I became estranged from my father after my parents’ divorce in the early 90s. My wife Valerie and I had been living in Albuquerque for a few years at that point and we began hearing rumors that my dad – Roscoe – had bought a mail-order bride over from the Philippines and married her. She was half his age, apparently, but I never found out much about her because by the time I arrived at the door of my childhood home in Riverside, California they were already long gone.

Val and I drove all the way to California from New Mexico to investigate the rumors. We didn‘t know what to expect when we arrived. I had no expectations, really: just curiosity. We were pretty sure the rumors were true and he had moved away to The Philippines, but what if he answered the door? No one in my family had heard from my dad or spoken to him in the two years since the divorce. As we approached the front door I began to feel queasy. Everything looked exactly as I remembered it: the white fence along the front of the house leading from the driveway, the worn white door with little French windows, the red brick walkway and entrance. I hesitated for a moment before ringing the doorbell.

To our surprise, the door was answered by an old High School friend; a red-haired, freckle-faced girl we both knew – now a woman – named Patti. She had dated one of my best friends for many years. Although she recognized us immediately, Patti was genuinely shocked to see us. Then she paused a moment and sighed, “I knew you’d be back. Your father said you were all dead, but I knew it wasn’t true.”

My father was a strange man. Tall, charismatic, incredibly charming when he wanted to be, and very intimidating – scary, even – at other times. The simple fact that he was born a Creole in New Orleans, Louisiana, made him unique. A ‘Creole’ (not to be confused with Cajun, God forbid!) is a mixture of Black, White, Spanish, French, and even German lineage – all rolled into one highly complex, enigmatic ball of confusion, guilt, and self-loathing. In his younger days, my dad reminded me of Muhammad Ali or Malcolm X, two of my childhood heroes.

His name was Roscoe Conklin Darensburg, and his olive skin and 6 foot 3 inch frame made him stand out in any crowd. He always had an air about him, too – some would call it arrogance. God only knows where ‘Conklin’ came from. He never said. Roscoe was eleven years older than my mom, who was still a teenager when they met. The story goes that she was “cleaning his apartment” on that fateful day. They had a tempestuous relationship to say the least, and I remember them fighting frequently when I was growing up. As a father, Roscoe was aloof and detached – he never seemed to be comfortable in the role of responsible parent. When my brother and I were kids he did okay, but once we hit our teens and became more difficult to deal with, he withdrew. He began spending more and more time at the pharmacy just when we needed him the most – just when we could have used some discipline and guidance in our lives. Roscoe wasn’t exactly strict in the parental sense, either, but he was quick to anger and when he got mad he was terrifying. My mom, sweet lady that she is – was weak and ineffectual against the onslaught of two teenage boys, let alone an overbearing, unpredictable husband.

Before I met Val, I’ll admit I was a major screw-up and a big disappointment to both my parents. Valerie and I were married very young – too young: she had just turned eighteen and I was only twenty in 1983. We survived some difficult times, but against the odds (and the expectations of our parents and everyone else) we managed to stay together. Val hasn’t changed much over the years: she is still a thin, pretty woman with short blonde hair, brown eyes, perfectly fair skin, with a pair of granny glasses perched atop her nose. She came from a stable but emotionally very cold family. We decided early in our marriage that we did not want to bring any children into this awful world. Looking back, we also freely admit that we got married just to escape from our dysfunctional families. Somehow the formula worked. The relationship with my parents improved after we got married, and at the time I was grateful that Roscoe and I were able to reconcile somewhat.

Roscoe was very well-read and highly educated. He was a graduate of Xavier University in New Orleans, a famous Jesuit (Black) college. He was raised a strict Catholic but somehow managed to wind up an outspoken atheist. A man of color with radically left-wing political beliefs – he once corresponded with Huey newton – he also admired the Nazis…mostly for their technological achievements, but still: my father was a walking contradiction. He eventually became a successful pharmacist, becoming the first “colored” store manager at Walgreens in Hyde Park, Chicago. Later, he accepted a position as manager of FEDCO pharmacy in South Central Los Angeles. FEDCO was one of the first ‘membership’ department stores in the country, open to state and federal employees only. Roscoe was eventually transferred to the new branch out in San Bernardino, about 70 miles east of L.A., and several years later he fulfilled his lifelong dream and opened up his own pharmacy – ‘Delta Drugs’ – in the middle of a crime-ridden ghetto in that dreary, god-forsaken town.

My dad had moved our family – me, my mom and my older brother Eric – from my hometown of Chicago, Illinois to Los Angeles when I was only two years old. I don’t remember much about Chicago or the house in L.A., other than the L.A. house seemed like a mansion compared to the place we moved to in Riverside in late 1969. Riverside is about twenty miles west of San Bernardino: a sprawling inland suburb of L.A. consisting of tightly packed, beautifully manicured ranch style homes. We lived on Fairview Avenue in a typical upper middle class neighborhood.

**

We stood at the front door of my childhood home, staring uncomfortably at Patti, the old High School classmate who now lived there. I reached out to her. Clearly we were not dead, as Roscoe had intimated. As she flaccidly shook my hand, Patti had a sorrowful, almost shameful look in her eyes – she was very sympathetic and seemed sincere in the guilt she must have felt seeing me standing forlornly in the doorway of the house I’d grown up in, and she was gracious enough to invite us inside. Val and I were not prepared for the shock we received upon entering, however. As we looked around, it became obvious that Roscoe had moved to the Philippines with his young mail-order bride and sold the house to Patti and her husband, Jim Bice (another former classmate) with all of our belongings still in it!

It’s hard to describe the feelings I experienced as we toured through my old house and realized that every bit of furniture, every rug, every book in the bookcase, every single bit of decor and decoration was exactly where we had left it when we last saw him. The expensive wood carvings, porcelain figurines and faux-classical art pieces from the Smithsonian Institution were still sitting in the lighted mahogany display case in the corner. My eyes were drawn to the familiar sight of the miniature statue of David replica poised atop the massive JBL speakers in the den. Nefertiti’s head still sat upon the other speaker against the far wall. The gigantic entertainment center with the big-screen TV was virtually intact. The beer steins from a previous trip to Europe were right were we’d left them on the mantelpiece. ‘Sir Leroy‘, the suit of armor that Roscoe had imported from Spain, was still stationed in the hallway. The Mark Twain portrait he’d paid thousands of dollars for was still hanging above what used to be his favorite chair. Our hearts sank – didn’t Patti and Jim have any possessions of their own? “We had a big yard sale,” explained Patti.

**

The last time I saw my father, I was standing at the end of the hall in the doorway of his bedroom in Riverside. It was a hot, smoggy evening and I was exhausted after a long day hauling what remained of our possessions from his house to the apartment my wife and I had just rented across town. The two of us had spent all morning packing the UHAUL and driving to the new place to unload our stuff in the afternoon.

Against our better judgment, Valerie and I had moved in with Roscoe soon after he filed for divorce from my mom in the summer of 1991. He took the separation pretty hard, and he’d been calling us repeatedly and dropping by unannounced for several weeks – usually drunk, crying and blubbering with such an intensity that we were convinced he needed looking after. I had never seen my father behave like that – he was so pathetic and needy, and I thought he was too proud to ever let me see him that way. We reluctantly agreed to live with him, at least until he got back on his feet. This successful manipulation seemed to cheer Roscoe up, and he subsequently showed his appreciation by taking us both to France first class that November with promises that we’d all escape our troubles and move there together some day. We’d live happily ever after in a cozy little village in the Aquitaine. Val and I even spoke of raising a family – something we would never have considered in our homeland. It was a wonderful dream.

My dad wined and dined us – we stayed in four-star hotels in Paris and ate at the finest restaurants: Café de la Paix, La Coupole, Brasserie Flo. On our first night in Paris, Roscoe took us to the Lido Cabaret on the Champs Elysees. We were late for the show, having just arrived from the airport, and Val and I watched as Roscoe bribed the doorman a hundred francs to let us in. I never thought I could get tired of looking at tits, but the entire 2-hour performance consisted of topless women prancing around on stage, and – believe it or not – the novelty wears off rather quickly. Or maybe it was just the jet-lag.

We drank cognac and gorged ourselves on chocolates and croissants until the wee hours of the morning. I’d even returned to Bordeaux in the southwest of France with Roscoe a few months later in order to explore some real-estate options, and I had made arrangements with some local immobiliers to view several potential homes, and possibly make a down payment on some property. It was then I detected a change in my father. Whereas before he had been gung-ho for the move to France, he now seemed distant and non-committal – after all of the hard work I had done, too. Suddenly, he didn’t want to talk about it anymore. Our worst fears were confirmed when he approached us in the kitchen one day shortly after our return and announced out of the blue:

“Son, it looks like I’ve run out of money…you all are gonna have to move out.”

Valerie and I were stunned. Immediately we realized that we’d been pawns in one of his little games yet again. The whole point of the trips to France had been part of his plan to spend down his available income so that he wouldn’t have much left when he settled the divorce with my mom. How low can you go? The thought had never occurred to us. Perhaps we were being deliberately naïve. I don’t think we spoke another word to him during the entire two weeks it took us to find an apartment – no mean feat in such a small house.

Now were leaving for good. We’d had enough of Roscoe’s lies and his petty manipulation. He’d been home all day as we wheeled the dolly back and forth through the house, but he spent the entire time holed up in his bedroom, chain-smoking, getting drunk, and God knows what else. He never said a word to us as we labored, but it was better that way. I came back after the final load to say goodbye…or something. I had no idea what I was actually going to say to him. I stood in the doorway wheezing, seething, burning up inside as sweat ran down the side of my face. I was shaking with fear and anger. I tried to think of something to say. My guts began to churn, and I was nauseous from the adrenaline rush. These would be the last words I would ever speak to the man, as far as I knew or cared. I should have prepared a speech.

I leaned against the threshold, staring at the side of his head as he pretended to be engrossed in Paul Moyer presenting the five o’clock news on TV. His thinning hair seemed more grey than before, his face more wrinkled. The late afternoon sunlight filtered brightly through the room from the window just above the television, and I almost smiled when I noticed the expensive chiffon curtains, ripped to shreds one day by our beloved cat, Fleabag. I remembered how pissed off Roscoe had been at the time.

He lay silently upon his four-poster canopy bed, flat on his back on top of the sheets with several pillows stuffed behind him – refusing to look at me. He was gazing intently at the television directly in front of him. Roscoe was wearing his favorite pajamas (the ones with all the burn holes); the ever-present Dunhill poking out between his hands, clasped tightly across his chest. A pile of cigarette butts, ashes and burned whatnot sat in the huge ashtray on the nightstand next to him like a smoldering campfire, beside his lamp and his digital clock. The room was filled with billowing clouds of cigarette smoke. I watched as they floated across the room, forming ghostly grey trails in the radiant sunlight. The entire scene was reflected in the wall-to-ceiling mirrored closet doors directly across from Roscoe as he lay rigidly on the bed, unmoving. He’d had them installed many years ago for reasons I was too young to understand.

The refracted image was slightly skewed from my angle, but it seemed fitting under the circumstances as I stared at Roscoe‘s torso in the mirror. The cigarette continued to burn between his fingers. It was mostly ash at this point. Dad was a genius at letting a cigarette burn all the way down to the filter. How he’d managed to survive all these years without immolating himself was a mystery to all of us.

As I stood beside him, he did not speak or move, but he knew I was there. I’m pretty sure, anyway…his eyes were open, at least. They were blood-shot. Was he too drunk or whacked out on pills (or both) to notice me?

“Well, I guess this is it…” I managed to blurt out.

Roscoe remained completely still, stiff as a board. He may have flinched a little at the sound of my voice. I stubbornly remained at his side, trying to provoke him. His unshaven, silhouetted face continued to stare straight ahead while I looked down at him.

“I said, ‘I guess this is it, dad.’” I tried not to stammer.

The sun was rapidly setting now and the shadows began stretching across the room. The air was thick with tension; the orange sunset was blinding, the TV volume deafening – but I was determined to have the last word. Was this really his strategy after all this time, to simply ignore me and let the last member of the family who gave a shit about him just walk out the door?

The smoke continued to curl up from the slowly dying cigarette sticking out from the middle of Roscoe’s chest, propped up between his bulbous, well-manicured hands as he lay there, prone. He really had thought this whole ‘goodbye’ thing through. He’d had all day to think about it, after all. This was his parting shot. It occurred to me that I was saying goodbye to my father for the last time and he wasn’t even dead yet. In a way, though, seeing him like that – prostrate on his bed, silent, motionless – I might as well have been beside his coffin, viewing his body at the funeral. There was so much I wanted to say, so many things I needed to get off my chest, but it was not to be. Eventually, I gathered the strength to mumble:

“Someday, you’ll be very sorry for the way you treated us…”

I spoke slowly and clearly. My voice cracked. My lip quivered. I held back the tears. That was the best I could do. This time Roscoe managed an annoyed grunt. Then he slowly lifted his right hand and waved his cigarette at me as if he were shooing away a fly, but he never said a word. With that parting gesture, I turned and stumbled down the narrow hallway, took a left, walked out the front door and out of my father’s life forever. I can’t remember if the door hit me in the ass on the way out.

That was the last time anyone in my family saw him. Several years passed. We had no idea what happened to Roscoe until one day about a year ago when my mom received a copy of his death certificate from Manila, sent by the mail-order bride, Mari Aquino Darensburg. She was kind enough to send this bit of documentation so that my mother could receive whatever Social Security benefits she was entitled to. She must have been trying to locate my mom for quite a while. Not surprising considering she’s had at least seven different addresses since the divorce. I’m grateful that Mari made the effort. Roscoe died of an ‘embolic tumor’ (a blood clot) back in December of 2001 in Manila.

He had been dead for nearly a decade by the time we found out.