Replacement Child

by Judy L. Mandel

  When we first dated, Bob took me to expensive restaurants nearly every night of the week and wowed me with gifts for birthdays and holidays. It wasn’t until much later that I found out he cleaned out his savings and investments to finance that courtship.

  When I brought him to Florida to meet my parents, we all got together with his father and stepmother who lived close by. The families hit it off. But when we got home, Bob almost immediately got a call from his father, who warned him that if Bob didn’t tell me the truth, he would tell me himself. The truth that I didn’t know was that Bob was still married. Now that his father had met my parents, he said, he couldn’t let Bob lie to me any longer. That led to a long process of obtaining the actual divorce and proving to me and his father that it had been done by producing the final papers. Still later, I learned that he had a daughter that he was not allowed to have any contact with. Yet I ignored all the signs.

  Bob had brought the second mortgage papers to the hospital for me to sign, where I was recovering from a flare-up of Crohn’s disease just five months after Justin was born.

  “I need you to sign these so we can put some more money into the house. It will increase the value. Trust me; it will be fine.”

  From the moment I met him, I trusted Bob. His calm assurance, his easy good looks. His sensitive eyes.

  But only a few months after signing those loan papers, Bob lost another job, and money was so tight that I had trouble paying for groceries.

  For another two years I trusted that he could put our house of cards back together, Scotch-tape our credit, glue back together the shards of our security. But he gravitated to jobs that never quite worked out for him, like insurance sales and financial planning.

  I was home alone most nights with the baby. When he was home, Bob busied himself in his workshop until I fell asleep. I was sure then that I was entirely unlovable, that this pattern of retreat was somehow my doing. I felt stranded on an island, distressed by our financial straits without the comfort of a loving relationship as a buffer.

  We drifted further and further from the life I promised my son when I first held him.

  “I don’t think I can do it,” Bob finally told me on the way home from a therapy session.

  His face was stark honesty, his eyes revealing a finality that closed my heart.

  We postponed the inevitable split, but when the foreclosure sign was posted on the bluegrass of our perfectly mowed lawn, I scooped up my baby and left.

  On moving day, our house grew smaller and smaller in my rearview mirror until it disappeared behind me. Beside me in his car seat, Justin suddenly looked as serious as a three-year-old could get. His tiny brow furrowed in worry.

  “When is Daddy coming?”

  It was a long mile before I could speak, to give him my practiced answer. The cliff I had always feared was just ahead, and I was powerless to stop his fall, to stop his heart from breaking.

  In a weird twist, this was one of the few times in my life that I did not feel guilty, that my life was somehow balanced with Linda’s. Linda seemed to always have a hard time, either financially or with men. When my life was going well, I felt like it wasn’t fair. During this period of time, my struggle to maintain three jobs and feed my child seemed to be my due and was what I deserved as the survivor, the one blessed—the replacement for the angel. I was determined, though, that Justin wouldn’t suffer for my failings. He truly was a force behind my landing a good job at a national insurance company and holding a stable career in corporate communications for many years. It enabled me to buy the house he deserved to grow up in, in a quiet suburban town, miles and miles from any airport.

  NO, I COULDN’T stay with Justin’s father. I only hope I made up for it with stability and love.

  Now, while Justin is running all over town with friends and working a part-time job this last summer before college, I am being more and more overtaken by the past. I’m spending more time these days sifting through documents and through my own memories.

  I try to find someone or something to blame for the accident in the piles of notes and newspaper clippings, but nothing reveals itself. Apparently, the plane was working just fine. The pilot was stellar. The reports all said the engines had no malfunction. The landing gear was down and both flaps were extended, and nothing else was found that failed structurally. Even the maintenance records for the plane showed it was in good shape.

  It’s possible that some birds flew into the plane, but they didn’t find any bird remains in the engine parts. From twenty-six witness statements and the Civil Aeronautics Board Accident Investigation Report, I learn that the aircraft was flying at an altitude of 100–150 feet, just below the clouds, in a generally easterly direction, for a distance of about three city blocks before it went down. They all say it was flying level to the ground. Until it wasn’t.

  Witnesses heard: loud bangs, with a roar; rumbling as it passed over; the sound like a car when all the spark plugs are not working; when the noise stopped, the pilot speeded up the motors as much as he could.

  My only hint is that the Investigation Report notes that carburetor icing could have been a factor. All but one of the pilots who landed just before and after the crash of Flight 6780 said they used carburetor heat during their approach to avert icing. They didn’t know if Captain Reid had used it or not.

  The iffy weather seemed to affect only Flight 6780. During the two-hour period, one hour before and one hour after the crash, nineteen flights landed or took off safely at Newark Airport.

  Underneath the Civil Aeronautics report, I find a faded newspaper clipping of Linda celebrating her third birthday in the hospital. She’s surrounded by my mother and father, aunts, uncles, and cousins. Linda is trying to smile. Her bottom eyelids are dragged toward her cheeks; her chin is soldered down to her little girl neck. Still, she smiles at the cake, the candles, her cousins standing with her. A defiant gleam in her eye.

  chapter thirty-three

  JANUARY 22, 1952 (DAY OF THE CRASH)

  2:50 PM

  LINDEN SUFFEL WALKED out of school with her friends to find her mother waiting for her in the car. Linden was on her way to my mother’s apartment to rehearse for a skit at their temple that evening.

  “The weather is so bad, I didn’t want you walking to Mrs. Mandel’s and coming home late in the dark. She’ll understand. Just tell one of the girls to let her know you couldn’t make it,” Mrs. Suffel told her daughter and ushered her into the car.

  Captain Reid was cleared by air traffic control to maintain seven thousand feet over Branchville.

  Newspaper headlines and photos of the crash in Elizabeth, January 22, 1952, from the (then) Elizabeth Daily Journal and Elizabeth Star Ledger

  On my parents' wedding day, August, 1937—Mom always told me it was 100 degrees that day

  Dad and Mom before the accident

  My favorite photo of my mom, in the hat I coveted

  Dad clowning at the beach

  Baby Donna, probably a year old. Mom said she was "too fat to walk" yet

  Dad holding Donna

  Dad holding me

  Donna

  Donna, age 6

  Linda and Donna just before the accident in 1952. The last picture of the two of them together

  The fornal portrait of Donna that hung in my parents' room

  Donna holding Linda

  Linda holding me, 1954

  Linda in her leg brace, but with a bat to play stickball with her friends

  The family with Donna and Linda

  Linda and me

  Me in my cowgirl outfit, much like the one my sister Donna had at this age

  Dad and Mom dressed as the Pic-a-Pocket Man and Lady for the Purim Festival at temple

  Linda with her best friend, Nancy Boroff, on their way to Girl Scout camp

  Me, age 7

  Me sitting on Linda's full body cast, clowning around

  The family with me

  Mom, Linda, and me dressed up for my Bat Mit
zvah

  Me playing a gig at 22

  chapter thirty-four

  1966

  BY THE TIME Linda was seventeen, she used special theatrical makeup designed to cover the red and brown raised scar tissue. It performed miracles for her, covering the scars and letting her features emerge like a painting.

  I used to watch her sitting at the vanity table my mother gave her, artistically re-creating herself one brushstroke at a time. There were jars and bottles of creams and powders, brushes, pencils, application pads, and sponges filling the small plastic surface and tucked beneath a narrow shelf. Linda was adept at using the pink and green tints to counter the corresponding brown or red tones of the scars. Then, applying the paste-like foundation and a layer of white powder, she would set the base. The finishing touches transcended the sum of the parts; the hint of blush to the cheeks, the tasteful black outline of the eyes, the extension of lush lashes. It all came together with the delicate balance of a Renoir.

  I marveled at how she knew just where to put what, and at her skill and patience. It would take her at least an hour to get the results she wanted. I knew from listening to my parents that the stuff was very expensive, so she was careful not to waste it when she wasn’t going out. I’d heard my mother assure her that she would make sure she could always afford her makeup.

  When I was around fourteen and could have started wearing makeup, I totally dismissed the notion. Perhaps it was some kind of reaction, or rebellion, to seeing my sister chained to that vanity table for so many hours, so dependent on the transformation that the creams and powders provided. This, I thought, was another source of Linda’s resentment toward me. And another source of my guilt. My face and I could go anywhere right out of the shower. It was a daily affront, and I figured I didn’t need to make matters worse by adding eyeliner and blush. Even so, she used to accuse me of attracting boys whenever we went anywhere. “You don’t have to do anything,” she’d say. “They just seem to gravitate to you!” I did not agree with her that that was the case, but she generally persisted in pointing it out all through my adolescence so much so that I made a conscious effort not to even look at any boys when Linda and I were out together. I tried to blend into the background, make myself smaller, and dress in dark colors. I don’t think I bought my first piece of makeup until I was twenty-two.

  When Linda was seventeen and I was twelve, a cosmetic surgeon offered to attempt to graft new skin to Linda’s face—something no one had tried before. For the first time, she allowed herself to imagine her face without scars.

  She dreamed, and I dreamed with her. How would boys react to her with her new face? Would she be asked to the prom now? Could she put behind her the kind of rejection she experienced at those awful spin the bottle games in junior high? How might her world expand?

  I wanted this for her as much as she wanted it for herself. It was a chance to even things out between us—a chance to erase my unfair advantage.

  Linda was buoyant about this hospital trip. It was the one surgery she had waited for, and the only one that I ever remember her being excited about. I helped her pack her favorite nightgowns for the trip, like she was going on a honeymoon. She didn’t pack any makeup.

  Before she left that day, she gave me a tighter-than-usual squeeze and took a deep breath and a long hard look at me.

  She was admitted overnight at Columbia Presbyterian in New York City, prepped for surgery the next morning, and put under anesthesia. When she woke up, however, the news wasn’t good. My mother stood next to the doctor when he told her why she had no bandages, as she had expected.

  “The scar tissue is just too close to the nerves to do this kind of surgery,” the surgeon explained. “You could wind up much worse if we went ahead, with a possible paralysis of your face. I’m very sorry.”

  I can’t imagine what my sister went through hearing this very final verdict. Later, she told me that was when she decided she was done trying to make herself over. She didn’t want any more surgery to reconstruct, reconnect, or realign anything anymore. My mother tried to convince her for a while to get more done, but Linda was adamant and refused.

  Meanwhile, I had heard the news at home and waited anxiously on the curb outside our house for them to return. I thought they would have packed up and left the hospital right away and would be home any minute. I wanted to hug my sister and tell her everything would be fine. By that time, my protective instincts for Linda were well honed, and I felt she would need me now.

  “Hey, Juicy, whatcha doin’ out here?” my father said as he sat down next to me.

  “Waiting for Linda and Mom. They’re on their way home from the hospital, right?”

  “Well, I just got off the phone with Mom. They aren’t coming straight home. They decided to go to Washington, D.C., for a few days.”

  “What? We were all supposed to go there—together!”

  We had talked as a family about making this trip to visit the monuments and the Smithsonian museums.

  “It’s to cheer Linda up, since they couldn’t do this face surgery thing. They were all packed anyway, so Mom thought they would just get in the car and drive for a little getaway. This was very hard for your sister, Judy. I told her you would understand.”

  I tried to understand. I really did. It made perfect sense, and I knew how disappointed Linda must have been that they couldn’t fix the scars on her face. I was, too.

  “Yeah, that’s okay,” I told my father then, trying to hide my disappointment. But I felt like I was in a movie and the camera was zooming away, making me smaller and smaller—until I disappeared.

  chapter thirty-five

  2006

  I’M WAITING FOR Justin to get home from school and fill the house with music. Even though I should keep working on some of my corporate writing that helps pay the bills, I look forward to the excuse to put it aside and talk to my boy, listen to him play the piano or even blare the music that we sometimes disagree on. Although often I’m pleasantly surprised when he chooses to play some Bob Dylan or Grateful Dead.

  My home office is plastered with the photos and the newspaper clippings I’ve been piecing together. It’s not yet a year since my mother passed away, and I find myself staring at her photo for a long time. I remember her mostly now as the woman I knew when I was a child: beautiful, robust, and giving. I think of the things I should have done as her daughter, that I did not do or did not think of doing. All the things I could have done for her at the end to make it easier.

  I am also coming to grips with the reality of my father’s life and the hole he left in mine. The more I relive our past together, the more I understand my own feelings toward him, as well as some of my own motivations throughout much of my life, especially my choices of men. As much as my father was the comic, fun-loving guy, I latched on to the defining nucleus of our relationship—a stoic distance.

  Still, as I re-create that awful day and its aftermath, with the notes from my family and every scrap of detail from newspapers and investigative reports found on the web, my own childhood fades to gray—as insignificant as it felt when I was going through it. How could anything in my life compare to what the rest of my family members had been through? To what they suffered, and what they lost? I am still a footnote in the story, stranded outside.

  My most mundane episodes, along with the days that stand out in a bright white light, were infused with my parents’ hopes and fears, their grief and loss. I was a sponge, thirstily soaking up the spillage of the tragedy.

  I pick up a photo of me at age thirteen at my Bat Mitzvah from the pile next to my desk. Linda and I both went to religious school and were part of the first generation of women to go through the coming-of-age ritual. It was meant to acknowledge us as equal partners before God and to raise up our worth in our clan.

  I studied for the ceremony for a year. The Hebrew was difficult, but once I got the melodies in my head, it was just like learning new songs. “I Want to Hold Your Hand” in code. For me, it wa
s a performance. My father listened to me practice, since he knew Hebrew.

  Our learning Hebrew was important to my mother, especially since she never did. She often said to me, “I want my girls to be able to say the Kaddish for me after I die. I could never say it for my parents.” She could never say it for Donna.

  My mother sewed remnants from my Bat Mitzvah dress to create a near-perfect mini-me on top of my celebration cake. The photo shows me sitting in front of the cake with my tiny twin perched on top of white icing, yellow roses at her feet, the navy blue background of our dresses punctuated by white dots and outlined in yellow ribbon at the neck and hem. The yellow bow in my own hair matches the one on my replica on the cake. I imagined myself that perfect girl, morphing to womanhood on cue and committing to the God that saved one and let the other go.

  My mother and I shopped for my dress for the ceremony, just the two of us, at Bamberger’s. My mother went there a lot, so she knew right where everything was. Junior girls on the second floor toward the back on the right, the tailored clothes I liked in one small section on the left.

  The shopping trip was a sparring match. She found several dresses on the rack that she insisted “would look so cute on you” and piled them on her arm for me to try. We lugged two armfuls of clothes into the dressing room. Once I had my clothes off, I was her prisoner, and she brought me all the dresses she liked best.

  She waited outside as I tried them on. I pulled the curtain closed behind me; the rings on top of the flimsy drape clinked like coins across the metal bar. Safely inside alone, I shrugged at myself in the mirror.