Days 220 and 221 – Writing Exercise

…

It was always the same answer, as it had been from the day I could ask questions: “Who was Uncle Robert?”

My mother was always the first to speak, as he was one of her mother’s siblings, saying he was the black sheep, the one who went down in a hail of bullets.

If that sounded dubious, the next part cemented that remark: that he had died a hero, saving a bus full of children

It was heroic, and he was my uncle, the original font of all things good about my mother’s family, even though once I grew up and understood the nuances of the English language, I also knew what sarcasm was, and how it applied to him.

My mother and two of my aunts on her side, when thinking they were alone and talking about him, dropped a trail of breadcrumbs that said he was a criminal somewhere in Chicago and if he wasn’t already dead, he should be.

That meant a lot.  And it was curious to us children that we should stop asking terrible questions about a man who no longer existed.

Over succeeding years, I tried, but it wasn’t easy because there was always someone inadvertently mentioning his name.

But as the years passed, and I started digging into the genealogical aspect of our family, a chance discovery of a ‘lost’ aunt on my mother’s side who was living on the other side of the country, Charlotte, told me her brother, my uncle, was not dead but very clearly alive.

And what’s more, she gave me his address.

And as soon as I was old enough to travel on my own, I got on the plane and went to Cincinnati.  It was, I discovered, where all the members of my mother’s family came from.

…

Considering where we lived in Arizona, a not-so-large town in the Southwest, Cincinnati was eye-opening.  To me, it was a big city, but not as big as Tucson or New York, where my older sister had gone, but enough to show there was a whole different world out there when I was ready to greet it.

At this time I just wanted to say hello and confirm that the mystery that had hung around for years was not a mystery at all, and then go home.

Of course things were never that simple.  It might have been simple if I had a plan, but all the plan was; was to get from the airport to the house where my potential uncle lived.

And to find out why he had been shunned, or more likely why he had shunned us.

Until I knocked on the door and a boy who looked exactly like me opened it.

“My God,” was his first comment.  It was followed by, “Well, aren’t you the clever one, then.”

Until that exact moment, I was not sure what I was fishing for, perhaps a slightly complimentary remark.  Charlotte had said the uncle was a bit of a smarty pants.  He’d obviously passed that on to his son.

“Is your father here?”

I knew who my uncle was because Charlotte had shown me his photo, and I had rung ahead to let him know who I was and what part in the family I was related. 

He hadn’t seemed impressed that I existed or that he cared whether he knew me or not, though I did detect a slight curiosity in his tone.

He asked only one question.   Was I visiting him of my own volition or had my mother told me to come?  I said that it was a result of my ancestry search that I’d discovered him, and I’d not told my mother anything about this visit.

I had assumed that telling my mother where I was going would set her off, after running a test scenario that just had his name on the tip of my tongue.  Something bad must have happened a long time ago, and it was so bad they stopped talking.

Perhaps I would have to mend some bridges.  After the meeting, of course, and if we dismissed the idea of killing our contemporaries to keep a secret.

There was a story to be had, and once I stepped over that threshold, I was determined to get it, or at the very least, the truth.

I didn’t feel too sanguine, though, just outside the front door, and in a moment of realising that it was quite possible I would not get over the first hurdle. 

I was looking at the uncle’s son’s not-backing-down expression, so I had to consider that first effort might all come to nothing, but perseverance was the ticket to this mission, not failure. 

Until another of my aunts, one I didn’t readily recognise, came down the stairs just inside the doorway.  She stopped on the last step, then put a hand on the boy’s shoulder.

Was she about to send me on my way?  She gave me an up-and-down look.  “You don’t look like your mother.”

“You don’t look like my mother, and you are supposed to be a sister.”

“Obviously your mother didn’t teach you about insolence.  You should go back to where you came from.”

“They don’t know I’m here, and I didn’t tell them.  I didn’t come to see you; I came to see my uncle.  Is he here or is he playing hide and seek?”

“You can leave now.”  She said.

A man came down the stairs and brushed past her.  There was no doubting who he was.

“You’re as feisty as your mother.  Jack, isn’t it?”

“It is.”

He came out the door and closed it behind him.  “Let’s walk.  I wouldn’t worry too much about them.  Annabel is your mother’s twin sister, the one she doesn’t talk about.  It will no doubt answer that question you have about the boy looking like you.”

“I wasn’t going to ask.”

“You were.  What made you think there was a long-lost uncle?”

“The way my mother talks about a part of her life that seems like a made-up story.  How many siblings were there?”

“Fourteen.  Same father, two different women, sisters.  Your grandfather married Elsie first and had eight children, including your mother and Annabel, the last two of the eight, and after they were born Elsie died from afterbirth complications, then he married Agnes, Elsie’s younger sister, and had six more of which I was the first.  Your mother and Amnabel were blamed for her death; each blamed the other, and then the family fractured.”

…

We ended up in a cafe and the story took three cups of coffee.

The grandparents, the marriages, the family fractures, the children, and loss.  Perhaps I was too young to understand the nuances of family, other than my father’s edit that family was supposed to be everything, a hard tenet to follow given how my mother was the complete antithesis of it.

It was why I only assumed there were eight siblings: my mother and her older brothers and sisters, the evil sister Annabel, not knowing Annabel was her twin, and this other bunch of people that I thought belonged to another branch of the family.

My mother never assimilated with her father, and I knew that her mother was dead, but she never seemed to mention her with any fondness. 

No surprise.  She had never got to meet her at the point where she could bond with her or remember her.  She only had a stepmother, though she never mentioned her.  In fact, she rarely mentioned her life before marrying my father, and he seemed quite at home not mentioning her parents either.

The only people both my siblings and I knew were the grandparents on my father’s side.

Now I had a more detailed understanding of mt mothers whole family, and some of the reasons why she never mentioned them.

I could understand why Annabel hated me; she hated her twin, who had been born in a house that treated them badly.  I could not imagine what it would be like to be blamed by everyone for the death of their mother.

Even when it was not their fault, as my uncle had gone out of his way to find the truth and try for years to repair the fractures.

By the time I got back on the plane to go home, two days later, and after sitting at the table with my other six aunts and uncles, I was not sure whether I should be pleased or disappointed I’d found out the family secret.

…

When I walked in the door, back home, and feeling exhausted from the long trip, I wasn’t expecting to walk into a minefield.

My mother was standing in the hallway, arms crossed, and looking black as thunder.

Melanie.  The sister who could never keep a secret.  I had to tell someone in case there was a problem while I was away.

I guess if there was a chance to score points, she would take it.

“You went to Cincinnati?”

It was a statement, not a question.

My father, or anyone else who was around, had seen the storm brewing and left to find a safe haven.

“I did.  Part of this deep desire to see something of this great country I live in.  Maybe next month I’ll go to Texas.”  Better to be flippant.

“So Cincinnati was just a spot like pinning the tail on the donkey?”

“No.  It seemed significant, like you mentioning it with loathing.  I wanted to find out if it was as bad as you seem to think it is.”

“You have no idea what I think.”

“Actually, I think I might have some idea.  I met your twin sister, the evil Annabel.  I get it, by the way.  Sisters can be shitty to one another, and I imagine that can only intensify with a twin.  It’s amusing to discover she had exactly the same loathing of you, which makes it quite funny.”

“It’s not.”

“It is.  After all the times you told me I had to be nice to my siblings, you went and did the exact opposite.  Did Dad know you were one of fourteen?”

“I told him my father was in a mental home and my mother was dead.  I’d like it to stay that way.”

“Why?”

“Because it was better that way.”  The black clouds were passing, and the edge had gone out of her tone.  She was still angry but not as much.

“You spoke to Anthony?”

“You knew he was still in Cincinnati?”

“Of course.  He is my stepbrother, perhaps the only one worth talking to, and the only one who took the time to find the truth.”

“And you knew Annabel was staying with him?”

“You went to the home we were brought up in.  She was never going to leave him, married or otherwise.  You would have met your doppelganger Eric, too.”  She shrugged.  “She dated your father for the whole of high school, got pregnant, which, given the type of girl she was, surprised no one.  It’s why he looks like you; he’s your father’s illegitimate child.  He invited her to the prom, and she got sick, and told me to go with him instead so another girl wouldn’t steal him from her.”

I could see how that would work.  “Except…”

“He preferred me.  One night it took.  The Prom.  She was a bitch at the best of times.  I wasn’t.  You can only put up with that stuff for so long.  But there was the pregnancy and the obligation.  Our parents expected him to do the right thing.  He didn’t.”

I could see now why Annabel hated her.  Bad choices and expectations.

She continued, “To make things easier for her, I left home, came here, told him he had to marry her, but he said he’d made his bed, asked me to marry him.  I said no.  He eventually married her, the child was born, and then they divorced.  She cheated on him, not surprising.  A year later, your father came here, asked me again, and I said yes.  She hated me ever since.  The guy she ended up with was better for her, but you could never tell her anything.  She blew that marriage up too, by the way.”

I had some experience in breaking up with a first love.  The next was never the same, even after you got over that broken heart, which I didn’t think I had.

“I’m sure there’s a moral in this story somewhere.  If anything, given my family, perhaps it’s better not to get married, or if you do, stick to one wife, and not have eight, six or fourteen kids.  And not marry a twin.”

I thought i saw the beginnings of a smile.  I could have been mistaken.

“What are you going to do with this newfound knowledge?”

“Talk to the aunts and uncles I know about the aunts and uncles they quite clearly knew about but never spoke about because of you.”

“Not me exactly.  Out of deference to me.  They regretted blaming us for our mother’s death, because at that age everything was more intense and easily explained in a child’s head, aside from our father hammering it in because of his own misery.

It was what it was.  I should have handled it better, but I didn’t.  Perhaps in some small way, you doing what you just did might be the first step along a long path back.  If you want, invite Anthony to come and visit you.  See what he says.”

I knew what he would say, but I wasn’t going to tell her.

I’d let that be a surprise.

…

©  Charles Heath  2026