Finding Cassidy

by Laura Langston

  Dad cleared his throat. “The thing is, Cassidy, we need to get some information on my biological father. You know that Little Mac rarely talks about him. I assume that’s where the Huntington’s link is.” He stared down at his plate and absently rearranged his food before looking up again. “When she hears what’s going on, she’ll probably come up from Montana right away. For that matter, Big Mac might come with her. We need to take some time, that’s all.”

  Little Mac and Big Mac were Grandma and Grandpa MacLaughlin. I’d given them the nicknames in preschool when they’d come for a visit and taken me to the Golden Arches for lunch three days in a row. Big Mac wasn’t Dad’s real father. He’d married my grandmother, adopted my dad and given him the MacLaughlin name when Dad had been just two years old.

  “So what does that have to do with me getting genetically tested?”

  Mom and Dad exchanged another one of those looks. Dad’s hand trembled as he picked up a large forkful of salad and put it into his mouth. “There’s a lot to take care of in the short term. We have to check into my treatment options. Decide whether to make an announcement in the press about my condition. Whether I’ll remain on council. Stay on as deputy mayor. What to do with the stores. How it will—”

  Now he was doing the avoidance thing. “Quit being a politician and answer me!” I interrupted.

  “Don’t be rude, young lady,” Mom snapped.

  “Then tell me what you’ve got against genetic testing.”

  “Nothing,” Dad said.

  “We just…We think it’s better to wait until we get your dad sorted out,” Mom said weakly.

  “No!” I pushed my barely eaten dinner away. “I have every right to be tested. I need to know. And I don’t want to wait until I’m nineteen, either.” Mom and Dad were silent.

  “Big Mac and Little Mac will back me up. They’ll understand. So will Aunt Colleen and Uncle Geoff.”

  Dad paled. “This has nothing to do with them, Cassidy. It’s a private matter.”

  “Are you telling me I can’t talk to them about something that affects my life?”

  “I’d prefer it if you didn’t.”

  “Well, I’d prefer it if you’d sign for genetic testing, so I guess that makes us even.” I picked up my plate and stood.

  “Sit down, Cass,” Mom said. “We’re not finished.”

  “I am,” I muttered. I carried my plate to the trash can and scraped it clean. “I’m going out with Jason.” I opened the dishwasher and stashed my plate, the cutlery.

  When they didn’t answer, I turned around, half expecting them to ask me when I’d be home.

  Dad took a breath, looked me in the eye and said, “You don’t need to be tested, Cassidy, because we don’t share the same genes. You’re my daughter and I’m your father. But biologically, we aren’t related.”

  FOUR

  All birds lay eggs. They can’t give birth any other way. They never have live babies.

  Cassidy MacLaughlin, Grade Four Science Project

  What?” The kitchen light flickered; the storm was picking up. I was momentarily disoriented. “I don’t get it.”

  “Sit down,” Mom said softly.

  My legs shook. Blood pounded behind my eyes. I felt like I had a case of instant flu. I sat. “What are you talking about?”

  Dad pinched the bridge of his nose and dropped his gaze. “It’s complicated.”

  “Am I adopted?”

  “You’re not adopted.” Mom grabbed the butter tart squares from the top of the microwave and sat back down again. “You’ve seen the pictures of me pregnant. How I looked right after delivery.” Her voice sounded strangled, like she had a chunk of rigatoni caught in the back of her throat.

  “What, then?” I stared from Mom to Dad. “What is it?”

  “It’s…” Dad hesitated. “It’s…complicated,” he repeated weakly.

  Complicated. Now that explained a lot. Mom, a.k.a. Queen of Avoidance, busied herself cutting the butter tarts into perfect two-inch squares.

  “Do you plan to tell me this year?” I snapped. “Or do I have to guess?”

  Dad tapped his fingers nervously against the table. “Grace,” he murmured, “help me out here.”

  When Mom dropped the knife, it clattered against the glass baking pan. We all jumped. She leaned back in her chair and gave me a wan smile. “Cassidy, we love you more than life itself. You know that, right?”

  I nodded.

  “And you know we would never do anything to deliberately hurt you?” she added.

  Rain blasted against the kitchen window. I shivered. “Right.” This was like a bad movie. I expected sappy music to start building any second.

  “The fact is, Cassidy, you were a very special baby. I mean, you still are special, but as a baby you were our little miracle.” Mom picked up a square, looked at it and put it back down again. “The thing is, you were a wanted baby. A chosen baby. A baby we yearned for. One we tried very, very hard to conceive. And we did try hard. Believe me, we did, but it’s just that—”

  Dad interrupted her rambling. “You were conceived under exceptional circumstances,” he told me.

  Exceptional. At least he was past complicated. “In vitro fertilization, you mean?”

  “Not in vitro,” Mom said. “Donor implant.”

  “Donor implant?” The lights flickered again. “What the hell is that?”

  Dad frowned. “Watch the language, Cassidy.”

  “Well, what is it?”

  Two balls of colour flushed his cheeks. “My sperm count was too low to conceive a child.” He cleared his throat. “We used another man’s sperm.”

  It took a minute, but when the truth dawned I stared in horrified fascination at my mother. “You mean you slept with another man to get pregnant?”

  “Oh, no. No!” Mom practically giggled. “No, of course not. It was all done in a laboratory. His sperm was…you know…inserted inside…when I was fertile.” She waved her hands in the air to cover her discomfort. “It was all very clean and scientific. Business-like. There was nothing nasty about it.”

  Clean and scientific. Business-like.

  The bones of most birds are hollow and filled with air. And that’s how I felt. Hollow. As though if somebody said anything else to shock me, my air-filled, insubstantial bones might be crushed under their words.

  A voice that sounded like mine said, “So I’m not related to you?”

  Dad shook his head. “Biologically, no. That’s why you don’t need to be tested. You don’t have my genes. But I’m still your father, Cass. That doesn’t change.”

  The clock above the table ticked; the refrigerator whirred. I stared at the man I thought of as “Dad.” I mean, I really looked. He had red hair and freckles; I was blond. He was stocky; I was tall. He was a steak lover; I preferred pasta. He was understated and quiet. I wasn’t. The unconnected bits of my life had always been there, only now they clicked, puzzle-like, into perfect place.

  “I’m not going to get Huntington’s?”

  “You are not going to get Huntington’s. We don’t share the same genes,” he repeated.

  I vaguely remembered an article in People magazine a few years before about donor implant. Some girl found her long-lost father. I’d been too busy looking at the clothes and reading about Renée Zellweger to pay much attention.

  Now I struggled to digest the news.

  But you know how it is—some things become part of you right away, and some things stay weird for a long time. Like when Nana died. I must have picked up the phone to call her every day for a month. Her death just wasn’t real.

  This couldn’t be real, either.

  “Are you sure?” There was a little-girl quiver in my voice, but I so wanted this not to be real that I forced myself to talk over it. “You aren’t just saying this so I won’t get tested?” The threat of Huntington’s seemed almost bearable compared to this…this strange black hole of not having Dad be my dad.

  “Cassidy, we wo
uldn’t do that to you,” Mom said. “We wouldn’t lie about this.”

  I believed her—for about three seconds. Then I realized they’d been lying to me for years. My parents, the honest ones. My parents, who had stressed the importance of telling the truth. Even when I’d taken Melissa Munz’s pencil crayons and thrown them in the toilet back in grade three, I hadn’t gotten into trouble, because I’d been honest enough to tell them.

  “So who is he?” I asked. “My father?”

  Mom and Dad exchanged glances. The silence between them grew, filling the room like a presence. “What?” I joked nervously, wondering if I was ready for the rest of it. If my air-filled bones could take more news. “Is he in jail or something?”

  Mom swallowed nervously. “Cass, don’t.”

  But I was on a roll. “Or is it Mel Gibson? When I pulled my hair back the other day, Prissy said I looked like one of his daughters. Come on, you can tell me.” Life had become so unreal I figured anything was possible. Father diagnosed with fatal illness. Daughter finds out father not hers. Real father a movie star. This whole day had more twists than a movie of the week. Only this wasn’t a piece of trash I could switch off after a couple of hours. This was my life.

  “We never met him,” Dad said.

  “Huh?”

  “Frank.” Mom frowned at him before turning to me with her fake I-know-there’s-a-problem-but-we-can-fix-it smile. “We have some papers in the safety deposit box at the bank. We’ll bring them home tomorrow and let you have a look. There were some details there.”

  “How many details?”

  “I don’t remember.”

  I knew she was lying. “How can you not remember? This man is part of me. Or I’m a part of him.” Or we were a part of each other. Or…or something. How was I supposed to articulate this weirdness?

  Dad shook his head. “No, Cassidy, you’re part of us. Part of this family. You’re our daughter—my daughter.”

  “But I don’t have your genes floating through me. I have his. How many details did they tell you? How much do you know?”

  Mom offered me a butter tart square. Resisting the urge to slap it out of her hand, I managed a stiff shake of the head. Mom put it back down. Then she said, “Enough. You can see the papers tomorrow.”

  “Why didn’t you meet him?” I demanded hotly.

  “It wasn’t allowed,” Mom said.

  “I would have met him,” I said. “I would have demanded to.”

  Dad smiled slightly. “Of course you would have. Your outspokenness is one of the things we love most about you.”

  “Well, at least now we know where that trait comes from. Oh, wait a minute.” I slapped my palm over my mouth in mock surprise. “No, we don’t. How silly of me.”

  Ignoring my sarcasm, Mom reached for my hand and squeezed. “Cass, listen. The goal was having you. Getting pregnant and having our baby. Someone was kind enough to help us with that. That’s just how it was done in those days.”

  “How it was done?” I yanked my hand away. “You let some strange guy’s sperm in your body to make a baby and you didn’t meet him because that’s how it was done? That’s gross is what that is.”

  “We didn’t question it,” Dad mumbled. The tips of his ears were red. He repeated Mom’s earlier words. “The details were a business arrangement.”

  A business arrangement. I started life because of a business arrangement. Right then, my bones felt so hollow I half expected to float up from the table and fly away without even trying.

  “It was something your father and I probably wouldn’t have thought of if it wasn’t for Nana and Granddad,” Mom added.

  Nana and Granddad Hunt. Mom’s parents. I stared at her. “Nana and Granddad knew?”

  “It was your grandfather’s idea,” Dad said.

  Was that bitterness in Dad’s voice? He and Granddad had never gotten along. I pulled my knees up to my chest and hugged my trembling legs. “His idea?” I repeated weakly.

  There was a power surge then—a large hum followed by silence, as lights, appliances, everything, shut down. Seconds later, another power surge brought the lights back. The microwave, refrigerator and oven beeped happily as their power source was restored. Dad retrieved matches and a fat yellow candle from the cupboard. It took him three tries to light it, his hands were shaking so much.

  “Grandad knew the trouble we were having,” Mom explained. “He knew how desperate we were to conceive our own child. Back then, we never could have afforded all the procedures without your grandfather’s support.”

  “How many procedures were there?” I asked thickly. “How much did they cost?”

  Mom appeared flustered. “I don’t know, I don’t remember, we never—”

  “There were four, Grace, remember?” Dad reminded Mom softly. The candlelight made his freckles look blotchy against his skin. “And not procedures. Visits. Four visits to the clinic. And don’t ask me what they cost. The bills went to your grandfather.”

  Jewel. Precious. My grandfather’s nicknames for me suddenly took on new meaning. No wonder he’d indulged me so. I was his own little investment. Dad, who came from a long line of frugal dairy farmers, hadn’t been comfortable with any of it. Even after Mom had come into the inheritance, Dad had been uneasy moving from our modest three-bedroom home to the luxury of the Uplands. Too pretentious, he’d said.

  My mind spun as I tried to digest old memories and new information. “Where’s the clinic?”

  “Vancouver,” Mom said. “West Vancouver to be precise.”

  A ferry ride away. “Is it still there?”

  “I don’t know.” Mom looked uncomfortable. “Cassidy, listen. Let’s concentrate on the now. On the future. We love you. We never wanted you to find out like this.”

  “When did you want me to find out? Were you ever going to tell me?”

  Their silence was their answer.

  Tears burned the back of my throat. “Why not?” I demanded.

  “We didn’t think the how of your conception was important. You were important.” Mom’s voice trembled. Her eyes brimmed. The shock of seeing those tears paled in comparison to the shock of her words. “It was just a…a thing we did…a visit to a clinic…a laboratory procedure that lasted less than an hour…and then we were pregnant. That was all that mattered. You are all that mattered. That was true then, and it’s true now.” Her voice cracked.

  “Your mother and I love you, Cassidy. You’re our daughter. My daughter.” Dad’s voice trembled. “That hasn’t changed.”

  “Everything’s changed! You lied to me. All these years. Every single day of my life. You lied. How can I believe anything you say to me now?”

  Dad paled. Mom was openly crying, but I didn’t care. I had my own tears, only I would fight mine. There was no way I’d give them the satisfaction of seeing them.

  “You didn’t have to tell me,” I said angrily. “You could have let me get tested for Huntington’s. It would have been negative. I’d never have known the difference.”

  Mom wiped her eyes. “Would you have wanted that?”

  What I wanted was my life back. Yesterday’s life back.

  “The secret was getting too big,” Dad finally admitted. “All these years of living like this, I—” He stopped. Then he said, “When you were four years old, you asked me if you were adopted. Do you remember?”

  I’d thought that more than once over the years.

  “We were looking at a picture of us on holiday and you said we looked like ice cream cones,” Dad continued. “You said Mom was chocolate, I was strawberry and you were vanilla. I almost told you then.” His lower lip trembled slightly. “But I didn’t.”

  Why, why, why? I wanted to scream the words until my voice gave out. But he looked so miserable and I remembered the Huntington’s and I just couldn’t.

  I turned accusing eyes to Mom. “Was this your idea?” I wanted someone to blame, someone to hurt. “Was it you who wanted the picture-perfect family, just like you
always want the picture-perfect house and picture-perfect clothes? Was that it? Was it you who decided to order up the picture-perfect child, too?”

  “Cassidy, please—”

  But I wouldn’t let her speak. “Did they let you go through a catalogue? Did you see a picture of him? Pick out the perfect nose? Decide I would be tall? Blond?”

  Weeping, Mom jumped up from the table and fled the room. Dad just looked at me; his face was carefully composed now. And that really set me off. How dare he be composed at a time like this?

  “What’s wrong, Frank?” I demanded rudely. He flinched at my use of his first name. “Was I a little too frank for you? Well, frankly, Frank, you could have been a little more frank about the details of my conception, and frankly, that pisses me off.”

  I was out the kitchen door before he spoke. “Give yourself time to calm down, Cassidy.” His words followed me down the hall. “We’ve had enough shit to deal with in the last twenty-four hours. We don’t need a car accident on top of it.”

  It wasn’t until I was in my bedroom sobbing into my pillow that I realized my father—the father who prided himself on never resorting to bad language in my presence—had used the word “shit.” Only he wasn’t my father anymore. He was Frank. And Frank, apparently, had no problem with shit in all its forms.

  FIVE

  Great Blue Herons are mostly solatary creatures, but they can be really social, especilly when they want to find a mate.

  Cassidy MacLaughlin, Grade Four Science Project

  I cried for me, I cried for Dad. I cried because I was angry, afraid and confused.

  I might have cried for hours, except Tabitha positioned herself at my bedroom door and meowed for freedom (she, apparently, didn’t care that my world had just exploded). Getting up to let her out, I caught my reflection in the vanity mirror.

  It pulled me in like gravity.

  I sank onto my stool and stared. A stranger stared back. Blond hair, blue eyes, nose a little too big. It was me, all right.