by Diana Welch
Both Amanda and Dennis worked full-time, so I spent many afternoons over at Fran’s house, their closest neighbor, who lived just a quarter mile down the road. Fran and I would sit in her double-wide trailer with the air conditioning blasting, watching daytime TV and crocheting skeins of acrylic yarn the color of Pepto-Bismol into intricate gowns and bonnets for little plastic dolls that she’d wrap in Saran wrap to keep them from collecting dust. Other times, Amanda would drop me off at her friend Janice’s house, and I’d play with her kids Hannah and Beth, who were a little younger than I. They both loved watching Full House, listening to Paula Abdul, and playing Donkey Kong, and though they were nice to me, I was always glad when Amanda came to pick me up. I think that was the biggest difference I noticed about that summer: For the first time I could really remember, I was eager to go home.
AMANDA
DIANA HAD ARRIVED at our house that June with a trunk full of clothes. Then Nancy called. Once again, she had a surprise for me: “Okay, here’s what’s going to happen,” she said. “We signed Diana up for school at St. Anne’s in Charlottesville; she’s going to board there during the week and she’ll live with you on the weekends. I’ll send her stuff along. Bye!” It was the same deal as spring break: no checking in to see if it was okay, no explanations. I had no idea that Diana and Nancy had come to Virginia to visit St. Anne’s–Belfield earlier that spring. When Diana showed up that summer, I had no idea that it was for good.
A couple days later, the rest of Diana’s stuff came in the mail. And I mean, all of it. It was crazy: They didn’t just send the rest of her clothes; they sent everything. What really freaked me out is that they sent every photograph ever taken of Diana while she lived with them. It was as if they were erasing her from their hard drive.
DIANA
WHEN THE CHAMBERLAINS sent all my stuff, it really solidified what I had felt for so long—that it really was better for them when I wasn’t there. I felt hurt, because I had tried so hard to be loved by them and I had failed. It has taken me nearly twenty years to realize how hard they had tried, too, to be loved by me.
So often, people ask me why Nancy Chamberlain did the things she did. I have no way of explaining her actions. I can venture to guess, though it seems unfair. As a teenager, I felt about her as most teenagers do about grown-ups: She was a crazy, mean bitch who tried to ruin my life. But now, as I approach the age Nancy was when she took me in, I can see that there must be more to it than that. She was a middle-class girl from Albany who married into the Bedford blue-blood country-club scene, a young mother who acted on her instincts and took in a little girl who needed a home. I can think of her as a mama bear, fiercely protecting her cubs, trying desperately to maintain a sense of normalcy in her household. It just so happens that her idea of normal doesn’t match mine.
I got my period one afternoon that first summer, while waiting for Amanda to get off work. When I told her, in the car, on the way home, she asked me if I knew what getting my period meant. I told her I did. She asked me if I had cramps, I told her I didn’t. Then she stopped off at the drugstore and bought me a big squishy pack of menstrual pads that read “Made for Teens” in pink type on the purple packaging. Even then, at twelve going on thirteen, I thought it was adorable that my twenty-four-year-old sister bought me special pads for teens. I could see how hard she was trying to navigate these crazy waters she found herself in. More than anything, I couldn’t believe my luck that I was with her, of all people, when that happened. We’re similar birds, my sister and I. She doesn’t make a big deal out of stuff; things are what they are. It’s hard to explain. Everything just felt right.
LIZ
MAMA SENZE DROVE me to the airport the morning of August 10. At breakfast, the children all sang a song for me, and then a dozen or so accompanied me to the airport and waited on the observation deck, bouncing and waving, until the plane made its way down the cracked runway. I sank back in my seat and waited for the tears. I thought saying good-bye would be harder than it was. All I felt was a tingly sense of excitement.
Amanda had called me that day with lots of thrilling news: Diana was moving in with her. We were all going to be together on Fire Island that August for Amanda’s twenty-fifth birthday. Karen had rented a house in Davis Park, and for the first time in nearly six years, all the Welch kids were going to be together. Auntie Eve and Uncle Harry were coming, and Amanda and Diana were going to pick me up at the airport. It was the longest airplane ride of my life.
Diana, with her shock of red hair, was easy to spot in the bustling crowd at JFK. It also helped that she was a full head taller than Amanda. I squeezed both sisters so hard I thought we’d all bruise. Then we all started to laugh. We laughed and laughed. It felt good to be home.
DIANA
THERE WAS NO crying when the Welches finally got together again. Well, Auntie Eve cried a little, but nobody else did. It was as though we had no time for tears. Or maybe the happiness of all being together again completely pushed any sadness out of the way. For a whole week, we ate delicious meals together on the wide wooden deck of a Fire Island beach house that Karen had rented. I was allowed to drink wine with everybody, and they all laughed at my jokes. Amanda, Liz, and Dan were all so comfortable around each other; it was contagious. I just slipped right in. I don’t remember any awkward silences. I remember laughter, mainly.
I was nervous at first, though. Not sure what to expect. Liz was just as I remembered her, smiling at everybody, so easy to talk to, so pretty, and so loving. Mainly, I was scared to see Dan. We hadn’t seen each other in so long, and when we lived together, we fought. Like brother and sister. One time, he bit me so hard for petting his dog Ralph without his permission that he left brace marks on my forearm. But this Dan, who was taller and thicker than I remembered, wasn’t mean to me at all. When he saw me, he hugged me so hard my feet left the ground. And he cracked everybody up by greeting Auntie Eve with “Hey, sexy.” She pursed her lips and rolled her eyes, her signature move. Everything about her was exactly the same as I remembered; when you’re in your seventies, six years doesn’t change much. And Uncle Harry smelled the same way he did when I was little, a tobacco-scented mountain I remembered climbing up to fall asleep on his chest. I remembered Karen as the mean lady I avoided when I was little. I never would have thought that she of all people would be the tenuous link that had held my siblings together all those years. But here she was, offering us all a meeting place. She always had, Amanda explained to me on the car ride up from Virginia. Her New York apartment was where they had spent all their Christmases while I was gone, where they all stayed when they had nowhere else to go. And now that Amanda had her place in Virginia Karen came down there for all the holidays, along with Dan and Liz. It seemed to me that Karen needed the Welches as much as they needed her. More, even.
DAN
WHILE WE WERE on the ferry heading back from Fire Island to the mainland, I told Liz what had happened to Lisa. I had to tell somebody. Up until that weekend with my family, I was drinking nonstop. I immersed myself in liquor. I kept going to bars and picking fights. I was just so angry. I felt like such a bastard: If I hadn’t cheated on Lisa, she wouldn’t have broken up with me, she wouldn’t have gone on that date, she wouldn’t have gotten raped. That’s really what I believed, and what a part of me still believes. Liz told me over and over again that Lisa’s rape wasn’t my fault. It’s just that I wanted so badly to protect Lisa. Like I wanted to protect my sisters.
But that weekend, I saw that my sisters are tough. Our strength is in our laughter. We are all fighters. And Diana was like a beam of light, like sunshine. Her coming home marked the end of the darkest period in my life. That week I realized that I am not alone in the world. I realized that my sisters will always love me, no matter what. And that I will always love them right back.
DIANA
THOUGH I STILL called them Mom and Dad, the Chamberlains ended our relationship the same way they had tried to end my relationship with my family
: by cutting me off, completely. For a while, after I moved in with Amanda, I wrote them letters and asked to visit, but my requests went unanswered. That fall, Liz brought me back to Bedford for my friend Alicia’s bat mitzvah. We ended up staying with the Stewarts, because the Chamberlains hadn’t responded to my requests to stay at their house. So I was surprised to see them at the synagogue. Still, I went over to say hello. Mr. Chamberlain stood silently smiling as Mrs. Chamberlain gathered her children to her legs and said, pleasantly, “Hello, Diana. How are you?” It was the first time I’d seen them since I had moved out, yet nobody made a move to embrace me. It was very formal and strange. I was stunned.
LIZ
DIANA WAS SO excited about seeing all her old friends at the bat mitzvah. I helped her get ready at the Stewarts’—Daisy and Montgomery always made me, and my siblings, feel welcome whenever I went back to Bedford. Diana borrowed a white scoop-neck dress of mine that was big on her; you could see her bra straps. Her breasts were small bumps, just starting to grow, but she insisted she needed something to cover them. I suggested Band-Aids, as a joke. She thought I was serious and actually put Band-Aids on her little nipples. You could see their outline through the dress. But she felt grown-up—I could see that. I put a little blush on her cheeks, and she used my lip-gloss. She was giddy when I dropped her at the synagogue.
I went to get her a few hours later and was giddy myself waiting to hear her stories about seeing her best friend “B” and her ex-boyfriend Harry. But when she climbed into the car, I could tell something was wrong. She looked spooked.
“How was it?” I asked.
She looked at me, then started to tremble.
“What happened, Di?” I asked.
“The Chamberlains were there,” she said, bursting into tears.
Between deep, jagged breaths, Diana told me that she ran up to say hello to Margaret, who got red in the face, nervous. And that when Diana asked Margaret what was wrong, Margaret said, “My mother said I’m not supposed to talk to you,” and ran off.
I knew that Diana had been fighting back these tears all night, that this tough little thirteen-year-old wasn’t going to break down in the middle of the party, in front of all her friends and those people she was still calling mom, dad, and brother and sister. I pulled her close to me and there, in my arms with her head buried in my shoulder, she began to cry. And so did I. I could not understand how Mrs. Chamberlain could be so cruel.
DIANA
ONCE I WAS back in Virginia, I got angry. I felt as though I had lost another mother, another father. I wrote them letters telling them so. I heard nothing back. One afternoon while waiting for Amanda to get off work, I decided to give them a call.
Nancy answered. In a shaking voice, I began to tell her how hurt I was. I asked her why she no longer wanted me in her life. She cut me off. “We will not be treated like a bus stop, Diana,” she said, her voice quick and angry. “I will not have you flitting in and out of our lives without a care in the world.” Then she hung up. The conversation was over, and that was the last time I ever spoke to the woman I had called “mom.”
When I looked up, it was to see Amanda standing there, waiting. “I didn’t mean to be eavesdropping, Di,” she said, her eyes soft and apprehensive, “but I have to tell you something.” Her lips quivered and grew tight. “You are not treating them like a bus stop.” As simultaneous tears began to burn our eyes, Amanda hugged me. In the back of that retail store, I cried for a long time into my sister’s soft shoulder.
AMANDA
I DROPPED DIANA off as a boarder at St. Anne’s-Belfield, because that was what Nancy arranged. At that point, I just did whatever Nancy said. Once Diana was settled in her dorm room, the admissions woman wanted to talk in private, so Diana went off to check out the tennis courts. The woman started asking me questions, about guardianship, about how things were going to work. I didn’t know any of the answers. And right there, in the office, I started to cry because I had no idea what was going on. I hadn’t seen Diana in all these years, and I was like, ask Nancy, because I don’t know anything about any of this! I was so lost; I had no control over anything that was going on. It killed me to think that this must have been how Diana had felt for the last six years, just wondering what the fuck was going on.
The transition from living with the Chamberlains to living with Dennis and me must have been weird for Diana. We had no money. I mean, I was making six dollars an hour working retail, and Dennis was just starting out as a stockbroker, making cold calls to people. Without Diana’s monthly Social Security checks, it would have been hard for us to cover her expenses. Meanwhile, she was going to this fancy private school, and my yearly salary wouldn’t even cover the tuition. The trust was still in good shape; Mom had been so smart in setting that up. Still, when I dropped Diana off at school every Monday morning, and picked her up every Friday night, it was in my old International pickup truck with its “Farm Use” plates. We’d be in this long line of BMWs and SUVs creeping up the hill, and poor Di would shrink in her seat. But, I figured, hell—it was good for her. Builds character.
Eventually, she told me that she hated boarding and asked if she could live with me and Dennis full-time. Slowly, we took control of our situation, of being together. I began the guardianship transfer, but because Diana was still considered a “ward of the state,” I had to be approved by the state of Virginia. It almost didn’t happen.
The state appointed for Diana a guardian ad litem, who advocated for Diana to move in with us but suggested that Dennis not come with me to the actual hearing. He was concerned that the conservative Virginian judge might have an issue with Dennis and me not being married. So it was just Diana and I that day in the judge’s chambers, but when the judge asked who else lived in the house, I couldn’t lie to him. I told him that I lived with my boyfriend. He was quiet for a while and then said, “Well, I don’t like that.” I think he actually might have used the words “living in sin.” I was like, Jesus Christ, what are you going to do, send her to another fucked-up foster home just because I’m not married? But I didn’t say anything. I didn’t want to piss him off. Diana and I just looked at each other, like, oh shit. Eventually, he acquiesced—thank God. On the way home, Diana and I started laughing uncontrollably in the car, probably from relief. We didn’t give a fuck whether that old judge liked it or not. We were family.
For the five years that Diana lived with me, I never asked her about what happened while she lived with the Chamberlains. I figured if there was anything she wanted to tell me, she would. So I didn’t hear any of the stories on these pages until Diana wrote them all these years later. And it was hard to hear. I think the best thing Nancy ever did for Diana was to send her to live with me. I don’t know how to say this in a nice neat way, but maybe Nancy finally realized that cutting us off from Diana was wrong.
I think the Chamberlains did what they thought was best. And I think that Diana would never have bent to Nancy’s will, no matter what Nancy did or said. Diana has always had a fun-loving, carefree spirit. It’s not surprising that she didn’t fit into the Chamberlain model of the perfect family. She’s way too stubborn; she does what she wants when she wants. Believe me, it can be frustrating, but I understand it. Diana is a Welch.
DIANA
MY FAVORITE THING about being back with my family was hearing the stories. I got the most during holiday meals, where we always gathered around Mom and Dad’s table, eating good food, drinking wine, and laughing.
“Tell that story again,” I’d beg them. “The one where Amanda convinced Liz to eat soap by telling her it was cheese.” And they would, through laughter that often rocked their bodies to the point of tears.
Hearing these tales, seeing my siblings’ eyes lit up with their memories, I would dissolve, slamming down my fork, leaning forward, and laughing with my family. The time that the mean goose at Leonard Park chased Dan and ripped off his diapers. The time Mom called Amanda upstairs to help her investigate the ghost ben
eath her bed. It was actually Dan, making the mattress rise up and down with his back. Knowing this, Amanda took a running jump and landed spread-eagle on the bed.
“Then I heard the saddest little whimper,” Amanda would say through laughter, somewhat amazed by the depths of her childhood cruelty. “And Mom totally freaked out, screaming, ‘You could have killed him!’” Somehow, even Dan found the story hilarious.
They told me stories of Mom and fallen soufflés, failed piecrusts, and blueberry pancakes on Sunday mornings. They told stories of me, a chubby cross-eyed kid who was always on someone’s hip or lap. Mom was forty-two years old when I was born, an unplanned pregnancy. “You were the love child,” Liz would say every time I joked that I was a mistake. “Mom called you the best surprise.”
Liz’s favorite story to tell was a bedtime story that Dad told each of us about the one-legged pheasant that patrolled the grounds of the gray house while we slept. “Dad would pretend his pointer finger was the pheasant, and he would poke up our legs and into our bellies so that our last waking memory was a fit of giggles,” Liz explained, poking her finger on the table for effect.
“Tell me that story again,” I’d ask, hungry for more.
And they would, every time.
acknowledgments
The authors would like to extend deep gratitude to our agent, Brettne Bloom, and our editor, Julia Pastore. Brettne’s enthusiasm and diligence about this book has not waned since the start. We simply cannot thank her enough, or our brilliant and gifted editor, Julia, who believed in this book from its first one hundred pages. She trusted us completely and we trusted her. We are grateful to everyone at both Kneerim Williams and Harmony Books for making this experience such a great one.