Brian picks up an accordion file from an end table and hands it to me. I take it but don’t open it yet, my eyes glued to his face.
“My dad…our dad…died a year ago. Heart attack. When I was in his office looking for some paperwork to send to his lawyer, I found a file. That file.” He gestures to the folder in my hand.
“It was full of information on, well, you. It basically documents your birth through your retirement from pro hockey and the foundation you built and all your charity work in the sports world. I didn’t read all of it, so that’s why I didn’t realize you grew up in the system. I’m so sorry. I should have read it before I contacted you and invited you here.”
I stare down at the folder I’m now holding with shaking hands, still making no move to open it. My brain is racing, trying to make sense of what he’s telling me. Because if this is true, then…I can’t go there. I need to hear the rest even though alarm bells are ringing dimly in my head, and my fight or flight instinct is in full flight mode. My entire body is braced to jump up off this couch and run out the door.
Brian must sense I’m not going to say anything because he continues.
“I wouldn’t have understood what I was looking at except, well, you look like me, and we both look like him. I put the piecestogether, and my mom filled in the rest. My dad had an affair years before I was born. I guess my parents’ marriage hit the skids for a while, but they worked it out and she stayed with him. Seven years later, I was born. By all accounts, they were happy. My mom never knew about you.”
There’s anger in his tone when he says, “Trust me, if she had, she would have been a mom to you too. We could have known each other before now.”
“Where is she now?” It’s all I can think to ask.
“She’s gone. She died six months ago, but she was sick for a long time, even before he died. This is their house. Or I guess it’s mine now, but I don’t want it. I don’t want anything that belonged to him. If it wasn’t illegal, I’d burn it the fuck down.”
Brian’s voice is tinged with fury and disgust. I appreciate his anger towards the man who lied to him and his mom for more than three decades, but I can’t focus on it right now.
My heart is thudding in my chest as my mind struggles with the ramifications of this discovery. I look around the room, gaze fixing on the wall of picture frames across from the couch where I sit. I see Brian at all ages, standing with two adults. There’s a woman with soft features and curly brown hair, and then there he is. Brian is right; I do look like him. I take in this fact with a kind of dispassionate observation that disappears as my eyes dart back and forth along the rows of pictures.
In them, I see the kind of childhood I dreamed of. The mom and dad and son. School plays. Trips to the park. Snowball fights. Beach vacations. Hugs and kisses and casual arms around shoulders and bedtime stories. Your own bedroom and warm enough blankets and new clothes and books to read anytime you want. I love yous. Confidence and happiness and belonging and permanence.Permanence. A home. People who stay.
Brian is still talking, but I no longer hear what he’s saying. Dropping my head down, I stare at my feet as my breaths saw in and out of my lungs.
Suddenly I need to see it. The evidence that there was a parent out there who knew about me. Who could have taken me away from the foster homes and loveless childhood and adults who didn’t care about me beyond the check they got once a month for letting me live in their house.
Who could have but chose not to.
A deep sorrow and emptiness settle in my chest.
With shaking hands, I unwind the string holding the folder closed and pull it open. I grab a stack of paper at random and start flipping through it. My hands are clammy, and documents scatter all over the floor, but I see enough. Some of the papers are yellowed with age, but it’s all there, just like Brian said it was.
Birth records. My mom’s death certificate. Social worker reports. Names and addresses of my foster homes. Reports from my annual fucking physicals when I was playing in the Juniors. My first NHL contract. The incorporation documents for my foundation. The resources that had to have gone into compiling this information while also hiding the fact that he was my father is staggering. My brain struggles to grasp the enormity of it.
He didn’t want me.
My breath catches in my chest, and my head spins from lack of oxygen. Sweat drips down the back of my neck and my heart thuds so wildly I’m surprised my ribs don’t crack from the impact.
The loneliness is suffocating.
My own father, the person who shares my blood, didn’t want me. Of course he didn’t. No one ever does. No one stays. Everyone leaves.
I need to get the fuck out of this house.
I stand abruptly, the folder on my lap falling to the floor.
“I’m sorry,” I manage. “I have to go.”
“Wait,” Brian lays a hand on my arm and my defenses are low enough that it stops my forward momentum.
“I’m so sorry I laid all this on you. I did it all wrong. I should have let you know before you came here so you had all the information before you decided to make the trip. I wish you wouldn’t leave like this. He’s an asshole, but we’re still brothers.”
Brothers.
The word is a kernel of hope, but as quickly as it appears, it’s swamped by the negativity coursing through my brain. Because he might want to know me now, but it’s only a matter of time before he figures out what everyone else already has.
Jeremy Wright is no one’s forever.
