On her way back to school to retrieve Winnie later that afternoon, Maren stopped at the grocery store to stock up on bread and butter in anticipation of the difficult conversation to come. One of the few traditions she’d carried over from her childhood was the comforting magic of hot, heavily buttered white toast. Like Wonder Bread white. The intense gnawing sensation in her gut indicated that today would be a full-loaf encounter. Maren headed straight for the toaster the second they arrived home.
A few minutes later, Maren entered the living room with a plate piled high with toast, buttered all the way out to the edges just the way they both liked it, and sat down next to Winnie.
“Wow. Must be serious,” Winnie said, glancing up from her phone. “That’s, like, half a loaf right there. Let me guess. Today’s toast topic is my dad?”
Maren nodded grimly. “I need you to promise to just listen for a little bit, OK? This is going to be upsetting, and I’m sorry.”
“OK…” Winnie said, chucking her phone down on the large, rectangular ottoman that doubled as a coffee table.
Maren had her attention now. She tucked one leg under her and faced Winnie. “So you know how I’ve always told you I didn’t know who your father was and that you were my gift from a one-night stand?”
“Yeah?”
“Well, that wasn’t a lie…but it wasn’t the complete truth either.”
“What do you mean?”
Maren took a deep breath. She felt like a little girl standing at the end of the high dive for the first time, working up the courage to jump. She closed her eyes and leaped. “I was raped, Win. Your father was the man—or boy, I guess—who raped me.” It was a relief to finally say it out loud, but she was suddenly chilled to the bone. She reached for the throw blanket behind her and wrapped it around her shoulders.
“What do you mean by raped?” Winnie’s eyes were bugging out. “Like date rape? Was this, like, an ambiguous consent situation?”
Maren knew there was a whole vocabulary around sexual consent and assault these days. In many ways, she wished she’d come of age in today’s world. But then she might have aborted Winnie. Maren’s life would have been easier, but she wouldn’t trade Winnie’s bright light for any alternate journey in the time-space continuum.
“No,” Maren responded, her eyes already tearing up. “I mean raped, as in I was passed out drunk, and I never knew who did it to me.”
“Oh my God,” Winnie said and reached for her mom’s hand. “What happened?”
“Well…I was seventeen, basically your age, and it was the night before I was leaving for college. It happened at a late-night party at my parents’ country club. It was by far the worst, most traumatic night of my life. I’m so sorry,” Maren said, grabbing a tissue from the side table and drying her eyes.
“Why are you apologizing?” Winnie said.
“I don’t know. I don’t know,” Maren repeated while staring down at the mountain of toast in front of her, unable to meet Winnie’s eyes. “My mom made it even worse by not believing me. She blamed me for drinking too much. Ordered me to go to college and forget about it. I think I’ve carried so much shame and pain over this for so long it’s like I can’t separate what really happened from whether it’s somehow my fault.”
“Oh my God. I’m sorry I keep saying that, but just, like, oh my God. Then what happened?”
“When I came home for Thanksgiving a few months later, I thought I was just depressed and fat, but my mom figured out right away I was pregnant, and my parents totally freaked. I was too far along to consider an abortion—not that my parents would have allowed that anyway. Long story short, they ended up driving me to Wisconsin at the end of that weekend and leaving me there at a creepy home for unwed mothers that was straight out of the 1950s. All my parents cared about was making damn sure no one at their precious country club or church ever found out their daughter was a slut. The plan was for me to give birth to you and then hand you over to a ‘nice Christian family,’” Maren air-quoted.
Winnie’s doe eyes were breaking Maren’s heart. She’d known this would be tough, but it was wrenching to watch her daughter internalize that she was not just unwanted but actually forced upon Maren. “Anyway,” she said, waving her hand in the air, “obviously I couldn’t go through with it. What I need you to understand is that even though you were conceived without my consent, I knew by the time I was in my third trimester that I was meant to be your mom. I did what I had to do to keep you. And sadly, that meant running away from everything and everyone I had ever known.”
“So my grandparents didn’t die in a car crash when I was a toddler?” Winnie looked stunned.
“No, they didn’t. My dad died of a heart attack when you were five. My mom is still alive, and I send her a card once a year with your picture,” Maren said. “But she’s never responded.”
“I can’t believe she doesn’t want to meet me. I can’t believe you lied to me.” Staring straight ahead, Winnie hugged a pillow to her chest.
“I only hid the truth to protect you until you were old enough to handle it.” Maren reached out for Winnie’s hand, but Winnie pulled her arm away. “End of story. I wanted you to feel normal, wanted, and loved—because you are all those things. None of this was your fault.”
“But half my genes are from a horrible person.” She turned to Maren with tears freely flowing. “Tell me the truth: Do you ever look at me and hate me?”
“No, sweetie, no! Of course not,” Maren said, again reaching for Winnie’s hand. This time, Winnie didn’t resist. “I hate the man who did such a hideous thing to me, but I love every single cell of you. You’ve never been anything but perfect to me from the second you were born.”
“Wait…” Winnie said, wiping away her tears with the back of her hand. “So that Naomi woman outside school really is married to my dad? I mean, your rapist?”
Maren nodded. “You were right about the account Alicia set up a few years ago with your DNA sample. I found it yesterday. My guess is she logged back in to try to find your dad with the hope of ruining your first-generation hook, not that it would matter what his education level was when you’ve never even met him, so don’t ask me what her thinking was there,” Maren said, reaching for a piece of toast and taking a bite. “But because of all this, I learned the name of my rapist for the first time. I always thought it was this one entitled creep I’d grown up with, but I was wrong. It was a name I didn’t even recognize, which meant I’d been raped by a complete stranger.”
“Oh my God, Mom! That’s awful.”
“It turns out it was the entitled creep’s younger cousin.” Maren brushed the crumbs from her lap into her hands.
“If that woman hadn’t come to Seattle, would you ever have told me any of this?” Winnie asked.
“I always told myself I would tell you when you were eighteen.” Maren looked down at the half-eaten piece of toast in her hand. “But if I’m being completely honest, the closer you got to eighteen, the less I could imagine it. The thought was just too painful. I guess with DNA testing everywhere these days, though, I would have told you eventually, but no mom ever really wants to tell her daughter she’s the product of rape.”
As they sat side by side, each consuming a piece of toast, Maren could all but hear the gears turning in Winnie’s head, trying to weave together the new threads of her life story. Winnie’s initial shock and anger had been expected, but Maren took it as a good sign that Winnie hadn’t stormed off to her bedroom or grabbed the car keys. Unsure what to say next, she waited for Winnie to make the first move.
“What do you think his wife wants from me?”
Maren almost wished Winnie had more questions about the rape or her grandparents. Anything to avoid humanizing her rapist and his wife. But she owed Winnie the truth. “Apparently their three-year-old son has leukemia and needs a stem cell transplant. They seem to be hoping you m
ight be a match.”
“Wow.” Winnie slumped back into the couch. “I feel like I just walked into the middle of a soap opera. So that’s what the woman meant when she said it was critical that she talk to me. That little boy is my half brother, right?”
“Genetically speaking, yes,” Maren said, starting to worry about where the conversation was headed.
“Will he die if he doesn’t get the transplant?”
“It sounds like he might,” Maren acknowledged. “It’s sad, but sometimes people get sick and die.”
“But there’s a chance I might be able to save him?”
“There’s a chance, yes. But it’s not without risk. You just had brain surgery for God’s sake. You could get an infection. You yourself could die.”
“Like you just said: it’s sad, but sometimes shit happens.”
“That’s not exactly what I said.” Maren was definitely regretting Winnie’s tenure on the award-winning EBA debate team right now. “But regardless, that doesn’t mean you have to ask for shit to happen, as you put it. Not when you have another option.”
“Like letting my half brother die? No thanks. Even if his dad is a terrible person, that’s not his fault. Any more than it’s my fault, right?”
“You may want to help the boy, but what about me? I’m a victim here too.”
“I get that, Mom. I really do. But what about the part where you got me out of the deal? Doesn’t that count for something? And also, I don’t think this is the sort of revenge that would really make you feel better.”
“Oh really, then what would?”
“I don’t know. Maybe getting a life?” Winnie said, her tone softening. “You’ve spent the past eighteen years all alone holding onto this awful story, letting it define you.”
“I have a life.” Maren looked away. “I have you. I have my job.” Her voice sounded hollow, as though she were ticking off items on a grocery list.
“Come on, Mom. You have a job you hate, working for a total bitch who pushes us both around. You have me, but I’m going to college soon. And I always thought you didn’t have time for friends or dating since you’re a single mom and all, but that’s not really the problem, is it?”
Maren avoided her daughter’s perceptive eyes.
“Don’t you think it’s time for us to figure out how to let this go and help you move on?” Winnie asked gently.
“Maybe, but it kills me that he’ll never rot in prison for what he did to me.”
“I know,” Winnie said.
“Can I at least kick him in the balls until he turns into a soprano?”
“Sure. I promise I’ll hold him down for you, OK?” Winnie said with a brief chuckle, but then her brow furrowed with her telltale determination. “I just want to meet them and see if there’s any way for me to help the kid.”
Maren massaged her temples. “I wish it were that simple. If we meet with them, you’ll probably learn some things that will be so upsetting you’ll wish you’d never asked.”
“If there’s more, can’t you just tell me now?”
“There are some things only my rapist knows. And there are other things I can only say out loud once. Please don’t ask more of me. I’m strong, but I’m not superhuman.” From the concerned look on Winnie’s face, Maren thought, or maybe hoped, she’d pushed back hard enough that Winnie would reconsider asking for the meeting.
“I think we should email them now. We’ll feel bad if we wait too long and something happens.”
Maren had obsessed for so long over telling Winnie the truth about her origin story, but she’d never thought for a moment to envision a meeting with her daughter, her rapist, and his wife. This was beyond soap opera; it was more like an episode of The Jerry Springer Show.
Maren sighed. “How did I raise such a good person? Right now, I wish you were a little more selfish and callous. But listen, even though you think you’re so smart, you’re still a minor for a few more months. So we’re going to do this my way. Let’s not forget, you had brain surgery a couple of weeks ago, and your arm is still healing,” she said, pointing to Winnie’s cast, “and we don’t even know who did that to you. For all we know, they could have something to do with it. Naomi said herself she was there. I’ll arrange the meeting, but if you change your mind at any time, all you have to do is say the word and we’re outta there.”
Winnie nodded her assent.
“One more thing. When we meet him—”
“Wait, I don’t even know his name,” Winnie interjected.
Maren was loath to say her rapist’s name out loud for the same reason she didn’t allow Winnie to name the stray cats that appeared at their back door every so often. She feared Winnie would become attached to something she couldn’t have. “Your sperm donor’s name is Chase Alder.”
Winnie nodded, and Maren continued. “I need him to come clean about everything that happened that night if I’m ever going to get closure. I need you to respect me on this. If he refuses to be honest, we walk. OK? I don’t care how cute or innocent his kid is, that boy’s blood will be on his father’s hands, not yours, if he can’t treat us with the decency we deserve after what he did.”
“I can live with those terms. And, Mom? This wasn’t your fault. I’m really sorry for everything you went through.” Winnie laid her head down in Maren’s lap.
“I’m sorry too.” Maren stroked Winnie’s silky hair. “About everything except you.”
* * *
From: Maren Pressley, Today, 9:45 p.m.
To: Naomi Alder
Subject: My Daughter
This is Maren Pressley. You are under the mistaken impression you’ve been communicating with my daughter through apairofgenes.com, but someone else has control of that account. Please cease all messages through that platform immediately.
I will give you and your husband one chance to meet my daughter and me to explain yourselves. Your husband must accompany you or the deal is off. Meet us at the Four Seasons Hotel restaurant in downtown Seattle tomorrow at 5 p.m. Bring medical records proving your son’s condition. Be prepared to tell the truth about everything. I am making no promises other than to hear you out. If I get even a whiff that either of you is holding back information about ANYTHING, I will physically drag my daughter home, and you will never see her or her stem cells again.
* * *
From: Naomi Alder, Today, 9:47 p.m.
To: Maren Pressley
Re: My Daughter
We will be there. Thank you so, so much.
* * *
The next day, Alicia flew out early for a board dinner in NYC, and Bryan was picking up Brooke early from school and taking the family jet to meet Alicia in “The City” for the weekend. Never one to miss an elite golf opportunity, Bryan had finagled an invitation from one of Aspyre’s investment bankers to play Winged Foot, an exclusive golf course in the Hamptons. While Bryan would be occupied golfing and drinking, Brooke and Alicia would be busy shopping with the personal stylist Maren had hired to help them find dresses for Snowcoming and the Parents’ College Stress Buster Extravaganza, or whatever the hell Diana was currently calling it. With the Stones on the opposite coast, Maren had a bit more time to prepare for the meetup with the Alders.
Maren was no stranger to the accoutrements of power, having served Alicia for so long. Just as Alicia did when she was preparing for a television interview or public speaking event, Maren forced herself into an ice-cold shower to invigorate her mind and body. Though she rarely put effort into her own hair and makeup, she did Alicia’s all the time. Rummaging through Winnie’s makeup drawer, Maren moisturized and then applied foundation, mascara, eyeliner, sun-kissed powder, and lipstick. She selected the outfit from her wardrobe that most telegraphed competence and control—black slacks and a red blouse. An updo twist completed the don’t-fuck-with-me portrait of power she sought. Sati
sfied with her appearance, Maren headed to EBA to pick up Winnie from school at three p.m. sharp, and from there, they drove straight downtown.
Though it would be only a small win in the confrontation that was about to unfold, Maren was fixated on arriving and being seated at the table well before the Alders. The thought of walking into the restaurant knowing Chase would be watching her body move through the tables toward them was more than she could bear. She needed to have control of the entire interaction, and that started with her appearance and the initial greeting. She figured Winnie might as well do some homework and get a fancy meal out of the ordeal; Maren fully intended to stick the Alders with the bill.
There weren’t enough flowers in the world to create an atmosphere of warmth in the marbled hotel lobby of the Four Seasons, although clearly the staff had been ordered to try. The pungent fragrances did little to soften the harsh clicking of women’s heels on the hard floor or the thrum of rich people demanding their due, but at least the dim lighting didn’t further aggravate the pounding headache she’d awoken with that morning. As they wound their way toward the empty restaurant and chose a table in the back overlooking the waterfront Ferris Wheel, Maren congratulated herself on her first tactical victory.
As always, Winnie was ravenous after school. She glanced at Maren, silently confirming and reconfirming permission, before placing her order for a $25 organic grass-fed burger with fries. Maren couldn’t help herself. “She’ll also have a shaved vegetable salad on the side.”
Winnie shot her a dirty look.
“What?” Maren shrugged. “I’m not an idiot. You think I’m going to pass up a chance to stuff you full of organic produce? If you’re this smart growing up on pesticides, just think what a genius you’d be if I could have afforded clean food.” She turned to the server and added, “I’ll have a bottle of sparkling water with a lime, please.” She hoped the expensive bubbly water would settle her roiling stomach.
Girls with Bright Futures Page 24