Alice Digs in Her Heels
August 15, 2012
Yesterday, Alice received a message from her 80-something second cousin. We’ll call this woman Lucille. It caused Alice such concern that she forwarded the message to me.
First, Lucille had written a few words about Alice’s 97th birthday coming up (August 24th) and sent her good wishes. Then this appears:
I have been getting vibes about my real father and the only one I have (sic) is that my father is Toby Gunderson. Do you know my other one and any health issues he might have had?
I went to my heart dr. for a checkup yesterday …my blood pressure is under control. So good news that way.
We have been making jelly/jam from rhubarb & blueberries & huckleberries. Fun but tiring. Much love, Lucille
Of course, the part that alarmed Alice is the sentence about Lucille’s “real father” because Toby Gunderson is not her biological father and Lucille knows it.
Alice asked me what she should write back.
Both of Lucille’s fathers are long dead, but I know that Alice knows who her biological father was. In fact, I know who he was. I heard the story several times growing up. It goes like this:
Somewhere in the late 1920s, two teen-age cousins, Essie and Joy, found themselves bedazzled by the same young man, Wim Pederson, a newcomer to town. He was twenty-two. They didn’t mention this infatuation to one another.
Essie’s parents and Joy’s parents were farmers. (Their mothers were my grandmother Martha’s sisters, but Martha and Louie and their seven children, including Alice, lived in town, not on a farm.)
Wim Pederson owned a car and he drove out nightly to the outskirts of the little prairie town to secretly meet either Essie or Joy and drive them around in the car and park somewhere to look at the stars and do other things they should have been doing only if properly educated and equipped, but they were neither.
Each cousin thought she was the only one Wim was picking up and parking with in secret. It must have been thrilling to sneak out a farmhouse window and run across damp fields and down the dirt road until headlights appeared in the distance and a night of romance began.
Essie was the youngest of the two cousins and ever since she was small she’d spent occasional days and nights at her Aunt Martha’s house. Martha and Louie and the whole family loved her. She ate at their table and spent peaceful nights in bed with her cousins. (Every night there were four sisters in one bed and three in another, so with Essie staying over that meant four in each.)
Also, they visited her at the farm.
Essie (on horseback) and Alice’s sister Marie (standing).
Essie grew up around them all.
Essie was a gentle girl with a ready laugh, always eager to help out, full of plans. About her slightly older cousin Joy, they knew little. She was shy and kind, but remote.
Later, when Alice and her sisters told me (one at a time) about what happened, each would marvel at how little they understood about the female bodies they owned. Here was their cousin Essie skipping through the summer days with them that year she was fifteen, hunched next to them on one of the apple crates at their crowded dinner table, squeezed in amongst them in their crowded bed, and not one of them had an inkling that her belly was swelling day by day or, if they noticed, why such a thing would be happening.
Essie and Alice’s family dog, Pom.
Meanwhile, her cousin Joy’s belly was swelling too, and finally some heretofore oblivious adult caught on.
Chaos. Hysterical conversations behind closed doors at Essie’s farm house and at Joy’s farm house. Wim was summoned. Options were given or straws were drawn or firearms appeared or something. Soon, Wim and Joy were married, and sweet Essie was left to give birth to Lucille in shame. Not long after that, Essie married Toby Gunderson, a neighboring farm boy who knew the story but didn’t care, and he gave Lucille his name.
Little Lucille called Toby “Papa,” but it wasn’t long before she heard from another child or a neighbor or a shopkeeper in town that Toby was not Papa. Everybody in that town knew what had happened. The children knew. Alice, who was thirteen when Essie gave birth to Lucille, also knew.
But Essie is gone now. Joy is gone. Toby and Wim are both gone.
And here is Lucille, who, some eighty years later, still wants that piece of information that all those men, women, and children had way back then. She, who has never brought herself to ask the question of Alice before now, notices the clock ticking and the deep age of 97 approaching for her mother’s Cousin Alice, so she slips her query into an e-mail with a seeming casualness, positioning it between birthday tidings and huckleberry jam.
Poor Lucille, daughter of Essie and Wim Pederson. Tell her!
But in a string of e-mails to me, Alice instead started testing out ways to avoid divulging Wim Pederson’s two-timing, selfish ways. Alice wrote: “Can’t I say that I have no idea?”
“That is not true,” I counter. “Tell her.”
“Maybe I could say that I was too young to be paying any attention to that.”
“You said you found out when you were thirteen.”
Finally, she called me. “I am NOT going to tell her.”
“Why not?”
“No. NO! No.”
“Everybody’s gone,” I said. “Doesn’t that mean the shame can die too?”
“Oh, I don’t know what you’re talking about. No. Huh-uh. I’m not going to tell her.”
I pleaded with her. Why can’t she know? For the sake of her curiosity at the very least? Wouldn’t you want to know? There’s nobody else left to tell her.
“Let her husband tell her,” Alice said. “He grew up there.”
“But he didn’t grow up with Essie and Joy. He grew up with Lucille.”
“What?”
“Lucille’s husband is her own age, not her mother’s age. Why would he know who was sneaking around back roads twenty years before he was even born?”
“Oh,” she said. “He knows. It was just a small town. Everybody knew.”
“Mom, Lucille doesn’t know. Why would she ask you to tell her if she already knew?”
“Oh, she knows. Once when Lucille was in the fourth grade a little boy came up to her and said, You have a nose just like Wim Pederson’s.“
I thought about this but, assuming Wim Pederson’s nose was a regular Scandinavian nose and not upside down or otherwise strikingly unusual, I couldn’t imagine how little fourth grade Lucille would give this strange announcement any credit. Did she even know about genetics then?
I pressed on. “I don’t think that counts. Anyway, she obviously didn’t believe it or doesn’t remember it. Can’t you say something to help her?”
In my rising frustration, I realized this was one of those moments when my mother’s stubbornness is super-glued to her generation’s moral values and certainly nothing a young whippersnapper like me has to say is going to split the two apart and crack open a new vista on the past.
i tried one more angle. “What about Lucille’s health issues? She wants to know what she might have inherited, what to look out for.”
“He had thirteen children with Joy, and then he also fathered Lucille, so that’s fourteen children he had altogether,” Alice said. “I don’t think he had any health issues.”
Now our two trains of thought were not only running on different tracks, they had arrived at a junction and sped off in separate directions entirely.
“What difference does it make how many children…?” Picture these words floating out from the engine of my train, picked up by a gust of prairie wind, and wafted off over the wheat fields and beyond, into the vast Dakota of Times Past.
But I had one last shred of defiance. Damn these damn small towns where women cannot get the most basic information eighty damn years after the fact about their own damn lives.
“Maybe I’ll tell her,” I said. “You forwarded her letter. I have her e-mail address.”
“Anyway,” she said, ignoring me, “I already know what I’m going to say. I’m going to thank her for wishing me happy birthday and tell her I think it’s nice she makes her own jam, and then I’ll put it like this: About your father, I cannot help you there.”
“Really? It’s not true!”
“I’m not lying because I can’t help her,” Alice said.
“You won’t.”
She hung up.
She called back a few minutes later to tell me pleasantly that someone had brought her some bean soup, which she thought was very nice because a server at lunch time had slipped up and Alice had missed out on her portion.
“Soup,” I said flatly. “Good for you.”
“Oh yes, it was very good. Your father always liked bean soup. And now I’m going to take a nap.”
Dear Reader, enlighten me. What should I do? I met Lucille once about fifteen years ago and (just to maintain this silly train metaphor) our opposing politics and her religious fervor derailed any real conversation. But should she continue to suffer not knowing? And if I tell her, and she then tells Alice that I spilled the beans right out of the soup…oh you get the idea. Your thoughts?
August 15, 2012 at 8:47 pm
Well, I’m always for telling the truth, especially when someone “involved” wants to know.
A friend of mine always used to say “Bad news never gets better with age.”
This one has aged quite a bit… it may be time to put her mind at rest. To let her heal. Or deal with it. Or whatever she needs now that she had dared to ask the question.
Conversely, when it comes to nosey busy bodies who have no “involvement” and just want the rumor, that’s when discretion overrules certain knowledge and it’s usually best to say nothing.
August 15, 2012 at 9:51 pm
Tell her. I can think of no ethical reason not to and a zillion on the tell side.
August 15, 2012 at 10:15 pm
Oh, my god. Tell her. Tell the poor woman, despite her religious fervor. As we say in the south, “Bless her heart.”
August 16, 2012 at 2:07 am
I would tell her and maybe Alice will actually be glad that she doesn’t have to give out the secret herself. Everyone deserves the truth.
August 16, 2012 at 5:35 am
I’m with the tell her faction. And if as your mother thinks, she really knows, it would confirm to her that she wasn’t imagining things.
August 16, 2012 at 5:37 am
Bless her heart, she has been waiting on this for such a long time before she got the nerve to ask… all the people are long gone, and she is approaching her old age too, why not give her a bit of peace, and if your mother gets annoyed with you if she finds out that you told… that will be ok too, because you have already told her you were going to do it , if she didn’t.!!!… Its all so very long ago, and your cousin probably has had a feeling about it for years.. but for all the fears and morals, its her story and she should know… all the best, J
August 16, 2012 at 5:44 am
Maybe approach it by saying Alice has her own reasons, but if she asked you, you’d tell her what you knew. That absolves Alice from “gossipping” or whatever the shame connection is. Wim is the one who should be “ashamed” – certainly not the child he brought into the world. Maybe she will pray for his lost soul…She shouldn’t have to carry around the guilt for something she had
no control over.
August 16, 2012 at 7:58 am
Tell her. And tell Alice you told her. Let the beans spill where they may. Mothers forgive their daughters.
August 16, 2012 at 8:13 am
Although I agree with your sentiments, it honestly is not yours to tell. This is Alice’s and Lucille’s business. Yours is the Witness role . Look to see what lessons are there for you.
August 16, 2012 at 8:33 am
Hum, this is a tough one because I think it has more to do with the relationship you have with your mom than a need to tell the cousin about her father. I’d be caught as you are in this catch 22. My family had a secret as well that this reminds me of your story. My mother’s only sibling, a younger sister, married an Italian American man who had been stationed at Ft. Knox during WWII; I grew up only 20 or so miles from there so there were always women from my home town who met up with and married men from different parts of the county…this was one of the few ways of meeting men from such exotic places as New York City, Chicago, Oklahoma, etc. Anyway, the marriage didn’t last very long and my aunt ended up remarrying a local boy but even though she never had children with him it was scandalous back then to be a divorced woman so she never wanted her children to know that she had had a previous marriage. Thus, I grew up with family photos of my aunt’s first wedding ceremony and knowing the whole story but being sworn to secrecy not to reveal the story to my cousins. There were 7 of us and 4 of them so it was a tough secret to keep but we all had promised my mother not to tell them but low and behold a number of years after my aunt died one of the cousins found out from a cousin on their father’s side and immediately called my mother to have the story verified. Mother did verify the story but had to explain why she had never told them. It seems like such a small thing in this day and age but my cousins feel like this secret caused them to know their mother less than they thought they had and at least one of them has tried to find this man through the internet. Mom gave them all of the photos of their mother in her gorgeous wedding gown and filled them in as much as she could but they still question their mother’s reasoning for keeping this information from them. So, I understand your dilemma and can only wish you good luck in making the decision……..
August 16, 2012 at 8:55 am
Wow, Andrea, your dilemma certainly stirred up a lot of comments all saying “tell her”. I’m for that as well. Taking a step toward helping someone’s clarity about who they are/where they come from, the mystery of their existence,
seems a good idea.
I loved watching your mind roll out the train metaphor, e.g.
“Now our two trains of thought were not only running on different tracks, they had arrived at a junction and sped off in separate directions entirely.”
Your agility moving into the metaphor and back again is one
of the things I most love about your fine mind!
xoxo
August 16, 2012 at 11:07 am
While Skydog has a point that strictly speaking, this is not yours to tell, I think to err on the side of compassion is the truer road. Alice’s generation kept its secrets out of shame — lord knows I have plenty of examples in my own family — but this is a different age. Lucille is asking about the truth of her own origins. It’s not frivolous. It’s not gossip. All the parties involved have passed on. Lucille has a right to her history.
August 16, 2012 at 11:11 am
Tell her!!!!
It is the right thing to do.
Bon
August 16, 2012 at 1:36 pm
So, you don’t know Lucille. Your mom has decided to make you informed of the situation, though. Interesting. I wonder if your mother is trying to set you up to be the one to tell her. It is certainly your decision. Of course I don’t know either you or your mother but it seems like your mother is getting a lot of mileage out of this whole situation. Since you don’t know Lucille or what she may or may not know, if you wanted to contact her yourself (since your mother seems to be limiting herself to driving everyone concerned crazy by withholding knowledge she could but won’t share), you could call her, identify yourself, explain that your mother has told you that she (Lucille) asked for information and then ask Lucille what she does know or thinks she knows. Then, on that basis, you could decide if you want to share your secondhand knowledge. Good luck.
August 16, 2012 at 8:17 pm
I agree with laurieclemens above and with all the “tell her for god sakes” comments further up. Your mother gave you the email, which had the email address on it, AND told you the story. If she’s not manipulating you into being the one to tell poor Lucille the truth, I don’t know why she would do that. And Lucille is entitled to the truth, poor woman, she has finally asked for it, she wants it. Lies are bad, no matter the rationale. They make people crazy. Surely the truth cannot hurt Lucille now (if it ever could). If your mother is too much of a coward, or too entrenched in early 20th century rural values, or too ashamed that she never told her before, to be willing to tell her now, then you should. Alice has handed it to you on a silver platter. She has passed the job on to you (whether or not she would admit it). And….does Alice own the rights to decide if Lucille gets to know the truth? I don’t think so.
August 16, 2012 at 10:43 pm
All things considered … tell her. Your mom will say, “You shouldn’t have,” thankful that you did … if you felt you needed to … but she wouldn’t have. Amen.
August 17, 2012 at 5:10 pm
This is such a Southern story. All souls sworn to secrecy to “protect” someone. Throw my vote in with the tell her crowd.
August 18, 2012 at 1:30 am
I can’t help but wonder what happened back then – if Essie stayed friends with all of her cousins – especially Joy – what their relationships were like after the big brouhaha… What kind of a father and husband did Wim, The Philanderer,” turn out to be? I can only hope he rose to the occasion, but his earlier actions don’t necessarily bode well… I also wonder about Lucille and if it took a lot of courage for her to bring the issue up with Alice. I love that she uses the word “vibe” in her request of information – and that word indicates to me that she may know, she just wants a confirmation. I wonder how Lucille will react if she does find out. At her age, how much could it affect her, already knowing that the man she called Papa wasn’t her biological father from an early age. I have to say, I think If I were Lucille, I would want to know – just to know. Just to line her ducks up at the end of her life. I am dealing with a family whose photos I scanned who are from another culture. Even though everyone knows the stories about all the messing around that went on and the children who were brought into the world through “interesting” unions are pretty much acknowledged as part of the family, there is still, a hundred years later, a game of “you tell me what you know and I’ll tell you if it’s the same story I heard.” Even though life is a very messy business, people still have ideas that things should be certain ways and that to me is the crux of the matter. Why? Attaching shame to these situations – especially when they happened so long ago and all the primary characters are gone – seems like giving the judgements too much importance. For me, working with this other family, I don’t see it as something to judge – I see it as something that happened in a long list of things that happened. And I tend to collect people’s versions of the stories – because no one person has the absolute truth – they have their version, as they saw it. It’s like the 1950 Japanese film, Rashomon. Good luck Andrea!
August 23, 2012 at 10:49 pm
I note that ALice ignored your offer or threat
to tell LUcille; she did not ask you not to “stick your beak in.” Tacit permission to do what she was too embarrassed to do?
August 27, 2012 at 6:19 am
Telling the truth is important and necessary in most cases–essential when one is asked a question directly. You were not asked directly–hence the gray area. So–the question becomes whether or not it is your place to get involved, not about whether you tell her or not. Do you feel like knowing will bring something better to her life? Do you feel like there is a genuine health issue where this knowledge could help? Do you think that her knowing will provide answers she is seeking or do you think it will open up a whole new set of questions (unlikely to be answered now that the persons involved have passed away)? Another aspect to consider is that the family that loved her and raised her (and one would assume cared about her best interests) chose not to tell her. There has to be a reason for that–perhaps one you don’t have access to and one that Alice cannot remember. Good luck with this important decision. Either direction you choose would make for an excellent story/novel by the way–there is nothing more beautiful, heart wrenching, inspiring, complex, etc… than the inner lives of families. Thank you for sharing.
August 27, 2012 at 10:40 am
Such wise and thoughtful readers. You have brought up many points that show what you’re made of, and you have helped me understand this dilemma more clearly. Thank you all. Please see the next post, titled “Dear Readers,” to see the conclusion I finally came to after much thought.