by Dani Shapiro
49
The month of May had seemed so far in the future when we’d had lunch with Ben and Pilar in New Jersey back in October, but now it had arrived and along with it, my book tour. It had been nearly a year since I’d received my DNA results. Nearly a year of living in a new reality and adjusting to it the way the body acclimates to a new temperature. There was something to the old adage that time heals all wounds. I’m not so sure about the healing, but time certainly had brought me to a place of greater acceptance that this was indeed my life. I had changed my name and gotten a tattoo. Outward signs of inward shifts. The phrase donor-conceived no longer traumatized me. I could look at childhood photographs of myself with my parents with curiosity as well as some measure of sorrow that I imagined would always be there—but the tremulous, mute, childlike denial of what I was seeing was gone.
Once in a while, though, while driving down a country road, or as I crossed a busy intersection in the city on my way to an appointment, or even while sitting quietly in meditation, I would be overcome by the now-familiar physical sensation of slipping into a void. I had come to understand this as the space between my father and Ben. Neither of my two fathers could ever be entirely mine. Everyone is begotten and points backwards, deeper down into the depths of beginnings. There was, and always would be, a groundlessness to the depths of my beginnings. That knowledge now existed in the place within me where all the secrets had once been stored and despite the occasional free-falls, felt like a new form of strength.
Which was a good thing, because in order to spend the next six weeks on the road, I had to split myself in two, take everything about the last year and shelve it. I would be promoting my latest book, which concerned itself with marriage and memory. Innumerable times, I had listed among the strange twists and turns for which I was grateful, the timing of my discovery. If I had found out the truth of my family history while I was writing Hourglass, it would have been a wrecking ball aimed straight at my delicate little book. The manuscript would have wound up in a drawer.
* * *
—
Portland. The city stood out on my calendar amid all the other tour stops. It was part of a West Coast leg that included L.A., San Francisco, and Seattle. I had been in touch with the Walden family a month in advance, and the entire day in Portland was now planned. Lunch with Ben and Pilar before my reading at Powell’s Books; dinner afterward with Emily and her husband, Scott. Even Emily’s older kid, Nick, was planning to come to the reading. It was nearly the whole Walden mishpacha. Michael was flying west to meet me in Portland. I had told him he didn’t have to, that I’d be okay. “I know you’ll be okay,” he’d said. “But you need a witness.”
To several degrees less than I’d felt the year before, when I went through the motions of my everyday life on that trip to San Francisco—making dinner reservations, calling Ubers, conferring on book jackets while attempting to metabolize the elephant—my time on tour once again had the strange quality of being on one side of a split screen while I held the rest at bay. It was hard work, this compartmentalization, this pushing away of what most consumed me. The sheer psychic effort of it was exhausting. I wondered how my parents had done it; jettisoned their knowledge of my origins. At pediatrician appointments, how had my mother given my medical history without being gripped by persistent distress? How was it that they laughed about the Kodak holiday poster, holding up their daughter as an emblem of Christmas cheer? How deep did their denial have to go—and at what cost—in order to pulverize the truth, until it no longer had shape or form?
I tried not to concern myself with these questions as I zigzagged the country. Though in quiet moments—alone, on flights, or in solitary hotel rooms—it all reemerged the way suppressed thoughts tend to do. I had been high up in the air for weeks, nearly every day, looking down at the flat plains, the mountain ranges, the world below, and it wasn’t a far leap from there to think about geography and displacement. The country I’m from—the way I’d come to think of Ben. I had been living for a year in the lashed sea’s landlessness.
I often wondered what would have been the case if my parents had made a different choice—a more radical choice for the place and time in which they lived—and had told me the truth from a young age. What if I had been raised knowing that my father and I weren’t related? What if I had always known that the reason I looked different, and felt different, was in fact because I was different? It would be easy to fantasize that this would have been better. But we can never know what lies at the end of the path not taken. Other difficulties, other heartaches, other complexities would certainly have emerged. But at least we would have been a family traversing them together.
* * *
—
Michael was waiting for me when I got off the plane in Portland. We had just enough time to drop our bags off at the hotel and meet Ben and Pilar at a nearby restaurant. It was a gray, rainy day, traffic sluggish along Southwest Fifth Avenue. This time, I felt no nervousness. Only pleasure in continuing the conversation that had begun haltingly a year before and had grown into something comfortable, no matter how unusual or, at moments, disconcerting. I still had questions for Ben, ones I wasn’t sure I could ask. I wanted to know more about how many times he had donated. A dozen? Fifty? If I knew what his reference to “a period of time” meant, I would have some way of imagining how many half-siblings I might have in the world.
I wasn’t sure Ben wanted to think about that. And I was certain that Pilar did not. The four of us met at a steak house on the thirtieth floor of an office building, with floor-to-ceiling windows that overlooked the city and the distant, foggy outline of the Cascade Mountains. It was an airy, elegant place I sensed they’d arrived at with some care. This time, we all ordered a glass of wine, and the mood was more celebratory than cautious. Like children playing a game of tag, we knew which subjects were home base. We spoke about my tour, Michael’s new film, and then about the endlessly absorbing topic of the current administration. They caught us up on their kids and grandkids, and asked after Jacob, who was finishing up his junior year. The evening’s plans, carefully calibrated, meant that Ben and Pilar were coming to Powell’s to hear me read, and then they were taking their grandson Nick back home with them to spend the night so that Emily and Scott, and Michael and I could go out to a late dinner.
I kept thinking about what it would be like to be in front of a crowd, speaking about my new book to an audience that included my biological father and half sister. My dad had died before I became a writer. He’d never read my work nor seen me in the context of my professional world as an author. In the thirty years since his death, I had written nine books. I had read from those books to hundreds of audiences all over the world. More times than I can count—with each new publication, or upon receiving a particularly meaningful review—I would talk to him. Dad, look—I wrote all these books for you.
Now my other father, my biological father, would be the one sitting in the audience watching me. Ben had written to me after our first meeting that although he could only claim a paternal genetic link, he was certainly proud of what I had accomplished, not just in my career but also in establishing a wonderful, loving family. As grateful as I was for my relationship with Ben, my heart ached for my father. He had never experienced that parental pride, that kvelling—the Yiddish word he would have used. Ben was now a part of my adult life. He had met Jacob over FaceTime. He had traded stories with Michael. He would stand in line to have his book signed later that evening. If my parents had been able to flash forward for just half a second to a future in which—with both of them gone—I would be dining high above the city of Portland with the anonymous medical student they had pretended didn’t exist, would they have proceeded?
* * *
—
I would have loved to explore many of these intricacies with Ben—to ask the provocative, deep, hard questions about this strange terrain—and my sense
was that he would have welcomed a complex conversation. But Pilar, despite her warmth, still seemed to be in some state of disturbance at the idea that she had never known Ben’s history as a sperm donor and the fact that the three adults they had raised together were not his only children. And I could hardly blame her. I couldn’t imagine how I’d feel if a child of Michael’s appeared one day, upending the size and shape of our family.
As we lingered over coffee, Pilar asked a question I could tell had been haunting her.
“So you’ve taken your name down?”
At first I didn’t know what she meant.
“From the website? From Ancestry.com?”
I was afraid to look at Michael. I wasn’t sure how to answer. No, we hadn’t taken my name down from Ancestry.com. In fact, we had spread my information as widely as possible among other sites—23andMe, MyHeritage, GEDmatch—to increase the possibility that I would discover half-siblings and they would discover me.
I couldn’t bring myself to tell Pilar that my DNA was readily discoverable. Nor did I want to lie to her. As I was trying to formulate a response, Michael chimed in.
“Adam Thomas’s DNA is still up there too,” he said mildly.
“But he told us it was private,” Pilar said.
Ben looked back and forth between us.
I could tell that Michael and I were having the same thought. Let it go. Adam Thomas’s DNA was every bit as discoverable as mine. If the Waldens had asked him to take it down, he hadn’t complied. Which meant that if biological offspring of Ben’s found themselves on Ancestry.com, they would come up with the same mystery first cousin that I had, and—with a little ingenuity and journalistic chops—follow the trail of bread crumbs all the way to Ben.
Pilar seemed momentarily appeased by this false notion of privacy—both Adam Thomas’s and my own. But then, a few minutes later, as Ben and Michael were engrossed in a different conversation, she leaned toward me and spoke with a hushed intensity.
“Your daddy is a good daddy,” she said. I thought I had misheard her. She rested a hand on my arm. “He’s a very good daddy,” she repeated.
“Our home is your home,” she went on. “You can stay with us, anytime.”
I knew it had taken a lot for Pilar to let me in. But after the careful terminology—the genetic link, the biology, the delicate dance—the word daddy felt out of place.
“If any others come,” she said, “you won’t tell them. You’ll stay private.” It was half-question, half-statement. And suddenly I understood. How old was too old for a surprise? A young medical student’s casual decision now had the potential to shake up a retired doctor’s life. Surely Ben and Pilar, too, had read stories about donor-conceived people who had discovered scores of half-siblings. Had they imagined a line of blond, pink-cheeked offspring circling the block outside their home? Of course there had to be a kernel of fear, even in their interaction with me.
I laughed, as if there was something whimsical about the whole idea, and took a big sip of my abandoned glass of wine. In a way, Pilar’s words provoked a train of thought I’d never before entertained: Ben as Daddy. I pictured myself sprawled on the floor in Ben and Pilar’s comfortable home in their retirement community, playing backgammon. I imagined being in my pajamas and robe, drinking coffee early in the morning, reading the paper with Ben. Perhaps we’d do the crossword together. And then, like a needle scratching across a vinyl record, the thoughts screeched to a stop.
Ben was a lovely, caring man for whom I felt great fondness and gratitude. Knowing him was allowing me to put pieces of myself together in a way that would be of comfort to me for the rest of my life. He was my cloth, my country. But he was not my daddy. I felt for Pilar, I really did. She had raised a loving, tight-knit family. I resembled her husband more than any of their own children did. I’d seen a photo of Ben as a teenager, and Jacob looked a lot like him. What if, as I strongly suspected, there were others? More women or men in their early- or mid-fifties scattered around the country who were biological children of Ben’s?
* * *
—
Here was a massive ethical conundrum, one I would explore if the need ever presented itself. Part of me hoped it would never arise, at least not in their lifetimes. The question of what I owed them—my promise of privacy—and what I owed anyone who might someday contact me, was never far from my mind. If someone like me, stunned, traumatized, shocked, disbelieving, contacted me through one of the testing sites asking how it was possible that we were listed as half-siblings, I couldn’t turn that person away. I was that person.
At the same time, I was acutely aware of Ben’s kindness in being truthful with me from the beginning, as well as his courage and generosity in ultimately wishing to meet me. My words during our first lunch: you didn’t have to do this. He could have ignored me, or lied. He could have been rejecting, even cruel. Instead, Ben’s inherent goodness also made me feel I came from that goodness. I felt enormously protective of both Ben and Pilar and would never want to hurt either of them.
The exchange with Pilar happened in its own cocoon, so as the four of us left the table, there was no awkwardness. She hadn’t exactly asked a question, nor had I attempted to answer. Ben had no idea the conversation had even taken place. I filed it away to be considered at another time. In the following months, as a steady stream of second and third cousins on the Walden side began to appear on my Ancestry page—distant biological relatives with whom I saw no reason to connect—I’d think about the odds that a half-sibling would show up one day. And then another. And another. Who would these people be to me? And I to them? I had certainly benefitted from being the first of Ben’s offspring to stumble upon the truth. If I had not been the first, would he have ever responded to me? I was lucky. I understood that now. Recompense. I came from two men—my dad and Ben—who were honorable to the core. You can say this is beautiful, wonderful. What would I do with my good fortune?
50
Later that evening I stand behind the lectern at Powell’s Books, reading to a standing-room-only crowd, but I am constantly aware of the family taking up the entire fourth row. That line of warm, encouraging people is like a distant land seen from the churning sea. I take in only flashes: white hair, a blue shirt, a tall, angular man arriving late, my half sister’s wide, generous smile. But even as I bracket the air in front of me, moving my small hands in the same gesture as the man I come from, there is another man—the one who loved me into being—who I am looking for. There has rarely been an event of importance in my life when I have not searched for my father. Rarely a time during which I have not felt both his presence and his absence. I silently call to him, a Hebrew word—hineni. Here I am. Hineni, uttered only eight times in the entire Torah, is less a statement of personal geography than an expression of presence and pure attentiveness. Abraham said it to God when he was asked to bind Isaac, and repeated it in response to his son. Jacob said it when he answered the call of an angel. Joseph said it to Jacob when he was sent to seek his brothers. Moses found his voice and said it to God at the burning bush. And I say it to my father, again and again. Hineni. I am here. All of me.
Acknowledgments
This is a story that was written as I lived it. Events unfolded in ways that were destabilizing and miraculous in equal measure. I am grateful to those who offered support.
I will begin with the family I call Walden. Your humanity and grace enabled me to move forward, to fill in the missing pieces. I will forever know just how blessed I am that you are who you are. Thank you for trusting me.
Early readers who made valuable contributions to this book are Abigail Pogrebin, Elissa Altman, Karen Shepard, and Andy McNicol.
Jennifer Mendelsohn, Wendy Kramer, Naomi Cahn, Jacqueline Mroz, Dr. Leonard Hayflick, Dr. Alan DeCherney, Dr. Jenna Slutsky Bass, Arthur L. Caplan, Daniel Wikler, Rabbi David Wolpe, Rabbi Haskell Lookstein, Sylvia Boorstein, David Crean
, Jack Gilpin, Rabbi David Ingber, Elizabeth Lesser, Dr. Bessel van der Kolk, Gabrielle Bernstein, Stephen Cope, Kris Carr, you are all my heroes. Experts, ethicists, authors, doctors, spiritual leaders who took the time out of your busy lives to help me enter hidden realms.
Thanks to my research assistant, Erica Schwiegershausen, who left no stone unturned.
Jennifer Rudolph Walsh, I will always treasure your guidance, friendship, wisdom, and support.
Dr. Arietta Slade helped me to navigate the unthought known.
Deepest gratitude to my beloved aunt, Shirley Feuerstein, weaver’s daughter, who stitched me back together again, and again, and again.
Jordan Pavlin and the entire Knopf family, every day I pinch myself. Julie Barer, your spirit and enthusiasm are contagious. I feel lucky to have such an amazing team behind me.
And finally, my two greatest loves: Michael Maren has lived this story with me every second of the way, has read each page of this book with devotion and discernment. I don’t think I could have survived this without you. And Jacob Maren, this is your story too. It—and you—couldn’t be more beautiful.
A NOTE ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Dani Shapiro is the author of the memoirs Hourglass, Still Writing, Devotion, and Slow Motion, and five novels, including Black & White and Family History. Shapiro’s short fiction, essays, and journalistic pieces have appeared in The New Yorker, Granta, Tin House, One Story, Elle, Vogue, The New York Times Book Review, the op-ed pages of The New York Times, and many other publications. She has taught in the writing programs at Columbia, New York University, the New School, and Wesleyan University; she is cofounder of the Sirenland Writers Conference in Positano, Italy. She lives with her family in Litchfield County, Connecticut.
