I was up late the other night, doing some work stuff on the computer and I had on one of those all music stations that plays classic country music and a song by Tanya Tucker came on called "What's Your Momma's Name?" For some reason, I started thinking about Seddie being in this situation and this is what I came up with. Hope it's alright, and I claim no ownership of Ms. Tucker's song or iCarly.
A dark haired man sat on a park bench in a suburb of Memphis, Tennessee innocently watching the children on the playground. There was a group of girls, maybe ten or so years old, who had just finished up a game of jump rope and had begun tossing a Frisbee disk between them. Suddenly, a gust of wind caught the disk and it landed by the man's feet.
He bent down to pick up the toy and handed it to the girl with dirty blonde hair who ran his way. As she thanked him for returning it to her, he noticed that her eyes were a beautiful shade of green. They made him think back to why he moved to the area to begin with, nearly ten years ago.
"You have pretty eyes. I'll bet you take after your mother." He said with a smile.
"Uh, thanks." The kid replied, not sure what else to say.
The girl was suddenly jolted out of her thoughts by her mother's voice. "Deanna! Get away from that hobo!"
"Sorry, mister, gotta go." She turned and ran back to the brunette woman, all of about thirty herself, who was glaring at the man like he was the devil incarnate.
No, he wasn't really a hobo, or a pervert for that matter. In fact, he was a well-educated man, who held down a respectable job. His two-day old stubble and baseball cap made him appear much less intelligent than he really was. At one time, he had been the person voted most likely to succeed out of his high school class and the class valedictorian. He attended M.I.T. on a scholarship and graduated, with honors and a master's degree, over nine and a half years ago.
It was shortly after graduation day when his world literally came crashing down and he received a letter from a girl he had been in love with since they were both young teens. That very letter was neatly folded and tucked into his shirt pocket, where it was kept every day since the day he received it. It was that document which made him give up his dream of designing software and move to the south in search of the young lady who wrote it. It contained no return address, but the letter was postmarked Memphis, so Memphis is where he went to search for her.
His night job as janitor at a local community college left him plenty of time to visit parks and playgrounds, where he fed bread crumbs and stale crackers to pigeons, hoping to-by fate-see the woman again. Sure, he drank from time to time, maybe more so now than he did a couple of years ago, but he was not indigent nor was he a threat to anyone's child.
Weeks passed and the same man sat on the same bench watching a trio of little girls play on the swings. He slyly pulled a small pair of small opera glasses from his jacket pocket and took a closer look at their faces. One girl had dark eyes, like his. Another had ice-blue eyes, like his long lost love. The third kept her back to him, but he continued to wait for his opportunity to get a closer look at her.
"You have a problem, jerk?" A thin woman with red hair shrieked as she approached him.
"Uh, hello." He tried to be friendly, but she was in full battle mode.
"You mind telling me why you're watching those little girls with binoculars." She demanded.
"Well, I was just sitting here, feeding the birds and I . . . "
"You better feed the stinkin' birds somewhere else if you know what's good for you. My brother's a cop. I bet if I was to call and tell him you were staring at kids in the park he'd run you in, you sicko."
"Honestly, I'm not a pervert, I was just enjoying a nice fall day."
The three girls ran toward the woman, it was then he got a good look at the third one and determined her eyes were steely grey. He also nearly got his butt kicked, or at least pepper-sprayed.
"You'd better not be here tomorrow!" The woman pointed her manicured finger in his face. "Come on girls, we need to leave."
Maybe his search was futile, he should give up before he gets himself in real trouble. But he was so desperate to find someone who didn't want to be found that he just couldn't stop.
Several months passed and the same man was sitting on another bench at another park feeding the birds. There were lots of kids at play this Sunday afternoon. Most were there with their moms or dads and none of the thirty-something women within eye shot looked familiar. There were kids on the swings, kids on the teeter-totter, kids on the monkey bars. One petite, dark haired girl seemed to sitting all by herself at a kids' sized picnic table, reading a book. There was something oddly familiar about this one, so familiar that he couldn't help himself.
As bad of an idea as it was, the man approached the child. He stood in front of her for a few seconds before clearing his throat to get her attention. She looked up at him and flashed a set of deep green eyes and a slight smile. She appeared to be about ten, just the right age, and her face had a shape he had seen before, he gathered his courage and spoke to her.
"Hello, there. What are you reading?"
"Nothing, just poetry." She responded quickly.
"Are you here alone?"
"Nah, my momma's over there talking to her friends." The kid pointed toward a group of women about his age who were sitting under a far off pavilion talking and having a good time. One had long, blonde hair pulled into a pony tail and her back to him and the girl.
"What's your momma's name?" He quickly asked. "Does she ever talk about a place called Seattle?"
The girl didn't speak, she simply went back to reading her book. "My momma says I shouldn't talk to hobos."
"I guess I'm in luck then, because I'm not a hobo. I'm a janitor. You like Fatcakes? I'll share this pack with you." He pulled a pack of fluffy, pink confections from his pocket.
She looked up and smiled at the sight of the package, it was a familiar smirk-smile that only emboldened him more.
"But you have to tell me your mom's name first."
"I don't have to do anything except go to school and take a bath." The kid retorted with a huff, sounding like a long-lost old friend.
"Well at least tell me has your mom ever mentioned a man named Freddie Benson?" He begged, holding the Fatcake package toward the girl. "Please, you can have the whole pack of cakes if you just tell me."
"Um, I think I've heard of him, isn't he the guy that played for the Titans?" Before the kid could make another bad guess, she was interrupted by a police officer standing beside the man. The cop grabbed him by the arm that he had extended to the girl.
"Alright, fella. Let's you and I go and share that pack of cakes somewhere else." The officer suggested, not wanting to make a scene in front of a child.
"Oh, good afternoon, officer, I was just asking this girl if her mom might know me. You see, I've been looking for . . . "
"Save it for the judge, creep. We've had reports of guys down here stalking little girls. You and I are taking a trip down town." The cop stated with authority as he pulled a set of handcuffs from his belt.
A month later, the man was released from the local jail. The charge had been attempted child luring, and if not for his squeaky-clean record and a good lawyer, he would have probably been incarcerated for over a year, not just a month.
The thirty day sentence made him realize how bad he missed the cheap whiskey which he had been consuming daily as of late. Now that he was free from not only prison, but his job (thanks to the arrest), his daily drinks turned into full blown alcoholism.
Eighteen years passed, the part-time, meaningless jobs were as plentiful as water. Once he got past the point of admitting he held a master's degree, minimum wage employers no longer used the words 'over qualified'. He thought many times of cleaning up his act and going back to computer engineering, but each time he was about to, a round of heavy drinking pulled him back in. He would drink, lose his job, not have enough money for booze, dry out and get another mundane job so he could afford more alcohol. It was a long, hard, downward spiral.
His rent was nearly three months past due when he passed away one night in the run down, third floor, two-room apartment which he called home. The coroner officially ruled his death a result of alcohol poisoning. His only possessions in the world were a six year old laptop with a cracked screen, a garbage bag full of worn out clothing and a stack of overdue bills beside the non-working toaster on his kitchen counter. He had truly drank away everything life had to offer, all because of the depression of never finding the blonde he had been seeking for so long and the daughter he never knew.
The county paid for his funeral, only attended by a few of his neighbors who knew him as a kind and helpful man when he was sober and a loner who kept to himself when he wasn't. The manager of his building was tasked with cleaning out the apartment and disposing of his worthless possessions. He had cleaned up the kitchen first, tossing any remnants of spoiled food and cracked dishes from the refrigerator and cupboards.
He moved to the bedroom and gathered all of the man's clothes into a large, green bag to drop off at the thrift store donation bin. Folded neatly on top of the dresser was a very worn letter that had obviously been folded and unfolded many times, bearing many tear stains. Before dropping it into the garbage can, he unfolded it and read.
Dear Freddie,
First, I want to say I'm sorry for not keeping in touch with you. I know you've tried to contact me, but you need to understand that I stayed away for your own good. You know I love you more than life, but you have your act together, a bright future ahead of you and I can't let myself bring you down any more. You're too good for a girl like me, you deserve a girl as smart and kind as you are.
Soon, you'll be putting that fancy degree of yours, that took eight years to earn, to good use and making computers and programs. Me, well, I'll be making sub sandwiches for minimum wage somewhere. Your future is bright, but mine is dull and gray.
We've been friends for years, we shared so many firsts, our first kiss, our first time, our first heartbreak. No matter how long I live, I'll never meet another man like you, I don't think I want to. My destiny is to be alone and miserable, just like my mother. You'll find someone just like you and have a happy life together.
I wanted so bad to come to New England to see you graduate, but I wasn't able to travel. You see, I had a baby a few weeks ago and I have just got back to work, so money is tight and every dollar I make at Sub Place goes toward buying diapers and formula.
Remember that night last summer, right before you went back to school? I do, I can never forget it. It's a night that changed my life forever, the night our daughter was conceived. She's beautiful, Freddie. She has dark hair like you and the most stunning green eyes you'd ever want to see. I just hope she grows up to be as smart as you, not a loser like me and the rest of my family. I thought about putting her up for adoption, but I can't bring myself to give her up because she's a constant reminder of our love.
Please don't try to find me, I've left Seattle to live with some relatives. It's for your own good, Freddie and it'll be better if we never see each other again, no matter how much we both want to. Move on with your life and forget about me, my love. One of us deserves to be happy.
All my love,
Sam
A week after his funeral, a short, blonde woman stood in the pauper's cemetery, on the south side of Memphis, staring at a small bronze plaque with the name 'F. Benson' engraved on it. She had read his obituary in the local paper the day before and was shocked to see that he had lived less than ten blocks from her but their paths had never managed to cross. Beside her was a dark haired girl with piercing green eyes in her late twenties, pushing a baby stroller.
"So, where'd you say you met him, Mom?" She asked
"We knew each other forever, Jenny. We were best friends growing up in Seattle." Sam replied. "He was my first love. My only love."
"You know what, I just remembered something. You said Seattle and the name Benson. Remember when I was a kid and the cops hauled that guy off who was talking to me at the park next to our building?"
"Oh, yeah. We used to go down to that park every Sunday so you could play with the other kids, but you always just sat and read books and poetry and chiz. You were like him, you never did make friends very easy. But, what made you think of that? We moved from there when you were, like, fifteen."
"I think that was, him, Mom. That guy the cops got, he said something about Seattle and the name Freddie Benson. He promised me a pack of Fatcakes if I'd tell him your name. That guy wasn't some weirdo trying to molest kids, he was my dad?"
Sam swallowed a lump and tears came to her blue eyes. "Fatcakes? I, I, I guess so, baby. I never knew. I mean, I never thought he would have came to Memphis. He must have been looking for us all this time."
The two women stood in the graveyard and held each other as tears ran down their pale faces. Sam's tears for the one and only man she ever loved, Jennifer's for the father she never knew, even though he was right under her nose one day.
I hope this was alright. I know it's not the fairy-tale ending most stories have, but I wanted to try something different. Next time will be a little brighter, I promise.