Seven Letters from Paris Read Free

shook with disgust and disappointment. It was from my biological father, Chuck.
    A crazed man with blue eyes and dark, curly hair stood in front of a comically oversized cake under a Happy Birthday banner, holding a gun to his head. Guests surrounded a table, all in exaggerated death poses, tongues hanging out, eyes rolled back. Chuck had written a banal message on the inside of the card, closing the note out with “Well, here’s the birthday card I modeled for. Love you.”
    Granted, it was better than the other birthday card he’d sent a few years later, the one with a woman dressed in a trench coat and lacy lingerie—the printed text reading, “Play with it again, Sam.”
    I pushed both cards face down into the folder, questioning whether to throw them out. Truth be told, I was questioning everything.
    My husband had always accused me of having “abandonment issues” because of Chuck—or as I called him, the Mother Chucker. Suffice it to say, I’d always harbored a deep resentment for my biological father. Anybody of sane mind would. After a year and a half of marriage, he left my mother and me for another woman. Stole the car. Drove off into the California sunset. Left the door to our apartment open so the cats escaped. Didn’t even leave a note. I was six months old, jaundiced and colicky. My mother was twenty-one years young, fearful of her future. Even worse, the Mother Chucker’s family wrote us off too, cutting off all correspondence.
    Still, life went on for my mother and me—and it was a much better life. When I was six, she married the man I proudly call my dad, Tony. As a precocious five-year-old, I probably played a tiny role in his decision to marry us when I looked up at him with wide blue eyes and asked, “Will you be my daddy?” And no, my mother did not prompt this question. It was all me—a little girl who wanted to complete the family circle.
    Tony accepted my proposal and Mom married him one year later. I wore my hair in Shirley Temple ringlets to their wedding. Our life was great, no, fantastic, all rainbows and marshmallows and unicorn-perfect, or at least, it was to me. Chuck wasn’t around to veto the judge’s ruling, and my dad formally adopted me when I was ten.
    Two months after my adoption had gone through, my mother gave birth to my baby sister, Jessica. Thanks to Peter Mayle’s book Where Did I Come From? , I knew enough about the facts of life when I stated matter-of-factly, “Dad is going to love her more than he loves me. She’s his real baby. And I’m not.”
    Then I burst into tears.
    Mom and Dad sat me down and explained that just because my dad didn’t make me during one of his happy sneezes (as depicted in the book) it didn’t mean I wasn’t his real daughter. Love didn’t come from just DNA. I was still jealous of the attention my sister received but, for the time being, the issue had been resolved. I forgot about my adoption, my old last name. I was a Platt and proud of it.
    Until the day I was reminded I wasn’t born a Platt at all.
    Which brings me back to Chuck.
    Deadbeat daddy-o first made contact when I was twelve years old—right when I was in the throes of puberty, right at the time I didn’t fit in. As if life wasn’t confusing enough. Naturally, his wish to get to know me upset my mother, but she gave me the choice to speak with him or not. Curious about my origins, I’d hoped to get some answers. Like, why? Why did he leave my beautiful mother? Leave me? Yet I was too nervous to ask these questions.
    Soon after this first phone call, the gifts arrived—a red suede coat from Saks and a pair of diamond earrings. Like that could make up for never paying child support. In eighth grade, I lost one of the earrings. A jealous classmate destroyed the jacket; the blue pen marks scribbled on the back of it couldn’t be removed.
    After he made this