The Castaway Hotel - 5 - 27. Chapter 27 - A Tense Situation

Dustin’s birthday was at the end of April, so I made sure to call him a few weeks before that to see how he wanted to celebrate his big day this year. I suggested we could all come to see him at college, go out to eat and give him his gifts there, but he said it wouldn’t be necessary. He informed me that having a birthday was no big deal and it might be best for us to wait until he got home for summer vacation, and then just do a little something, but nothing big. He also explained he wouldn’t really have the time to party so late in the semester, since he had a couple of big assignments that would be coming due around that time. Not only that, but it would also only be a week or so away from finals, depending on which week-end we would come out, so he determined his time would be best spent studying, writing his term papers and finishing his projects instead. He explained it wouldn’t bother him to wait a couple of extra weeks to celebrate his birthday at home, as long as I didn’t mind.

I quickly assured him I understood and we’d merely call him on his birthday, so we could send along our best wishes. He said that would be fine, and then I asked him if he wanted me to do anything special or send him anything to make up for our not being there with him. He said that wouldn’t be necessary and he’d enjoy the delayed party even more, once he didn’t have all the pressures of his coursework to deal with. I agreed with him on that point and planned accordingly.

That’s how things stood as April reached its final few days, but it’s also when an unexpected visitor suddenly popped into our lives. It all began one afternoon while the boys were at school and a woman showed up at our door. I was the only one home at the time and had no idea who she was or what she wanted. After questioning her briefly at the door, she insisted she had an important matter to discuss with me, so I let her in and guided her to the living room, where we could talk.

“May I get you anything?” I asked, trying to be a polite host and giving me a chance to figure out who she was. “Perhaps you’d like a cup of coffee, a soda, a glass of water or possibly a snack of some sort?”

“No, thank you. I’m fine, just a bit nervous,” she admitted, and at about the same time I concluded her gaunt body and haggard features made it appear as if she’d led a rough life. “You really don’t have any idea about who I am, do you?” she asked, with a puzzled expression on her face.

I’m sure her last comment caused me to look even more perplexed than she did, as I searched my memory to see if I could conjure up a spark of recognition. While I thought back upon my life, trying to determine if she were a former student, someone my wife or I might have known or if she had possibly even been a friend of one of my older children, I drew a blank. However, after thinking it through, I eventually realized the last choice was the least likely, since she appeared to be older than any of my biological sons or daughters.

“No, I’m afraid not,” I finally admitted. “I apologize if I should know you, but the memory is one of the first things that goes with age.” I added that to bring a little levity into the conversation, but my comment didn’t seem to amuse her.

“Don’t worry about it,” she reassured me. “I know we have never met in person, but I thought you might have possibly seen my picture or recognized a similarity in my appearance. But then again, I guess I really don’t know what I thought would happen, but that doesn’t matter any longer.”

As I listened to her ramble like that, I just sat there staring at her and eventually noticed something vaguely familiar about her features. However, I just couldn’t put a finger on exactly what it was. As I sat thinking about it, I also hoped she would take the initiative and enlighten me as to her identity; at least before too much more time elapsed.

The problem was, she was too lost in her own thoughts, so I decided it was up to me to bring her back to the matter at hand. “I beg your pardon,” I said, breaking her train of thought, “but I still don’t know who you are. Might you care to share that information with me?” This brought her back to the issue at hand, but now she was the one who looked puzzled again.

“Oh, I’m so sorry,” she said, apologetically, “it’s just that I’m so nervous about doing this. It’s probably because I realize I don’t have any right to come here and ask you this, but I know in my heart that I must. I just won’t be able to live with myself unless I get this matter settled, once and for all.” Having said this, she studied me apprehensively, as if she were waiting for a response, however I hadn’t heard any questions and she hadn’t said anything that would require a reply. Instead, I concluded it was time for her to stop beating around the bush.

“Excuse me, but I think maybe we should back up and start over again,” I informed her. “Why don’t you begin by telling me who you are and why you’re here?” She nodded her head as I said this, as if she were agreeing with my suggestion, so I paused to let her fill in the blanks.

“Yes, you’re right. I apologize for not doing that before,” she concurred. “My name is… well, it’s Melissa Van Cott. I’m Cole and Graham’s mother.”

At this moment, I must have been the one who looked as if I were in shock. I suspect my mouth must have fallen open, while my eyes bulged from their sockets after she made her announcement, and now my mind began to whirl with a thousand questions. ‘Why had she shown up now? What did she want and what was she after?’ However, these were just a few of the questions that invaded my thoughts.

Carefully, I studied her and noted her features. That’s when I realized the glimmer of recognition I had felt before was because Graham shared a great many of his mother’s physical attributes, but his weren’t nearly as hard. Actually, they looked better on him than they did her, but that might be due to the fact that she looked worn and far older than her years, which was most like caused by the prolonged rough living and heavy drinking she had indulged in.

“Well, I guess the next question I should ask you is, why are you here?” I managed to choke out. I was sure my adoption of her sons was perfectly legal and irreversible, but that didn’t stop me from wondering what she hoped to accomplish by showing up like this.

Ms. Van Cott merely looked at me and licked her lips tentatively. This was most likely because she was suffering from cottonmouth, not only due to the tension and unpredictability of this meeting, but also a result of her intended purpose. After a lengthy delay, she finally answered.

“I’ve come here to let you know that I would like to take my sons back,” she replied, looking hopeful. “I appreciate what you’ve done for them, but I want to have my boys back.”

Hearing this, I nearly jumped out of my seat. I was more than ready to challenge how she dared show up with such expectations, especially after how she had treated her sons when they were in her custody. To my credit, though, I managed to maintain my composure.

As I thought back upon her words, I realized she hadn’t said this with very much feeling, other than a very bad case of nerves. It certainly wasn’t the impassioned plea of a doting parent and fell far short of showing any depth of concern, as she made her case. Although I still wasn’t exactly sure of her reasons at this point, I WAS convinced it was time to nip this notion in the bud.

“Look, I’ve adopted these boys and they are no longer your sons, in the legal sense,” I explained, as bluntly as I could. “You signed all the paperwork to allow me to adopt them, so you can’t just show up whenever you wish and announce that you want to take them back.”

“I know all of that,” she admitted, suddenly looking nervous, “but I was hoping you’d understand why I need this to happen. Back then, and even when the boys were little, I was really into booze and drugs, and my boyfriend wasn’t thrilled about having children around, so I kind of gave in to him and we took off and left them. I knew the school would eventually check up on them and then they’d be taken into custody and placed in a good home, but now I regret my actions.”

“Well, you should,” I challenged her, “and not just about leaving them. These boys were both badly malnourished before you deserted them and still suffer to some degree from fetal-alcohol syndrome.”

She seemed totally surprised by my latest revelation and hung her head briefly, but remained undaunted in her mission. “I know I’ve made a lot of mistakes in the past,” she agreed, “but I’m clean now and off the booze and drugs. I’ve been clean and sober for over a year and I did it so I could make a fresh start with my sons. I feel I’m finally ready to be their mother now and take care of them, like I should have done before.”

“Look, lady,” I began, totally unsympathetic, “you can’t just waltz in here and disrupt the boys’ lives again, especially after what you did to them. I’m happy that you’ve cleaned up your act and you’re sober now, but I don’t think a year is long enough to prove that you won’t end up doing the same sort of things all over again. It certainly doesn’t convince me that you’d be a good parent now or that the boys would even want to see you again. I don’t wish to sound cruel, but the boys were able to move on mainly because they believed you no longer existed. If, by some strange chance, they did still want to see you again, I’d be willing to let you visit them occasionally, but there is no way I will give them up.”

After hearing my latest comment, she suddenly straightened up, almost in a defiant gesture, and then spoke again. “I was afraid you were going to say something like that, and I really don’t want to have to fight with you, but I did talk to legal aid before I came and they are willing to help me try to get my boys back again. I hope it doesn’t come to that, but I’m determined to have my family back.”

“It won’t come to that, unless YOU’RE the one to push this and try to get custody,” I spat back, venomously. “And to clarify another point, I wouldn’t even consider letting you see them either, unless the boys agreed to it first, because it was very hard for them to deal with your abandoning them the way you did. They had many deep emotional scars from that experience, wounds that took a long time to heal. They were very insecure and emotionally wrought for many months after I took them in, but it was even worse than just that, if that weren’t enough. They also had to heal physically.

“Even though they were so badly malnourished that we cringed looking at their hallowed faces and skeletal bodies,” I announced, as forcefully as I could, “we were able to correct most of those problems with good nutrition and vitamins. However, their emotional wounds and the lingering effects they suffered from fetal-alcohol syndrome have taken much longer to deal with and I’m not convinced those problems are behind us even now. Let’s face it, you just took off one day and left them to fend for themselves. What’s even worse, they were old enough to understand this, even if they couldn’t fathom WHY you would do such a thing. They came here thinking you had left them because they were bad or unlovable, and they looked like two concentration camp survivors. If you want a fight, I’ll give you one, but if you just want to see the boys and get to know them again, then I’ll discuss it with them when they get home from school, to see what they think. You’ll have to make up your mind which way you want it, because other than that, we have nothing more to discuss.”

She looked disappointed by my response, and I suspect she had hoped I’d just give in to her demands. To her benefit, though, she did consider what I said, before she spoke again. “WOULD you ask the boys if they’d like to see me again?” she asked, with a touch more humility than she had shown up to this point.

“That would depend on whether or not you’re planning to continue to push your previous demands on us,” I responded, quite bluntly. She thought some more about this momentarily, before she responded.

“Look, I can’t say that I absolutely won’t do that,” she admitted, “but maybe if I see the boys again, I’ll know for sure whether or not they would want me in their lives.”

“And if you were able to see that they really didn’t want you in their lives any more,” I challenged, “would you be able to accept it and leave them alone?”

“How can I answer that, until I see and talk to them?” she asked. “Since I’ve been sober, I’ve realized how much I miss them, and I want so much to be a REAL mother to them now. Can’t you understand that?”

“Yes, I understand how YOU feel, but do you really understand how THEY might feel?” I posed, in an effort to get her to look at this situation from the boys’ perspective. “You hurt them deeply and made them feel unwanted and unloved. It took them a long time to overcome all of that baggage, and now you want to reopen those old wounds and step back into their lives. How do you think they’re going to feel? How do you think they might react? I’m not sure if even I can predict what this will do to them or how they’ll respond.”

“I know this is going to be hard on all of us,” she agreed, “but I really need to see them. Can’t you understand that? You have to realize that they are still my sons and I miss them?”

“The key here is that they may be your biological sons,” I conceded, “but they are my sons legally. You abandoned them and gave up all your rights long ago, but I’m still willing to ask the boys if they want to see you. However, I will stick to my guns and deny you visitation, if you are planning to disrupt their lives and put them through hell again.”

She took a few seconds to think about my last comments before she answered. Finally, she made her next move. “I don’t know what to say, because I really don’t want to give up on this,” she explained. “If you would please ask them if they’d want to see me again, I’ll go by what they decide. If you give me your phone number, I’ll call you later to find out what they’ve agreed to and then we can talk about this more. In the meantime, I’ll think about everything you’ve said.”

“That’s a start, but I still really hate to throw this at them, without knowing what it’s going to do to them,” I confessed, “but I guess either way they’ll have to know you’ve returned and are trying to get back into the picture. All right, I’ll ask them after dinner if they’d be interested in seeing you, and then you can call me back after 9:00 to see what they’ve said. Is that okay with you?”

“Yes, that will be fine,” she concurred, while smiling slightly. I believe she felt she had won a minor, first-round victory.

“Okay, I’ll do that much for you then,” I agreed, before showing her out. As she was leaving, I handed her a card with our telephone number on it and then hurried her outside. It was getting close to the time the boys would be returning home from school and I didn’t want her still hanging around when they arrived. I needed time to prepare for how I was going to tell them this news, so they didn’t think I was trying to give them back or no longer wanted them.

Once she was gone, I sat down to consider how I was going to handle this. First of all, how was I going to tell the boys their mother had suddenly reappeared? Worse than that, how was I going to tell them she wanted to get back into their lives or that she wanted them back totally? How would I bring all of this up without disrupting their lives or sending them into another tailspin? No matter how difficult this was going to be, I certainly had a great many decisions to make before they returned home.

When they arrived, I tried very hard not to let on that anything was wrong, and as far as I could tell, no one suspected a thing. When dinner ended, I asked Cole and Graham to join me in my bedroom, telling them that something came up that I needed to talk to them about. My request didn’t seem to faze Cole at all, but Graham seemed a little nervous. Surprisingly, though, he didn’t ask any questions and followed me to my room, but once the door was closed, Graham nervously confronted the issue head-on.

“What’s the matter, Dad? Is something wrong?” he asked. I was surprised he would even consider such a thing, since we frequently had these sorts of meetings to discuss various matters.

“No. Why would you think that?” I countered. “Have you done something wrong – something I don’t know about?” I smiled after saying this, as a way of breaking the tension.

“No, but I had a feeling there might be a problem or that something might happen,” he told me.

“What do you mean?” I asked him. It was my way of finding out if his sixth sense had given him a warning about what was going to take place.

“Well, Brent has been showing me Cole and myself, and we have this gray haze around us,” he explained. “It’s not the black outline like Brent had, or the dark gray cloud that surrounded you before you had your heart attack, it’s just a light gray ring around our bodies. I haven’t been able to figure out what it means, but I kind of figured it wouldn’t be good, whatever it was.”

His observation signaled me that I would need to reassure him before I got to the point of this meeting, so I thought maybe I’d try to turn the focus of this around a bit. “Well, what I have to tell you is not anything bad, so it’s nothing to be scared about. It’s just something I need to get your opinion on. In fact, you might think this is a good thing, once you find out what it’s about.” They both stared at me now, trying to read past my words and expressions.

“Well, what is it, Dad?” Cole asked, directly, trying to cut to the chase. “Why don’t you just tell us why you called us in here?”

“Okay, I will,” I agreed. “I had a visitor this afternoon, someone from your past.” I paused again, to see if they might guess whom I meant.

“Who is it?” Graham wanted to know. “Was it our mom?” He seemed almost excited as he said this, almost as if he were expecting her to show up again.

“I hope not,” Cole stated, sarcastically. “I don’t care if I ever see her again.”

“Why?” Graham asked his brother, not understanding how he could feel that way. “She is our mother. Why wouldn’t you want to see her?”

“She might be your mother, but she’s not mine any more,” he spat out, defiantly. “She left us and we could have died, but she didn’t care. Why would I want to see her again, when she didn’t care enough about us to make sure we had food or someone to look after us?”

“But don’t you ever think about her and wonder where she is or what she’s doing?” Graham reasoned. “I do. Sometimes I really miss her and hope she’ll come back.” Graham had this really sad, yet hopeful expression on his face as he explained this.

“Not me,” Cole said mockingly. “I hope she never shows up again.” Now Cole turned to face me. “Please tell me it wasn’t her, Dad. Please tell me it’s someone else.”

I didn’t respond right away, since I wasn’t sure how to word my response. Cole immediately picked up on that small foible and sensed it to mean it was his mother who had shown up. “No way! Tell me it’s not her. Why the hell would she come back now?” he screamed.

“She came here,” I told him, looking him directly in the eyes, “to tell me she wanted to take you back. She wants you to be a family again.”

At this point Cole sprang from the bed, his face turning red and his body going rigid, as if he were preparing to fight. “No way!” he bellowed. “I won’t go with her. I’m not leaving you. She can go to hell, for all I care.” He was extremely adamant with his message and then suddenly turned toward Graham. “You can do whatever the hell you want, but I just want you to know that if it includes her, I won’t be a part of it.”