Happy Family
Page 34
“But if you had to pick a team, who would you root for?”
“In Chicago?”
“Aw, c’mon! The Cubs or White Sox? You’re from Jersey. What team did you like growing up?”
“The Yankees. Yankees over Mets any day.”
“Bingo,” he says, rocking back on the stool, and for the first time his face shows a little expression. “I knew it! Listen, there’s something I have for you. Stay right there.” Maybe this guy has taken too many mood stabilizers. She’s still feeling a little queasy.
“This has been through a lot with me,” Billy says, coming back into the room. “I never thought I’d see this day. I’m still blown away that PI lady found me.” She looks at the gift he’s holding out—a simple silver hamsa pendant on a leather cord. “Take it, it’s yours,” he says.
“Is this supposed to mean something to me?”
“It was hers. Your mother’s.”
“Miriam? She gave this to you?” There were questions she’d formulated, but now, holding something concrete, makes her voracious to know everything. Every detail, nuance, the weather on the day she was born, what Miriam was wearing, what she said to Billy Beal. “Wait,” she says, “don’t say anything yet. I want to start at the beginning.” She gets her purse and pulls out the PI’s file, a pen, and a pad of paper. “Okay, go on.”
“I remember everything about that day,” he says. The night before, on the top sheet of her notepad, Cheri had scribbled a list of newsworthy events that happened on her birthday: Marilyn Monroe’s death, Jamaica’s independence, and Nelson Mandela’s arrest. She had been afraid these impersonal details were all she would ever know. She looks into Billy Beal’s steel-gray eyes.
“Okay,” she says. “I’m ready.”
August 5, 1962
Marilyn Monroe found dead, drug overdose
Jamaica celebrates independence
Nelson Mandela arrested for illegally leaving South Africa
Trenton, New Jersey: Generator blowout at St. Mercy’s
Twelve-car pileup on the New Jersey Turnpike, worst in state’s history
This is the story of family.
Like any story, what happens and why changes depends on who is doing the telling. Two siblings raised by the same parents in the same house often have different versions of shared events. Multiply that over generations, and you see why wars are started, religions divided, secrets held forever.
Who really knows about their parents’ life before they were parents? Who wants to know about their parents’ sex life? Forget about grandparents. Throw divorce and fertility science into the equation and you can have multiple parents and more stories in the mix. What if you knew the uncut version, the whole story, not just what was interpreted for you?
What if you were adopted and got a glimpse of your birth parents? Would your biological father have your flat butt, explain your love of guns; would your birth mother have two different-colored eyes? If you discovered that your adoptive father had another family living two towns away and hated him for his deception and yourself for being complicit, would it change anything if you knew the reasons why? What if you learned that your parents had a baby who died just before they adopted you? That your adoptive mother nursed you on the milk of her dead son, a mixture of her grief and hope—hope she’d put all on you because she’d never be able to carry another child? Would it change how you feel about your parents and about yourself? Would this knowledge rewrite the story enough so you could find forgiveness for a bigamist father, compassion for a mother who stalks you with her love?
If life is a river, we can see only a small patch of it. A little in front of us, some behind. We don’t know when we’re going to run into a tributary or hit a waterfall. If you could pull back and up to see how it all connects to the ocean, if you could see the whole story of all of your parents and their parents, would it alter your memories of them? Would it change what you translate to your kids, what they then revise and tell their kids?
If you could do that, even for a moment, you’d get God’s sense of humor. You’d know your story is perfect. That your terribly imperfect parents were perfect for you, that your life could only have been written by and for you.
This is the story of the Matzner family. Its end is its beginning. August 5, 1962: Marilyn Monroe is found dead, Jamaica celebrates its independence, Nelson Mandela is arrested. In Trenton, New Jersey, a pregnant teenage girl walks into a clinic and gives birth, then walks out, leaving her baby forever. The baby is adopted, named Cheri, wears her Girl Scout uniform to school but ditches the troop for shooting practice at the local 4-H, pierces her tongue, has a love affair with speed, becomes a cop, discovers her father leads a double life, witnesses a murder, buries her father and her husband, forgives her mother, eats a T-bone steak with a stranger in the rain, meets her biological father and the person who rescued her from the clinic, without whom this story would have been very different.
Oh, and the baby ends up having a baby. The result of that T-bone steak in the rain, some excellent whiskey, and the stranger who showed her how to open herself up, to tell her story. That baby is you, Henry. I named you Henry in honor of Michael, who wanted a Hank. I wrote this book for you. So you can smell the ocean. Have a wider view. And be able to laugh at it all just a little bit sooner than I did.
—Cheri Matzner, October 7, 2015
Acknowledgments
For their courage in helping me see them outside of their roles as my parents, I thank my mother, Cynthia Barber, and father, David Birenbaum. Tireless readers, they provided not only love and support but incisive comments. Thanks also to my stepmother, Vanessa Ruiz, for her calm and counsel.
For their enormous generosity of spirit, I am indebted to these friends who were there for me, unfailingly: Philipp Keel, A. M. Homes, Angela Janklow, Maria Semple, Tamar Halpern, Rick Mordecon, Matthias and Melodie Mazur, Ingrid Katal, Susanna Brisk, Janet Yang, Amy Raine. For their early, close reading, thanks to Cathy Coleman and Judy Sternlight.
For her encouragement, guidance, and patience, I thank my wonderful agent, Susan Golomb. Thank you to my editor and publisher, Lee Boudreaux, for putting both her heart and intellect into and behind this book. To Reagan Arthur, Lisa Erikson, Carrie Neill, Carina Guiterman, Lauren Harms, Tracy Roe, and the entire team at Little Brown, a debt of gratitude for believing in me and working so hard to bring this book into the world.
To Shaun, who was here at the conclusion, thank you for a new beginning.
Lastly, thank you to my beautiful daughter, Zoë, who has grown faster than my ability to write these words. I know you will be able to laugh at it all far sooner than I did.
About the Author
Tracy Barone earned a BA and an MFA in dramatic writing at NYU and has worked as a screenwriter and a playwright. A former film executive in Hollywood, she was the executive producer on Wild Wild West, Rosewood, and My Fellow Americans and was instrumental in acquiring and developing the films Men in Black and Ali.
Unusual stories. Unexpected voices. An immersive sense of place. Lee Boudreaux Books publishes both award-winning authors and writers making their literary debut. A carefully curated mix, these books share an underlying DNA: a mastery of language, commanding narrative momentum, and a knack for leaving us astonished, delighted, disturbed, and powerfully affected, sometimes all at once.
LEE BOUDREAUX ON HAPPY FAMILY
I like a novel that surprises me, and Tracy Barone’s Happy Family did just that, in spades, from first page to last. And the whip-smart, fiercely independent, and complicated woman at the heart of the book supplies more than her fair share of those surprises. She’s not always likable, but I found myself rooting for her all the more as she simultaneously hungers for meaningful connection and pushes it away with both hands. And who can blame her for her deeply suspicious nature? After all, the whole truth of her existence is shrouded in secrecy and shame until the fact that she’s adopted emerges, in all sorts of puzzling detail, when she’s
eight years old. As an adult, she’s a flawed, messy, deeply relatable modern-day woman trying desperately to sort out her career, her marriage, her past, and her future before the clock runs out, all chronicled in a voice that’s as cracklingly intelligent and wryly observant as its heroine. In the end, there’s no one whose long, hard road to happiness I’d rather witness.
______________________________________
Over the course of her career, Lee Boudreaux has published a diverse list of titles, including Ben Fountain’s Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk, Smith Henderson’s Fourth of July Creek, Madeline Miller’s The Song of Achilles, Ron Rash’s Serena, Jennifer Senior’s All Joy and No Fun, Curtis Sittenfeld’s Prep, and David Wroblewski’s The Story of Edgar Sawtelle, among many others.
For more information about forthcoming books, please go to leeboudreauxbooks.com.
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Table of Contents
Cover
Title Page
Welcome
Dedication
Epigraph
Preface
Part I: The Baby Miriam
Billy Beal
Cici
Lucky Charm
Small, Heavy Things
A Few Crises
Three: The Loneliest Number
Part II: Chicago, 2002, Somewhere in the Middle Eggs
Merrily We Roll Around
School’s Out for Summer
Body Shots
Punch-Drunk Love
40bday 1.0
40bday 2.0
Part III: Different People Die Family Portrait, Summer 1970
The Bad Seed
On the Road Again
Cherry Bomb
Out, Damned Father
The End of Thanksgiving
Things I Hate About Her
The Lamppost Survives
Call Me Ishmael
Michael
Part IV: What’s Left White Rabbit
Lilacs
Ashes Are Heavier Than You Think
Sonny
Your Own Backyard
Truth Is
Epilogue
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Lee Boudreaux Books
Newsletter
Copyright
The characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.
Copyright © 2016 by Tracy Barone
Cover design by Lauren Harms
Cover painting by M. Wehmer
Cover copyright © 2016 by Hachette Book Group, Inc.
All rights reserved. In accordance with the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, the scanning, uploading, and electronic sharing of any part of this book without the permission of the publisher is unlawful piracy and theft of the author’s intellectual property. If you would like to use material from the book (other than for review purposes), prior written permission must be obtained by contacting the publisher at permissions@hbgusa.com. Thank you for your support of the author’s rights.
Lee Boudreaux Books / Little, Brown and Company
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First ebook edition: May 2016
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ISBN 978-0-316-34258-2
E3–20160421–DA–NF