The Two-Family House(88)

“Never. Your father was a prince. Your brothers were a handful, though, with all the fighting and running around. Sometimes all I wanted to do was just go downstairs and be with the girls. Mimi would play dress-up and she used to love for me to do her hair. Dinah was little then, she only wanted to cuddle. And Judith … well, Judith was like a grown-up. Even when she was ten, I could talk to her. You were that way too, you know. Brilliant, both of you.”

Natalie smiled. “Let’s hope the thesis committee agrees with you.”

“Don’t worry about them. I’m sure they’re going to see right away what a genius you are.”

“Sure. Anyway, go on.”

“I know this sounds terrible, but sometimes your brothers would drive me crazy. Rose had three sweet little girls, and I was jealous because I knew they would all be close to her when they grew up and I would be alone. I used to worry that your brothers would all move away and get married to girls who hated me.”

“Meanwhile, Sam lives the farthest, and it’s only twenty minutes from here! And no one could ever hate you. Everyone loves you.”

“Well, I’ve been lucky. But back then I worried. Anyway, I was thirty-five when I got pregnant again. My grandmother used to say if a woman waited more than seven years between babies, her body changed and she’d have the opposite of whatever she had the last time. I thought for sure I’d have a girl.

“Rose got pregnant at the same time. Our pregnancies had overlapped before, but we never had due dates as close as that. We were so excited. Rose and I were like sisters back then. But she was worried. The whole time she was pregnant, she was scared of having a girl.”

“She told you that?”

“She didn’t have to tell me, honey. It was obvious. Uncle Mort was convinced they were having a boy. He called the baby ‘he,’ he told the girls they were having a brother, he told everyone who’d listen. He started paying more attention to Rose and the girls—and that only made her feel more pressured. I don’t think she would have been able to bear it, to disappoint him again.”

“Geez. Lucky for her she had Teddy.”

Helen’s face reddened. She looked away. There was something amiss in her silence. “Mom?”

“Natalie, Johnny isn’t your cousin.”

“What?”

“I don’t know how else to tell you. Johnny isn’t your first cousin. You love him and you’re going to marry him and have healthy babies and you don’t need to worry about those stories Arlene tells about her uncle’s children.”

“What are you saying?” Natalie stood up from her seat and started pacing across the kitchen floor. “What are you saying to me?”

“I’m saying, the night you were born, the night of the blizzard, Rose and I … she was so distraught, we…”

Natalie’s ears were ringing and her hands started to shake. She stopped pacing and fell back, limp, into her chair. Her eyes were blank, and when she spoke, she was incredulous.

“Rose and Mort are my parents?”

“Yes.”

“And Teddy was your son?”

“Yes.”

Natalie shook her head. Her brain was filled with a buzzing static so that every thought was muddled. “But how? How is that even possible? How could that happen?”

“You were born first and then Teddy was born a few minutes later. Rose was absolutely crushed, hopeless. She didn’t speak. And then Judith came into the room and she asked us which baby was her mother’s and which baby was mine. Rose looked at me then, and she was so … I don’t know. So desperate. She stared and stared at me, pleading, and I … I nodded. I agreed. And then it was done. Without a single word it was done.”

“What do you mean, it was done? You decided to switch your children without even discussing it? How could you have known what Rose was thinking? How could she have known that you agreed?”

“We just knew.”

“But what about the midwife? Didn’t she see what you were doing? Didn’t she say anything?”

“No. She was out of the room when it happened, and when she came back I was holding you and Rose was holding Teddy. The midwife filled out the forms the way we told her to. She knew, but she didn’t stop us.”

“Did Daddy know? Does Mort?”

“Only Rose and I know. And now you.”

Natalie lifted her knees to her chest and rocked back and forth in her chair. “Oh my God. Oh my God. Why are you telling me this now? Why?”

“Because I can’t let what I did control who you marry or how you live the rest of your life. I want you to be happy, even if it means you hate me and you never speak to me again. Even if it means everyone finds out the truth. Even if it means you know I’m not your mother.”

Natalie’s lungs were burning. A terrible tightness gripped her chest, and her thoughts turned suddenly to Abe. If she shut her eyes tight, she could conjure Abe’s face, she could summon his smile. She could hear his daily complaints about the diet Helen kept him on, about the tub of margarine that had been substituted for his beloved dish of butter. “Why do you make me eat this crap, Helen?” he would ask. “Because I love you,” Helen would answer. “Now eat it.”

Natalie tried to picture Abe sitting with them, listening to the true story of the night she had been born. She tried to imagine him pounding his fists on the table, screaming his outrage and walking away from Helen, the same way Natalie wanted to now. But when she tried to conjure the scene, she found that she could not. All she could see was Helen and Abe together in the funeral chapel on the day they buried Teddy. All she could picture was Abe cradling her mother in his arms after Helen had just slapped him across the face. All she could hear were the old rabbi’s words, words she had then been too young to understand—“Love is always forgiving.”