He Gets That from Me

by Jacqueline Friedland

  “Pa?” he asks me, blinking rapidly as he begins to realize that something else is wrong.

  I feel heat rising to the sides of my face, spreading across my temples—a sudden, deep anger, the sensation of confusion coupled with despair.

  “Papa?” he says again, and my heart splinters as I try to process the impossible idea that I might not be his father at all.

  “It’s okay. Sorry, sorry.” I rush back at them all, regretting the way I’ve extinguished everyone’s Saturday afternoon buzz. “I just got frazzled by work stuff. Look”—I motion down to my sweats—“I didn’t even have a chance to get dressed yet. But I shouldn’t have let the work blitz influence my behavior. Completely my fault. If you guys go hit the shower, I’ll have lunch on the table in ten minutes.”

  They hesitate, unsure if they’ve really been dismissed.

  “And a smile on my face,” I add. “Promise.”

  “I call first!” Kai shouts in response, running past me toward the small bathroom the boys share, clearly prepared to forget what just happened.

  “No way—you went first yesterday!” Teddy is darting after him, a second piece of cheese still in his hand, oblivious to the tension that remains in the kitchen behind him.

  As the boys’ voices get farther away, Chip looks back at me and leans against the fridge. “You want to tell me what that was about?” he asks gently.

  I glance back over my shoulder, nervous to be overheard.

  The distant whirr of the shower starts up, and a second later, a door slams. I poke my head out from the kitchen and see Teddy still standing in the hallway outside the bathroom, a look of defeat on his chiseled face.

  “You can use ours, Ted,” I call to him, offering up this forbidden fruit, even though I know that bottles of conditioner will end up abandoned in all states of disarray—tops askew and shimmery liquid dripping helplessly into Rorschach images on the tile below. Towels will be strewn on the floor, left for dead, as though a magic gnome might hang them back.

  Teddy’s eyes light up at the offer.

  “Just please don’t make a mess.” As if there’s any point.

  “Got it!” He nods and scurries toward the master bedroom, lifting his shirt over his head as he goes.

  I sigh, sorry that he and I have very different definitions of the word “mess.”

  “Our shower?” Chip raises a golden eyebrow. “This must be serious.” He’s all light-heartedness and smiles, clearly not expecting the magnitude of what I’m about to tell him.

  “The Relativity results came back. The DNA tests.” The words rush out in a hushed whisper. “Kai’s results don’t match any of ours. There’s no overlap. Not with either of us, and not with Teddy.”

  Chip is silent for a beat, impassive, almost as if I haven’t said anything at all. I can see the moment that the information registers, and suddenly he springs into action.

  “What? What do you mean?” he demands. He’s scanning the kitchen counters. “Where are the reports? That’s not possible.”

  I scuttle around him and pull them from the canvas bag. “Look.”

  He grabs the papers from my outstretched hand and places them on the kitchen island. I read the results again from over his shoulder as he studies them. First he examines Kai’s, then Teddy’s. He doesn’t even look at mine or his.

  “This doesn’t make sense. The boys have the same mother. How could they not share a single origin country in common?” he asks me, as though I’m the one who has come up with the incomprehensible results he’s reading. He looks back at the reports for a moment longer and then reaches for the paper with his own results, his eyes scanning quickly over the information. “Well, this at least makes sense.”

  I know he’s seeing information he would have expected on his own report. Chip is more or less “Mayflower stock,” even though he can’t fully trace his lineage back to a literal pilgrim, much to his family’s dismay. Still, the report confirms that he is 94 percent of European descent, with an emphasis on England, France, and Scandinavia. The remaining 6 percent is listed as “unassigned,” which we were told to expect as a normal part of the results.

  He glances quickly at the report with my information, which reads mostly as we’d expect. I am 97 percent European, with the greatest connections showing me to be Italian and Iberian. The results also allege that I am 3 percent Native American. I don’t have time to focus on that unexpected bit of trivia, though.

  “Well, clearly this is wrong,” Chip says, flinging the pages back onto the kitchen island beside us as if they’re worthless. “What a hoax.” His lip curls as he prepares to write off this whole experiment as hogwash.

  I don’t respond, and his features slowly slacken as he registers that I believe there might be veracity to these results—that the horrific implications contained on these pages might be truth.

  “Stop it,” he says gently, putting a hand on my shoulder, as if to steady me. “Don’t. What are you thinking? That the fertility clinic screwed something up? That the kid was switched at birth? You’re not serious.” He tilts his head as he regards me, like he can’t believe the ridiculousness of my reaction.

  And in that horrible moment, I suddenly realize that this mistake may have gone beyond the fertility lab. Here I was wondering if they had implanted the wrong embryo in the surrogate. But it could be so much worse. If the results are correct, if Kai is not my son, then I might have another son out there in the world—a ten-year-old child who has been living for a decade with the wrong parents.

  Chip is watching me. His eyes narrow as though he can hear my thoughts. “No.” His voice is firm. “That’s preposterous, Donny. ‘Switched at birth’ isn’t something that happens in real life. And anyway, it couldn’t possibly be more obvious that Kai is the fruit of your loins. All you have to do is take one look at him.”

  But now I’m wondering if everyone’s always thought Kai looks so much like me simply because he looks so different from Chip. “Well, then, how do you explain these?” I wave the papers in the air.

  He steps closer to me and puts his hands on either side of my face, his palms cradling my chin, and it’s as if he’s trying to control the direction of my thoughts through his grasp, holding tight to keep me from getting hysterical. He lowers his head slightly so our gazes are level, our faces only inches apart. “Slow yourself down. These reports aren’t right. This is just some money-making entertainment thing that people aren’t supposed to take seriously. They called you Native American.” He cocks his head in doubt, emphasizing the absurdity of it. “You think your Nonna’s Nonna was spending time with the local Navajos back in Sicily? This”—he points toward the papers—“is just consumerism gone wrong. Fake science getting into the wrong hands. We have no reason to consider this information real data. At worst, it’s nothing more than a scam. At best, they mixed up the results. Who knows? But don’t you go doubting the family we worked so hard to create.”

  “It could be real.” I back away and lower myself into a chair, too weak to bear the weight of the thoughts assaulting me. “Remember when the Mayers did this and found out Judah was Irish? They redid the test with two other companies and all three reports showed identical results. I think he found, like, twenty-two Irish cousins he never knew he had.”

  “First of all, promise me you are not going back online to look for cousins.” Chip’s voice is rough, commanding.

  I shake my head. “It already says there are no matches for any relatives closer than four generations removed.” I point to the bottom of Kai’s report.

  He looks down toward my finger but doesn’t read the words. “Well look, the Mayers’ experience doesn’t mean that there wasn’t a screw up this time around, okay?” We’re quiet for a second as we stare at each other. “Just slow your roll for me. That’s all I’m asking. Let’s take a step back and digest this information for a few hours. Maybe it was just a shock to see the reports not matching up. Nothing is going to change, so let’s sit with it for a
minute, let it simmer. If we give it a little time, perhaps clearer thoughts could prevail?” He raises an eyebrow at me.

  I want so badly for him to be right, to prove that my anxiety has gotten the best of me once again. “Yeah, okay,” I say, nodding, as I make my way back over to the fridge, where I pull out a package of whole wheat wraps and a head of lettuce so I can get lunch started. “I guess that makes the most sense.” I don’t expect that a few hours of ruminating will do anything to quash the dread I’m feeling in the pit of my stomach, the vine full of worry burrowing inside me. My mind is already running on overdrive, wondering what the next step should be, how we should try to figure out what happened. In spite of myself, I feel like something has already been taken from me—ripped out of my grasp, stolen. I’m not sure how I’m supposed to just ignore this new sense of uncertainty, of not knowing where our boy came from, of not having any information to cleave to for even a dusting of foundational or emotional security.

  As I pull a few more items from the fridge, I try to talk myself down. I tell myself that it’s crazy to think, even for a split second, that Kai might not be my child. Of course he’s mine, and there is a reasonable explanation for the results we were sent. I try to convince myself that eventually, I will be laughing about my ridiculous overreaction.

  And yet.

  As I move the butter knife in concentric circles, spreading hummus across four whole wheat wraps, I can’t stop worrying. Is it possible that I have another ten-year-old son somewhere out there, living in someone else’s home? Or is my genetic child still a frozen embryo, waiting in a lab in Connecticut? What if there was another unfortunate family at UCLA the day that Kai and Teddy were born who are also caught up in this, and now, somewhere out in the wide world, I have another child who has no idea he has been living the wrong life?

  By nighttime, I’m still fixating, despite Chip’s pleas to the contrary. Each of his brisk, clipped movements feels like an admonishment as he climbs into our king-size bed and pulls the white duvet up around his waist. He plucks his iPad from the nightstand, his gaze shifting pointedly away from me, down to the news article on the screen.

  I sigh dramatically from where I’m still standing in the middle of the bedroom with my toothbrush in my hand, and Chip looks back up at me.

  “I can’t argue about this anymore,” he says. “You’re Scottish, you’re Spanish, you’re part penguin. These companies are just pandering to consumers.”

  “I don’t know how you can be so cavalier.” I run my bare toes against the scratchy Berber rug beneath the bed as I stare down at him. “They have millions of people in their database. Millions. It’s real data, Chip!” I point the green toothbrush at him, laying into him like this is his fault. A dollop of fizzy toothpaste plummets to the Berber.

  “You know what?” Chip sits up a little straighter against his pillow, a hint of irritation creeping into his voice. “Do you want to just get DNA tests? Like, real, legit paternity tests? Otherwise you’re going to be a basket case forever.”

  “Yeah.” I turn back toward the bathroom. “I think it’s a good idea.”

  I don’t mention that I already reached the same conclusion hours earlier, while we were shepherding the boys around South Street Seaport, talking about everything except what was actually on my mind. Chip’s cell phone rings from its perch on the wireless charger beside him, and I head back to the bathroom to take care of my teeth.

  His mother, no doubt. Don’t get me wrong, I love Lynn Rigsdale dearly, but Chip has asked her repeatedly not to call us after 10 p.m., and still she does. Some days Chip seems incredibly miffed by the liberties to which his mother feels herself entitled, and other times, like tonight, he is clearly delighted by the sound of her voice, regardless of the hour.

  I take my time with my teeth as I listen to Chip’s end of the conversation. Gone is the exasperation that I heard moments ago; and instead, he’s regaling his mother with tales of his latest work-related drama. Who knew there could be drama at an investment bank, but that’s Chip—he could find a human-interest story inside a can of green beans.

  It turns out that the investor on the other side of his latest deal is the brother of some peripheral high school friend of his. As I listen to him hypothesize with his mother about what ever happened to this guy and that guy from his stodgy private school back in Connecticut, I feel an unwelcome sense of jealousy at his ability to compartmentalize, or to simply not worry at all. He’s always so sure of everything, of how things will work out, of himself.

  He’s hardly rushing her off the phone, so I reorganize the top drawer in the bathroom vanity while I wait. Beneath the tubes of toothpaste and shaving oils, I spy a package of Cocofloss, a high-end dental floss that Chip brought home from a cosmetics store last month. I used to get really fired up about artisanal floss—one of my many offbeat indulgences from before we had kids—so when Chip saw this new floss at a Sephora, he thought of me and picked it up. Sadly, this brand leaves an aftertaste akin to Crisco mixed with shoe polish. After trying it once, I thanked Chip profusely and shoved the packet deep into a drawer when he wasn’t looking. I reach now for the fluorescent box, pull out a long piece of the distinctive turquoise-and-orange-braided thread, rip it off, and toss it directly into the trash. Chip will see it there and think that I’ve used it.

  He’s wrapping up the call, finally, so I make my way back toward the bed, stopping to rub at the spot of toothpaste on the rug and then to pull our blackout shades more precisely into place on the way.

  He hangs up the phone and looks back at the tablet in front of him as I lower myself onto the bed next to him.

  “Huh.” He chuckles as he turns his screen in my direction. “Did you know they sell paternity tests at Walgreens?” He tilts the device closer to me so I can see. I’m surprised that he was searching DNA tests while so casually chatting it up with Lynn. “How many people do we think are doing paternity tests on the regular?” he says on a laugh.

  “I’m glad you think this is funny,” I say. “I am not using some random drugstore test. We’re using a lab. Quest, Labcorp, I’m sure they all do it.”

  “How are you going to take Kai to a lab? You’re just going to tell him that you’re worried we got the wrong embryo or that the hospital might have sent us home with one of the wrong babies?” His smile vanishes. “I don’t think so. That’s a hard no for me.”

  “Of course not,” I say. “Do you think I’ve suddenly turned brainless?”

  He raises his eyebrows at me as if to say, If the shoe fits.

  “Oh no,” I deadpan, “there goes my brain, slipping right out of my ear. Look, it made a mess on the bed.”

  I cross my arms against my chest, waiting for him to speak. He only rolls his eyes at me.

  “I’m pretty sure we can get a sample at home,” I say. “I’ll just tell Kai it’s follow-up for the ancestry testing. That they needed more information or something. He won’t care.”

  “Fine, whatever.” Chip waves a hand in the air. “I think you’re blowing this whole thing out of proportion, but whatever you need to do.”

  “I hope you’re right,” I shrug as I pick up the novel that has been sitting on my bedside table for a month, some crime drama that I cannot get into. I pull out the bookmark and attempt to focus on the words in front of me, but my thoughts are still careening in a million directions. I can’t stand that it’s currently only Saturday night, which means I will have to wait out the remainder of the weekend before I can start making any useful phone calls about this situation.

  My thoughts keep churning, tumbling all the way back to the day the boys were born. We were there in the hospital room the moment they arrived. I saw both babies before they were whisked off to the nursery. I held their wiggly bodies, inhaled their scents as I kissed them. Wouldn’t I have noticed if one of them was different—like, an entirely different little human—when we saw him again only a couple of hours later? I remember how I instantly felt bonded with each boy. Chip
and I had endless discussions before the babies were born about whether the love for a child truly materializes the minute he or she is born, or whether that was all cliché. Those questions became moot as I held Teddy and then Kai, for the first time each. I was overcome with such astounding emotion, a fierce and violent love that took over my whole being.

  But now I feel my stomach clench as I worry that maybe it wasn’t Kai I was holding in that moment, that it could have been another baby boy. Is it really possible that Kai wasn’t meant to come home with us? I can’t fathom such a possibility, not even a little. And yet I can’t let it go. I need to know why his results don’t match up with the rest of ours.

  Chapter 3

  MAGGIE

  JANUARY 2007

  As I pull into the parking lot of the Food City Shopping Plaza, exhausted from eight hours at the store, I’m still ruminating about my afternoon. This older guy came in wanting a refund for an air mattress, but he’d already opened and destroyed the packaging, which meant I was only allowed to an offer an exchange. Well, he wasn’t having it. He threw a full tantrum, shouting at me about how he didn’t like my attitude and demanding to see the manager. Cynthia appeared on the scene and eventually placated the man with a lot of earnest head nodding and a discount card, but after he left, she started waxing poetic about customer service. I let the situation get too heated without seeking intervention, she said. “You’ve got to know who has your back,” she kept telling me, as though she’d have gone to bat for me if she’d been standing there when the guy started insulting my intelligence.

  He doesn’t know who I am or where I come from. He doesn’t know everything I’ve given up. Who is he to judge me? And I said as much. And what reason has Cynthia ever given me to indicate that she truly has my back anyway?

  I wonder fleetingly whether I will ever truly trust anyone other than my sister. My parents stopped speaking to me six years ago, when I dropped out of UC Irvine mid–freshman year. I was so sure then that I was making the right choice—rejecting everything they stood for, pursuing a future that would hold something better for me.