Chapter 38

38

Not much happened during the next few weeks after Mr. Panim’s death.

Mrs. Panim, after grieving for a spell, ended up putting the urn with her husband’s ashes on a shelf in the living room that held numerous photos of Mr. and Mrs. Panim during happier days, including their wedding portrait. She had never taken the photos down during Mr. Panim’s absence; the urn was the first addition to that shelf since he left.

Abraham Lincoln Panim’s grieving time was much less than his mother’s. He really did not know his father well, so although he had met the man briefly, it is not as if the man was a major presence in his life.

However, he continued to think constantly about that unfinished sentence, constantly asking himself, “Dad, what did I become?” over and over again.

He continued to take walks late into the afternoon into the early evening, hoping that Ariel and Snuff would venture back into his sights, but that never happened. He also looked for the older woman sitting a few benches away from him but she, too, had vanished.

Every once in a while, when he would sit on the bench, his mind would drift to the same question he constantly asked himself: “Dad, what did I become? What did I become.”

He asked himself that question constantly, but he never formulated a possible answer to the question.

Mrs. Panim took some time off from her duties at school, but after mourning for a few days, she decided that the best place for her to be was in school, and she returned.

Abraham Lincoln Panim returned almost immediately to school. At this point, school had become his refuge, but things seemed different to him even there.

When he would walk to school or back home at the end of the workday, no one appeared to be looking at him, and he found that he was staring more at the people he passed in the street than they were staring at him.

When in school, his class had pretty much returned back to the way they were when he first took over the class. The students were not as attentive as they once were, had stopped staring at him, and there were some occasions that he had to discipline a few students for their behavior in class.

As for his relationship with other teachers, he continued to take his lunch in the teachers’ room each day of the workweek, but the teachers pretty much ignored him, and he often sat alone while eating his lunch. Nobody stared at him anymore, none of the female teachers fawned after him, and the teachers pretty much excluded him from any discussions they had.

He was cordial to the other educators, always saying hello to them when he entered the room, but he rarely received any reply.

The days turned to weeks, and the warmer weather had come upon the school as it moved on to the last days of the school year.

On one of these days, Abraham Lincoln Panim had another rough morning in the classroom when the bell sounded, and his room emptied as students went to lunch.

As he always did, Abraham Lincoln Panim took his lunch out of his drawer, and proceeded to the teachers’ room. He entered, and said “Hello” to the other teachers without any response. He sat down on the same couch he always sat on, and proceeded to eat his lunch. And as had been the norm, nobody spoke to him, or even seemingly acknowledged that he was there.

As he ate his lunch, he saw the usual group of teachers talking. On the far side of the room, he also saw someone he had not seen before, who was sitting at a small table in the corner of the room.

To Abraham Lincoln Panim, at least from what he could see from the back and with a glare in his face coming from the window by the table, the person at the table appeared to be a woman who was sitting there, all alone. Based on what he could see through the glare, it appeared to be a woman who was sitting away from everyone else in the room.

He didn’t think anything of it, and he continued to eat his lunch. He was also looking over some papers, a recent spelling test that he gave his class that needed to be graded, so he took out a pen and looked over the tests one by one.

But as he was finishing his lunch and concentrating on the tests, he felt a “p-lunk!” right next to him, and he looked up from the tests, and the woman who he had seen sitting alone at the table on the far side of the room, had sat next to him on the couch.

“Hello, how are you doing?” asked the woman.

Abraham Lincoln Panim looked up from his tests, and he looked at the woman. He did a double take.

“Anything wrong?” asked the woman, who was now clearly in his sights.

The woman was older, and even though she was sitting, he saw that she had thick legs and he also saw that she wore her hair in a bun on her head, something he did not see when she was sitting across the room.

“Mrs. Stottle? Are you Mrs. Stottle?” he asked her, now thoroughly focused on her.

“Mrs. Who?” she asked. “I didn’t get the name you asked—“

“Mrs. Stottle. Mrs. Stottle. You are Mrs. Stottle.”

“No, you must be mixing me up with someone else.”

“But your ARE Mrs. Stottle.”

“No, I am Mrs. Meyer. I guess I must look like someone else. But I have been Mrs. Meyer for the past, I don’t know, many years.”

“But you look like Mrs. Stottle. You talk like Mrs. Stottle—“

“But I am not Mrs. … Mrs. Stottle.”

When Abraham Lincoln Panim calmed down a bit, Mrs. Meyer told him about herself.

“I was a teacher, a regular teacher, so many years ago. I met another teacher, we were married, and I left the profession. But when he died a few years back, I came back to teaching, as a sub.”

“But … well … –“

“Yes, I know, you have never seen me before, Actually, in all my years of teaching, I never taught at this school, not as a regular teacher and not as a sub. Just about all of my teaching was at the school on the other side of town. This is my first time here. No one knows me here at all. But you have to go where the work is.”

“Yes, but Mrs. Stottle … I mean, Mrs. Meyer—“

“Look, the bell is about to ring for the next class. I walk with a bit of a limp, so I have to leave a minute or two early. But just let me leave you with this thought:

“Do unto others as you would have the do unto you … treat other people the way you would like to be treated yourself.”

When she uttered these words, Abraham Lincoln Panim became so ruffled that he dropped his test papers on the floor. He bent down to pick them up, gathered them quickly, and looked up, but Mrs. Meyer was gone.

“Mrs. Meyer … Mrs. Stottle … Mrs. Meyer—“ he shouted out, but no one answered as the bell rang to begin the next period.

As the other teachers filed out of the room, Abraham Lincoln Panim sat there, completely perplexed.

“Mrs. Stottle WAS here,” he thought to himself. “She was here. I know she was here.”

The bell than rang, with Abraham Lincoln Panim having not moved from the couch. Other teachers came into the room, and he realized that he needed to get back to the classroom immediately. He gathered up his things, and ran out of the room as quickly as he could, right to his classroom, where he saw his class lined up outside the door.

“What happened to you, ‘Mr. Abraham.’ You look like you just saw a ghost!” said Melissa, leading the class at the door as she always did.

As he unlocked the door and let himself and the students into the class, he had a tough time getting into the educational rhythm, as he kept on thinking about the older lady with the bun on her head.

His class continued to be rambunctious, but he let a lot go this time around, because he, himself, could not concentrate fully on the class, only on that woman.

Somehow, he got through the day, and as the students exited the class, Abraham Lincoln Panim continued to sit at his desk, pretty much staring into space while he thought of the older woman.

Finally, he realized that he had been sitting at his desk for many minutes, and when the janitor came in to start to clean the floor in the class, he knew it was time to leave.

He gathered up his things and left the school, and this time, he didn’t know if anyone was staring at him, and he wasn’t the one doing the staring, either. He walked right home, opened the door, and went right into his room.

The hand mirror was on his bed, but unlike most other times since he lost his rat face, he did not look into the mirror at all. He pushed it aside, and just put his head on the bed’s pillows, pretty much lost in his thoughts about the older woman.

Later in the afternoon, his mother came home, and while she was taking her coat off, Abraham Lincoln Panim hurriedly left his room and saw his mother go into the kitchen and take out some food which she was going to prepare for dinner.

“Oh, I didn’t think you heard me come home,” Mrs. Panim said. “I know I usually tell you that I am home, but today was a really busy day for me, and honestly, I don’t think I have the strength—“

“Mom, I had an interesting experience today,” Abraham Lincoln Panim said to his mother as he sat down at the kitchen table. “Can I talk to you about it now?”

“Yes, I guess so, but as you are talking, I need to get this food going, or we won’t eat until late, and I know you like to go for a walk—“

“Mom, I met a teacher today in the teachers’ room … well, do you remember when we went to see dad, and the nurse … I mean … we both thought that she looked like Mrs. Stottle?”

“Well … yes … I thought that she kind of did at first, but the more I looked at her, the more I know that I must have been grieving for your father, because I don’t think she really looked like her that much at all.”

“Well, I did, and the more I looked at her, the more I knew that she was Mrs. Stottle, as odd as that might sound.”

“It is impossible. But what is your point?”

“Well today at school, while I was eating lunch, I saw this older woman … she was sitting alone, an older woman, and she … she started to talk to me … I had never seen this woman before … but she looked like Mrs. Stottle.”

Mrs. Panim chuckled. “You know what they say … we all have a double somewhere.”

“No, mom,” Abraham Lincoln Panim said. “She looked like Mrs. Stottle, talked like Mrs. Stottle, was a teacher like Mrs. Stottle—“

“Just a coincidence. These things happen,”

Abraham Lincoln Panim then stood up from the kitchen table.

“And you said that the woman was older … a sub?” his mother asked him.

“Yes, she was in the teachers’ room and she told me that she normally taught at the school across town, and had never been in this school, so she didn’t know anyone … but for some reason, she came over to me.”

Mrs. Panim stopped preparing her dinner meal, and turned toward her son.

“Now, you are sure that you met this woman in the teachers’ room?” she asked.

“Yes, while I was eating lunch.”

“That is really odd. Do you remember her name?”

“Meyer, Mrs. Meyer.”

“No … no … I am thinking about today, and all of our teachers were present, with the exception, or course, of Mr. Praeger, who you have taken over for. We didn’t use any substitute teachers today.”

“What? How could that be?”

“And you are saying her name was Meyer? I don’t know a single sub by that name, and an older lady … no, I don’t know any sub named Meyer in the entire school district. You are sure of it?”

“Mom, I swear to you that she was there. She sat right next to me. She was an older woman who walked with a limp, and she wore her hair in a bun. I swear to you that she was there.”

“Sorry, you must be mistaken. There is no Mrs. Meyer who I know as a sub, and we did not use subs today at all.”

Abraham Lincoln Panim made a bee line back to his room, jumped on his bed in dismay, and the hand mirror feel to the floor with such a thud that it cracked right down the middle of the glass.

He did not notice what happened.

Chapter 37

37

Neither Mrs. Panim nor Abraham Lincoln Panim heard about Mr. Panim for many weeks.

The monthly checks still came, again directly from the bank without Mr. Panim’s home address.

A few times, Mrs. Panim retrieved the letter that Mr. Panim had written to them some time before, copied the return address onto a new envelope, and wrote her husband a new letter, but she never received a return letter from him.

Abraham Lincoln Panim suggested to his mother on more than one occasion that the two should go over to his home again, but she would not do so.

“He wanted us over there the one time, and we obliged him,” she would tell her son over and over again. “If he wanted us to come over another time, he would have written me back.

“He never did, or at least, he hasn’t yet, so until he does, I think we should stay away from him, at least for now.”

In the ensuing weeks, and with the weather warming up, Abraham Lincoln Panim continued to take walks in the early evening, but he did not enjoy the walks as he once had.

People did not stare at him when he would walk to the park, and into it, as they once did, and he found that he was staring more at them than they were staring at him.

Each time he had his walk, he would sit down on the same bench where he met Ariel and Snuff, but he never saw either one of them again.

And again, he found that he was staring at people more than they were staring at him.

He also would periodically look down the row of park benches to look for the older woman who seemed to be always sitting on one of the far-off benches, but she also was nowhere to be found, even though Abraham Lincoln Panim still looked for her.

With little to keep his interest, his time in the park became shorter as the weather became warmer, and he spent less and less time in the park during the ensuing weeks.

But he still made the walks, almost out of habit, and he did not give up hope that he would see Ariel and Snuff, and the older woman in the distance, once again.

One evening, he dutifully made one of his walks, and once again, he went unnoticed by others, him staring at them more than they were staring at him.

He sat down on the same bench, looked for Ariel and Snuff, but they were nowhere to be found.

Abraham Lincoln Panim sat for a few minutes, and then felt it was time to leave. As he had continued to do, he looked down the row of benches, but this time, he saw what looked like the older woman sitting a few benches away, like she had done before.

He got up, and ran towards where she was, and stopped at the bench where he had seen her sitting.

But as he ran over to where he thought she was, seemingly in a blink of an eye, she wasn’t there anymore. He briefly looked around, but she was gone.

“I thought I saw her,” he thought to himself. “I know I saw her. She was here, I just know it.”

As he walked back to his house from the park that night, he didn’t see anyone pass him, which he found very unusual. And when he got to his house and took out the key to open the front door, he found his mother sitting on the couch, holding a letter and weeping. There was also a medium-sized box on the couch which appeared to be unopened.

“Mom, what’s the matter?”

Mrs. Panim tried to get out the words, but her tears washed away any hope that she could say something. Instead, she handed over the letter she was holding to her son, who read the letter to himself:

“Mrs. Panim:

I regret to inform you that your husband, Mr. Marcus Panim, passed away after a long illness.

Adhering to his wishes, he was cremated, with his ashes in the enclosed urn. He had no worldly possessions, but I am sending you this last, final check, which amounts to all the money he had in the bank.

He wanted you and your son to have it. He had nothing else to give you but this money. I have already taken out my final pay from his account, and I have also paid off any outstanding debts that he had.

Again, I am sorry to have had to tell you this way, but it might be for the better.

Be Well,

Nurse Stottlemeyer”

Abraham Lincoln Panim dropped the note on the floor, and he sat down next to his mother, who continued to cry. He put his arms around his mother, but no tears came out of his eyes.

“What did I become?,” he thought to himself. “Dad, you left us before you could finish your sentence … how could you do that to me?

“Dad, what did I become?”

Chapter 36

36

Abraham Lincoln Panim read the plaque over and over to make sure he wasn’t seeing things. After a few minutes of doing this, he heard a door open, and saw his mother come out of the room.

The nurse went over to her, as Mrs. Panim looked clearly distressed, crying and shaking as the nurse led her to the couch to sit down.

“Can I get you something, m’am, maybe some water to calm you down?” said the nurse to Mrs. Panim.

“No, no,” Mrs. Panim said through tears. “I will be OK.”

“I pretty much expected your reaction. Mr. Panim is pretty sick, and he has been that way for awhile,” the nurse replied. “If you need anything, let me know.”

Abraham Lincoln Panim rushed over to his mother, but the nurse stood between him and his mother.

“It is your time to see your father. Are you ready to see him now?” the nurse asked.

“Yes, yes,” Abraham Lincoln Panim said, as he put his hands through his hair again.

“Do you have a mirror? I need to make sure—“

“This is not a beauty pageant,” the nurse replied. “Go in like you are.”

Abraham Lincoln Panim followed the nurse to the door, and as he did, he instinctively pushed up his scarf over his face, exactly as he had worn it when he had a rat face.

The nurse opened the door, and Abraham Lincoln Panim entered. He looked to the left, and his father was lying on what looked like a large hospital bed, with tubes and nozzles coming out of seemingly every part of his body.

With all the machinery covering his father, he could barely see his father’s face, and barely could see his eyes.

“Abraham Lincoln Panim, please come closer to me so I can see you,” his father said, and his son moved closer to him so he could see him better.

“How are you doing dad?” Abraham Lincoln Panim asked.

“I can barely hear you,” Mr. Panim said in a very breathy voice. “Why do you have that scarf over your face?”

“Well—“

“Please take it off. Your mother told me all about it, and I know all about what you look like now.”

“Abraham Lincoln Panim almost ripped the scarf off his face, and it dropped to floor, exposing his full face to his father to see.

“So dad, what do you think?”

“What do I think about what?”

“What do you think about how I look? Aren’t I—“

“That is not important now,” his father said, followed by numerous coughs. Abraham Lincoln Panim was ready to go out to get the nurse, but the coughing stopped.

“I’m doing as good as I possibly could be, with all of these things coming out of me,” his father said. “Now tell me about you.”

“Dad, you still haven’t told me how I look.”

“Well, I will answer that when you tell me how I look.”

His father then started coughing again.

When the coughing stopped, Abraham Lincoln Panim asked his father, “Why did you leave--”

“I was a coward,” his father said through more coughing. “I saw you as me, going through a good part of your life with a rat face. I remember what I went through … I just could not do it again.”

“So you just left us? I never knew you, but do you know what you did to mom?”

“Yes, I do. I really do. And I was sorry, I told her so today. You don’t know how many times I wanted to come back to the two of you, but I just couldn’t. I was scared, I was a coward. I thought that the money I sent each month made up for me not being there, but I was a fool. I missed out on so much.”

“And we missed out, especially mom. Do you know we used to walk in the park when I was a kid, and I always thought she was looking for you when we were there. You said in your letter to us that you often saw us from afar in the park. Why didn’t you ever come up to us, contact us … I mean, you were so close.”

“Yet so far,” his father said, followed by more coughs. “In my mind, I was thousands of miles away from you, even though there were times I was just a few feet from the two of you. I am just so sorry for what I have done to both of you.”

There was a pause in talking, and then Abraham Lincoln Panim said, “Now dad, what do you think about me … your are ‘impressed,’ aren’t you--?”

“Look, I know that you became a teacher. Mom says that you are a good teacher. That is really what I am concerned about. You became a—“

Before his father could finish his sentence, he began to cough uncontrollably, and the nurse came into the room, walking over to Abraham Lincoln Panim.

“I am sorry, but his health is very bad,” she said in a whisper. “I can only give you a few minutes with him. He is weak. I can’t give you any more. Please say your goodbyes and meet your mother in the foyer.”

Abraham Lincoln watched the nurse go back out the door, and when she left, he said to his father, “Dad, what did I become? Please let me know, what did I become?”

The nurse peaked her head through the door. “Young man, you have to leave now.”

“But dad did not finish what he was saying—what did I become dad, what did I become?”

The nurse came over to Abraham Lincoln Panm, put her hand firmly and forcefully on his shoulder, and tried to lead him out of the room. He resisted.

“I just want to know what my father said I had become. That is all I want to know.”

“Look, I am sorry, you must leave now,” the nurse said. Mrs. Panim, much more composed than before, came into the room, and she had to lead her son out.

As they left the room and the nurse closed the door, Mr. Panim, still thinking his son was in the room, said in almost a whisper,

“A success.”

Mr. Panim coughed some more, and then closed his eyes.

Abraham Lincoln Panim and his mother never heard what Mr. Panim said, as the door had closed behind them when he answered his son’s question.

“What was I, what was I?” Abraham Lincoln Panim continued to scream out as his mother put her hand on his shoulder.

“Keep that thought. Maybe the next time we visit, your father will answer you,” she said to her son.

The nurse turned to them as she showed them out the door.

“If there is a next time,” she said, as Mrs. Panim and Abraham Lincoln Panim walked out the door and walked home.

They didn’t say a word between them.

Chapter 35

35

Mrs. Panim and her son got to the door of Mr. Panim’s home, and Abraham Lincoln Panim saw the doorbell and pushed its button, which produced a loud ring.

There was an intercom on the door. After a few seconds, a voice came through the intercom.

“Who is there?” the voice said.

“It is Mrs. Panim and my son.”

“We were expecting you. OK, I am going to buzz you in.”

The buzz came, and Mrs. Panim turned the doorknob and the door opened. Both stepped into a small foyer, and they almost immediately saw a woman with her back turned. The woman was poring over some papers, and Abraham Lincoln Panim noted that she appeared to be an older woman, short in stature, with her hair tied up in a bun.

In an instant, the woman put down the papers and turned toward the mother and son.

“Hello, I am Nurse Stottlemeyer, and I have been taking care of Mr. Panim for a few years. He has been very, very sick.”

Mrs. Panim gulped, and Abraham Lincoln Panim looked at her and said in a whisper, “It’s Mrs. Stottle!”

“No, it can’t be,” his mother replied. “She died several years ago. She just looks like her. Her last name is different.”

“She said Stottlemeyer. Didn’t she tell you that she was ‘Miss Meyer’ before she got married?”

“Hrrumph!” said the nurse, trying to get the full attention of Mrs. Panim and her son. “Are you ready to see Mr. Panim now?”

The mother and son quieted down, both shaking their heads affirmatively.

“Mr. Panim has requested to see you each individually. He can only see you each for a few minutes. He simply does not have the strength for any time more. Mrs. Panim, would you like to go in first?”

“Yes,” Mrs. Panim said, still kind of staring at the nurse as she was led to a room by her. The nurse, who had something of a limp, opened the door and let her in to speak with her husband alone.

Abraham Lincoln Panim sat down on a couch in a corner of the foyer, nervously put his hand in his hair, pushing it up in place, and when the nurse came back into the room, he continued to stare at her.

“Can I help you with anything?” the nurse asked, aware that she was being stared at.

“No … no … you just look like someone that my mom and I used to know,” Abraham Lincoln Panim said, staring at the woman’s thick legs. “No, it can’t be.”

“What can’t be?” the nurse asked.

“Umm … nothing … umm … how do I look?

The nurse hesitated, then said, “You look like an average person your age,” as she went back looking at her papers.

“No, how do I really look?” Abraham Lincoln Panim asked again, a little more forceful this time.

The nurse looked up from her papers. “Look, you appear to be fine to me. You look good enough to see your father, if that is what you are asking me.”

Abraham Lincoln Panim, looking for a different answer than he was getting, sat back on the couch, and continued to play with his hair. He looked around the small room, which was pretty barely furnished, but across the room, he saw a plaque on the wall. It appeared to have some writing on it, and not being able to clearly see what the plaque said, he got up from his seat and walked over to wall where the plaque was.

The nurse looked up from her papers, saw that Abraham Lincoln Panim had become interested in the plaque, and said, “Yes, I put that up a year or so ago. It is something I believe in fully, and I hope that everyone believes in it, to tell you the truth.”

Abraham Lincoln Panim got to the plaque, and read its inscription to himself:

“Do unto others as you would have the do unto you … treat other people the way you would like to be treated yourself.”

Chapter 34

34

The day came quickly.

Abraham Lincoln Panim woke up, looked in the bathroom mirror several times before he went into the shower. When he was done, he shaved, and put on a special aftershave that Mrs. Stottle bought him years ago that he had never used.

He then got dressed, and decided to really get dressed to the hilt, picking out his best suit and tie to wear to meet his father for the first time.

“My real ‘Sunday Best’ to make me look even better than I already do,” he thought to himself, admiring himself in his hand mirror numerous times before he was done.

He finally emerged from his room, and went into the living room, waiting for his mother to be ready to go.

In a few minutes time, she was done, and she was dressed in business attire, but nothing out of the ordinary.

“Abraham Lincoln Panim, why are you dressed like that?” his mother asked him. “You are dressed like you are going out on a big date. And that smell … why did you dunk yourself in aftershave like that?

“We are going to see your father. We aren’t going to a wedding, or a bar mitzvah—“

“I wanted to dress my best to ‘impress.’ I want my father to see how good I look.”

“Don’t you think it is more important for your father to find out who you are, your accomplishments, how you have matured, rather than what you look like?”

“It is all in the wrapping. If the outside wrapping is so attractive, it just makes everything else … well, not second best … but it helps to have a good wrapping. First impressions are very important—“

“Your father said he is dying. Your father just wants to meet you. He doesn’t care if you looked like you once did. He doesn’t care at all. He just wants you to be there—“

“Yes, but I want him to see what he has missed when he skipped out of here. He missed you and he missed me—“

“No, Abraham Lincoln Panim, he missed the old you, the boy who did what he had to do to get by, who wasn’t so stuck up with his appearance that nothing else mattered.”

“Mom, I was stuck up on my appearance back then, but just the opposite way. I hated the way I looked, with that rat face. People made fun of me, I couldn’t even barely go outside without people looking at me.

“Now, I can go outside and do whatever I want because people admire me. They look at me and think, ‘That is the way I want to look.’ But they know they can’t look this good. I give them hope … and don’t forget, I always wear my scarf to remind me where I was, and where I am now.”

“You have become … I don’t know … you have become more vain about your looks then you were before. What would Mrs. Stottle say about all of this?”

“Mrs. Stottle … Mrs. Stottle would admire me too.”

After that remark, Mrs. Panim gave her son a long glare. Her son saw her eyes, and they seemed to be red and tearing.

“Enough about that,” she said through the tears. “Let’s go and see your father. And please, for me, please just act like you really are, not like you are acting today or during the last several weeks.

“Please, if not for yourself, please do it for me.”

Abraham Lincoln Panim got his jacket and wrapped his scarf around his neck. He then helped his mother on with her coat.

“Son,” Mrs. Panim said as the looked at the envelope of the letter her husband sent her, “I think we will walk there, It doesn’t seem to be too far away.”

The mother and son left their home to take a walk together, something they had not done in a while. She thought that the walk would do them good, clear out both of their heads and make them focus on what they were going to be doing.

Abraham Lincoln Panim had other thoughts.

“OK, so we are going to walk. That is great. It is a nice day out, people will be around, and I know that they will look at me … and think I look great!”

Chapter 33

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Abraham Lincoln Panim quickly took out his keys from his pocket, and opened the front door to his house. He immediately saw his mother sitting on the couch, which was unusual in itself as in the evening, she rarely sat on the couch, usually going into her bedroom to prepare for the evening.

And not only was she sitting on the couch, but an envelope was on the floor, and his mother was holding a letter in her hands. She also appeared to be staring out into space.

“Mom, what’s going on?” asked Abraham Lincoln Panim.

Mrs. Panim broke out of her stupor, but still stared into space as she said, “Son, you rushed out of the house today so quick. I wanted to tell you that we received in the mail a letter from—“

“From who?”

“From … from your father.”

Abraham Lincoln Panim stopped in his tracks, and ended up sitting on the couch with his mother.

“I wanted to open the letter with you here. He never writes letters to us, never. I thought that this was something that you needed to hear, to read along with me when I read it, but I guess you had more important things to do.”

“Mom, if I would have known—“

“It doesn’t really matter now. I read the letter myself, and maybe it was better off that I read it myself first. It was the first letter we have gotten from him, ever.”

“What did the letter say? Is he doing OK? Is he finally going to be coming home?”

Mrs. Panim did not answer her son right away, and started to shake her head, almost to herself.

“Mom, what did dad say in that letter?”

“Abraham Lincoln Panim, your father isn’t coming home. You’re father is … he is not doing too well.”

Mrs. Panim handed Abraham Lincoln Panim the letter for him to read to himself. The letter said, in Mr. Panim’s own handwriting:

“Dear Diana:

I know that you must be startled to get this letter in the mail completely out of the blue. I am not a good letter writer, so please, just bear with me. I will try to explain the best that I can.

I admit that I am a coward. You were in the hospital all those years ago, and when you gave birth, I was happy and proud, and then I saw our son. I felt bad for him. I know he has gone through a lot, because what you don’t know is that I went through the same thing when I was a child.

I had the same features that I saw in our son when I was a child. I put up with a lot of ridicule from everyone. Even when I started to shed some of those characteristics as I got older, I was still pointed out as “the rat-faced boy.”

And what is worse, and the worst thing about all of this, is that I passed on that gene—or whatever it is--to our son.

I looked at him in the hospital, and my mind raced back to when I was a kid myself, all the stuff that I had to put up with. I simply could not do it again, so I became a coward, and I ran. I simply could not go through again what I had gone through myself as a child, so I ran away from it all.

I was scared, and yes, I was nothing but a coward. What I should have done and what I did were two different things. I was wrong, and I admit it. I left you and our son hanging there without me.

I know it doesn’t mean anything now, but I apologize for my behavior. Diana, I hope that the monthly checks have come in handy, and yes, I was selfish in what I did, but I felt the checks would help our son to grow into the man I knew he could be.”

“Checks?” Abraham Lincoln Panim asked his mother as he stopped reading the letter.

“Yes, your father has sent checks to you each and every month since you were born,” Mrs. Panim said. “They were sent directly from a bank outside our area, from another state, and there was never a return address on either the checks or the envelope they came in.

“Several years ago I tried to find out where they came from, but the president of the bank told me that he could not reveal any further information about the checks and where they came from to me. I thought that maybe your father would finally come home, but he never did. I guess the monthly checks gave me hope, but he never came home,”

Abraham Lincoln Panim again started to read the letter.

“Yes, I had the same problem that our son had. I had it through my early years, and I had it during my teen years, although much of it left me by the time I was in my mid teens. By the time I was in my early 20s, I just had the problem with my face, and when I met you, Diana, I still had the problem.

A little while after, I woke up one day, and I looked like every other man around. The problem left me! I could not believe it, and it came at just the right time, because it gave me a chance to know you, and that is when our relationship really blossomed.

Anyway, you know the rest. But let me bring you up to date with the reason I am writing this letter to you.

Seeing our son grow up from afar—“

Abraham Lincoln Panim looked up from the letter.

“What is he talking about, seeing me ”growing up from afar? What is he talking about?”

Mrs. Panim looked up and turned to her son. “Keep on reading, please keep on reading.”

Abraham Lincoln Panim turned back to the letter, and once again began to read to himself.

“Seeing my son grow up from afar has not been fun. As you can tell by the envelope that the letter came in, I actually don’t live very far away from where your house is. I live on the other side of the park. I have seen you, Diana, and our son from his earliest days. I saw you from afar, and I saw him, all covered up with his scarf as I was when I was a kid.

“I hope he has outgrown his affliction like I did, as I haven’t seen either of you walking around the neighborhood together in some time.”

“Dad hasn’t seen me because I haven’t taken walks with you for a while,” Abraham Lincoln Panim said to his mother. “So he has no idea how much I have changed, because without seeing you with me, he would have never recognized me.”

“Son, please read on.”

“Diana, I am sick, I mean really sick. I have been in and out of the hospital for the past few months, and the doctors don’t give me long to live. They actually, at least initially, didn’t know why I am so sick, ruling out cancer and a lot of other things.

I wasn’t willing, at first, to tell them my background, you know, about the characteristics I had when I was younger. But I ended up telling them, and they believe that my failing health has something to do with something called ‘zoomorphism’, a very rare disease where animal characteristics are found in humans. The doctors told me that they have discovered that many more people have this than first believed, but most people outgrow the problem as they get older.

They feel that while I did outgrow it, it had some lingering effects on my body, and since they have no other explanation for my current situation, they believe that those effects are greatly impacting my health.

Me, I know that I am dying … dying of a broken heart.”

“Dad … dad is sick?” Abraham Lincoln Panim said to his mother.

“Yes, son, but please read on.”

“I am a sick man. I am not asking for forgiveness. I don’t have long to go. Just writing this letter is taking a lot out of me.

Now that you know where I live, would it be possible, would it be something that you could arrange, Diana, for me to meet our son and to speak with you?

I am hoping he is doing well, and there is nothing that I would like more than to speak with him, even if for a few seconds, a few minutes.

I know that I don’t have much more to go. I just want to meet him, in person, and tell him how sorry I was for my behavior, and really, to tell both of you how sorry I am for what I did and what I put both of you through.

Please do not call me. Simply come to the address on the envelope, and please do it soon.

I hope that I have not upset you too much with this letter. Again, I am not asking for forgiveness, but I need to see both of you, and I want to meet my son and tell him how much I love him.

Thanks. I understand if you decide that a meeting with the two of you is not the right thing to do.”

Sincerely,

Marcus Panim”

“So Mom, are we going to see him?”

His mother looked up again at him as he gave the letter to her.

“Remember what Mrs. Stottle used to say all the time … ‘Do unto others as you would have the do unto you … treat other people the way you would like to be treated yourself.’”

“So that means we are going to see him?”

“I think if Mrs. Stottle were still with us, she would recite that saying and leave it up to us to decide. So what do you think?”

“I—“

“I think that we should get there sooner rather than later.”

“How about—“

“Yes, I think we will go on Sunday morning to see your father.”

With that, Abraham Lincoln Panim got up from the couch and went into his bedroom. He sat on his bed, then laid down in it, and picked up his hand mirror, which he had left on the bed when he went to see Ariel.

He looked in the mirror.

“My father … I am finally going to meet him,” he thought while he gazed into the mirror. “Why did he have to leave like he did? He really hurt mom …

“I am sure that he will find me as good looking as everyone else does. Ariel doesn’t want me, I don’t care at this point. My father wants me, and I just know that when he sees me, he will be … “

He stopped his thought, trying to think of a word that would fit.

“Impressed. Yes, impressed. He will be so impressed at how I look.”

Abraham Lincoln Panim put down the mirror, and closed his eyes.

He fell asleep quickly.