Mom made up for his absence by being steady and trustworthy and showing her love with a quiet devotion that kept me bolted to the earth when I wanted to take off into la-la land. Kylie and I were her life, and that’s the way it was. Years of working behind a bar had taught my mother to carefully guard her true feelings, and she used that same emotional vigilance to hold our family together, even as her daughter’s marriage fell apart. Again, I owed her one.
“I’m not doing this to find out about my biological family,” I insisted to Heather.
She rolled her eyes. “You can’t tell me it never crossed your mind.”
“It might have, but what really matters is using this information to find out what I can about any illness Kylie might have inherited.”
“Bullshit.”
Just then, Kylie burst into the room. “What did you say, Auntie Heather?”
“Bullet. Your mom made me a bulletproof coffee, and it’s going to keep me up until three a.m.”
Kylie shot her a skeptical look before falling into Heather’s arms for a hug.
Coming from such a small family, I’d always sought people out to fill in the missing spots. Kylie didn’t have any aunts—Heather didn’t have any nieces. This worked out perfectly, especially when I separated from Matt, which made my small family even smaller.
“We were about to learn all of your secrets,” Heather joked, guiding Kylie to the kitchen table.
Kylie flushed. “What secrets?”
Ignoring the uneasy feeling in my gut, I fired up my laptop. “The DNA results came in today. Want to see the ethnic breakdown?”
She nodded and scooched next to me.
I took a deep breath and logged in. The breakdown of Kylie’s heritage appeared. I wouldn’t consider it mine. I couldn’t consider it mine. Scientific data. That was all.
Your Past Is a Present!
YOU:
Scandinavian: 48.9%
Northern European: 21.7%
British Isles/Ireland: 16.2%
France/Germany: 5.5%
Southern European: 20.3%
Italy: 18.9%
Iberia: 1.4%
North African: 3.2%
Native American: 3.1%
Ashkenazi Jewish: 1.7%
Unassigned: 1.1%
Heather whistled. “You are truly a woman of the world, young Kylie. Way to represent.”
Kylie pulled the computer closer and began studying the analysis.
“All those percentages represent people,” Heather said softly. “Lots and lots of people who made you into you.”
The concept was almost too much to process. I sat back in my chair, my emotions fogging my vision, preventing me from focusing on the specifics of the ethnic breakdown. All those people included the people who made me and then gave me away. None of those people included my mother.
“Why don’t you read it, Ally?” Heather said gently. “It’s historical data, that’s all it has to be.”
“You’re right. It’s not my life.”
“Yes, it is, Mom,” Kylie said. “You and Dad are on here.”
Her innocent exuberance had me pull the laptop toward myself. I studied the numbers, pretending I was in a lab coat, a cool, dispassionate scientist, not a woman who was about to find out the answer to the central mystery of her life.
The “unassigned” designation caught my attention first. It was a little disturbing. What did that mean? That there was a small part of Matt’s or my DNA that was homeless, wandering rootless and alone? That had to be mine. Nothing about Matt was a mystery. So even my DNA questioned who I was. Great.
With effort, I shook off that downer of a thought and glanced at my daughter, at her sandy-brown hair, so much lighter than mine, her strong nose, the shape of her delicate brow. I thought of her strength, her sense of humor, her passion. Which traits came from these mystery ancestors and which ones were uniquely hers? Which were nurtured by me and Matt and my mother, and which were designed by nature? And . . . did it matter?
It did. Because there was her illness. It was as mysterious as these nameless, faceless contributors to the creation of the girl sitting next to me. Getting help from these people seemed an impossible task. But, as Doctor Indigo said, it was a start. So what could I do but get over my drama and begin to sift through all of the data? I dashed off a quick email to Dr. Indigo, sending her the link to the DNA information. Then I drew the laptop even closer to me so I could have a better look at our past.
Matt’s family came from Sweden, on both sides. Scandinavia made sense.
And the rest? It was time for a little detective work. The remaining big percentages had to represent my side. I did know that my biological parents were from Chicago. Given the ethnic mix of the city, in all likelihood, I was Irish and Italian. I let that settle in for a moment. Did that knowledge change anything? No. I already liked pasta and Guinness. I had dark hair, but my shoulders freckled after a day in the sun. These details were interesting, but didn’t change my perception of myself one iota. Historical data, Heather said. That’s all it was.
The smaller percentages also made sense if they belonged to me. North Africa was very close to Italy. I’d read somewhere that Irish immigrants worked the railroads out West, so maybe the Native American came through that?
“Look, Mom!” Kylie exclaimed. “They have a timetable! We had a Jewish relative somewhere in the 1770s. I wonder if that person was a girl or a boy.”
The Ashkenazi Jew was the wild card, another lone DNA wanderer through the distant past. He was mine. Somehow I knew it. “I think a boy. I don’t know why I said that, though.”
Excited, Kylie wiggled in her chair, reminding me instantly of Matt. “Will I be on this someday?” she continued. “Like if my great-great-great-granddaughter tests her DNA?”
It was an awe-inspiring thought. “Yes, sweetie. You’ll be a little dot in the first half of the twenty-first century.”
Kylie’s excitement turned down a notch. “That’s actually kind of weird. Like, she won’t know me. I’ll be a stranger to her.”
“At that point, she’ll probably be able to stick a computer chip in her head and visit your memories. And anyway, I take a lot of photos of you. There will definitely be evidence you were on this planet.”
Kylie snorted. “You never print those photos out.”
“No one prints photos out,” Heather said. “Who has time for that?”
“Well, I’ll make time,” I said to Kylie. “We’ll make scrapbooks for your great-great-great-granddaughter, even though she’ll probably be half alien or something.”
Heather laughed and started telling Kylie about some science fiction movie she’d seen. I couldn’t tear my eyes away from the results page. All those people over so many years—all those choices made, all those people falling in love, having babies, moving from place to place, living and dying and forming the basis of the lives we now lived. It was nothing short of a miracle, and something completely mundane at the same time. We were all here because someone got together with someone else—the simplest thing in the world, right?
I thought about me and Matt. Maybe not so simple.
He’d probably think this was all a waste of time. Still, I made a mental note to send him these results. It was his heritage, too, this map of our genes mixing it up.
“Grandma, take a look at this!”
Distracted, I hadn’t noticed my mother come into the room.
“Let me put my eyes on, honey,” she said, fishing her reading glasses out of her flannel-covered cleavage. I held my breath as she brought her face right up to the screen.
“It’s the DNA test,” I said, my voice flat.
“Uh-huh,” she said. “I can see that.”
“This one was for Kylie, but you can do one, too, if you want,” Heather said, not realizing she was treading into dangerous waters. “Do you want to know where your ancestors came from?”
My mom straightened to her full five feet, three inches. “I already
know. They’re from Poland. I’m Polish.” She looked directly at me. “And so are you. I raised you to be, so you are.”
“I know,” I said. “This is just . . . it’s just a way to find out more medical information. It’s for research. A tool.”
“Tools can be dangerous,” Mom said. She snapped the laptop shut. “My parents were Josef and Gloria Stefancyk. Their family was from Warsaw. I’m Polish. You’re my daughter, so you are too.”
Kylie looked puzzled. “But, Grandma, you adopted mom. There isn’t any Polish on my chart.”
“Not another word.”
I knew I should back down, but I didn’t like the sharpness in her tone. “Mom, it doesn’t change anything about us.”
“That’s where you’re wrong, Ally. It does. Go ahead and use this information for whatever you need to help Kylie. I get that it could be useful, but I don’t want to look at it. I know you didn’t come from my body, but your DNA sure wasn’t the one cleaning up your puke when you got sick, and reading to you every night.” Mom crouched in front of the fridge and dug out a can of sparkling water. “I need you to listen. When I said not another word? I meant it. At least not in front of me.”
I heard her, but it didn’t change the fact that I thought there should be another word about it. Lots of words, for that matter. At dinner that night, there were hardly any words at all. My mom ate with us, stoic and grim, barely responding as Kylie described her day.
I knew I should let her work through it, and that I should be gentle with her—I’d forced my mother to confront information she’d rather remain buried—but part of me wondered why she faulted me for simple curiosity. I was thirty-eight years old. At some point, didn’t every adopted person wonder about where she came from? I’d think the urge to uncover that mystery would be almost primal. Part of me was hurt too. Didn’t my mother trust the strength of our relationship?
Mom brought her plate to the sink. “I’m going out to the garage,” she muttered. “To work on that lamp.”
Kylie perked up. “Can I help?”
“Not tonight,” she said, shrugging on a faded hoodie. “Some other time.”
“You have homework anyway,” I said as Kylie slumped down in her chair.
“We’re sorry, Grandma,” Kylie said. “We didn’t mean to hurt your feelings.”
After a pointed glance my way, Mom crouched next to her. “You didn’t, honey. It’s just that . . . I’m old. I like things to stay the way they are, and I don’t like to be reminded that they could be different. Your mom is a Stefancyk. I hope looking at those numbers can help you, but it doesn’t add anything but complicated thoughts to my life. Do you understand what I’m trying to explain?”
“Yeah,” Kylie said. “I mean, I guess.”
She briefly touched the top of Kylie’s head. “Your mom is my family. You’re my family. I’m not going to let those numbers tell me otherwise.”
Later, after I’d tucked Kylie in for the night, I curled up with a mug of tea and my laptop. I wanted to start the process of sifting through the health data before our visit with Dr. Indigo at the end of the week.
The first thing I did was copy the link and email it to Matt. I wanted to call him, to pore over this material with the one person who should be just as invested in it as I was. But I doubted my phone call would be welcomed. And the thought of discussing his dating life was about as appealing as lasering Jenn with two n’s nether regions.
I knew why people tried to “stay friends” after a romantic relationship went bust. It temporarily allowed them to hold on to the one kind of intimacy that lasts—the one built of familiarity. In many ways, that type was the hardest to lose, because it took the longest to build. I’ll admit, I clung to the idea of friendship with Matt. Maybe we couldn’t be in the same place for more than ten minutes without arguing, but we still cared for each other, we still wanted the best for each other.
And wasn’t that friendship?
Maybe. The thing was, friendship implied mutual respect.
Did I respect Matt’s decision to move on with his romantic life? Did he respect my choice to continue seeing Dr. Indigo?
A whole lotta no. To both.
So we aren’t friends, then, I thought, sadness echoing through me. We were just two people with something in common, which was barely any kind of a relationship at all. That conclusion made me want to add whiskey to my tea.
Instead, I took a deep breath and dug further into the DNA results. Underneath the ethnic breakdown was an image of a family tree generously dotted with colorful leaves. Each one represented someone who shared a fraction of my or Matt’s DNA, and was willing to share that information with anyone who was interested.
Kylie, you have 1,526 relatives in the Past Is a Present database!
1,526!
My heart nearly leaped out of my chest. Talk about a big family!
I scrolled through quickly. There were pages of cousins—second, third, fourth, and beyond—from all over the world. All these photos of strangers reaching out blindly to those who shared their blood—their optimism warmed my frosted heart. I went back up to the top and started reading down the list of names.
Huh.
I didn’t think I was comprehending what I was looking at, so I read the relationship designation again. And again. Then, sent the link to Heather and called her.
“What does this mean to you?” I said, trying to hide the note of hysteria in my voice. “Am I reading that right?”
“Oh, my friend. Yes. You are. Holy shit.”
I could feel my blood pounding through my veins. “That’s . . . a close relative, yes? Like, really close. Almost uncomfortably close.”
I heard Heather gulp her beauty drink. She drank warm milk with coconut oil every night, claiming the concoction kept her from getting wrinkles. “Yep. Kylie’s great-aunt.”
“She could be Matt’s aunt.”
“She could be, but don’t you know all of Matt’s aunts?”
“I do. But what if there was a secret love child or something?”
Heather laughed. “I’ve met Matt’s family. That seems unlikely. No, honey, she’s your aunt. It’s pretty clear.”
“I figured. I just wanted a freak-out partner.”
“You’ve got one.”
“Do you see where she lives?”
“Willow Falls. We could drive there in less than an hour, like, if we were doing the speed limit and missing every light. Wow.”
“Uh-huh. Wow.”
Heather gasped. “She could be your biological mom’s sister.”
“Or my bio-dad’s.”
“Oh my God.”
“My body feels weird,” I said. “Kind of tingly and warm.”
“That’s your blood pressure going nuts. You are, like, gaining close relatives as we speak. Of course your body is reacting.” Heather gasped again. “Her name, though. Micki Patel? Could the test be wrong?”
I thought about that possibility for a moment. “They allow DNA in court, right? So it’s got to be pretty foolproof. And that’s probably her married name. I mean, in all likelihood she’s in her sixties, so chances are she’s married, and might even be a mom.”
“And maybe even a grandma.” A pause. “You could have cousins, and great-cousins. Is that once removed or twice? I never could understand how that worked.”
The thought of that stole my breath.
“Ally?”
“Yeah?” I choked out.
“Are you going to tell your mom?”
Good question. This went beyond rejecting the notion of another family in the abstract—this was a real live blood relative. I studied the photo of the woman. She took the camera straight on, grinning directly at whoever was taking the picture. Her hair was an unnatural shade of red, and she wore too much makeup. But there was something about her eyes I liked, something familiar. They were brown and warm and the slightest bit guarded, just like mine.
“I don’t think so. How could I do that to her? Sh
e’d be so hurt.”
“Do you think she’d be the kind of hurt that lasts, though? Or do you think she’d get over it when she finds out you were only satisfying a curiosity?”
“You know Sophie. Which do you think?”
“Yeah.”
Heather was my best friend. I could say anything to her, so I did. “What if, hypothetically, I contacted this woman just to talk to her. Just to set some facts straight, if she even has any information. Like, family medical history.”
Heather gasped. “You’re going to contact her? Out of the blue? You have no idea who she is. I would do one of those search things beforehand. You know, find out if she’s got any arrest warrants or foreclosures or anything. What if she’s a con artist with a criminal record? What if she goes after your money?”
“Now you sound like Jenn with two n’s. And I don’t have any money.”
“Well, okay then. Maybe she’s rich and you can go after her money.”
“We’re just talking in the abstract. I don’t think it’s going to go anywhere.”
“It’s not just talk. You have this . . . this open door right in front of you. I’ve known you for years, and you have never been able to resist an open door.”
The Other Family Page 4