Future Home of the Living God(77)

“Could you stop that for a minute?”

“Sure, if you want to eat off dirty plates.”

“You’re scraping a pan, not a plate.”

“Be my guest.”

I get up and start scrubbing away. She stands beside me, guilty.

“That’s okay. You don’t have to.”

“You’re always cleaning. It’s so annoying.”

“What else is there to do?”

“You can go outside, Mom.”

My voice is angrier than I mean it to be.

“As for me, I have to stay inside listening to you scrape your stupid bean pans.”

“I’d love to go outside, but don’t you get it?”

“Get what?”

She takes her pencil and paper out of her back pocket. She maintains that it is the safest way to communicate. I think she uses notes when she wants to halt actual communication. She writes: If they see me here they’ll know you’re here.

After I read the paper, I crush it. The paper crushing infuriates her and she hisses.

“You just take for granted, don’t you, that Glen is putting himself in danger, not to mention me. All for you. But that’s nothing. If Eddy or Sweetie snap their fingers, you’re nice as pie. God, we spoiled you. You’re obnoxious!”

Obnoxious is the word she always used when I was a bad teenager, and she knows I can’t stand it. Ditto spoiled. I always react venomously, but today I go over the top. I force her to answer the question she has avoided all my life.

“Mom, how did you adopt me? Don’t wiggle out of this. Tell me straight. I need to know. This time I don’t want your eye rolls. I want the truth.”

We are standing by the sink. Outside, the November ground is slightly frosted over. The cool of winter. I face my blue-eyed Cinderella-godmother mom, who is biting her lip. Even wringing her hands, like in a bad stage play. But slowly she is cracking. Yes, I can see it—she will tell me. I nod, holding her gaze.

“You’re not adopted,” she blurts out.

What a weird reversal. Impossible to take that in. My mouth doesn’t work. I shake my head to dislodge my tongue. My hair flies out of its loose ponytail.

“You’re not adopted,” she says again. She is still furious and maybe, I don’t know, wants to hurt me. Because she says an unbelievable thing.

“Glen is your biological father.”

My brain does not believe her, but my heart does. My chest hurts. I reel to a chair. Plunk down. There is just no way to absorb this. But I get it—her anxiety over Glen and her anger at me have combined to the point where she’s told the truth. Again, I try for words, but there are no words or even feelings yet. It takes a long time before I start to breathe, and then sadness overwhelms me.

“If that’s true, if you kept that from me, I could have had my real father all my life.”

“But,” says Sera, as if she was waiting for this, “even though I’m not your biological mother, aren’t I your real mom?”

I stare at her. The fact that I’m hesitating throws us both. She now looks horrified at what she has revealed and where this is going. I guess, as the saying goes, the truth will make you miserable and then it will set you free. Am I now free? Is Mom? Remember, I think, she ate a gas-station hot dog for you! I am in that calm stage of shock.

“So what happened? Why isn’t Glen here? Is Sweetie my real birth mom?”

“Yes.”

“So . . . she and Glen had a relationship. Like the Retro Vinyl clerk. That’s why he’s not here?”

“Yes.”

“Quit making me tell the story!”

“Okay.”

“Oh my god. Mom! How did he meet her? What was he doing?”

“He was representing the tribe. A land case.”

I am suddenly overcome with hurt, with fury.

“I never want to see him again. Or talk about him.”

But of course that isn’t true. I always loved my father. I love him now. It all fits—the times people thought he was my real father. Our similar hands, hair, even our walk. I need to tell him how this affects me, because he’ll care. Won’t he? But if he really cared, he would have told me. I want to try and understand what happened, even though it blows my mind. I want the stabilizing effect his presence always had on us. Without him, Sera and I can’t stop fighting. His light nudges, simple jokes, his ability to pry my mother out of her obsessive head-space, all that helped. I’m afraid she’s going to clean herself to death. Oh let her! I hate my mom for keeping this from me, and then I hate her even worse for telling me. At the same time, she is the bravest person I have ever known. I will never forget her showing up at that hospital with a lunch tray. But Glen!

How could Glen have agreed to lie? Was he going to lie to me all of my life?

Suddenly it hits me. Sera’s insecurity. It was Sera. He was protecting Sera so that they would both be equal as parents, so he wouldn’t be the “real” parent and she the possibly lesser “adoptive” parent. He gave up his “realness” for her, but when he did that, he kept his “realness” from me. He kept me wondering all my life. And even Sweetie was in on the deception.

That’s the worst thing—the unnecessary deception. How I always seized on our physical likeness, but pushed it out of my mind. And the weird loneliness I now feel about being tricked all my life. I leave the room, walk down the little hallway to sit by Grandma’s bed. I am just too spent with the force of all that I must absorb to do anything but stare at the shape of Grandma Virginia, hardly a ripple in the golden covers. Her severe little face is upturned, catching the light. She senses my presence immediately and says, in her thin, breathy voice, “What is it, child?”