Family Curse

Family Curse.

By Rick Wasserman

"I miss the ocean," he said one day out of the blue, and I sighed inwardly in resignation. The days when he spoke were seldom good ones.

"Dad, the ocean is maybe 20 minutes away from here."

"That can't be right," he frowned.

"30 minutes, and we could be at Coney Island," I said. "Do you want to go to Coney Island?"

"Never. NEVER! Too dangerous," he yelled and threw his spoon at me.

I counted my lucky stars that it wasn't the bowl. The soup was long gone, but the bowl was quite solid and would have hurt. I picked the spoon off the floor and quickly grabbed the bowl on my way to the kitchen area.

"Done with your soup then?" I said.

"Soup?" He looked absently at his TV tray.

Moving my Father from Rugby, North Dakota, to live with me here in the city was not my best idea. Leaving New York was a non-starter, though. My job paid well, and I had a life here, or at least I used to.

But when his mind began to go, I looked at my alternatives, and they were all bad. Moving him into my two-bedroom condo had been the least bad option, or so I had thought. There was a western on the TV. There was always a western playing on the TV. For the last two years, non-stop westerns. Who knew there were so many westerns or TV channels devoted to them? I hated westerns.

"What's wrong with the ocean, Dad?" I said before considering the can of verbal diarrhea I might be unleashing.

But all he said was, "Rhonda."

I wasn't sure what surprised me more, that he stopped at a single word or that it was a name that I had never heard before.

Before my brain could realize my folly, I blurted out, "Who's Rhonda?"

"She was the love of my life," he said wistfully.

I thought Mom was the love of your life," I said with a smirk.

"WHO?"

"Sally," I said. "You know? My mom, your wife."

"She was a witch, though," he snarled. "She could summon sharks out of the ocean depths on a whim."

"Mom?"

"No, Rhonda," he said. "She would stand on the sand and call out to them. I thought it was a joke at first, but then they came. They always came when she called."

"Sure, dad."

"She was a pinko too," he said, "and a frikkin Fem'nist. Always there with a sharp word against the war or the guv'ment. Said I was a racist too!"

Well, she was right on the nose with that one, I thought privately.

"She was so mad," he said.

"Who? Rhonda?"

He nodded, "I was just trying to calm her down. You know? She was hysterical."

"You're hysterical."

"You know what she was like. Don't you, Tom?"

"Who's Tom?"

"She was a right spitfire she was. Powerful woman, never seen her like before, or since."

"Dad, I'm your son Fred. Who is Tom?"

"But afterward… afterward we couldn't go near the ocean. It's the sharks, you see. The sharks can smell the blood, her blood, on our hands. I told you not to go into the water Tommy. Why didn't you listen?"

Wait. What?

"It's why I left you behind, Tommy," he pleaded at me, "I had to get away from them. As far away as I could."

I was bewildered, and without thinking, I said, "It's OK. I forgive you."

"The Curse," he said, "with her dying breath, she said our families would never be free of it so long as we lived. But I showed her, didn't I? No sharks in North Dakota. HA!"

It took a few hours to calm him down. By then, a new western had started that caught his eye, and it was almost dinner time. I tried to get more details out of him, of course, but it was like sifting sand. Who was Tommy? Who was Rhonda? Were these the raving of an old man that had lost touch with reality, some vaguely remembered movie plot, or was my father possibly a murderer?

Monday came around, and I still hadn't let it go. Whatever memory cells had sparked and flared must have also died, and my father sank once again into his silent contemplation of the television westerns. So, while I was supposed to be working, I spent the morning searching the internet for clues. This turned out to be an exercise in futility. Computers are great at answering questions, but only when you know how to phrase the question. Do you know how many Toms, Larrys, and Rhondas there are in the world? There are over sixteen million results alone with those names together. Even narrowing it down to the early 20th century was no help. I needed more focus.

Larry Davis, my dad, where was he in his teens and 20s?

151,000,000 results… Oh, good lord. That is even worse.

OK, let's try this, he was 80 years old, which meant he was born in 1941-ish.

41,500,000 results.

A search for Larry Davis 1941 Rugby North Dakota reduced it down to a million results, and most of them were garbage. One, however, caught my eye. Samantha DAVIS married Larry Winslow (born 1941) in Rugby, North Dakota, in 1972. He would have been 31. My birthday was in 1973. Coincidence? Did my dad change his name to Davis from Winslow? Why would he do that?

Larry and Tomas Winslow, 761,000 results. One of which was the funeral of one Tomas Winslow, age 16, in 1959 off the coast of Georgia. Survived by a mother and father whose names I didn't recognize, and a brother, age 18, Larry Winslow. But was that Larry Winslow, my father?

The town was Brunswick, Georgia. I'd never heard of it.

I looked for Rhonda in Brunswick, GA, in 1959. Five hundred fifty-two thousand results, but nothing stood out.

I left work early. Most of my father's things had been placed into storage two years ago. We sold the farm, and the furniture. Most of the clothes were donated. The rest were various boxes of junk moldering away in the smallest cheapest storage unit I could find. There were rats. Of course there were. Some of the boxes had been violated, but not too many. About seven boxes in, I found a lockbox tucked in among some essential papers. One of those papers was a certificate of live birth for one Larry Winslow in a Jacksonville, Florida hospital. The parents named were the same ones from the funeral announcement. So my father was that Larry, and he had a younger brother named Tomas.

So who was Rhonda?

There wasn't a key for the lockbox, but there was another box in the storage unit full of odds and ends, including tools. After some struggling, cursing, and an injured hand later, I had the lockbox open. It had curious bits and bobs inside, old pictures, and a few newspaper clippings.

There was a picture of my dad, as a young man, with another young man and a girl.

There was a newspaper clipping about a young man, name withheld to protect the family, killed in a freak shark attack.

Another article was about how the search for a lost girl had been called off after several days of searching—the girl, presumed dead.

But there was a name, Rhonda McGuire.

I pulled out my phone, searching for Rhonda McGuire in Brunswick.

A small-town tragedy, a young woman goes missing. Her friends and family are distraught. She had been planning on going to college in Savannah. Several articles were unflattering. She was described as flighty. Some wondered if she had just run away.

I thought about this. I thought long and hard.

I arrived home and found him sleeping there, in front of the TV, which was still on with yet another westerns showing. His face looked empty, tired, but peaceful. As the days flowed, I looked for signs in him that he remembered. I asked him about Rhonda, about Tommy. But he would just shrug if he even bothered to answer at all.

Bright and early on Saturday morning, I packed him all up into his wheelchair with a picnic lunch, and I took him down to Battery Park. The Statue Cruises were already busy busy with tourists. We looked out across the water towards the Statue of Liberty. I asked him about it.

"It's too small," he said. "Can't be real."

I looked out over the water.

"That isn't the ocean, is it?" he asked suddenly.

"It's the Hudson River," I said.

He grumbled, "Not great, but not terrible."

I thought it was a trick of the eye. But then I confirmed it. Out among the choppy waves was a single pale gray triangular shape. It didn't seem possible. I had googled the possibility, but it was very rare.

Some species of shark could survive in Freshwater for long periods. That one should show itself now, even at such a great distance. We had only been near the shore for a few minutes.

But then there were three.

I very distinctly saw three, and they were getting closer.

I turned my father away from the water and strolled south past the Castle Clinton.

More, cresting and disappearing among the waves. It was hard to count how many. It could have been seven. It could have been more. They were mere yards from the shore. No one else seemed to notice them. In fact, despite the tourists waiting for their chance to visit the Statue, there were hardly any souls about. I was just rolling past the third boat ramp when I looked over my right shoulder at the water. There might have been twelve fins out there now, maybe more. Some were very close too. I looked at my father, but he had dozed off.

At the top of the third boat ramp, I turned.

And then I let go.

He rolled quickly down the ramp to splash into the water.

There was no sound other than the lapping of the waves as I turned and walked away.