Pieces of Broken China

by Dean R. Blanchard

Overview

A father struggles to tell his long-lost daughter that he is not a predatory sexual molester.  A promising ring becomes the symbol of a boy's love for a girl he thought he knew.  A son stands by his dying mother, and in return, she helps him to make peace withj his adopted father. A mother attempts to help her daughter deal with an emotioanlly crippled Vietnam vet, who happens to also be her father.  A wife senses her husband's sexuality after an encounter with a gay man in a striight bar.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940152286144
Publisher:	Dean R. Blanchard
Publication date:	01/05/2014
Sold by:	Draft2Digital
Format:	eBook
File size:	279 KB

About the Author

I share a home with Sarah, my calico who undersands me more than I do.

Sometimes I stare at a blank page on my computer. when the muse illudes me I go for long walks at the shopping maul near my home or bake loaves of bread or go play backgammond with a disabled veteran. 

Read an Excerpt

pieces of Broken China

---

By Dean R. Blanchard

iUniverse, Inc.

Copyright © 2012 Dean R. Blanchard
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4759-3061-0

---

Chapter One

A Daughter's Love

I put on my reading glasses and read aloud to Lazarus Malisa's Christmas card and letter that lay open on the wooden TV tray in front of me

Dear Dad,

Thank you for the Christmas card and letter; however, the letter has raised more questions than it answered. I have some immediate questions that I need you to answer.

Is Lazarus your lover? Did he die from AIDS? Do you have AIDS?

How old am I?

Why did you decide to find me now?

Enough questions from me. I was married in 1989 to Jake Lynn. We divorced in 1992. My daughter Dayna was born on October 12, 1991. I graduated from Montana State University with a double major in 1995. I've been teaching developmentally disabled children in Centerville since then.

I've wished for you to find me for a very long time. I'd almost given up. I guess I am a dreamer. I also believe in forgiveness and hope you believe in forgiveness too.

Take care and God bless. Malisa and Dayna

I leaned back into the futon, numb, as I held the letter over my heart; Lazarus curled up on my lap and purred while softly kneading my lap with his paws. As I stroked Lazarus's back, I looked into his bright yellow eyes and said, "No, you're not my lover, and I don't have AIDS." I removed my glasses and laid them down on the wooden TV tray. I recalled the Christmas card I had mailed to her, the first Christmas card in sixteen years. I had signed her card, "Love, Dad and Lazarus."

Winter passed into spring, and we kept writing. I answered her questions as best I could. Some questions there were no answers for, and Malisa never prodded further.

On Easter Sunday afternoon I was in the kitchen making salad when the telephone rang. I walked into the living room and glanced at the caller ID. I took in a deep breath and exhaled slowly as I held the receiver to my ear.

"Dad? I tried calling you last night," she said. "Eight thirty your time."

I responded, "I had convinced myself I would be ready for this moment. 'I'm sorry' isn't enough to say to you ... I know it isn't. So I chose not to talk to you." I couldn't believe what I had said, and I held the receiver to my chest for a moment. I repeated, "I thought I was ready for this."

Lazarus stood up on my lap and rubbed his head gently against my chin; I stroked his back and whispered to him, "Not now."

"Dad? Who are you talking to?"

"Lazarus," I said. "My tabby cat, Lazarus."

"Oh, geez, Dad! I'm sorry. I thought Lazarus was—"

"How would you know?" I said. I glanced at the calendar again and then said, "Happy birthday, Malisa."

"You remembered!"

"You're twenty-seven today. It's been sixteen years since we've seen each other."

"I know." The excitement in her voice calmed me. She asked, "Would you mind if Dayna and I came for a visit?"

I don't want you here or we should do this later when I'm more settled into myself. The words were on my lips, ready to speak. Why had I written her in the first place? In the pit of my soul, I knew if I turned her away now she would never return.

I said, "I would love to see you and Dayna."

"You sure?" she asked

"I'm sure," I said and then asked, "When?"

"Fourth of July weekend? Will that work for you?" She paused and I stared at my reflection in the computer monitor. "I'll need directions ..." Her voice trailed into silence.

"I'll mail you directions," I said.

"Today?"

"Yes. Today."

"I love you, Dad."

The following morning I went to the post office and mailed a short note to Malisa giving her directions to my home. Returning to my apartment, I sat at my computer and began another letter.

Dear Malisa,

I spent eight months in jail and five years on probation plus an additional ten years on surveillance as a registered sex offender. Family and friends have forgiven me. Forgiveness of self is a long time in coming.

I stopped typing. I folded my hands on top of my bald head and stared up at the ceiling. I would never forget the images, the smells, the sounds of steel doors slamming shut behind me as I walked into my jail cell to the yells and screams of inmates in cells next to mine: "Sex offender, sex offender, sex offender, baby rapper, baby rapper, sex offender, sex offender ..." I cupped my hands over my ears as I stared at my reflection in the computer monitor. I chanted, "I am not a sex offender, I am not a sex offender, I am not a sex offender, and I am not ..."

I reached over and highlighted the letter I had started and hit the delete button.

A week later Malisa sent me a photograph of her and Dayna, which I taped to the side of the computer monitor. At times, I dialed Malisa to tell her not to come down. I always hung up before the first ring.

The last Monday of June, Malisa called.

"Dayna and I will be there Friday."

I don't want you here. I'm not ready for this. Instead the voice inside of me said, "If you turn her away now, she'll never come back to you."

"Dad? You okay?"

"I'm fine," I lied.

"I'm looking forward to this, Dad. I hope you are too."

"I'll see you when you get here," was all I could say as I hung up. I was a twisted ball of emotions for the rest of the day. My mind's eye reeled with scenes of her childhood and the wonderful times father and daughter had shared long ago. I recalled when she was in Girl Scouts and she had Girl Scout cookies to sell. I walked house to house with her in the beginning, because she told me she could not do this alone. After we sold most of her cookies, she informed me she could sell cookies on her own.

Friday arrived sooner than I wished, and so did Malisa, without Dayna. When I saw her standing at the doorway, my mind leaped back to her thirteenth birthday, the day of my divorce.

After idle chitchat about the weather, Lazarus, and her drive to my home, an uneasy silence fell between us. We sat down on the futon in the living room. I stared at the floor while Malisa drank the glass of water I had given her. She set the glass on the wooden TV tray next to the futon. When I looked up at her my heart broke, and I was overwhelmed with grief and anger for my silent absence from her life.

"Dad," she began. Her hands were shaking; her voice trembled. "I was going to bring Dayna with me, but I thought it would be better if you and I had this time alone." She paused briefly. "I know about your time in jail. Mom found out ... are you a predatory sex offender?" she asked. "I need to know."

"I'm not a predatory sex offender," I said, looking at Malisa. Tears washed down our cheeks. There. I had finally said it to another person. "No. I'm not a predatory sex offender," I repeated. "I had sex with my nephew ..."

"How old was he, Dad?" Malisa interrupted.

"Fourteen," I said. "What I did was wrong." I paused as I rubbed my forehead with the palm of my right hand. "I turned myself into county mental health for help." I paused again. "Going to jail was my wake-up call. I went through two years of therapy ... emotional vomit would be a better word."

Malisa looked at me and said, "At my school I work with mentally challenged kids. Some of my kids were born into families where drug and alcohol addictions are the norm. Many of those kids suffer from mental and physical abuse. One boy I know has been sexually molested by his older brother. He won't talk about the molestation, because he doesn't want to put his brother in prison. The parents pulled the boy out of school, said they wanted to home school him. What's sad about all this is that young boy will grow up being a sex offender too. Most sex offenders show no remorse or are in denial. I know one when I see one."

"Is that what you see in me?" I asked.

A cautionary tone rang out in her voice. "No ... but this is our first time together."

"I'll do whatever it takes," I said as I stood up. "I am not the man I once was."

Malisa stood and we hugged. Soon she looked up at me and said, "When I was a little girl, you were my knight in shining armor." She paused as she held my hands. "Your armor may be dented and tarnished a bit, but you're still my dad."

"Those dents remind me what I've done to myself. Family and friends have forgiven me," I said, looking into Malisa's eyes. "Forgiveness of self—I don't know if that will ever happen."

Malisa tapped her finger on my chest and said, "We'll work on that."

Summer passed into fall. We had our first Thanksgiving together in sixteen years in Malisa's home in Drummond, Montana. I have two sons, Jason and Justin, fraternal twins. Jason spent the first Thanksgiving with us. The following Thanksgivings Malisa, Dayna, and I were together.

In the summers I started to go to my daughter's home, and together we canned all sorts of foods: carrots, sweet corn, pickled beets, an assortment of pickled vegetables, bread and butter pickles, and dilly beans too. She taught me how to can venison, chicken, pork, and fish. This was our time to bond, father and daughter and granddaughter. We laughed; we cried as we told each other about our lives after the divorce. What my daughter taught me the most was about family and forgiveness.

In one of the letters I wrote to Malisa, "You'll always be my daughter. But now that we have found one another I would like us to be best friends."

"You've always been my best friend, Dad," she wrote back.

I kissed the letter and wept until my sides hurt.

Caleb's Sarcophagus

Bruce juggled three golf balls with perfect timing. His red hair flopped against his shoulders; he wore a small gold stud in his left ear and a red pullover two sizes too large for him with black lettering that read: LOOKING FOR THE MEANING OF LIFE? JOIN PEACE CORPS.

Susan chain-smoked. A coffee can on the porch overflowed with cigarette butts and empty wrappers. I watched the one-man show from the porch; Susan and I sat on the large porch swing. Susan, in her blue sweatpants, pushed the swing gently with the heels of her bare feet. I was in my full-length hooded monk's robe made from Pendleton wool and barefooted too.

"Concentration is everything," Bruce said as he juggled the golf balls. "Being centered is what it's all about, Caleb."

"Is that what you call it?" I asked.

Bruce let the balls drop to his feet, looked at me, and said, "Yes. That's what it's all about," and started running up the porch steps.

I met Bruce at the top of the steps, pointed at the golf balls, and yelled, "Pick them up!"

"Later." He smirked.

"Now!"

I stormed into the living room with Susan following. Seconds later I heard the screen door slam shut. I turned to see Bruce poised to throw one of the golf balls at my back.

"I wouldn't do that if I were you," I warned.

Bruce dropped the golf balls inside a wicker basket on the dining-room table. He turned to me. "Eat this," he yelled as he grabbed his crotch with his right hand. Moments later he disappeared down the long hallway into his bedroom, slamming the bedroom door shut behind him.

"Jerk," I said as I sat on the futon.

"He's not a jerk," Susan said. "I've known Bruce since grade school. You're the newcomer. Or have you forgotten?"

I stood facing Susan. "This is my house. You and Bruce have lived here for the past three-and-a-half years rent-free. Or have you forgotten? If you don't like it here, you can both leave."

"You," Susan began, "invited us into your home, rent-free. When we offered to pay you something, you said no. When we offered to help keep the house clean, you said no one cleans your house as well as you do. Every time we offered help, you said no." She paused. "You've never liked Bruce, because he doesn't kiss your ass." She paused. Glaring at me, she said, "Money and material wealth mean nothing to Bruce. That offends you, doesn't it?"

"He's a vegetarian Peace Corps wannabe geek!"

"So ... what am I to you?"

"I can still taste your—"

"Caleb! We were both horny and lonely. I gave you a sympathy fuck."

"Is that all it was to you?" I paused and then added, "How many sympathy—"

"Bastard!"

My face throbbed from the sting of her right hand for several minutes after she stormed out of the house. The slow clapping of hands broke the silence. I turned to see Bruce standing in the hallway outside his bedroom door. He walked behind the futon and around the living room, gesturing at the bookcase, my computer workstation. He stopped to eye the two white swans etched in stained glass hanging on the wall above the dining-room table.

"I've always wondered what you saw in these two swans," he said, his back to me. "Such beauty"—he turned to face me—"in the home of an ugly, lonely, vile man." He paused as he walked up to me. "I know this is your house. Your mosque. No—no. Your sarcophagus!"

"Shut up, Bruce!"

"What're you going to do to me? Put me out on the street?" He cocked his head to one side, smirked, and said, "You'd like that, wouldn't you? That's why you rifle through my personal effects while I'm in school, isn't it? You want a reason to get rid of me. This house," he said, turning in circles about the living room and waving his hands above his head, "gives you a feeling of power." He paused as he dropped his hands to his side. "We're your pets. We've been your pets for the past three-and-a-half years. As long as we don't mess up your home, cause embarrassment to your neighbors, and are the good little children you want us to be—"

I interrupted boldly, "I told you why I was in your bedroom. I detected the odor of weed lingering in this house. When I mentioned this to you and Susan, you played me for a fool. I knew you were lying. So I did some searching while you were gone. That's when I found a Ziploc bag full of weed in the top drawer of your dresser. If Susan hadn't come to your defense, you'd have been history. I don't do drugs."

"I don't smoke weed in your house. Besides, what I do with my private life is none of your business!"

"This is my house, my rules. You're a loser, an addict to boot."

"I hate you!" He stood inches from my face. "You're going to die in this house old, feeble, and lonely."

Bruce stepped back as I clenched my fist. "That'll be the last mistake you make with me," he warned.

"Get out!" I yelled, pointing to the front door. He stormed out of the house and slammed the door shut behind him so hard the walls shook.

I sat at my computer workstation most of the afternoon and stared at photographs of Mom and Dad. My mind wandered in no particular direction as I glanced at three photographs of Susan, Bruce and I attending our graduation celebration at the end of our freshman, sophomore, and junior years of college. Bruce had scribbled, "The best is yet to come," on the back of our freshman photograph, in which Susan sat between Bruce and me with an empty bottle of tequila in the middle of the dining room table.

An hour later Susan returned, sweaty from running. Susan's blue clothes clung to her body. She sat at the dining room table and there followed by several awful moments of silence. Finally I sat across from her.

"What do you see in Bruce?"

"What's it to you?" Susan fanned herself with her hand and then smoothed her tangled auburn hair, letting it drop against her back. She looked at me and began, "Unlike you, Bruce and I were raised in this wonderful tiny hamlet, with its white picket fences, row houses, and as many churches as there are bars and all its hookers. Some of them go to church.

"My father's the deacon at the First Baptist Church. He knows all the women in this town well ... very well. My parents, like a lot of other families in this town, live unhappy lives. Dad's a busted-up logger. Mom toils at the local restaurant, comes home at night, cooks his dinner, and listens to him bitch all night because she wasn't there to take care of him. He's a drunk, full of self-pity because he can't go out and do the manly thing anymore."

"Manly thing?" Susan asked.

"Work, Caleb. Something you don't know much about." Susan rested her left arm over the top of her chair, looked at me, and said, "Tell me about your parents."

"Why?"

"I'm trying to understand, Caleb." She grinned.

"Dad was working out of the San Francisco office recruiting for the State Department at a job fair when he met Mom. They married a year later. In the spring of 1966, Dad returned with Mom to Israel. While Dad was in the field, Mom remained home—she was not a social person. Three months after they settled in Israel, she told Dad she was pregnant." I paused. "She insisted on finding a place stateside, safe to raise a kid.

"It was Dad's secretary who told him about this area. I guess she had attended Middleport College and left after graduation. When Dad brought Mom here, she fell in love with Middleport. While they were looking around, Dad found and bought this property.

"He departed for Israel on June 1, 1967, four days before Israel's counter-offensive erupted with Syria, Egypt, and Jordan. That's the last time Mom heard from him. The State Department never gave her a satisfactory answer as to what happened to him. He had the house insured, so the policy paid off the mortgage plus other assets that left her well off. Money was never an issue with Mom. I never understood their marriage, because he was gone from our lives so much. She never remarried and lived with Dad's memorabilia surrounding her. Two years after his death, Mom died. She just gave up." I paused as I glanced at the photograph of my parents above my computer workstation. "All of Dad's plaques and letters of commendation that Mom framed are boxed and stored in the basement."

(Continues...)

---

Excerpted from pieces of Broken China by Dean R. Blanchard Copyright © 2012 by Dean R. Blanchard. Excerpted by permission of iUniverse, Inc.. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

---

Table of Contents

Contents

A Daughter's Love....................1
Caleb's Sarcophagus....................7
Cody's Promise Ring....................23
Confessions and Forgiveness....................33
Genesis....................43
Lower Than a Snake's Belly....................49
Orson Welles....................61
Seth's Sourdough Shop....................67
Speaking in Tongues....................81
Twin Sisters Inn....................89
Troy's Condition of Friendship....................97