Pizza at Bendino’s became a regular event, to the point I got my own local’s discount. A few months later I was tucking into salad and a slice when Officer Harris was placed at the table adjacent. He wore jeans and a plaid shirt and was with a woman dressed similarly. I didn’t recognise him and I don’t think he recognised me until he heard me order dessert.
‘Excuse me ma’am,’ he was leaning over. ‘I take it the pizza was good enough for you to stick around.’ I still didn’t recognise him, and the blank look must have told him so. ‘Few months ago,’ he said. ‘You met me in my official capacity. Told you to ask Tony-‘ He stopped as recognition flooded my face.
‘Yes! Officer Harris, I remember. Yes. Now I’m here often enough I get my own discount. Sorry I didn’t recognise you. And, is this Mrs Harris?’ I hoped the matched wedding rings meant it was.
‘Call me Danny, and yes, this is June-Ann. June-Ann this is…’ His brows furrowed and I was going to tell him but he held a finger up. ’No, let me think. I see your truck round town and it always reminds me of the first I ever saw, back when the coronavirus first hit, and just after a bad storm.’ His eyes were focused somewhere out past the pizza oven at the back of the restaurant. I glanced at his wife who raised her eyebrows and shook her head a little. ‘Ursula White!’ he said, ‘That’s it, right?’
I smiled and said, ‘It sure is.’
‘Never forget a name I’ve written down. Say, how did you get on with finding your folks?’ He turned to June-Ann, ‘Ursula’s here looking for family. Her mom died a while back.’ He looked at me again. ‘Come jump on our table. You can have a beer with, oh, you can’t can you? How’s the pregnancy? Remember me telling you about the poor woman whose boyfriend didn’t like hearing he was going to be a pa, June-Ann. It was poor Ursula here.’
‘Danny,’ June-Ann said, ‘maybe Ursula doesn’t want her business discussed all over Bendino’s.’ She turned to me. ‘But if you wanted to sit with us to have your dessert, you’re welcome. I might even know some of your relatives, if they’re in the N.M.B.W.C. That’s the North Myrtle Beach Women’s Club.’
I’d been used to my own company, and was going to refuse the invite to table share, unsure I could cope with the garrulous Danny. But I still hadn’t found anyone who knew mom. And so far had received no response to three enquiries forwarded to the N.M.B.W.C.
Like many coastal communities North Myrtle Beach had lost more than land to the inundation. Precious records had been lost. Paper records which went back decades, even centuries, became sodden masses which broke down the longer they remained immersed. Computer disks could have been different but too many were stored in warehouses which were low on the list of protection or later salvage. Where information had been stored virtually there was more to find, but I’d already scoured and re-scoured every cloud archive available.
There was nothing apart from that single notification of my birth, at a health facility which had long since collapsed into the sea.
Danny and June-Ann adopted me. I could have stopped it if I wanted, I think, but it was nice to have people around again. They were five or six years younger than mom would have been, and both loved the view from my lounge.
‘We have a nice view,’ June-Ann said, one Friday evening, the day they came to mine for dinner. Danny was still an hour or two from finishing his shift. But June-Ann had some ideas about why it was still so hard to find trace of my mom or her folks. There was pasta and sauce ready to go for when Danny arrived. ‘But your view is terrific. Reminds me of what the beach was like way back when.’
I handed her a glass of wine and lowered myself into my chair, wincing a little.
‘The baby lying awkward?’ June-Anne asked.
‘Kicking. I think it’s running a marathon.’
‘George used to do that. So eager to get out and see the world.’
‘I didn’t know you have a son.’
‘Had. He’d be about your age. It was the time of the third corona outbreak, back in forty.’
‘I’m so sorry.’
‘Oh, dear, you’ve nothing to be sorry for. We were hit pretty bad in that outbreak.’ She took a large swallow of wine.
‘I didn’t mean to upset you.’
‘Really. It’s not your fault. It was a long time ago. Mainly we’re okay. It just seems all so— Your mom must have been going through the same kind of worries. Most all the maternity units round here had high infection rates. If you didn’t have it going in you like as not did coming out. That was George and me. Did your mom talk about it?’ I shook my head. Another thing she never discussed. ‘But she took you out west pretty soon, didn’t she?’
‘It hit everywhere hard didn’t it?’
‘Oh, I know what they say now. But back then some states governors said everything would be fine, and others said ‘stay home, it’s bad’. The only time our country was more divided was the civil war. I reckon we were close to another one, or at least to some states considering secession.’ She looked at me and forced her normal smile into place. ‘But we got through it. Well, mostly.’
Her sorrow may be thirty years old, but it was still a heavy burden. Beyond platitudes I wasn’t sure what to say. ‘Tell me about George.’
‘George, my little George.’ Her eyes glistened and I was about to apologise. ‘We were three months before the wedding when I found out I was pregnant. Danny had waited until he got out of probation before proposing, wanted the job to be secure. Anyway, we got married in the September, George was born in the March. Like I said, he was an active baby. Kicked his way all through the pregnancy. Danny said he’d be a fine running back. When he was born he had a full head of hair and bright, bright blue eyes. And he was healthy, robust. We came home and everything seemed fine. Then two weeks later both he and I were running a temperature, Danny started a few days after. All three of us. George, he struggled pretty quick. They put him on a ventilator. But he only lasted another week.’ Now there were tears rolling down her face. I scooted of my chair and went to sit by her, wrapped an arm around her. ‘Yeh, your mom did the right thing taking you away so quick. And she was lucky you didn’t get it in the hospital.’
Danny arrived not long after and, though June-Ann protested she was fine, I made him take her home. Better they had the time together.
I was left to overeat fresh pasta with homemade carbonara sauce. Sitting with a small light on I stared out into the dark expanse of the Atlantic Ocean and thought about a suggestion June-Ann made. She wondered if mom lived on a trailer park. There’d been a few in the area then, were now, though further inland these days. The virus went through them pretty bad, and many fled to parts of the country they felt would be safer, taking the disease with them in more than a few cases.
But why leave mom? Or did mom leave them? Neither option really made sense, only opening up yet more questions which branched off into speculative avenues that wound round into dark, steep-sided, box canyons.
But June-Ann was right about mom heading to California quickly. I was born March twenty-second, and by April twenty-first we were over west. It can’t have been a fun drive with a new-born baby and the fear that either of us may have the virus.
And that realisation drove me to wondering about my father, because what would make a woman disappear, abandon her family, in the middle of an international health crisis. Mom never said anything bad about my dad, never hinted at him being some kind of monster, but she never said much about anyone. Had she wanted to protect me so much, shield me from horrors she then kept a lid on for the rest of her life?
This felt like the end of my search. There were no answers here, I’d searched. And it was possible that whatever answers existed were to questions which were best left unasked, doors which should remain shut.
And, somewhere deep down, I had to admit to a snobbery which rises from my upbringing. We lived in a house. A trailer park was where, well, people not like me, lived.
The combination of pasta and baby made me swell, stretching skin to the point it felt on the verge of splitting. I lay on the couch and rubbed olive oil into my distended belly, feeling the lumps and bumps of my child and wondering what they would be like. At the last scan I’d been asked when the reveal party was. They’d been surprised when I said there wasn’t one, and I didn’t want to know either.
If Ralf had been in touch, shown any interest, then maybe there would have been a motivation to find out, if only for him or his parents. But since he left I’d had one email which didn’t manage to be the apology I think he was attempting, but was very explicitly the end. So, I was happy to wait for the big day and find out then.
Part One Here
Part Two Here
Part Three Here
Part Five on Friday
text by stuartcturnbull picture by AberrantRealities via Pixabay