Tuesday, March 20, 2012

The Visitor Part II_The Visitor Returns, Unchanged

Jean Purcell


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I wanted to run things by Elizabeth, to find out if maybe she remembered meeting Ruth's odd granddaughter. Anywhere. When I called, I went into messaging.

When E called back, I gave her a blow by blow of Catherine's visit.

At one point, E defended Catherine. Even after she learned that Catherine had refused to believe that she is my daughter

My slanted profile of Catherine ended in a kind, I thought, nutshell: "She has a very bad way of expressing herself." 

"Maybe she's the nervous, impulsive type," E said. "Or, as you say, not a good communicator. It's a shame. I know you and her grandmother Ruth were so close."
 
"Close, yes. But you are my daughter!"   

"But Mom," she continued, "this isn't new, is it?"

"Yes it is, E, in its harshness. She was so insistent, almost brutally so!"

"I don't know if I've ever met her. I meet so many people, and I can't remember everyone.  I wish I could help. But my identity our family is unchangeable, thank God. I mean it, nothing anyone says can change that for any of us."

She said it so sweetly, then said she needed to go soon.

We said goodbyes and I reflected how my daughter, who grew up under...now a cloud, but a challenge, daily...became so unusually successful as a neurosurgeon, and how she is able to slough off non-medical matters, even rejections. I wished I could do as she does. So like her father.

Why would anyone have the nerve to insist so vehemently that E is not my daughter? It felt like my blood pressure was rising, my heart pounding, but I kept wondering: "Is Ruth's granddaughter jealous of E? Is she a trouble-maker, a deranged woman, even dangerous?"

I wished Ruth were still alive so I could talk to her about this. The fact that Ruth and I had been friends...was her granddaughter jealous of that? Was that why she had come to meet me, with no idea about "Dr. Ransom"? Ruth and I had known each other in a small town not far from Atlanta, then not quite the big city it was now. Surely she knew about us because Ruth's family had passed down the information to everyone...about our friendship.

Catherine and my daughter were almost contemporaries, E a bit older of the two,I figured, and both in the medical arena. E's last name, since she married, is not the same as mine. She's been known as Dr. Ransom for over eight years. I had other suspicions beyond jealousy, likely more obvious explanations.

E called again the next day. "Why don't you invite her for dinner? Or take her to that 'down home' place you're always talking to me about."

"I don't want to see her again."

"You what?! You must have been afraid! Forget what I said about inviting her, then."

"I was not afraid. I was insulted." My brain was turning around how E never quits trying with some people. I had not been afraid, exactly. I had felt angry and baffled at the same time. The experience had been insulting! Like being called a liar...except for the parts of the truth that I knew could elicit disbelief.

"But not almost violent objection!" I blurted. 

E must have imagined the opposing wheels turning in my head.

"I have to go in a minute," she said. "I want to be sure you'll be all right."

"We'll see. I might invite her to dinner after all."

What in the world a meal together could accomplish was way out there for me. E had suggested I invite her brothers and their families. I stood, phone in hand, and mused, thinking ahead. With everyone around the table, nine of us.

She might feel overwhelmed. I sighed to myself. But then you'd have reinforcements, I told myself. What do you think Ruth would say?

Ruth might urge, "Let it go!," shake her head, eyes, closed, and laugh as if to say, "what can you do?"

I found the business card Catherine had left on the hall table, still lying there in a bowl. She'd put it there before we had talked about E's relation to me.

Catherine said she could come to dinner if it could be the next week. After that, I called Robert's wife and Elton, my younger son to invite them.  

Our visitor came two Friday nights later, and my sons came with their families. I told them no more than that our guest was Ruth's granddaughter.

Catherine seemed to enjoy the food and the company after she came out of a brief clam-like phase at first. When I mentioned talking with E, she almost withdrew into a shell again. She lowered her head over the table as if praying, but I doubted it.

What is wrong with her! I felt exasperated and blocked. She's so resistant, I thought, and then, to my surprise, I suddenly felt sad for her. It was a specific sadness that I had not felt for anyone for a long time.

At dessert, Elton asked her, "Did you see the family gallery?" He assumed not and arose quickly, motioning for Catherine to go with him.

"Excuse us for a minute, everyone?" He winked at me. He was so natural, and I was glad I had not told him anything specific about the short history of Catherine and me.I suspected he wanted to be sure she "met" E.

My younger son and our guest came back and I knew that she had seen E's photographs in the family lineup along the walls of the bedroom wing.       

The evening ended nicely, I had to admit, and before our guest left I urged her to give her mother and daddy our greetings. She nodded and then left, after saying she'd had a good time.

Had she?

She had said nothing all evening about E, whom she still believed, I knew, could not be my daughter. And, she'd not said a word about the medical field, her career, or anything else about herself except her cats, Nucleo and Chromo.

What a CIA-type girl!

Next: The Visitor Part III_(untitled)

Copyright (c)2012 Opinari Writers and Jean Purcell
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Tuesday, March 06, 2012

The Visitor_I

English: common aluminum and glass residential...
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The is the first of three draft installments for my draft of short story, The Visitor. The final version will be posted here or offered as a free BlogInPrint novella. 

On that blustery day at the end of an otherwise mild March, I made a fire and sat near its warmth holding a hot cup of tea for added measure of comfort. The doorbell interrupted the rare solitude I'd managed to make for myself.
     I went to the door and opened to see, through the glass, a woman probably in her mid-thirties, of neat and professional appearance and a hint of familiarity. Instead of turning away, thinking it a sales call, I caught myself realizing the stranger's somewhat unsettling likeness to Ruth, bringing reminders of what seemed a lifetime ago. 
    I stared at her while pushing the glass door halfway open. At the same time the visitor spoke: "Hello, my name is Catherine Wells Frank. I think you knew...my grandmother?"
    "You're Ruth's granddaughter?" I replied, exchanging one question with another and thereby answering her. She nodded, told me her name, and that she was in the area on business.
    My manners left me and I kept looking into her eyes as if keeping her as a likeness of long ago. 
     "Yes, I knew your grandmother," I said, and she nodded, then waited, standing there, looking at me through the glass. Immediately, I awoke from the surprise. 
     "Please, come in," I opened the door, and she stepped inside.  
     She refused a cup of tea or anything to drink, but she did accept a seat near the fire. She only was curious, she said, for she had heard of me and my family for a long time and was in the area, so why not stop by. She knew that I had known her grandmother. She was right about that. I had known her grandmother possibly as well or better than her own family had. Our paths had kept crossing that closely, by routine and by choice.

"I can't explain why I looked you up," she explained, "but I'm in this area from time to time...working with surgeons at Pennsylvania Hospital."

"Well, then, tell me about yourself," I said, and I was eager to hear. I had had no contact with Ruth's family since her death 10 years before.

Catherine spoke first about why she was in the area and her connection with medical diagnostics and equipment design and testing. It sounded interesting, and so we talked briefly about her experiences, then family news. It did not surprise me when she included events of note where she had grown up, where I had met Ruth.

She told me about learning to play the piano at Grandmother Ruth's.

"I loved playing Bach. I know people laugh at that, but I still get a thrill when I recognize a Bach Two-Part Invention without being told what it is!"

"There's a piano in another room. Would you like to play?"

Catherine blushed, then giggled. 

"I'm am so very rusty, got out of touch, probably my 'Chopsticks' now would make our ears shriek...But thank you for the offer."

That sounded so like Ruth, her quiet, subtle fun.

I laughed with Catherine and prompted, coming down from a good chuckle: "You should write," I said.

"I do," she said. "I get so much material from doctors telling me about patients' comments and questions. They're not mean but hit the nail on the head. I send them to a couple of journals, insider stuff, and some are cartooned as well. It's fun."

She launched into a couple of quick examples. Then looked at me seriously.

"Enough about me, tell me about your family," she urged. "I only know what we last heard from you, after Grandmother died."

"You are so like Ruth!" I said, remembering Ruth's little stories and also her drawings. Then, I told Catherine about my husband's death, the five grandchildren living nearby. I felt such rapport with the young woman sitting before me. I felt blessed in a rare way, with the mixture of past and present that we shared. Was this going to become a sort of friendship, between us, I wondered? Ruth would almost have danced to hear such a thing!

"I have two sons, as you may know, and a daughter who is married...no children...yet," I added, smiling and trying to convey my hope. "She is in the medical profession, too. A surgeon. That's her photo behind you, on the table over there." I indicated the elaborate French antique that Elizabeth had given to her father and me in her second year of medical practice. Elizabeth's wedding photo was there.

"That's Dr. Ransom! She's not your daughter!" Catherine exclaimed, then caught herself before saying more. I felt she had lots more to say.
I objected, glaring at her: "Yes! She is my daughter!"
"That cannot be so," she said. "I don't understand."

She rushed to add that she had seen Dr. Elizabeth Ransom, now a well-known, break-through neurosurgeon. Their paths had crossed at professional awards ceremonies and conferences.

"My research relates to neurological diseases," she added. "But," she insisted, "She cannot be your daughter!"
How rude she was, how unlike Ruth, and how angry she was making me!

"I think you should leave," I said, trying to hold back my temper...almost failing.

She seemed not to have heard me and tried to turn the subject to my sons and grandchildren.

I could not cooperate, my thoughts churning. Why is she so angry? 

Maybe she was not mentally all there. Why had I allowed this stranger into my home?
 
Those ideas ran through my mind while she talked on and on about new topics, such as a book she was writing, speaking engagements, successful projects, and I wondered, then, if perhaps she was in competition with Elizabeth's achievements.

The visit could not last long, given its odd turn. When I stood and indicated I had an appointment, she said only, "So do I."

The oddity grew when our paths crossed again at an evening event two nights later. Catherine tried to smile at me and I tried not to frown at her or make a worse face. She walked over to me, but all I could think of was my daughter and this woman's strangeness. Only the connection with her grandmother, Ruth, if there really was one, prevented me from ignoring her. h

She tried to be friendly, but when someone joined us she introduced me mentioned nothing about our brief history through her grandmother...and beyond.

Her friend, in another surprising coincidence, turned to her, excited: "Did you know that Dr. Ransom might be able to speak at that Johns Hopkins symposium?"
Catherine nodded, saying nothing in response. Her friend looked puzzled and stood with us, silently. Nervously, she left us, alone again. 

Catherine bothered me the next week, showing up as before, without a phone call. I saw her through the front window as I walked to the door. I gazed at  her through the glass door and then, after brief hesitation, I opened it.
"I was in the area again," she said, "and I thought to drop by."
"Oh, Elizabeth is coming by soon. You can officially meet her."

I was being very bad, as Elizabeth would say, for it was not true. I wanted to see Catherine's reaction.

Her face appeared to freeze, then relax enough for her mouth to form the words, "I should leave, then."

"Why not come in for a few minutes," I offered. What other kind of test could I give her, I wondered. Our family history is well-known, more than her family's in fact, and I wondered if she did not like to think of Elizabeth as being connected from a somewhat historic family, albeit from generations past. If jealousy was her problem, the news that Elizabeth was connected to our family could be the reason for her odd behavior.

She did not stay long. I cut our visit very short, with no excuse. The wedge that had appeared earlier had grown larger and harder from my perspective. It made no sense to allow her to remain any longer in my home, a woman who rejected my connection with my own daughter. It would make no sense to invite her in, and I did not want to do it. It would be wrong, because it would mean that I disrespected my daughter as who she is, in the family. What if _____  arrived as we were talking? I would embrace her, introduce her more familiarly, in person, and I knew in my heart that our guest was capable of saying something insulting, an exclamation of disbelief.
Our family is close, open to all, except in this kind of instance. Discord, disagreement, and eventually arguing would ensue, I felt then. I had rarely turned away anyone before this, yet I knew it is right to do so now. It would be dishonest to do otherwise. She distrusted me, I disliked her.     

This experience was wrenching, and my thoughts returned to it often. Then, it occurred to me just this morning that that experience is like a glimmer of insight into the mind of God. People deny that Jesus is His Son. That helped me calm myself. I felt so protective of my three children, now two men and a young woman. I felt especially protective toward my daughter, and she toward us.
 
I am so very human. Yet, I see now a new way perhaps to understand God and His insistence that Jesus be accepted as His Son. I am a mother, a parent in an unusual, yes...an unusual family.

I had often felt that God seemed stern by insisting that Jesus be acknowledged as who He is. This experience was opening my eyes about that. And, it was over. I would forget it eventually and move on.

The Visitor is a short story installment. Next: The Visitor Part II_The visitor returns, unchanged *
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Copyright (c)2012 Opinari Writers 

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