Emily's Seams

It was Saturday and I decided to do something I hadn’t done in a very long time. Mr. Puggums screeched and hollered as I put my shoes on, so I just picked him up and brought him with me.

The cat was so used to car rides by then that I didn’t have to put him in his crate anymore. He lay down on the seat beside me as we stopped at a market for some cheap but cheerful bouquets. We continued on to the cemetery where Julia and my mother were buried.

It was a nice day, with a clear blue sky. I put the cat on his leash, much to his chagrin.

For a second, I thought I had wandered into the wrong section of the graveyard. There was a tall man in a nice suit at my sister’s grave.

I walked up slowly but he heard my footsteps and tried to straighten up.

I recognized him immediately. It was Mr. Wilson from the bank.

“Mr. Wilson? What are you doing here?”

He looked nervous for a second but then the exhaustion of grief overtook him. His shoulders slumped and his eyes sagged.

“Paying my respects. Nice to see you Emily.” He turned and walked away from me.

I looked at Julia’s grave. There were fresh pink daisies on it.

“Why?” I yelled after him.

He just kept walking. I picked up Mr. Puggums and ran after him. I caught up and gave a sharp pull on his arm that nearly made him fall over. He didn’t yell at me or ask me what my problem was. He just took it.

“What are you doing here?”

Up close I could see that his eyes were old and tired and his slumped shoulders made his expensive suit and shoes look cheap. He was beaten in that moment, it was easy for me to recognize. “She was my daughter.”

My mouth fell open as a question tried desperately to take shape.

“Your mother and I had an affair when she worked at the bank. When she told me she was pregnant, I...asked her to take care of it.”

“Were you married?”

He nodded. “Yes, and still am. I panicked, but your mother was strong. She knew what was right for her.”

“Did you fire her?”

He looked at me again and shook his head. “No. She quit. Said she wanted five thousand dollars for a new stroller, some baby clothes and so she could take her daughter on a trip to Disneyland.”

My throat tightened but the words came out cold. “Yeah, thanks. It was a fun trip.”

He smiled sadly. “I never had any other children.”

“You didn’t have any. Julia wasn’t yours.”

He looked confused for a moment. “But, I saw pictures of her, I...”

“If she’d been yours, you would have visited her on her fifth birthday with that fucking doll that talked and pissed itself. If she was yours, you would have taken her to the father-daughter dance when she turned ten. If she had been yours, you wouldn’t have fucked it up this badly!” I was screaming with rage by that point.

He nodded. “You’re right.”

“For fucks sake, you didn’t even know she was dead!”

“Your mother and I agreed that it would be best for her to not know who her father was.”

“Well, you two were a couple of geniuses, weren’t you?” My throat was tight. I was starting to cry. “If you had met her, just once, you would have known how great she was. You wouldn’t have been able to forget about her.”

“I never forgot about her.”

“Well, she seemed to think so. Do you know how many times she asked about her daddy? Why she never heard from him, not even on her birthday?”

He bowed his head and his shoulders started jerking. He was crying too.

I turned away from him and went to sit down between my mother’s and Julia’s headstones. I pulled Mr. Puggums onto my lap.

“I was such a coward.”

“Yeah, you were. She really could’ve used you in her life.” I spit out each of the words.

He nodded. “I thought about her when I found out that you had come in for the safety deposit box. I thought, well, Judith the old bat is dead. And thankfully there’s still something left for those girls. I wondered what she would do with the money. Go to Europe for a summer, buy a semester of random classes at a local college? Maybe a new car. But those hopes never had a chance, did they?”

“No. She was long gone.”

“I used to dream about her.”

“You didn’t have to. You could have just visited her.”

“I know.” He didn’t even try to fight off the guilt. He took it on as if the pain of it would somehow compete with the emptiness that I knew he was feeling.

And just then I pitied him. I had felt such guilt at Julia’s passing. As much as I hated this man for abandoning my sister, I also understood the hollowness that he was feeling. And the fact that he felt anything said something.

“I’ve come here every day since you told me.”

“How’d you know where to come?”

“I was here for your mother’s funeral. It was the only time I saw Julia. I...I said hello to her and I remember for a second just thinking about picking her up and hugging her.” He chuckled. “Your aunt shot me a look that could kill. I wish now that I had just done it anyways.”

I laughed and wiped away my tears. “My aunt could be a real bitch sometimes.”

He laughed and sat down across from me. “You remind me of your mother. She didn’t take any crap from anybody. Probably why she stopped seeing me after she found out she was having Julia. She’d seen how spineless I was, probably realized there was no point in bothering with me anymore.”

My mother had always been so patient and kind with me and Julia. It was frightening, hilarious and wonderful, all at the same time, imagining the kind of woman she was outside of being mom.

I laid out the two bouquets I had brought and stood up. Mr. Wilson stood up along with me.

“Emily, I know you don’t think much of me and I know I don’t deserve any better than that. But if you need anything, ever...well, let me know.” He fumbled through his wallet and brought out a business card. He turned it over and wrote something down before handing it to me.

“There’s my home number on the back. Anything, Emily. Anytime.”

“Are you sure I should be calling your home number?”

He smiled sadly. “My wife knows everything.”

I kept the snide remarks to myself about how she should leave his sorry ass. People needed each other for all sorts of reasons.