I submitted this story for an website I have contriubted to. It didn;t get picked up and I am too lazy to retype it.
“All I need is a name, a first name.” I watched as my brother’s plea fell upon the caring face of a bureaucrat handcuffed by regulations. She wanted to help and sensing that, my brother pressed, to no avail. “Have you considered hiring a private investigator?”
This was not the “This American Life” quality of ending I had hoped for when I climbed in my 911 a mere 4 days prior. The directions from Oklahoma City were pretty short; “Enter I-40 East. Stop in Greensboro North Carolina.” This harebrained idea spawned during my last extended trip overseas and aside from the car and the company, was not working out.
My infatuation with my 911, combined with an absence of family caused me to seriously overestimate my abilities. It was a brilliant plan; I would meet my brother at his home in North Carolina, soon after we would depart to my home in Atlanta. Maybe detour to the University of Georgia, oddly enough my father’s alma mater and look through yearbooks in a vain attempt. Then to Greenville South Carolina, where my step-father still resided in the house where I had spent a good portion of my formative years. Then to Columbia the capital, where our heartbreaking story of love and loss, reunion and redemption as well as our combined southern charm would open dusty vault and present us with the answer we were looking for; who is my brother’s father?
You think I would know, but until 2007, I was only vaguely aware I had a brother after one very distracted conversation 24 years prior. But he knew. He had become quite adept at research after travelling to the same location on his 18th birthday. The woman approached a window with a file and said “In here is everything you need to know, and I cannot give it to you.”
Over the years he poured over the blacked out file and repeatedly requested information. He would receive the same file. He searched, he posted, until he caught a break, one copy had failed to black out our mother’s original first name. A volunteer search agency was able to cross reference birth records in several counties, connect to non-identifying information and track down a cousin, connected that to my step dad, connecting him to me, and three years later put him in the passenger seat of my black 911 in sweltering southern heat.
That had landed us here; in the hall of records in Columbia South Carolina and the last available option was being put to us; “Have you considered hiring a private investigator?”
So that’s what we did, in fact we hired the one she recommended. A specialist in adoption, she sat on a state board and the meat of her practice was based on these cases. Her reputation had grown to the point she didn’t need to farm herself to divorce firms. My iPhone vetted her website and success. On the phone, she was cautious. She warned me it could from 6 months to a year. That even with her skill, sometimes she could not make the connection, and if that was the case, she would refund the deposit. I looked at my brother, elbows on his knee, Marlboro light in his fingers, staring at a blank patch of concrete hoping for the answers that had eluded him for his existence would materialize. There was no other answer.
In the end, it took only three weeks. Her research was exhaustive, containing the detailed college history of both grandparents, the current status, and to paraphrase Mike Rutherford; I had a name, and I had a number. I left a very generic message to not set off any alarms, unsure of the knowledge of the family. Luckily, he had been quite forthcoming when dating her current wife about his relationship with my mother. A few weeks later, hallway between their home, my brother watched his father arrive at the agreed upon meeting place.
He was driving a 911.
- I'm glad I got to know him. He's a good dude, works hard, pays his taxes and is fun to hang with. Having known him for a few years know, I will tell you this, awkward as it may be, a human needs to know where they come from. You don't have to be buddies, but just throw the guy a bone and talk about you family.
Awkward, you bet. I find a few beers help.
Uhhh... that's not what he means...
