Issue date:
May 16, 1997

Seeking Harry Foster

By Jen Schuchman
Greensburg (Pa.) Salem High School

Angie Frye lived in a gray and brown aluminum trailer in a grassless cul-de-sac off the Indiana interstate. In the relentless August heat, I waited while she eyed me up and down, an unlit cigarette in her mouth and a half-naked baby balanced on her hip. She resembled my father more than I did.

I glanced at a gaping tear in the screen door. "Angie, I'm Nora --"

"I know who y'are," she snapped, pressing a twisted piece of duct tape over the hole. "You said you weren't comin' till tomorrow." A child's cries erupted from inside and she disappeared.

Retrieving my duffel bag from the puddles of wet gravel, I followed her, pulling a set of forgotten keys out of the front door and setting them down on the kitchen table.

Angie Frye had been my father's firstborn, the product of a 16-year-old girl playing dress-up in a bar and a 21-year-old man who took advantage. She had been born in the back of a van. He left two years later, passing it off as "a mistake made by two kids too young to know any better." Always the philosopher. Always the con man.

The baby toddled over to the corner and buried his fat fingers in the matted fur of his dog, startling the sleeping mutt. Down the hall his mother was yelling at the other children. Exasperated, she sighed and said, "Harry, go tell her t'come in. Get movin'."

A pre-adolescent voice retorted, "I ain't doin' it!"

"Don't talk back to me."

Angie reappeared. "Oh. Y'found yer way in. You'll have to sleep on the couch tonight. I was plannin' on you stayin' in Harry's room 'cause he was s'posed to see his father the next coupla' days, but y'know how fathers are." She seemed to sense the awkward connection she had created with the last phrase and abrasively added, "Th' bastards."

"Shut-up, Mom." A greasy-haired boy wearing a faded black AC/DC shirt scowled in the doorway. "Dad's got a new job. That's why he can't see me. He wants to." Who was he convincing? His mother or himself?

I used to do that all the time. Daddy's perfect. Never [Daddy can't see me 'cause he's draped over a toilet in the bathroom at Motel 6 with a woman he barely knows.] The bastard.

My mother had come from a straight-laced, upper-class family, and he offered her the thrills she'd craved for so long. Two years after they married, they brought me home and laid me in a designer crib surrounded by expensive stuffed animals. Photographs in a dusty album depict a devoted father. I was Daddy's little girl until he rekindled his love affair with a bottle of Jack Daniels and left. After that, my mother stopped taking pictures.

"D'y'want somethin' to drink, Nora?" Angie was in the kitchen, and Harry was tormenting the dog. She growled, "Stop, dammit!" Her eyes followed him as he stomped back the long corridor to the bedroom. "Where'd'you say you were goin' t'school?"

"Missouri, to study journalism."

I inherited what Daddy referred to as "his affinity for story-telling." My mother had sensed this right away and told me to put my lies on paper instead of saying them out loud. Of course, I did quite a bit of writing. I wrote pages and pages of rainbows and fuzzy animals ... in the beginning. Then, the Liar stopped coming home, eventually moved out, and called to say he was living in Las Vegas, so sorry he didn't get a chance to stop over and tell me goodbye. Rainbows turned into mud puddles, and bunnies became drunks.

He's disappeared. I tried to find him before my graduation three months ago. I wanted him there, if only to show him what I'd accomplished without him, in spite of him. I pretend I don't care, part of me still misses him. Part of me would spit in his face if I ever found him. But for now, I just need something to reassure me so that I can sleep without dreaming that he's dead and I'm too late for the funeral.

Angie handed me a glass of lemonade and sat down beside me. Her face softened. "I don't know what you're lookin' for here. I don't know where he is. Th'last number I had for him's been disconnected for years." She took a long drag from her cigarette, snuffed it out in a plastic ashtray, and lit another. She slumped back on the couch and laughed. "There was actually a time when I idolized him. Course I was only 16. Named Harry after him. Sometimes I think that's why Harry's so angry. His father don't care about him. He ain't even seen him. But I know the kid has to hope."

She paused, and her expression changed from shame to envy. "You're 18, right? It's funny. I was married, divorced, and had two kids by the time I was your age." She ended bitterly, inhaling more smoke. "Not necessarily in that order."

"I'd like to blame it all on Harry Foster, world's greatest father, but I can't." By the way she stared straight ahead and rambled on, I could tell she was feeling the effects of the almost-empty Budweiser sitting on the counter. "I screwed up my own life. Pregnant teenager ... had t'drop out my senior year. Sarah's 7 now. There woulda' been another one then, 'cept my husband hit me with his pickup, and that kinda' ended that. He always loved that truck more than me, anyway." She staggered over to the counter and downed the last drops of beer. "Social services said we could keep it on account of Lonny bein' locked up and me recoverin' from the accident. Never did get 'round to sellin' th'damn thing." I followed her eyes. An old blue Chevy pickup was parked outside.

"Then I married Sam Frye. He was a mechanic and me and my kids was almost on welfare. He made it all right. Even took a job as a truck driver so we could get out of the trailer. Soon's we had enough saved, I was gonna' quit waitressing and get my GED. When I found out I was gonna' have his baby, it was different. With the others, I was ashamed. But this time ..." She trailed off, staring at the rain streaking the window for a long time before shutting it.

"What happened?"

She glanced up and shook her head as though it needed a jump-start. "Three weeks b'fore Sam Jr. was born, his damn oil tanker exploded."

I stared at this woman who had held everything together despite being battered by life, and suddenly I saw my mother. I remembered my graduation day in June, when she sat in the front row, so proud of the daughter who had caused her so much heartache. I had looked right past her, searching for the face I so desperately wanted to see. But my father wasn't there. I couldn't hide my disappointment, and my mother noticed but never said a word.

And now, I had taken off for my future a week early so that I could search again for my past. And she was there all the time.

Standing up, I swung my bag over my shoulder. "Angie, thanks. I won't be staying tonight after all. I'm going home."

"Hope it wasn't anything I said."

I turned around as I stepped out into the downpour. "You made things all right for me."

Her face twisted, surprised, maybe even touched, underneath her tough, sarcastic facade. "Have a safe trip. Write to me, if y'aren't embarrassed to address yer mail here."

We smiled at each other, and I shut the door.

Outside, heat rose from the gravel and the air was sticky and gray. A little girl twisted the chain of a swing slowly around itself on a rusted swingset beside the Chevy. The keys slipped out of my hand as I unlocked the door, and I dropped to my knees to find them. Retrieving them from underneath the car, I threw my stuff onto the passenger's seat and jogged over.

"What are you doing out here? It's so wet."

"Nuthin'. Barbie busted her arm." She held the armless doll up for me to see.

"Oh, well, do you still have the arm? Maybe I can fix it for you."

"Nope. Harry melted it down." She looked up at me with wide blue eyes rimmed with dripping blond lashes. "Did'ya find what you were lookin' for?"

I stared at her.

"Over there. You were searchin' for somethin'? Did'ya find it?"

I smiled. "Yeah, I found it."

Each of these students receives a $75 gift certificate for books or software. Sponsoring teachers get $50 gift certificates.