FROM: Sybil Van Antwerp
DATE: September 21, 2015
Good morning,
A little over two months ago I received notification from this website of a DNA match. This was a mistake. I had no intention of opening my information to connection with other Kindred users. As it turns out I did check the box by mistake when I was drunk. I’m also going blind. (I am not an alcoholic; I rarely drink. It was a bad set of circumstances.) I was planning to ignore the information, but a few days ago I opened the notification. It appears that you and I are a DNA match.
My name is Sybil Stone Van Antwerp. I live in Annapolis, Maryland (the capital of the state of Maryland), and I grew up more or less in Philadelphia. I have two grown children and three grandchildren. I was adopted from within the US.
Perhaps this DNA matching business is nothing. I have spent most of the last year assuming it was all a scam, honestly, but here I am coming to you nonetheless. I think I would like to hear from you so I can at last shut off this particular valve in my mind.
Warm regards,
Sybil Van Antwerp
Re: Message to Henrietta Gleason
FROM: KINDRED PROJECT Account Services
DATE: SEPTEMBER 21, 2015
The user you are trying to contact has an account that has been either temporarily suspended or deactivated. Your message will be delivered if/when the user reactivates the account.
Please contact [email protected] for further information.
FROM: [email protected]
DATE: Sep 25, 2015 10:00 AM
SUBJECT: NEEDING YOUR HELP (Attn: Basam)
Good morning, Basam. Have you got your resume together yet? I’ve told you previously I’ll be glad to clean it up for you. Just send the bones. Certainly a job change would be much better for your family. Certainly the pay would be much higher than whatever you make at Kindred, and your wife could quit working altogether if it’s what she wants, though you haven’t said as much.
Can you look in my profile and see where I sent a message to Henrietta Gleason, the woman to whom it appears I match a significant measure of DNA? There is an error. Do you think you could log into her profile the way you frequently log into mine and find her e-mail address for me? Or a phone number or an address? Now that I’ve decided to get in touch I am unable to reach her. (And do you know, I’m not even sure I want to be in touch, but I like to have options.)
My husband’s died as of a few weeks ago. Well, he was my ex-husband. I’m booked to attend his funeral, which is in Belgium, in about ten days. I dread it, but you know, I get to feeling sorry for myself, and then I think of you and remember it could be worse. Anyway, I tell you so you know I’ll be away from the computer for some time. Send your resume when it suits.
Warm regards, Sybil Van Antwerp
(cont. Oct. 1, 2015, previous pages UNSENT)
Daan has died, which I’ve already said. If I write it again and again, perhaps it will sink in. The funeral is in Belgium and I have my plane ticket. October 3 I leave. This will be my first time out of the country, aside from the one cursed trip to Canada, which I don’t count.
I imagine myself at the church in the small town surrounded by people speaking a language I do not know and himself in the casket there with the lid folded open. It was a quarter century ago the last time I saw him. I think that’s right, give or take. I can see him the day he left. I can see him walking into the tunnel at the airport beside Fiona. He had blond hair and he wore it rather long then. He had stayed very slim and I can see him walking down the tunnel beside Fiona wearing his denim and the leather loafers he loved. He was wearing a wool blazer and he had his traveling bag. I remember Fiona looked back at me over her shoulder. She gave me a little wave, nothing dramatic, she would be coming back in the summer. Here is a small detail I remember—I could see, as she turned her face back in the direction they were walking, that she was saying something to him, I could see her mouth moving, but of course they were too far away for me to know what she was saying. I hoped very much she was saying something about me, how I was standing there or some little thing, and I hoped, I really hoped, he said something back. I wanted him to look back the way Fiona had, but he didn’t, and I guess probably up until that point it hadn’t been true to me yet. I hadn’t really believed it was happening, but then he was gone without looking back and a shock wave hit me deep down in my bone marrow. It felt like my body was vibrating, the way the air trembles after a gong is struck.
Why was I saying this?
Yes. I’m not sure if I can stomach that image I have of himleaving that last day in all of his professorial stature being replaced by the shriveled, disease-ravaged corpse of an old man. I think that’s the roundabout train of my thoughts. I’m terrified. However, one must attend the funeral. There is nothing I can think of more important than the prioritization of attendance to a funeral.
Someone is stalking me. After Judge Donnelly died, this individual contacted me with a letter, a rather crass and vengeful kind of letter, which was disturbing. I had not received anything of the sort in a long time, though it did remind me of when we were in the courthouse years, how Guy and I (and others) would receive those kinds of nasty missives from time to time, people disgruntled and hateful about the way a ruling had gone, and back then I did not have my address listed in the public record for that very reason. The subsequent note that arrived, though uncomfortable, did not make me afraid and I tried to put it out of my mind. However, after some time, I guess maybe another year went by and I received the third communication from this individual, but it was evident he or she had visited my house. I know it’s true because in the letter, she or he (seems like a man) described my garden and my unique mailbox. You might wonder if I have any idea who this person is. I do not. They have signed their communications with two initials, and that is all. This individual threatened to pay additional visits to my house. I get the sense that the purpose of this is rather to make me feel afraid, and not likely to actually harm me in any way, and it’s working. When I read it I felt frightened, really frightened, Colt. I can’t think of the last time I had felt that way. I hate to feel afraid. I can think of nothing worse, so I imagine this person watching me as I go slowly blind. I imagine this, and when blind, how I won’t even know, and I’m sure anyone would advise me to call the police, but I won’t dothat. What would they do other than send a patrol car over every so often? If I told Bruce and Fiona, they’d only fret or make me move (they’re already trying to get me to go to an old people’s home) and I have no interest in anything of that sort. I have considered alerting my neighbor, Theodore Lübeck. I did have a security system installed with a camera, but I’m confused about how it works, so I rarely turn it on.
Enough now. I’ll let you know how things go regarding the funeral.
Ms. Joan Didion
