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Father and son exited Norm’s Breakfast Bar together, Billy affectionately holding onto his son’s shoulder.
‘Feel better, huh?’
‘Yeah, Dad, I’m stuffed to the rafters.’
‘Now you understand why your mother -’ Billy paused. Maybe it wasn't the best time to bring the memory up...
‘Naw, go on, Dad. Why Mom, what?’
‘Why she and all the ladies at the church brought all that food in all the time, special occasions, holidays, after a funeral...’
‘Aw, yeah,’ Eliot laughed, to his father’s delight. ‘I never understood that. I’s just a kid. All I knew was that I couldn’t wait for services to end so I could dig in! But now… yeah, I see how it’s comforting. Thanks, Dad.’
‘Meet you back at the house. Unless you need to go - ?’
Eliot heard, in his father's voice, the yearning invitation in that question. There wasn’t a job or a client on earth that was worth a few hours more of being with his father. Not now, not after so many lonely years. Not when things were finally right between them.
‘Meet ya there, Dad.’
~~~*~~~
‘Coffee?’
‘Aw, hell, yeah.’ Eliot grinned. ‘Settles down a big meal.’
‘It does that.’
Eliot sat at the kitchen table watching his father prepare the coffee pot and bring out a small cake. He felt incredulous at how very at ease and so at home he felt. It was ironic that as a retrieval specialist, he had finally attained what he had long despaired of ever retrieving. He’d made peace with his father at last. At long last. His heart swelled in gratitude.
‘Y’know,’ Billy remarked, ‘I wanted to thank you for that picture, the one of you and me when you were playing Pee Wee football and I was coaching the team. I think you were about 8 or 9. Small for your age but my God, what a tackle. You brought down kids twice your size. When I watched you ride off in that massive meat wagon…’
‘Food truck, Dad.’
‘Yeah, yeah. Anyway - it struck me, standing there in the driveway, how long you must have held onto that picture and what a miracle it was, considering some of the places I think you were in, that you could have held onto it at all.’
‘It might have spent a night or two in my shorts…’
Billy shook his head, laughing, and threw his hands up. ‘Shouldn’a asked. Oh, boy, too much information. But it reminded me of somethin’ else - somethin’ I wanna show you. Come on, while the coffee's brewing.’
In his bedroom, Billy raised the lid of a very old cedar chest. He dug down to the bottom and came up with a flat box and handed it to Eliot, who took it with a quizzical look on his face.
‘Open it, son.’
Wrapped in tissue within the box was a thin blanket that looked as if it had been hand-woven. Zig-zag embroidery decorated the edges. Billy took it out of the box and laid it on his bed. He unfolded it carefully, to reveal a yellowed, folded note lying on top of a piece of hardened substance that had permeated the fabric of the blanket.
‘What is it, Dad?’
‘That, son, is the blanket you were wearing when your Mom found you at the hospital. Just that blanket and not a damned thing else… no diaper or nothin’… except this note that came with you, like a… like a goddamn receipt or somethin’.’
‘No shit. Seriously?’ Eliot lifted the thin square blanket and peered at it.
‘Seriously.’
‘And you kept it all these years?’
‘It was easy. I didn’t have to keep it in my underwear.’
‘Can I read the note?’
Billy handed it to him. Eliot unfolded the small square of paper, reading silently.
His name is Eliot. I can’t keep him. Give him a good home.
‘You mean, you and Mom didn’t name me? Did - did this come from my birth mother?’
‘We never saw her, son. All we can do is speculate - we think it did. We saw nor found no trace of her or your natural father. No one saw anyone arrive, put you on the floor, or leave.’
‘Huh? Look, I know you always told me somebody dropped me off at the hospital, but they laid me on the floor?!’
‘Around the corner from the door. Takes all kinds. We figure it was some young girl, probably desperate, scared to death, in a situation she couldn't handle. She didn’t know where to turn. As it was, think well of her, son. She left you in a safe place.’
‘So this is probably her handwriting.’
Billy shrugged.
Eliot sat quiet for a while, processing it all. The picture his father had painted of the scenario played in his mind. He couldn’t figure out what to feel. These past few weeks had been tumultuous to someone who had buried his feelings deep and forbade them to surface. Circumstances had thrown life preservers at it all, and feelings were surfacing faster than he could process, a sensation akin to drowning.
Still, he recognized this as a treasure, a piece of his past; his beginnings, of an innocence he lost early and would never have again. It was a souvenir to keep.
‘Thanks, Dad. I’m gonna take good care of it.’ Eliot folded the paper within the blanket and returned it to the box. He reached for his father and embraced him.
‘Coffee’s ready. Got room for some cake?’
‘Come on!’ Eliot grinned.
~~~*~~~
Back in New Orleans at last, Eliot sat at the bar with the box before him, reading and re-reading the note. The team had texted that they were between jobs and all were off doing their own thing. The only one they hadn’t heard from was Parker.
Eliot slid the note back in the box and left it on the bar while he went for a beer. When he returned, Parker was sitting in his spot, going through the box.
‘Parker!’
‘What?’
‘That’s mine!’
‘I don’t see your name on it. Oh wait, yes, I do see your name on it. What is this?’
Eliot grabbed the note and blanket from Parker’s eager hands and returned it to the box. ‘Do I go through your things? No. So leave it alone.’
‘Sorry. Maybe you shouldn’t just leave stuff just lying around. I was just curious. What is it, anyway?’
Parker looked so remorseful Eliot relented, set his beer down and told her what his father had told him. It was almost comical to watch her eyes widen and her mouth drop open.
He allowed Parker to handle the blanket. ‘Wait, what’s this stuff? I can’t get it out of the fabric.’
‘Mom said whoever left that note with me stuck it to the blanket with chewing gum so it wouldn’t get lost.’
Eliot didn’t think Parker’s eyes could get any wider, but they did. She drew in her breath sharply as if she was about to yell.
‘What?!’
‘Eliot, do you know what that is? What it means?’
‘Stop talking in riddles! What?!?’
‘That’s chewing gum, Eliot!’
‘So?’
‘Chewing gum can keep a sample of DNA locked inside it for centuries!’
‘Huh?”
‘Researchers in Denmark discovered an old, and I mean really, really old piece of gum that still contained the full human genome of the guy who chewed it, like, 5,700 years ago.’
‘So…’ Eliot gestured toward the blanket.
‘Yes!’
Eliot mind reeled with this new information. If what Parker was saying was true, it might be possible to… find his mother. His birth mother.
‘You’re sure. You ain't just riffin’ me with this.’
‘Look it up. Scientific fact.’
Parker looked at Eliot closely. Although not the master of reading people that Sophie was, Parker nevertheless read Eliot’s face as well as the schematics to the most secure safe mechanism. She watched as surprise, excitement and yearning washed over his strong, regular features. Usually he was so closed, reticent, walking under a perpetual dark cloud. This was a whole new Eliot. She’d gotten used to the old Eliot. The question was, would she like this new Eliot? Maybe she didn't need to worry. The old Eliot was back. Closed, reticent.
‘I gotta think about this, Parker.’
Eliot got up slowly from the bar, tucked the box under his arm and mounted the stairs.
~~~*~~~
The main question was, if he decided to go through with this nonsense, what was he going to tell his father?
Eliot lay back in his recliner, two empty beers on the table beside him, a third in his hand. He sipped it, as his mind generated question after question. Would this DNA thing Parker was talking about actually work? If it did, what information would he get? Was his natural mother even alive now? Where would he find her? Did he even want to find her? If he found her, what would he say? Could she tell him about his natural father? Would she even want to see him? Was he setting himself up for rejection? His Mom was dead, but what would Dad say? How would this make him feel? Things were delicate between them; they were in the process of healing. Would this not throw a monkey wrench into the works? Sabotage the progress they'd made? He himself had reached a place of relative peace and even a modicum of happiness. Why should he jeopardize all that to satisfy a whim of curiosity?
Eliot thought back over his early life. His parents had been strict but fair, opposed to corporal punishment. A natural mischief maker, Eliot was sent to his room or reasoned with, never spanked or whipped. The fact of his adoption, of necessity relayed to him when he was old enough to understand, had been handled with loving kindness and understanding. Mismatched or not, he was their son. He had grown up feeling wanted, confident and secure in their unconditional love. As an only child, he had benefited from activities that showcased his natural athleticism. His father coached his Pee Wee football team and later high school football and wrestling.
Only when Eliot gravitated toward the Army, expressing a fervent wish to enlist upon graduation, did he butt heads with his parents, his father in particular, who never gave him a satisfactory answer as to why he shouldn’t join up.
That one argument had led to a rift in the family and a fight with his father one night, after which Eliot proceeded to enlist over the objections of his parents.
That rift had led to a thirty-year separation and the loss of his mother, whom he never saw again after that night.
His mother. She's the one who had brought him home from the hospital and claimed him as her own.
He already had a mother, what the hell did he need with another one?
That clump of hardened gum as just that - a piece of gum. If it held any connection to him, it was only that of a stranger.
Eliot knew what he had to do.
~~~*~~~
The fire pit in the courtyard was glowing. The charcoal embers had been originally meant for the next cookout. Eliot removed the blanket from the box. He read the note one last time, folded it within the blanket and laid it tenderly on top of the burning embers.
Watching the remnants of his unknown past being reduced to ashes gave him a sense of closure; of peace.
He hoped Parker would understand his decision.
The End