The Vanishing Year(62)

I appreciate this simple kindness. For all her chilly demeanor, she doesn’t have to give it to me, the reassurance that Evelyn’s hesitancy came from love, not rejection. She is, above all else, self-aware then.

She sits up straight, pulls her arms against her midsection, protective. “How is she, your mother?”

“She’s dead.” My voice is flat and I close my eyes. “You didn’t know?”

Her face freezes, her eyes go wide. “No. We . . . well the whole family sort of fell apart later. After my mom died. There was talk of a reunion at one point . . .”

The genealogy website. Growing up, I remember asking Evelyn about family. Other people had cousins, big Fourth of July barbecues and vacations, dramatic fights and people to call when your car broke down or you needed to borrow a hundred dollars. This is what I saw on television. At the time, she’d touched her eyebrow, shook her head. We have only each other, bud. I wonder now, had she wanted it that way? To protect me? Or to keep me?

Caroline leaned forward, her breath hot on my cheek. Her eyes studying my face, so close we could touch. But we didn’t. “Listen,” she said. “No one wanted to hurt either of you. It all happened so fast, and I was barely functioning. But you have to understand. Mother thought if she knew, she’d back out. She didn’t know there were two. That she wouldn’t want you both. I know it wasn’t the best thing to do, but you have to understand—”

My heart picks up speed. Two? “Both?”

Her hand flies to her mouth and between those long delicate fingers I hear, “I thought you knew. I thought that was how you found me. She knows about you. I just assumed she sent you.”

“Who? Who sent me? Who is she?” My mouth keeps asking questions my brain already knows the answers to.

“I had twins, Zoe. You have a sister.”





CHAPTER 20



“I don’t understand,” I say. “You’ve met her? Where is she?” I whip my head around, like she’s going to magically appear in the living room. My hands are shaking and a pulse throbs in my neck.

“I think she lives in Brooklyn with her parents. She was here, oh maybe three or four years ago? She knows about you. I told her, but she had already known. Her adoptive parents . . .” Caroline splays her hands outward and lets me fill in the missing information. Evelyn didn’t know everything. Why?

She takes a deep breath and stands up. “Her name is Joan, but hold on, I’ll get you all her information.” She scuttles out of the room on the balls of her feet, nervous. She’s had control of the conversation up to this point, and now she’s anxious. Impatient. She returns not more than a minute later holding an index card. She pauses in front of me, running her fingernail over the words, before she hands it over. “We didn’t keep in touch. It’s all the information I have.”

Her eyes are huge against her pale face. She’s beautiful, my mother. I look like her but in small ways. In person, our differences are obvious. I’m a cartoonish version of her, I’m drawn with a Magic Marker, deep confident lines. She’s sketched with an artist’s touch: feathery strokes and skittish shadows.

“She’s like me, nervous. I take medication, do you? Is that genetic? It was interesting, her mannerisms are so much like mine. You . . . not as much.” She studies me and I duck my head, studying the index card, the words sliding around as my vision blurs.

My sister’s name and address in Brooklyn are scribbled with disjointed handwriting, slanting one way then the other. Joan Bascio. I look up at Caroline questioningly.

“You can keep that. I copied it.” She looks over at the chair, like she can’t decide if she should sit or if the conversation is over, and she ends up half-hovering over me, stooped and nervous, like a Bryant Park pigeon.

“If Evelyn had known, she would have taken us both,” I say confidently. “Why didn’t she know?” Evelyn was the most maternal person I’d ever met. Her need to nurture was a constant presence in my childhood, every twisted ankle tended to as though she were a wartime nurse. Every cut and scrape thoroughly scoured with alcohol. Despite being woefully unprepared and hopelessly scattered, she’d make up for her lack of preparedness in fret time alone. Her concern was never limited to me. Any lone wolf, lost child, homeless puppy. She was a natural adopter of all misplaced things.

When I was sixteen, I broke my wrist, just a hairline fracture. I’d been helping her clean the faculty office buildings at Berkeley after school, one of her many patchwork jobs. We’d take the train down from Richmond to the UC campus, moving in and out of the administration building, quiet as mice. I’d stood on a chair, trying to dust a light fixture hanging from a conference room ceiling. When I fell, she screamed louder than I did.

In the emergency room, I alternated between reading and daydreaming, trying to distract myself from the pain. Evelyn was quiet, mostly concerned with the bill, her mind running constant stream of co-pays and deductibles against account balances and paychecks. She processed numbers like a ticker tape. A young girl, about my age, paced along the far wall. Hours later, with my arm set and casted in a thick, white plaster, I emerged through the big double doors back into the lobby and the girl was still there. She sat on the floor, her back pushed up against the wall, mascara streaks down her face. Evelyn squared her jaw, marched right over to her, and after a short, whispered conversation, brought the girl over. This is Rachel and she’s coming home with us for dinner. She said it so matter-of-factly, neither Rachel nor I dared argue, despite the fact Evelyn and I had eaten hot dogs and baked beans three nights running. Eat what? I didn’t have the gall to ask. We ate whatever meat Evelyn could find, white and mysterious in the freezer, chopped up with canned vegetables, and then she drove Rachel home. When she returned, her eyes were red-rimmed from crying, but she never explained why. When I pressed her, she just hugged me and called us lucky. This, mystery meat surprise and all. We’re lucky.