The Demotivation of Charlie Fitts- Part II

Part II – A Living Dog Is Better Than A Dead Lion

As he returned to his room and prepared to read, his resident advisor, Tom, popped in hurriedly with an impatient and worried look.

“Hey, Charlie. I just got a call a few minutes ago from your Aunt Julie. She said she had been dialing your room phone for two hours but couldn’t reach anyone. She told me to have you call home as soon as possible. I don’t know what’s going on but she said something had happened to your father.”

Charlie placed his book down and nodded affirmatively to Tom, indicating he would call right away. He dialed home, but couldn’t reach his mother and spoke to his aunt instead. All she said was that his father was dead and he needed to come home at once. She advised she couldn’t give details because his mother needed her. After hanging up Charlie felt as if his world was spinning out of control. He sat down at his desk a moment, trying to process what he had heard. How could Dad be gone? He was young and had no big health issues that I knew of. None of this makes any sense. I just spoke with him on the phone last week. I guess I better get packed and head home. After five minutes, he had finished packing a few clothes and books. On his way out he dropped by Tom’s room and told him he had to go home due to a family emergency, and didn’t know when he would be back. Tom tried to ask if there was anything he could do to help but by the time he got the words out Charlie was already halfway down the hall.

Charlie ran to his car despite the thunderclouds and pouring rain, threw his book bag in the passenger seat but dropped the keys in the floorboard. It took him a minute to search through all of the snack wrappers and books to find them. After starting the car, he peeled out of the parking lot, turning his windshield wipers on but forgetting his headlights until he came to a crosswalk and nearly hit another student. Ignoring their cursing, he turned on his lights, and hit the highway in a few minutes. He was determined to get home by dinnertime, which meant making the 70 mile trip in less in than an hour.

Upon pulling into the two-story 1970s ranch house he grew up in, he parked behind the car of his Aunt Julie. Rushing into the house, he ignored the greetings of his cousins, and anxiously searched for his mother. He found her in the kitchen with her head laying on her arm on the table sobbing uncontrollably and her sister sitting beside her trying to console her. Usually well-put together and dignified, Charlie was not used to seeing his mother disheveled and out of control.

“Mom, what happened?! How did Dad die?!” Charlie asked in dismay.

Barely raising her head to acknowledge his presence, 42 year old Anna Fitts looked at her only child for a moment before laying her head back down. She was so overcome with grief she could not speak.

Desperately searching for an answer Charlie glanced at his aunt with a questioning look on his face. Aunt Julie was his mother’s younger sister and although never overly fond of her brother-in-law, she was always there for her sister as friend and confidant. Pausing a moment to brush her blond hair from her eyes, Julie peered at Charlie compassionately.

“Charlie, I am not sure how to tell you this gently,” Julie began, “so, I will just say it right out. Your father died by his own hand.”

“What? Suicide!? That can’t be!?” Charlie half-screamed. “Why would he do that?”

“We don’t exactly know why but it happened this morning. Your mother found him hanging in the garage.”

“This is unbelievable!” Charlie exclaimed as he slumped into a chair opposite of his mother.

A few moments passed before he found the strength to ask if his father had left a note. His aunt glanced at his mother who had just sat up and looked at her son with reddened eyes. With quivering lips, Anna Fitts managed the first words she had spoken since Charlie had arrived.

“Yes, he did but, but, it still doesn’t make much sense,” she whispered and ran from the room. Her sister looked at a paper on the table that had been in front of Anna and then at Charlie as if to indicate this was the note. She promptly arose from the room in search of her sister, leaving Charlie in the dimly lit kitchen alone.

Charlie didn’t know what to expect when he got up to retrieve the note. He picked it up without reading it, shoved it in his jacket pocket, and left the house without speaking to anyone. He got in his car and drove to the bookstore he and his dad had frequented hundreds of times, Question Mark Books. He ordered a green tea from the cafe and proceeded to a chair in the most remote part of the store in the poetry section. Charlie sat sipping his tea for half an hour lost in questions he was afraid would haunt him the rest of the night and the rest of his life. He finally pulled the crumpled note from his pocket, smoothed it out, and laid it on the coffee table in front of him. Ignoring everything his mother had ever said about good posture, he crouched over with his elbows on his knees and began to read his father’s just barely legible handwriting:

To my beautiful wife Anna, wonderful son Charlie, and anyone else who cares (not that anyone does): I have seen the end of days all my life- sunsets and stars and evenings that promise tranquility but only yield regret and never-ending nightmares. Now my life has seen the end of its days. I alone make this choice and I alone deserve the blame, the guilt, the punishment. I have read book after book, thousands in my life, but what are they all worth? “Of making many books there is no end and much study is a weariness of the flesh.” “Vanity of vanities, saith the preacher; all is vanity.” These are my two favorite quotes from the last book I will ever read. It was written by a famous king from centuries ago who was said to be the wealthiest and wisest man who ever lived- a man named King Solomon who wrote a memoir of bitterness and remorse called “Ecclesiastes.” He found that everything in life was meaningless- all of his wealth, fame, and accomplishments in the end meant nothing. He wound up as full of misery and self-reproach as a poor and foolish idiot- much like me.

If a man like that found no contentment and solace in all he gained and learned, what hope could I have? I have a wife everyone always said I could never deserve. Every time I see my in-laws they condemn me with their eyes, if not their words. Even on our wedding day I overheard them say, “Oh, Anna! What have you done? You could have had your pick of a number of successful and worthy guys and you chose this loser Charlie. Mark my words: he will live up to his name and give you nothing but fits and despair!”

I have a son who follows in my footsteps in name and love of reading but what good am I to him? Charlie, I named you, helped you learn to read and develop a love of books but I could never believe you would see me with proud eyes as I have accomplished nothing, gained nothing in my career or life. I have had the same pointless job for over a decade and am reminded by my co-workers daily that I would never be more than what I have been. And that’s the problem- I have no faith or hope to become more than I am. I am exhausted from seeking answers that I can’t find. Despite all of my knowledge, I have never known a moment’s peace or a success I could call my own. Trust me, Son, you will be happier and better off without such a pitiful example of a father and man. I know you will do well in life. You are already smarter than me since you are in college. My father always told me I was too stupid to go to college and I had used up all of my wits just finishing high school.

The pain and burdens of trying to measure up to a wife I don’t deserve, to the dreams that have become nothing more than mocking disappointments, to wanting more than life is willing to give, all of it has finally become too much. I can no longer carry their weight and feel crushed under the expectations I had that yet remain at such a distance- I will never realize them. I have come to hate what I have become and find the strength to change lacking; indeed, I have weighed myself and my life on the scales and been found wanting.

I am sorry for any pain my death may cause you, dear Anna and Charlie, but even more sorry for how I have turned out. I want more for both of you than I can give. I can no longer live with my agony and failures. So, I say with a heart full of love and heaviness- Ultimum vale, Charles Warren Fitts, Sr.

As a store clerk proclaimed over the intercom that the store was closing, Charlie carefully folded up his father’s letter and put it in his pocket. He walked leisurely to the front door, ignoring everyone around him. As he made his way to the door, he saw a poster announcing that Stanley Bickerhoff would be there the next evening to sign books. He made a mental note of the time and then headed home. Entering the house he didn’t trust himself to speak civilly to anyone as he had yet to fully think through what his father had written. His cousins were leaving to go home though his Aunt Julie said she would stay the night to be with her sister. Charlie just nodded his head in understanding and went to his old bedroom, thankful to be alone. Pushing down his pain, he didn’t bother to get dressed for bed but only took his boots off. He grabbed the book by Bickerhoff he had been reading and looked at the author’s picture on the inner back cover. He started wondering what a self-help expert and best-selling author would say to a young man who was more confused than ever about life’s brevity and meaning. Overwhelmed by his questions and exhausted from the gloom of the day, Charlie drifted off to sleep in minutes.