Questions I Want to Ask You

by Michelle Falkoff

  Aunt Reggie stops pacing long enough to pour us both more coffee. As if lacking energy is really the problem. Then she sits back down and drums her fingers on the table until I want to put my hand over hers to make it stop. She takes a deep breath and starts over. “Your mom—Natalie—we never really got along. She was a tough kid, always getting into trouble, and she was still young when she got into drugs. She’d been going out with a boy who played hockey—everyone thought the Bruins were going to draft him—but he got injured, and the doctors prescribed OxyContin. Long story short, he developed a problem and got Natalie into it too, and it didn’t take long for them to switch from Oxy to heroin.”

  That makes sense. Oxy is crazy expensive, and Tom’s told me all about how bad the problem in Brooksby used to be before he took over as Brooksby’s unofficial drug czar.

  “Her boyfriend didn’t make it—he died of an overdose not long after it became clear his hockey career was over. They wrote an article about him in Sports Illustrated, using his story to talk about drug problems among athletes. His death really scared Natalie, enough for her to quit. At least for a while.”

  So far, nothing she’s telling me contradicts anything Dad said. I’m getting details now, but the stories line up. I wait to hear where the shift will happen, where his lies begin.

  “She started seeing your father during junior year, when she’d been off the drugs for a while. They got serious fast, and by senior year they had it all planned out: your dad would follow in his father’s footsteps and go to the police academy, while Natalie would go to Holy Cross—she’d gotten a full scholarship. She was always smart, and once she was done with the drugs, she could concentrate on school. After college, they’d get married. My parents weren’t thrilled about her marrying someone who wasn’t Italian, but at least he was Catholic, so they were on board.”

  “So they were, like, together?” I ask. “For real?” I’ve uncovered the first big Dad lie—my mother wasn’t just some hookup—and now I have an explanation for the ring.

  “Very much so,” Aunt Reggie says. “They were head over heels for each other. We all thought it was crazy for them to be so sure about their future, especially with Natalie going off to school, but they insisted they knew what they were doing. At first everything seemed to be going according to plan, but the summer between your mom’s freshman and sophomore years of college, she got pregnant. It wasn’t as scandalous as it could have been, though the family might have handled things a little better if they’d gotten married as soon as they found out. Your dad wanted to, but Natalie wanted a big fancy wedding like I’d recently had, and she refused to have one while she was pregnant. She said we’d all have to wait. She did agree to baptize you, so my parents calmed down a little.”

  I wait for her to continue, but she gets up from the table again and leaves the room. I’m not sure whether to follow her, but I don’t have to think long before she comes back, holding a photo album. How retro. She places it on the table between us and starts flipping through it, stopping first on a page where my very young father is wearing a suit and standing next to the girl from the yearbook photo, who’s wearing a red dress to go with that dark red lipstick. “Prom,” Aunt Reggie says. “Or maybe one of those other dances. Who can remember, these days?”

  They’re both smiling so wide it looks like it hurts. “I’ve never seen a picture of her before,” I say. It’s not true, but she doesn’t know I’ve seen the yearbook photo, and she doesn’t need to. Yearbook photos aren’t the truth. They don’t say anything about who you really are. Mine is almost unrecognizable to me, and my mother’s has that same overly posed quality. This photo is real. This is her young and happy and in love. My dad, too. Honestly, they look kind of like me and Maddie. What could have changed so radically that Dad would pretend it never happened?

  My aunt turns the page to photos of a baptism. I groan. “I’m guessing the kid in the white frilly dress is me?” It’s embarrassing, really, but that’s not the strangest part. It’s the fact of the baptism itself. Sure, we’re Catholic; I went to CCD with all the other kids, but only until First Communion. We never go to church, but there’s Dad, holding me next to my mother as a priest flicks water on my head.

  There are a ton of photos, both at the church and the after-party, or whatever you call the party that follows a baptism. Aunt Reggie points out all the friends and family members who are there; it’s the first time I’ve ever seen a photo of my grandparents. My grandmother—Nonna, as Matt calls her—is elegant, dark haired like her daughters, wearing a navy suit with little crystals around the collar. My grandfather is pretty much her height, which is adorable, and they’re looking at me with so much love in their eyes it’s hard to imagine they’d ever have let me go.

  “Your grandparents are very eager to meet you,” Aunt Reggie says. “I don’t know how long you can stay, but I called my mother as soon as I heard you were here, and she’d like to have a dinner for you. We usually all get together Sunday afternoon.”

  “I don’t think I can stay that long,” I say. “I start work Monday morning.”

  “Where are you working?”

  “At the gym.” I can tell she wants to know more, but I really want to get back to the story.

  She gets it, because she doesn’t press me further. “I’ll talk to her about moving it up. I’m sure she won’t mind. I think she started cooking as soon as I hung up the phone. She’s a wonderful cook—she makes old-school Italian food, recipes that have been in my family for years. Sound good?”

  Italian food? Like, pasta? I briefly contemplate making up a gluten allergy, but I don’t want to lie. And I don’t want to be rude and not eat homemade food. “I kind of don’t really eat carbs, and some other stuff,” I admit.

  “Oh, half of us are off carbs these days, so we’ve cut way back on the pasta. She makes lots of protein too, so we’ll figure something out.” She closes the photo album. “But you want to know the rest, I’m sure. This is where it gets confusing, so I’ll do my best, but I don’t know all the details.”

  “Whatever you can tell me,” I say, relieved to be off the topic of food.

  “Okay. So after you were born, things were good for a while. Your mother loved being home, taking care of you—I don’t know if she even planned to go back to college at all. The family was closer than we’d been in years. I was already living here, and I’d recently had Matty, but he was a good baby, and it was an easy drive to come home and see her. Then one day your father called and said Natalie wasn’t at home and asked if I’d heard from her. He’d come home from work and the two of you were gone, and some of your things were missing, including Max.”

  “Max?”

  “Your stuffed monkey? You wouldn’t go anywhere without it. You loved when I read Where the Wild Things Are to you, and you’d started calling your Curious George monkey Max.”

  Funny that even as a kid I shied away from curious things. “How old was I?”

  “Maybe two? Barely, even. I thought maybe she’d just taken you for a drive, but then he said there was a suitcase missing too, and some of her clothes. She’d left him, and he had no idea why.”

  I’ve found another Dad lie—he said she died soon after I was born, but even if he really did think she passed away, we’d had years together first. As a family. “Did you know why?” I ask.

  She shakes her head. “I didn’t have a clue. They seemed so happy. Your mom had even started planning the big wedding she wanted; she decided to wait until you were old enough to be ring bearer, since she thought having you walk down the aisle would be so cute. To this day, I have no idea what prompted her to leave.”

  “How long was I gone?”

  “That’s the thing,” she says. “I suppose it helped that your dad was on the force, because as soon as he figured out she was really gone, he told his boss and they caught her almost immediately, at the airport. She was getting ready to leave the country. She had passports for the two of you, and tickets to Italy�
�she’d tracked down some family we still have there. But there were also drugs in her suitcase. A lot of them. I don’t know whether she was back to using herself, or whether she was going to sell them, but the drugs changed everything. She was arrested for kidnapping and intent to distribute, and they could have brought in the Feds because she planned to leave the United States, but before they could do it she agreed to plead guilty.”

  “I don’t understand,” I say. I’m not even sure which part I’m referring to.

  “We don’t either,” she says. “But she refused to explain, or even to talk to us about it. Nonna and Poppa wanted to get her a lawyer, but she said she didn’t want one. She had a public defender negotiate the deal, and while I don’t know all the details, I know she ended up in prison way out in western Mass, and she refused to see us. She turned you over to your dad. Nonna and Poppa wanted to sue for custody, but the lawyer told them they’d lose.”

  “Why would she take me away from my dad only to give me back and never see me again?” I ask.

  “We’ve been trying to figure that out for years. The only explanation we could come up with was that she was using again and the drugs were affecting her thought process. We tried talking to your dad—we thought we had a good enough relationship with him—but he wouldn’t see any of us. He even took out a restraining order against us, which meant we couldn’t see you, either.”

  “He did what?” That doesn’t sound like him at all. Though it does explain why the family never reached out to me. If the choice was between me and not going to jail, it wasn’t really a choice at all.

  “He thought we’d helped her,” Aunt Reggie says. “I admit I hated him for that for a long time, but eventually I came to understand. He was terrified of losing you, and he knew Nonna and Poppa were thinking about the custody suit. Nonna’s never forgiven him, but I have.”

  This isn’t the story I wanted to hear. We’ve traveled so far from what Dad told me it’s like we’re on a different planet now. So many things seem wrong, not least of which is what I’m learning about Dad, both the lying and the fact that he’s the one who’s kept me from the family for so long. The only thing that makes me feel better is how all Dad’s actions sound like they were meant to protect me. But that only makes me feel worse, because it convinces me that Aunt Reggie’s story is true.

  “We thought maybe someday your mother would explain, but we never heard from her, even after her prison term ended. We still don’t know where she is, and I have to be honest—now that we have you, I don’t care if we ever hear from her again. It’s hard to believe someone I’m related to, someone I grew up with, could do something so awful as to take a child away from his family, and I can’t let that go.”

  We’ve come full circle. I came here to find my mother, and the first thing Aunt Reggie told me was that she didn’t know where she was. Now that she’s told me everything, I know that not only is she not going to be able to help me, she wouldn’t want to. I can’t blame her.

  I’m not sure I want to find her myself. Not anymore.

  15

  Aunt Reggie leaves it to me to decide what I want her to tell Matt and Mia. I say I need some time to think and go outside, promising I’ll come back. I wish I hadn’t worked out already; as much as I hate running, sometimes it helps to clear my head. I went too hard this morning, though, and I’m too sore to do anything but walk. But walking’s better than driving.

  The sky is overcast now, but it’s still nice out, with a breeze blowing and the smell of flowers in the air. Maddie would probably recognize the scent, but I have no clue. I wonder what Maddie would think of Aunt Reggie’s story, what she’d tell me if I explained all the different things I’m feeling. As I walk, I pretend she’s here, and in my head I tell her everything. How I’m mad now that I know how much Dad lied, even though he did it for me; how angry I am that I’ve missed out on this family for so long; how I’m no longer sure looking for my mother is such a good idea.

  I want to talk to Maddie so bad it’s all I can do not to get out my phone and call her. But if I do that, I have to apologize and hope she’ll forgive me and we’ll be back in the same place we were when I left. If she even agrees to talk to me in the first place. Nothing will be different, and everything will be terrible. I can’t go back to her until I can tell her something new about me, about who I am. Something she didn’t know. Something that will make her see me differently. All I have now are new facts, and that’s not the same thing.

  If calling’s not an option, at least I can try to imagine what she’d say, if we were still us and I could still ask for help. She probably wouldn’t be quite as forgiving of Dad as I’m inclined to be, though maybe she’d think now’s the time to tell him about the letter. She’d probably be as excited as I am about this new family; I bet she’d like Mia, too. Would she still think I should try to find my mother? I have no idea.

  I know I have to stop thinking about Maddie and figure out how I feel about all of this myself, but it’s so hard. I miss her so much, and even though my aunt’s story answers a lot of my questions, it raises so many more I don’t even know what to do.

  I haven’t kept track of where I’m going, and all of a sudden it’s clear that I’m lost. I try to recall which houses I passed, how many turns I’ve taken, but nothing stands out. There are lots of houses that look like my aunt’s, big and white with two stories, but there are others, too—some made almost entirely out of brick, some that are only one story but longer, lots painted blue and gray, all nicer than what I’m used to seeing in Brooksby, except maybe some of the houses in Maddie’s neighborhood.

  All my thoughts keep coming back to her.

  I’m just about to get out my phone and map my way back to the Lombardis’ when a car rolls up next to me. Matt. “Mom said you were wandering around the neighborhood,” he says. “Come hang out with me and my friends. We’re going to get some food.”

  Food? I have no sense of how much time has passed. I look at my phone and see that it’s past noon. “Sure,” I say, though I’m not necessarily in the mood to meet more people. Still, it’s better than going back to the house to do more thinking. My head can’t take it.

  I get in the front seat, and Matt takes off before I’ve fastened my seat belt. He drives like someone who hasn’t had a car very long, or who doesn’t have a cop for a dad who swears none of his friends will let me off if I get pulled over. “So, you talked to my mom,” he says, trying to sound casual and completely failing.

  “Yeah, it’s all kind of nuts.” I glance over to see him watching me instead of driving. He wants to know what’s up, and though I said I’d wait for Mia, I decide to give him the short version. “Basically my mom kidnapped me and got busted with a bunch of drugs. She was in prison for a while and no one knows where she is. Sounds like they don’t want to know, either.”

  Thank god we’re deep in the suburbs with no one around, because Matt swerves so hard I think he’s going to hit a car in someone’s driveway. He gets it together enough to say, “That’s seriously fucked up,” then starts driving slower, which is a relief.

  “You don’t have to tell me.”

  “Did Mom tell you why she never told us about her? Or you?”

  I don’t want to tell him that he and Mia weren’t exactly the focus of our conversation. “We didn’t get too far into it. She said she’d talk to you guys later on.”

  He frowns—my answer isn’t what he hoped to hear, though I can’t imagine what I could say that would help. “We’ll see. So are you, like, okay with all this? Do you still want to find her?”

  “I don’t know,” I say. “I mean, I figured the story wouldn’t be good, whatever it was. I need to think about it.” What I don’t say, but what I’m starting to realize, is that I feel kind of bad for my mom. Not that stealing me and running off with a bunch of drugs should inspire a pity party, but something must have made her run, right? Aunt Reggie made it sound like she and my dad were happy, and then she’d just taken
off—there must have been a reason, and instead of finding out what it was, everyone gave up on her. Dad was even willing to believe she was dead. It’s possible I don’t need someone like her in my life, but she reached out, and there’s still so much I want to know.

  Matt pulls onto the highway, and we travel a few exits before getting off in downtown New Haven. He parks near a pizza place with a huge line in front, and my stomach turns over—how am I supposed to explain that I don’t eat pizza? Not to mention the smell coming out of the place is amazing and I kind of want some.

  Two guys wave at us from the front of the line, and Matt waves back as we walk up to join them. I thought he’d hang out with jocks who look like him, but these guys definitely aren’t jocks. One is a white guy, basketball-player tall and the skinniest dude I’ve ever seen, with no muscle tone at all and a light-brown ponytail. The other is black, about my height, with glasses and a Yankees T-shirt, something I can’t let go undiscussed as a proper Red Sox fan.

  Matt introduces me as his cousin; the tall guy is Devon and the short guy is Parker, which both sound like rich-kid names to me. “Nice to meet you,” I say. “But isn’t Connecticut still part of New England? How am I supposed to eat lunch with someone wearing that?” I gesture at Parker’s shirt and hope he knows I’m just messing around.

  “Pack’s from Massachusetts,” Matt explains. “He hasn’t learned how to behave outside the Boston area.”

  “That’s true,” I admit.

  “No worries,” Parker says. “I’m not a huge fan. It’s just a T-shirt.”

  Just a T-shirt? If anyone I knew heard someone talk about baseball that way, it’s more than possible the day would end in a fight. I pretend to understand. “Are they not your team?” I ask.

  “Nah, I’m just not that into sports,” he says.

  “He’s all about politics,” Devon says. “I’m surprised he’s not wearing some fancy model United Nations swag.”