Three years too late.
Or really sixteen years too late if we’re being honest.
But it was him.
Dear Julian Oliver,
I really don’t know how to begin this letter other than to say, I think you’re my dad. There is so much I want to say, but I felt the need to start with a neat and pretty and direct beginning. Something to get you hooked so you’ll keep reading this letter until the end.
I like to imagine this is how you feel when you go about ordering the tracks for one of your albums. You select something nice and catchy for the beginning track and then slyly sandwich in some of the more meaningful but less flashy songs.
Now, before you throw this letter away, please hear me out. I’m sure you get deranged fan letters all the time, but that’s not what this is. To be honest, I’m not even a huge fan of yours. I don’t mean that in a bad way. I like your music just fine, but it’s not like my favorite or anything. To be fair, that probably has a lot to do with the fact that my mother doesn’t really let me listen to your genre of music much, which, after my recent discovery, is starting to make a lot more sense.
I guess I should mention that my mother is Dr. Lena Noura Abdallat. Ha! I bet I have your interest now, right?
Anyway, when I was snooping in her study I found a well-cataloged shoebox. (The shoebox was full of news clippings about you and your band. Cutouts of write-ups from Rolling Stone and the profile that the New York Times did on you a few years back. And then, buried under all the news clippings, there was a single letter from you to her. It was written on yellowed paper. Three lines only:
Lena,
Please give me one more chance. This time it will be different. I promise.
Always,
Julian
So you have to understand how my brain basically exploded at that moment. I stared at your photograph from one of the articles that had run in Rolling Stone and was amazed to see that we have the exact same eyes. I mean, exact same eyes, dude. And as you know, Mom is from Jordan, so that was always something I wondered about because Mom told me that my dad was someone she knew from back home. She claimed I was conceived (GROSS) when she went home for her mother’s funeral, but like how many Jordanians do you know with icy blue eyes?
And then I did more research into you—thanks, Google—and found out that you are from none other than Oak Falls, Indiana. Guess what? Mom went to undergrad at Hampton University in, yup, Oak Falls, Indiana. I’m guessing that’s where you guys met, right?
Basically, I want you to explain yourself. Or at least answer my letter to tell me if I’m on the right track or not. You owe me some answers.
I know you are a busy man, so I’ve laid out my three most pressing questions below and would appreciate if you could contact me as soon as possible with the answers:
1) Are you my father?
2) Did you already know that you were my father?
3) What does my mom need to forgive you for?
Your maybe-possibly-probably daughter,
Taliah Sahar Abdallat
PS: I’ve included a recent photograph of Mom. She’s a babe, right? Also, check it out—that’s from an article she had published in Art History. You aren’t the only rock star in this “family.”
II.
I clutched Harlow’s shoulder. “Is that who I think it is?”
She reached out and squeezed my other hand. “That’s a loaded question.”
I thought of the famous photograph spread shot by Annie Leibovitz where Julian Oliver was holding a gun in his right hand and the neck of his guitar in his left. “Harlow.”
“Taliah.”
“Well, I think it is him. Pretty sure he’s Julian Oliver. But I’m still unwilling to fully agree that he is who you think he is.” She squeezed my hand again. “In that regard.”
“In that regard,” I repeated absently, and snuck another glance at the willowy figure standing on my doorstep. I’d imagined this moment so many times, and now that it was finally here, I found it very difficult to be present in it. It almost felt as if I were watching a videotape of my life.
My mind repeated the same refrain over and over again: Julian Oliver is standing on your doorstep.
Julian Oliver of rock star fame.
Julian Oliver, my long-lost father.
You see, three years ago when I’d discovered The Shoebox in my mother’s home studio/office—I obviously immediately shared this life-altering revelation with Harlow because she was and is my first-choice person. But analytical-to-a-fault Harlow hadn’t been as convinced as me. Her arguments, presented below in no particular order, were valid:
Lots of people have glacier-like blue eyes and dimples in their right cheeks.
Mom could have been a huge hardcore fan of Staring Into the Abyss. A secret fan, but a die-hard one nonetheless. Lots of people were.
It was just very unfathomable and unlikely.
See point 3 and repeat it over and over and over again.
My counterpoints were as follows:
Yes, but there was still a startling resemblance. We even smiled in the same way. Didn’t she see that? (She eventually admitted that she did, indeed, see it. Especially the way both of our bottom lips curved slightly to the left, which served to further highlight the dimple in our right cheek.)
Mom hated rock music. This had been a point of contention between Mom and me for basically my whole life. I’d had to beg—I mean capital-B Beg—her to let me take piano lessons. And to this day, she only wanted me to listen to classical music and musical soundtracks. Any modern music I listened to was a secret affair. Her disdain for rock music had always seemed odd, and I remember one time when she had a very strong reaction to a Staring Into the Abyss song that came over the speakers when we were in a store. All this is to say, Mom’s reactions to rock music, particularly Staring Into the Abyss, seemed suspiciously out of proportion.
Mom had completed her undergraduate studies at Hampton University, a private college nestled in the sleepy town of Oak Falls, Indiana. Guess where Julian Oliver was born and raised? Yup. You guessed it.
Sure, it was very unfathomable and unlikely, but so were many things that existed in this world, such as air travel, the smallpox vaccine, and the absolute perfection of Beyoncé.
Harlow dropped my hand. “You’re going to answer the door, right?”
I nodded dumbly. “But what do I say?”
“Why don’t you wait and see what he says?”
I stood frozen and she let out a loud sigh. “Taliah. You have to open the door. This is getting weird.”
“Isn’t it already crazy weird?”
“Yes,” she said emphatically. “So there’s no need to make it any more weird.” And with that, Harlow pulled open the door.
Staring Into the Abyss