Bad guy again June 16, 1985

 Dear Mary Ann:

I went to Pennsylvania yesterday to try to locate Louise and Ruby. But the fire sent them scrambling again, not across county as I feared, but across town.

They moved back to Moscow; a few miles closer to New Jersey. But it is mostly rural, and I didn’t have time to search.

After the court thing, Louise has pretty much clammed up, looking to start over and get back to the life she had before I came into the picture.

On my way back, I detoured to Scranton, trying to account for all the places Louise lived over the years. Ten since 1983. It appears her answer to everything is to move. Find a new location. Start again. Like being reborn.

Only she keeps dragging her baggage with each move, methods of operating that often cause her more harm than good. Her friends are not always friends. Back when we were together, I noticed she often made enemies out of friends. Several people I cared about, she suddenly hated. In LA, New York, Portland and other places, we found ourselves in dispute with people over silly issues or wanting to move away to escape from them.

For years, I thought it was me. But when I got back with Louise again in 82, I found she had continued to do it. She gave up a good little place because the landlord had become suspicious about all the business she brought home, many of her former customers showing up at her door uninvited and unannounced. Her boss from once the clubs where she danced (now a bicycle shop) showed up while I was there, asking to have a serious talk with her.

The place after that she left because of the neighbors, and the one after that on account of a man. Her phone number changed more often than her address did. She had six different numbers in one year.

Moscow has bitter memories for me since it is where she lived back in 1978 when we had our first legal battle over visitation rights. When I got the court to agree with me, she fled the state.

Her recent move was not by choice. A fire gutted the apartment where she lived. But I also think she felt betrayed by me over the most recent issues with family court and how close she came to going to jail for welfare fraud.

Louise can’t stop blaming other people for her own misdeeds, and over the years, I have served her best as the demon in her closet, blaming me for everything that went wrong in her life. I became a good guy briefly only when her troubles became so overwhelming, and she needed someone to turn to for help – back when a grand jury pondered whether or not to take our daughter away.

She was in a similar fix back in 69 when I rescued her in Colorado, when she had gotten involved with a local biker gang, turned witness against them, and had to move five times to keep them from finding her, never far enough until I took her out to California.

Now, I’m a bad guy again, something I suspected was coming when the return address on her letters became a Post Office box.

I have to be careful looking for her. If I nose around too much and word gets back to her, she’ll read this as a threat, and might disappear altogether – maybe back to the west coast the way she did last time.

I lost precious years of seeing my daughter. I do not want to lose even more. Ruby just turned 14. There aren’t many years left before she’ll go off on her own.

Maybe Johnny was right when he advised me not to back down in court, but to stand up and get my legal visitation rights. But it seems I may lose touch with my daughter anyway.

Most of Louise’s anger is based on her misreading the letters I sent, taking them as a threat rather than a concern. So, I’m being very careful not to push her further away by playing detective, by finding her and having her flee.

The only good thing is that we no longer have the court breathing down our necks, and if we can work this all out, we might end up in a better place after all.

I’ll leave you on that positive not

 

Yours in spirit and in faith,

Al Sullivan

 1985 Menu


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