Forgiveness is a Choice

I heard George's voice down below me. "Come on down, Jacob. I'd like you to meet the family that's going to live here when we're finished." He turned to them, then said, "Jacob is one of the finest finish carpenters in the city. He has a gift. You'll love this room when he finishes with it."

I climbed down and saw a man, about thirty-five, a woman about thirty, and two children who I guessed to be two and four. "Jacob," George said, "this is Doctor and Mrs. Jackson. They're the new owners of this property. And these are their children."

I turned first to the man, sticking my hand out and shaking his. "Jacob Harper, Doctor Jackson. A pleasure to meet you." As I spoke my name, I saw the woman shudder out of the corner of my eye, almost as if she'd been struck. I turned to her and said, "Hello, Allie. It's been a long, long time. I'm glad to see you're doing well." Then I knelt and addressed the children. "My name's Jacob. What's yours?"

The little boy replied, "I'm Davy and my sister is Amanda. I'm four and she's two."

"It's very nice to meet you," I said. "I have two daughters your and your sister's ages, Davy. You might like to meet them some day." Then I stood and addressed Allison. "You have a lovely family, Allie. I hope you have better luck keeping yours than I did mine." Then I turned and walked from the room.

George later told me that the look on Allie's face was one of horror. David, her husband, had just looked confused. "Do you know that man, Allie?" David had asked as I exited the room.

"Not now, David," she'd replied. "We'll talk later."

George finally realized what had just happened and after showing the Jacksons the remainder of the house, had come to get me. "That was your daughter, wasn't it?"

"Former daughter."

"Then those are your grandchildren."

"No, they would have been my grandchildren. According to the courts, they're just some customers' children."

"Jacob, I'm sorry. If I'd known who she was, I wouldn't have asked you to meet them."

"You've nothing to apologize for. You didn't do this. Allie, her mother and that man she calls her father now did this. I'm over it. Or at least I've put it behind me since Anna and I became a family."

I didn't learn it until some time later, but that chance encounter almost destroyed Allie's marriage. David and Allie had gone home, fed the kids and put them to bed, at which time David had pressed Allie for an explanation. I'll let David explain.

DAVID

I grew up an only child, the son of a senior partner in the largest law firm in the city and a professor of psychiatry at the university who also maintained a private practice treating the rich and famous. My parents sent me to a private school, the same school to which Dr. and Mrs. Jones had sent Peter and Allie. I'd known Peter, who was a year younger than I was, from playing with him on the soccer team, but we were never friends. He had an arrogance, a snobbishness, an "I'm better than you are just because I'm me" attitude about him that was unappealing. My parents would have grounded me until I was ninety had I demonstrated similar behavior. I was dimly aware that he had a younger sister, but at the time she was a freshman and had not yet begun to mature.

I chose medicine rather than law for my profession and ended up an orthopedic surgeon in the same hospital where my mother taught, which also happened to be the same hospital where Peter and Allie's father and mother both worked. By the time I began working there, Dr. Jones was chief of cardiac surgery and Mrs. Jones was director of nursing. Peter had graduated from law school and was working on the west coast with one of Los Angeles' best known entertainment law firms. From what I would later gather, he was as big a jerk as his father.

I'd done a residency rotation under Dr. Jones, so he knew me. I later found out that he'd had a detailed background check performed on me and decided that I was a fitting mate for his daughter. So I found myself summoned (an invitation from Dr. Jones was a command, not a request) to dinner, where I'd been introduced to his now quite lovely daughter, Allie.

Somewhat to my surprise, Allie and I hit it off. I say I was surprised because I thought both her parents were stuffy, pretentious snobs. Allie was different, or so I thought. She had a certain air of remoteness about her. Whatever caused it was something she was unwilling to discuss and I never pressed her on it. She'd done the Ivy League university, Ivy League MBA school, big consulting firm career path and was focused on healthcare management. Our relationship followed the usual young professional progression: dates, intimacy, moving in together, declarations of love, proposal, marriage. Our wedding gift from her parents was a two bedroom condominium unit in one of the best projects in the city.

My parents had not embraced Allie with the enthusiasm I had expected. By the time we married, my father was the managing partner of his law firm and a member of the hospital's board of directors. He knew both of Allie's parents fairly well and did not care for them at all. My mother had a similar reaction to them. She had gone so far as to ask me whether I really wanted to have Dr. and Mrs. Jones as in-laws, given how much my parents disliked them and what stuffy, pretentious jerks they were. I'd had to think about that for a bit before assuring mom that my love for Allie would allow me to deal with Allie's parents.

When Davy was born, Allie had stepped back a bit on her career path, leaving the consulting firm for a hospital administration position with the hospital at which her parents and I both worked. She doted on Davy, as did my parents. Allie's parents seemed to treat him more as an ornament to their lives than a grandchild. As one of my friends later told me, it seemed that Allie's parents wanted pictures of their grandchild more than the grandchild himself. We'd had Amanda two years later and she'd generated the same response in all parties.

Dr. Jones' mother died shortly after Amanda was born, leaving Allie and Peter the beneficiaries of a healthy trust fund that paid the income to them until they turned thirty-five, at which time the principal would be paid over to them as well. With those funds in hand and the fact that Amanda's birth had caused us to find the condo a bit cramped, we'd begun looking for a house. We both wanted to minimize our commute and had purchased a house near the hospital in the area the university had designated as the redevelopment target, with it being served by the charter school. We'd probably send our children to the same private school we'd attended, but liked having the charter school as an alternative.

As Jacob has already told you, the house needed substantial renovations to bring it back to its former glory and we'd hired George's firm to perform the work. We'd done so based upon their reputation for authenticity and craftsmanship, even though there had been other, lower bids. I'd taken Allie and the children to see the work in progress that weekday morning when we encountered Jacob Harper, the man who had so upset my wife with his comment about keeping her family.

I started to ask questions of Allie on the ride home. "Who was that man? How does he know you? What did he mean about keeping your family and not keeping his?"

Allie had told me that she didn't want to talk about it with the kids around, but that we could discuss the matter in detail after we put the children to bed that evening. I was willing to wait, although I really didn't like the notion that there was an important part of Allie's past history about which I'd been kept in the dark. Until that moment, I thought we'd been as open and trusting with each other as it was possible for two people to be.

We fed, bathed the children, read them their bedtime stories and put them to bed. Then I took Allie into the living room of the condo and sat her down across from me. "So...," I said, "who is Jacob Harper and why were you so upset at seeing him? And what did he mean about not keeping his family?

"Jacob Harper was my father until I was fourteen."

"What do you mean, 'was my father'?"

"He and my mother were married for eight years. They had Peter and me during that time. After mom went back to work, she met dad. She divorced the man who fathered me and married the man I now call my father. We lived with them for eight years, at which time mom and he petitioned to have my biological father's parental rights terminated and to allow my father to adopt us. The court granted the petition and my biological father disappeared from my life."

"Why did your mother divorce Jacob? Was he abusive? Did he cheat? Did he desert the family?"

"No, none of those things. You've seen him. He was a carpenter. We didn't have much money. We lived in a small house in a nondescript suburb. He had no ambition to be anything more. Then mom met dad at the hospital. He wanted her and she wanted the things he could offer her. So she divorced my biological father and married my dad."

"Why did the court approve the termination of Jacob's parental rights? Did something happen that caused him to stop being a good father?"

"Well, mom and dad thought that he was a bad influence on us. He was still poor and didn't share their values. He wasn't ambitious. He worked all the time, sometimes seventy hours a week to make ends meet. There was never anything nice at his house: no video games, no big screen TV, no pool. He was boring. He never took us anywhere, even in the summer, except to some local parks or museums. He wasn't going to be able to provide the kind of stuff we deserved nor the education we'd need to succeed. He was just a carpenter."

"But none of that should have caused the court to terminate his rights. He was just a typical blue collar dad. There's something more here I don't understand."

"Well, mom and dad told us that once we reached age fourteen, we didn't need to see my biological father anymore. Peter stopped as soon as he could. I did the same. Mom and dad petitioned the court to terminate his rights and Peter and I supported the termination. Once dad adopted us, we'd be his heirs. He was the one who paid for school, paid for our clothes, bought us cars, paid for our trips, paid for college and grad school and even bought us this condo. My biological dad couldn't have done any of that."

"But I still don't understand. He was your father. He loved you. I saw that in his eyes when he encountered you today. He still loves you, I think. And I'll bet he'd adore those grandchildren. Didn't you see how he was with them? He engaged with them more in two minutes than your parents do in two months."

"But he couldn't give us what dad gave mom and us."

"Good grief, Allie. Do you hear yourself? I'm talking about love and you're talking about things. That man showed you more love in a look than I've seen your mom and dad show you since I've known you. How is it possible that the court would have discounted how he felt for you and how I assume you felt for him."

"Peter and I supported the termination. We signed statements and told the judge we wanted to sever our relationship with our biological father and be adopted."

"What the hell? How could you do that to a man who loved you? Are you that much like your mother? My mother was right. She warned me about your family and I didn't listen."

"What do you mean?"

"My mother specifically asked me if I wanted to be a part of your family. I told her I loved you enough that I could bear being part of that group of pretentious snobs. But that was when I thought you were different. What you did to Jacob tells me that you aren't any different than your parents. I'm not sure how I can stay married to you if that's true. I'll always be afraid that you'll find someone like your father who can give you more than I can and you'll decide to trade up. I don't want to live the rest of my life in fear of that. I'd rather end this marriage now.'

"No David. Please."

"Are you telling me that you wouldn't do what your mother did, no matter what the circumstances were?"

Allie hesitated for a fatal moment. Before she could answer, David said, "If you had to think about the question, I already know the answer. I think we're done here."

"David, please. No. Please don't do this. Don't destroy our family. I love you."

"I'm sure that's what your mother told Jacob right up until the man you call your father appeared on the scene. I won't take the same risk. I'll be sleeping in the kids' room until I can find a place to stay. You can have the bedroom."

By now Allie was crying hysterically. "Don't do this David. Please don't do this." And she later told me that for the first time since the hearing terminating Jacob's parental rights, she had flashed back to the comments the judge had made in the off the record session so long ago. Karma really was a bitch and she now had begun to understand just how much she'd hurt her father. And she knew she had no idea how to make amends for what she'd done.

When I awoke the following morning, I found Allie lying on the floor in front of the kids' bedroom door, wrapped in a blanket. She'd slept there all night, putting her body in the way so that I couldn't just disappear on her. If she were that upset and that determined, I might have to rethink what I was doing. I woke her, then got the kids up, dressed and fed.

"I'm going out," I told her. "I don't know what time I'll be back. I need time to think and I need to talk to someone. If there's any hope of saving this marriage, you need to give me some time to work through all that you've told me and a reason to trust you. Right now, I don't have one." And with that, I left.

My first stop was at the new house. I wanted to talk to Jacob one on one. I needed to get his take on what had happened between him, his ex-wife and his children. I found him in the same room he'd been working in the day before. He recognized me and climbed down off the scaffolding to greet me.

"Doctor Jackson. What brings you by again?"

"I'd like to talk with you, if I may. I need to understand some things. My wife and I had a long conversation last evening and it ended quite badly. I was appalled to hear what she, Peter, her mother and the man she calls her father had done to you. When I asked her if she'd do to me what her mother did to you, she hesitated. That was enough for me. I'm thinking about ending the marriage now, before she screws me the way Lilith screwed you twenty years ago. I don't feel I can trust her and I don't want to live every day thinking she'd do something like that."

I learned a lot about Jacob the man in the next hour, far more than I learned about what had happened so many years ago.

"David," Jacob said. "I hope you don't mind if I call you David. Don't do this. You'll regret it all your days. Allie isn't like her mother. She's done some things to hurt me. They really hurt me. They hurt me more than I'll ever be able to tell you. But unless she's changed drastically, she never fully bought into the bullshit that Lilith, Michael and Peter peddled. I could see her struggling at the hearing where they terminated my parental rights. During my one on one with the judge, he told me that he thought she was ambivalent about terminating my rights, unlike Peter, who couldn't wait for it to happen. The judge thought she was being pressured."

"Well, I didn't hear anything about pressure last night. It was all about what Michael could provide that you couldn't."

"Look David. In spite of everything, I still love my children, especially Allie. I'd love to reestablish a relationship with them. I'd like to get to know you and your children better. None of that will happen if you and Allie split. I think you need to take a step back, take a deep breath and rethink what you're proposing to do. If you don't, you'll hurt her, you'll hurt your children, and you'll end up hurting yourself as well. Let me make another suggestion, as distasteful as this sounds even to me. Go talk to Lilith. See what she was thinking and what she and Michael did to persuade Allie to support the termination petition. From what I knew of her, if they pressured Allie, she'll brag about it. She never could resist bragging when she got something over on someone. If you can get her to explain how Allie made the decision, it might help you sort some things out."

We talked some more at length. By the time we were done, Jacob had persuaded me to hold off on making any decision about my marriage and to talk to Lilith to see what had been going on in Allie's mind when she decided to support terminating her relationship with her father. In light of the history of his and Allie's relationship, I found that extremely generous on his part.

I called Lilith after I'd met with Jacob and asked her if I might swing by and talk with her about Allie. She told me Michael was golfing with some colleagues at Hilton Head for the weekend and I could come over Saturday morning. I told her I'd see her then.

When I got home later that day, Allie was there waiting for me. She started crying as soon as I walked in. "I wasn't sure you'd come home. I was so scared. Please David, listen to me. I lost one good man from my life because I was young and stupid and greedy and frightened. Don't let me lose another one. Please don't leave me."

I calmed her down and then told her I'd spent over an hour talking with Jacob. I told her that he'd specifically requested that I not do anything to end the marriage without giving it more thought and that he'd strongly discouraged me from divorcing her. He had also told me that he still loved her and Peter and that he hoped to reconnect with her and get to know our children. She was very surprised. Then she told me something I didn't expect. "At the hearing, the judge told Peter and me MIchthat someday we'd recognize just how much we hurt my biological father and that we should be prepared to ask his forgiveness. I didn't understand what he said back then. But I do now. Do you think my real father would be willing to forgive me for what I've done to him?"

"I don't know for sure, but I think he's prepared to forgive you if you're prepared to ask. He seems like quite a man. He's a far better man than all but a handful of people I've met in my life. I'd put him up there with my own father. They live in different worlds, but I'd bet a lot of money that they'd get along great and they'd be friends."

David continued, "Jacob made a few suggestions that I'm going to follow up on. Give me time to do that. I promise that I won't make any decisions until after I've done what he recommended. Now dry your tears and let's get the kids fed and ready for bed."

I slept in our bedroom that night. We didn't make love, but I cuddled Allie until we both fell asleep and when we awoke, we were still spooned together. At that point, I didn't know what the future held, but at least we were still on speaking terms and our marriage had a chance of surviving. I had to thank my newly discovered not quite father-in-law for that much. Whether we'd get past this was still up in the air.

That Saturday, I met with Lilith at her house. We had a somewhat distant relationship, in large part because I didn't feel the need to bow and scrape when I was around her. She had always liked to brag about her successes to me and I hoped I'd learn more about what had happened between Allie and her father. I did, and when I was finished hearing what had happened, I wanted to scrub my soul with Lysol and never see Lilith or Michael again.

I started the conversation off with a small lie. "Lilith, I'm concerned about Allie. We were over at the new house the other day and we met a man. His name was Jacob Harper. Allie was very upset to meet him and she won't tell me why. Is there something that this man did to her in the past that I should know about? Do I need to get George to remove him from the job site? I don't want Allie to be upset with our new home because this man worked on it. Can you tell me what's going on?"