The Year that Everything Changed

by Georgia Bockoven

  “As long as I can, I will.” He motioned for her to join him, pointing to a high-back chair covered in green and black striped silk. He lowered himself into a matching chair and openly studied her. “Forgive me if I stare. Seeing you last week brought back memories I hadn’t indulged in years. I’d forgotten how beautiful your mother was. . . .”

  She returned his stare, seeking something, anything that connected them, but couldn’t see past how old he was, how sunken and wrinkled and gray. “I looked for pictures of her on the Internet. The ones I found were all staged, nothing candid.”

  “Could you see yourself in them?”

  “No.” She had, but only superficially, and only after comparing them to what she had looked like in her twenties.

  “You will one day—when you get past your anger.”

  “Don’t assume you know me because you knew her. I’m nothing like her.”

  “How do you know?” he asked with a half-smile.

  He might be old and dying, but he wasn’t slow. “I believe in nurture over nature.”

  He chuckled. “I guess it’s a good thing I didn’t mention how you seem to have inherited the infamous streak of Reed stubbornness.”

  “What makes you so sure you’re my biological father? You couldn’t test for things like that back then.” It wasn’t something she’d planned to say and was immediately ashamed that she’d done so in an attempt to hurt him.

  “What possible reason would I have for claiming you as my daughter if I didn’t know it to be true?”

  “She could have lied to you. Women have been known to do that.”

  “Not Barbara.”

  “I’ve listened to her songs. She sang a lot about being free to love when and where and who you wanted. It seems reasonable to assume she practiced what she preached.”

  “You can accept Barbara as your mother, but not me as your father? Is that it? You would prefer a faceless, nameless man you would never have to acknowledge?”

  She felt cornered. “I don’t . . . know.”

  “Why did you come here today?”

  “I want to know if there are any family medical problems that I could pass on to my children.”

  “That’s it?”

  “Yes.”

  “No other reason?”

  “I want to know about Barbara,” she admitted. “What she was like. What the stories written about her don’t tell.”

  Jessie closed his eyes for so long, Ginger couldn’t determine if he was in deep thought or had gone to sleep. When he opened them again he looked at her, ready for whatever she had to throw his way. “All I know medically is that she didn’t have any problems carrying you or having you. For anything else you’re going to have to ask your grandmother or one of Barbara’s sisters. I don’t know that I would recommend doing that, though.”

  “Why not?”

  Jessie chuckled. “They’re a tight-ass bunch who’ll have you slit your wrist to prove your blood runs blue. They loved Barbara, but she swore there was a collective sigh of relief when she moved out west and they didn’t have to explain her to their friends anymore.”

  “That’s a terrible thing to say.”

  “Even worse to believe.”

  “You were already an old man back then. I find it hard to believe you were friends. What could you have had in common with someone like her?”

  “Believe what you want, Ginger. I’m not going to try to change your mind.” Fatigue shadowed the lines on his face, charcoal in the hands of an artistic cancer. “Ask me something that matters,” he said with aching tenderness. “Something you’ll be glad to know when you stop hating her for what you think she did to you.”

  He’d found a way past her anger, past her pain and confusion. “I can’t think what that would be.”

  “Then I’ll tell you what I remember, what I see when I look back. I knew she was gone before I heard it on the news. I’ve never told anyone this, it was too personal and didn’t matter one way or the other to anyone but me, but she stopped to say good-bye before she took off on that plane. She didn’t say anything profound, she hardly said anything at all. She just wanted to let me know she was all right. Now, when I think about her, I see her smiling and remember how she loved raunchy jokes and peppermint candy and whistling.

  “Most of all I remember her music and what it meant to her. It was everything, not just a way of life, but life itself. It’s hard to understand someone that dedicated and driven. Viewed from a distance, they are the stars we delight in, even envy. Close up, they are the ones who break our hearts.”

  “Did she ever talk about me?”

  “No. But I know she thought about you. Listen to her songs. She was talking to you through them.”

  “How do you know that? Did she tell you?”

  “She didn’t have to.” Jessie gave her a sad look and shook his head. “Why is it important for you to feel discarded? Barbara wanted you to have the stable home she could never give you. If she’d been your friend you would have admired her decision.”

  “And how would I have felt about you?”

  Jessie stared at her a long time weighing his answer. Finally, with a sigh he said, “Not very good, I’m afraid. I was the last person you needed. Drunks make lousy fathers.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  Ginger

  Ginger hesitated ringing the doorbell to Rachel’s apartment. She still couldn’t understand why she’d decided to take I-80 instead of I-680 to get back to San Jose or what impulse had made her take the Orinda exit to stop by to visit her “sister.”

  Curiosity was the obvious answer, the one Jessie had offered at their first meeting. But it was more than that. Jessie had shown her photographs of his family, but most of them were so faded and cracked, she couldn’t recognize him as a young man, let alone see herself reflected in the faces of the people staring back at her.

  A month ago she’d paid less attention to family ties than she did her retirement account, taking for granted what she’d known, or thought she’d known, all her life. Now the complex DNA that tied her to complete strangers threaded through every waking thought and even found its way into her dreams.

  She had a million questions. Like musical talent. Was it inherited? If so, it had skipped a generation. She couldn’t carry a tune in a Prada bag. What about business sense? Obviously Jessie had more than his share. He might have gone bankrupt a couple of times, but he always came back. She couldn’t balance her checkbook. Where was the connection?

  Was it in her sisters? Did they share mannerisms, stubbornness, gestures? Were those traits inherited or learned?

  And where did standing outside someone’s door stupidly trying to decide whether to ring the bell fall in the grand genetic scheme of things?

  Ginger pressed the bell. Rachel appeared seconds later. At first she looked annoyed, then puzzled. Recognition and curiosity followed in succeeding waves. “Ginger—isn’t it?”

  Ginger nodded.

  “How did you find me?”

  “The lawyer, Lucy Hargreaves, gave me your address. Your husband—I assume he’s still your husband—gave me this one.”

  “And you came here because . . . ?”

  Ginger considered the question. “Honestly—I don’t know.”

  Rachel seemed as ambivalent. Finally, she said, “You might as well come in while you’re figuring it out.”

  Ginger followed Rachel down a hallway into a living room with a sofa, a coffee table, a lamp, and little else. “I see you’re a minimalist. I’m more into the calculated shabby chic myself.”

  Rachel sat on one end of the sofa and motioned for Ginger to join her. “The proper term is early separation.” She offered a polite smile. “I’ve heard of shabby chic, but not the calculated part.”

  “My invention. It’s where you strive to convince everyone you can afford better when you really can’t.”

  “I spent the first five years of my marriage there. Jeff and I used to cruise the neighborhoods on pi
ckup day to see what we—” Rachel stopped and shook her head. She gave Ginger a glance that was both pain-filled and embarrassed. “I’ve got to stop doing that.”

  The action was as revealing as words. Ginger knew with gut-wrenching certainty what had happened between Rachel and her husband. The details—who, why, when—weren’t important, only that Rachel had not been the one who’d strayed. She still hadn’t learned how to stop loving the creep.

  “That’s not how I pictured you at all,” Ginger said breezily. “I figured one of us had to have benefited from having a father who was a millionaire. I knew it wasn’t me, and it obviously wasn’t Christina.”

  “And the other one looked pretty middle-class.”

  “That would be Elizabeth, the one who bolted when she discovered she had a room full of sisters. Do you suppose she honestly believed she was the only one? She knew Jessie the longest. She had to have some idea what he was like.”

  She gave Ginger a curious stare. “How do you know that about Elizabeth?”

  “I went to see Jessie today.”

  “I see,” Rachel said carefully.

  She shouldn’t have said anything about Jessie’s money. “It’s not what you think.” Rachel wasn’t stupid. “Well, maybe it is, a little,” she admitted. “But mostly I wanted to find out about my mother.”

  “Seems to me that would be pretty easy to do on the Internet.”

  “I tried that. There’s a lot about her music and her public image, but not a lot about her personal life beyond what was in her obituary.”

  “What about all the books that were written about her after she died?”

  “I’ve ordered a couple, but they haven’t arrived yet.” Ginger smiled. “You’ve been looking, too, I take it?”

  “A little,” Rachel admitted.

  “I wouldn’t think you’d have the time.”

  “Yeah, you’d think.” Rachel straightened her legs and sat forward. “Look, I don’t mean to be rude, but my kids will be here in an hour and I don’t have anything in the apartment to feed them.”

  “You have kids?”

  “Two. Cassidy’s eight and John’s five.”

  An odd feeling came over Ginger. “I guess that makes me an aunt.”

  “I guess it does.” Rachel seemed as bemused at the idea as Ginger. “I’ve been so wrapped up in everything else that’s been going on, I didn’t stop to think that this thing with Jessie involves them, too. What about you? Do you have children?”

  “I’ve never been married, and I’m kind of old-fashioned when it comes to kids and marriage. Came close once, but it didn’t work out.”

  “And there’s no one now?”

  Ginger had her mouth open to tell Rachel about Marc when it hit her what a huge mistake that would be. There was no way Rachel would understand her reasons for being involved with a married man. “You need to get to the grocery store. I should have called before I came.”

  “I’m glad you didn’t,” Rachel said. “I would have found an excuse not to see you.”

  The statement was too provocative not to ask, “Why?”

  “My life is complicated right now.”

  “Yeah, mine, too.” She moved to stand. “Before I go—I know I already told you I was sorry, but I just wanted to say it again. I was a real bitch to you at that meeting. I had no right to put you on the spot the way I did about you being separated.”

  Rachel smiled. “As I recall, I gave as good as I got. I took out on you what I wanted to take out on Jessie.”

  Ginger stood and slipped her purse strap onto her shoulder. “He looked a lot worse when I saw him today.”

  “I’m not surprised. He’s dying.”

  “It was more than that. He was . . . I don’t know, I guess it was that he looked sad.”

  “Sounds like you’ve forgiven him?”

  “I’m still trying to decide whether he needs forgiving—whether either of them do. I can’t imagine giving a child away that I’d given birth to, but I’ve never been in that situation. How do I know what I would do?”

  “It’s pretty obvious that Jessie wouldn’t have been a part of your life even if your mother had kept you. At least with you he had a legitimate excuse for staying away.”

  “You never spent any time with him?” Ginger asked.

  “I never even saw him before that meeting. Not once in thirty-six years.”

  “I think we can safely assume Jessie Reed never came through as a father for any of us.”

  “There’s no way I can tell you how much I hate that man.”

  “You should tell him how you feel, get it out of your system while you can.”

  “He would just try to defend himself, and I don’t want to hear what he has to say. There’s no excuse for what he did to me or to my mother.”

  “What did he do?” Normally Ginger would never have asked, considering it none of her business. But there was nothing “normal” about Jessie or the situation he’d put them in.

  “My mother was seventeen when I was conceived. Jessie was almost fifty. When she told him she was pregnant he said he was too old to have a kid. He changed the locks on the house and told her he would hire as many men as he could to say they’d slept with her if she tried to take him to court for support. Now the son of a bitch wants to claim me because he’s dying and has a guilty conscience? I don’t think so.”

  Ginger recoiled at the story. People changed, but she couldn’t believe Jessie could have changed that much in thirty years. Something wasn’t right. Rather than argue the point, she decided to switch to a safer subject. “Do you have pictures of your kids?” She smiled. “Of course you do. What I’m really asking is if I could see them.”

  “I only have a couple of recent ones here. They’re in the bedroom. Hang on a minute, I’ll get them.” Just as she was leaving the room, she stopped and looked back at Ginger. “How do you feel about macaroni and cheese?”

  “About the same as I do about liver and onions.”

  “Is that good or bad?”

  “Very, very bad.”

  Rachel laughed. “How about salad?”

  “What woman who wants to stay under a size sixteen hasn’t convinced herself she loves salad? Why are you asking?”

  “I just thought if you didn’t have other plans you could stay for dinner. That way you could see Cassidy and John in person.”

  Marc was waiting for her, or would be in another hour. He’d been too busy to listen when she’d called earlier to tell him how the meeting had gone. “I can’t. I have a conference call—” She saw a quick flash of disappointment cross Rachel’s eyes that mirrored her own feelings.

  For once she would cancel on Marc. He’d done it to her so often he could hardly be upset. “I’ll get out of it. I’d really like to meet my niece and nephew.”

  Cassidy and John were confused and standoffish at first introduction but came around when Ginger plied them with riddles and knock-knock jokes while Rachel ordered pizza. Jeff wasn’t so easy to figure out. She’d been prepared to hate him on sight but saw too much sorrow in the way he looked at Rachel to justify a snap judgment. He was friendly, and obviously curious at meeting a sister Rachel hadn’t known she had, but was too conscious of being in a place he wasn’t welcome to take the time to socialize.

  Later, after pizza and a video and unexpected hugs from her niece and nephew that left Ginger a little breathless with wonder, Cassidy and John were in bed, if not asleep.

  “I should be going,” Ginger said. It was an offer, made because it seemed the right thing to say at nine-thirty in the evening. She didn’t want to leave. She hadn’t asked half the questions she’d come there to ask, nor had she found a reason to be glad she’d been raised without knowing she had a sister.

  “Do you live far from here?” Rachel asked.

  “San Jose.” An hour or two from Orinda, depending on traffic.

  “Would you like to stay?” Rachel blurted. “Never mind. I know how odd that sounds, but I was jus
t thinking how nice this has been and how long it’s been since I’ve had someone I could talk to—and how much we have to catch up on.”

  “You mean overnight?”

  “All I can offer you here is John’s bed.”

  “Where would John sleep?”

  “With me.”

  “He wouldn’t mind?”

  “He won’t even know he’s been moved until he wakes up in the morning.”

  She shouldn’t. She had a dozen errands to run in the morning, including a couple for Marc. “Sure. Why not?”

  Rachel smiled. “Great. I’ll open that bottle of Merlot I picked up last week.” She stood and added, “Is Merlot okay with you?”

  “Yeah—it’s fine.”

  “You’re wondering why I didn’t offer it with the pizza.”

  “No—not at all.” Yes, she was.

  “I have a thing about drinking and driving. In college my best friend was killed by a drunk driver. I tried really hard to hate him, but at the trial I wound up feeling sorry for him. His wife died in the accident, too. They’d been at a restaurant celebrating their anniversary. Everything about it was such a waste.”

  “What happened to him?”

  “He went to jail for a couple of years. After he got out, he committed suicide.”

  Ginger cringed. “Sure you wouldn’t rather stick to iced tea?”

  “Don’t get me wrong, I don’t have a problem with drinking. It’s when it’s combined with driving. And I’d really like someone to try this Merlot with me.”

  “Okay.”

  They had a glass, decided it was less than advertised but better than average, and finished the bottle with a bag of microwave popcorn. By eleven-thirty Rachel was sitting on one end of the sofa, yoga fashion, with Ginger at the other end, her shoes kicked off, her feet tucked under her.

  “I have to admit this has turned out a lot better than I expected,” Ginger said, relaxed to the point of shared confidences, thanks to the wine and an inexplicable, compelling feeling that she’d found a long-lost friend.