The Mistress's Daughter Read online

  I have only the home movie version in my head. A big old-fashioned 1961 car. Downtown Washington. Snow. Nervousness. Excitement.

  The story goes that my brother, Jon, so proud, so thrilled that the new baby was coming home, stood out in the driveway with a sign that he and my grandmother had made—“Welcome Home Baby Sister.” My arrival has always been described as if it were some magical moment, as if a fairy had waved a wand that pronounced the household cured, leaving me there, like a token, a good luck charm to fix everything, to lift a mother and father from their grief.

  I was carried down the hall and laid out on the big bed in my parents’ room. Neighbors, the aunts and uncles, all came to look at me; a prize—the most beautiful baby they’d ever seen. My hair was thick and black and stood up like a rocket ship, my eyes were bright blue. “Your cheeks were luscious and pink—we ate you up. You were perfect.”

  Think of the differences in anticipation; with a non-adopted baby, members of the family would have visited the hospital. They would have seen me with my mother, or visited me in the nursery, picking me out from the police lineup of bassinets.

  But here it begins with a phone call: Your package has arrived and is wrapped in pink ribbons. The trusted pediatrician dispatched to the hospital to make an evaluation of the merchandise—think of movies where the drug dealer samples the stuff before turning over the cash. There is something inescapably sordid about the way the story unfolds. I was adopted, purchased, ordered, and picked up like a cake from a bakery.

  When I was twenty my mother confessed that the “friend” who collected me was the next-door neighbor. I couldn’t believe that all these years, I had lived next door to someone who had seen my mother, who had actually met her face-to-face.

  I dialed the neighbor’s house. “So?” I said. “You saw my mother?” The neighbor was cautious. “I hope you’re not going to do something about this,” she said. “I hope you’re not going to pursue it.” It amazed me that this was the reaction. What was her fear? That I would disrupt my family, the woman’s family, that I would wreak havoc? What about me, my life, the deep chaos that had been my existence?

  “What did she look like?”

  “She was beautiful. She had on a tweed suit and I couldn’t believe that she had just had a baby. She didn’t look pregnant at all. She was thin. And her hair was up in a bun.”

  I pictured Audrey Hepburn.

  “Did she look like me?”

  I can’t remember what the neighbor said. I was suffering the deafness that comes in moments of great importance.

  “I wore bad clothing,” the neighbor was telling me. “I disguised myself. I didn’t want her to know anything. And she too was very concerned about anyone knowing who she was.”

  The amount of mystery that surrounded the proceedings was enormous, everything was subtext and secrecy. Beneath the intrigue was the element of shame that no one ever talked about.

  “‘If you ever see me, don’t acknowledge me,’ the woman said. Meaning that if I ever saw her at a party or around town, I should pretend that I didn’t know her,” the neighbor told me.

  “Did you ever see her again?”

  “No, I never saw her again.”

  “If you ever see me, don’t acknowledge me.” The one line of dialogue, the only direct quote.

  In the morning my mother comes into my room with a scrap of paper; she sits at the edge of my bed and asks me again, “Do you want the name?”

  I don’t answer. Even if I want it, I can’t say so—it feels like a betrayal.

  “It’s the same name as a friend of yours,” she says, as if she were trying to warm it up, to detoxify it, to make it somehow more palatable. “I think she has a brother, a lawyer who lives in the area—Frosh recognized the name.”

  “You can just leave it on the desk,” I say. Her name is Ellen. Ellen Ballman. It sounds like a fake name. Ball-man. What is she like? What does she do? Is she smart?

  I once met an adopted woman whose mother had come back and found her. The mother was a photographer who traveled a lot. She was lovely, warm, respectful. She said, “I just want you to know I’m here if you need me.”

  Ellen has a brother who lives in the area, my mother had said. I look up the brother’s address. I go for a ride. I am trying it on—the concept of biological family. His house is on my regular route. As a habit, I drive to think, I drive the way other people jog. I have a regular routine, landmarks. I have been riding up and down this road for years, fixated on the roll of the hills, the long driveways—how strange that my uncle’s house is just a left turn away.

  White brick, lots of cars, a basketball hoop in the driveway—a sore point. As a kid the thing I wanted most was a hoop. A hundred times a year I asked for one—and my parents, entirely unathletic, would say no. A hoop would ruin the aesthetic integrity of the house. I played next door, I played up the street, I played until inevitably someone would stick their head out a window and suggest I go home for dinner.

  I park outside the uncle’s house; this is the first time I’ve been within feet of someone biologically connected to me. I sit and imagine them inside, the uncle and his sons, my cousins. The Christmas decorations are up. I see their tree through the window. I imagine this as a joyous, prosperous place. I imagine they are somehow better than me—I drive away.

  I call a private investigator, the friend of a friend—also adopted. I give her what little information I have.

  “Give me a couple of hours,” she says.

  I am a spy, a hunter, hot on the trail. I have no idea what I’m doing except that I want information, something to go on before I proceed. I don’t want any more surprises.

  The P.I. calls me back.

  “The woman you’re looking for doesn’t have a phone listed in her name in New Jersey. And she doesn’t have a local driver’s license, but she does own a home in the Washington area.”

  The P.I. gives me the address. I get back in the car. It’s nearby, very nearby. Did she really live that close? Has she lived there all along? Might I have seen her somewhere without knowing it—in a shopping mall, or a restaurant? I circle the house. It looks empty. I park, knock on a neighbor’s door—asking questions, talking to strangers. What is a stranger? Who is a stranger? She could well be my mother.

  “Do you know what happened to the folks next door? Moved? Any idea where to?” Dead end.

  I go to the library of my childhood, of book reports and science projects. I look things up. I am always looking things up. I get a map of the town in New Jersey where she lives, I find her street. I look in phone books, call information. Nothing. Why is she not listed? Does she live with someone? Does she have another name? Is she a liar? An outlaw?

  I call Frosh, the lawyer. “A letter. I’d like a letter,” I say. “I want information—where she grew up, how educated she is, what she does for a living, what the family medical history is, and what the circumstances of my adoption were.”

  I am asking for the story of my life. There is an urgency to my request; I feel as if I should hurry and ask everything I want to know. As suddenly as she has arrived, she could be gone again.

  As soon as I hang up, I start waiting for the letter.

  Ten days later, her letter arrives with no fanfare. The postman doesn’t come running down the street, screaming, “It’s here, it’s here! Your identity has arrived.” It comes in an envelope from the lawyer’s office with a scrawled note from the lawyer apologizing for not having got it to me sooner. It’s clear that the letter has been opened, presumably read. Why? Is nothing private? I am annoyed but don’t say anything. I don’t feel I have the right. It’s one of the pathological complications of adoption—adoptees don’t really have rights, their lives are about supporting the secrets, the needs and desires of others.

  The letter is typed on her stationery, simple small gray sheets of paper, her name embossed across the top. Her language is oddly formal, less than artful, grammatically flawed. I read it simultaneously f
ast and slow, wanting to take it in, unable to take it in. I read it and then read it again. What is she telling me?

  …. at the time I was carrying this little girl it was not proper for a girl to have a child out of wedlock. This was probably the most difficult decision of my entire life to make. I was 22 years old and very naive. I was raised very sheltered and very strict by my mother.

  I remember being in the hospital with her and dressing her the day we both left the hospital. I have never forgotten the beautiful black hair and the blue eyes and the little dimples in her face. As I left the hospital with the lady who was picking up the little girl, I can still see myself in the taxi and her asking me to give her the baby. I did not want to give her the child, however, I did realize, I did not have the wear-with-all to take care of her myself. Yes, I have always loved this little girl and been tortured every December of my life from the day she was born that I did not have her with me.

  She writes that watching television shows like Oprah and Maury gave her the courage and the confidence to come forward. She lists the facts of where she was born, what street she lived on as a child, how she grew up. She tells the names of her parents and when they died. She says how tall she is and how much she weighs.

  She writes of never forgetting.

  Each bit of information swims through me, takes root, digging in. There are no filters, there are no screens. I have no protection from this.

  She closes her letter by saying, “I have never married, I have always felt guilty about giving this little girl away.”

  I am that little girl.

  I call the lawyer and ask for another letter, with more information, a medical history, a more detailed explanation of what happened, what she’s been doing since, and a photograph of her.

  A day later, in a panic, I call the lawyer back. “Oh,” I say. “Oh, I forgot. Could you ask her who the father is?” Not my father, but the father.”

  “Okay,” he says. “Okay. I’ll put it on the list.”

  Within days, a second letter arrives, again having been opened.

  I suppose now, I should tell you about Norman Hecht. This is difficult for me because to me it is turning back the hands of time. I went to work for Norman at the Princess Shop in downtown Washington D.C. I was 15 years old. I worked for him on Thursday night and on Saturdays. During the summer, I worked fulltime. Norman as you know was much older than I. He was very nice to me. This relationship started very innocently. He would offer to drive me home and we would talk about many things on the way. Then one day while we were working he asked me if I would like to go to dinner with him. This was the beginning. At age 17, he called my mother and asked if he could marry me. My mother said, “she is too young.” Hung up the telephone, turned to me and said, I do not want you to see this man ever again. At this time, I was in love and nothing she said would stop me. I have always been a very determined person. Stubborn if you will. This is me. Norman is married at that time and promises to get a divorce and marry me. This was not my idea but his. Time goes on, I become pregnant with the young lady. He thinks I should go to Florida. He will buy a house for us both. About three months later, I am very unhappy. I return to Washington. Norman and I start to have disagreements. During the last three months of the pregnancy I stayed with my mother in Virginia where her home was. Shortly before the baby was born, Norman again said he would marry me. He asked if he could come and pick me up and take me to buy things for the baby. I told him no. I did not call him when the baby was born.

  Norman to the best of my knowledge lives in Potomac, Md. He has four children. All of his children were born prior to the birth of our child. He was an All American Football Player. To the best of my knowledge his father was Jewish, his mother, Irish. I knew only his mother. She was a little chubby lady. Very kind and very nice to me.

  You asked about my general health. I periodically do have a problem with bronchitis. This is treated with medicine. Damp weather is not for me. I do take pills for high blood pressure. Other than that, I am fine. I am nearsighted and do have soft teeth. Both inherited, my eyes from my father, my teeth from my mother.

  She ends her second letter, “…I have a great fear of being disappointed with what I am now doing.”

  Later, she will tell me that Frosh, reading the letter, recognized the father’s name and called her saying that if she was going to give the father’s name, she’d better let the father know what she was doing. She will tell me that she called my father and that he was shocked to hear from her, horrified at what she was doing, and told her that watching Oprah and Maury was beneath her.

  Frosh is driving me crazy with his tinkering. It is an intrusion and interruption of the events—whose side is he on, what is he looking for, who is he trying to protect? I don’t want anyone reading my mail. I get a post office box. I call Frosh and ask him to pass my new mailing information on to Ellen. I purposely do not give her my last name, or my phone number. Having had no control over this situation for thirty-one years, I need to measure things out, moderate the amount of contact.

  The father, another name to look up in the phone book, another set of blanks to fill in. What did his name mean to the lawyer? Why did he recognize it? Who is my father?

  I call a friend in Washington, a native, a man who knows things.

  “Does this name ring a bell?”

  There is a pause. “It does. He used to come into one of the clubs.”

  “Anything else?” I ask.

  “That’s all that comes to mind. If I think of anything I’ll let you know.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Hey, is this someone you’re thinking of writing about?”

  The next week, without warning, my parents visit me in New York.

  “Surprise, surprise.”

  They are being incredibly nice, warm and loving, as though I have a terminal disease—six months to live.

  “We’d like to take you out to dinner,” they say.

  I can’t go and I can’t tell them why. I send them to dinner, knowing that while they are gone, I will call her.

  Hers is the most frightening voice I’ve ever heard—low, nasal, gravelly, vaguely animal. I tell her who I am and she screams, “Oh my God. This is the most wonderful day of my life.” Her voice, her emotion, comes in bursts, like punctuation—I can’t tell if she is laughing or crying. In the background there is a flick, a sharp suck of air—smoking.

  The phone call is thrilling, flirty as a first date, like the beginning of something. There is a rush of curiosity, the desire to know everything at once. What is your life like, how do your days begin and end? What do you do for fun? Why did you come and find me? What do you want?

  Every nuance, every detail means something. I am like an amnesiac being awakened. Things I know about myself, things that exist without language, my hardware, my mental firing patterns—parts of me that are fundamentally, inexorably me are being echoed on the other end, confirmed as a DNA match. It is not an entirely comfortable sensation.

  “Tell me about you—who are you?” she asks.

  I tell her that I live in New York, I am a writer, I have a dog. No more or less.

  She tells me that she loves New York, that her father used to come to New York and would always return with presents from FAO Schwarz. She tells me how much she loved her father, who died of a heart attack when she was seven because “he liked rich food.”

  This causes an immediate pain in my chest: the idea that I might die of a heart attack early in life, that I now know I need to be careful, that the things I enjoy most are dangerous.

  She goes on, “I come from a very strange family. We’re not quite right.”

  “What do you mean, strange?” I ask.

  She tells me about her mother dying of a stroke a couple of years earlier. She tells me about her own life falling apart, how she moved from Washington to Atlantic City. She tells me that after she gave birth to me her mother wouldn’t come to the hospital to pick her up. She had to tak
e the bus home. She tells me that it took all her strength and courage to come looking for me.

  And then she says, “Have you heard from your father? It would be nice if the three of us could get together,” she says. “We could all come to New York and have dinner.”

  She wants everything all at once and it is too much for me. I am talking to the woman who has loomed in my mind, larger than life, for the entirety of my life, and I am terrified. There is a deep fracture in my thoughts, a refrain constantly echoing: I am not who I thought I was, and I have no idea who I am.

  I am not who I thought I was, and neither is she the queen of queens that I imagined.

  “I can’t see you yet.”

  “Why can’t I see you?”

  I am tempted to tell her, You can’t see me right now, because right now I am not visible to anyone, even myself. I have evaporated.

  “When can we talk again?” she asks as we are hanging up. “When? I hope you will forgive me for what I did thirty-one years ago. When can I see you? If you said yes, I would come there right now. I would be at your door. Will you call again soon? I love you. I love you so much.”

  My parents return from dinner. I am looking at a picture of her, a Xerox of her driver’s license that the lawyer forwarded to me. Ellen Ballman, strong, thick, fierce, like a prison matron. There is another photo in the envelope—Ellen with a niece and nephew, with stuffed animals in the background. There is something about the way feeling moves across the face—something vaguely familiar. In the cheeks, the eyes, eyebrows, forehead I see traces of myself.

  “How did she have Frosh’s name?” my mother wants to know.

  “She said she’d heard it once and never forgot.”

  “Interesting,” my mother says, “because Frosh wasn’t the first lawyer; the first lawyer died and we got Frosh after you were born, when we were having some problems.”