Drawing Conclusions

by Deirdre Verne

  “Oh CeCe.” Trina gripped my arm. “I’m so sorry.”

  “Are you kidding? That may be the best news I’ve heard in weeks,” I laughed. The revelation, although astonishing and completely unexpected, was encouraging, if only because it would explain a lifetime in exile. Of course my father disliked me. We weren’t even related! And as for Mom, her lack of maternal instinct now had meaning. Maybe these were just two wealthy people who adopted simply to fill up space on their annual Christmas card.

  “But,” Jonathan said, giving me a nudge to continue.

  “Well, I guess it also shows that one of my adopted parents had another child by birth. This is just supposition, but I’m wondering if my mother may have come to the marriage pregnant, lost the child and then adopted Teddy and me with my father. Her depression may have come from this loss. Or maybe she gave that child up for adoption, yet another possible reason for her depression.”

  Cheski turned the paper over and pointed to the markings on the back, “How ’bout this, Einstein. What do you make of all these Xs and Ys.”

  “Basic biology,” Jonathan answered. “Male DNA contains an X and a Y chromosome. Females have two Xs.”

  “I was hoping for a triple X.” Charlie smirked.

  “Do you ever stop?” I reprimanded him. Then I turned to Jonathan. “So basically, this key on the back shows which circles are males and which are females. I’ll be able to find out if Teddy and I had a stepsister or stepbrother. Is it step? Or half? Whatever.”

  Jonathan turned the paper front to back a few times, making mental notes of the chromosomal key. He grunted a few times, seemingly lost in his own thoughts. “Maybe.”

  “Here, let me do it.” I grabbed for the pencil again. The Xs and Ys were multiplying, and it was no longer as simple to decipher the diagram. I flipped the paper over a few times, making notations of gender in each of the circles. As I penciled in the last of the circles, my hand slowed to a screeching halt.

  “Oh my god, this can’t be,” I said as the room spun around in a blurry haze. I was stumbling and falling despite being seated and felt as destitute as I had the night I found out Teddy was gone. Even that could not match the depths of my sorrow at this particular moment. “Jonathan,” I wailed, “tell me I’m wrong. Please.”

  “I can’t.” Jonathan opened up his arms and let me fall into his chest. “I’m sorry, CeCe. I wasn’t expecting this.”

  Charlie was the first to break my grip on Jonathan. “Come on. Don’t hold it in.”

  I read the diagram, my voice weepy and thin. I wanted my friends to be the first to know what had struck me so hard.

  “The circle to the left is my father,” I began. “He’s not related to any of these children. Not one of his numbered alleles is shared by any of the children.” The first bomb dropped without protest from my friends. “The circle to the right is my mother. She is related to one of the children. That child is a girl and that child is me.” I paused for a second, allowing my friends to digest the information. “The two children to the left are boys. They’re not related to these parents. One of the boys must be Teddy. Teddy has a brother, but he doesn’t have a sister.” I wiped my face with a dishtowel; there was no tissue with enough absorbing power to soak up my tears. “I don’t have a brother. I’m not a twin. Teddy’s not my brother.”

  The room exploded in chaos. The news was shattering. Everyone seemed agitated and at a loss for words. Trina simply cried, while Charlie stared into space, his entire childhood landscape upended. Lamendola and Cheski communicated in police terms I did not understand. Everyone seemed as disoriented as if we had been deposited in a circus funhouse. I could only speak for myself, and I felt as if I had lost my brother twice—once to death and once to genetics. Most importantly, none of us knew what to do with this new piece of information. What was Teddy trying to tell me with it? We weren’t twins, but that information alone was not enough to complete the picture. So my father adopted twin boys? Since when was that a crime? What happened to the other boy?

  “Stop. Everyone stop,” I yelled. “Charlie, go get me your laptop.” I jolted back from the table with supreme purpose and ran upstairs to my studio. I rummaged through a pile of junk at the foot of my futon and located the still-drying satchel I had carried yesterday as I bicycled home from my parents’ house. At the bottom of the bag was the DVD my mother had been watching when I checked in the other day. I charged back down the stairs and instructed Charlie to insert and play the disc.

  “My mother was watching these home movies when I went to check on her yesterday. I didn’t see the whole thing, but I thought it was strange that I wasn’t in the film. Most of what I saw included only Teddy and my parents.”

  The film booted up and the screen filled with happy families at the beach. My dad, under a brightly stripped umbrella, held Teddy and rocked him to sleep. As with the first viewing, Teddy looked adorable and cozy and completely content. The camera panned wide, picking up my mother as the waves pushed her ashore. Her one-piece suit was wet and clingy, revealing a slim figure with a little extra padding.

  “CeCe,” Trina said, “I’m embarrassed to say this, but your mom looks kinda pregnant. It’s subtle, but she could be four or five months in.”

  “I think so too. I also think I noticed it the first time I saw the footage, but I blocked it out.”

  “That would mean that Teddy is older than you.”

  “Yes, and based on the timing of this film in late summer, I guess my birthday is not in June.”

  “More like October,” Trina added.

  “Now I know why Teddy always hit milestones earlier,” I said, remembering how awful I felt that he could ride a bike and swim a year ahead of me. “I could barely roll over when he started to walk. I’ll bet he’s easily six to eight months older than I am.” I watched my mother drying herself with a towel, her face distant and disconnected. The camera paused and when it restarted, it appeared that someone else, maybe my mother, was filming.

  “There’s another thing I’m noticing now,” I said. “When I first saw this at my mother’s house, I thought it was our annual vacation to Cape Cod. But look.” I pointed to a row of stores in the background. “Those signs are in Italian. This was taken in Italy.”

  “Oh man,” Charlie said, “this is getting too close for comfort.”

  The camera swept the shore again and refocused on a man walking on the sand toward my parents. The lens zoomed in on the man, singling him out from the crowded beach patrons.

  “No!” I screamed at the top of my lungs. “No, that’s insane.” I didn’t need to sketch this one out with a pencil and paper because I’d already done part of the work for DeRosa. I knew how to add age to a face, and as a result I had a pretty good idea of how to reverse the lines of time. And I knew for certain that the man walking toward the camera was Peter Dacks, alias Piotr Dackow, looking thirty years younger.

  “That’s Peter Dacks,” I screeched, jabbing my finger at the screen.

  “No fucking way,” Charlie said loudly.

  “Believe me, it’s him. His teeth are bad and his hair isn’t as blond, but damn it, that’s Peter Dacks. Wait until he gets closer.”

  The man walked to the umbrella and it was obvious from his casual demeanor that he knew my father. He knelt down in the sand and for a quick second was out of the frame. When he came back into focus, he sat next to my father and cradled a second baby boy. Every last molecule of air in the room disappeared, sucked deep into our collective lungs.

  Charlie pressed pause and we sat there frozen, all of us, staring wide-eyed at the screen. It was faint, but behind me I heard something whispery, a breath and then a gulp. I turned my head slowly, moving Jonathan aside with my arm to get a better look.

  DeRosa was watching the screen from behind us. I had no idea how long he had been standing there. He seemed to be equally as mesmerized by the video.
He was stone-faced, but something foreign and unfamiliar was pooling in the corner of his eyes. Tears—surely a novelty for Detective Frank DeRosa—formed like rain drops and rolled down his cheeks.

  “Frank,” I said, and the entire room turned in unison. “Is it you? The other boy in the video?”

  “I believe so,” he said, his voice bereft and wan.

  thirty-four

  DeRosa walked into the room, shaking hands with the men and hugging Trina.

  “You’re Teddy’s twin?” I said, almost in awe of his presence, a near biological replica of Teddy.

  “I am.”

  “How did you find out?”

  “The pictures you sketched. I had heard my parents talk about Bonetti in passing as a child. Not often, but every once in a while. The town came up when we found out about Naomi. I thought the connection was too strange, so I went to see my parents right after leaving Harbor House.” He pulled a chair from the kitchen table and then rubbed his face, as if he couldn’t contain his own disbelief. “It was difficult for them to admit. My parents are good, loving people and they only wanted the best for me.”

  “Are they your parents?” I asked.

  “No, they’re not. They were living in Bonetti, a childless couple, struggling financially. My mother went to a clinic in Yugoslavia, an hour’s drive across the border, to find out why she couldn’t have children. Fertility intervention in a Roman Catholic country was unavailable at the time. There she met a man I suspect to be Peter Dacks. He offered my parents the deal of a lifetime: he would get them a baby boy and help them resettle in New York. They handed over their measly savings and agreed to take a baby without asking questions.”

  “So what did you do with my pictures?”

  “I went to Bonetti hoping to find someone who looked like me, maybe my father. It was a long shot.”

  “Did you find anyone?” I asked.

  “No, but I was able to get some information. I showed your photo to every storekeeper in the town and the same name kept coming up: Margiotta. Then I went to the local police and between the last name, my year of birth, and the sketches, they felt able to make some calls to the Margiotta family. I spoke to this man.” DeRosa pulled out his cell phone to show me the photo of a man in his mid-fifties. The similarity between my sketch and the man was uncanny. “If my assumptions are correct,” DeRosa said, “he may be an uncle. We chatted for a while, and I showed him the sketches and explained my predicament. He had a brother who disappeared at seventeen. This brother had a girlfriend at the time, and the families had been worried she was pregnant. That’s all he knew, but I suspect the girlfriend gave birth in this same clinic that my mother attended, and the clinic is probably associated with Naomi’s shady medical school.”

  “How does my father fit in?” I asked, passing the cell phone picture around the room for the others to see.

  “That part is ugly, CeCe.” DeRosa hung his head in dismay. “I’m not sure I’m ready to talk about it. It’s too personal.”

  “We’ve come this far,” I pleaded.

  Jonathan motioned to the rest of group, and my roommates left the house without making a noise. DeRosa whispered to Lamendola and Cheski, and they patted each other on the backs, shaking hands the way people do at funerals.

  “Can we go up to the studio?” DeRosa said.

  “Sure,” I said, and we made our way to the spot of our initial meeting. I remembered it clearly because that first night, I despised him and his overconfident tone. This time, however, his bravado had been defused. Unfortunately, that made me nervous; I had come to rely on DeRosa’s steadfast control.

  I flicked on the light and he made a beeline to my portraits, setting aside the paintings I had done of him. He stood back to study my work.

  “I need to tell you something and at the risk of sounding dramatic, it’s the closest thing I’ve seen to pure evil.”

  “You’re upsetting me.” A million thoughts raced through my mind, fighting for answers I didn’t have. How did Teddy and Frank get separated? Who was my father? What did my mother know? Did I have other siblings?

  “I don’t mean to scare you, so let me qualify this conversation. Although we have uncovered many facts in the case, some of what I’m about to say is supposition.”

  “I trust you.”

  “Okay, here goes.” He went on to unravel a story so spellbinding I was afraid to budge for fear of missing an important detail.

  “Teddy and I have a number of recessive features in common. As you pointed out, we both have attached earlobes and we both have a hint of a cleft chin. But you know from your paintings that we are not identical. I can see here,” DeRosa said as he gestured to a canvas, “the way you started to sketch my eyes, it’s not exactly the same as Teddy. However, the similarities are almost spooky. It bothered me initially. I’d never worked on a case where I resembled the victim. And I know it threw your mother for a loop.”

  “Can’t fraternal twins have things in common?”

  “Yes, but Teddy and I have too much in common.”

  “But you’re not identical twins?”

  “No, we’re not. It would have been obvious if we were. I did some research. Actually, the director at the medical school in Slovenia, where Teddy and I were born, explained it to me after pulling our file. Our conception is called polar body twinning, a rare version of twins. A thorough DNA analysis would confirm this.”

  “Explain,” I said.

  “Identical twins share a hundred percent of their DNA.”

  “Okay,” I said.

  “And that’s because identical twins form from a single fertilized egg that splits in two.”

  “Jonathan explained the egg-and-sperm combinations to me earlier. Fraternal twins are no different than siblings, and that’s why they don’t necessarily look alike. Two eggs, two sperm. So what are these polar body twins?”

  “Apparently, it’s unusual but there’s a chance an egg can split before it’s fertilized and subsequently meet two separate sperm. In that case, the twins are almost identical, sharing seventy-five percent of their genetic material. A close but not perfect match.” DeRosa’s face turned grave. “I think your father ultimately searched for identical twins, but Teddy and I were the next best thing.”

  “Searched? You’re losing me.”

  “Do you remember when you explained the concept of epigentics to me? The ability to alter but not change DNA. You said Teddy explained to you that some geneticists believe extreme external factors can trigger switches on a DNA strand, essentially turning the switches on or off. A person programmed to handle stress can be deprogrammed as a result of negative stimuli.”

  “Okay, I remember that conversation.”

  “I think your father is testing this epigenetics theory with Teddy and me.”

  “That’s insane.”

  “I know, but hear me out. Your father ...”

  “Stop there,” I interrupted, holding both my palms forward. “Call him anything else but my father. I’m disgusted.”

  “The man is still your father,” DeRosa said calmly.

  “Oh no, you must have come in a few minutes too late,” I said with pure pleasure. “William Prentice is not my father. Jonathan helped me decipher Teddy’s medical notes on my family’s genetic tree. I have no idea who my father is, but I can say with complete confidence that I’m not related to that bastard.”

  Frank practically fell backward onto the futon. The frame shifted under his weight and he caught his head in his hands and started to laugh uncontrollably.

  “Did you think that maybe we were all related?” I asked, but he kept on laughing. “Frank, seriously. Don’t tell me you sat on that plane for umpteen hours thinking that you, me, and Teddy were siblings.”

  I grabbed a clean painting rag and helped Frank wipe the tears from his eyes. He was emotionally spen
t not to mention jet-lagged. He regained his composure momentarily, bracing his hand on a ceiling beam as he stood. “I’ve barely slept in the last four days. I have no idea what I’m thinking. I’m relieved to learn, however, that you are not a half-sister or first cousin or whatever.”

  “So now my genetics aren’t good enough for you?” I feigned offense to lighten the mood.

  “Your genetics are just fine,” DeRosa said. “In fact, they’re more than fine. This issue is my genetics and the game that man attempted to play with my life.”

  “Go on. Tell me.”

  “Dr. Prentice’s life work focused on two medical fronts. Decode the human genome and then figure out how to manipulate it. To test the manipulation theory, he took two nearly identical babies and separated them shortly after birth. He gave one baby all the many privileges a wealthy family could afford, and he gave the other baby nothing. Worse, he did everything in his power to limit the second baby’s opportunities.”

  At this point, DeRosa’s anger swelled and his took on a sharper and more forceful tone. “He gave the baby to a poor, uneducated family and then deposited them in a rundown slum in Freeport, a crime-ridden area with a lousy school system. The boy’s parents were immigrants in an unfamiliar country. They did not speak English, nor did they ever master the language, thereby increasing the chances the boy would fail. Then Dr. Prentice watched both boys in hopes that external factors would send them on opposing paths despite having almost identical DNA. If the baby in the negative environment faltered while the baby in the positive environment thrived, then his theory would be supported. Nurture over nature. Our genetics could be overcome.”

  “But it didn’t work, did it?” I said.

  “Not at all. A failed human experiment. Given the constraints of my life, I excelled. Maybe my environs limited my ability to become a doctor, which frankly I never considered, but it didn’t prohibit me from rising to the top of my profession.”

  “Both you and Teddy succeeded because essentially you have the same makeup, and that must be some wonderful DNA. You have both led lives packed with achievement.”