Speaker 1: Hello, podcast friends. Jonathan Here. For the protection of those
Speaker 1: involved in today's story, some of the names have been changed,
Speaker 1: but not my name. I'm still me Jonathan Goldstein. Boom boom,
Speaker 1: Let's start the show.
Speaker 2: Hello.
Speaker 1: Do you remember when you came back from England and
Speaker 1: you were referring to the bathroom as the loo?
Speaker 2: What's wrong with that?
Speaker 3: You?
Speaker 1: We were in a cafe and you were like, oh,
Speaker 1: one moment, I just have to find out where the
Speaker 1: loo is.
Speaker 2: And I was like, Lou, I mean, you spent a
Speaker 2: year in the country.
Speaker 4: You pick up stuff that.
Speaker 5: I think you were only there like a couple of weeks.
Speaker 2: I was there for I think you were.
Speaker 5: There for a couple of weeks.
Speaker 1: I'm it's been a while, all right, all right, let's
Speaker 1: let's okay. You know we're getting off on the wrong
Speaker 1: foot here. Let's walk it back. Do you like eating
Speaker 1: buttered mashed potatoes? Would you eat a toilet? Do you
Speaker 1: like noodles? Do you like the sound of the wind
Speaker 1: in the trees? Do you like climbing trees? Conclusion, I
Speaker 1: would like to say that this was a very nice
Speaker 1: telephone call for who from Gimblet Media. I'm Jonathan Goldstein
Speaker 1: and this is heavyweight today's episode, Rachel. Sometimes an impetuous
Speaker 1: decision you make as a kid carries over into adulthood,
Speaker 1: and day after day you write out the consequences on autopilot.
Speaker 1: Sure you could always take back the wheel and change course,
Speaker 1: but it's easier just not to think about it.
Speaker 6: So it sort of starts out in that.
Speaker 7: So I never had I never had a boyfriend or
Speaker 7: anything in high school.
Speaker 1: Just for Rachel's a thirty year old PhD candidate in genetics,
Speaker 1: and she has a decision like that, a choice she
Speaker 1: made as a college student that's determined the last ten
Speaker 1: years of her life. Lately, though, she's been wondering if
Speaker 1: there's something she can.
Speaker 5: Do about it.
Speaker 6: I was in college, And the.
Speaker 1: Story begins when Rachel was eighteen and she took a
Speaker 1: job at a restaurant to make some extra money.
Speaker 7: And as I was working in this restaurant, I started
Speaker 7: dating this guy.
Speaker 5: What was his name?
Speaker 7: His name was Oscar Okay, yeah.
Speaker 6: Which is the name I've not said in a while.
Speaker 7: So Oscar just immediately started like paying attention to me.
Speaker 7: He like asked if I wanted to come early one
Speaker 7: day and like help him cook because I really liked.
Speaker 7: I really like cooking, and I have this like very
Speaker 7: clear memory of being next to him in him like
Speaker 7: toasting fennel, which was like.
Speaker 6: Super hot.
Speaker 7: It was really he made me feel special. And then
Speaker 7: every now and then I'd look over and they'd.
Speaker 6: Be like a perfectly seared scallop on my station.
Speaker 1: In the beginning of their relationship, Oscar and Rachel would
Speaker 1: go out after work, still wearing their chef clothes, and
Speaker 1: they'd hang out into the night. It was fun, but
Speaker 1: pretty soon Oscar started demanding more of her time. Rachel
Speaker 1: was in college and Oscar wasn't.
Speaker 7: There would be points where I was studying and he'd
Speaker 7: be like, we need to hang out and I would
Speaker 7: be like, no, I'm studying, and he would be like
Speaker 7: this is unacceptable, Like are you studying with other guys?
Speaker 1: Oscar could get needy, moody, and the two of them
Speaker 1: didn't communicate well. After about a year, Rachel wanted to
Speaker 1: break up with Oscar, but as a teenager in her
Speaker 1: very first relationship, it was hard. She kept trying, but
Speaker 1: you couldn't make it stick. So in a last ditch
Speaker 1: effort to put some space between them, she took as
Speaker 1: I'm her job as a nanny in England.
Speaker 7: We then had sex one last time, and then I
Speaker 7: went to England and I never saw him again.
Speaker 1: In the autumn, Rachel returned to school oscarless. One Sunday morning,
Speaker 1: while over at her parents, she noticed them looking at her.
Speaker 5: Funny, I guess they.
Speaker 6: Hadn't seen me in a while.
Speaker 7: And my mom she literally just lifts up my shirt,
Speaker 7: pokes my stomach and was like, Rachel, go.
Speaker 6: Take a pregnancy test.
Speaker 7: I went back to my apartment and took the pregnancy
Speaker 7: test and it was positive. I remember just being just
Speaker 7: not feeling anything and being on the bathroom floor, and
Speaker 7: then I called my parents and my dad came and
Speaker 7: I remember him picking me up off of the bathroom floor.
Speaker 1: At that point, without even realizing it, Rachel was already
Speaker 1: six months pregnant.
Speaker 7: Which I find hilarious because I was a biology major
Speaker 7: and by that time being six months pregnant, I just
Speaker 7: we were going with it at that point. So I
Speaker 7: basically had three months to like find a doctor and
Speaker 7: like build a crib and figure out daycare. Like the
Speaker 7: health insurance issue was a big enough headache on its own,
Speaker 7: Like student health insurance doesn't cover maternity On the.
Speaker 1: Day of the delivery, a friend posted an open invite
Speaker 1: to the hospital on Rachel's Facebook wall.
Speaker 6: Hey, Rachel's having a baby. Come over.
Speaker 1: It's like you're having a keger or something. Yeah, were
Speaker 1: you like the first of the friends to have a baby?
Speaker 6: Oh yeah, by like ten years.
Speaker 1: Rachel sent me a photo of everyone hanging out in
Speaker 1: the maternity ward. They look exactly like what they are,
Speaker 1: a bunch of kids too young to legally at tande
Speaker 1: Kegger and with all of these baby faced, sweatshirted classmates
Speaker 1: rooting for her outside the delivery room.
Speaker 6: I like had my daughter.
Speaker 1: That night, after her parents left the hospital and her
Speaker 1: friends returned to their dorms, Rachel was left all alone
Speaker 1: for the first time with her daughter, Lena, and.
Speaker 7: I remember holding around just looking at her and saying, like,
Speaker 7: I have a baby, Like I have a baby.
Speaker 1: It was Friday night, Monday was a holiday. By Tuesday,
Speaker 1: Rachel was back in class And as for Oscar.
Speaker 6: So that's the crazy thing is.
Speaker 7: The only thing I really knew was that, like, the
Speaker 7: one thing that could make this really really hard is
Speaker 7: if I have to deal with a person that I
Speaker 7: really really don't want to deal with and so I didn't, So.
Speaker 5: You meaning you didn't you didn't tell Oscar?
Speaker 7: Yeah, I didn't tell him because I just there were
Speaker 7: so many things that got on the to do list
Speaker 7: that the only thing going in my mind with regards
Speaker 7: to Oscar was like, let's just not deal with that now.
Speaker 1: And so Rachel's let's just not deal with that now.
Speaker 1: Kept getting kicked down the road, one day handing off
Speaker 1: to the next until today's her birthday, hadn't She's turning ten.
Speaker 6: Wow, I have a ten year old.
Speaker 7: I still can't believe it, Like she's amazing.
Speaker 1: For Rachel, it's been ten years of birthdays and Christmases,
Speaker 1: ten years of card games, bedtime stories and big Saturday
Speaker 1: morning breakfast. But ten years too, of not telling Oscar
Speaker 1: about his daughter, ten years of not telling Lena about
Speaker 1: her dad. Rachel says that so far it hasn't really
Speaker 1: come up.
Speaker 7: I think she has once in like preschool, when they
Speaker 7: were doing making a family tree, and she was like,
Speaker 7: why why don't I have a dad? And I was like, Mary,
Speaker 7: you just don't, like you have Nana and pops. And
Speaker 7: then the other cool thing is like one of her
Speaker 7: good friends has two moms, so I can just be
Speaker 7: like Eli has two moms, like look.
Speaker 6: Over there, Like Eli doesn't have a dad either her like,
Speaker 6: and she just sort of accepts that. But as my
Speaker 6: daughter grows up right more and more, it.
Speaker 7: Is obvious to me that one day she's actually going
Speaker 7: to ask me about him. And then I don't know
Speaker 7: what I'm gonna say, because the thing that scares me
Speaker 7: is her being God sixteen seventeen eighteen and being like, mom,
Speaker 7: like why did you do this? And me being like,
Speaker 7: because it seemed kind of complicated at the time, like
Speaker 7: it is one hundred percent on me.
Speaker 6: Is the reason that like, this person is not in
Speaker 6: her life.
Speaker 7: I've never even been close to trying to, Like I've
Speaker 7: never googled him. No once or twice a year. I'm
Speaker 7: just like, hey, like I should tell Oscar, and then
Speaker 7: it's sort of a passing.
Speaker 6: The feeling passes.
Speaker 1: It isn't like Rachel doesn't think about Oscar in choosing
Speaker 1: Lena's name, She intentionally picked something that could be pronounced
Speaker 1: in Chinese. Rachel's half Chinese, as well as in Spanish
Speaker 1: because Oscar's Mexican. Rachel doesn't want to live her life
Speaker 1: wondering if Oscar's out there, oblivious to the fact that
Speaker 1: he has a ten year old daughter, and she doesn't
Speaker 1: want another ten years to pass with Oscar still a
Speaker 1: ghost that she and Lena can't discuss. So she wants
Speaker 1: to find Oscar and tell me as a daughter, but
Speaker 1: she says the Oscar she remembers ran hot and cold
Speaker 1: before getting Lena involved. She wants to know how he
Speaker 1: feels about his fatherhood, and so Rachel wants to take
Speaker 1: his temperature, or rather, she wants me to take it.
Speaker 6: Can't you take someone's temperature? Isn't that what you do?
Speaker 5: Hew? Do you mean?
Speaker 4: I don't?
Speaker 6: I want you to do all the work.
Speaker 8: I don't know.
Speaker 1: I'm not so much a temperature taker. I'm in an interlock.
Speaker 1: It it's into locator. Yeah, but uh, I could take
Speaker 1: the temperature.
Speaker 6: You would do that.
Speaker 5: Yeah?
Speaker 6: Wait, so we're doing this.
Speaker 5: I think we are. I mean, that's what it sounds like.
Speaker 1: And you know what this music sounds like, bargains boogying
Speaker 1: out your buds, your earbuds. So make room in your
Speaker 1: wallet for all the Benjamin's coming your way. You're about
Speaker 1: to save big time, boss, big time. Rachel hasn't seen
Speaker 1: Oscar in more than ten years, and she doesn't know
Speaker 1: how to find him to tell him about Lena. Back
Speaker 1: in the day, an old friend from the restaurant told
Speaker 1: her that her pregnancy was the talk of the kitchen.
Speaker 1: So Rachel thinks it's possible Oscar might have already heard.
Speaker 5: But we all know what.
Speaker 1: Happens when one assumes, or at least I assume we
Speaker 1: all know. But since I don't want to be indicted
Speaker 1: for the very crime against which I am building a case,
Speaker 1: let me just say it outright, And if you already
Speaker 1: know this, you can press fast forward. When one assumes,
Speaker 1: one makes an ass out of you and me. Though
Speaker 1: now that I say it out loud, I realize it
Speaker 1: makes more sense written out. Let's stroll on over to
Speaker 1: the chalkboard.
Speaker 5: Shall we.
Speaker 1: See the letter you stands for yo you, and then
Speaker 1: the letters M and E spell me and ass.
Speaker 5: That makes the ass part.
Speaker 1: Of the proverb. Alex might want me to edit out
Speaker 1: that ass, but I'll just say I was talking about
Speaker 1: a donkey in the zoo. I assume he's too busy
Speaker 1: capitalizing on opportunities to even notice the difference.
Speaker 5: Hello, can you hear me?
Speaker 2: Hey?
Speaker 5: I can That's important? Can you hear me, yes, I
Speaker 5: can hear you. We can hear each other.
Speaker 1: This is Diane, the old friend of Rachel's from the restaurant,
Speaker 1: who thought Oscar might have heard about the pregnancy. So
Speaker 1: reaching out to her seems like a good way to
Speaker 1: start the search.
Speaker 8: I haven't been in pets Oscar for quite some years.
Speaker 8: After I left the restaurant, they started working at a
Speaker 8: the same Crown, Okay, and I had seen him there
Speaker 8: several years ago when he brought his family there.
Speaker 5: He was with a family, as in, like he has kids.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 8: He the last that I knew he had two little girls.
Speaker 8: He had gotten married to this woman and had two
Speaker 8: children with her.
Speaker 1: So Oscar now has a family of his own, two
Speaker 1: little girls. Maybe when Rachel finally tells him about Lena,
Speaker 1: as they get into the little things, Lena's love of chess,
Speaker 1: how she's getting into anime, he could tell her about
Speaker 1: his daughters, the things they like. They could talk about
Speaker 1: being parents. And at the time that you that you
Speaker 1: saw him, the subject of Rachel didn't come up.
Speaker 8: Well, it kind of did. He would like ask me
Speaker 8: how she was, and I'd be like, well, I haven't
Speaker 8: seen here.
Speaker 1: Diane wasn't sure whether Oscar was fishing around for information,
Speaker 1: and if he was, she didn't know what Rachel would
Speaker 1: have wanted her to say, so at the time she
Speaker 1: just played dumb and after that day she never ran
Speaker 1: into Oscar again.
Speaker 8: I hope that they're able to connect. I mean, just
Speaker 8: so everybody's in the know.
Speaker 2: I guess.
Speaker 1: The only problem is it's not just Diane who's lost
Speaker 1: touch with Oscar. No one from the restaurant has heard
Speaker 1: from him in years. It's like he's just vanished.
Speaker 4: Rachel, let me kick the dogs out of the room.
Speaker 1: I'm really glad that you finished that sentence with out
Speaker 1: of the room. I call Rachel to fill her in
Speaker 1: about Oscar's two little girls, his marriage. Now, no one
Speaker 1: knows where he is, and to this last point, Rachel
Speaker 1: isn't surprised. Since we last spoke, she's gun searching for
Speaker 1: Oscar on her own.
Speaker 4: Is like impossible to find, like for someone in twenty eighteen,
Speaker 4: Like I cannot find any name because then, you know,
Speaker 4: when we first talked, I was like, I've never even
Speaker 4: looked about on Facebook, and now I've been like, I've
Speaker 4: been cognitomode and look for him on Facebook like all
Speaker 4: the time, and.
Speaker 1: Like, I can't mind any other defining Uh middle does
Speaker 1: he have a middle name?
Speaker 4: The answer is yes, because he has two last names.
Speaker 2: Well, I don't remember what the other one.
Speaker 5: Do you know what my middle name?
Speaker 2: Okay, here's the other the other thing.
Speaker 1: My middle name is Stuart. And so I keep searching.
Speaker 1: I look for Oscar on all the major sites, Facebook
Speaker 1: dot CA, Twitter, dot Google dot Ca, but no dice.
Speaker 1: Growing desperate, I even join LinkedIn. But after Jorge in
Speaker 1: fun adds to my list of professional endorsements, the fact
Speaker 1: that I quote smell moderately presentable, I delete my account.
Speaker 1: Just as I'm about to give up, Rachel phones with
Speaker 1: some good news.
Speaker 8: My dad He found a W two form.
Speaker 1: Rachel's father found an old W two of Oscars. It
Speaker 1: was in a box of Rachel's old poetry, and the
Speaker 1: form contains Oscar's first, last and middle name, which is
Speaker 1: not Stuart, because why would it be Stuart's my middle
Speaker 1: name if you've been following along thus far. Armed with
Speaker 1: Oscar's full name, Rachel did some research and found two
Speaker 1: possible addresses, and so she drafted.
Speaker 4: A letter and I feel like we could send it
Speaker 4: to both addresses, and just like hope that it gets.
Speaker 1: To them, and maybe we'll even get one of those
Speaker 1: fun stamps, or.
Speaker 4: Like you could get a verified.
Speaker 1: Letter, right, Oh, that is an idea. That's a really
Speaker 1: good idea. Then we would know that it's been received
Speaker 1: and signed for. Yeah, for someone who had asked me
Speaker 1: to do all the work. It seems like Rachel is
Speaker 1: really taking care of business. Only her business is the
Speaker 1: business of putting me out of business.
Speaker 4: I feel really good about this. Thank you so.
Speaker 5: Much, Rachel. Don't condescend to me.
Speaker 1: In the letter, Rachel tells Oscar about her pregnancy and
Speaker 1: about Lena, my daughter and I have a great life,
Speaker 1: she writes, and I don't want or need anything all
Speaker 1: these years later, I just want to be able to
Speaker 1: have an honest conversation. Rachel makes two copies of the letter,
Speaker 1: one free to dress and to make me feel like
Speaker 1: I'm not dead weight. She generously allows me to mail them.
Speaker 1: At the post office. I'm served by a kind clerk
Speaker 1: named Magnus. While those in line wait patiently. I ask
Speaker 1: Mags to run down the list of all available stamps,
Speaker 1: and he's more than delighted to do so. Birds in
Speaker 1: winter solar eclipse. The Art of Magic Illinois statehood, Uncle
Speaker 1: Sam's Hat and dragons. After several minutes of back and forth,
Speaker 1: and with lots of support from the people waiting in
Speaker 1: line behind me, egging me on, I choose a stamp
Speaker 1: celebrating frozen treats. But here's the corker. After all of
Speaker 1: my choosing, rechoosing, hemming and hym get this. You don't
Speaker 1: actually use a stamp on a verified letter. In fact,
Speaker 1: it's not even called a verified letter. It's called a
Speaker 1: certified letter because it certifies.
Speaker 5: That it's verified.
Speaker 1: Learning about the United States Postal Service was fun, so
Speaker 1: back at Gimblet headquarters, I decided to further educate myself online.
Speaker 1: Did you know that the original Pony Express was something
Speaker 1: of a misnomer. It actually made use of full size horses,
Speaker 1: and on its inaugural ride, those regular sized horses delivered
Speaker 1: important bank letters, miscellaneous papers, and five telegrams. Telegrams are
Speaker 1: transmitted using Morse code. Because I don't have a telegraph
Speaker 1: with which to provide examples, I've instead here chosen to
Speaker 1: use this airhorn. That's how you say the word ass
Speaker 1: in morse code. If Alex asks me to bleep out
Speaker 1: any portion of it, I'll just say that a bleep
Speaker 1: in Morse code language has meaning as well as a
Speaker 1: rich historical significance that ought to shut them up. After
Speaker 1: a week of learning Morse code square words to tap
Speaker 1: out on my stapler, I receive confirmation one of the
Speaker 1: letters has been received, and the signature on the receipt oscars.
Speaker 1: For weeks, I wait for Oscar to phone, but he
Speaker 1: never does. I can't drop by his house because his
Speaker 1: family might not know anything about Lena or even Rachel,
Speaker 1: so we need another way to reach him, a phone number,
Speaker 1: an email address. I keep searching, and finally, after applying
Speaker 1: some good old fashioned Canadian elbow grease and hiring a
Speaker 1: private investigator, I discovered two potential Facebook accounts for Oscar.
Speaker 1: Immediately I send a message to each one, the same
Speaker 1: message we'd sent by certified mail. Further research reveals the
Speaker 1: phone number for Oscar's landlords, who also happened to be
Speaker 1: Oscar's in laws.
Speaker 5: Please record your message.
Speaker 4: Hi.
Speaker 1: My name is Jonathan Goldstein, and this is I leave
Speaker 1: a message for Oscar's mother in law, Barb. I don't
Speaker 1: make mention of Rachel, or Lena or even Oscar. All
Speaker 1: I say is that I sent a letter to one
Speaker 1: of her tenants, and I wanted to follow up.
Speaker 2: Yes, this is concerning Oscar for mister Goldstein.
Speaker 1: Before long, I received a message back from Barb. As
Speaker 1: it turns out, all my discretion was for not. She
Speaker 1: knows all about the letter and everything in it. This
Speaker 1: is because Barb's the one who signed Oscar's name for it.
Speaker 2: It's a long story, but Austin's been deported. He is
Speaker 2: the daddy of my two granddaughters and was a very
Speaker 2: active father with them. I would like him to know
Speaker 2: that he has another child. He was a very loving father.
Speaker 2: But well, things happened. So anyway, give me call and
Speaker 2: see what you want to do. Bye bye, hello, Yes, hello.
Speaker 4: Hello Hello.
Speaker 1: When I returned Barbe's call, she's at a school out
Speaker 1: in the desert where she does mental health work with kids.
Speaker 2: Your name is Jonathan something.
Speaker 5: Yeah, Jonathan Goldstein.
Speaker 2: Okay, all right.
Speaker 1: Barb tells me that although she's still in touch with Oscar,
Speaker 1: he and her daughter are no longer together. I asked
Speaker 1: her how long ago Oscar was deported.
Speaker 2: Ah, exactly two years ago. He got three duys. He
Speaker 2: was a great guy, and then he suddenly went off
Speaker 2: the deep end, so he ain't coming back for a while.
Speaker 1: Barb says, Oscar's trying to quit drinking, but right now
Speaker 1: he isn't able to be much of a father.
Speaker 2: I mean because even his kids that you know he
Speaker 2: knew about, and that he was very.
Speaker 5: Close to your grandkids.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he has very sporadic contact with him. Right His
Speaker 2: younger daughter knows him well and loves him and was
Speaker 2: in a terrible shock he got taken away. So we're
Speaker 2: going to go to Mexico at some point and try
Speaker 2: to link up with him, but at this point, not
Speaker 2: yet till you know, he says he's getting sober, so
Speaker 2: that's sort of the goal. You don't want him to
Speaker 2: be with him if he's drinking. But he was a
Speaker 2: good daddy when he was a daddy.
Speaker 1: So Barbara can't say if Oscar knows about Lena, but
Speaker 1: she thinks that if he doesn't know, he'd want to.
Speaker 1: She has a number for him in Mexico, but says
Speaker 1: it really goes through. She offers to tell Oscar about
Speaker 1: Lena the next time he calls, though she can't predict
Speaker 1: how long the wait will be. As it turns out,
Speaker 1: though it's not long at all, just A few days later,
Speaker 1: oscar Facebook message is Rachel, he's received the message about Lena.
Speaker 1: I'm in Mexico having problems, He responds, the economy here
Speaker 1: is bad. They don't share stories about their daughters. There
Speaker 1: isn't a lot of small talk. Instead, Oscar tells Rachel
Speaker 1: that with regard to their talking, he can't afford a
Speaker 1: phone call, so Rachel suggests they try skyping, and Oscar
Speaker 1: asks to be sent money to buy some internet time.
Speaker 1: The two get caught up in a volley of messages
Speaker 1: about the logistics of setting up a phone call, who
Speaker 1: will pay for it, when it'll happen, but ultimately it
Speaker 1: doesn't happen at all. Their exchange ends with Oscar messaging
Speaker 1: to say, I ask for money to get phone time
Speaker 1: and internet to talk and solve all this, but seems
Speaker 1: like you don't care well have a nice day. Throughout
Speaker 1: the correspondence, Lena's name never even comes up.
Speaker 4: I went straight to like you don't care about me,
Speaker 4: Like you don't care about this, which is insane to
Speaker 4: me because like that's the kind of stuff he would
Speaker 4: say to me when we were in a relationship, Like
Speaker 4: if I didn't pick up the phone, it was just
Speaker 4: immediately very I don't know, it brought back like a
Speaker 4: lot of things very very quickly, and none of those are.
Speaker 5: Good things, right right?
Speaker 3: And then she never even wanted to know it was
Speaker 3: never even tell me about the kid, right right?
Speaker 4: I mean I accomplished what I originally set out to accomplish,
Speaker 4: which is I wanted to find him and I wanted
Speaker 4: to tell him that he had a kid. I guess
Speaker 4: the one the part that is like now sort of
Speaker 4: a U can of worms, is like, what do I
Speaker 4: tell Lena?
Speaker 1: For years, Rachel's assumed Lena's never asked about her dad
Speaker 1: because she's not curious. But lately a few things have
Speaker 1: happened that have begun to make her wonder if she
Speaker 1: hasn't been wilfully naive, if Lena isn't already curious but
Speaker 1: too afraid to ask. For instance, Rachel's father, Lena's granddad,
Speaker 1: recently overheard a friend of Lena's ask her over and
Speaker 1: over who her dad was. Throughout, Lena remained silent.
Speaker 2: She's just like a really good kid, and like she
Speaker 2: broke her.
Speaker 4: Toe the other week, and like I didn't even know
Speaker 4: what happened until like she was like my toe really hurt,
Speaker 4: and like that was I had this moment of intersection.
Speaker 4: Then I was like, oh my gosh, like what if
Speaker 4: I done to my child? Because she's like doesn't want
Speaker 4: to cause trouble.
Speaker 1: And then three weeks after we speak, Rachel finds one
Speaker 1: of her old college diaries in Lena's room. It's a
Speaker 1: black moleskin she started when she was pregnant. There's all
Speaker 1: this writing in there about that time in her life.
Speaker 1: Her anxiety is about having a kid, a bunch of
Speaker 1: poems she wrote trying to process her feelings. It's clear
Speaker 1: that Lena is looking into Rachel's past, doing it in
Speaker 1: her own way, a way that's private and quiet. Did
Speaker 1: you read my notebook? Rachel asks? No, Lina says, Are
Speaker 1: you sure? Asks Rachel, Maybe, Lina says, And in that
Speaker 1: maybe Rachel realizes that though the timing might not be
Speaker 1: right for her and Oscar to talk, it might be
Speaker 1: the right time for her and Lena. So one Saturday,
Speaker 1: after their ritual big Saturday morning breakfast, as Rachel and
Speaker 1: Lena lounge around in their pajamas, Rachel leads her daughter
Speaker 1: into the coziest room in the house, Rachel's bedroom, and
Speaker 1: with the morning lights spilling in through the windows. Lena
Speaker 1: and Rachel sit down on the carpet beside the bed
Speaker 1: and talk.
Speaker 3: So.
Speaker 6: I was wondering whether.
Speaker 7: You had ever wondered about out, maybe why you don't
Speaker 7: have a father. I haven't wondered in a while about that.
Speaker 5: I have in the past.
Speaker 3: I didn't know that really.
Speaker 7: Yeah, when you wondered, mm hmmm, why didn't you ask
Speaker 7: me about it?
Speaker 3: I didn't know how to ask.
Speaker 6: You didn't know how to ask. Is it just because
Speaker 6: you don't know.
Speaker 9: How to ask.
Speaker 5: I don't know how to ask, you don't know.
Speaker 6: How to ask?
Speaker 9: No?
Speaker 6: Well, so, now is there anything I want?
Speaker 7: All the w's.
Speaker 6: You want, all the wu's.
Speaker 9: Yeah, the w questions?
Speaker 3: Who?
Speaker 7: What?
Speaker 8: Where?
Speaker 9: Why?
Speaker 3: When?
Speaker 5: Yeah?
Speaker 6: Okay? So who?
Speaker 10: Uh?
Speaker 3: So you.
Speaker 6: Have a father. His name is Oscar.
Speaker 7: And he is in Mexico. We met when I was
Speaker 7: in college. We worked at a restaurant together.
Speaker 2: Yea.
Speaker 7: So one of the things that happened was I didn't
Speaker 7: know I was pregnant with you, But I also didn't
Speaker 7: I didn't want to be in a relationship with him anymore.
Speaker 5: Mm hmm.
Speaker 7: And then he was here. He's from Mexico, so he's
Speaker 7: Mexican and then he went back to Mexico. Why I
Speaker 7: was at the that's the w U because that's where
Speaker 7: he was from. So he is no longer here. So
Speaker 7: now you know something else, right, So you know that
Speaker 7: you're half Mexican half half Mexican half half.
Speaker 6: So now you know.
Speaker 9: Now I know.
Speaker 7: And now even if you don't know how to ask,
Speaker 7: do you feel like you can come talk to me
Speaker 7: about anything?
Speaker 6: Because you totally can.
Speaker 2: Thank you.
Speaker 6: What else do you want to know?
Speaker 9: I don't know what else I want to know.
Speaker 6: Okay, but if you think about it, will you tell me?
Speaker 5: Yeah?
Speaker 6: Okay, okay. So that's all we want to know.
Speaker 7: That's all I want to know for now, for now.
Speaker 5: Dun dun dum.
Speaker 1: Rachel keeps checking in over the next couple months to
Speaker 1: see if there's anything Lena wants to ask, and while
Speaker 1: there never is, Rachel's getting into the habit of taking
Speaker 1: the temperature. It's not until a few months later, when
Speaker 1: Rachel and Lena are snuggling in bed. Then Lena looks
Speaker 1: up at her mother and asks mom how tall was Oscar.
Speaker 1: When Rachel hears the name spoken so casually by Lena,
Speaker 1: it still gives her a slight twinge in her chest.
Speaker 1: But Oscar's no longer a ghost. He's her daughter's dad,
Speaker 1: and when Lena has a question about him, Lena's no
Speaker 1: longer afraid to ask. Oscar was a little shorter than
Speaker 1: your granddad, Rachel tells her. Okay, Lina says.
Speaker 9: Now that the fern entures returning.
Speaker 10: To its goodwill home, now that the last month's rent
Speaker 10: is skiming with the damage deposit, take this moment to dissolve,
Speaker 10: if we mentage, if we tried to remember felt rent
Speaker 10: for far too from things An Accidentally Heavyweight.
Speaker 1: Is hosted and produced by me Jonathan Goldstein, along with
Speaker 1: Khalila Holt, Peter Bresnan, and Stevie Lane. The show is
Speaker 1: edited by Jorge Just, with additional editing by Alex Bloomberg.
Speaker 1: Special thanks to Emily Condon, Caitlin Bagooki, Andrew Goldberg, Rachel Ward,
Speaker 1: and Jackie Cohen. Bobby Lord mixed the episode with music
Speaker 1: by Christine Fellows, John K. Sampson, Blue Dot Sessions, and
Speaker 1: Bobby Lord. Additional music credits can be found on our
Speaker 1: website Gimbletmedia dot com slash Heavyweight. Our theme song is
Speaker 1: by the Weaker thands courtesy of Epitaph Records and our
Speaker 1: ad music is by Hailey Shaw. Follow us on Twitter
Speaker 1: at Heavyweight or email us at Heavyweight at gimletmedia dot com.
Speaker 1: We'll be back with new episodes after American Thanksgiving, Happy
Speaker 1: toy Ky Day, and now here's a special holiday song
Speaker 1: that Bobby Lord composed for you to sing with your
Speaker 1: family while celebrating.
Speaker 5: Take it away.
Speaker 1: Bob Alex might want me to edit out that ass.
Speaker 1: Should I try, but.
Speaker 5: No doubt bad ass flex edit out that ass bogging
Speaker 5: out your.
Speaker 1: Butt, edit out, edit out bad ass, edit out that
Speaker 1: ass boging with that ass both bogeing, Edit out that ass.
Speaker 5: Full sized horses