I knew from stories I heard as a girl that my mother had a brother named Hank. His full name was Henry Russo Mencken. Russo was my grandmother’s maiden name. From what I gathered over the years, Hank joined the navy in World War II, went away, and never came home. He died in a motorcycle accident before being shipped overseas.
There were a lot of men who didn’t come home after the war. I had a number of girlfriends whose fathers either didn’t come home at all or who came home as decorated heroes. From what I could gather around the dinner table, Hank wasn’t one of those. He was a bit of a scalawag-sort of the black sheep of the family-who was given a choice between joining the service and going to jail. Compared to jail, the U.S. Navy must have seemed like a reasonable option.
As I said, according to my mother, Hank was a bit of a wild thing. By the time he joined the service, he had been in enough trouble that my grandparents, and especially Grandpa Mencken, pretty much washed their hands of him. You probably can’t imagine a parent doing something like that to his own child. Most people can’t, but Grandpa Mencken wasn’t an easy person to get along with.
Actually, in that regard he and my grandmother were a matched pair. My father always said of Grandma Mencken that she was “as mean as a snake,” but he only said it when he was well out of earshot. I think it’s a miracle that, growing up the way she did, my mother turned out to be such a nice person. You can believe me when I tell you that she and my dad made a lot of sacrifices over the years in looking out for Grandma when other people probably would have walked away, but Mother was Hilda’s only surviving child. There wasn’t anyone else to do it.
I had to stop reading just then because my eyes had misted over. Unfortunately, I could very well imagine a parent washing his hands of his own child. It was the same thing my mother’s father, my other grandfather, had done to his own daughter when he learned she was pregnant with me.
“What is it?” Mel asked. “Is something wrong?”
She was seated in the chair directly behind me, the so-called comfortable one, with her own computer open on her lap. I’m sure she saw me mop my eyes, and she must have wondered what was happening.
“Just a minute,” I said. “Let me finish reading this.”
I returned to the text of the e-mail:
Grandma Mencken lived with us the whole time I was growing up. She was over a hundred when she died. With her it’s the opposite of the good dying young. Somehow I don’t think Mother will make it that long, probably because she used up so many of her good years in looking after Grandma.
At any rate, Mother and Hank were close growing up. They were brother and sister, but they were also good friends. As far as I can tell, after he joined the service, she was the only member of the family who wrote to him regularly. There may have been other letters, but I only found the ones he sent to her. In them he mentioned receiving her letters and told her how much he appreciated hearing from home. He never mentioned letters from anyone else.
Mother said she kept all his letters, tied together with a ribbon. Shortly after the war ended, the packet disappeared. My mother mourned losing those letters; she always blamed herself for being so careless. It turns out they weren’t lost at all. I found them up in the attic, hidden away in the back of one of the drawers in Grandma Mencken’s pedal sewing machine when I took it to the local historical society.
I already mentioned that my grandmother was mean. She once lay down on the floor and pretended to be dead because my mother didn’t buy the kind of cookies she liked. It was only AFTER Mother called 911 and the ambulance was on its way that Grandma got up off the floor and told her, “See there? I fooled you.” I’ll say!!!
But I think hiding Hank’s letters tops that trick. The truth is, my mother never lost Hank’s letters. Grandma Mencken took them. Big difference. Once I found them, I read through them all, one by one. Hank wrote to Mother about a wonderful girl he had met in Seattle. He said that her name was Carol Ann Piedmont, although in his letters Hank always refers to her as Kelly. He told Mother that he was in love, that he had bought Kelly a ring, and that he hoped, after they got married, that she’d come back home with him and live right here in Beaumont. The letters stopped because he died in a motorcycle accident.
After he died, my grandparents refused to get in touch with the girl. Mother was still living at home at the time and couldn’t bring herself to go against their wishes. By the time she was ready to do something about it on her own, the letters had disappeared-until I found them a few months ago.
I didn’t mention finding them to Mother because I didn’t want to get her hopes up that we’d be able to locate Hank’s long-lost Kelly. I used the Internet and searched the available records for your mother’s name. I was surprised to learn that she had never married. It made me sad when I found her obituary, like that was the end of it right there, but that’s when I discovered she had a son.
When I saw your name there in her obituary I had goose bumps. Suddenly it seemed possible that you might be Hank’s son and that your mother had given you at least that much of your father’s history, his hometown, because, I’m sad to say, she had nothing else of his to give you.
Please don’t think I’m a stalker, but I managed to track down your high school photo. I put it side by side with Hank’s senior photo the year he graduated from Beaumont High School. The two of you could have been brothers or even twins. I can scan the photo and send you a copy if you like.
If you’re still reading this, you probably see my writing to you now, after so many years of silence, as an unwelcome invasion of your privacy. I can hardly blame you for that, and if you choose not to answer, I’ll certainly understand. After all, my family betrayed both of you. For your mother, struggling to raise a child on her own in the aftermath of World War II couldn’t have been easy.
It’s possible that my grandparents didn’t know you existed. I hope that’s true, but I’m probably being too charitable. Otherwise, how could they have turned their backs on your mother when I’m sure she could have used their help, to say nothing of their considerable financial resources, to raise their only grandson? That’s what you are, by the way-their only grandson. I have two granddaughters and a grandson, but that makes him a great-grandson. You were then and still are their only grandson.
So here comes the asking part of the letter-the one you’ve been dreading and the thing this whole exercise has been leading up to. I’m hoping I’ll be able to convince you to come to Beaumont to see Mother while there’s still time.
This would be at no cost to you, of course. I’d be happy to pay your way. If you’re married, I’ll pay your wife’s way, too. I hope you’ll consider it. Mother loved your father so very much, and being able to lay eyes on you would be a gift beyond anything I could ever give her. It would fill an empty spot in her heart that has been there ever since she lost her beloved brother Hank.
I’m putting my contact information at the bottom of this page so you can be in touch if you so choose. Again, I understand that you have every right to be angry with my family, but please don’t take it out on Mother. What happened between Grandpa and Grandma Mencken and Hank was their fault, not hers.
Sincerely,
Sally Mathers
For a long time after I finished reading, I didn’t move. Couldn’t move. At my age, it was astonishing to me to hear someone-a stranger-refer to my mother by her given name. Once my grandmother died, there was no one left in my life to do that. Carol Ann-Kelly-Piedmont was always just Mother to me, and of course that’s where my daughter’s name comes from-my mother’s name.
It seemed astonishing to me that Kelly Piedmont had gone out in the world and found a man whose parents were as difficult and as judgmental as her own. Of course, maybe that was part of the attraction. She and Hank both knew what it was like to try to live their own lives with parents who regarded their children as puppets and who stayed just out of sight, offstage somewhere, pulling their kids’ strings for all they were worth. No wonder Hank Russo Mencken and Carol Ann Piedmont had bonded. And if Frederick Mencken and Jonas Piedmont had ever had occasion to meet, they probably would have gotten along like gangbusters. After all, birds of a feather do flock together.
“Beau,” Mel said. She spoke from behind me, her voice full of concern. “Did you hear me? Are you all right? What is it-someone claiming to be a long-lost relative and trying to put the bite on you?”
“No,” I said quietly. “It seems like exactly the opposite.”
I passed her my open computer and waited while she read Sally’s letter. “Wow!” she said finally, when she
