More from Charlie's Diary

I don’t know what to think.  If this were a soap opera instead of real life, I’d probably have a nervous breakdown and start having an affair or something.  Nikki says I ought to “confront” my father.  Karen thinks I ought to try to track down my sister.  But I’m really not that interested; I spent so many years repressing my curiosity and feelings about the whole thing that I don’t have the energy.

Every summer my father would fly out to see my sister for two weeks.  He would call home every couple days, but he never mentioned her.  As I grew older, I wondered if my father’s first marriage was simply an elaborate ruse designed to fool either my mother or me or both of us.  Maybe he had a girlfriend that he saw once a year.  Maybe money that supposedly went for child support was just his fun money.  My mother was easy to fool, because it never occurred to her that people would say things that weren’t true; that would defeat the whole purpose of communication.  You’d have thought this would have been great for me, but I stopped taking advantage of it because I felt too guilty; it was liking stealing cookies from a blind child's lunchbox.

This was before I knew the story of his first wife and the Trashing of the Offices.  Janet said that she’s not surprised with all that was going on in those days.  There were even parties where people would pair off with someone else’s spouse.  Not that she ever did; it creeped her out and anyway she’d never been invited to one. At the time, everyone in her crowd had young children and they were all too tired.  She supposed she should have suspected something when Doug told her he thought it would be “interesting.”  But at least he’d had the decency to wait until the kids were teenagers.

Kate, of course, was very concerned and kept asking me how I felt about things.  I said I didn’t know.   She kept eyeing the box of tissues and offering me tea.  Then she asked me if I wanted to go out and get a drink or a hot fudge sundae.  I opted for the sundae.  We didn’t talk about It, but just about stuff, like the kids, and how Janet’s cats are adjusting to the rectory, and what we were doing for Thanksgiving.  Strangely enough, I felt much better.

Karen and Nikki want me to get more information from Aunt Pooh.  I decided we could all go over to see her; she loves to tell stories and this certainly is a good one.