Delta's Diary

Martina's Father's Secret Family

Martina's Father's Secret Family

My brother reads newspapers. I didn't think anyone still read newspapers, but he does. He reads the free local paper that everyone in town gets. I read the grocery ads. I like to compare prices at stores that are too far away to shop at anyway. It's a tease, but life is like that.

But Chris also reads real newspapers, not just free ones. He reads them in print, not on his phone. It's amazing—he's only seven years older than me, but you'd think he was an elderly man.

Chris has always been that way: old at heart. My mother thinks it's because she named Chris after my grandfather, Christopher. If she'd named Chris after a song lyric, like she did with me (Walking in Memphis came out the year I was born and she played in on repeat all through her second trimester), maybe he'd be a looser person and not read newspapers.

I don't read the articles in Chris's newspapers, but I sometimes read the headlines. If I'm really bored, I'll flip through an entire section and read all the headlines for all the stories.

Last week I spotted one of those advice articles where people write in with their problems and ask a complete stranger what they should do. I didn't read the letter and I didn't read the response. I only read the header:

My Husband Has A Secret Other Family.

Whoa, honey, that is big news! That should be on the front page! Newspapers would probably sell more copies if they led with stuff like that.

It made me think of this girl, Martina, that I worked with at that taco place. One time she told me her father had a secret other family in Winnipeg. I don't know why she brought it up. She wasn't crying about it or anything. It was really casual, the way she told me.

By that time, Martina had known about her father's other family for a while. They weren't a secret anymore. She and her brothers were actually friends with their Manitoban half-sisters, which sounded really nice, to me.

Oh, I remember why Martina brought it up: because one of her half-sisters was coming to visit. They were so friendly that they would visit each other. Well, that's a bit of an exaggeration. Martina never went to visit them in Winnipeg because she had no interest in going to Winnipeg.

Made sense to me, on a gut level, but a couple years later I hung out with this girl, Sophie, who'd lived in Winnipeg. She said they got way more snow than we do here, plus there were so many mosquitos in the summer that people didn't leave their houses most days. I don't know if any of that was true, but it made me think of Martina's father's secret other family.

I wonder how Martina's dad ended up fathering children in Winnipeg. It seems like something you might do in Montreal, or maybe New York, although New York is really expensive. Maybe New Jersey. Just seems strange, but I guess he met a woman in Winnipeg and they hit it off.

Did the Winnipeg woman know about Martina's family?

Which came first? Martina's family or the Winnipeg family?

Maybe the Winnipeg woman had no idea the man she'd fallen in love with had a family somewhere else. I'd always assumed she knew he was cheating, but maybe she didn't. I'd also assumed he was married to Martina's mother, but I don't know that to be true, either. Maybe he didn't have to hide his wedding ring when he went to Winnipeg because he didn't have a wedding ring to hide.

Does that make the situation any better? I doubt Martina would think so.

It's possible that two women were wronged in all this. Two women, plus all the children.

When I saw the Secret Other Family headline in the paper, I almost told Chris Martina's story. He was sitting right there. But then I stopped myself, because I thought it might remind him of Becca, and every time he thinks about Becca he starts crying and he can't stop. He'll cry for hours, sometimes. His face gets all red and that vein in his forehead throbs. Strings of mucous hang out of his nose.

So I try not to upset him.

That's why I didn't tell him this story about Martina's father's secret other family in Winnipeg. That's why I didn't tell him about Sharon's husband having an affair with that cancer lady when it came to mind yesterday. My brother's going through a rough patch right now and I'm supposed to be here helping him, not hurting him.

Sometimes it feels like hurting people is all I'm built to do.