445
DUAL IDENTITY
By
Esther Minskoff
SMASHWORDS EDITION
Published by
Esther Minskoff on Smashwords
Copyright 2011 Esther Minskoff
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Chapter 1
It was the summer of 2005 when two events skewed the upward trajectory of Hannah’s life. Without warning, not one, but two Challenger disasters smashed her life to smithereens. First, there was the discovery of the identity of her biological parents, and then there was meeting Tommy, the man she felt destined to love forever, only to eventually learn that their love was universally condemned as perverted, filthy, the vilest of sins.
Hannah was a kindergarten teacher so her summers were somewhat free, except for the six weeks she taught in a half-day enrichment program for children needing school readiness skills. These students were quite different from her year-round students who were white, middle class, native born, and affluent. Most of her summer school children came from diverse ethnic groups, and/or were poor, and/or were non-fluent English speakers, and/or lived in educationally unsupportive home environments. Hannah liked the extra money she earned during the summer as well as the instructional challenge posed by this special population. With every new letter, number, fact, or song a child mastered, she basked in the success of her teaching. These were the tangible fruits of her labor. Here was evidence that she was making an impact on the world, however infinitesimal.
But more importantly, she craved the infusion of inspiration she derived from contact with children. When she was with youngsters, either her summer or her year-round charges, she felt more alive. Her face became elastic with a range of exaggerated emotions from fear to elation, and her body moved in grand sweeps. She viewed the world through their eyes, a glittering world of wonder and joy. Her throaty laughter merged with their tinkling laughter at jokes only five year olds understand. Their probing, often unanswerable, questions made her look at reality with inquisitive eyes. “How did God make the earth without falling off?” Her awe of nature deepened as she and the children breathlessly observed a wooly caterpillar amble across the classroom floor. Her favorite perch was the child-sized chair she sat on as she gazed down at the upturned rapt faces of her students while reading books aloud, animating her voice deeply for scary characters and lightly for happy characters. She pulled her shoulders back to signal support for the children as they gathered their resolve to climb the small playground equipment, their own Mt. Everest. When she led her students in their off-key singing of children’s songs, she proudly shouted the lyrics along with them. The visions she saw through her students’ eyes validated Hannah’s belief in the goodness of the human race. She fervently believed that humans were born good, but what happened to some people later in life corrupted their innate goodness, but that was true for only despots, mass murderers, and rapists, not everyday people. To Hannah, most of life was to be savored, and every experience had a silver lining if you only dug deeply for it.
When her students looked at Hannah, they saw a wide face on a large head fringed with bangs and a pony tail. Her hair was Asian black, silky, and straight. Her smooth skinned face with large black eyes, button nose, and full lips made her appear like a comic strip drawing. In fact, her students told her that she looked like the cartoon character, Dora the Explorer. Maybe that was one reason why they liked her so much. Imagine being taught by a cartoon character come to life. But the main reason for their affection for Hannah was her kindergarten teacher personality – bubbly, warm, affectionate, and overflowing with praise. She found what was unique in each child and emphasized this to the child, the other children in the class, and the child’s parents. No parents ever came away from a conference with Hannah without being prouder of their child than before the conference. She was the most requested teacher at Waterview Elementary. All parents wanted their children to start their education with Ms. O’Brien.
People who superficially knew Hannah thought she was an airhead, lacking depth which was considered of prime importance in the college town in which she lived. She appeared innocent, especially when she widened her black eyes. Some wondered why she was always happy, especially in light of her father’s premature death and her mother’s Alzheimer. They concluded that she was either hiding her true feelings, or she was a blind optimist who didn't recognize that she was supposed to be depressed about her family situation.
She didn't care that people viewed her as naïve. Her behavior was based on the premise that if she was nice to everyone; then in response, everyone would be nice to her. She wanted the world to be conflict-free, or at least the world around her. She wanted to live in a cocoon of smiles and hugs. In her rare introspective moments, Hannah moved out of her body to gaze at herself, and she liked what she saw - a woman whose calling in life was molding young lives; a woman who smiled all the time sprinkling happiness wherever she looked; and a woman who was lucky to live a comfortable life in a small town in one of the most beautiful places in America.
Hannah viewed her life as a fairy tale. She knew that she had ideal parents who lavished her with love. They desperately wanted a baby and couldn’t have one so they adopted her. She didn’t know who her biological parents were, and she had no desire to learn their identity. With perfect parents, why would she want to find the imperfect parents who threw her away? Until the age of 16, her life had been blissful. She loved school and got A’s in every subject, except math in which she got B’s or C’s despite studying hard and being tutored. She never had to be told to do her homework. Not only did she do the required homework, she always did the extra credit. She practiced playing her flute without being prompted so she could play on-key in the school marching band when she was more concerned about not tripping than producing the correct notes. She rehearsed her gymnastics moves at home so she would perform them perfectly in competitions. She rotated through the house with summersaults and cartwheels, somehow avoiding the many fragile knick-knacks and plants crowding the surfaces in every room.
She enjoyed spending time with her parents, even as a teenager when she was expected to rebel against them. Together they went to the movies, bicycled, gardened, and cooked. Some of Hannah's fondest memories were of their annual beach vacations when she and her parents spent hours rafting atop the crests of ocean waves. Then, returning to their beach cottage, her mother would soothe Hannah’s and her father's flame-red sunburned skin as she gently massaged them with lotion. The burning pain from the sun would be further diminished by a seafood dinner at their favorite beachfront restaurant.
Hannah’s father’s death was the first puncture in her fairy tale existence. Death was the evil stepmother, the wolf, and the ogre who brought grief into her life. For three months she mourned his passing, continually asking God why He took such a good human being while letting nasty people live into old age. But then Hannah quelled the evil stepmother, and put her fairy tale existence back on track. She stopped questioning God and started thanking Him for giving her 16 years of complete happiness with the best father in the world. She refused to let her father's premature death squash her rosy view of life.
Once Hannah started teaching, her life gained a richness she had never envisioned. She discovered that she was created to be a teacher; this was her calling. She eagerly anticipated each day she spent with her students. Most of her mental life was devoted to thinking about them, what was happening in their lives, and what fun activities she could create to maximize their learning. But that serenity was shaken three years earlier when her mother was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. The evil stepmother had returned. First God had taken her father’s life, and now He had taken her mother’s mind. Her students sustained her as she gradually adjusted to her mother’s condition. Her house also helped. The Victorian house built in 1925 with its turret windows was her castle, and she was the princess who dwelt within its walls. She loved her house so much that she lived at home during her four years at college despite her mother’s encouragement to live on campus so she could better experience college life. She refused because her house was her sanctuary. She thought it would provide an impermeable shield from life’s hardships. She was wrong; Alzheimer’s had penetrated its walls.
Hannah felt that her mother's illness was another of God’s challenges to her positive world view. She battled to maintain her vision of the world as a place where bad things made you appreciate the good things even more. What helped her in this struggle was her belief that someday she would meet her Prince Charming who would provide a happy ending to her fairy tale. She used this dream as a shield against negativism and depression. She and her prince would marry and have 10 loving, perfect children. Her prince would vanquish death, illness, and unhappiness. His arms would envelop Hannah, giving her complete impregnability against the evils of life.
She had a special prize waiting for her prince – her virginity. She was saving this for him to show that he had always been the only man in her life even before they met. During her high school years, preserving her virginity had not been difficult because she had only gone out on a few dates, usually to school dances. But guarding the prize for Prince Charming became more of a challenge in college. On the first day of classes, she spotted David in her huge freshman psychology class. She was attracted to his light blond, almost albinoish, hair and bright blue eyes. She thought he looked a bit like a prince in a Disney movie, and she hoped she might be lucky enough to find her Prince Charming on the very first day of college. At the second class, she sat next to him. David was extremely shy so she initiated a conversation and asked him out for coffee after class. That was the beginning of their lop-sided relationship where Hannah talked incessantly as she gazed into his face and he listened passively with his eyes averted. She was having difficulty getting him to utter more than a few words although she tapped into a variety of topics from sports to medicine to religion, hoping something would spark a response from him. He was like a turtle, he rarely made utterances. She wasn’t even sure she would recognize his voice if he didn’t identify himself when he called her.
David was a pre-med major who was strongly motivated to become a dermatologist, like his father. To maintain high grades, he studied every night except Saturdays when he took Hannah to the movies or sporting events. David brought Hannah from the kissing stage to petting. With their first kiss, she realized he was not her Prince Charming. He left her feeling vacant. During their kissing and petting sessions, she thought of homework she had to do and clothes she had seen on a recent shopping trip. Her lack of responsiveness to him left her worried that she might be frigid, a condition she had read about in a woman’s magazine. After his freshman year, David transferred to another school that had a better pre-med program, leaving Hannah to continue her pursuit of Prince Charming.
In her second year Hannah dated Stuart, her math tutor. He was a math major who was puzzled as to why Hannah couldn’t grasp math concepts when she was intelligent. Hannah had no difficulty making conversation with Stuart who had a great sense of humor and was always joking and punning, until she had to stop him for fear that her uncontrollable laughter would cause her to pee in her pants. He was part of a popular campus improv group so she went to almost all of the group’s performances. She marveled at his quick wit, especially when he created skits from words thrown at him from the audience.
Stuart moved Hannah ahead several notches on the sexual progress chart. Stuart’s was the first penis that Hannah had seen and touched. They would spend hours in his apartment with Hannah massaging Stuart over and over again. As soon as he came, they would start again. She didn’t know where he got all that sperm. She even let him kiss her naked breasts. Although she was more aroused with Stuart, she still was not fully engaged. She felt as though their relationship was mechanical and goal directed at getting him to set a new ejaculation record each evening. This led her to wonder whether she had reduced libido, which she had learned about in her psychology class sitting next to David, her first candidate for Prince Charming.
Their relationship ended abruptly when during one of his comedy routines, Stuart made fun of his girlfriend comparing her to a sexual crossing guard preventing him from getting to the other side. He described his fantasy of her nude except for wearing a yellow crossing guard vest and holding up a red stop sign in one hand and his dick in the other. He looked at her as he laughed causing everyone in the audience to look at her as she turned crimson. She had never experienced humiliation before and she was overwhelmed by it, wanting to vanish into thin air. She felt as if she were actually sitting in the audience nude wearing a yellow crossing guard vest. At the break, she hurriedly left. After the show Stuart called her, but she banged down the phone when she heard his voice. The next day he came to her house, but she refused to open the door. Did he really think that humiliating her would make her want to sleep with him? She never saw him again, although she did mentally thank him for helping her get a C in calculus and teaching her the details of male anatomy.
The greatest challenge to her virginity came in her junior year, when she met Phil, a business major and a gung-ho fraternity guy. He took her to frat parties which she enjoyed enormously, especially when fortified with beer. She loved wearing pretty evening dresses to dances. She dressed hours before Phil was to pick her up so she could pose in front of a full length mirror as she twirled round and round to create an opening-umbrella effect with dresses of yellow silk or mauve lace. She imagined herself dancing for hours on end, never tiring, never wilting. In reality, she danced a few dances on a crowded floor and then ended up in Phil’s room having her dress unceremoniously removed or pushed aside so that she and Phil could engage in all types of foreplay, but never the real thing. After just one wearing, the dresses were often dirty and even torn.
During their five months of dating, Hannah became more sexually responsive to Phil, especially when he touched her vagina. As soon as his hands passed her stomach, she found that the lower half of her body was no longer under her control. Phil was increasingly insistent that she sleep with him. She didn’t want to stop going to parties, but she also didn’t want to have intercourse, so she decided to offer him oral sex because everyone knew that wasn't really going all the way. That would save her virginity while keeping him happy. She found it disgusting, and tried not to gag or vomit while feigning pleasure. When his fingers explored her vagina, she realized that she did have a normal libido. She found herself screaming with passion. For a while he was satisfied, but with each date they were getting closer and closer to intercourse. He would insist that there was no difference between having his fingers or his dick in her. But to her, there was an insurmountable difference. Although she was committed to only allowing Prince Charming’s penis to enter her precious cavity, she knew she wouldn’t be able to resist Phil’s advances much longer especially when he plied her with more and more beer so she reluctantly stopped dating him.
Since college, she had dated five guys, but had never gone beyond oral sex. She dated a guy until he was no longer content with what she had to give him or she tired of him. Although she was 27, she was patiently waiting for her prince to whom she would proudly present her virginity. Her friends told her that she was destined to be an old-maid virgin, but she was certain that someday she would meet the right man.
Taking advantage of the extra time she had in the summer, Hannah was catching up on cleaning out the basement of her house. At last she was facing the dreaded task of disposing of her father’s papers. Her father, Sean, a sociology professor at the local university, had died eleven years earlier. He seemed to be in perfect health, but as he was grading papers in his office, he fell onto his desk, dead of a massive heart attack. No one understood why this happened to a fifty-six year old, thin man with low cholesterol who exercised regularly. Even if they knew why, it wouldn’t have lessened the overwhelming grief Hannah and her mother felt. Over time, Hannah’s grief settled into a subliminal sadness which she barred from her daily consciousness. But shortly this sadness would be mixed with questions regarding who Sean O’Brien really was.
Her mother, Mary Ann, stored Sean’s office papers in the basement, vowing to go through them someday. She never did. It was too painful for her to see his handwritten comments on student papers, or look at his grade books, or read the article he was writing that abruptly stopped on page 14. These were relics of who he was eight hours a day, five days a week for the 23 years he taught at Central Virginia University.
Now her mother would never look at his papers. Alzheimer’s had ravished her mind. In the first year after her diagnosis, Mary Ann could be left alone during the day, but during the second year Hannah had to hire a woman to stay with her while she worked. Hannah quickly went through five women, who for various reasons had to be fired. Not showing up at 7:15 in the morning was the most frequent reason because this led to Hannah missing or being late for school, while she scrambled to find someone from Mary Ann’s church to help out. Hannah had no choice. She couldn’t afford to stay home to take care of Mary Ann so she put Mary Ann’s name on the waiting list at the nursing homes specializing in Alzheimer patients. Four months later a spot became available at Shady Brook Village and Hannah painfully moved her mother from the home she loved and the daughter she adored to the nursing home that tried to be warm and caring, but couldn’t overcome the fact that it was a nursing home.
Over the last six months Hannah had instituted a new ritual in her life. Everyday she visited her mother to report on the happenings of the day. Although Mary Ann was in a private room, Hannah closed the door, sat Mary Ann in a chair and then pulled up another chair facing her so she could look into her empty eyes as she quietly chronicled the day’s events. First she hugged her tightly as she said, “Mommy, Mommy, Mommy, I love you. I’ll always love you.” Then she gently kissed her eyes, cheeks, and lips as if the kisses would wake her to a conscious state, like Sleeping Beauty. She held her mother’s hands hoping that the physical contact would kindle some reaction as she described her classroom projects, the progress of her students, problems with the cats, new plants in bloom, and the strange activities of the neighbors who had moved in down the street. Hannah didn’t know how this ritual started, but she knew part of the genesis was her need to continue sharing her life with her mother as she had shared everything with her since her father’s death. Prior to that, she shared everything with both her mother and her father. No one in the O’Brien family harbored any secrets, or so she thought. Hannah certainly didn’t have any secrets. Her life was a book open for inspection by all readers.
If Hannah was in a hurry during one of her visits to her mother, she stayed only 10 or 15 minutes telling Mary Ann about the day’s events as she straightened her room. In the spring and summer, there were always flowers from Hannah’s garden gracing the bedside table and window sill. Hannah cleaned the petals from the heavy peonies or the budding roses that wilted as soon as they inhaled the overheated, dry air of the nursing home. Most days Hannah stayed to feed Mary Ann and then stroll with her through the corridors, nodding to the other Alzheimer patients who didn’t return recognition of human communication. Their evenings together usually ended with Hannah and Mary Ann watching TV with other patients in a large recreation room. Hannah looked around at her mother and the others marveling at how the meaning of what they were watching stopped at their eyes, never venturing upward into their brains. Only Hannah understood the silly sitcoms filled with constant discussions of sex and adolescent humor. Hannah often smiled to herself as she thought that the patients could be watching hard-core porn and no one would respond. On several occasions, Hannah tried to take Mary Ann outside for a walk, but Mary Ann was afraid of the outside world. She refused to leave the safety she found within Shady Brook Nursing Home.
When Hannah entered the room, she always asked, “Do you know who I am Mom?” Mary Ann would look at Hannah and answer yes, sometimes saying Hannah’s name. But the most painful evidence of the devastation of their lives by Alzheimer’s was May 21st when Mary Ann no longer recognized her only child. Hannah asked, “Do you know who I am Mom?” Mary Ann did not reply, she looked through Hannah as if she weren’t there. She never again spoke the word “Hannah.” That was the day Mary Ann died for Hannah. Mary Ann was 69 years old, and in relatively good health so her body might not die for many years, but Mary Ann, the person, was gone. As of that day, Hannah was an orphan. Sometimes she prayed that God would take Mary Ann and put her out of her misery. Or maybe she was really praying for herself so she wouldn’t have the burden of watching her beloved mother slowly die like the flowers in her room.
Over the six months that Mary Ann had been at Shady Brook, Hannah gradually built a mental moat around her mother. She learned to compartmentalize her mind. When she was with Mary Ann, she was overcome with sadness and mourned for their lost lives, but once she exited the building she was Hannah again, the woman who dwelt within an insulated capsule.
July 10th started out as the hottest day of the year. Hannah went out to weed and do some morning watering of her back yard flower garden. It was too hot to do anything outdoors even at 7:00 AM. She was soaked with perspiration and glad that she hadn’t showered yet. She went back into the cool house, ate breakfast, and read the newspaper. Although the house was 80 years old, it had been re-wired and central air conditioning installed.
Hannah went to fill the bowls for her cats, Spot and Puff, and saw that she was out of food. She went down to the basement to get an extra bag of cat food she kept under the stairs when she noticed the long-ignored boxes of papers. With resolve, she said firmly, “Okay Hannah, this is the day you are going to work on those papers. You are not going to put it off any longer. You do not have an excuse for not doing it.” She went upstairs for a floor lamp so she could spotlight what she would be reading. Before going back down, she called her best friend, Kelly and left a message on her voice mail. “Hey lady, I know you’re working but I wanted to let you know that I’ll be in the basement going through my dad’s papers. At last! If you want to stop by after work, come in. Just yell down. Maybe you can help me get through some of these boxes of junk.”
Kelly and Hannah had been best friends since kindergarten. They were both perky, bubbly girls who were considered popular by the unpopular kids in school. Physically, they were a study in contrasts. Hannah was small, thin, dark-haired, and had deeply dimpled cheeks in a round, apple-like face. Most people would describe her as cute. Kelly’s naturally blond thick mane of curls, curvaceous figure, and perfectly-molded features would merit a rating of beautiful by most people. But they were alike in that they both had nurturing personalities. Hannah channeled her nurturing into working with young minds, while Kelly directed hers into working with sick bodies. And over the years they had nurtured each other, cementing their friendship until it appeared unbreakable.
Growing up, Kelly lived with her brother, Phil, who was five years older, and her single mom, a nurse who worked two jobs to support her children. When Phil graduated from high school, he joined the navy and lived the motto, “Join the Navy and see the world.” He returned to Lewiston for occasional visits until he married a woman who lived in San Diego where he then spent all his shore leaves. When Kelly was away at college, her mother remarried and moved away. But throughout her life, Kelly’s real family was the O’Briens. When Sean died, her family became Hannah and Mary Ann. And now with Mary Ann mentally deceased, her only family was Hannah. They were like sisters, only closer because they chose each other and because they needed each other.
For 22 years, their friendship had strengthened as they weathered life’s storms together. It had endured the four years Kelly was away at nursing school in Richmond, while Hannah lived at home and went to Central. But most importantly, their relationship had saved Kelly from a marriage that started like heaven and ended like hell. Hannah gave Kelly the support she needed to end her marriage to her dream man who morphed into a physically abusive brute.
Hannah took a huge glass of iced coffee, another glass filled with ice cubes, and a portable radio downstairs for a long-delayed reunion with her dad. She tuned the radio to a classical music station to serve as background for her trip back in time. The first few boxes she went through contained thousands of old student exams going back to his early days of teaching. Then she went through boxes with term papers. Most had A's and A+'s with positive comments scrawled in green, never red which he considered harsh and punitive. “Creative ideas.” “Good application of research.” “Your understanding of this topic is amazing.” She knew that despite how hard the students had worked on these, she had no choice but to dump them. They had no meaning to her and they certainly had no meaning to Mary Ann. She leafed through his green grade books from every semester he taught, noting that most grades were A's with a smathering of B's and C's and a rare F. She put these back in their box to be brought out for the garbage truck and burial in land fill three days hence.
The next box was filled with his research papers. When he died, he had been working on a paper comparing Asian and Latino gangs in Washington, DC. She recalled him periodically going to DC to interview gang members. She also remembered how worried her mother was whenever he was away, thinking that he might get mugged or murdered. She glanced at the photocopied articles and notes he made of his interviews. She thought she might keep the interview notes, but then decided that they served no purpose and added them to the box headed for oblivion.
She had been downstairs for two hours and had hardly made a dent in all the boxes. She went upstairs to pee and go outside to see if the weather had improved. It was worse than she expected. She really didn’t have anyplace to go or anything else to do. She had no excuse not to return to the basement. As she walked down the steps, she had no premonition that this was the end of the insulated fairy tale existence she had created for herself.
The next box she attacked contained Sean’s personal papers. He saved letters commending his teaching, recommendations for special teaching awards, and letters informing him of merit raises for his exemplary teaching and significant research. She knew he was a good teacher, but these official recognitions filled her with pride and saddened her to think of what he might have accomplished had he not died so young.
Next she examined the stacks of letters from students telling him how much his class meant to them and how great a teacher he was and how good a person. Among the student letters, she discovered one that would destroy the image of the man who was her adoptive father. Unlike the other letters, this one was in an envelope addressed to:
Dr. Sean O’Brien
Professor of Sociology
Central Virginia University
213 Linden Hall
Lewiston, VA 28822
The return address was:
Brooke Brock
171 Bayside Road
Roanoke, VA 27753
The word PERSONAL was written in caps in the lower left corner. What a hard name to say, Brooke Brock. It was almost a tongue-twister if you said it repeatedly. Brooke Brock. Brooke Brock. Brick Broc, Brick Brac. The handwriting was beautifully scripted with circles for dots, very feminine. It was dated December 15, 1977.
Hi Sean,
I got home from school a few days ago. I went right to see my doctor because I didn’t get my period when I was supposed to. I’m not always regular so it was hard for me to tell if I was pregnant or not. I was on the pill so I told you not to use a condom, but it didn’t seem to work. Maybe I forgot to take it. Anyhow there’s a problem and I didn’t want to tell you on the phone. I’m pregnant!! I’m not calling you to tell you this because I know you’d insist I get an abortion. I can’t hear that word – abortion. I won’t argue with you about it. You know the problems I had when I had an abortion 5 years ago. I’m not going to go through that again. I felt like I was a murderer and that’s why I had the breakdown. I’m going to have this child whether you like it or not. Nothing you say or do can make me murder this baby.
It's due June 13th so I’m going to sit out next semester. I’ll probably get a job waitressing and take a few night courses. Then I’ll be back in September and I’m going to switch majors. I know you think I should go to grad school and get a doctorate in soc but I don’t want to go to school so long. I think I’ll switch to social work. I’d like to work with poor people or maybe the mentally ill. I think I’d be good working with crazy people because I’ve had my problems as you know. I certainly was a little crazy when I was in your class. But I’m fine now. I’m going to stop all my meds even tho the doctor told me I should definitely continue taking them, especially because of all the stress I’m under now. I don’t want to do anything to hurt this baby. In fact, I feel emotionally stronger than I’ve ever felt before. I’m about eight weeks pregnant, but I think I’m showing already. I love caressing my belly and thinking of you in me pumping away. I don’t know whether to believe that I was the best woman you ever had, but it makes me feel good to think that you thought so. We fucked good together!!
I know you and Mary Ann can’t have children or at least that’s what you said. I don’t know if I believe all that stuff about her being cold and not wanting to have sex. Now that I’m far away from you things look different. I think you just wanted to get into my pants, but I just wanted to get into yours too. So we’re even. And it made me feel so important that a professor wanted to screw me. Especially a popular professor like you.
I definitely do not want to keep this baby!!!! I really don’t think I ever want to have kids. It’s funny that it’s so easy for me to get pregnant when so many women who want to have kids can’t get pregnant. This may sound strange, but I want you to have the baby if you want it. Maybe that will bring you and Mary Ann closer together. If you don’t, I’ll give it to my sister who doesn’t have kids. I really don’t want to give it to strangers unless I have to. I need to know that it will be loved and I think you and Mary Ann would love a baby and be good parents.
Let me know what you want to do. We can get a lawyer to figure out how to transfer the baby. You don’t have to pay for anything. My parents are taking care of the medical bills. They just want this whole episode in my life to end. I told them you are the father and my father was furious. I thought he was going to have a stroke. He said he wasn’t paying tuition for a professor to screw his daughter. He felt you took advantage of me when I was having emotional problems. I told him that I wanted sex with you as much as you wanted it, maybe even more. He didn’t want to hear the details. He was going to contact the university, but I convinced him that would be more harmful to me so he won’t do anything. I don’t want him to ruin your career. There are so many great things you will do in the future. And because of you, I know I’ll do great things in the future too.
Sean, I will be forever indebted to you for helping me through those tough times. I think I would have killed myself if we hadn’t had sex after class that day when I told you I wanted to end everything. You were so understanding. It was like you read my mind. I think that might have been the day we made the baby or maybe it was one of the times we went to that seedy motel. Wasn’t that the pits! But that magic fingers massage bed was so much fun. You have magic fingers too. You made me feel like an important woman who had a future. After the baby, I will have a future, all because of the faith you had in me.
Don’t worry about this baby thing. It’ll be over in seven months. Everything will work out especially if you want to be the father. I know you’ll be a great daddy.
See you next semester. And if we see each other on campus, I'll act like nothing happened so don’t worry. But if you want to go back to that motel, I’m open for it. I’d love to do the magic fingers massage again with the bed doing the outside and you doing the inside. Sean, I’m always available for you. You are one awesome lover!!
Brooke
Chapter 2
Hannah felt vomit erupting in her throat. With her lips tightly locked, she raced up the stairs in time to spew vomit into the kitchen sink. For several minutes, she hung over the sink with dry heaves until she was emptied. To get rid of the putrid taste in her mouth, she gargled a glass of ice water and then gulped down an entire can of coke, but to no avail; she still tasted and smelled of vomit. Although the house was cool, she was covered with sweat, the kind of sweat that seemed to have icicles in each bead.
The letter was still in the basement. She had to retrieve it to see if she had really read a letter from the woman who was her biological mother, or if she had had a heat-induced hallucination. She tore down the steps almost toppling head over heels, stopping inches from the letter lying on the floor. She wasn’t ready to re-read it. She shut the radio and the lamps and took them upstairs. Then she went back for the letter, this time walking slowly, hoping it had miraculously evaporated. But it was still there, looking like an innocent piece of paper, rather than an anthrax-laced letter that poisoned her life. She picked it up as if it were radioactive, holding it gingerly on the edge and with her other hand, she picked up the envelope.
She took them upstairs and went into the living room, a room she rarely entered. She sat on the old-fashioned heavily upholstered chair facing the defunct fireplace, reading the letter over and over. She lost track of how many times she read it, but after several minutes she had memorized every word Brooke Brock wrote about her baby. Her baby - Hannah.
This one piece of paper was the meteor that crashed into her life, devastating everything in its path. Her biological father was not the man she worshipped. On July 10, 2005, she cried like the baby she was on June 1, 1978, the day she was born to Brooke Brock and Sean O’Brien. Hannah was the “it” of the letter. When Brooke wrote this letter, Hannah was the eight week old fetus growing within her womb.
Although she didn’t know anything about Brooke, Hannah was consumed with a searing hatred for her and what she had done to her father. She was sure she had tricked him into having sex by saying she was suicidal. He would do anything to help a student, even have sex. She recalled Sean’s tiny office, stacked with books and papers on all surfaces and the floor. She pictured Brooke, a breathtakingly beautiful girl with long black hair covering half her face and tears gushing down her cheeks as she poured out her problems to Sean. Through her sobs, Hannah heard her say, “There’s no reason for me to go on living. I’m going to end it today.” Then she saw Sean going around his desk to comfort her, saying “Please don’t talk like that. You have a great future.” As he moved to hold her hands, Brooke became the aggressor and grabbed Sean’s crotch. He couldn’t resist her and succumbed. They lay on the top of his desk wildly screwing among the papers and books. Did his semen that didn't swim fast enough to create Hannah get on the papers on his desk? If so, what did he do with them? How do you explain semen on a midterm exam? It can’t be passed off as coffee. Did he think of locking the door? Did he think of closing the window blinds? Did they keep silent so passersby in the busy hallway outside his office wouldn’t hear their grunts and groans? Her mental video played like a soap opera scene with Sean lunging for the door to lock it and closing the blinds before he pulled out his penis and gave it to Brooke who pulled down her pants as she guided Sean into her. With Sean’s face buried in her neck, he did not see the look of conquest on her face. She had trapped him. Oh, and incidentally she had created Hannah O’Brien.
But then Hannah recalled that they had sex more than once. She couldn’t have been suicidal all those times they met at the seedy motel. She pictured a dingy room with just a bed and a TV. They lay naked on the bed, laughing as the magic fingers massaged their back sides. There were no tears in this scene. There was only laughter and lust. She heard the squeaking of the mattress as they passionately screwed. Maybe Sean O’Brien was a predator who took advantage of his students. No, she couldn’t think this about him. She had to think of him as the innocent victim of Brooke Brock’s attacks. Whatever the truth, he had betrayed Mary Ann, the woman she knew he loved. How could he do that? He was such an honest man, or so she thought, and he loved Mary Ann, or so she thought.
She never suspected that her adoptive father was her biological father even though people often commented that they looked a bit alike. Some people say that living with someone makes you look like them. No, being their biological parent makes you look like them. They both shared a short, thin body build with a black mop of hair, but their facial features were very different. Why hadn’t she ever entertained the idea that he was her real father? He was her real father because he had loved her, not because she had his genes. She couldn’t lose sight of that. She couldn’t let that evil bitch destroy the adoration she felt for her father.
She heard Kelly open the door with the key Hannah had given her so that she could enter at will. As she walked into the front hall, Kelly shouted, “Where are you Han?” She was surprised when Hannah answered, “Here, in the living room.”
Wearing green scrubs that she wore in the hospital emergency room where she worked, Kelly entered the living room with a quizzical look. “What’re you doing in here? Are you sick? What’s the matter? My God, what’s happened? You look like someone died. Is it your mother?”
Hannah handed the letter to Kelly who kept saying “Oh my God, oh my God. What a fucking slut,” as she read it four times.
“Where did you get this?’
“In one of the boxes of letters from students that I was cleaning out in the basement.”
“Why did he keep this? He should have destroyed it. What an idiot! I can’t believe he did this. Do you think your mother ever saw it? I think he wanted someone to know or he would have destroyed it years ago. Very strange. Very strange. Any man in his right man would have destroyed this. Maybe he was proud of his conquest. Sick. Or maybe he felt guilty and wanted you to know. Maybe he's talking to you from the grave. Maybe he thought you'd love him more if you knew he was your biological father. Didn't he realize you'd hate him for what he'd done to you and Mary Ann? I'm sure he kept this so you would find your birth mother. What a shit he was! Why didn’t he take all this crap with him to the grave?”
Hannah seemed oblivious to Kelly's words. She was alone in her own world. “I wonder if he gave this to my mother to read after he got it or if he just told her about it. I’m sure she wouldn’t have wanted him to keep it in case I'd find it someday. She would have destroyed it if she knew he'd kept it. She wouldn’t ever have wanted me to know this. Never.
All I can think of is him going to her after he got this letter and telling her that he was unfaithful and that there is this child they could adopt who is his biological child. Do you think she had any idea that he was screwing a student before he told her? Do you think there were other students? Was he one of these professors who liked to do it with his students and gave A’s for good bedroom performance? I just looked in his grade books, and it looked like almost everyone got A's. Maybe, it was only the girls and maybe he screwed them. How can I think that? Kelly, the daddy I knew is destroyed with this one letter. Poof. He's gone with a piece of paper. Oh, I can’t believe it.”
She leaned over and rocked as if she had stomach cramps while moaning rhythmically. Kelly snuggled into the chair with Hannah and rubbed her back.
“You know how I worshipped him. I don’t know what to think of him now. I know he loved me and my mother, but he betrayed us. I thought he was the most honest man in the world. Obviously not. He was always giving me these lectures on how you have to be true to yourself and know yourself and go after your dreams no matter what. It sounds like hypocritical shit now.
What did he think when he looked at me? What did my mom think when she looked at me? I was this walking, talking product of my father’s unfaithfulness.
What a wonderful woman my mother was. How long was it before she stopped seeing me as my father’s bastard and started seeing me as her loving child? How did she feel when the transfer was made and she held me for the first time? Did they do it in the hospital or at a lawyer’s office? I wonder if she ever saw Brooke Brock and if I look anything like her. If I do, it must have been so hard for her every time she looked at my face. I wonder if she ever stopped thinking about me as her husband’s child.”
“Hannah, you know how much I loved your parents. I can honestly say I never suspected any of this. Your parents seemed to have the most ideal marriage. I never saw him look at a woman with interest. I always thought of him as the perfect husband. The kind of husband I wanted, especially after Seth. The memory of what he was like has kept me hopeful that there might be someone good in my future. That someday I might have a happy marriage. Now I don't know. Maybe there's no such thing as a happy marriage. Hannah, they were so good at hiding their past. It'll take me a long time to recast my views of them and it’ll take you a lifetime, if ever. Oh my Hannah, I love you and I’ll help you through this.”
As they hugged, they sobbed uncontrollably. The tears on their faces intermingled, diluting Hannah's grief with Kelley's solace. They talked until two when Kelly made a light lunch. “I have to go home and get some sleep. I had a hard night. We had two stabbings from that trailer park on Rte. 58. Come to my place for dinner later.”
“I won’t feel like eating. I have to visit my mother and tell her about this.”
“Hannah, she won’t know what you’re talking about. Why do you have to do that? It's so ridiculous.”
“I have to tell her everything. I have to keep her as my mother. I need to do this for me. Maybe someplace deep inside her destroyed brain, she understands something. I need her more than ever now. I’ll call you later.”
Hannah went back to the basement to shut the lights. But then she remembered that there might be more revelations in other student letters. She anxiously skimmed the rest of the letters, relieved to find nothing personal. She read the letters from the girls carefully looking for any clues that he might have gone farther than just being a good teacher. She noticed that all the letters were from girls. He didn’t seem to be interested in his male students’ problems. She carried the boxes upstairs and put them by the front door to be put out with the garbage. She didn’t know when, if ever, she would finish going through her father’s things. She couldn’t face any more secrets.
She wasn’t sure what to do with the letter. Part of her wanted to tear it to sheds, but another part of her wanted to keep it with the hope of re-reading it and finding hints that her father really was an innocent victim who was taken advantage of by a conniving, oversexed girl. She went up to her room and put the letter in the bottom drawer of her bedside table under the diary she kept when she was 11 years old. No one ever came into her bedroom so she was sure it would be safe.
She looked around at the room where her parents had brought her when she was three days old. Then it was a frilly pink nursery with decals of baby animal characters placed on the walls by her mother. When she was three, it was transformed into a room fit for a princess with a single bed with Cinderella pillows and blanket, a canopy of pink tulle, and now decals of castles and princesses on the walls. At 12, it had changed to a teenaged girl’s room with walls painted pink and a flowery spread on the single bed. The white lace curtains, white dressers, and white lamps with lacey shades gave the room an air of innocence. A white desk and chair were nestled in the alcove where the turret protruded from the house. She loved sitting at her desk and looking down at the people who passed by looking up at the turret as if she were a princess locked in a castle, or maybe Rapunzel. The laptop she kept on her desk along with the ipod and small TV looked out of place, too modern for a room that looked as if it were still 1925. Although Hannah was 27, she continued to live in this young girl’s room. She never thought of changing it.
There were two other bedrooms in the house. The spacious one that had been her parents’ was heavily ornate with deep red walls almost completely covered with paintings of rural scenes in thick gold-gilded frames. There were red flowered curtains with a matching bedspread and two chairs upholstered in complementary fabric. This room, too, looked like a bedroom from 1925, except for a large TV against the wall facing the bed. All personal belongings had vanished along with her parents. No perfume, make-up, and jewelry box on Mary Ann’s dresser and no family photos on Sean’s dresser.
The other bedroom was an all-purpose room with a desk and computer, a table for Hannah’s craft projects, and a sleeper sofa in case a guest slept over. The only guest to ever use it was Kelly.
Hannah showered and dried her hair. She applied a light coating of powder to her face, but not much because she knew it would grease up with the heat. She put on lipstick so she wouldn’t look too pale. She stared at herself. She didn’t see any facial resemblance to her father. She forced a fake smile to highlight the deep dimples in her checks. They were clearly visible when she smiled so she tried to smile a lot, knowing that they were her most distinctive feature. Did Brooke Brock have dimples? She puckered her lips to accentuate her rosebud lips. Did Brooke Brock have rosebud lips?
She hoped she would never see Brooke Brock. She didn’t want to know what she looked like, and yet she did. As she gazed into her eyes in the mirror, she knew she wanted to find Brooke Brock so she could retaliate for what she had done to her family. She’d make repeated calls to her in the middle of the night to disturb her sleep. She’d slit the tires on her car. She’d steal her mail so she’d have to pay interest on her unpaid bills. Oh, those were so lame. She had to think of more hurtful forms of retribution. Maybe, she’d tell her kids what an evil slut their mother was so they would hate her as much Hannah hated her. Her imagined reprisals against Brooke were suddenly halted by the realization that she might have siblings. Brooke might have more kids and these would be Hannah’s half-siblings. She had always wanted to have siblings, but not this way. She would hate these kids as much as she hated their mother. If Brooke had kids, they were probably bastards too. She couldn't imagine the Brooke Brock she knew from the letter as a happily married housewife nurturing her children. Then the thought occurred to her, "I'm a bastard." She had never thought of herself as being illegitimate. That was because she had never thought of her life prior to her adoption by Sean and Mary Ann. "Bastard. Bastard. That's me."
Then her fantasies turned from nuisance retaliation to the ultimate vengeance - murder. She pictured herself stabbing a naked woman with her back turned so she couldn’t see her face. She was stabbing her in a frenzy, like the shower scene in Psycho. As she turned away from the mirror, she said aloud, “Now that’s the end of my belief in the goodness of all people. Thanks Brooke Brock. You’re the first evil person I know and hopefully I’ll never meet you face to face. I’ll just keep imagining all the things I’d say and do to you if I did meet you. I’ll try to think of more creative ways of killing you. Maybe slow torture next time. Or maybe rat poison because you’re a rat. I’ll read some Stephen King or Poe to get some gory ideas. My Danielle Steeles aren't any help.”
When Hannah got to Mary Ann’s room, the housekeeper was vacuuming so Hannah took Mary Ann for a walk to the arts and craft room. It was harder to get Mary Ann moving. She was shuffling more so Hannah thought she might start using a wheelchair to get her around. They watched a paint-by-numbers class where everyone was painting the same picture of a fruit bowl with the same exact colors. Then they walked to the cafeteria where they had iced tea and cookies.
At last they headed back to her room so Hannah could tell her about the letter. Hannah made sure the door was closed and then set the two chairs facing each other so their knees touched. She had to see if Mary Ann showed even a glimmer of reaction when she told her about the letter. She whispered, “Mom, I have to tell you something very important. I found a letter from Brooke Brock, you know, the woman who is my biological mother.” She stopped and looked intently into Mary Ann’s eyes searching for a trace of understanding. There was only void.
Hannah continued, “You knew all these years that Dad was my biological father, but you never hinted at it. You and he were so good at hiding the truth from me. I wonder how you felt knowing that your husband had betrayed you. Mom, I have so many questions I want to ask, but I’ll never get answers. I’m glad you don’t understand what’s happening. You’d be devastated if you knew I learned about my birth mother. I hate to call that animal my birth mother. She didn’t care about me. I got the impression that I was a prize for having sex with Dad. Whatever. I wasn’t a baby that she ever considered loving and that’s okay. I had two people who loved me as much as parents could love their child. I wonder if Dad was ever tempted to tell me that he was my biological father. You told me at a young age that I was adopted and I accepted it and didn’t really care about who my biological mother and father were. I was so unlike these people who need to find their biological parents and go to the ends of the Earth to find them. I was content with you and Dad.
Why did you take me Mom? How could you raise a child who was a constant reminder of your husband’s adultery? Did you want a child so much that you took his bastard? Was your marriage falling apart and did you think I could fix it? You seemed to have such a good relationship with Dad, but was that an act for me? How could you put on an act 24 hours a day for 16 years? I know you loved him. I saw what his death did to you. It was like a piece of your heart actually died.
I thought we lived in a house with no secrets. But now I find that you and Daddy based our whole lives on an ugly secret. But how could you tell me? You couldn’t tell me when Daddy was alive. I was too young to understand. I’m 27 now and I still don’t understand. You couldn’t tell me after he died because that would be like defiling his memory and I know you couldn’t do that. How I wish he had destroyed that letter so I never found it. I could have continued living my happy life. I didn’t need to know this. I don’t want to know this. I can’t stop picturing Brooke and Daddy having sex. It’s driving me nuts. I have to stop obsessing about them. I have to get those pictures out of my mind. I feel like I have a porn movie playing non-stop in my head.”
Usually when Hannah left Mary Ann, she was able to push aside her feelings of sadness with a smile and a conscious self command to be positive. But not today. She couldn’t banish the sadness, hatred, and confusion ricocheting around her brain.
When Hannah got back to her house, Kelly was sitting on the porch waiting for her. “You didn’t have to come over.”
“I didn’t want you to be alone. Why don’t you sleep at my place tonight? Otherwise, I’ll sleep here.”
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