Letter: A Name of Our Own by Sarah Sherman
“I spent those nine years trying to forget you”
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We get through our days by movement. Every cell in our body is constantly moving, allowing us to hear, taste, smell, feel, and see. We move to stay alive.
Most of my movements come without thought, as I’m sure yours do. The alarm goes off, I hit the button. I see a red light, I push the brake. I see my niece and nephew run toward me, I smile. Unless I feel threatened in some way, I don’t think about my movements. It’s when something goes wrong that I think about the actions leading up to that moment. Simple actions, movements so routine, like the light tap of my thumb on the third icon on the bottom of my iPhone screen—mail.
A few weeks ago, when your name appeared in my inbox, I felt threatened. I thought about the simple movement that got me there. The light tap of my thumb.
It’d been almost nine years since you came into our lives, my family’s lives. I spent those nine years trying to forget you. Tried to forget the hurt you caused, the confusion. Some would say it wasn’t your fault, that you were just trying to look out for yourself. You were concerned about your family, your future.
Your name, in bold, startled me. The subject, his name, made my heart race. I didn’t open the message right away. I stared at the screen for a while. Your name burned into my eyes. I pictured you, small, learning to write it.
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You called in September of 2004. I had just started my freshman year of college. You told him you were calling because you thought there was a chance you were biologically related. At the time it seemed strange to me that you chose those words instead of just simply saying, “I think you’re my father.” I understand now that this choice was deliberate. You didn’t think he was your father. You thought you shared DNA. There was a difference, which you quickly made clear.
You and him decided to meet. Somewhere in a park, I think. You gave him a picture of you and your husband on your wedding day. Later, he’d show this to me and I’d see that we have the same eyes. Blue, sometimes with flecks of green if the sun is right, and slightly slanted. You explained to him that the reason you contacted him was because you wanted to start a family. You wanted to know genetic history before having children. You arranged to meet for a DNA test. The results, of course, showed that he was in fact your biological father. It was no surprise.
And that was that. You had what you needed. There was no history of serious illness or anything you needed to be worried about passing on to your children.
Or so we thought.
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In July of 2012 I was living in Tahoe. I had only been there about a month when something in my gut told me I didn’t belong there—that I should be back in New York with my family. About two days before I was set to leave, this feeling was proven right. I woke up to my phone ringing and looked to see my brother’s name.
“Listen,” he said. “Dad had a heart attack. He’s okay, but you need to come home.”
I don’t remember the rest of the conversation. What I do remember is wanting to call my grandmother, but couldn’t because she had been dead over a year. I remember taking wet clothes out of the washing machine and throwing them in a suitcase. I remember begging a woman from United Airlines to put me on the next flight to Albany. I remember calling the only four people I knew in Tahoe to ask for a ride to the airport in Reno. I remember taking Xanax and ordering wine as soon as I got to my seat on the plane. I remember calling him and telling him I’d be there soon.
I could try to explain to you the details of the weeks spent in the hospital with him—what it looked like, what it sounded like, what it felt like, but you wouldn’t understand. Unless you were there you couldn’t possibly imagine what it was like to see the dozen tubes coming out of his body, the ripped skin, the chapped lips, or the fear in his eyes.
I don’t remember if it was before the surgery—the six-way bypass—or after, that you came up in conversation.
I’m pretty sure he brought you up. He was thinking of you. How does that feel?
I think it was a nurse who told my brother and I that from then on we had to make our doctors aware of a family history of heart disease. As his children, we were at risk, which meant you were, too.
We talked about telling you—if we should, how we would do it.
I decided I would handle it. I Googled your name, found you were a professor at a school in Vermont. I got your email address and sat down at my computer to tell you what we thought you deserved to know.
You wrote back within a day or two. You thanked me and asked how he was recovering. You said you’d be in town the next week, suggested we meet for breakfast. You welcomed the chance to “catch up.”
I didn’t respond right away and we didn’t meet for breakfast, but I did eventually write back to you. It was hard, but I admitted that I was curious about you.
I didn’t tell him this.
You thanked me, again, and admitted you didn’t handle the situation very well years ago. Then you told me you’d like to talk on the phone. Could you do that? you asked. Let’s try. Just us.
Us? No. There was no “us.”
I never called you and never wrote you back.
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I don’t know how many minutes went by, but I realized after a while that I was still just staring at your name in my inbox. Finally, I opened it. Before your new message was the original email I had sent you after his heart attack.
Hi Sarah –
I think of you and your family from time to time. I’m cleaning up my inbox from work and came across this email. I .................hope everyone is in good health.
All my best,
Nicole
I reread it over and over again, but it did nothing. It meant nothing. For some reason I was just fixated on your name. I couldn’t seem to get the image of you as a child sitting on your knees at a low table, writing your name, proudly, with a crayon.
I clicked reply, but before I started typing I began thinking back to my own childhood, when I learned to write my name. I thought of how now, most people call my brother and I by our last name, the name he gave us. I thought of how proudly we own his name. A name that was never yours.
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Sarah Sherman lives in Albany, NY, where she's pursuing her MFA in Creative Writing at The College of Saint Rose. Some of her work has appeared in Albany's alternative newspaper, Metroland. She supports herself by serving drinks at a local pub, where she enjoys imagining the stories she'll one day write based on overheard conversations and the ridiculous behavior of bar patrons.