Authors: Wyborn Senna
Warren tried to focus on Bea but was distracted as a perfect dark lock of hair fell squarely down the middle of Ryan’s forehead. He had The King’s same gorgeous, thick, dark, luxuriant hair made to be styled in a pompadour, the same soft face with prominent cheekbones, the same shape to his brow bone area, the same broad forehead, the same cheeks, the same relatively small mouth, the same full lips, the same left side lip curl, the same broad jaw, the same rounded chin, the same low-riding eyelids, the same startling half-mast blue eyes, the same slightly raised eyebrows, the same broad nose that tapered at the tip.
“You keep looking at him,” Bea noted. “Did you know his mother?”
Warren tore his eyes away from Ryan and looked at Bea. “Whose mother?”
“His. Ryan’s.”
The doctor played dumb. “What’s your last name?” He knew Zella had married Eugene Wyatt. She had sent him Christmas cards until the mid-nineties, when they ground to a halt as life took over, the road behind them fading in the rearview mirror.
“Wyatt,” Ryan told him, giving the doctor chills. Ryan’s voice and inflections were pure Californian, but if you’d raised him in Memphis, he and Elvis would’ve sounded as alike as two kernels off the same cob of corn.
Warren stood up and went into the kitchen, where he’d left his new cigars. He snapped on the overhead lights, took the cigar box out of the bag lying on the counter, opened the box, removed a cigar, found a suitable knife among the utensils in the top drawer of a cabinet, and cleanly cut the tip off on the cutting board by the sink.
The teenagers filtered into the kitchen and watched him.
“So you don’t remember anyone named Wyatt?” Bea asked.
Noah hiked up his pants. “Maybe she used her maiden name?”
Warren removed the ring wrapper from the cigar, stalling. “What might that be?”
Ryan moved closer. “Her name was Zella Stuart.”
Beneath the kitchen’s fluorescent lights, Logan saw how much grayer his uncle had gotten, how the salt and pepper years were passing as surely as water erodes stone, how he seemed wearier and frailer.
Warren dug around in the top drawer closest to the sink and pulled out a box of wooden matches. “No. Doesn’t sound familiar.” He lit his cigar and headed toward the sliding glass door that led to the patio. He turned back. “Excuse me.”
Then he stepped outside, sliding the glass door shut behind him.
Logan no longer needed Uncle Warren to drop the needle on
Elvis’ Christmas Album
for him when he went to bed. He was able to do it himself. Tonight, however, instead of side one, he listened to side two, which kicked off with “O Little Town of Bethlehem”, followed by “Silent Night”, “There’ll Be Peace in the Valley For Me”, and three other songs. He climbed into bed and peeled off his socks by digging the toes of one foot down the back of the sock on the opposite foot, kicking, and repeating. He was cold and unsettled, so he got out of bed and got another comforter from the closet, fanning it out so it landed flat atop his mussed covers. Then he climbed back in, but he was still restless. He got up and went over to his mirror.
What had changed? Why am I feeling so alive?
His face had color, and his brown eyes had a brightness to them he’d never seen before. Maybe it was because he’d went out and had a good time with kids his own age. They had made him feel welcome and accepted and hadn’t even given him a hard time when he passed on the beer. But was it just a fluke? And if he ventured out again, would he be treated as he had been tonight, or would he be mocked like he was when he was a child?
The clothes he wore were different now. Nancy saw to that. And he was clean, thanks to being able to shower in a tub that wasn’t filled with items Ramona had meant to put away. His hair was cut every month at a barbershop on Winchester, and his fingernails were short and clean. He had even learned to shave the sparse facial hair that was beginning to appear.
Barefoot, he crept downstairs. The light in the dining area had been turned off, but the stove light was on in the kitchen. Logan peered around the corner into the living room. He watched as Uncle Wendall buried a folder filled with paperwork beneath old newspapers, catalogs, and junk mail in a bin next to the fireplace. The receptacle held flammables used to get logs blazing. Whatever Uncle Wendall hid in the bin was meant to burn.
Logan snuck back upstairs just as “Silent Night” was ending, and by the time “It’s No Secret What God Can Do” was coming to an end, he realized Uncle Wendell was standing in his open doorway. The room was dark, but Logan pretended to be asleep. Side two had come to an end. The needle lifted up and returned to the beginning of the side for a replay. At some point during the night, when Logan was younger, Uncle Wendell would come in, lift the needle, and turn the stereo off. But he didn’t do it now. Instead, he stood and listened to “O Little Town of Bethlehem”. Midway through the song, he left the doorway and headed down the hallway.
Logan heard his uncle’s bedroom door shut. He waited through “Silent Night” and “There’ll Be Peace in the Valley” before he dared to get up. Then he went downstairs, poked around in the fireplace bin ‘til he found the folder, and looked inside.
He was looking at the medical records for Ryan’s mother.
Scanning them, he found what he was looking for on a slip of blue paper tucked toward the back of the stack of pages. It read, “Elvis Presley, T-8A-14226, 8/19/74.”
With his success in Vegas, Ryan and Noah went to karaoke contests held at bars throughout Los Angeles, generally on school nights, but Ryan tried to perform early and get back home by his ten o’clock curfew, and the Wyatts were none the wiser. In addition to singing in public, the trip to Vegas had thrown fuel on Ryan’s urge to find his biological father. Most afternoons, he found himself in Bea’s bedroom, where they surfed websites and forums. One Tuesday not long after their trip, Ryan practiced hip swivels in the mirror while Bea read recent messages on
FindUrBiologicalFather.net
,
SpermDaddy.com
, and
DonorSiblingsUnite.com
. Ryan had posted his picture and information on the sites, hoping someone who had donated sperm in Vegas prior to 1988 would contact him.
“
I connected with my real dad this past weekend
,” Bea read aloud, “
and he was everything I dreamed he would be and more. He said he didn’t want a family because he travels for work so much and is never in one place for long, but now that he’s met me, he plans to keep in touch
.”
Ryan stopped swiveling. “Wow.”
“Yeah. And Mary Eisenhart from Missouri is still ranting about the fact that sperm banks protect donor confidentiality, but no one considers how that affects kids.”
Ryan came over and jumped on the bed.
Bea shoved the laptop at him. “Here. You read.”
She got up, went to her drawer of meds, took out a few vials, popped the caps, threw a few tablets into her mouth, drank some water, and returned the vials to the drawer.
Ryan read her a story posted by a woman with the handle Dubby905.
“
When my husband couldn’t get me pregnant, I went to a sperm bank. I never told my husband our daughter isn’t his. When we wanted a second child, I used the same donor so my children would be related. I will never tell my family what I did, and I’m not sorry. How could I be, when I have such a wonderful life with two beautiful kids and a husband who loves me?
”
Bea flopped down on the bed. “Aw!”
Ryan opened another window on the screen. “I wanted to show you this one.”
A picture of a blond woman in her early twenties appeared beside her message.
“
If you really want to find out who your dad is, find the donor card. My mom kept a medical card from New Jersey Cryogenics in her recipe box. I found it one day when I was looking for a brownie recipe. Yes, brownies—wink! Anyway, I asked my mom about it. She told me a long time ago that I was conceived via artificial insemination, so it was no big deal. She kept the card because she thought we might need it for medical reasons, in case I got sick and we had to check out the donor’s medical history. So, the card had a donor number on it, which was my dad’s number. If you can find your card and get your dad’s number, you will be a lot closer to figuring out who he is (if you want to). Me, I don’t care too much. Just thought I’d share this as another way to find out who your dad is (if you want to know)
.”
Bea slumped back into the pillows. Her words were beginning to slur. “Did you find your donor card?”
“No, but I’ll keep looking. If mom kept Dr. Johns’s card, maybe she kept a donor card, too.”
Bea closed her eyes. “Fat lot of help Dr. Johns was.”
Ryan read another entry, this one by a young man calling himself BaySurfer.
“
I’ve been searching for my biological father for six years. My parents don’t care about me and never did. They never told me I was a sperm donor baby, and it’s probably good they didn’t. I would have left home years ago. As it is, I have lost years I could have been searching for him, and I will never forgive them for lying to me my whole life
.”
Another entry, this one by a woman just offering her first name, Megan, read, “
I just found out my dad isn’t my dad, and I am pissed. I am an only child and always wanted brothers and sisters. What if I have half-brothers and half-sisters out there who are looking for me? How do I find them?
”
Then there was an anonymous note from a sperm donor posted in a forum titled, “From Us Dads to You”. “
I know some of you are asking yourselves, is my dad thinking about me, wherever he is? The answer is a resounding YES. Sure, some guys are donors in college or whatever, and they move on and they have lives and they do seem to forget. But if they were really honest with themselves, they would have to admit that once in a while, even if it is very infrequently, they do wonder if they have any kids out there they don’t know about, and if they do, where they are and how they might be doing. Do they look like me? Do they have any similar traits? Do they have similar interests? Do they have similar talents? There will always be a yearning to know
.”
Ryan looked over at Bea. She had fallen asleep with her mouth open. He read one last post, this one by a sad-looking woman who went by the handle FindYou15.
“
I have wanted to find my biological dad for years, but my mom won’t let me. She is afraid of losing me. We don’t have much money, and unless I get a scholarship, I won’t be going to college. How does she know my dad wouldn’t be able to help me? Help us? She has been a single mom all these years to my sister and I, and I am ready to give up. I have spent my whole life fantasizing about the father I don’t know. Does this happen to boys who don’t know their fathers, too?
”
A tear leaked from corner of Ryan’s eye. He brushed it away, covered Bea with a peach-colored throw blanket, unplugged the laptop, and went home.
Just as Don Draper and his friends pulled together their own agency from the spoils of Sterling Cooper, twelve years into the new millennium, Nicole “Marilyn” Coffey left the cutthroat environs of
Flash
to start her own tabloid in the last rent-controlled apartment complex in the Valentino Heights section of the Hollywood Hills.
The show of solidarity began the week Marilyn blasted a hole through the back of her bedroom closet, old-England-countryside style, so she could connect her unit through the back of Tobias Vada’s bedroom closet into his one-bedroom unit and then forge a hole through the back of Tobias’s living room closet in through the back of Pia Sutherland’s living room closet, creating one giant living space shared by friends. The three had been lucky enough to rent apartments in The Argyle Arms, a strangely named complex that had been rent controlled since the seventies. When next-door neighbor, Ira Jarvis, died in 1986, Tobias, who had been living in the complex since 1982, convinced the on-site landlords, Bob and Ethel Hector, to rent the unit to Pia, who had just moved to Hollywood from San Francisco. Then, in 1998, when another neighbor, Hugh Braxton, was ready to give up his one-bedroom to move into his boyfriend’s two-bedroom condo in West Hollywood, Tobias asked Marilyn, who had just moved to Hollywood from Vegas, to take Braxton’s pad.
The three had worked together at
Flash
—Tobias since 1983, Pia since 1986, and Marilyn since 1998—but of the three of them, Marilyn had had the roughest go. When she’d walked into the offices at
Flash
on Hollywood Boulevard thirteen years earlier, she had been the tender age of twenty, having left home in Milwaukee at eighteen, heading to Vegas, where she spent two years as a Monroe look-alike in the
Legends Live Tribute
at the Kalahari Hotel & Casino on South Las Vegas Boulevard.
Nicole was Marilyn incarnate, from the platinum blonde hair, pert nose, full mouth, and curvaceous figure, right down to the little-girl voice. Her nails were always immaculate and polished with Chanel Le Vernis in a constantly changing palette—her favorite shade being number 209 Marilyn, a hot pink Monroe would have loved.
Flash
sent their Marilyn, whom they never called Nicole, on jobs that compromised her sexually, and after two years of this, Alastair Neville, owner of
Flash
, flew in from London expressly to see her. Her assignment was to spend the weekend with him in his deluxe suite at the Mondrian, theoretically taking notes on the redesign of L.A. Bureau Chief Cecil Bertrand’s office. That had been the final straw.
Tobias dropped onto Marilyn’s white sofa and kicked off his flip-flops before he put his feet up on the cushions. Everything about him was long, from his face to his arms to his legs to his hair, which he tied back in a thick brown, gray-streaked ponytail. He had a doctorate from Columbia in political science and a quick mind. How he’d ended up writing for the tabloids had nothing to do with his intelligence and everything to do with his joblessness at the time
Flash
had offered him a cool grand a week to chase down pregnant starlets and drug-addled producers.