by Marti Green
The only thing that’s gotten me through these weeks has been Ezra. I’ve met him four times for dinner. So far, it’s just been playful flirting, although I know he’d be amenable to more.
Tonight is Thanksgiving. Ben and I always spent it volunteering at a soup kitchen. This year, I asked Ben to join me at my father’s apartment instead, where Tatiana was preparing a traditional dinner. He demurred. Said he’d be more useful serving the homeless. Frankly, I was relieved.
I arrived at Dad’s apartment with two pies I’d baked myself, one apple and one pecan, and a bowl of turkey stuffing, also made by me with a recipe I’d created. I didn’t cook often—my gallery took most of my energy—but I enjoyed it when I could. Something about the aroma of food while it was cooking was terribly comforting.
I let myself in with my key and headed to the kitchen, where Tatiana was busy preparing our meal. I gave her my contributions, then joined Dad and Poppy in the living room. I gave them each a hug, then sat down on the couch next to Dad.
“How are you feeling today?” I was happy to see him out of the bedroom. Lately, he’d been so fatigued from the day that he’d retreated to his bed by the time I arrived from work. He was dressed in slacks and a long-sleeve shirt, open at the collar, but his face was still drained of color.
“A little better,” he answered.
I didn’t believe him. His hand was resting on his stomach, and every few seconds, he winced. He’d been on the new trial drug for several weeks now, but I hadn’t noticed any improvement.
“Do you think you can eat tonight?”
“Sure. Especially your stuffing. Been looking forward to it all day.”
“Where’s that fool husband of yours?” Poppy asked. I never knew whether my grandfather disliked Ben only because Dad did, or whether he’d formed his own opinion of him. I explained that Ben was feeding homeless people tonight, then quickly changed the subject. Dad had little interest in art, and Poppy had even less, but we all enjoyed college football, so we talked about the day’s games. Before I knew it, Tatiana rang the bell for dinner. She joined us at the table, and we began as we always had when I was a child, by stating what we were thankful for.
Poppy began. “I’m thankful that I don’t have to go outside in this god-awful cold weather.”
I laughed. We New Yorkers were grateful that we hadn’t had real winter yet—the temperatures were still in the upper forties, dipping down to the midthirties at night.
“I’m thankful that I have a beautiful, loving daughter and a father who still knows how to comfort me,” Dad said.
I started to speak, then the words choked in my mouth. It was obvious what I was most thankful for—that my father was still alive, still with me. I stopped and took a breath. “I’m thankful for my family, that I have a family. Nothing is more important.” I’d learned long ago that it wasn’t biology that made a family. It was unconditional love, and I’d always had that from my parents and grandparents. I’d hoped that I’d start my own family, with Ben and lots of children, but now I knew that would never happen. Any love I once had for him was gone. He was as dead to me as my mother.
My grandfather returned to Florida the Sunday following Thanksgiving, and I returned to my usual routine of daytimes at the gallery and evenings with Dad. A week later, I got the news: Dad’s trial wasn’t working. Instead of reducing the tumor, it had spread even more. His doctors were taking him off the drug. “Probably two months left, the most three. That’s all,” his doctor had told me.
As soon as I hung up the phone, I went to my office in the back of the gallery and bawled. Sandy had seen my face when I was on the phone and knew to leave me alone. I cried deep, heaving sobs, my head buried in my hands. After five minutes, the tears began to dwindle.
I would soon be an orphan. I had my grandfather, and I had one aunt and uncle and two cousins, but they weren’t enough. No one took the place of a parent. I had mourned for a whole year after my mother died, coming straight home from school, cutting out all friends and activities, hibernating in my room, until finally, on the one-year anniversary of her death, my father said, “That’s enough,” and forced me back into living. But during that entire year, I knew I still had my father. I knew that I had someone who loved me more than anything else in the world.
A few years after my mother died, when I was twelve, I thought about searching for my birth mother. Dad had said he’d help me, if that’s what I really wanted, then cautioned me that sometimes the fantasy was better to hold on to than finding out the reality was much different from I’d hoped. I thought about it for days, then weeks. Finally, after three months of weighing it, I decided against searching her out. If I found her, and she rejected me, it would hurt too much. It would feel like losing my mother all over again.
Now, facing the loss of my father, I thought about it again. Maybe. Maybe after Dad’s gone. Not right away. Down the road. Maybe I’ll find her, and she’ll be happy to see me. Maybe then I won’t be alone.
I’ve done it. I had dinner with Ezra last night, and afterward, still feeling the buzz from three glasses of wine, we went back to his loft and made love. So now, I’m an adulterer, too. Except I felt I deserved this. If Ben hadn’t been unfaithful, I never would have considered cheating on him. I returned home from Ezra’s bed, and as usual, Ben was plopped in front of the TV, feigning the boredom of someone who’d been in the same spot all night. He asked his usual, “How’s Rick?” question. I answered my usual, “The same,” and then I headed to our bedroom alone, as usual.
Now, back at the gallery, I picked up the phone to call my attorney. When Steve Goldfarb got on the line, I asked, “Can you pull up a copy of my prenuptial agreement?”
“Sure. Hold on a sec.” Thirty seconds later, he said, “Got it. Now, what’s going on? You and Ben having problems?”
“To say the least.”
“Listen, Charlotte, you’re under a lot of stress with what your father’s going through. That has to affect your other relationships. Step back from whatever you’re thinking, and wait until things settle down.”
“Our conversation is covered by attorney-client privilege, right?”
“Of course.”
“Good. I don’t want my father or grandfather to know about Ben. He’s having an affair. Has been for months, maybe longer. Since before Dad’s diagnosis.”
I heard an intake of breath on the other end. “I’m sorry, Charlotte. You have too much on your plate to have to worry about this, too. But my advice stands. Wait until things settle with your father, and then try to work things out with Ben. Maybe marriage counseling.”
“I’m not doing anything now. Dad’s not going to survive; his doctors were clear on that. When he passes away, I want Ben out. I just need to make sure what our prenup says.”
“Ben gets one million dollars for each year of your marriage, up to a maximum of ten million. But if you have proof of his affair, he gets nothing.”
“What if I have an affair?”
“Are you?”
“Just hypothetical.”
“Then you don’t get any of Ben’s assets.”
Ha! Ben had no assets. Just the piddling amount he’d been able to save from his earnings. I smiled. I wanted Ben to walk away without anything: no money, no job, no future. I wanted Ben to hurt.
CHAPTER 34
The weeks leading up to Christmas were always busy for me. Once the holiday was over, I always took the rest of the week off. Usually, Ben and I took that week to soak up the sun on some Caribbean island, but this year, I wouldn’t leave Dad. By now, we were barely talking, anyway. Today was my first day back at the gallery after New Year’s, and I had a lot of paperwork to catch up on—most pressingly, getting the tax records in order for the gallery’s estimated tax payment, due in less than two weeks. Just before noon, Sandy told me a prospective client was on the line. “Can you take it? I need to get through these figures.”
“She’s insisting on speaking to you.”
“Charly, it’s Mallory. Mallory Holcolm.”
“How can I help you?”
“It’s . . . it’s . . . your . . . Wait—didn’t Ben tell you about me?”
My back immediately tensed. Ben’s lover was named Lisa, but maybe he had more than one. Maybe he was seeing several women.
“No,” I answered coolly. “My husband has never mentioned your name.”
There was a hesitation on the line, and then she said, “It’s urgent that I meet with you.”
I opened up my scheduling book. “I could see you tomorrow afternoon. How does three o’clock work?”
“No. I know this is going to sound strange, but I have to see you today. Now. But not at the gallery.”
“Ms. Holcolm, I’m sorry, I can’t get away today at all, but I’m very interested in working with you on your art needs. If it must be today, then my assistant is very talented, and she’d be happy to come to your place.”
“Charly, please.”
Suddenly, her voice sounded different, familiar, as though before she’d been playing with an accent. “Have we met before?”
“I’m at the West Bank Cafe, on West Forty-Second. I have a table in the back, on the left side. You can walk here in fifteen minutes. I have on a black suede hat with a wide brim and sunglasses. Whatever you do, don’t tell Ben.”
I could feel myself start to get angry. “Look, I don’t care for all this cloak-and-dagger. If you have something to say to me, then just say it.”
“I’m not trying to alarm you,” the woman said. “But your life truly depends on meeting me. I’ll see you in fifteen minutes.” And then the line went dead.
What was that nonsense about my life? It was nonsense, of that I was certain. Out of curiosity, though, I did a computer search of the name Mallory Holcolm and came up with nothing. Just some crackpot. I picked up my pencil and got back to work, but after five minutes, I realized I couldn’t concentrate. What the hell, I thought as I grabbed my coat. If nothing else, it would be a funny story to tell Dad tonight.
It was freezing outside. When I’d left for work this morning, I hadn’t expected to be traipsing outside in my high-heeled shoes and barely warm wool coat. I’d taken a taxi to the gallery, as I usually did in the winter, and planned to take one to Dad’s when I closed up. Instead, I was pushing past the throngs of pedestrians, holding the collar of my coat up to my neck in an effort to block the wind. I would have taken a cab to the restaurant, but finding one along Tenth Avenue wasn’t easy this time of day, and by the time I spotted one with a vacancy, I was only two blocks away from my destination.
When I stepped inside the café, the young woman behind the register said, “Just one?”
“No. I’m meeting someone already here.”
She nodded for me to go on in, and I headed toward the rear. I spotted a woman in a black hat sitting in the corner and walked over. “I’m here,” I said as I sat down.
She looked at me silently, reached up, and took off her hat, then the sunglasses that covered half her face. I took one look at her and burst out crying. She leaned over and touched my hand.
“It’s okay. I know how you feel.”
“You’re my sister,” I said through my sobs, not as a question. It was obvious.
“I’m your twin. Your identical twin. You didn’t know anything about me, did you?”
“No.” I cried even harder. She stood up and came over to me, then hugged me tightly. When I finally calmed down, I asked, “How? How did you find me?”
Mallory sat back down in her chair. “Your college friend, Matt Findly. He came into the restaurant I worked in and thought I was you. He told me about your gallery.”
“Did you go there?”
“Not inside. But I glimpsed you through the window. I saw how much you looked like me.”
“But why didn’t you come inside? Why are we meeting here?”
“That was a few months ago. Something happened in between. Something I’m ashamed to tell you.”
“What?”
Mallory dropped her head to her chest and shook her head. “I can’t tell you in here. When we leave.” She looked back up at me. “Are you hungry? Do you want to order lunch? I’m famished.”
I couldn’t believe she was thinking about food. I felt like a cataclysmic bomb had exploded right in front of me, completely changing the landscape of my world. I sat there mute and watched as Mallory motioned for a waiter. When he came over, she said, “I’ll have the Cobb salad, hold the onions.”
I began to laugh. She looked at me quizzically. “That’s exactly what I’m having. I hold the onions, too.”
“Anything to drink?” the waiter asked. As if on cue, we both said at the exact same moment, “Iced tea, with a slice of lemon.”
I sat back in my seat. “I guess it’s true what they say about twins. Genetics rule.” I hesitated. “But I never had a feeling that someone was missing, that part of me was gone.”
“I never did, either.”
I couldn’t keep myself from staring at her—at my sister. Of course, there were superficial differences: her hair was longer, without any real shape to it, and darker. That’s because I lightened mine, and she obviously didn’t. Her nails were short and unpolished, and I weighed a few pounds less, but not by much. I was clothed in a designer dress, and she wore jeans and a sweater. I suspected my adoption had been to parents wealthier than hers.
“There’s so much I want to know about you,” I said. “What are your parents like?”
“I didn’t have a father.”
I’d wondered why my parents hadn’t adopted us both. They’d certainly had enough money to raise two children comfortably. Maybe this was the answer. “I suppose you were adopted first, and because she was single, your mother could only afford to take one of us.”
“I’m not adopted. Our mother gave you away and kept me.”
My mouth dropped open, and I began rubbing my arm, unthinkingly repeating the motion my adopted mother made when she tried to calm me. Mallory knew my birth mother, the woman I’d thought about so many times over the years, always pushing away the possibility of searching for her. This woman sitting across from me—my sister—held the answers to my questions. My heart raced, and I began to feel light-headed. “Tell me,” I said. “Tell me about her.”
“She raised me alone. Our father died in the Gulf War when she was pregnant with us. She was just seventeen at the time, and her own mother insisted she give the baby up for adoption. When Mom refused—”
“Wait. What’s her name?”
“Sasha. Sasha Holcolm. Mom wouldn’t hear of it, so her mother threw her out. She thought that would bring her to her senses, but it didn’t. She moved away and got a job. She didn’t know she was having twins until she gave birth. She knew it would be difficult raising a child on her own, at her age, with no skills. Raising two would be impossible.”
I kept taking deep breaths, trying to collect myself. All around us, people sat at tables, eating their food, glancing down at their smartphones, oblivious to the earthquake that was occurring at my table. Because that’s what it felt like—a wide opening in the ground, shaking my body. Yet, I knew that when the rumbling stopped, I could look inside the dark hole and uncover the mystery of my life.
“We were always poor,” Mallory continued. “Mom cleaned houses six days a week. She didn’t have very much time for me.”
I reached over and took my sister’s hand. “I’m sorry. It was very different for me.”
“I know.”
I pulled my hand back. “How?”
“I know everything about you, but I don’t want to talk about that here. When we go outside.”
It was maddening, her dangling this mystery, the one that started with her phone call to the gallery. “Then let’s get the check and go,” I said, even though our salads were only half-finished.
�
�Not yet. I’m still eating.”
I sighed deeply. Mallory clearly had a schedule, and I was just going to have to go along with it. “So, who’s older? You or me?”
“I am, by two minutes.”
“I suppose that’s why you’re being so bossy,” I said, smiling.
“It’s why our mother chose me to keep. Because I was first.”
“Does our mother know you’ve found me?”
She shook her head. “Mom died three years ago.”
I began to cry again. I didn’t know why. I’d never met my birth mother, had never tried to find her. Yet, for a moment, she had become real. And just as quickly, she was gone.
Mallory reached into her purse and handed me a tissue. “She would have liked to find you, I think. There were times she looked at me with a strange expression on her face, and I suspect she was wondering about you then. I think she always regretted giving you up.”
I wiped the tears from my cheeks. “Do you have a picture of her?”
Mallory nodded, then once again opened her purse and pulled out an envelope and placed it in front of me. “I have a few pictures of her on my cell phone, but by the time I got one, she was already very sick and didn’t look like herself.”
I picked up the envelope and pulled out two pictures. The first was of a young woman, holding a baby in her arms. She had chestnut-brown hair, delicate features, and a bright smile. I thought she was beautiful. “This is her, holding you?” I asked.
Mallory nodded.
In the second picture, she looked ten years older, although the child by her side—Mallory, looking just as I did at that age—was holding a birthday cake with a large number-five candle in the center. Her eyes had puffy circles underneath, and her smile had dimmed. I was glad Mallory hadn’t brought any later pictures. “I don’t think we look like her, do you?”
Once again, Mallory pulled an envelope from her purse. This time, she took out a picture and handed it to me. There was my birth mother, looking longingly up at a soldier, dressed in his army uniform. He had blond hair and the same large, blue eyes we did. “Our father?”
