Confession made me question memories

In the early 1990s, I opened up a small deli and hired a couple of my older son’s friends, about 20 years old, to work there. One of them was Bonnie.

I’d first met her when she and my son were in a high school production of “Guys and Dolls.” She was beautiful, talented and charming, with natural charisma, and the audience was enraptured whenever she sang.

Bonnie lived with her mother in a house two blocks from me, so when she and I closed the deli at night, I’d drive her home, and I’d tell her anecdotes I had dined out on for years: when I was a deckhand on ammo ships to Vietnam, when I spent months studying meditation in Indian ashrams or took peyote with the Native American Church. Bonnie laughed or gasped in all the right places, a perfect audience of one.

I know what you’re probably thinking, but there was no romantic vibe on my part. None. I thought of her as the daughter I’d never had.

The deli was struggling to survive, and on top of that, I was diagnosed with cancer. During the months I went through radiation and surgery, Bonnie and Rudy, a night clerk, ran the deli. After treatment, when I returned to work, I realized there was a discrepancy between how much food we sold and how much money we took in. I suspected that Rudy, the night clerk, was stealing from the till, so I let him go.

After three years, I closed the deli and moved on.

Fast forward to the Fourth of July 2005. My sons were playing with a brass band at a farmers’ market and I ran into Bonnie, whom I hadn’t seen in years. She was thin, her face was drawn, her complexion sallow. She pulled me aside, so we could talk.

“I’m not well,” she said, looking down. “I’ve been sick, very sick.”

“You know, they can do things, look at me …”

She shook her head. “It’s spread. It’s spread all over.”

“Look, they can …”

“No, they can’t. I’ve got two months. Maybe less. There’s something else,” she said, “something else. It wasn’t Rudy, it was me.”

“What?”

“I was the one stealing from you. It was me. I don’t even know how much I took. Hundreds? Thousands? Night after night.”

I was silent. Bonnie had suddenly brought it all back to me. How I’d blamed Rudy and never suspected her.

“Please forgive me. Please … forgive me.” She was crying.

“Of course I forgive you.”

I meant it. I didn’t care about the money. What I thought about were those nights I drove her home, when she listened to my stories and laughed at just the right spots. Had she laughed at me, knowing she was taking advantage of a middle-aged fool who thought he’d formed a connection — a father-daughter bond — that didn’t exist? Was her stealing from the till something she thought of as her due for having put up with my stories?

I hugged her gently. I could feel the ravages of her illness: her ribs, her lack of flesh, her frailty. Her human frailty.

Weeks later, Bonnie died at 31. In her obituary notice, her husband wrote that Bonnie’s final wish was that we all “take time to dance and to cry, and never forget … that we are all connected.”

Bonnie’s heartbreaking death and her plea for forgiveness rippled through me. Mouthing the words, I addressed an absent Rudy, whom I’d fired unjustly, and asked him for forgiveness. And all those friends and lovers I abandoned during my youth, I asked them for forgiveness as well. And my long-dead parents, who suffered while I drifted around the world, having dangerous adventures, I also asked them for forgiveness.

I recalled Bonnie’s confession, and it occurred to me maybe it wasn’t by chance I ran into her. She could have known my sons were performing and may have gone to the farmers’ market on purpose, knowing I’d be there. That’s who she was, I told myself, a good and decent soul who made a horrible mistake, and — while mortally ill — made a courageous effort to tell the truth and get my forgiveness before dying.

I’d like to believe that, I’d really like to believe that — though I know it’s probably me being foolish again.