Dear Zachary: A Letter to a Son About His Father Page #2

someone who had never met him?

The man never wore pants.

He only wore shorts.

That's right.

Constantly!

Well,

Andrew was very good at pool.

Quite frankly, he was

a pool shark, is what he was.

Well, he had a good teacher.

When we first met him, he had

this thing with his fingernails.

Oh, yeah, he'd always bite

his fingernails.

They looked like they'd been

through a shredder.

Too late.

He was probably the most

determined person I've ever met

about doing

a particular profession.

His mom worked in the business,

so...

We would sit and discuss

a topic like venereal disease.

He didn't get an offer

to come to medical school

at the end of the first year.

I remember

that was a big downer.

I think he felt like

he wasn't...

like things were

kind of stalled for him

and he wasn't really...

he wasn't living

up to expectations.

"Well, what are you gonna do?"

"Okay, I'll get a job,

and I'll apply again."

Okay.

That's problem, solution.

And then, of course, Heather

brought home this application

she had picked up from Memorial

University of Newfoundland.

I had to go look up St. John's

on the map

when he got accepted there.

I knew,

"That's over in the east coast."

He's now engaged

to this lovely girl,

and he's gonna go to med school.

It was great.

Graduation, he was in shorts.

Hold on a second.

We'll come back to this.

But before we go any further,

you've got to know

what happened.

The whole truth.

So here it is.

A couple of policemen met us

at the airport in Pittsburgh.

Took us over to the hospital.

Bill and Clark picked us up

and took us over to Bacha's

Funeral Home in Greensburg.

And then he took us

down a stairway.

Gurney at the other end...

with a white sheet over a body.

And...

...went over to him and when

we could see his face...

...I said, "It's really him."

I kissed him and held him,

and Kate kissed him and held him

and kissed him some more.

Tears are dropping on him,

of course,

and Kate went to wipe

one of those away off his cheek,

and a plug came out where he'd

been shot in the left cheek.

Oh, God.

She pushed it back in

and cried some more.

After that, I lost it.

I just ran outside and screamed.

I was so f***ing mad,

I couldn't see straight.

God damn it, I hated.

I've never hated like that.

Didn't even know who I hated.

Didn't know who it was then.

Just knew that somebody

purposely put him there.

Whoever that is is a monster.

Well, who hurt him?

A very bad person.

Which bad person?

- A lady?

- Mm-hmm.

What's her name?

Shirley.

Shirley?

Why'd she kill him?

I couldn't figure out who

she was in relation to Andrew

since Andrew talked a lot

about women

but never really

mentioned her.

Collette,

this is Bagby's new girlfriend.

Makes me sick to my stomach now,

but I was so excited

that he was dating somebody.

Come on, Shirley.

Get out from behind him.

I knew he'd been struggling

with me moving on

and dating other people.

- Or maybe you will.

- You already met me!

I was excited at the thought

that maybe he had found somebody

that he, you know,

could really be happy with.

But it didn't turn out that way.

- Did you know her?

- Yeah.

Do you remember

when they started dating?

Mm-hmm.

She just kind of appeared,

and then she was there

all the time all of a sudden.

And just didn't seem suited

for him.

He did say that there was

a considerable age difference.

And then the second time

I heard him talk about it,

he actually fessed

to the age difference,

and I was like, "Holy sh*t!"

Shirley's got three kids!

Whoo-hoo!

Me, I always had to give him

a hard time,

so I'd tease him

about nailing grandma.

And she seemed so incongruous

with who

I would picture him with.

A person like that isn't just,

like, completely normal

and then, one day,

they become a psycho, you know?

I mean,

there had to be some signs.

She'd just be really

inappropriate with things.

Poor taste,

things that she would say.

She was always making

sexually inappropriate comments.

But never threatening.

We never thought of her

as being threatening,

but, just,

something was a little off.

Something wasn't right.

She started calling me

on a regular basis.

She talked forever.

Crude things about

their intimate relationship.

But I thought it was kind of odd

when I met her

that she was not practicing.

She had finished residency

for quite some time,

and yet she was having trouble

getting her credentials.

Nobody said anything

'cause we all respected Andrew.

And if he wasn't putting the

pieces together or something,

it just makes me think

he was just not caring.

He was likely 4,000 miles away

from where he wanted to be

for the rest of his life.

He had had a very difficult,

kind of heartbreaking type

of situation with Heather.

Whatever happened

with their breakup

really kind of devastated him

and just left him vulnerable

to someone like Shirley.

"Andrew!

You know you can do

a lot better."

He said,

"Ah, no, I really can't."

He'd poke fun at himself

all the time.

He'd say he was a short,

portly little fella.

You don't need

to go out with a woman

because you can't

think you can do better.

It was a comfort.

And, in Newfoundland,

it was somebody to be around

and he enjoyed it.

Oh, it's just

a senior-year thing.

After graduation,

he came back to the U.S.

to do a surgery residency

in Syracuse, New York,

and he was miserable.

He hated it.

Shirley also decided to move

to the States to practice.

We were not very aware

of his year in Syracuse,

what a problem

she became to him there.

Was a real hard year for him.

There was really no time

for anything.

And the fact

that there was this somebody

that was making a lot of effort

to maintain a relationship

with him

and represented something else

besides the misery

that it sounded like

his internship was

was hard for him to pass up.

He pretty quickly realized

that surgery wasn't for him

and switched

to a family-practice residency

in Latrobe, Pennsylvania,

in July of 2001.

And he loved it.

He said, "When you finally find

that thing

that you know is your niche,

it's worth everything

in the world."

And he now wanted her

to go away.

He did not invite her

to Matt's wedding.

Yeah, and she thought

she was going to be coming.

She just already had it

arranged.

The morning of the wedding,

Andrew's cellphone

started ringing.

And he'd answer it,

and it's Shirley.

A minute or two later, it'd ring

again, and it's her again.

Andrew got more and more upset

with her.

"What is your f***ing problem?"

And he clicked off the phone.

She left 30-some-odd messages

on his phone.

His phone in his house rang,

like, 30 times.

Then his cellphone rang

He's like, "Oh, it's her.

I don't want to talk with her."

Apparently,

Andrew had already asked Shirley

to accompany him to Karl and

Marci's wedding, October 20th,

before July.

He had broken up with her

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