Page 23 of I Can't Even

I ran my thumb under the sealed edge and peered inside. When I reached in, I removed an official-looking document, several photographs, and a letter written in my dad’s distinctive spidery handwriting. A quick glance at the photos showed a much younger version of my dad in them with a woman I didn’t recognize. My gaze strayed to the document. It was my birth certificate except where Babs name should have been there was a different name. It read Lisa Michaels. My hands started shaking and I tucked them under my arms as if I was a bird folding my wings, trying to stay warm.

“That’s not my birth certificate,” I said.

“It’s your original,” Mr. Loren said. “The one you’ve seen is your amended birth certificate, which is what the court issues when a child is adopted.”

“I don’t understand,” I said, even though deep down I did.

Mr. Loren met my gaze. I saw sympathy and kindness in eyes, and with everything in me I wanted to flat out reject it, but I didn’t.

“About twenty-eight years ago, your parents were in a rough patch in their marriage,” Mr. Loren said. “Your father’s work schedule left Barbara feeling neglected and unhappy which drove a wedge between them. Your father did what a lot of men do and sought solace elsewhere.”

“Is that lawyer speak for he played hide the salami with someone else?” I tapped the papers. “Might her name be Lisa?”

Mr. Loren looked pained. I wasn’t sure if it was my false bravado or the fact that I’d forced him to spell out for me what all of this meant. He started to explain but I couldn’t hear him over the loud rushing noise in my ears. I watched his lips move but there was no sound. It didn’t matter. I was just stalling. I knew what I was looking at. I knew what all of it meant. And for the first time in my life, I even knew why Babs had hated me all these years. She wasn’t my mother.

The words clicked in my brain like the opening of a lock. My entire life story smashed like a mirror under a heavy fist. The shards tried to reorder themselves into making sense, but I couldn’t put the pieces together. They simply didn’t fit anymore. As if an escape hatch opened, I glanced to my right to see the floor rushing up to meet me. For the first time ever, I blacked out.

“You have her hair,” Soph said. My older sis was sitting in a chair beside the couch where I was lying with a bag of frozen peas on my noggin. I had clipped the table on my way down and now had a nice lump the size of a robin’s egg on my hairline. Apparently, Mr. Loren had managed to catch me before I crashed to the floor otherwise the damage likely would have been worse.

At the sound of his yelp, my sisters had come running. Neither Mr. Loren nor I thought to hide the papers from them and after they hauled me to the couch, Em jogged back to the dining room to retrieve my glass of water and saw the birth certificate. Freak out is a woefully inadequate way to describe her reaction, but it’s all I’ve got. It took us another twenty minutes to calm her down.

I gave Mr. Loren permission to tell them everything and when he left, he looked like a man who had climbed Mount Everest without a Sherpa. I sort of felt bad for him but thought it might be an excellent life lesson for him to screen his clients more carefully in the future. Clearly, my parents were the worst.

“I always thought you had Dad’s hair.” Soph had not set down the pictures since Mr. Loren had given them to her.

“Me, too,” I said. Suddenly, the image of Babs coming at me with a straightening iron made much more sense.

“I can’t believe they did this,” Soph said. “I was so sick with the measles right before you were born that I didn’t remember much about it. I never remembered Mom being pregnant with you. I always thought it was because I was sick, but it was because she wasn’t. I remember they even told me she had to go away because my illness might harm her or the baby. She must have been hiding out, pretending to be pregnant while just waiting for you to be born.”

“It’s mental,” I said. “Who does that sort of thing?”

“Mom,” Soph said. She stared off at nothing. “I remember Nana came to stay with us and she made me peanut butter and chocolate chip sandwiches every day for lunch.” I just stared at her and then she said, “Sorry. I’m just trying to put it all together.”

No one spoke for a while and then Em, sounding stressed, said, “You have a letter from Dad.”

“Yes.”

“Are you going to read it?” she asked. I thought I heard a note of jealousy in her voice.

“When I’m ready,” I said. Another lie. I would have read it right then and there except I didn’t want to share it. It was mine. All mine.

“Oh.” Em was sitting in the chair beside Soph’s. Even though we were not as close as we’d once been, I knew the look on her face. It was the one she got when she wanted something but didn’t know how to ask. I wasn’t going to help her out. Not this time.

“Are you going to search for her?” Soph’s voice was soft as if the question would have less impact if she spoke quietly.

No such luck. The thought of having a mother I’d never known shook me to the core, as if the very foundation upon which I’d built my life had suddenly fallen into a sink hole, or more accurately, a bottomless pit. I felt like I was free falling, with no idea where I would land.

“I don’t know,” I said.

Soph stared at me for a moment. She put the pictures on the coffee table and said, “I’m going to make some coffee.”

Em and I were quiet for a while, each lost in our own thoughts. Babs’s urn still sat on the table in the other room. In my mind, I had flashes of such anger that I pictured taking the stupid thing and throwing it through the picture window she had asked to be placed beside. I wouldn’t do it, but I imagined it.

“Why?” Em asked.

I glanced at her from under the bag of peas and saw the confusion in her eyes.

“You’re going to have to give me more if you want an answer,” I said. “Why didn’t they tell me? Why hide my original birth certificate? Why didn’t Babs just tell me why she hated me all these years? Give me a direction, Emily.”

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