Happy Family

by Tracy Barone

  “Stop, Mama, let me go.”

  Marco D’Ameri silently picks up his birds, whistles for his dogs, and walks out the door. He doesn’t look back, not even when Mama throws Cheri’s quail at him. She misses. The bird thumps on the wall and lands on the floor, its neck twisted at an impossible angle.

  “I forbid you to ever speak with that man again. You will not see him, talk to him, nothing, ever. You will not fool with guns—ever! Never again will you go anywhere, anywhere, without telling me. Understand?” Mama shakes her violently. “Say you understand. Say it! We will stand here forever until you say ‘I understand.’” Cheri fights to free herself.

  “I hate you!” Cheri yells. She doesn’t see Mama’s hand until it has smacked her across the face. She tastes the iron of her own blood and pushes her mother away as hard as she can. She wants to run outside but is badly positioned for an escape. The best she can do is race upstairs and lock herself in the bathroom where, at last, she is finally able to pee. Her shoulder still aches from the recoil of the rifle and her lip is bleeding. The pain is nothing compared to the hatred and confusion she feels. It courses through her body and comes out through her trembling fingertips. Cheri is silent when emissaries from downstairs come knocking, asking if she’s okay.

  Hours later, the gurgling in Cheri’s stomach wakes her up. Judging from how dark it is outside, she’s been sleeping on the bathroom floor for quite a while. The last thing she ate was the chocolate torte early that morning and she’s starving. On her way downstairs she sees Mama’s bags lined up outside her room. The muffled, conspiratorial voices of her cousins are floating from Donatella’s bedroom. Did you see what she was wearing? I heard she had blood all over her face. Cheri tells herself to keep walking, but she has to know what they are saying. She was holding a gun. She looks like a boy so he treated her like a boy. Don’t you know that in America, women burn their bras? They speak so quickly it’s hard for Cheri to get it all, even with her ear against the door. Like listening for a bad heart, she waits for the skipped beat that confirms a malfunction. You’re a stupid idiot! Open your eyes. Can’t you tell she’s not one of us? There is one word they toss back and forth like a ball: adottata.

  Cheri’s stomach drops at the sound of the word. Somehow, she already knows what it’s going to mean. It’s going to explain why she doesn’t look like her parents or her cousins. It’s going to explain why she has the funny feeling that she doesn’t belong in Montclair, with its fancy china and crystal and silk curtains. It’s going to explain why Sol always looks at her like he can’t quite figure out where she came from or what she’s doing in his family. She races to Zia Genny’s library and looks it up in her dog-eared Italian/English dictionary. “Adopted.” Given away because your parents didn’t want you. Not one of us. The only person Cheri knew who was adopted was a Vietnamese girl in her class, Mary Frances O’Leary. On the first day of school, Sister Agnes kept calling her name because she refused to believe it belonged to the girl who was raising her hand. There are not many Vietnamese people in Montclair, and they weren’t named Mary Frances O’Leary. Cheri was the same as Mary Frances? How could Mama have kept this from her?

  Cheri hesitates before she goes into the kitchen, feeling like she’s got an arrow pointing to her saying exactly why she’s the thing that’s not like the others. But she’s starving. The floor of the kitchen is swept clean of all traces of bird and grandfather. Bread, olives, cheese, and cured pork are set out on the butcher block, and Cheri forgets her manners and grabs at whatever is closest. Mama appears at her side, saying, “Slow down. Here, use a plate, you’re making crumbs on the counter.” Zia Genny gives her a lemon soda and waves Cici off. “Let the child eat.”

  “You. You told him we were here.”

  “Shhhhhhht,” Genny says. “How was I to know he would show his face? I could not have known he would take your daughter—”

  “Donatella says I’m adottada,” Cheri blurts. The women fall silent. Then Mama looks up at her sister and hisses, “How dare your Donatella say—” Zia Genny quickly interrupts her. “For the sake of Jesus on the cross, don’t put the blame on Donatella; you are the adult, start acting like it for once in your life.” “It’s true then,” Cheri says to Mama, “you aren’t my real mother.”

  “It is true that you did not come from my body,” Cici says gently, bending down so she is at Cheri’s eye level. “But I love you just as much. I love you even more because I could not have children any other way. Being a mother…it does not come because we have the same blood or the same face. It comes from having your heart live outside your body. That is how I felt from the day your father brought you home to me.”

  Zia Genny goes upstairs to have words with Donatella. A little later, Donatella comes downstairs and, within earshot of the grown-ups, apologizes to Cheri in loud broken English. Zia Genny looks sad and tells Cheri that she is sorry that her sister is so bullheaded and insists on leaving tomorrow. “We will have our mushroom hunt another time, yes?”

  Shortly after they get back from Italy, Mama comes home with the family portrait and Gusmanov hangs it above the mantel in the sitting room. It now includes her father, standing stiffly behind the couch, with his arms on either side of Mama. Everyone looks even more awkward. Nobody looks like they go together; how could Mama not have told her the truth? “There, see, we are a happy family,” Mama says, giving Cheri one of those big hugs that gets tighter when she tries to pull away. Was it because she was adopted that her father was mad about the painting? She tries to picture her parents going into an orphanage and picking her out, like in Little Orphan Annie. Mama clearly told him what happened with Donatella because, about a week after their return, he stops in her room and says, “I know your mother has said this, but I want you to know that you are our daughter and we are your parents. No different than any other family, and don’t let anyone tell you otherwise, okay?” Okay, she’d nodded.

  If something bad happened and Mama wanted to make you feel better she’d say it was a “blessing in the skies.” The grown-ups keep telling her nothing has changed, her parents are still her parents, and Mama’s family is her family. But something has changed. Somewhere out there, she has a real mother and father. They were like the gods and goddesses in her book of Greek myths. They had her pale skin and strange eyes and must have had a very good reason for giving her away. It might just be a matter of time before they come and take her back.

  The Bad Seed

  Gluten is the devil. For the past few weeks since his physical, Michael has been seeing a gastroenterologist and is convinced that gluten is what’s been wreaking havoc with his digestive system. He’s performing an exorcism in their kitchen. Cheri walks in on his sorting and tossing—mostly of her main food groups, carbs and sugar.

  “What the hell? This is perfectly good stuff. What’s wrong with licorice and ketchup?” Cheri pulls the items from the trash.

  “Hidden wheat repositories.”

  “You’ve been eating wheat your whole life and now it’s suddenly poisoning you?”

  “Celiac disease can manifest over time; it’s often overlooked or misdiagnosed. Don’t start putting stuff back, it needs to be segregated. Can’t you see I’ve got a system going? Everything on the counter goes on the bottom shelf.”

  “Meaning I get one shelf and the rest is for millet—isn’t that for birds? And oatmeal doesn’t have wheat, why is that in this pile?”

  “It has to be gluten-free oats. Plus, I do all the shopping. I get to organize the food according to what my system can digest.”

  “You don’t even know if you’ve got this condition. You don’t even have a diagnosis.”

  “I will today,” he says.

  “You get the test results today?” Cheri knew that Michael had recently had a battery of tests done, but he hadn’t offered details and she hadn’t probed. “I’ll come with you.”

  “Thanks, but I’ve got it under control.”

  “I’m sure you do,” she sa
ys. “But I’m coming.”

  Cheri doesn’t want to fight; it seems any subject can make one of them start foaming at the mouth. Since she’d thrown down the separation gauntlet the night of her birthday, they’ve retreated to their own corners, cocooning themselves in avoidance. Her corner is now the den; she’s stacked boxes from her office to stake her claim but hasn’t unpacked them yet. She tries to distract herself by looking through some late Bronze Age Ugaritic texts, sniffing at a thesis for mourning rituals that traces cutting and tattoos back to ceremonial pagan rites. But all she has are filaments, nothing for a full-fledged book.

  It’s back-to-school time and, for the first time in her whole academic career, Cheri has no school to go back to. She wakes up with the thump of I’m late for class only to realize another long day stretches ahead of her. Still, fall is her favorite season: crisp air, fresh start, new notebooks. The review committee did nothing in the August doldrums but she’s heard that they will soon start interviewing students from Richards’s class. The thought of her peers questioning her former students about her work is demeaning. Does her entire career really all hinge on the interpretation of her questions about prostitution? Every act of translation is interpretation. How many times did she say that to her students, never anticipating that one of them would turn the idea back on her. Unlike when she was in college, kids like Richards feel entitled, as if merely showing up means they should get good grades. And the university certainly doesn’t dissuade them from that notion.

  All she can do is hope that the wheels of the academic gestapo churn faster than those of international consensus for a war in Iraq. It’s not exactly a consolation, but progress on the Tell Muqayyar tablets is as stalled as she is. With talk of UN inspectors returning, it’s possible that Saddam will acquiesce to Western demands for full transparency of nuclear sites rather than risk war. In a perfect world, the sea would part on both fronts, and they could be able to get into Baghdad. She has the urge to e-mail Peter Martins to ask once again how the photocopying is progressing. Samuelson didn’t mention her suspension to anyone at the British Museum, but, in stark contrast to her own wasted summer, Peter has a museum’s worth of projects on his desk—ones that aren’t bogged down by external events. She gnaws on a pretzel she rescued from an untimely demise and thinks it’s time for her luck to change.

  The car ride to the doctor is thick with what Cheri and Michael leave unspoken. Cheri relegates herself to duckling status, silently following him into the waiting room and, once the doctor beckons, into his office. She’s about to introduce herself since Michael hasn’t bothered when the doctor abruptly announces, “It’s not what we’d hoped for.” Michael’s ass hasn’t even hit the chair and the doctor barrels on: “Your biopsy results indicate pancreatic cancer.” The doctor’s mouth is moving and he’s talking about early detection, surgical options. Michael holds up his hand. “But what about celiac? All my symptoms.”

  “Pancreatic cancer is hard to diagnose because the symptoms are so vague; it’s often mistaken for something more benign. That’s why we did the endoscopy and took a biopsy. Now, if you’ll look here, I can show you what we’re talking about.” Michael is clearly blindsided. All Cheri knows about pancreatic cancer is that it’s one of the bad kinds. This is all happening too quickly.

  The doctor displays images of Michael’s pancreas, then fans out laminated diagrams of the organ and points to the salient features like he’s a car salesman.

  Cheri stares at the diagram of the pancreas like it’s a Rorschach test. “You’re positive? No test is one hundred percent accurate, is it?”

  “Tissue doesn’t lie. You’re welcome to get a second opinion, the faster the better. It’s imperative to stage the cancer so you can form a treatment plan. I’ll refer you to an oncologist at the cancer center here. Likely he’ll do a pancreatic-mass CT to assess the tumor for size, location, and involvement of the surrounding organs.”

  “Fuck me,” Michael says. His left eye twitches like it does when he’s overtired or lying.

  “But we’ve caught it early. He hasn’t been feeling sick for that long. It’s in the early stages, right?” Cheri asks, grasping to put this into some kind of perspective.

  “That’s what we’re hoping for, which is why it’s important to move quickly and aggressively. This is a very tricky kind of cancer, and we won’t know if the tumor is operable until we see if it’s contained or if it’s spread to other organs.”

  The doctor’s voice sounds like the teacher in the Peanuts cartoons, Wah-wah-wah. Michael’s lost in the fog of news too bad to absorb. “Can you hold on a second?” Cheri fumbles through her purse to get a pen. “Sorry, so sorry.” She writes: Ampulla vedar (sp?) spread to lymph nodes? Exocrine system. After staging determine if ressectable—pancreatoduodenectomy, Whipple procedure. Can’t give chances of survival until tumor is staged. Her handwriting is loopy and her hand is shaking.

  “Is this a death sentence?” Michael’s hand covers his face. “Is that what I’m looking at?”

  “Michael, no, nobody is saying that,” Cheri says emphatically. Who is she trying to convince, she wonders. Herself or Michael?

  “It’s far too early to speculate; there are new treatments and if you’re a candidate for surgery and the cancer is contained to the pancreas, it can be successfully eliminated. The oncologist will go over all of this with you.” With a loud scrape of his chair, Michael is up and out of the room.

  “It’s quite common to feel overwhelmed. It’s too much information to process all at once. Here’s a handbook with treatment options, support groups, et cetera—I’d stay off the Internet, as there’s a lot of misinformation and worst-case scenarios. Call Dr. Perry right away. My nurse will give you his card and can help you schedule an appointment. He’s very booked up.”

  “I appreciate that, Dr. …I’m sorry, I didn’t catch your name.”

  “Fishman,” he says, handing her his card.

  “I meant first name.”

  “You can just call me Dr. Fishman.”

  Cheri looks at the card. “Thank you, Karl.”

  If there was one thing Sol had taught Cheri about doctors, it was that you needed to level the playing field. She imagines her father had the same lack of bedside manner as Karl.

  When she walks into the waiting room, Michael isn’t there. Cheri gets Dr. Perry’s card from the nurse. “My husband, did you see him leave? Tall guy, salt-and-pepper hair?”

  “Just got here, so no, but he can’t have gone far,” the receptionist chirps, giving her a big smile. What a job, Cheri thinks. You’d have to be a cheerful idiot to survive.

  By the time Cheri reaches the elevator bank, she can feel the edges of panic nibbling at her chest. She has the car keys but Michael might have taken off anyway. He did it once before, after a fight outside a restaurant. She’d driven around for hours trying to find him because he wouldn’t answer his cell. She eventually went home and found Michael already there—he’d taken the bus. The thought of him right now taking a bus, surrounded by strangers, makes her throat catch.

  Following a full check of the main lobby and the downstairs men’s room (she had a janitor go in to call his name—“Michael Shoub, anyone in here named Michael Shoub?”), Cheri races to the parking lot, which now seems nothing short of Kafkaesque. Didn’t she just walk past that gray Toyota? She knows she parked on level four, green, so where is the goddamned car? Her hand shakes as she takes an Ativan from her purse and swallows it dry. Cheri briefly wonders how many she has left before Dr. Vega forces her back onto the couch in exchange for a refill. Cheri wanders up and down the aisles, holding out her keys like a divining rod. “Fuck,” she says. “Fucking fuck!”

  “Where the hell have you been?” Michael suddenly appears, stomping down the middle of a ramp from the level above. “I’ve been waiting for you for thirty minutes. You insist on driving, you take the keys, but then you never remember where you parked.” He turns on his heel and walks back up the ramp. “Gre
en Four. How hard is that? Number-one rule of being the driver, note the signage.”

  “There’s a West Green and an East Green, it wasn’t clearly marked.”

  “It says Four West right here, with a green square. Hello? Now give me the keys.” Just because he’s scared, does he have to be even more of an asshole?

  She hands him the keys. “We’re going to get on top of this.” She gets in the passenger side of her Jeep. “We’ll get other opinions. Chicago has the best cancer facilities in the country, but if we have to go out of state, we’ll go out of state.”

  “Duane’s father went to Johns Hopkins, and we know how that turned out.” Duane was Michael’s accountant. It takes her a moment to remember—his father died of pancreatic cancer. After ratcheting his seat back as far as it can go, Michael struggles with the ignition, turning it on and off. She’d been meaning to fix the starter. “Give it some time,” she says, and he lets out an exasperated sigh. He turns it off and then on and then he floors the gas pedal. The engine finally lurches to life.

  When they get home, Michael takes his yoga pillow and mat and retreats to his office. An hour later, she goes to check on him. She finds him on the floor in the lotus position. She can tell he’s straining to quiet his mind, and his exertion is clearly visible; his T-shirt is damp around the neck, his left eye twitches. When Michael was a kid his mother would tell him, “That’s good but imagine how well you’d do if you tried harder?” Cheri can’t imagine how hard he’s trying now. What can she say to or do for him? She would like to take back the words, the horrible news of today. But she can’t take back all of the moments big and small that led to disappointment and hurt until they were so deadlocked that they stood over the dishwasher, panting from anger. She had been slowly acclimating herself to the discomforting but liberating notion of an exit and now their lives were unalterably changed. She would like to bend over, wrap him in her arms, in spite of, because. But even in his newly vulnerable state, Michael seems unapproachable. He moves his neck from side to side, sighs heavily, eyes tightly squeezed shut.