The Ancestor

by Danielle Trussoni

  She walked back into the maze of filing cabinets. “Are you making a family tree? Everyone I know has one going on ancestry.com. Or they’re doing genetic tests from that other site. What’s it called? Two-three something. I just did a spit test and found out I’m not even African!”

  “What are you, then?” I asked, surprised by this. Her skin was a dark caramel brown.

  “If you ask me, I’ll tell you I’m African American. But according to my test, I’m thirty-nine percent Hispanic, forty-one percent Middle Eastern, twelve percent Irish, and eight percent African! I’m more Irish than African? I couldn’t believe it, so I took it again. I paid another hundred dollars to get the same result!”

  “That is crazy,” I said. Maybe I wasn’t the only one with family secrets. “What a surprise.”

  “It changes everything and nothing,” she said, shaking her head, as if she were ready for whatever life might throw at her. “I mean, I am still me, but jeez, it’s hard to get your mind around something like that.” She went to her desk and pulled out a piece of paper. “Here it is, all official.”

  The words “Genetic Profile” were written across the top. Below this, there was a sequence of ancestral groups—Northwestern European, Middle Eastern, North African, Southern European, East Asian, Sub-Saharan African, Native American, and so on, with percentages next to them. There were “Maternal and Paternal Haplogroups,” a section titled “DNA Family,” and another column called “Neanderthal Variants.” A chart outlined the ancestral group results Mrs. Thomas had described.

  I knew exactly what kind of test this was. Some months before, I had bought a genetic testing kit from the online company Mrs. Thomas had mentioned. The site promised to give a complete profile of my ancestry, including the countries of origin and the ethnicity of my ancestors, all for ninety-nine dollars. I had spit into a plastic tube, mailed it to a lab, and awaited my results.

  That had been many months before, in the wake of the last miscarriage, when I’d been desperate to find something, anything, that might explain why I couldn’t have a child. I had seen specialists, none of whom had answers for me. The idea struck me, as I watched Mrs. Thomas search through the M filing cabinet, that it wasn’t a coincidence that I had taken a genetic test when I did. I had been in mourning. My marriage, the baby, my parents, my studies—I had lost so much in the previous years. Sadness and disappointment had subsumed me, ripping out the seams of every part of my life, even the parts I thought were tightly bound. Without Luca, I was alone in a way I had never been before. There were moments—late at night, after drinking too much—when I felt that the universe, with all its billions of life-forms, its bacteria and protozoa, its plants and animals, was broken somehow. How could the world be teeming with life when I felt so utterly alone? I wasn’t going to get into it with Mrs. Thomas, but I had needed that test. I needed to believe that a scientific breakdown of my genetic composition—a clean, color-coded pie graph that demonstrated my family heritage scientifically—would tell me something profound about who I was and why I was floating untethered, no family to steady me.

  As it turned out, my test results never came back. I guessed they had been lost in the mail, and sent an email to the site’s customer service address, asking for information. But then things came to a head with Luca, and I forgot all about the genetic test.

  “Here we are,” Mrs. Thomas said, pulling out some certificates and bringing them to her desk. “I didn’t know you had an uncle,” she added, fanning the papers out so I could see them.

  “He died before I was born,” I said.

  There weren’t many Monte birth certificates. Just three: my father, Giuliano, who had been born January 17, 1961; his brother, Frank, born March 22, 1966; and me, Alberta, born March 20, 1988. My grandfather Giovanni had been born in Italy, so there would be no birth certificate for him on file. My mother was born in Dutchess County, and her certificate would be there, filed under her maiden name.

  Before I could ask her to photocopy them, Mrs. Thomas was off on the other side of the room, hunting through the filing cabinet holding death certificates. While I waited, I pulled my birth certificate from the pile. My Social Security card had the initial “I” as my middle name, as did my driver’s license. I read the birth certificate. Family name: Monte. First name: Alberta. Between those names were three others: Isabelle Eleanor Vittoria.

  “Hmm,” Mrs. Thomas said, her head bent over the cabinet. From the sound of her voice, something wasn’t right.

  “There should be five death certificates,” I said. “My grandparents, my parents, and my dad’s brother.”

  “Come here a sec, hon,” she said, lifting the file from the cabinet and carrying it to the back of the office. “Take a look at this.”

  Mrs. Thomas spread the death certificates out under the light of a lamp. I could see there were more than five. Significantly more. She arranged them into two piles on her desk. The left pile had the five certificates I had expected to find. On the right, there were ten others.

  “What are those?” I said, taking the pile on the right. I sorted through them, one by one. The first eight certificates were dated between 1942 and 1969. The parents were listed as Marta Monte and Giovanni Monte, my grandparents. On the line where the names should have been typed, there was an abbreviation: N/A. Not applicable. The last two certificates were from the eighties, and the parents were listed as my mother and father. Each of those two certificates had a name: Rebecca Monte and John Monte. At the top of each document were the words “Certificate of Death.”

  I sat down in the chair at Mrs. Thomas’s desk, stunned, and looked at them all again.

  “Names weren’t mandatory with these older ones,” she said, pointing to the eight nameless certificates. She picked up the newer certificates. “But these two came after new regulations were put in place. Names were required on all certificates in this county after 1978.”

  I stared at the death certificates, the typed words and official signatures, my heart heavy. “What does that mean?”

  She looked at me, suddenly cautious. “You see here,” she said, pointing to the dates. “The day of birth and death is the same. These are all stillbirths.”

  A heavy, suffocating weight pressed on me. Stillbirths. That was what the last miscarriage had been, technically. The first three had happened early, before the eighth week, nothing but blood and some cramping. But the last pregnancy had been twenty weeks along, a boy, fully formed and small as a kitten. I’d held him for a moment, looking at him, knowing it would be the last time. I wrapped him in a cotton swaddle blanket and kissed his forehead. When they took him away, it was as if they took a part of me, too. Luca had taken care of everything at the hospital, and I never saw any of the paperwork. Our baby—our son—must have a certificate there, under Luca’s family name. I wondered what name Luca had given him.

  “You all right there?” Mrs. Thomas asked.

  “I just don’t understand how there can be so many . . .” I couldn’t say it, the word “stillbirth”; it stuck in my throat like chewing gum. “So many of these in my family.”

  “You didn’t know about any of this?”

  I shook my head. “I knew that I was an only child, and that my father had a brother who died young. But I didn’t know about . . .” I glanced at the papers. “Them.”

  Your family has had such trouble. Such tragedy.

  “Well, sometimes when you start digging into family history, this shit just comes out of the woodwork,” Mrs. Thomas said. She patted my hand and gave it a squeeze. “Let me make you some copies.”

  “Thanks,” I said. As she walked back to the copy machine, I remembered why I had come there in the first place. “Hold on a sec,” I said, pulling my grandfather’s Certificate of Death from the pile and taking it back to her desk. Giovanni Monte, born 1931 in Nevenero, Italy. Died July 1993 in Milton, New York. Running my finger down the page I found what I was looking for. Cause of death: suicide.

  Four
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  I knew I was being followed the moment I pulled out of the parking lot. There was the same prickling sensation at the back of my neck that I’d felt at the Monastery, the same eerie presence lingering behind, only now I could identify it: a black Porsche with New Jersey license plates.

  The car arrived like a sheet of fog sliding over the moon: there was a sudden darkening of the atmosphere, a tremor in the air. It pulled out after my Honda, slowed, and drove carefully, too carefully, behind me. I checked the rearview mirror, saw the car trailing me, noted its tenacious proximity, and continued onward, trying to ignore it. But a new Porsche in the hamlet of Milton was an anomaly nearly as great as a letter from noble relatives in Italy. I fixed my eyes on the road and drove, determined to get home without having an accident.

  A parade of emotions had marched through me that day, but for the first time I was really, truly angry. What in the hell was going on? Why had my parents kept Rebecca and John a secret? Or the other eight stillborn Monte babies? Hadn’t they thought that maybe one day I would discover the death certificates and figure out that there was some kind of medical issue in our family? What hurt the most was that my mom and I had spent so much time together when she was sick, so many afternoons watching television, so many mornings walking by the river, talking about everything under the sun, and she had said nothing. Not one word about Rebecca or John. Not one peep about the name Montebianco. Not a whisper that Grandpa Giovanni’s family had a fancy title and a castle and probably a shitload of money.

  By the time I pulled up at home, I was fuming. I jumped out of the car, ready to confront whoever was driving the black Porsche, but I found—as I looked behind me, my headlights cutting voluminous sculptural shadows in the snow—no one. I was alone. My house was dark, the driveway empty. I started to tell myself that all of this was nothing to get worked up about, but of course, it was something to get worked up about. With the arrival of the House of Montebianco’s letter, the cogs and wheels of an unstoppable machine had been set in motion. I wanted to pretend that it was just another day, and that I could go on as I had before. But I couldn’t have ignored the letter, or anything else I had learned that day, even if I wanted to.

  My head was throbbing. The sooner the day was over, I thought, the better. It wasn’t even six o’clock, but I wanted dinner, a hot shower, and bed. Tomorrow, I would look at the world with fresh eyes and a clear mind. Tomorrow, everything would make sense.

  I made my way up the icy drive, keeping my balance the best I could, when, out of the corner of my eye, I saw the black Porsche parked down the street. I stopped, a lightning bolt of fear bursting through me, and ran to the front door. My heart racing, I slipped the key into the lock and pushed the door open. I was nearly inside when a shadow fell across the entrance. I caught my breath, and terror, sharp as a spike of ice, slid up my spine. They had, as Nonna Sophia had warned, found me.

  From Nonna Sophia’s description of Nevenero, I had imagined the home of my ancestors as a place in a fairy tale, a cursed village hidden in the mountains. In my mind, I envisioned ice-glazed gingerbread houses, a haunted castle, a ring of spiked granite peaks looming at the periphery. I imagined the Montebiancos as a cruel Italian Mafia family whose vicious crimes had pushed the villagers to flee. The one thing that never crossed my mind was that the House of Montebianco would send someone after me and that this someone would be so disturbingly, so disarmingly charming.

  “Really sorry,” a man said, stepping from the shadows. “I didn’t mean to frighten you.”

  I’d jumped away from the door and dropped my keys. I may have screamed, as well, and although I can’t remember hearing my voice, the expression on the man’s face told me that my reaction had startled him.

  He held up his hands to show they were empty. “I’m harmless, I promise,” he added, giving me a big smile. “Unless you have a legal problem. In that case, I can be quite devastating.”

  Devastating to say the least. He was thirty-something and handsome, with dark, unruly hair, very shiny oxfords, and a well-cut suit. Not winter attire in rural New York, to be sure. He spoke with a strange accent, one that I later understood to be British English softened by the fluidity of his native Italian.

  “Who the hell are you?” I said, recovering my composure enough to retrieve my keys from a snow-filled planter.

  “Enzo Roberts,” he said, offering me his hand. “I realize this is an unconventional way to approach you. But . . .” He shivered and looked past me, into the house. “Could I possibly . . . ?”

  “Come in?” I said, ignoring his extended hand. “No way.”

  He looked wounded. “I’m here to help you, if you would let me explain.”

  “Help me?” I said. “Help me with what?”

  “With the details.” He tapped snow from his oxfords on the edge of the concrete step. “I’m a lawyer with the Montebianco Estate. You should have received some rather complicated legal documents. I want to clarify some points that may be . . . confusing.”

  “Not necessary,” I said, stepping into the foyer of my house and gripping the door. “Thank you very much.”

  “Just let me explain . . .”

  But he didn’t need to explain. The letter had caused too much pain and confusion already. I didn’t want to speak to Enzo Roberts. I didn’t want to shake his hand or hear his explanation. I wanted Enzo Roberts to turn around and walk away, so that I could hold off thinking about the Montebianco family, and the bundle of death certificates in my purse, for one more night.

  I pushed the door closed and latched the lock.

  “Truly,” he called from the other side of the door, “I’m sorry to approach you this way. It is an odd situation, to be sure, and you must want to think it all over in peace. But please allow me to come inside for just a few minutes and explain. There is more to this than you might suspect. Give me five minutes. Then I will leave you alone. I promise.”

  “Wait there,” I said, pulling out my phone and dialing Luca. “My husband will be here in a few minutes.”

  Ten minutes later, Luca’s Jeep pulled into the driveway. By then, I had googled Enzo Roberts and found, according to his profile on LinkedIn, that he was a thirty-seven-year-old lawyer who lived in Turin. Outside, Luca asked a few questions before he rapped on the door. As he brushed by me, he squeezed my arm to reassure me that everything would be okay. Although I had explained the situation on the phone—namely, that there was a strange man on the front steps and that we might want to call the police—it was clear that Luca was going to handle this the way he handled everything else: with a cool head and a generous pour.

  “I think we all need a drink, what do you say?” he said, leading Enzo Roberts into the living room.

  A drink was exactly what we needed. Sometimes, I wondered if I wasn’t divorcing a saint.

  “I’ll make them,” I said, heading to the kitchen, where I dug out a bottle of my favorite gin from the cupboard, sliced a lime, and grabbed a bottle of tonic water from the fridge. The sound of the ice cracking and the smell of juniper and lime calmed my nerves. No need to panic, I told myself. Nothing bad was happening. We would have a drink with Enzo Roberts, hear him out, then send him on his way.

  Enzo and Luca were laughing by the time I joined them in the living room. Luca had begun his usual charm offensive, telling Enzo about one of the regulars at the bar, a guy named Butch who got drunk and used the bar phone to prank call his ex-wives. With his silk tie and buffed oxfords, Enzo looked nothing like the locals at the Miltonian, but Luca was a barman through and through, and could talk to anyone about any subject. No matter where you came from or what you looked like, Luca could make you feel at home in five minutes.

  I put the tray of drinks on the coffee table. I hadn’t finished decorating the tree, and tinsel and ornaments were strewn here and there, making the room cheerier than it had seemed in a long time. I sat down next to Luca and looked at Enzo more carefully. He had black hair and large, dark eyes. His cheeks were s
till pink from the cold, and his elegant hands were folded over his wool trousers. There was a briefcase at his feet, its calfskin polished to a shine. It struck me that I needed this guy. He might be the only person who could help me understand the story of my family.

  Enzo gave me a big, charming smile, took a sip of his gin and tonic, and said, “As I mentioned, I’m here to help you with the documents you should have received.”

  “I did receive them,” I said, taking a sip of my drink.

  “And is there anything I can help you understand?”

  “You can start by telling me what in the hell is going on.” I could hear my voice rising, and felt Luca tense up at my side, but I didn’t care. In the past few hours, everything I had believed about myself had been turned inside out. I wanted answers.

  “Well,” Enzo said, straightening, his voice turning lawyerly, as hard and cold as a winter morning. “You’ve inherited a legacy that is worth a great deal, and you will need to travel to Italy to meet with the estate lawyers to claim it.”

  Luca said, “What does that mean—worth a great deal?”

  “It means,” Enzo said, looking over the living room, his gaze settling on the small, sad-looking Christmas tree, “life-changing.”

  I kept my expression neutral, hoping to mask how curious I was about what he could tell me. But in truth, I was dying to know everything about the Montebianco family. I wanted to understand my parents’ silence, my grandfather’s suicide, Nonna’s strange warnings. I wanted to know if my family history might explain the void that had formed at the center of my life.

  “That said,” Enzo continued. “There are a few circumstances you should be aware of.” His voice became soft, as if he were telling us a secret. “This isn’t just about money. The Montebianco family is more than just another wealthy family. They are a rather special family. Were special, I should say.”