WHITHER THOU GOEST 3 - RUTH'S STORY - PART 1

How the hell did I get here?  Yeah yeah, I know, I am sitting in a car – I mean HOW did I get HERE?  What am I doing?  This was a crazy idea, travelling halfway across the world looking for a Mom who, let’s face it, let me go when I was just a few days old!  What kind of woman does that?

Deep breaths now Ruthie, you’ve spoken to her, she sounds a nice, regular sort of woman – and hell – SHE abandoned ME!

I am Ruth-Anne Kaufmann Thomas.  I was born in 1969 on an Israeli kibbutz, to Charles Henry (Hank) and Julia Kaufmann of Boston MA.  Or at least, that’s what I have always believed until recently.

My first home was a big old period house in Boston.  I can still remember the big garden backing on to a field where I used to ride my bike.  Boy, did I love my bike – a Birthday gift when I was 5 or 6.  My Daddy used to be away on business a lot, but we lived right by both my sets of Grandparents, and I spent a lot of time with them as Mom was almost always tired, and often sick.  She was kind and read me stories, but it was my Daddy I was closest to;  I looked forward to weekends when he would take me swimming and fishing in the lake, and to the match when I was older.

I must have been 7 or 8 when we moved away to Ohio.  The house was smaller and I really missed my grandparents.  Daddy was away even more, but by then I was doing well in school and had plenty of pals to keep me busy.  Mom was often sick and took to her bed for days - she never minded much what I was up to, and so I was pretty much free to go wherever I liked, but I so looked forward to the weekends with Daddy!  I would run up to his big old Buick when I heard it arrive, and there were always gifts for both of his girls, as he called me and Momma.

We saw less and less of him as time went on, and we moved house several times, must have covered most of America in my life!  As soon as we started putting down roots, off we would go, and I had to make new friends so many times, I became quite self-sufficient and a bit wild.  Sometimes, when Momma was sick, I would be sent back to Boston for a few weeks stay with the grandparents. I really looked forward to those times, and Daddy would visit me there.

All my grandparents had passed away by the time I was in my early twenties;  by that time me and Mom were living in a nice house in Philadelphia, and seldom saw Daddy, though he rang me often, and visited when he could.  Momma was getting weaker and it has to be said, stranger all the time.  She more or less took to her bed and died soon after her own Mother, so I was alone at a fairly young age, apart from Daddy’s visits; and he came back to live with me permanently later, when he was semi-retired.  Of course, I had my own life to lead; and when I met Danny, we did some travelling ourselves.  That felt strange, leaving Daddy all alone in the house while we went off round the world!

We stayed a couple of months on the Sharona kibbutz where I was born: I guess it was very different then though, now almost 30 years on it was more like a little town, and I was a bit disappointed that no-one there remembered my folks.  Silly really, there must have been young people coming and going all the time in the 60s and 70s – why would anyone remember another American or two?

Danny and I married, and stayed in the house with Dad; he was getting older and a little frail, always had this horrible cough.  ‘Daddy’ I would say, ‘ain’t it about time you gave up smoking – and lay off the whisky too!’

He just laughed.

‘I’m too old to change now, baby girl!’.

The house was plenty big enough for us three to do our own thing; Danny worked hard as a civil engineer, and I had a promising career as a kindergarten teacher, ‘a chip off the old block’ Dad used to say, though he had given up teaching many years ago in favour of a more lucrative career as a traveller for a hardware company.

Even in those last few years he would go off occasionally ‘on business’ and return with gifts for me and Danny, saying he had closed a big deal.

His cough got worse and one bright day just under a year ago I went over to his part of the house so we could have our usual morning coffee and cake together, and found him dead in his big old leather armchair, a glass of bourbon at his side.  The autopsy showed lung cancer, the result no doubt of hanging out in too many smoky bar-rooms!

As people do, I put my grief aside into that special compartment in the heart, went into auto-mode and set about organising the funeral, which I booked to take place ten days later.  It felt strange, and somehow wrong, going into his study without him, and once I had found the keys to his bureau, it took me a while to pluck up the courage to use them.

My first task was to go through his records and notify everyone of the sad news and of the arrangements.  Daddy did have a computer, but he didn’t have much use for it. I opened the central drawer and found two address books, the first a leather-bound volume I recognised as a gift from me many years ago; this contained details of family and friends, most of whom I knew of, and many of them already deceased.

The second book was smaller and well-thumbed, with the odd greasy spot and brown stains decorating the pages. ‘Damned bourbon’ I smiled.  This book seemed to be dedicated to business contacts; few of the names meant anything to me, and there were manly numbers with no names by them, just initials.  There also seemed to be some kind of code against these names, and I decided to show that to Danny later and get his opinion.

Shutting the drawer, I spotted Daddy’s latest Diary on the top of the bureau.  Reaching for it, I felt like a naughty little girl;  it had been bad enough looking through his address books; but his Diary – well, that just felt wrong!  It had to be done though, ‘Sorry Daddy’ I whispered, and began to read the latest entries.  They were pretty much as expected:  Doctor’s appointment, Pool game with the old boys in the clubroom, everyday stuff.  But one set of initials cropped up ‘Ring MC’; and going back a little ‘MC Bday’.  I realised that entry co-incided with one of his more recent trips away. Another recurring name was ‘Dino’.  ‘Meet Dino 4.30’. ‘Ring Dino’.  And there was that code again.  I guessed these were business contacts, as I thought I knew most of his buddies, and there were no Dino nor MC.

I next unlocked the tall metal filing cabinet next to the desk.  There was a whole bunch of old diaries in the deep bottom drawer, again containing the same code. ‘LW 12.50 20 number 1’ one entry from ten years ago read, and there were many similar.  At the back of each diary there were scribbled accounts, with entries amounting to tens of thousands of dollars.

I sat back in the swivel chair, wondering what it all meant.  I decided to stick to the immediate task in hand, and look into it all after the funeral.  I was still in deep shock at losing my Dad, and I knew I should work through my own grief before trying to sort his affairs out properly.

The funeral went as expected; I had invited the few remaining family members and colleagues and friends I managed to contact through his records. I had few responses, and guessed many of the business contacts would have died or moved on over the years.  In fact on the day I was surprised at the large number of mourners who turned up, many of whom I did not recognise.  Most of them seemed to melt away quietly after the burial.

That was a Friday afternoon.