“What do you have planned for this trip?” Shaun asks.
“Nothing,” I tell him. This isn’t a vacation. I want to spend time with my family and gain a feel for what their everyday life is like. I want to watch some television, go to the grocery store, take a walk through the neighborhood. I know it doesn’t sound exciting, but I’m not here to be thrilled or entertained. I’m here to absorb as much of what it means to be a part of this family as I can.
“What’s there to see and do?” asks Roger.
“The Jersey Shore,” Shaun answers. “Except I think it’s closed this time of year.”
“Then that should be fun,” I say dryly. “Maybe we can try that authentic Mexican food you talked about last time I was here?”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” Shaun says. “The one in Clayton is good. There’s another in Vineland, but I haven’t tried it.”
The sun peeks over the horizon. I stare out the car window as we cross the Delaware River. City gives way to rural landscape. This is not the New Jersey I remember. The trees are no longer green. Instead, they display their bright fall colors of red, orange, and yellow. Like the muted colors of a flame but without the heat. A sprinkling of leaves adorns the ground at the base of each tree.
All things have their season. The trees act as a reminder, a sign, that Father Petrauschke approaches the fall of his life. One more stroke could send him into the cold depths of winter, from whence no man returns.
“I’m taking you to Joe’s, right?” Shaun asks.
“Yep. He offered to let us stay with him.”
“You could have stayed with anyone,” Shaun says. “My place is open, so is Poppa’s, and my mom would love to have you stay with her, but her place is kind of small.”
“Maybe next time.”
Joe’s sitting on the front steps of his house as we pull onto the property. He has a coffee cup in his hands and is wearing a T-shirt. Apparently, it isn’t cold enough to bother him either. His efforts to stand are stiff and awkward, but there’s a smile on his face.
That he’s waiting for me outside feels like a warmer welcome than any words could convey. Even better than a hug. Joe’s expression is stern most of the time. It’s the little acts of kindness, or in this case excitement, that give him away.
In that way he’s like me. Family and friends have no trouble reading my emotions, but strangers often find my standard, everyday expression intimidating or gruff. Maybe that’s why it’s so easy for me to connect with Joe. We are as much alike as I am different from my siblings in Arizona.
I give Joe a hug. “Good to see you, bro.”
“Yeah,” Joe says, in a raspy voice. “Same here.”
Joe gives us a tour of the house. Roger and I will stay in the upstairs bedroom where Joe’s granddaughter sleeps whenever she stays with them. We leave our bags in the room and head to the kitchen. Tammy-P sticks her head out from one of the other bedrooms. “Oh, good. Glad youse both made it. Joe stayed up all night waiting. Welcome, welcome.”
She pulls her head back into the bedroom and closes the door.
We continue downstairs. Joe points out where everything is located in the kitchen, including a tube-shaped package of pork rolls. “Now it’s your fault if you starve. We have plenty of food, but I’m not your maid, or your cook, or your chauffeur. You can make your own food. You’re family, which means this is your home too.”
“Thanks.” I feel at home. With a smirk on my face, I point to the fridge and ask, “Does that mean you aren’t going to make pork rolls for breakfast? I mean, it is breakfast time, and I thought every self-respecting Jersey native swore by the state food.”
Joe grunts. “All right. I’ll make them this morning, but you need to pay attention so you can make your own from now on.”
“Absolutely.” I watch the process and hope Roger has better culinary instincts than I do.
Joe serves up the sandwiches. They’re better than I remember. How is that even possible? I close my eyes as I enjoy the first mouthful of heaven-sent breakfast meat. My mind is already working on how to convince Joe to make another round of sandwiches tomorrow morning . . . and every morning during my stay. I’m willing to give it a try, but why mess with perfection when Joe has clearly perfected the method of crafting highly addictive breakfast sandwiches.
“You like it?” Joe asks.
I nod my head, unwilling to stop eating in order to answer him.
“Good. You can make your own tomorrow.” Joe walks stiffly into the living room and grabs the remote. He spends a few minutes showing us how to operate the television and then heads upstairs. “I’m tired. Relax, watch some television, or do whatever it is you normally do at home. See you when I get back up.”
Then he walks upstairs, leaving us alone in the kitchen. He really wasn’t kidding about this being our home. Except for the part where they leave us by ourselves, this is the sort of everyday experience I’ve wanted. What surprises me is how comfortable I feel sitting around in my brother’s house without him or Tammy-P attending us. Roger and I watch television for a couple of hours before my lack of sleep catches up with me. I call it a morning and take a short nap.
Two hours of sleep refreshes me enough to function for the rest of the day. I amble downstairs and find Roger talking with Tammy-P. “I can see the two of you have met.”
Tammy-P offers me a smile. It’s been more than a year since my last visit, and I had almost forgotten the magical brilliance of those smiles. The whole room seems to glow from her radiance. “We’ve been getting to know one another while youse slept. I can’t believe how much the two of youse look alike.”
“I’m glad someone in Arizona looks like me,” I tell her. “After I found out the results of my DNA test, I tried to convince Roger to take one . . . to make sure I was really his dad. But he doesn’t seem to think that’s necessary.”
“I keep telling you, Dad,” says Roger. “It’s the lips. The lips don’t lie.”
We all laugh.
“Are you ready to go?” Tammy-P asks.
It takes me a moment to figure out what she’s talking about. Today is Sunday. That’s the day Mother Petrauschke has everyone over for dinner. I’m still tired, but I don’t want to miss the family event. I nod my head, trying to infuse as much enthusiasm into the action as my jet-lagged body can manage.
“Tammy decided to let you use her car to get around this week,” Joe says. “Pay attention to the directions I give you on the way over there because, after tonight, you’ll be on your own.”
A micro panic attack surges through my chest. I mentally picture Roger and me navigating the roads of rural New Jersey in the dark, growing more lost with each passing moment. What if the car breaks down while we are lost . . . and it snows?
“Don’t worry,” Joe says. “Dad’s place is easy to find. You only have to make about six turns to get there from here. I’ll make sure you know how to find your way back.”
“And youse can always call us if you get lost,” says Tammy-P.
Tammy-P gives me her keys, and we follow Joe over to Father’s house. We barely crawl out of the car when Mother Petrauschke hurries outside to greet us. She gives me a quick hug and then says, “This must be Roger.”
“Hello, Grandmother,” Roger says as he hugs her.
P-Mom leans in close to me and says, “Just so you know, Dad doesn’t talk as much as he used to, and he was never much of a talker. He’s in the living room if you want to go visit him.”
I don’t know. I’m not sure I’m ready to meet Father again. What am I going to find when I walk into the room with him? How is he going to respond? Fortunately, Roger and I are here all week, giving me plenty of time to reconnect with him.
“Make sure you duck your head when you walk inside,” P-Mom tells Roger. “The structure of the house is suited for short people. Which means it’s never been
a problem for me, but your grandfather had to learn to walk around the house with a slight bend.”
She turns to me and asks, “Did you warn Roger about what to expect from us?”
Actually, I hadn’t. I hadn’t seen any need to let my son know he’d be meeting a wonderful group of people. Roger is a gentle soul and tends to get along with everyone—much like the Petrauschkes. I know he will be all right with them. I only hope he will love them as much I do.
“You are a wild bunch,” I tell P-Mom. “I thought I would let him discover that for himself. Besides, if I told him about everyone before we boarded the plane, he might not have agreed to come with me.”
“Good thinking,” she says as we walk inside the house.
Tammy is sitting at the kitchen table. My heart does a double pump of joy as soon as I see her. It continues to amaze me how comfortable I feel whenever we are together. What a shame we didn’t have the chance to grow up in the same household. Imagine the storehouse of fond memories we could have built together.
But no matter how good that life might have been, I’m not willing to trade it for the one I shared with my Arizona parents and siblings. I might as well wish I had lived twice.
Joe heads into the living room to join Father, while Roger and I sit at the table with Tammy. P-Mom scurries over to the kitchen counter. She picks up a pie and says, “I’m afraid I have bad news. I made an apple pie for you but left it in the oven too long.”
This pie looks darker than the one I remember from my first trip. Not too dark, though. I think it might still be pretty good. “I’m willing to risk a slice . . . or two.”
“I made a cherry pie too,” she says as she puts the pie back on the counter and returns to working on Sunday dinner. “You might want to try that one instead.”
How bad can it be? As far as I’m concerned, extra-brown crust tastes even better.
Tammy opens a manila folder that’s sitting on the table. “I thought you might want to add this to your family research files. It’s a map from Ancestry showing the regions where the Petrauschkes originated. The file also has copies of a few emails John Lodge sent me.”
I take the folder and look at the map. Some of the ancestral regions don’t match mine. Then again, they shouldn’t. We have different mothers, and half the highlighted areas on the map come from the maternal DNA.
The first email John sent Tammy is on top of the stack. I pick up the message and read it: “So far, Randy is not entertaining the idea that W. P. is his father.”
“He was right,” I tell Tammy. “I was not entertaining the idea at all. I was convinced you guys were not family. When you told me the same thing, I called you the Crazy Lady. The Crazy Lady who thinks she’s my sister.”
“I am crazy,” says Tammy.
“No, you’re not,” I say. “Let me tell you something. You made it very easy for me. I received your emails and felt a connection right away. I would tell myself, ‘I like Tammy. I don’t know why I like her. This isn’t someone I know. We’ve never met, but I like her.’”
Tammy offers a shy smile, and I can tell from her expression that she appreciates my comment. It’s the least I can do for someone who’s made this whole experience less stressful than it could have been.
“The initial DNA results were weird,” Tammy says. “At first, I couldn’t figure out what the ‘Close Family Relationship’ meant. Nope. No clue. Then I went back and started clicking on stuff. That opened a page which said you were a half brother. I was shocked. I have a brother. It took two weeks for me to contact you after I figured all that out. I went through a lot of emotions. I didn’t think I would react that way, but I kind of cried a little bit. Then I’d be thinking, wow, I have another brother. A sister would have been nice, but another brother is all right. And he’s older. I always wanted an older brother. Then I just went back and forth with the emotions, figuring out how I was going to tell you.”
“Were you nervous?” Roger asks.
“I was worried how the family here was going to react, because I was pretty sure Dad didn’t know. I was, like, what is this going to do to him at his age? I realized that I was the one who had to tell everybody and didn’t know how they would react.”
P-Mom nods her head. “I told Tammy, ‘You’re going to get into this DNA stuff, and who knows what you’re going to find.’”
“She was right,” Tammy says. “I was up and down, trying to figure out what I was going to say to you. I ran it through my head so many times and . . . ahh, no, that’s stupid. Nope. Nope. I wrote that the wrong way. Then I finally decided I just had to do it. I had to make the effort and write something.”
“I think it was beautiful,” I tell her.
“Mom was fine when I told her,” Tammy says. “And Dad was just kind of in disbelief. He told us he didn’t have any kids in Arizona, but then we had him take the DNA test. Joe was all right with it from the start. He told me, ‘Cool. I have another brother.’”
“The thing is,” P-Mom says, “you didn’t even know. If you’re adopted, you know you have other parents. You can go looking for them if you want to. But in this situation, you had no clue that another family existed.”
Father waddles in and sits down next to me.
“Anything you want to say about this, Dad?” Tammy asks Father.
“About what?” Father asks.
“About finding out you had an extra son,” Tammy says.
Father hesitates. He starts and stops a couple of times before the first words come out of his mouth. “Well . . . well . . . I knew I got an extra son.”
“While he was in rehab,” P-Mom says, “the doctors asked him how many children he had, and Dad told them seven instead of five. But he remembered to include Randy.”
“There must be another one out there, Dad,” Tammy jokes.
Father laughs. I can tell he wants to say something but doesn’t. Maybe he wants to tell us one surprise is enough. Or that the rest of us will just have to wait and see who shows up next. Whatever it is, I feel robbed of the chance to find out. I want to know how he thinks and the sorts of things that go through his mind during these table-side discussions. I want to be able to fully interact with him, but I realize that will never happen.
The back door opens, and Tammy’s oldest daughter, Jessica, enters with her family. A few minutes later, Shaun and his family arrive. Then Tammy’s youngest daughter, Tara. I introduce them to Roger as they enter, and then we sit down to eat.
Pork roast, beef roast, sweet corn, and mashed potatoes with creamy, homemade gravy. This is pretty close to the same menu I had during my last visit. It’s probably the same meal they have every Sunday, and I’m all right with that. I only wish I was a regular part of the tradition.
But the food is secondary to the company. The parents, the siblings, the nieces, and the nephews all treat me and Roger like cherished members of the family. I sit quietly, savoring the meal almost as much as I relish the warm environment this family provides.
After dinner, P-Mom slices up two pies. I insist on apple. The crust is slightly burnt, as is the top layer of apples. But as far as I’m concerned, that’s all for the better. For some reason, I like slightly burned desserts.
“I warned you about the pie,” P-Mom says.
“You can make pies like this for me anytime,” I tell her. “I like them well-done.”
“Dad does too,” Tammy says.
I look up and notice Father is eating apple pie. He says, “I . . . like it.”
Maybe I’m not as weird as I thought. This is another trait I have in common with my biological father. Of course, I’ve never heard of DNA that results in people liking burnt food, but I suppose it could exist. Maybe there’s one for liking cherry-flavored taffy rather than the more superior banana flavor. That would explain why everyone doesn’t agree with me on the topic.
“What�
��s your schedule for the rest of the trip?” P-Mom asks.
A schedule? Now, that they mention it, I probably should have made some sort of plan for how to spend my time out here. “I don’t have one.”
“Tammy and I were talking earlier,” P-Mom says. “We want to have Thanksgiving on Saturday.”
I love Thanksgiving! The food. The football. The family all gathered in one place, or as many of the family members as you can convince to show up. Then a thought pushes its way to the front of my mind. This is an attempt by Mother Petrauschke to include me in their family holiday. An important ritual for most families and one I’ve never had the chance to share with this portion of my family.
My nose and eyes sting from the tears welling up inside me. What a thoughtful expression of their love for me. On Saturday, I’m going to celebrate Thanksgiving with the Petrauschkes.
I spend Monday with Joe and Tammy-P. Despite his warning to the contrary, Joe makes breakfast for Roger and me. Pork rolls. Just as good as the last batch. This could definitely become a food addiction.
Breakfast gives me my first chance to meet everyone in the household as they prepare for the workweek. In addition to Joe and Tammy-P, two of their adult children, a young woman named Alice, and ten formerly stray cats all live in the house.
The young woman fixes breakfast and then leaves for the day.
“Who’s that?” I ask Joe.
“That’s Alice. She’s Johnny’s ex-girlfriend.”
Ex . . . girlfriend? Shouldn’t that make this her ex-home? I wonder what happens when the two of them run into one another in the hall, or at the tiny breakfast table? This just doesn’t sound right.
“If she’s an ex-girlfriend, then why does she still live here?” I ask.
“She’s going to school,” Joe says.
Tammy-P straightens up in her chair. “Youse can’t expect us to kick Alice out of here just because her and Johnny aren’t together anymore. Her family is in Michigan. She doesn’t have anywhere else to go.”
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