I bought a house at 756 Harding Lane, in the village of Brentwood as a shelter for a new life with Beve Tansey, and whose children Lisa and Ben became my very close associates as children through a new marriage. Perhaps a word could be said about what it means to discover the children of someone who has lived a very different life until she met me and whose children had to also make new connections with someone who would perhaps become their stepfather.
I remember an evening at an outdoor café when Ben, then about twelve years old, was sitting between Beve and me eating his favourite - crab legs – which I suppose I had ordered as a sort of ‘come on’ or bribe to have this young teenager pay attention to me as someone other than an intruder into his family. At one point I turned to him and said something like, “I am not trying to replace your father.” In response, the twelve year old laughed out loud and suddenly disappeared under the table. When I looked for him, he held on to one table leg and sat crossed-legged with the table leg between his legs. Obviously he had wanted to disappear and, equally obviously, Ben had not liked my question. I don’t remember much else about that evening except that he let me know in various wordless ways his displeasure at my intrusive behaviour. From that inauspicious beginning there has developed, over some two decades or more, a very close relationship and I have become much more than a stepfather. Over the years, Ben has come more and more to rely on me as someone who can help him with the problems of his education and, more lately, as a critic of his writings as a journalist. So, I believe that the relationship between this stepson and me has not only been fruitful, but has become a paradigm of what a father/son relationship might ideally become.
My relationship with Lisa was never quite as problematic. She, also early in my appearance in her world, put me to the test and I think I have already spoken of it somewhere else – perhaps in the history of my relationship with her mother. Perhaps it would be too redundant to tell it again. One evening while Beve and I were sitting in her kitchen drinking beer and eating pretzels there was a knock on the door and Lisa came in wearing her nightshirt, and with a notebook and pencil in her hand. We may have looked questioning at her and she blurted out, “Please tell me more about your debts.” When I expressed my surprise at the question she explained that it had to do with my remark, probably overheard at a previous meal that I had incurred together with my brother, Mike, a considerable debt. Now it became necessary to give a reasonable explanation and, returning to the events referred to, I recalled that I must have spoken about the fact that my brothers and I had taken out a significantly large bank loan in order to pay the expenses incurred at our mother’s death. The youngster’s concern was satisfied when she learned from me that, because of our mother’s sudden death, which required my sudden journey from Montreal to Los Angeles, and my brother’s similarly from Alaska to California, under those extreme circumstances we discussed what we had to do immediately to pay for mothers’ death-related expenses. It was only then that I realized young Lisa’s interest in finances arose from a concern for her mother’s well-being and safety and I did not hesitate to explain that not only did I have no debts, but a sufficient amount of savings, and that my use of the term “debts” arose from the fact that I had with almost no notice raised enough money for a trip to California, and also enough to pay for possible unexpected expenses while there, which is why I had gone to the bank at an early hour to buy travelers cheques and to remind the bank clerk of my accounts. Evidently I had not made a very clear picture for Beve’s children of what I meant by “borrowing money”.
Looking back, I wonder sometimes how these early anxieties of Beve’s teenage children transmuted into the strong feelings of our relationship as it developed over the next two or three years. When I think back to the period of uncertainty, which my entry into the new relationship must have engendered, I can only wonder at how firm it has become over the years. A test of this firmness came at a sad moment – after a difficult illness leading to her death when Beve’s children and I came together to plan for her funeral. I remember something that was illegitimate at a Jewish cemetery. I had been told earlier that no manufactured objects could be lowered into the grave, but I had planned to write something very personal that I wanted to be on the casket as it was lowered into the grave. Having been warned that it could not be done, I decided to do so unobserved. I was allowed to throw first shovelfuls of sand onto the casket in the open grave then others did likewise until the gravediggers came and closed the grave up totally. Against the rules of the cemetery I had taken with me a glass-covered picture of Beve and me at our wedding which I had in my pocket and which I wanted to be somewhere in her grave. I don’t know whether I’d planned it that way but, as the last shovels of sand were being put onto the casket I knelt down at the grave and, as surreptitiously as I could took the picture of Beve of me out of my pocket and pushed it into the sand as it was being covered by two shovel-wielding workers. And so I did manage to send along a reminder on her long journey into eternity.
Somehow I have long felt that my “illegitimate” act of loving remembrance has been in line with the kind of relationship of exploration and discovery that I still happily have with Beve’s children.
H.D. Kirk
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