Innocent-resentments (Of All Men)
A Novelette
By Dennis L. Siluk, Ed.D.
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.
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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
1970s—St. Paul, Minnesota
Narrated by: the Author
Chapter One
(Introductory Chapter)
They weren’t born yet, Sergei, Pavlenko 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, so by the time the grandchildren would have children, she’d be able to say, before she died July 1, 2003, what her son Christopher would be able to say, seven years after she might have said it, which he did say: “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, 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. 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, 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 them but no longer could or would. This was the beginning of held-in resentments towards their father, mother, and even grandmother.
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Foster Home, 1992, Minnesota
Narrated by: Pavlenko Wright
Chapter two
So this is what Pavlenko Wright knew about what was taking place in his life, his brother’s life, and his sister’s life, his—I didn’t know my father was a drunk, and mother was mentally ill until I got born and big enough to know about such things. And when I got to know about them, my father said he’d take me out of the foster care—the homes—but he lied, and never did. 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 too angry—and then I stepped out of the car, and forever, telling him forever, I’d never want to speak to him again.
(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; we realized that that object of alcoholism was his soul excuse to unburden himself with us.
Well he said, I think he said, “You can get blood out of a turnip,” and I just looked at him, I was on a roll, talking faster than I could think. “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 while of waiting he had no use for us kids. And I suppose 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, but to be the best would have been stopping his lying to take us. I can hear the words he said clear as I can hear the birds chipper in the trees out at the Como Park, “I’m working on it son, it’ll take a while.” Then in 1988, he said “Okay, I got an apartment, you can move?” 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.
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Columbus, Ohio—2010
Narrated by: Sergei Wright
Chapter Four
Pavlenko and I met last at my wedding, in Columbus, 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, he’s at the hotel.”
“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.
The wedding was held at an old redbrick 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 pa 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, she wasn’t mad at him, at that time, at pa 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.
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 pa wanted to somehow talk to him, but Pavlenko wouldn’t. 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?
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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, pa is lighting up a cigarette, holding it in his right hand, watching Pavlenko fiddling with the controls. They see me pacing back and forth from the kitchen to the living room; 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 and his pa, he’s been gone a good while, and I’ve had to support my daughter on my own; he’s just like his father.
“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 before it’s on the cake, I wonder why?
“Your father and I need another beer?” says Pavlenko.
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 for his—he’s like his mother. 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.
“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, I met him once, he said hello to me and Pavlenko, he didn’t seem so 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.
“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.”
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St. Paul, Minnesota—2005
Natasha Wright-Hides & Carla (Natasha’s mother)
(Talking-to her mother by phone)
Chapter Six
Pa, He could have done so much for us, 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 have it—and you didn’t care one way or the other. He could and did do that for me, because I’m glad my two boys are now eleven and twelve now; I’m thirty. So if you’re wondering why there isn’t any room in me for him, he just wasn’t that important in my life ma. He just made sure nothing happened badly. 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 do strange things, like opening up car doors that were not your car and the police would ask “What’s wrong with your mother,” and I’d be crying, and we’d be on the street all alone, just me and you and the police officers and the police car and the parked car you were trying to get into. 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 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.
Carla
“I got my own troubles Natasha:
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.
4) I hear people in their beds all night long crying, and complaining, talking, some even have lovers.
5) I’m tired.
7) I got fish, goldfish, and now I want to flush them down the toilet, they’re too much work.
8) It’s really a daily job here, I have to clean up the room, I 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 don’t stink, plus in this place the people are uptight all the time, two thirds of them.
(Click: the phone is hung up…!)
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St. Paul, Minnesota—2005
Narration by the Author
Chapter Seven
(A Week later) Carla sits 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 told 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.
She wakes up from her sleep; she dozed off for a moment. Last time he called, Christopher Wright called, 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.”
“I wonder what he’s doing now?” she questions, in a mumble.
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St. Paul, Minnesota—
2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011
Narrated by Carla
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….
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Lima, Peru, 2010
Narrated by Christopher Wright
Chapter Nine
“When I was poor, we were all knitted together like bees in a honey comb, once I became rich and tried to help, they all flew away, thinking they were all innocent with their resentments.”
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Minnesota, 2004 (as told to her sister Mini, in 2010, during a phone conversation…)
Narrated by Delilah Wright
(Step-mother to the three children)
Chapter Ten
One day in late summer, of 2004, Christopher checked out one of his apartments he had, one Boris had work on, putting in a new floor of tiles, in the kitchen, there was small cracks between the tiles, consequently, a job done too fast, and overlooked. 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 then—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 above us.
Natasha had two boys, one eight, the other six, Christopher’s grandchildren, we saw them often, the youngest Willie, would ask his dad “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 was 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, I no longer trust your intentions.”
“You’ll never see your grandkids again,” said Boris to Christopher, in a near whisper, as he left the house.
I didn’t know he had said that to Christopher, until he told me, sometime later, and from thereon, they never spoke to him 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, 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. 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.”
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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. But what he said, he said, back in 1998, what Pavlenko, said to pa, 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,” and he meant it. 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. Maybe not a complete lie, 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 “Git,” the proper way, “Get” and that infuriated me, and I told him to apologize to her, and now she doesn’t want talk to Grandpa anymore. I don’t blame her.”
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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, 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. By rights, they aint got nothing to complain about.”
“It’s all said and done, all open.” I said, and then 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.
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Interlude, 2005
Narrated by: the Author
Chapter Thirteen
As for Christopher a simple and easy choice, you want to mend fences or you don’t. And then there are those folks who say you want to mend them, or tell other people you want to, just for telling sake. And this is what Sergei was telling people, implying I mean. 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? 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 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. They knew Christopher was moving to Peru, he send 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. 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. But he had been doing this 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 that you don’t like me.”
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 aint the first critters to come up with such diabolical schemes on their parents.
At this juncture Christopher was worn out, exhausted but still he restrained himself from wanting to close the door completely, 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 if he proved to be loyal, with Boris —and alleged daughter, tried to set the house on fire, via the garage, setting several brooms together, and pouring gas on them, and on the cement all the way to the car, let it and ran. 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.
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, “Wake up, wake up, wake up…” an ever lasting echo. And it woke Delilah, and she woke her husband who is ill with a debilitating neurological disease, to escape the impending fire in the garage. Delilah then put it out with a towel. The footsteps outside in the Minnesota snow looked like Boris’ 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. “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.”
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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 take one step ahead of me, without troubled minds, and give to those foster homes and those folks who run those foster homes, good old American currency. And what to those foster folks do: counted those dollars and pay their house payments with it, with those numbered checks, with no risk at all, and get respect and gratitude and homage and without a troubled mind. There aint no man living can say didn’t do what I said I did—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 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.”
(Author: so he said, 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?”
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Rampage, 2010 (Reference to the Late 1960s—early, 1970s)
Narrated by the Author
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, 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 that time “I might as well stop asking where you’ve been,” it would not bear saying, she said that 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, didn’t come too soon for him.
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The Rose of Lima, 2010
Narrated by the Author
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 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.
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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 seems to have some resentment to having been told to do it, when he was really 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: why he doesn’t do it? Christopher can’t figure that out, unless he has destroyed the tapes: I mean it’s 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 in—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 just had. 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.”
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Huancayo, Peru, 2008
Narrated by: Mini
(Talking to her sister Delilah by telephone)
Chapter Eighteen
One thing I know is, that I really know at fifty-years old, 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 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 his kids knew this, the scoundrels, that’s right, they knew this, innocence, as old as he was it’s still called innocence, as wise as he was, 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.
“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.”
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. 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.
On another note, he found meaning and peace to his life, 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…)
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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. 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, 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. Through correcting my grandchild, through old 8mm movies: and 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 write 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, and can you imagine if I hadn’t done that.
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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 nine-years to write him back, since last he saw him, when he was eight-years old; chumming it up some over the internet; he is now seventeen, graduating from High School. 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 carry on a light relationship over the internet, although they have met once—oh I already said that didn’t I, Mini, when he was eight-years old, 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.”
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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 it, 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, existed at onetime, they didn’t carry it over into their future, adulthood, those foster homes which cashed all those checks of Christopher, 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 for at eighteen, they had no more to give to anyone, 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, 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. 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 paid for, 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, 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.
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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 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’s it 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—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.
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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 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, 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” he says to pa.
“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.
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Columbus, Ohio—2010
Narrated by: Maria Wright
(Wife to Sergei, from the Philippines)
Chapter Twenty-four
It is a fact, 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, provoke him, because he just couldn’t come out right and say, “Pa I hate you for not taking care of me when I was eleven to eighteen.” 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, all wrapped up in a pretty box, that he had hidden until now—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.
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Conclusion, Peru, July 2, 2010
Narrated by: the Author
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. 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.
“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.
No: 638 (July1 thru 5, 2010) First Draft © Dlsiluk 2010
A Novelette
By Dennis L. Siluk, Ed.D.
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.
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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
1970s—St. Paul, Minnesota
Narrated by: the Author
Chapter One
(Introductory Chapter)
They weren’t born yet, Sergei, Pavlenko 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, so by the time the grandchildren would have children, she’d be able to say, before she died July 1, 2003, what her son Christopher would be able to say, seven years after she might have said it, which he did say: “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, 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. 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, 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 them but no longer could or would. This was the beginning of held-in resentments towards their father, mother, and even grandmother.
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Foster Home, 1992, Minnesota
Narrated by: Pavlenko Wright
Chapter two
So this is what Pavlenko Wright knew about what was taking place in his life, his brother’s life, and his sister’s life, his—I didn’t know my father was a drunk, and mother was mentally ill until I got born and big enough to know about such things. And when I got to know about them, my father said he’d take me out of the foster care—the homes—but he lied, and never did. 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 too angry—and then I stepped out of the car, and forever, telling him forever, I’d never want to speak to him again.
(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; we realized that that object of alcoholism was his soul excuse to unburden himself with us.
Well he said, I think he said, “You can get blood out of a turnip,” and I just looked at him, I was on a roll, talking faster than I could think. “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 while of waiting he had no use for us kids. And I suppose 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, but to be the best would have been stopping his lying to take us. I can hear the words he said clear as I can hear the birds chipper in the trees out at the Como Park, “I’m working on it son, it’ll take a while.” Then in 1988, he said “Okay, I got an apartment, you can move?” 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.
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Columbus, Ohio—2010
Narrated by: Sergei Wright
Chapter Four
Pavlenko and I met last at my wedding, in Columbus, 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, he’s at the hotel.”
“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.
The wedding was held at an old redbrick 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 pa 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, she wasn’t mad at him, at that time, at pa 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.
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 pa wanted to somehow talk to him, but Pavlenko wouldn’t. 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?
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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, pa is lighting up a cigarette, holding it in his right hand, watching Pavlenko fiddling with the controls. They see me pacing back and forth from the kitchen to the living room; 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 and his pa, he’s been gone a good while, and I’ve had to support my daughter on my own; he’s just like his father.
“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 before it’s on the cake, I wonder why?
“Your father and I need another beer?” says Pavlenko.
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 for his—he’s like his mother. 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.
“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, I met him once, he said hello to me and Pavlenko, he didn’t seem so 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.
“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.”
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St. Paul, Minnesota—2005
Natasha Wright-Hides & Carla (Natasha’s mother)
(Talking-to her mother by phone)
Chapter Six
Pa, He could have done so much for us, 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 have it—and you didn’t care one way or the other. He could and did do that for me, because I’m glad my two boys are now eleven and twelve now; I’m thirty. So if you’re wondering why there isn’t any room in me for him, he just wasn’t that important in my life ma. He just made sure nothing happened badly. 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 do strange things, like opening up car doors that were not your car and the police would ask “What’s wrong with your mother,” and I’d be crying, and we’d be on the street all alone, just me and you and the police officers and the police car and the parked car you were trying to get into. 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 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.
Carla
“I got my own troubles Natasha:
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.
4) I hear people in their beds all night long crying, and complaining, talking, some even have lovers.
5) I’m tired.
7) I got fish, goldfish, and now I want to flush them down the toilet, they’re too much work.
8) It’s really a daily job here, I have to clean up the room, I 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 don’t stink, plus in this place the people are uptight all the time, two thirds of them.
(Click: the phone is hung up…!)
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St. Paul, Minnesota—2005
Narration by the Author
Chapter Seven
(A Week later) Carla sits 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 told 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.
She wakes up from her sleep; she dozed off for a moment. Last time he called, Christopher Wright called, 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.”
“I wonder what he’s doing now?” she questions, in a mumble.
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St. Paul, Minnesota—
2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011
Narrated by Carla
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….
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Lima, Peru, 2010
Narrated by Christopher Wright
Chapter Nine
“When I was poor, we were all knitted together like bees in a honey comb, once I became rich and tried to help, they all flew away, thinking they were all innocent with their resentments.”
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Minnesota, 2004 (as told to her sister Mini, in 2010, during a phone conversation…)
Narrated by Delilah Wright
(Step-mother to the three children)
Chapter Ten
One day in late summer, of 2004, Christopher checked out one of his apartments he had, one Boris had work on, putting in a new floor of tiles, in the kitchen, there was small cracks between the tiles, consequently, a job done too fast, and overlooked. 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 then—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 above us.
Natasha had two boys, one eight, the other six, Christopher’s grandchildren, we saw them often, the youngest Willie, would ask his dad “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 was 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, I no longer trust your intentions.”
“You’ll never see your grandkids again,” said Boris to Christopher, in a near whisper, as he left the house.
I didn’t know he had said that to Christopher, until he told me, sometime later, and from thereon, they never spoke to him 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, 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. 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.”
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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. But what he said, he said, back in 1998, what Pavlenko, said to pa, 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,” and he meant it. 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. Maybe not a complete lie, 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 “Git,” the proper way, “Get” and that infuriated me, and I told him to apologize to her, and now she doesn’t want talk to Grandpa anymore. I don’t blame her.”
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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, 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. By rights, they aint got nothing to complain about.”
“It’s all said and done, all open.” I said, and then 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.
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Interlude, 2005
Narrated by: the Author
Chapter Thirteen
As for Christopher a simple and easy choice, you want to mend fences or you don’t. And then there are those folks who say you want to mend them, or tell other people you want to, just for telling sake. And this is what Sergei was telling people, implying I mean. 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? 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 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. They knew Christopher was moving to Peru, he send 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. 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. But he had been doing this 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 that you don’t like me.”
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 aint the first critters to come up with such diabolical schemes on their parents.
At this juncture Christopher was worn out, exhausted but still he restrained himself from wanting to close the door completely, 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 if he proved to be loyal, with Boris —and alleged daughter, tried to set the house on fire, via the garage, setting several brooms together, and pouring gas on them, and on the cement all the way to the car, let it and ran. 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.
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, “Wake up, wake up, wake up…” an ever lasting echo. And it woke Delilah, and she woke her husband who is ill with a debilitating neurological disease, to escape the impending fire in the garage. Delilah then put it out with a towel. The footsteps outside in the Minnesota snow looked like Boris’ 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. “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.”
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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 take one step ahead of me, without troubled minds, and give to those foster homes and those folks who run those foster homes, good old American currency. And what to those foster folks do: counted those dollars and pay their house payments with it, with those numbered checks, with no risk at all, and get respect and gratitude and homage and without a troubled mind. There aint no man living can say didn’t do what I said I did—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 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.”
(Author: so he said, 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?”
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Rampage, 2010 (Reference to the Late 1960s—early, 1970s)
Narrated by the Author
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, 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 that time “I might as well stop asking where you’ve been,” it would not bear saying, she said that 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, didn’t come too soon for him.
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The Rose of Lima, 2010
Narrated by the Author
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 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.
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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 seems to have some resentment to having been told to do it, when he was really 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: why he doesn’t do it? Christopher can’t figure that out, unless he has destroyed the tapes: I mean it’s 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 in—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 just had. 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.”
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Huancayo, Peru, 2008
Narrated by: Mini
(Talking to her sister Delilah by telephone)
Chapter Eighteen
One thing I know is, that I really know at fifty-years old, 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 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 his kids knew this, the scoundrels, that’s right, they knew this, innocence, as old as he was it’s still called innocence, as wise as he was, 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.
“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.”
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. 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.
On another note, he found meaning and peace to his life, 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…)
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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. 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, 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. Through correcting my grandchild, through old 8mm movies: and 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 write 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, and can you imagine if I hadn’t done that.
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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 nine-years to write him back, since last he saw him, when he was eight-years old; chumming it up some over the internet; he is now seventeen, graduating from High School. 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 carry on a light relationship over the internet, although they have met once—oh I already said that didn’t I, Mini, when he was eight-years old, 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.”
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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 it, 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, existed at onetime, they didn’t carry it over into their future, adulthood, those foster homes which cashed all those checks of Christopher, 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 for at eighteen, they had no more to give to anyone, 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, 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. 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 paid for, 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, 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.
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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 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’s it 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—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.
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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 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, 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” he says to pa.
“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, 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, provoke him, because he just couldn’t come out right and say, “Pa I hate you for not taking care of me when I was eleven to eighteen.” 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, all wrapped up in a pretty box, that he had hidden until now—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.
____________†___________
Conclusion, Peru, July 2, 2010
Narrated by: the Author
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. 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.
“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.
No: 638 (July1 thru 5, 2010) First Draft © Dlsiluk 2010
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