Emails from My Father’s Mistress, Posthumously

This is an excerpt from the e-mail I received from my father’s mistress today:

Hey JD,

I’ve been meaning to let you know I’m finally settled in a little apartment in Palmyra, one town east of Hershey, right by the railroad tracks. I love it.
I’m going through boxes and just unearthed one of my most precious possessions, a book your dad gave me: Baldwin’s Tell Me How Long the Train’s Been Gone. I always cry when I read his inscription:

Dear Wendy,
Some trains never come and some folks never know it. Most run somewhere that’s nowhere to most.
But your days here, packed and crated to be freighted with a host of other times into your future, reminds me of the boy myself waiting for the weight of trains to turn his pennies back into copper, wondering where the tracks began and where they’d end for him.

— Mark
I miss him so much.
Best to Basil; send your new address. I hope you’re both well.

Before I introduce Wendy, I have to pause to say hats off to Dad–love the line about turning pennies back into copper.

I was eighteen when I came out as queer to my father. (I am going to dispense with the “I am sure he knew before I did” bullshit lines people like to tack on to paragraphs like this, because that shit drives me crazy.) At some point not too long after that, my father sat me down and said, “A good friend of mine for many years who has identified as a lesbian for most of her life just fell in love with a man. I thought this happening at the same time as your coming out as some kind of sign I should introduce you to each other.”

I was confused–I thought I knew most of my father’s friends at that point and I would have certainly remembered meeting a lesbian. Who was this person my dad was talking about? Where did she live?

My dad explained her name was Wendy. Wendy lived in Hawaii. They had met when he was getting his MFA in Creative Writing at ASU–Wendy was in the same program. Mom had met her then but never liked her, so he didn’t tell my mother they were still communicating.

This part of the explanation seemed a bit flimsy to me at the time, but I adored my father. I was also already at a place in my life where I told my mother as little as possible about anything so she didn’t have any additional weapons in her seemingly endless verbal arsenal, so my father’s desire to not tell my mother something didn’t bother me much.

When I moved to Los Angeles three years later, my father came to visit during my first few months living there, during what also turned out to be the last year of his life. Wendy was going to be in Los Angeles at the same time, visiting her sister who lived in Malibu. We decided to all get together for margaritas.

“So when was the last time you saw Wendy?” I asked Dad.

“Twelve years ago.”

I was twenty-one at the time: 12 years was more than half the time I had been alive. It seemed an impossibly long time to go without seeing someone.

We met at Dona Rosa’s, a Mexican joint in Santa Monica. We sat on the patio. I remember it was typical Santa Monica weather–72, breezy, sunny. There were pitchers of perfect margaritas on the table, surrounded by baskets of chips and salsa. My father and Wendy were happy. I recall leaning back in my chair, looking up into the endless blue sky, feeling a mix of wonder and unease.

**To be continued**