138 South Carrington St.
Hasbrouck Heights, NJ 07604
January 8, 2018
Dear Dezi,
I received your letter of October 21, 2017. I can see only one way to begin, and that is to tell you, yes, I do remember you and your brother, Aldo, very well. I remember the day your mother brought you to Judge Donnelly’s chambers, and I remember the circumstances of the case. In fact, all of this has stayed very vivid in my memory for many years, and as troubling as it was to read your furious letter, it was also something of a relief. It seems age is softening me.
I am going blind. I am not telling you this as a plea for sympathy. When I was told by my eye doctor seven or eight years ago it was as if suddenly I was waking up from a long dream, a dream that had been my entire life, and now here was the real life and a timer had been set. When my eyes go, that will be the end of me, I thought, and the notion of the end of my life, though it feels trite to say, made me reminisce and consider the past in ways I had not done. You should know that among other things, there you were. You, your mother, your brother, and your father, Enzo.
About four weeks before your father’s case came before Judge Donnelly (and, therefore, me) my son died. He was eight years old. He was the middle of my three children. If you have suffered the death of a child, you have my complete sympathy and you do not require me to go on. If you have not, then suffice it to say there is no greater pain. Imagine the most severe pain, multiply it by a thousand. Ten thousand. Then you will have some inkling. Gilbert died, and two weeks later I returned to work and the matter of your father’s hearing. In your letter you said my eyes were cold and dead and cruel when you met me, and you are correct. Iwas cold, dead, and cruel. Was I a mother? I was asking myself the same. I was an evil witch, yes. If you had said these things to me that day, I would have said yes. I would have relished it.
Here is the whole truth, and this is my confession: when your mother came into my office with her two perfect, healthy sons begging for Judge Donnelly to have mercy on your father, I was cold and cruel. I hated her because she had you. Your big, curious eyes. How like Gilbert you seemed to me. The cowlick at the back of your head. Your brother with his socks sagging down at his ankles. She introduced you—“my sons Dezi and Aldo.” It was as if she’d stabbed me with a knife. You were tall and thin, and I could see you were paying attention. She begged for mercy, and I thought, I admit it, my thought was if I could not have my family back, then why should she? There had been no mercy shown to me; why should anyone receive mercy? My misery made me cruel. When Donnelly returned from lunch he said the secretary at the courthouse said I’d met with the defendant’s wife. He came to me, wondering why your mother had come, but I waved him off. I did not plead on her behalf, as I should have, as I, a mother, should have. I knew I had his ear, and I did not speak up for your mother. When Donnelly delivered your father’s sentence, the harsh sentence I knew he would deliver, I was silent, I relished my silence in that moment, and for this I am sorry.
After the sentencing, though, I was haunted. Your father’s testimony, your visit, it all bothered me. I was outside my mind during that time, unable to sleep, deranged with grief, and I became fixated on your family in a way, some parallel guilt, I guess. After a while I wrote to your father in prison, just a short thing with a few dollars. I didn’t confide in him, really, just a little note to say I hoped he was getting on OK, but he wrote back. His response was a beautiful letter, honest. He was so young, not thirty, but gentle. He said he wasn’t angry with me, he was so gracious. So wise. It moved me. We exchanged a handful of letters, theletters you have seen, and I always included a few dollars he could use at the commissary, but his letters rather always surprised me. Even though I kept myself at a distance, he told me little things about his life in Bergamo, and how he had fallen in love with your mother when he was just a boy, his happiness with having had sons. He told me that he’d only wanted to make something for you and your brother. He talked about the dream of buying a house with a garden for vegetables for your mother, Florencia. He said when he got out of prison he planned to go to you all in Italy and bring you back.
The last time I wrote him it was returned to me because he’d been released. I’d never really apologized to him for my part in the outcome of his life, though I guess he knew I was sorry. Where is your father now? I think I’d like to write to him again, to apologize.
With respect,
Sybil Van Antwerp
Hattie Gleason
Bodney Cottage
Fassfern
Fort William PH33 7NP
Scotland
February 2, 2018
Dear Hattie,
Thank you for your letter, and for the photos you sent. Though I have spent what must amount by now to hours staring at the one of your pregnant mother and father, and though I agree it seems we are very likely family, I cannot seem to find a way for the information to take up residence in my body. The strangest thing is to see the resemblance I share with you, and with the man in the photo with the pregnant woman, my father. What is more, that full, beautiful strawberry-blond hair she had is precisely identical to my daughter’s hair, and I had wondered where those genes came from. Remarkable. My brother (by adoption) was here over the holidays and I told him about all of this. I showed him the photos and with one look he was absolutely certain your family is mine. I am enclosing a photograph of myself. The similarity of our faces is remarkable.
I am finding I have nowhere to put all of this. I’m sorry, but do you know what I mean? It’s like I’ve come home from the grocery store overburdened with bags, but the cupboards, the refrigerator, the pantry, the countertop are all already full. A mother and father? But I had a mother and father. Siblings? I have a sibling. It feels a betrayal to even acknowledge you exist! No vacancy. No room at the inn. We’re all full up, and yet the thing I always thought was so small now seems as enormous as a galaxy, this thing I have felt my whole life, and that is, a sense of something missing, this curiosity of why my mother let me go. I haven’t thetools for it though. How to open myself up, let the flood wash over and through.
My life was simple enough. My parents who adopted me were wonderful. My mother had a cancer of the cervix when she was only twenty-four, so she had everything removed, and that meant she was unable to have children. They adopted me, and then my brother from Sisters in Ireland, County Clare, and raised us beautifully, put us through private school and college. The cancer ended up coming back to kill her via the bloodstream when I was eighteen. My dad was a banker and he did very well. My parents were typical American middle-class conservatives, and my father remarried quickly. Nobody wants a stepmother, but mine was fine and I was already out of the house. I will say, when it turned out Felix was gay (he came right out with it before it was an acceptable thing to do, age seventeen), they didn’t miss a beat, my father and his second wife, so in that she earned my respect. You don’t hear that story often, do you? I guess, compared to your life, and your mother’s, I should be grateful for the ease of my own. I married and we had three children. One died young, so I’m down to two, and I’ve made a mess of it. My daughter barely speaks to me. Apparently she’s had miscarriages and didn’t tell me. I have grandchildren now, too. My husband and I divorced, and he has passed away from cancer. Cancer cancer cancer.
I had a career in law. I was a clerk to a judge. Judge Guy Donnelly. I was rather like a cross between his wife and his conscience and his silent counselor. I guess this is the most interesting thing about me, though I hope you don’t think I go around parading this thing like some kind of badge of honor (I do not). It was a very large part of my life, for better or for worse. My career was wonderful for me, but hard on my family, and this is a roundabout way of explaining why my husband and I split up. Well, it’s part of the reasoning.
In any case, my life has recently taken a surprising turn. Last week I hosted a man at my house. He wants to marry me. Oh, it isn’t that he’s produced a ring and got down on his knee, but from the second dinner he’s said we should marry. Can you believe such a thing? Anyway, I don’t have any interest in being married at this point, and it’s a bit of a complexity because I have this other friend, a man who’s a neighbor, and that complicates things—I’m going on and on, and you don’t even know me.
Perhaps you might be willing to tell me a little bit more about yourself. I think I might also like to know just a little bit more about your mother. Additionally, a friend of mine who is an expert in internet researching found three documents pertaining to Charlie Thorne, and I’ve enclosed copies of them here, for your interest. It appears we share two additional half-brothers by the names of Davie and Joe.
Warm regards,
Sybil
Sybil Van Antwerp
17 Farney Road
Arnold, MD 21012
