“She…looks…beautiful,” Dana breathed.
She wasn’t the only one who thought so. From the minute they arrived at the medical building, people remarked on Lizzie’s looks. A nurse led them to an examining room and checked her height and weight, before Laura arrived, and examined her with the gentlest of hands, all the while asking routine questions. When she was done, she turned to Dana and Hugh. “Have there been questions about her coloring?”
“Some,” Hugh said. “We’ve been offered a wide range of possible explanations.”
“I’m sure,” Laura remarked. “For now, Lizzie is oblivious to color, but she won’t always be. At some point, you may want to talk with other parents of racially mixed children.”
“One half of a pair lives next door. He’s been a help.”
The doctor had picked up Lizzie’s folder and turned the page. “This is from the neonatal tests they did when she was born. The results are all normal. Your daughter is fine for PKU, metabolism, hypothyroidism.” She looked up, from Dana to Hugh. “She does test positive as a carrier of the sickle-cell trait.”
Dana’s heart nearly stopped. “What does that mean?”
“Sickle-cell disease is a red-blood-cell disorder in which normally round red blood cells are sickle-shaped. Because of this shape, the flow of blood in small blood vessels can be impeded. That can cause a low blood count and other problems.”
“Sickle-cell anemia,” Hugh said, his voice heavy.
“Yes. Most of the people affected are of African descent.”
“Lizzie can’t be sick,” said Dana. “She looks too…too robust.”
“Oh, she isn’t sick,” the doctor assured her. “Carrying the trait has nothing to do with having the disease. She should just know that she is a carrier, when she has children of her own. If the father of her child is also a carrier, their child could have the disease.”
“How did this happen?” Dana asked.
“It’s an inherited trait. One in twelve African Americans carry it.”
“That doesn’t make me feel better,” Hugh remarked. “Could she develop the disease?”
“No, but when infants with the disease are identified early and put on antibiotics, they do better. That’s why we do the test on newborns.”
Dana was only partly mollified. “So she inherited this along with her brown skin?”
“It would seem so. One of you carries the trait.”
Dana swallowed hard. “Without knowing?”
The doctor smiled. “That’s what I’m trying to tell you. Being a carrier of the sickle-cell trait has no impact whatsoever on the health of the carrier. It’s simply a risk for the next generation.”
“So, if we assume I’m the carrier,” Dana went on, “and if Hugh were of African descent, Lizzie could have had the actual disease.”
“Only if Hugh carried the trait.”
“Can Caucasians carry it?”
“Rarely. When we do see it in Caucasians, a closer look usually reveals a person of African descent in the family tree.”
“We’re Anglo-Saxon,” Hugh said. “Norse, on one side way back.”
Laura looked at Dana. “You had told me you suspected Lizzie’s features to have come through you. The trait goes along with that.”
“Then I do carry it.”
“Yes.”
“No chance it skipped a generation?”
“Not if your daughter has it.”
“Then one of my parents had it, too.”
“Yes.”
Dana glanced at Hugh. “Think my father would take a test?”
“If he’s serious about wanting a relationship,” Hugh said. He faced the doctor. “What does the test entail?”
“It’s a simple blood test. It can be done in any lab. There’s one downstairs. Analysis of the sample takes a few minutes.”
“I could do it now?” Dana asked, and looked at Hugh. “How can I ask my father to do it if I don’t do it myself first?” She turned to the doctor. “I’d like to do it, please.” She wanted to know. It would be the very first concrete bit of proof—the first conclusive step in tracing her roots. “Hugh can stay here with the baby.”
The doctor wrote the order, and Dana went to the hematology lab. She had no sooner presented the requisition and her insurance card then she was summoned.
The technician drew blood from the crook of her elbow in a way that was painless and fast. The problem came when he said, “We’ll have the results to your doctor in a few days.”
“Oh no,” Dana said quickly, “I need them now.” The results wouldn’t tell her which of her forebears had passed her the gene, but after hanging in limbo for more than two weeks, she wanted this one hard fact. “Dr. Woods said the analysis wouldn’t take long.” Her voice became pleading, “Is there no way…?”
The technician winced. “They don’t like it when I ask for a rush.”
“Dr. Woods said it would only take a couple of minutes.” Well, not exactly. But close. “She’s waiting for the results. I can stay here until it’s done and take them upstairs myself.”
The man seemed resigned. Vial in hand, he said, “Go up. They’ll call her as soon as they finish.”
Satisfied with that, Dana took the elevator back to the pediatrician’s office and found the doctor still with Hugh and Lizzie. They were talking about genetics. Dana bent her head over the baby’s, closed her eyes, and concentrated on the sweet scent of her child.
When the phone rang, she quickly looked up. Laura answered, listened, and frowned. When she hung up, she seemed bemused. “The test came back negative.”
“Negative?”
“Apparently, you’re not the carrier.” The meaning of that filled the silence.
Dana broke it. “There must be a mistake. I shouldn’t have rushed them.”
“You didn’t rush anyone. It’s only the paperwork that slows things down, not the test.”
“Then the reading of it,” Dana tried. “Maybe I ought to take it again.”
“I have a better idea,” the doctor said, and pointed a finger at Hugh.
Dana gasped. “That’s ridiculous.”
But Hugh said, “It’s not. Let’s rule it out, at least.” He asked Laura, “Are you sure one of us has to be a carrier?”
“I’m sure,” she said, already writing up the order.
He left with it, and for the next ten minutes, while Laura saw another patient, Dana was alone. She nursed the baby more for the distraction of it than because Lizzie was hungry. She was burping her when Hugh returned.
Dana raised her brows.
“They’ll call,” he said.
“While we’re here?”
“Yeah. He remembered you.”
She rubbed Lizzie’s back. “Sickle-cell disease.”
“Not disease,” Hugh said, leaning against the examining table and crossing his ankles. “Trait.”
“I can’t imagine walking around for thirty-four years not knowing it.”
The door opened and Laura slipped inside. She was looking at Hugh. “Positive.”
Dana’s eyes flew to Hugh.
He wore a disbelieving half-smile. “That’s impossible. Every last member of my family has been accounted for—for generations.”
“I can only tell you what the test shows,” Laura said. “Dana’s is negative, yours is positive.”
“They must have mixed them up,” Dana said, because she agreed with Hugh. “Or misread them.”
But Laura was shaking her head. “I asked the head of the lab to take a second look. Hugh’s test is definitely positive.”
Chapter 21
Hugh wanted to doubt, and it had nothing to do with bigotry. The idea that he was the source of Lizzie’s African heritage went against everything he had been taught about his family—everything he had been taught by his parents about his family.
But he did believe in science.
The meaning of the test was clear. It shed a whole new light on Lizzie’s coloring
—and, he realized in a flash of insight, on Eaton’s discomfort with it. On the drive home, he was silent, preoccupied gathering bits of evidence that rocked everything he had thought he knew.
As soon as he dropped off Dana and Lizzie, he headed for Old Burgess Way. Fueled by anger, he sped for most of the trip until he swung into his parents’ driveway. Within seconds of parking, he was storming up the walk to the big brick house.
He rang the bell. When no one answered, he used his key. Once inside, he strode through the living room to his father’s library. Eaton wasn’t there, but his latest book was, sitting smack in the middle of the large oak writing table that had been handed down by Eaton’s great-grandfather—Eaton’s alleged great-grandfather.
Hot off the press, read the handwritten note from Eaton’s editor. Here’s to more great reviews.
Fuming, Hugh went back through the hall to the kitchen. No one was there, but the door to the garden was open. He took the steps in a single stride and, with similar resolve, crossed the pool deck. His parents were with an old friend at a wrought-iron table, shaded by an umbrella, on the far side of the pool. From the looks of their plates, lunch was nearly done.
Dorothy saw him first. Her expression brightened, so that the others looked around.
Hugh looked at his father. “Can we talk?”
“Hugh,” his father said in pleased surprise, as though they had talked just the day before and with no dissension at all, “you remember Larry Silverman, don’t you? He’s just inked a deal to develop the old armory. We’re celebrating.”
Hugh extended a hand toward the other man. “Tex.” He turned back to Eaton. “Can we talk?”
Brightly, Dorothy asked, “Will you have a sandwich, Hugh?”
“No. I just want to borrow Dad for a minute.” His eyes turned to his father, who must have seen the passion there, because he rose and took Hugh’s arm.
“I’ll be back shortly,” he said to the others, and, rounding the pool, crossed the deck. At the house, he released Hugh’s arm and preceded him into the kitchen. “That was just shy of rude,” he said. “I hope this is worth it.”
Hugh knew it was—not that he cared how Eaton defined “worth it.” He had always respected his father. Despite their disagreements, he had believed his father to be honest. Now he no longer did.
Struggling to keep his voice low, he said, “An interesting thing just happened. Dana and I took Lizzie to see the pediatrician, who was reviewing Lizzie’s neonatal tests. My baby carries the sickle-cell trait. Do you know what that is?”
Eaton regarded him warily. “Yes.”
“She inherited it from one of her parents,” Hugh went on in that same restrained tone, “and, naturally, we assumed it was Dana, because from the start we assumed that the African gene came from her side, since my side of the family is lily-white. Funny thing, though, Dad. Dana tested negative. So I thought to myself, What the hell, I’ll take the test myself, because of course it’ll come out negative too, then they’ll retest Dana. Only my test came back positive.”
Eaton’s face lost all its color. He didn’t speak, just stared at Hugh—which infuriated his son all the more.
“So suddenly,” Hugh said, “I started thinking about the way you attacked my wife the day Lizzie was born—the way you were so quick to accuse her of having an affair. I started thinking about the way you didn’t want to see my child”—he still smarted from that—“even after I’d demeaned Dana by doing a paternity test to prove to you that this baby was mine. So I start wondering why you didn’t want to see this innocent brown-skinned baby—you, who have always been respectful of people of color.”
Eaton stood rigidly silent.
Hugh braced a shaky hand on the counter. “When I was driving over here, I remembered the last time we talked on the phone. You were fixated on your book, saying that the timing of this was bad, like it was deliberate sabotage on Dana’s and my part. Then I thought about the book itself,” he continued, “which is nothing if not a testimony to our aristocratic family. I began wondering if you knew your book, your life was a fraud.”
“I don’t know it.”
“And the great white liberal your books portray you to be,” Hugh raged, “is he real? Or have you been pandering to minorities all these years out of guilt that you were passing for white?”
“I did not write anything with that in mind,” Eaton stated.
“Are you truly unprejudiced, or was it all for show?”
“Does it matter?” his father shot back. “Doesn’t the end justify the means?”
“No. Motive counts. It’s what’s here,” Hugh said, touching his chest, a gesture Dana had made not so long ago.
“Not always,” Eaton argued.
“Even if it makes you a fraud?”
Eaton blinked at the word and the fight went out of him. He looked suddenly defenseless. “The sickle-cell business is the first concrete evidence I’ve heard.”
“The first concrete evidence? What about non-concrete evidence?”
“There was none,” Eaton insisted. “No evidence at all.”
“But did you know there was a possibility our family isn’t what we thought?”
Eaton stared at him. After a long moment, he nodded and looked away.
“When?” Hugh asked. “How far back?”
“Not too far.”
“Are we talking Reconstruction?”
“Less. Not even seventy-five years ago.” His gaze slid to Hugh’s face. “I heard rumor when I was a boy. And again when you and Robert were born. We were spending our summers on the Vineyard.” He frowned and pressed his lips together.
“Don’t stop now,” Hugh warned.
His father looked up. “Hugh. I don’t know what I know.”
“Start with the rumors.” He had never pressed his father this way. He had too much respect. But all that had changed.
Eaton leaned against the sink and looked out over the pool to the wrought-iron table and his wife. He was silent a minute longer. Then he sighed. “Rumor said my mother had an affair with someone on the island.”
“An African American.”
“Yes. He was a lawyer in D.C., but he summered in Oak Bluffs. My mother used to see him around town.”
“See him?”
Eaton’s eyes flew to his son—dark eyes, Hugh realized, so like his own, so like Lizzie’s. “I don’t know for sure that there was an affair.”
“Dad,” Hugh snapped, “I carry the sickle-cell trait. Think I got it from Mom?”
Eaton didn’t reply.
“Does she know about any of this?”
“No.”
Hugh pressed the throbbing pulse at his brow. “Did your father know that his wife had an affair?”
“I don’t know what he knew,” Eaton answered.
“Did he ever say anything to you?”
“No.”
“What else do you know about the guy? Do you know his name?”
“Yes.”
“Is he still alive?”
“No.”
“Does he have family?”
“A sister. He was from a racially mixed family—one parent black, one white. He was light-skinned himself.”
Hugh focused on the genetics. “So, if he had a child with a white woman, that child stood a chance of being even lighter-skinned.”
Eaton hesitated. “Maybe yes, maybe no. I gather that when I was born the rumors died down. They rose again when I turned up on the Vineyard with my pregnant wife. The same gossipmongers began to speculate that my child might resemble its grandfather. When you were born, the rumors died again. Same with Robert.”
“Robert,” Hugh breathed. This raised another issue. “You stopped after Robert. That’s two children. Most Clarkes have three or four. Did you figure you couldn’t keep pushing your luck?”
“No. Your mother had a difficult pregnancy with Robert. She was told not to have another child.”
Hugh accepted that.
“Rober
t was proof for me,” Eaton said. “When his children were born looking Caucasian, I decided that anything I’d heard at the Vineyard had been idle gossip.”
Hugh didn’t want excuses. “But you knew the truth the instant you saw Lizzie.”
“No. I didn’t. Too much time had passed. And there were other possibilities,” he said in a reference to Dana’s family.
“But this was one of the possibilities,” Hugh argued, “and still you didn’t say a word. Instead, you accused my wife of cheating on me. How could you?”
“It was a possibility.”
Hugh was livid. “Like your mother cheating on your father? Did you ever ask her about it?”
“I couldn’t do that,” Eaton said and started toward the hall.
Hugh raised his voice. “Because it would have been an insult to even suggest she’d been unfaithful. Didn’t you think the same applied to Dana? She may not have the pedigree we do—” He stopped short with a bitter laugh. “Hah. But we don’t have the pedigree we thought, do we?”
Eaton put a hand on the doorjamb. “What in the hell am I going to do? My book’s coming out a week from Tuesday.”
“Your book?” Hugh asked. “What about my wife?”
Eaton didn’t seem to hear. “We have a full tour scheduled. I’m booked for newspaper interviews and TV appearances.” He returned haunted eyes to Hugh. “I’ve presented my life in this book as fact. If it’s a lie, I’m done as a writer. Can you imagine the scandal it would cause if this comes out? The tabloids would have a field day.” His eyes narrowed. “Forget the tabloids. The Times would have a field day. And…and my students? How do I explain it to them? Or to the provost?”
Hugh felt no sympathy. “What was it you and Mom always said—don’t lie, because it’ll come back to haunt you?”
“I didn’t knowingly lie.”
“But you’re a researcher. You know how to dig into the past and get the facts. You’ve done it for Woodrow Wilson. You’ve done it for Grover Cleveland. Why couldn’t you do it for Eaton Clarke?”
His father drew himself up. “For the same reason you assumed your wife was the source of your daughter’s color. I was raised on certain beliefs. It was preferable to cling to those than to entertain other possibilities.”
Family Tree Page 21