him, my father, “I’m grown up now, you can’t fool me anymore,” and he didn’t understand what I meant by saying fool him any more, I suppose what I meant was I didn’t have any more faith in him, I didn’t believe a word he was saying even if he wasn’t saying a word, but just thinking of saying a word, and not saying one. But what he said, he said, back in 1998, what Pavlenko said he said to dad was: “I’m a Marine now, and just as tough as you.” And pa said “Prove it!” And Pavlenko resented that. And I knew, and pa knew he was on medication, like mother was on medication for twenty-years or more, the same debilitating illness. And Pavlenko said, “This is the last time you’ll ever see me,” because he didn’t want to prove it, not sure why, he had actually built up a current, and their voices were high, and he meant it, but he didn’t back up his word, and maybe father knew he wouldn’t, or couldn’t, but he created the devilment and perhaps got embarrassed he couldn’t pull through it. He put pa in the corner, and as pa used to say “If you ever put someone in the corner he’s got to fight or run like hell, or melt right there, you don’t give him many choices, so it’s best you leave a little room for both of you to wiggle out of…” and neither one left that inch to wiggle out of. And he told pa, I hated him just as bad as he hated him, and pa asked me, “Do you hate me like Pavlenko hates me?” And I said “No,” but that was a lie too. Maybe not a complete lie not likes his lie mine was a white lie, a distortion—no, a generalization—no, I just left something out didn’t say the whole thing: a deletion that’s what it was. I didn’t hate him; I simply resented him for thinking he was so innocent.
And paw told me, “If you spent more time teaching your daughter how to spell, than on the computer looking for a wife over in the Philippines, and riding on that motorcycle of yours, she’d be able to spell “Get,” the proper way, not like she does now: “Git”, and that infuriated me, and I told him to apologize to her, and now she doesn’t want talk to Grandpa anymore because he won’t apologize and I made an issue out of it. And grandpa isn’t going to say he’s sorry because he’s not sorry, and doesn’t understand why he should be sorry for correcting her—he wrote me and said: “That’s a grandfather’s job…!”
I told him then that I got my bad spelling from him and she got it from me, although he doesn’t spell that bad anymore, he must have practiced, or he carries a dictionary around with him nowadays, since he got his Doctorate in Education, he can’t afford to be a bad speller anymore, not to say he isn’t, he just can’t afford to show it like I do, and my daughter does. I don’t blame her for not talking to dad, and I’m not sure if I blame him, but if I don’t blame someone I got to blame myself, and I don’t feel guilty. But perhaps that’s my sin—no one else.

Then I got thinking: So what, so he did what he did, other father’s have done worse, he has to pass through them gates to get to heaven just like I got to, just like everyone has to, God is no respecter of men: my father’s own words, and that even Christ Himself, will not take a sinner in unless they’ve asked for, forgiveness, and have also forgiven another person, forgiven everybody who has ever done them wrong, and not forgiving is just as bad as about any sin I know of, and father knows that better than anyone I know of, and so he’s taking that route to heaven I bet. Gee I thought I’d never understand why, but now I’m beginning to, believe that maybe I do. And that is all I’m thinking of at this moment.
I can just see us three kids now, when we were young, in that time, and day, we all followed him, trusted him, anyway followed him because we were supposed to, into hell or hi waters, we would have followed him, for the reason that he was who he was, then we came home, then we went back to our foster homes, then we grew up. Certainly, why not blame him now; because we can. I can remember if I didn’t think about pa taking us, and just eating, it was off my mind. For a while anyhow: and Grandmother Teresa, never seemed to care much one way or the other, if she did she only showed it in giving us gifts, he was like her, he didn’t want the responsibility, couldn’t deal with it I suppose. But it’s all right, I got used to it in time, I even expected it.



____________†__________ _
Lima, Peru, 2010

Narrated by: Delilah Wright

Chapter Twelve



Christopher, had come to the point, realizing that Pavlenko, who now lived in St. Louis, Missouri, with his daughter, he had never seen, never been told her name, unknown wife’s name, and Natasha, her two boys of whom he had a very good relationship with until Boris took care of that, they still lived in St. Paul, Minnesota, in the same apartment building Christopher once owned, and he sold it, and told the new owner to leave the rent the same as it was, $450 dollars for four months, because he wanted to raise it to $750, of which, Boris only paid $100-dollars of the $450 anyhow because of the little work his son-in-law did and daughter did, said she did, but seldom did like cleaning up the hallways, and then we’d get a call from the tenants, to clean the hallways; and Sergei, now living in Ohio, and his son Sergei Jr, who lived in Florida, and his daughter who lived with his second divorced wife, in Florida, he had simply reached the point where it was utterly hopeless to try to put back a any kind of a relationship with any of them, So here he was, “I’m tired of trying to fix up something I don’t know anything about, old resentments, wounds that turned to scars, scars that healed but in the wrong places, where one can see them everyday and maul over them. My mother was in an orphanage, and she never hated my grandfather for it, and I was in a foster farm because my mother had to work for and save money for three years, and here the children are in foster homes for six-years, and they hate me, and their ill mother. That’s just fine. If anything they are downright honest about their feelings, coming out with them in the bright sunlight. They just don’t know the circumstances, and likely never will; the only one here that is up to date is me. If they ever will be; one is just as wrong as the other. They got half of it right. But by and large, they aint got a thing to complain about.”
I told Christopher, “Calm down, Christopher, you’ll have another heart attack. Go to bed, rest you’ll feel better.” He read a disturbing e-mail from his son Sergei, scolding him again.
“I can’t,” he said. “I tried.” He looked at me. “I’m the father, not him, and he’s treating me like I was his son, it’s better we have no communication than this?” he questioned, it was more a statement-question, one not to be answered but, thought through.
“Of course you’re the father,” I said. “Certainly, he is the son,” I added. Not really knowing what in the world I was talking about, just trying to reconfirm, he was who he knew he was.
“No,” he said “I don’t feel like a father, and don’t want to be one anymore if that is how it is; it is just as best we part even part that part.”
“Yes,” I said, “Do you want me to write him and say never to write again if he can’t write something decent?”
“Yes,” he told me. Then he said, “I’m tired,” and went to bed.

The following day, I said: “It’s all said and done, all open now between you and Sergei.” And then I told myself to keep my mouth shut, stay out of it, although I objected to Sergei’s insults on the internet to his father, and I wrote him and told him so. And it was then, he invited all the church members over to our house, and the nuns from the convent, and had ten papers made up, and had them all sign it, leaving them everything, two houses, three bank accounts, $100,000-dollars in books, and antiques, everything from shoe laces to diamond rings.

____________†___________
Interlude, 2005

Narrated by: the Person Behind

Chapter Thirteen



As for Christopher a simple and easy choice would be to mend fences or you don’t mend fences and wash your hands good and clean of it all. And then there are those folks who say you want to mend them, or tell other people you want to, would like to mend fences, just for telling sake. And this is what Sergei was telling people, implying he’d like to do with his father…but? Yes, he had questions, too many. You might say it was to his advantage with his son, he looked good, giving him a tender and gentle heart, who’s to say it couldn’t melt over night? But that was faith and a lie and I mean, Sergei Jr, was a thousand miles away, but Christopher wrote Sergei one day said, “You better hope your emulating isn’t picked up by your son,” which never proved much because he never got an answer back. But he had not stopped giving his father advice on how to be a good father, and I doubt, Delilah, if anybody was happy about that.

It was in the winter of 2005 the unthinkable took place. Hate that was still under the bridge came out, enough to fill up the Mississippi River. And if his daughter didn’t want anything to do with it, she was outvoted by John, the old caretaker, Christopher fired for stealing, everything he could get his hands on, and now living with Boris and his daughter across the street on Albemarle Street. Or maybe it didn’t even take a vote, maybe she wanted to go along for the ride—that’s to say? They knew Christopher was moving to Peru, he had sent them a Postcard, that took three days to get to them that would have taken three minutes to deliver to them across the street, but they were not talking to Christopher.
“I’ll deliver it to them,” said Delilah.
“No,” said Christopher, “never mind that. I forgot how to talk to them nowadays.” The bridge that was destroyed by them had become uncrossable, even for Delilah—but somehow she was willing to attempt to walk through fire to get to them for her husband. If it could have been it would have been, that Delilah would have sent fireballs down their chimney. All the efforts to settle things had come to a halt. Mike Hides, had even started a rumor with the neighbors, that Old Man Wright, was telling fibs of the lady next door, about her wanting to go to bed with him, and he extended that to other gossip in the neighborhood. You feel sadness over this, as Christopher did, a sadness that rises form the death of a child—will a literal death but close to it, a merciless separation that is forced upon you. In a world and in a sphere that one has only so many days to count until his last day approaches. If the kids forgot anything, it was one thing for sure; they created a conspiracy, a scheme, a plot, with the salamander, not realizing they can go on living in rain-soaked stumps. He may be the outcast, but they go on surviving. They are capable of regenerating lost limps. And Christopher knew himself better than most men know their bad habits. And so he didn’t seek revenge that is why he gave his daughter reduced rent even after he sold the house, made a deal with the new owner. He knew revenge destroyed two, not one person in the overall picture; in this case a whole family was being on a Pilgrimage to the Village of Hades.
But he had been doing this for awhile, Mike had been spreading rumors for awhile, and when confronted by Christopher, saying, “If you’re talking about me, tell them all I’ve done for you, already done for you, not your troubles, and your painless resentment and conspiracy toward me, and that, that you don’t like me. And that you don’t know why you don’t like me, perhaps because your children admire me, and you less, or perhaps because the house you live in belongs to me, but tell them it is the house I wanted to give to you, the four-plex, but you was too lazy to take it, accept it, because you didn’t want the responsibility of collecting the rent, and paying the rest of the house mortgage, which after you collected the rent you’d live free—so I told you and showed you. You didn’t tell them that, did you? Of course you didn’t, you’re slow but not that dense, just resentful and revengeful and disrespectful and you’d rather accept the butts you father throws on the floor, than doing an honest days work for me, that’s called pride. You’ll take the money alright but not the responsibility.”

His wife would say, “My husband gives you vacations and cheap rent and money, and gifts, and all your father gives you Boris, are his old cigarette butts, and you respect him more, why?”
“I can say what I want to say,” he’d say to Delilah, and she’d just shake her head; but the unbelievable took place that winter of 2005, but I guess they ain’t the first critters to come up with such diabolical scheme, or schemes on their parents.
At this juncture Christopher was worn out, exhausted but still he restrained himself from wanting to close the door completely on their relationship, leaving it ajar for reconciliation.

John was the caretaker of Christopher’s nine-plex, and overall handyman of the six properties. Knowing his ex employer, the one that was going to give him a free house also, if he proved to be loyal, but with Boris —and alleged daughter, they tried to set the house on fire, via the garage, setting several brooms together, and pouring gasoline on them, and on the cement, soaking into the cement, all the way to the car, lit it on fire, and ran like hell. It was 4:00 a.m., in the morning,
For what? For $450,000-dollars of liquid free assets; His will had not been altered yet: but it soon would be.
In time, Christopher would find out this supposed secret, of it being them who tried to set the fire in the garage, Boris had babbled it already to everyone in the neighborhood. It just happened to be Delilah heard a voice while they were sleeping; it sounded like Teresa’s voice—her mother in laws, “Wake up, wake up, wake up…” an ever lasting echo. And it woke Delilah up, and she woke her husband who was ill with a debilitating neurological disease, to escape the impending fire in the garage. Delilah then put it out with a wet towel. The footsteps outside in the Minnesota snow looked like Boris’ that let up to the opened garage, and then it downed on Christopher Boris still had the garage key, and the neighbor indicated—had said “…it was a big man,” that it could have been Boris: but it remains an unsolved mystery—for the police, because Christopher never would allow himself to crystallize such a theory to the point of involving the police for his own reasons: “Had the fire connected with the upper part of the inside garage,” said the Fire Chief, “the whole house would have went up in a matter of minutes.”

____________†___________
Lima, Peru, 2010



Narrated by: Christopher Wright

Chapter Fourteen



Doesn’t that beat all? I bear the worry on how to feed them, pay the bills, the rent, the insurance, and I get to be begrudged by my children, and the risk for years and years to teach them the Lord’s way, while each of them one time takes one step ahead of me, without troubled minds, and gives to those foster homes and those folks who run those foster homes, with all the good old American currency I pay them to watch my kinds, give to them, what I should have gotten in the long run. And what do those foster folks do: counted those dollars and pay their house payments with it and when they die their kids inherit all those payments I paid to pay off their house mortgage, and my kids still giving them undying devotion, get a smile; me, I don’t even get that, doesn’t that beat all: with those numbered checks I could have bought a house, instead of living in an apartment, with no risk at all, they get all that respect and gratitude and homage and without a troubled mind—my kids give it freely. There aint no man living can say I didn’t do what I said I’d do—that I didn’t do all I could do with what I had at the time, even if I did things slowly, strangely and only paid half the money for eighteen months, out of countless years and years of payments, because I was working part time those eighteen months and the Judge said it was okay. And now after all those years of activity the begrudging continues, if that doesn’t beat all! And still they can’t figure it out—having children of their own, doing the same things I did. Same problems, different situations, that’s about it. And still I can’t tell them a thing and they can’t figure out a thing.

If you look at a person’s life, like a map, backwards, you will observe he is countries of his own, a skeleton-like country, and with hands stretching out crooked fingers stretching out. Sometimes those grasping fingers capture something in his childhood, in his teenage years, in his twenties, or thirties, or in later life, some shift to industry, commerce and speculation. In each in their own days: some become the Rock of Gibraltar, some sober as the waters of the seas, some like the ancient mariner and circle the globe with no home, and every home being their home: thus, being at home anywhere. Now look again at the map, and you will see innumerable grooves and nicks, many intrusive seas, and all the earth is flipped into a big ball of mountains, and hills and plateaus. Every valley, every country everything that is anything, that is self-sufficient, has formed its own sovereign way of life, government you might say, values and way of survival, and in-between all this, its own situations, in learning how to live among the many, through religion and culture and industry. In each case, like in my case, or my three kids cases or anybody’s case, stretching up and out those hands—the natural termination of this line of thinking this thought—in its reality there is nothing but atoms and space to push you forward or for you to stand still, just a torrent of expressiveness to think all will be fine from the environment around you, because everything looks fine around you, that everything is supposed to be fine because those certain people that have formed their own self in the mold of the many are fine.
Then in time we all become a little bald headed, round faced droopy jaws and chin, deep-set staring old eyes, broad and flowery nose, vivid testimony to a long hard lived life, if indeed you survived all that life had to offer you up to this point. So I have nothing to complain about, just that I have now come to the point the starting-point of knowing something, and that something is that I’m thus far, knowing nothing, or very little of something, that I’ve learned to doubt, particularly to doubt one’s own cherished beliefs, not in God, he’s the only real thing I know, but everything else. Everybody is prying into everybody’s else’s soul, to capture it for some reason, as if it is having a little of that God unhindered God figure in us, actually being a little God figure to someone else or those around you, that is why God did not want man to form idols, he couldn’t deal with it, he’d create his own gospel once he got to that kind of thinking, and have man begging to be pardoned for breathing God’s air, his air.
Nevertheless, I bequeath my children to whatever philosophy they can live with. They will die just like me, and have to leave something to the next generation. I gave them a moral code, kept them from the fear of men, taught them to remain within the law of man. Those other teachers gave them disintegrating egoism, and for that, a passion-ridden debating-society, I gave them more than they will ever know. I taught them virtue meant wisdom in the long run. Their foster parents taught them, and society taught them, and the welfare social workers taught them, to criticize creative harmony, to cherish chaos, and out of this they acquired violent and unsocial impulses as the ignorant man, the imitation of the beast. And what they give me in return is hemlock.



(Person Behind: so he said, thought, like a wildcat passes for a moment to take in a deep breath and sizes up his rivals…this is how he felt this day.) “Only now, I am just finding out how little my three offspring seem to have thought of me, only now! Doesn’t that beat all?”



____________†_____________
Rampage, 2010
(Reference to the Late 1960s—early, 1970s)

Narrated by the Person Behind

Chapter Fifteen


It was too late now, it was years—sitting in that small bar on the corner of Jackson and Acker Streets, off Sycamore, near the Old Oakland Cemetery, there at the corner bar called Mount Airy, sitting in the back in the dark, where one could only get a faint view of him, a shadowy profile, sitting in this cubbyhole, like gopher hole of a bar, every afternoon, evenings, the smoke of cigarettes settling—windless bar—settling above his head. He would talk to himself, with wit and humorous admiration “By Gosh, another day of drinking, when will it all end?” But he said nothing to his kids when he had kids, about those years, those long drinking days, they never knew, and they never asked, and had they asked, he most likely would never have told, and his wife at that time, before that time and after that time (in total he had four wives) said at one time or another: “I might as well stop asking where you’ve been, it would not bear saying,” she said looking at his back, over his shoulders. Thinking at times he was cheating on her, but the only lover he had, was the bottle, but even that has its elements of envy and jealousy and before God idols, “Thou shall not have other Gods before me!” that kind of stuff. She, Carla Wright (originally: Carla Lawson) never went to the bars with him—or said goodbye when he went, seldom kissed him, just existed, stood, sat, in her apartment, depressed, taking pills, manic, nearly sexless. After she cut up his cloths, on a night rampage, manic rampage, he had but one suit coat left, two pairs of pants, and three shirts, and all the green socks the drawer could hold.
“I’ll buy some new cloths first thing tomorrow,” he told her. Saying nothing more, save—he was still alive, once she took his 45-automatic, in the middle of the night, woke him up, threatened to pull the trigger. Then the day came they separated, and she stabbed him in the palm of his right hand with a kitchen knife, and that day he left, and didn’t come too soon for him.
And as time went on, he stopped drinking, and went back to school, and earned money, and there came a time when he had things he didn’t even know he was going to ever want to have, until he reached some years of sobriety. And then what he couldn’t give the kids when they were young, he gave to them now—he had a big bank account, money in it, he was, he became the Land Lord King. And he wanted to share it all. And he had got rid of that old drunken behavior. He was respectable. So you would have thought the kids would have been satisfied, he was. But they weren’t. He couldn’t say, a humbly thank you to him: Dad, thank you for being so good to us. Don’t make no mistake about that, it was a monument of hate the kids built, and it was Christopher what paid for that monument, although he didn’t design it. Don’t make a mistake about that. It was those kids. Because this was part of what he had to go though for him-self to get to where he could let go and go forward with his life. All they did was hanging on to him as long as they could use him. And they outgrew their father.



____________†__ _________
The Rose of Lima, 2010


Narrated by the Person Behind

Chapter Sixteen


Somewhere along the line, no doubt, for while Christopher came to the conclusion, all the ladies had died in the 1950s, as he knew ladies to be, because all he could find were women, that’s all that was left, all that was being produced in those days; most were ill, not ill, ill—but rather, born ill (as he figured) and by the time they could shown breasts, the illness was permanent. Before it was learned, now it was inherited. And he waited and married three women, and found a lady to be his forth wife, searched high and low, but after long prayer, God found one for him because he told God “I’ll even marry an ugly one, just if you can find one because I can’t.” But she wasn’t ugly; she was the Rose of Lima.

But—in the meantime—he had to live among the living, the living people with a scale of values that would slowly rot him away, so that is why he drank, said he drank, long after he had stop drinking, and he found his Rose of Lima. Got away from those dangerous women: one who had many lovers, one who tried to kill him, one who used him to pay her bills take care of her two adapted brats from South Korea that her ex husband couldn’t deal with, and she couldn’t deal with: a different kind of violence in each case: prompt with their demands on how a husband should be, without misgivings or remorse. That’s how it was in those days, before the Rose of Lima came into the picture. On the other hand, his children, that was his fate, I mean that was his doomed anguish to bear it, doomed from their birth: robbed, and betrayed and nearly murdered.
Then he married his Rose of Lima, it as a right quiet time then. And he felt she should have the best, and these now were the best of his years. Fifty-two years old, and she was forty.
“Marry her,” he tells himself, and that was good. “Escape from your children if you can’t fix it,” he tells himself and he did. Because it was constantly in his life, and he tried for the next ten-years to fix it: but his fate was to constantly just miss it, just miss the boat, so it all remained unfixed. And like anything in life, or most anything, you wait, and like everything in life the waiting ends, sometimes there is no such thing as waiting long enough, it is just not going to happen: as if you wait long enough the sun is going to black out for a month, not in this life time: not unless some volcano blacks it out for you.




____________†___________
Lima, Peru, 2008



Narrated by: Delilah Wright
(Talking to her sister Mini by telephone)

Chapter Seventeen



Sergei has stopped talking to his father now, over those old movies of the kids transferred from 8mm tapes onto a VCR, that Christopher wanted put on a DVD, which Christopher has sent him to do, that Sergei said he would do, and send the DVD back, and after two years of asking, Christopher told, he told Sergei, “By gosh, it’s over two years, I’ll send you the $7.00 dollars to do it, what’s the problem?” Sergei seemed to have some resentment in having been told to do it—although the times I’ve met Sergei, he never had done anything for his father anyhow, I mean his father paid his way to Peru, and when he went to buy himself a coke, he never even thought about getting his father one, and when he paid his way to Los Vegas, gave him a hundred dollars to gamble with, his father asked him if he had that hundred dollars left, because he had implied if he won, he could give it back to him, and if he lost, don’t worry about it, and he won $100-dollars, and told his father he won one-hundred dollars, and that that didn’t count, it was not the free one-hundred dollars he originally gave him, it was the money he won—so now having been asked if he needed the seven dollars to get the DVD done, he resented that also, so he was trying to sabotage the relationship: as if to say “Get out of the way,” and Christopher did. He didn’t like to even have been asked to do it, now told to do it, and the request has turned into a slurred remark, or taken as one, and Sergei, said “I got things also to do, like work out at the gym, and …” so forth and so on—and that was that. And I suppose you could say, Sergei, like his brother, locked the door that day. And then Christopher found out he was put on medication likewise.
Christopher can’t figure that out the realism behind all this tape business and DVD business, unless he had destroyed the tapes in one drunken night fit, his mother had done that to their pictures, ripped them up and threw them in a fire one evening: I mean it was just a matter of dropping the movies off. The other issue is, so Christopher has said: Sergei’s brother Pavlenko, that one evening out at Como Park, sitting in a car, they had their biggest and final blast, back—let’s say, fifteen years ago, thereabouts, whereon, Pavlenko left the car, telling his father, “Forevermore, you’ll never see me!” Because he wouldn’t listen to his childhood complaints for another three-hours, like he had just done. He also had said, what my husband wouldn’t or couldn’t believe, that he now believes, that Pavlenko said about his brother Sergei, that when he asked Sergei if he said, what Pavlenko said he said, Sergei denied it, that “Sergei hates you more than I hate you.”

____________†___________
Huancayo, Peru, 2008



Narrated by: the Person Behind and Mini
(Talking to her sister Delilah by telephone)

Chapter Eighteen



Person Behind


Mini is sitting by her phone talking, her face is gravely composed, her sister on the other line of the phone, they’ve stopped talking, one of the many long inquisitive intervals, as if to catch their breaths, then plunge back into listening and talking, unimpeded through one another’s ears, and into the ultimate secret places of their lives, especially her sister’s. When she speaks her voice is quite, alert, without shame…





Mini


One thing I know is, that I really know at fifty-years old I really know, is that each man has got to come to grips with, or maybe two things a man has got to come to grips with: you make a plan, and you follow that plan until it is finished, you count the cost beforehand, and you pay the price, that’s maturity—either you have it or you don’t, it’s that simple. Second, a man must know his, his own self. Because whatever anyone else says, it’s out of self-interest, and if you give control to one person, or persons, they take control, and in the process, whatever you want to hear you hear it, and that makes you sensible and sensitive, but also gullible and easily lead into a soaked dilemma, and his kids, your husbands kids, knew this, the scoundrels, that’s right, they knew this, innocence, as old as he was, or is, it’s still called innocence, as wise as he was it’s still innocence, they were more deviant, and he was blinded to that deviance. Something he didn’t expect, too close to the forest to see the trees, as they say. Something he never imagined in all his days. When the kids were eleven and fifteen, and even nineteen, it was true, as true now as it was then: the bridge was up; he couldn’t cross it, it’s as simple as that.
“Is that it?” asked Delilah. Then she hesitated, said to me, “So I told him so, that he had to wait for thirty-four years to put it all together, to learn this, the hard way, the sure way, otherwise you’d not have believed it.”
Delilah hesitates again. Her voice is quiet. I lean to listen closer, I hope I didn’t offend her, I’m thinking. “Go on,” I tell her— “Speak!”
I suppose he was innocent in his own way, well, there are still a few gentlemen left over from the fifties, and most died long ago—I can assure you of that, only men left. But someone who came up from where he did can never lose—I tell my sister. He doesn’t ask, or expect, or trample on people or hold hard handed grudges, or bad feelings for folk, he knows the Lord demands this, and he’ll never put himself in the corner with Him—God forbid, should he.
(Delilah is listening closely)
On another note, he found meaning and peace to his life—especially with you sis, something no one can do easily, it’s no commodity, and he doesn’t want to lose it…and it is and was, and always will be free, for the taking, and he never threw it away, like so many do: respectability, being respected, having regard for yourself, mankind, animals, nature, God Himself, this is what he’s worked on, a good name, you work on it all your life as a man should, and you cash in on it everyday after you acquired it, until you lose it, and then… (the phone went dead…)


____________†___________
Lima, Peru, 2009

Narrated by Christopher Wright

Chapter Nineteen




There’s two wars going on in every man, and the hungriest warrior wins. That’s how it always has been—that’s how it is now. You wonder sometimes why God lets the evil one win sometimes or maybe more than sometimes, and the more I look into these two warriors, it is not that He really lets them win, it is simply that they are more prepared for battle. Pride comes before destruction, I told my wife once, and she never forgot it. Matter-of-fact, she points it out now and then. You know the other phrase I like is, what goes around comes around. Well, that’s enough sayings. Brianna is offended by her grandpa, that’s me, what for you ask? For correcting her spelling “Git” to the proper “Get” when you’re my age you can spell it anywhichway you want, and get away with it, or put it in a full length book, and you’ll never notice it, put it in a short story, and it will disturb the reader to the point, he’ll never forget that ‘git’ in the story, believe me, I know. Then her father, my son, says “You should apologize to her, she looks up to you.” And I think about that statement. Oh I love the kid, but…anyhow, then he says, “I love my kids more than you’ve ever loved me, I was alone inside of myself for all those years.” He meant all those years he never talk to me much when he was growing up, all those years I said, “Is there something wrong, tell me?” And now he’s telling me, but sideways, it’s all coming out sideways, through his unspoken words—the blind mirror. Through correcting my grandchild, through old 8mm movies: and I tell him, your kids emulate you, what goes around comes around, and pride comes before destruction, and here we are, the evil warrior is hard at work, on his black stallion. And I wonder how Brianna’s spelling has come along, she no longer writes me. Funny, Sergei forgot how I used some psychological conditioning on him, I gave him a dime for every word he spelled correctly, he’s still a hell of a bad speller, but can you imagine if I hadn’t got those dimes. And if you think that’s funny, he blames it on me. He’s got a god-awful way of looking at himself. I wish I could thing of more but some invisible wind is blinding my thinking, and I’m reeling in it. Snares make more snares, and somewhere down the line, efface themselves. Their hearts have seen the monoliths of hate, up cast like a whirlwind, a tide, it gleams no glory, enfolds their downfall, with a blasphemous echoes to the heavens, seals the eyelids of the angels, that can open doors for their betterment—yet they let no sunlight in, only vulture shadows.



____________†___________
Lima, Peru, 2010

Narrated by: Delilah Wright
(Talking to her sister Mini by telephone)

Chapter Twenty



Sergei Jr. wrote my husband several months ago, it took him five to six years to write him back, since last he saw him, when he was ten-years old, thereabouts—chumming it up some over the internet; he is now fifteen or sixteen, graduating from High School—no seventeen. They have an agreement, to write to each other often as not to become too separated like the rest of the family. I say had one? His father says he’s happy for him, but it sounds more like he has no choice but to play that roll, without offending his son—least he lose the goat and the rope—as they say over here. And for several months the grandfather and grandson carried on a light relationship over the internet, although they have met once—oh I already said that didn’t I, Mini—anyhow, they met at the airport for a brief half hour. Christopher tells Sergei Jr, he loves him but must break the relationship off, innocent as he might be from this family feud, why did he do it I asked myself? And I mention this to Christopher, “Maybe he’ll write you back and ask what he did wrong, and that this is not acceptable, and demand you put it back together?”
Well, Mini, to make a long story short, he simple said “If the journey is worth the effort, that’s exactly what he’ll do, and then we’ll go from there· It’s now in his hands.”
Well, lo and behold, Sergei Jr., writes him back, but what he tells him is this “Okay, if that’s how you want it.” And that was that, can you figure that one out? I mean, as the old sayings: “Easy come, easy go.” I wonder if Christopher knew that. I know he quotes the Lord and Job, and the Devil, and he said Job didn’t know what God was up to, and Job questioned him on that very subject because the Devil was getting his way pretty much with Job, and God had stepped back to prove a point. And God said to Job, in so many words: “If you’re so smart buddy, tell me what’s in my storeroom?” And Job said “I don’t know.” And God said “I figured that.” And then Christopher added to that, “Nobody’s innocent, Dear, not one darn soul down here on earth.” And then he said, “I’ll even quote your Mother Teresa concerning a person who wanted to be taught by her, and assist her with the poor, but wanted a personal invitation, and wanted a response from her through the mail, and he paraphrased her like this: “If she wanted to be with me over here in India with the poor, she’d not need my permission, she’d be here, nothing would stop her,” and then he added to that “And Dear, as you know, I’m not going anywhere too soon. And when I wanted to learn karate from the Greatest karate man in the world, I went to San Francisco, back in 1968, and I didn’t call him up for permission, I just went down there to meet him, and met him, and learned karate from him, his name—their names were Gosei and Gogen Yamaguchi, yes the famous Cat.”



____________†___________
Gratitude—Lima, Peru, 2010

Narrated by: Delilah Wright

Chapter Twenty-one




What wasn’t produced in those children was gratitude; I told Christopher that a hundred times I bet. Maybe only parents have that, are capable of producing that, I don’t know, I’ve never had kids of my own—I’m just going by empirical data, observations; and don’t plan on having any now, not at fifty-years old. But it would seem what little they might have had, what might have existed at onetime, they didn’t carry it over into their future, adulthood, those foster homes which cashed all those checks of Christopher’s, the ones he never got credit for—those foster parents never had to deal with teaching gratitude, it was a quality they had no time to produce in them, and they simply consumed all they brought with them, that Christopher embedded in them through emulation, through social comparison, through discipline: what they lacked in the foster homes. That when they left, left the foster homes, had to leave the foster homes at eighteen because they had no more to give to anyone—no more checks in the mail from their father, via, the social system, which was simply saying in the long run: “Sorry dad, every man to himself.” And Christopher, he had to learn that the hard way.

So the recipients of their gratitudes had already been supplied with all they had to give, which excluded the two generations of Wright’s before them. But Sergei wanted more, wanted the privilege of his father’s money—short term—a now or never thing, even in violation of his so called values, consequently, holding in his resentments when around his father; hid in the back salty chambers of his mind, eating at him, as salt eats away at those old brick walls by the sea in Havana. And he took what he could under the flag of forthrightness, he considered these trips to Las Vegas, and Peru, all paid for in cash, his father payment for—additional payment for—I mean it was a fair price to get out of his father, a compensation for holding in that long time resentment—out of the base fear he better do it now or never, now or never, it’s now or never, knowing he couldn’t—nobody could—hold it in forever. His brother, twin brother, fraternal twin brother, Pavlenko might have been the wiser—who’s to say—he made life more natural and normal and peaceful for himself, he didn’t bother trying to cover up his resentment for a life, a childhood ruined, valueless, he revealed it, and shut and locked the door behind him, as he did to the world around him, back in 1992. He didn’t get his free trips like Sergei.

____________†___________
Guilt—Lima, Peru, 2010

Narrated by: Christopher Wright


Chapter Twenty-two



If there is guilt or sin to be given out here—for not being with the children during those after formative years, perhaps it belongs to me, or perchance somewhere in-between two heavy rocks of hope I gave them, and the even a heavier rock above those rocks, that I never did take them, because I was between a rock and a hard place myself, because I was the one who brought them into this world all three of them children—namely me, who were incapable of harm at eight and nine and even ten (but surely not beyond that age, at eleven and fifteen and nineteen, who would never forget I owed them a better childhood beyond eleven to eighteen) take or give a year—and thus, bringing into their minds—hope. And unfortunately, they took that hope and created with their imagination an enticing picture, stretching it, and dreaming with it of someday being with their father, me; hope, that he, the father could pull them out of their beehive, foster homes, perhaps then I’m guilty. But guilty of what, that is what I have asked myself—all these years, that is why they are resentful. And in the process—I evidently give them dissatisfaction, and their giving that same dissatisfaction back to me—what they’re now giving to their kids on a silver platter—like to like, but they don’t see it.
Hope and dreams, that’s what it’s all about, what I gave and they can’t jump the gap—all three not just one, can’t jump the gap. Perhaps I was incapable in those years, trying to sober up, but also knowing the children were safe from folly where they were: knowing you’re incapable, not completely incapable, but incapable of keeping them out of poverty, and harms way, not incapable of loving them or making child support payment— or insurance payments, because it didn’t serve my will to let them stay where it was unsafe—that to me was loving them, it was harder not to take them then taking them, it only would have served them, their purpose, and that was what was important to them at the time, you got to count the cost, and follow the plan, that is what they don’t understand. Thus, I am guilty of the hope I had given them, even had given myself—that is me looking in the mirror—something they will have to do sooner or later—because no parent is perfect therefore expectations will be part of the folly concept they will have to learn, I’m talking about, Christopher Wright, me. That was the situation, the problem was hope not the situation, had I not given that—I don’t know, I think they may have run away, so I gave it to keep them settled, it was all I had available.


____________†___________
St. Louis, Missouri, Ohio—2010

Narrated by: Karin O’Hara-Wright


Chapter Twenty-three


“Pavlenko,” I say, “do you want your daughter by your side she’s eating up a storm out here?”
The breeze from the window is cool, I shut it, then bring Mary Anne to her father, put her between his legs on the rug on the floor, pa is sitting on the sofa next to Pavlenko, the dog leaped over Marry Anne’s legs.
“Your father, he’s a writer, or poet, isn’t he,” asks my pa to Pavlenko. “The son of a bitch, he’s nothing,” remarks Pavlenko.
“Why do you say that?” says pa.
“He’s a God damn son of a bitch, that’s why?”
“Don’t you call him that, he gave you life! Paid your bills, your insurance for health, I know he did, because I had to…” says my pa. It’s starting to get dark outside, I’m thinking it might be time and wise for my father to go home, Pavlenko gets triggered and you can’t stop his mouth, it becomes manic.
“It’s getting a little hot in here, men,” I comment to Pavlenko and my father “Do you want some coke or water or something pa?”
“I don’t understand him Karin,” pa says, “He leaves you and my granddaughter high and dry for months and months—I think a couple of years, just like he said his father did with him, and he wants you to forgive him, and me to act like nothing happened, and he didn’t pay any child support, and he can’t find any room to do the same, what a hypocrite.”
“I’d be obliged if you didn’t talk like that in my house, Mr. O’Hara” Pavlenko says.
“Why, you going to get mad at me like you have your mother, father, brother and sister and God knows who else, and kick me out?”
“Boy is it ever getting hot in here pa, and Pavlenko you should just go for a walk,” I said to both of them now staring at one another.
“Sure,” Pavlenko says.
“I’m fine, I got to go anyhow Karin,” and pa gets up looking for his cane and hat and jacket.
“Goddamn kids,” pa says.

____________†___________
Columbus, Ohio—2010

Narrated by: Maria Wright
(Wife to Sergei, from the Philippines)


Chapter Twenty-four



It is a fact, and I like facts, it appeared to make my husband more abrasive, in charge, something I can’t name, or put in place, but he had to challenge his father—that’s a fact, yes, there it is, that not only caused his father grief, but caused him all his grief, someone, somewhere said it’s the thing to do, and it ruined him—provoke your father that someone said, and he told me, that once his father told him, it was biblically dangerous to provoke your father, lest you throw a blessing away for a curse: because he just couldn’t come outright and say, “Pa I hate your guts, for not taking care of me when I was eleven to eighteen, but I forgive you.” I mean if you can say what you need to say, and then forgive, and go on with life, isn’t that better? That’s what I gather anyhow, from the looks of things. He got his teeth fixed and said “I had to go in the Army to get that done, my father was too cheap to flip the bill.” When he talks about his father, he gets hard looking. And then I see his eyes, it is a fact, and I like facts, facts are all wrapped up in a pretty box, and in his case, he had hidden the box until now until the day he rebelled—what a shame. I haven’t said anything to him about this, I don’t know why, I should, if he treated my father like he treats his father, and if I treated my father like that I’d expect him to say something. But when he talks about his pa, his eyes pop out, he has to calm his-self down, he stutters some, or can. I suppose he never could say to him what he wanted to because of that, and he never had the words to write him how he was feeling, so he just said—perhaps said: It’s easier to hate. And I said It’s easier to stay out of it. And his pa must have said the same thing somewhere along the lines. He must have said: I can’t wait for you forever—what a shame. His father wrote Sergei, said he found me over the internet, that’s true, he found me and I found him. And he said that his son should have spent more time teaching his daughter how to spell, I suppose he had plenty of time to do it if she had been round, but he was here in Columbus, and she was in Texas and then in Florida, he had to do it in installments when she came to visit, and that was not all that often. But I suppose my husband has lived a similar life as his father, he just doesn’t see it, and I’m not going to remind him of it—not yet, anyhow.


____________†___________
Conclusion to Part One, Peru, July 2, 2010

Narrated by: the Person Behind


Chapter Twenty-five



Well, since everyone else is quoting old phrases, I’ll quote one: anyway you slice the cake, it comes out all messed up, not enough pieces left to put the family back together as it once was. And now, the family that once was, no longer is; the family that had a picnic each year in the park, for so many years, back in 1982—to who knows when, when the boys were eleven, and the daughter, nine, and the grandmother was sixty-two, and Christopher was thirty-five. One is dead and the rest are all alienated from one another, not uncommon for this day and age, just sad. All over, oversights, past resentments, innocence, corrections, and just plain old ignorance, and plain old pride—somewhere along the line they’ve all picked up the double edged sword, and created a war just to see if they could create one, out of building blocks called innocent-resentments. And what I remember Christopher saying, and how true this all is: “When I was poor, we were all knitted together like bees in a honeycomb, once I became rich and tried to help, they all flew away, thinking they were all innocent with their resentments, those old wounds that never healed.” That’s Christopher Wright’s last statement, the last time I talked to him.

Christopher Wright goes to his bedroom and falls to sleep…




Part Two of Two Parts

Fragility


July 3, 2011: Christopher Sleeping (dreaming)




Christopher


Well?


Delilah


No. Your son and grandchildren have not called you, or written you on the internet since, well, since…



Christopher


I could have told you that. (He hears the wall clock strike 3:00 a.m.)



A voice (to Christopher)


You’ve still got time, you’re not dead, and you know where they live and you have their e-mail, and can get their phone numbers if you want.



Christopher


And then what, be their puppet old man, do as they say, blackmail me for their love? (He lights up a cigarette.)



A voice (to Christopher)



You forgot how to smoke, you haven’t for twenty-five years; you got to put it between your two lips and press down, suck in the smoke. Besides smoking, what would you suggest you do: I mean go forward, wait, hang it up? Call the cops (the Voice laughs). You got your out now…



Christopher


An out, what does that mean?




Delilah (to the voice, on part of Christopher)


That isn’t the right way to say it, you know. You can just stop talking like that and talk plainer, Christopher, save yourself all the headaches they got piled up for you. Leave them where they are, or wait till they get back on track and start over: that’s what he means.



A voice (to Delilah, on behave of Christopher)


For gad’s sake, that’s what I just said, maybe I said it wrong. You’ve got those pictures and some letters of your boys, haven’t you? Reminders; but what you really got is at the truth of the matter, the fidelity of life. And your kids can not produce something they don’t have.



Christopher


Oh yaw, the letters and postcards they sent me years ago when they were in the Army, and pictures, and a few other things, that’s correct I still have them (he reaches for his covers and pulls the blanket over his back, it’s cold in July, in Lima).

There you go, you’re comfortable.



A voice (to Christopher)


I’ve told you more than once, I didn’t want to go over this and over this, again and again until you’ve made up your mind, at least half way, and you should find a new dream voice. (They watch each other for a moment; it seems he’s looking in a mirror, except the Voice’s figure is foggy) Smoke that damn cigarette or put it out? (Christopher coughs, puts the cigarette out, stomps on it on the invisible floor.)

Go ahead and do what you got to do tomorrow.



Christopher

And what’s that?




A Voice (to Christopher)


Here we go again, am I speaking Greek? I mean what we are talking about here, Delilah, you tell him!




Delilah (to Christopher)


(A lighter appears out of nowhere, she snaps it on, it lights.) The letters and pictures appear, and other items Christopher has saved from the past.))

He’s offering you an out (she draws the items closer somehow).




A Voice (to Christopher)

That’s what they’ve done to your memorabilia, Mr. Wright.




Christopher


You mean burned it?



A voice (to Christopher)


Just remember you said that not me. But I will say, for the sake of saying it: you are a better man than they are. Aren’t you?



Delilah moves over towards her husband flops her hand over his shoulder. Christopher’s dream is now becoming shapeless.




A voice (to Delilah)


Come on. Let’s get out of here, moral is dull, and I don’t want to suggest I had any decision in this matter— (Christopher sees Delilah fading, and following the voice… and he drops a match, the Voice drops a match on the way, and the papers and pictures and other items start to burn up, and Christopher is running to save what is left…)




Christopher
(Screams at the Voice but he screams to where he wakes up Delilah)



You’re a thief and a spy!



Delilah
(To Christopher—both are awake now)



Who are the thief and spy?




Christopher (to Delilah)



Oh, just somebody in my dream (not looking at anything, facing the opposite side of his wife, inscrutable).




End to the Story



No: 638 (July1 thru 8, 2010) First Draft Copyright by Dlsiluk © 2010 “Innocent-resentment (Of All Men)”