Pirates

Thousands of utterly hopeless miles of misery, betrayal, and disgust seemed to separate them, across the glossy mahogany conference table, in the Judge’s chambers. Yet he could see her quite clearly, and in his mind’s eye, she was already dead.

After a grueling multi-year journey through the court system, and despite a very exhaustive search, it was now painfully clear to him that all along, he had really been in the dark, blindly searching for justice on the wrong side of the law, like an idiot. But he certainly knew where to find it now. “Justice” was literally at his fingertips, inches away, in the stealthy black leather attaché case, which miraculously made it through courthouse metal detectors, despite tight post-9/11 security.

The money was all gone. These were not the best of times, but our novel was finally ready for the publishers. The fledgling company he had built for his children, would soon be recognized around the world by many of you ladies and gentlemen on the jury and inquisitive teens like me, for centuries to come. It was a memorable labor of love. All his hopes and dreams of survival, salvation, and success were hinged on the future of this wicked work of art. The book could bring our high-tech ranch home back from the brink of foreclosure and the car, forever freed from the clutches of the evil  “Repo-man”. Dad knew he was running out of time. The only reason we still had the car was  our resident 120 lb savage beast, “Killa”,  who seemed to have developed a special fondness for the flesh of bill collectors and law enforcement officers. Thanks to Killa, all the bank’s efforts to recover the vehicle failed miserably, but now things were so bad  that even Killa’s bland daily meal wasn’t guaranteed anymore and our faithful guard dog’s continued loyalty was at risk.

That morning, with a body of evidence in hand almost as voluptuous as Leslie, Dad walked past Killa with a tunneled resolve, as the depressed canine and an empty stomach, growled together in a chorus of disapproval. After turning on the “Dr. Laura” show, with car radio volume high, he sped away early that morning, in our unusually clean luxury sedan, expecting justice. Already 2 months behind on the payments, with the money intended for his mortgage and car loan, he hired a lawyer, for a day. Now he was almost certain that no judge, could ignore our family’s accomplishments in the face of adversity,  and willfully dismantle the world he built for us, his beloved children. For many years, while the clock ticked away, it had been a very different and separate world from our Mom’s, but we knew it would always be “our world”, nonetheless. No sane representative of the courts would ever arrest the lifestyle we continued to enjoy and the aspirations we held dear. …”No judge could do that,” he thought. But in reality, there was a remote possibility that the judge would, and just in case Her Honor did, as always, Dad was well prepared that morning. He was back in  Divorce Court again, after divorcing our mother a zillion years earlier, in another life.

Maybe love really was blind, and justice too, but from thousands of extra-marital miles away, across the glare of the sunlit table, he could see her as clearly as he did that bright Saturday June morning when he unknowingly, lovingly  placed the golden ring on her finger months before my arrival. She was indeed very much alive and well. In a reserved, yet excruciatingly jubilant and content pose, she sat there in those final moments, without realizing that in his mind, at that moment not even the unconditional love we had for her, or his love for us, could save her.  For many months he had wrestled with the daunting prospect of losing custody of us, his own children, along with everything he owned, but now he was about to lose something else, himself. For awhile I saw it coming, and when times got really rough and even I was beginning to feel desperate, I felt I had no other option but to write this to him, shortly before my twelfth birthday:

From that moment forward Dad told me everything, that is, after he recovered from the terrible shock of learning how much I already  knew.  I was only eleven when I wrote my first secret letter begging Dad not to run. Yet despite all my letters and my pleas,  the advice of Dr. Laura, and all of my grandparents’ remarkable efforts; the catholic church and schools, college education, and my father’s former 6-figure income,  it seemed that in the blink of an eye, he had already made the tragic,  treacherous transition from proud, responsible father to fateful fugitive. I will always love my mother more than anything in this world. Maybe one day I’ll even write Mom’s story. But this today, I  tell you, after almost forty interesting and puzzling years, is what I believe to be,  his story. Here lie the clues of my Dad’s mystery: