In a New York Minute(33)

My mom had told me my birth father’s name, Carmine (another reason I’d always assumed he was Italian American), but because I knew she didn’t want to talk about him, I’d always just left the topic alone. And maybe that was for the best, anyway. Because mixed in with the disappointment was relief that I didn’t have to actually deal with the fear of hurting my mom by digging into her past. Just this alone always outweighed my desire to know exactly where I’d inherited half of my DNA, even if it could explain why I’d always felt like an outsider in my own family.

Sure, they loved me unconditionally, but that didn’t mean they quite understood me. I’d always been a little bit louder, a little bit more emotional, a little bit more creative than everyone else. It had felt confusing and isolating knowing exactly who I was while also never quite feeling like it was good enough. But no matter what my issues were, I didn’t want my mother to feel like she wasn’t enough for me, or for her and Jim to think that I didn’t appreciate them and all they’d done for me.

Still, I’d always existed at arm’s length from the more intimate parts of their lives. It was just how it was; we didn’t share deep feelings, big emotions, hard things. And my birth father fell squarely into that last category.

When the second email came through about thirty minutes later, with the subject “Hello from your half sister” and a link to my DNADiscovery inbox, my first instinct was to assume it was spam. I forwarded a screenshot to Lola and Cleo. This is fake, right? Someone scamming me for something? I wrote.

But then Cleo responded immediately with It looks real to me, and Lola added, I told you this happened to my coworker! Anytime there is a DNA match they alert people.

I read the subject again, and said, “Are you fucking kidding me?” out loud to my empty apartment. I was in the middle of getting ready for a spin class. I stood there, pants bunched around my knees, and clicked on the link to the message, which opened on the DNADiscovery site.

Hello,

I know this is a very strange message to receive on here. I am your half sister, living in Italy. Our father died in 1993, not long after he returned from America. I was two at the time. He was never married to my mother, and there were always rumors of other children. I live and work in Milan now but grew up in Sorrento, not far from where our father is from, and I studied and worked in London after university. My job is in interior design and architecture. I have my own firm and work all over the world. I have also found some cousins I did not know existed through this site. I would love to connect with you when you are ready.

Warmly,

Anna Farina



I read it again.

And again.

And then one more time, as if by doing so the words might disappear. But they did not. I shuffled over to the bed to sit down, pants now around my ankles, and typed her name into Google, misspelling it three times because my fingers were so shaky.

Sure enough, a link to her design firm popped up, a visual orgasm of modern homes and sleek, angular spaces. My heart pounded, knocking around my entire body.

I’d only ever known the barest-bone details of my father’s existence, and he was so far removed from my life that he never seemed entirely real to begin with. Most of the time it felt like my mom got knocked up by a ghost who then chose not to haunt me. And it never dawned on me that he could have had other kids. People who might look like me. Act like me. Get me. The new realization had left me unable to act, hands frozen, gripping my phone.

And while it felt ridiculous to admit, I had never even considered that this could happen. It had always been easier to not give him much thought, place the idea of him on a shelf and let it collect dust. But of course he had been a real person, with a life, and a family, and people who cared about him. And kids. He had kids. More than just me.

And he was dead. Dead. This thought devastated me, in a way that felt totally unexpected. Why was I sad about the death of someone I’d never even met? I was overcome with the weirdest feeling in my chest, tight and hard. Then I blinked and realized why: I was about to cry.

In a panic, I did the only thing that made sense to my brain. I pulled up my pants, shoved on my sneakers, grabbed my bag, and ran out of my apartment.

“Cleo!” I shouted into the phone the second she picked up. I knew she’d be awake; she was always up early to meditate and go through emails before work.

“Holy shit! What’s wrong?” I could hear her spring into friend-emergency mode through the phone.

“I think I’m having an anxiety attack. Or is it a panic attack? What is it when your heart feels like it’s beating in your head?” I raced down the street toward the subway, power walking.

“What happened?”

“That DNA-test thing we did? I just got mine back. I have a fucking half sister.” The words were coming out of my mouth at twice their normal speed.

She let out a drawn-out “Holy crap.”

“In Italy. I’m not half–Italian American. I’m half–Italian Italian.”

The lady standing in the doorway of the Laundromat gave me a strange look as I passed by, still shouting.

“Wow, your mom got knocked up by an Italian dude. Way to go, Diane.”

“Cleo! He’s dead.” There was that tightness in my chest again, crawling back up my throat.

“Oh my god,” she gasped. “Okay, look, where are you? I can hear outside sounds.”