Women My Father Slept With

How could so much cash leave me feeling so empty? This was the answer to my debt, my car that needed a new transmission, yet I didn't feel happy. I was holding my father's life savings in my hands, sitting on the stiff single mattress that he had likely died on. 20 grand could have bought him a lot of heroin, prostitutes, a nicer place… hell, even a new bed. Yet this lump sum of wrinkled bills had remained hidden away, untouched. No matter how it had evaded the jonesing hands of an addict with little to no impulse control, it had been intended for me—at least my name was written on the envelope. Not 'Ian' my legal name, but 'little bugger', his nickname for me. I suppose I must have been a 'little bugger' when he knew me. I was only 6 when he caught a bus out of the city and left my mother and me to fend for ourselves. I never forgave him for that—and neither did she up until her death.

I didn't know whether or not my father was alive or dead until I got a call from an elderly woman in a small town out west, saying she had been calling everyone in the directory with the last name Maybank, asking if they were related to a Mr. Sean Maybank. She had sounded immensely received when I confirmed that Sean was my father, and wasted no time in telling me that he had been renting a room from her at the time of his death and she was hoping a family member would come to collect his belongings.

"I'm sorry… did you say he's dead?" I asked, unsure if I had heard correctly.

"Oh yes, he died months ago. I found him with a heroin needle in his arm. I thought you'd have known," she replied, sounding remarkably callous.

"We didn't talk much," I replied stiffly.

It felt fitting—my father's last act on this earth was to leave a woman with a mess that he was responsible for. I poured a stiff drink and made arrangements with the women to help clean out his old room—thereby ridding her, and myself of his presence.

During the drive to her address, I contemplated what kinds of things I might find in his final dwelling place. I doubted there would be much of value—maybe a good record player. That was one of the few things I knew about my dad—he always liked his vinyls.

"Oh, good. Yer here."

The landlady greeted me at the door. She was barely five feet tall, and very toad-like in appearance.

"Yes, may I come in?" I responded politely.

"Please. The room is upstairs."

I followed her inside the old house and up a staircase that groaned and creaked with our combined weight.

"This is it," she said, a note of disgust in her voice as she pulled open the door at the top of the landing. I peered inside. It was small—cramped to capacity with objects; books, records, furniture, and other untidy mounds of paraphernalia.

The landlady left me alone with the room to see if anything was worth keeping. Sure enough, there was a beautifully maintained record player sitting atop a desk in the corner. Frank Sinatra's Songs For Young Lovers lay dormant on the turntable. Shrugging, I turned it on dropped the needle. The first cinematic notes of "My Funny Valentine" began to play, and an image of my dad sitting in his armchair, smoking his cigarettes after a long day at the pulp mill appeared in my brain. This was his time, as he called it. No one was allowed to speak to him, request anything of him until the Sinatra turned off—at which point he was usually so drunk that it was best to pretend you were asleep.

It was hard to know where to start. I decided that anything of any real interest wouldn't be left out in the clutter, so as if by instinct I opened the top drawer of his desk. The first thing I noticed was a little black notebook lying amongst what looked like a packrat's collection of discarded office supplies. Feeling mildly curious, I picked it up and opened it to the first page. All that was written were the words "DIAL 4 A GOOD TIME" in my dad's untidy scrawl.

Classy, I thought to myself before turning the page. It was a phonebook, full of names, numbers, and physical descriptions of what seemed to be at least a hundred different women. Some of the lines even contained explicit information about their individual fetishes.

"Maria likes it when you bite her ear and sometimes pretend to be her probation officer."

I snapped the book shut. This was disgusting. Reading about my father's sexual escapades was hardly on my bucket list, yet some sick part of me wanted to keep looking. Perverse or not, this book was the only thing I'd ever seen that contained words he had written. My mother had understandably done her own purging of anything and everything tied to his name, and growing up I only had one photograph of him; a black and white school photo I had saved from the burning pile. I had kept it hidden in my pillowcase, only taking it out when I was feeling particularly angry with my mother. I would lay in my bed, wishing that my cool, handsome father would return to liberate me from her rule. Perhaps even letting me smoke one of his cigarettes while we listened to Frank Sinatra together, ruminating about work at the pulp mill, and my day at school.

Feeling thoroughly disgusted with myself, I reopened the book and began reading down the list of names and numbers, sometimes skipping an entry when it became too vulgar. Some, however, made me chuckle in spite of myself.

"Adriana likes to be mean. Remember the safe word is fruit jelly."

Eventually, I came to a name that sounded vaguely familiar. Jill Raymond… Jill Raymond? It couldn't be.

"5' 6", a little on the tall side but makes up for it with a great butt. Slender blonde with a great smile. Jill is a wildcat in bed. Never expect it of her. She's so quiet until she's had a couple shots of tequila."

That quiet, slender blonde sounded a lot like my grade 1 teacher, Ms. Raymond. I looked at the number beside the name, and a crazy idea came over me. I pulled out my phone and dialed the number. There was no way. No way that this was the same Raymond that had taught me basic grammar.

It rang once, then twice. I began to lose faith that the number would even be in service. The phonebook was likely older than me. Just as I was about to hang up, I heard a voice answer.

"Hello?"

"Um, hi."

"Who is this?" It was a man's voice. Clearly, the number no longer belonged to Jill Raymond.

"Sorry. I think I have the wrong number. I was looking for Jill."

"Jill? Jill's my wife. I'll put 'er on."

Surprised, I waited on the line as the man yelled something muffled. There was a faint rustling before the sound of a woman's voice came through the receiver.

"Hello? Jill here."

My mind went blank.

"Hello?" she repeated.

"Hi, sorry," I stammered, unsure of how to begin. "Are you… are you or were you ever a teacher at Madison Elementary?"

"Why yes, I taught there for years. Who is this?"

I couldn't believe it. It really was my Ms. Raymond.

"This is Ian. Ian Maybank."

"Little Ian!" She exclaimed. "How old are you now? What made you think to call me?"

"To be honest… I found your number in an old phonebook of my father's."

"Oh… I haven't seen Mr. Maybank in living memory. How is he?"

"He died," I answered, as callously as the landlady had been on the phone.

"Dear me… I'm sorry to hear that."

"Thanks," I replied, sounding hollow. "I have to ask, forgive me if this is too personal... but did you and my father ever…"

"Have an affair?" she sounded completely shameless, a stark contrast from the sweet, motherly tone I remembered so fondly. "I'm sorry to tell you, Ian. We fooled around when we could. We saw each other more often than I like to admit, but it all came to a screeching end when I got the test."

"Test?" I asked.

"Yes, the pregnancy test. I'll never forget that summer in '72. After I told Sean… well I never heard from him again. Never saw a cent of child support either."

Pieces were beginning to fall into place. I had been 6 during the summer of '72, sitting on the front porch and waiting for my father to get home from work, ready to catch him for a moment before he sat down in his chair and shut out the world.

“The Girl Next Door” began to play, and I felt my heart rate begin to climb despite the slow, somber melody. Mrs. Raymond had given birth to her son, Reginald that year. Did that mean…

"I thought about contacting you over the years. I wanted you to know that Reggie was your half-brother. I suppose I kept putting it off, afraid that if your mother found out it would do tremendous damage."

"I understand," I said distractedly. "Listen… this is a lot to process. We'll stay in touch, yeah?"

"Oh… well yes. I'd love for you and Reggie to meet. I know it might be odd but—"

I hung up. The book fell from my trembling hand and landed at my feet.

Without thinking, I picked up the record player and threw it as hard as I could at the ground. With a loud crash, it broke apart. Intricate pieces flew in every direction, silencing Sinatra's crooning. I had acted rashly. Feeling guilty for my sudden loss of control, I began hastily cleaning up the pieces of the broken record player. Suddenly my fingertips found the yellowed paper of an enormously thick envelope. I pulled it from the wreckage and examined it. I read the words "little bugger" written on the front in the same untidy scrawl as the phone book. I opened it and immediately sat back down on the bed to stop myself from fainting. The envelope was stuffed full of $100 bills. For the next half hour, I counted and recounted, every time coming to the same number—$20,000.

It was more money than I'd ever had in my entire life. I could finally afford to get my car fixed. My credit card could be paid off as soon as tomorrow. This was the solution to all my financial problems here in my hands, yet somehow I didn't feel elated. I didn't feel much of anything. I sat in that room for a long while, just staring at the wad of cash in my hands. It had my nickname on it, yet somehow it didn't feel like it belonged to me. I looked at the little black book on the floor and picked it up. It was time to see how many other messes my father had left behind, and how a little cash could hopefully make up for it.