Relatively Honest

by Molly Ringle

  “So, Daniel.” She sat forward on the sofa, set her glass on the coffee table, and folded her hands. “There’s something I’ve wanted to tell you.”

  I didn’t know yet that she was about to destroy my life, but I think I guessed it. Swallowing became almost impossible, and I lowered my wine glass too. I glanced at Dad, in the armchair. He looked uneasy. “Yes?” I said.

  “You remember hearing of my sister Evelyn?”

  It was so completely not what I expected, it took me a moment to in fact remember hearing of her sister Evelyn. “Evelyn. Yes. The one who…um.”

  “She died several years ago. In 1992, actually.”

  I nodded, waiting for this to show some relevance to my life.

  Mum refolded her hands. “She had run away from home a few years before that, you see, and we didn’t really know what happened to her for quite some time. Well, ‘ran away’ isn’t quite the right term. She was twenty-three, after all, and could do what she liked. But there was a family falling-out, and – anyway, put that aside for now.”

  I stared, mystified.

  Mum glanced at me, and hurried on. “Yes, so, actually, Evelyn died here. In Oregon, I mean. It was a car crash. It turns out she was living with a man named James, and they had a child. Again, we knew nothing of that. All we learned was that she had died in an accident.”

  “They had a child,” I repeated, interested now.

  “Yes. I hired an investigator, and only just found out in the past few months. Seems I have a niece I never knew about.”

  “So I have a cousin.” I sat up on the sofa.

  “Yes. About your age, actually. Julie is her name. I haven’t contacted the family yet – ”

  “Julie?” I interrupted.

  “Yes. Julie French.” (The color must have drained from my face. Good thing for the glow of the Christmas tree.) “They still live around here. Bend, as a matter of fact.” (Thinking I might throw up.) “The investigator says she even attends your university – but then there are 20,000 students there, so I don’t imagine you’ve met her.” Mum laughed.

  I thought I might start laughing too, in lunatic fashion, and never, ever stop. “Um, I might. Know her. I’ll ask around.” I fixed my eyes on the Christmas tree. Couldn’t look at my parents. Very, very important not to say I knew Julie, not yet.

  “Oh, darling, don’t.” Mum touched my knee, startling me. “I’m not ready to talk to them yet.”

  “All right.” Yes, fine with me. Not sure at all how that conversation would go over myself.

  “It’s only, I’ve wanted so long to find out what Evelyn’s life was like here, her last few years, when we heard nothing…”

  I tried to look like I was frowning in thought, rather than in mind-spinning horror. “So that’s why you wanted to take the Sunriver job? Because it was in Oregon?”

  “For the most part,” Mum said. “Evelyn sent one postcard in all that time. It was from Sunriver. She said she was happy, and might write again sometime. But a month later we got word she had died.”

  “And no one told you about her husband? Or her…daughter?” Julie. My beautiful girl, my love, my bloody cousin, Julie.

  “He wasn’t her husband. They were unmarried. But, no. No one told us. Those may have been her wishes, or his, I don’t know.”

  “Which is why we aren’t sure we should contact him now,” Dad said. “He might not welcome it.” It was the first time he had spoken during all this. I looked at him and found he was gazing at his lap, fiddling with his glass.

  “But,” I said, “why didn’t you tell me? When we moved here, why didn’t you say…?” Why? Why? Why?!

  “Oh, I didn’t wish to bother you about it, darling. I assumed you wouldn’t be interested, on the whole. Much more my concern than yours. You had bigger items on your plate: going to university and such. You didn’t need to worry about your sentimental middle-aged mum and her family issues.”

  “I did worry. You could have said.”

  “I’m sorry, dear. Please don’t feel left out. I didn’t tell your father at first, either.”

  I glanced from him to her. “Why not?”

  “Well, the reason Evelyn left…” Mum stopped for a sip of wine.

  Dad got up, mumbled something about hot water for tea, and went into the kitchen.

  Mum went on. “Originally, Rhys,” (my father’s name), “was seeing Evelyn.”

  That shocked me out of my own problems. “What?”

  My flustered mother recrossed her knees and smoothed the crease in her trousers. “Yes, er, they were a couple. Before he and I…got together.”

  “You stole your younger sister’s boyfriend?”

  She looked at me, half offended and half guilty. “It was complicated, Daniel. I hope you’ll believe we were really in love. We never wished to hurt her, but of course she was upset.”

  Depression was washing me down some cosmic drain. I stared at a sofa cushion. “Did you have to marry him, because you were pregnant with me?”

  “No, dear!” She sounded taken aback, so that was probably true, at least. “We were happy to be together, and especially happy to have you.” Her hand squeezed my knee again. “Anyway, you can work it out. She ran away in ’89, and you weren’t born until ’91.”

  “Ah. So, what about Nanny and Granddad? Didn’t they miss her, try to find her?” Those were my mother’s parents, the Smith side of the family – grandparents I shared with Julie. Did she know their names? Probably she did. Oh, shite.

  Mum withdrew her hand. “They and Evelyn never got on very well. It’s awful, I know, but I think they preferred seeing Rhys with me. They adored Rhys.” They still did. He was like the darling son they never had.

  “All right, so…” I sank the heels of my hands into both eyes. “You and Dad jilted Evelyn. She ran off to America. She hooked up with James French, and had a girl named Julie. Evelyn died in a crash, around here somewhere. Then James married someone else, and they all live in Bend, and you’re deciding if we want to have them over for a family reunion or what. Do I have it all straight?”

  “How did you know he got married?” said Mum, surprised.

  Whoops. “Oh. Just assumed, I suppose.”

  “Well, yes, he did. And they had a son.”

  Indeed. Julie’s brother. Technically her half-brother. My half-cousin? They have a dog, too, Mum. Did you hear?

  “But as to inviting them over…” Mum shuddered. “I can only imagine Evelyn told James about us. He could very well hate your father and me. He could have tracked us down years ago if he wanted to introduce himself and Julie, but he never has. So we’re not sure how to proceed, or whether to approach him at all.”

  “Evelyn forgave you, though,” I said. “Didn’t she? The postcard?”

  “Perhaps. It didn’t say so, exactly. Just said she was happy, and hoped to talk to us again.” Mum closed her lips, and looked away. “She was my little sister, you know. That came before Rhys or any other boys. I missed her. All those years, I didn’t dare say anything, or try to find her, because I didn’t want to remind Rhys…”

  “Because he missed her too?” I said softly.

  “Not exactly. But having hurt her that way…well, he did feel rather awful. It was a painful memory for everyone. That’s why I didn’t tell him at first, when I hired the investigator.”

  I thought of Miriam, and a dozen other girls, and winced. Okay, so far I hadn’t done anything on the scale of what my father (and mother!) had done. But now I began to guess where I had picked up such behavior.

  “It’s all a little surprising,” I mumbled. Right, just a little. My head throbbed. I couldn’t imagine how this was ever going to untangle itself nicely.

  “I do so want to know my niece, though,” Mum said, wistfully.

  My parents had met her, of course – when Julie had picked me up to drive me to Eugene. Thinking frantically back on it, I decided we had only introduced Julie by her first name, and she had probably registered in th
eir minds mainly as “Patrick’s girlfriend,” Patrick being their employee and thus their point of reference. Plus she’d been wearing sunglasses and a headscarf, and my parents had been distracted with bidding farewell to their son as he valiantly took off for university. Yeah, obviously they hadn’t made the connection, and I wasn’t about to bring it up. Still, if Mum did want to get to know her…

  “I…I could try to meet her,” I began, my brain forming a feeble and hopeful plan. People arranged and approved marriages between cousins sometimes, didn’t they? Sure, Daniel – why, only just last century.

  “Oh, don’t do that!” Mum begged. “I don’t want any of us to approach them, not yet. Not until I’ve decided what to do. It’s enough just knowing, for now.”

  I nodded. Stupid idea anyway. “Anything else I should know about my family tonight?”

  “No. That was all. I’m so glad I’ve told you. I hated keeping secrets.”

  “I did think something was up.”

  “You’re too keen – can’t get anything by you!” She chuckled. She sounded so relieved. I didn’t have the heart to inform her she had crushed my soul into sick and twisted bits. “Want to see the photos and things the investigator turned up?” she asked.

  “Okay.”

  A tiny bit of hope kindled while she went and fetched a folder. A different Julie French, maybe? Big hilarious coincidence?

  No such luck. “This is Julie in high school.” She flattened out a newspaper article with a color photo of four girls in striped sport uniforms and caps, arms around each other’s shoulders. Undeniably my Julie, with longer hair and a more childish grin. “She was on the girls’ softball team. Apparently quite good.”

  Yes. She had talked about softball, on one of our walks in the rain.

  She turned a page. “The genealogy.” A family tree sprawled down the sheet. Evelyn Smith linked to James French, producing Julie. Meanwhile, on the other side of the Atlantic, but only a few inches away on this page and dangling from the same line of ink (the Smith grandparents), Jenny Smith linked to Rhys Revelstoke, producing Daniel. My other cousins, the ones I already knew about, branched off Mum’s older sister and also off my dad’s brother. Julie’s step-mother brought a flock of others onto their side of the tree, and James French supplied half a dozen cousins – none of them any relation to me, except maybe by law. But Julie and I? Blood relatives, no question.

  “Big family,” I said.

  “Yes. It would be so good to meet them. I do hope it works out.” Mum traced Julie’s name with her fingernail.

  “Me too.”

  Chapter 12: Living with Reality

  OKAY. WELL. Right, then.

  Couldn’t be in love with her now, could I? She had Patrick anyway. I would just turn my love into a nice cousinly affection, bid farewell to the idea of hooking up with her, and stride off to pursue fresh new faces.

  Four months ago my mind and body would have jumped straight in line with that idea. It had been the plan when I flew over here: Yank women everywhere! One right after the other! Play that field, you university man, you!

  Now? I wanted to weep. I felt sick. I wanted to ring her at once and tell her, and at the same time I wanted to prevent her from ever finding out.

  But doesn’t she already know? I thought, thrashing and sweating in my sheets that night. She knew her real mother’s name, surely. However, “Smith” was common enough. Even if she heard my mother’s maiden name, or my grandparents’ name, she wouldn’t instantly make the connection. But her father, James French, probably knew the story of Rhys Revelstoke (a.k.a. “that bastard”) and Evelyn’s sister Jenny (“that bitch”). And he probably, at some point, had mentioned it to Julie. Or maybe not; she certainly had never voiced the notion that we were related.

  So maybe James didn’t know the notorious Revelstoke name. Or maybe he knew but saw no reason to poison his sweet daughter with any information about us. He replaced those heartless English people with a huge litter of Italian-American cousins, so why bother with us? Lots of people had family connections they never thought about, or didn’t care to look into.

  I flipped onto my other side and punched my pillow. The winter wind moaned outside the window. Yes, so maybe she doesn’t know. But we’re still first cousins, aren’t we, and I know it, so I can’t very well be her boyfriend, can I? It’s incest. Repeat that word to yourself, Daniel: incest. Forget her. Yes, it hurts, but forget her. Find someone else. You have no choice.

  My mind disagreed. I was with her all night in my dreams, holding her hand and running through campus buildings and the shops in Camden Town and various tourist attractions in Italy, trying to escape some changing thing that pursued us.

  The next day I tried to force my attention elsewhere. I went to Whitecrest and helped my parents with a ski party that had arrived, which included loads of cute high school and college girls. I smiled and flirted, coached a few beginners down the bunny slopes, and got two phone numbers. But I had no desire to ring them. Deleted them from my mobile when I got home.

  Forget her. Forget her.

  That night she was in my dreams again. It was just the two of us, in my bed. The room glowed from the lights of a Christmas tree. Snow drifted down and piled up on the blankets and carpet and bookshelves, but we were warm. Both of us were naked. We gazed at each other, stroked one another’s faces, rested our foreheads together, kissed repeatedly. I loved her so much my chest hurt. “I love you too,” she whispered.

  And then, of course, we had sex.

  I, mature nineteen-year-old university man, awoke the day before Christmas, tender and sticky, out of a dream that I’d had sex with my cousin. Whom I loved.

  “I am so fucked,” I told the ceiling.

  MY PARENTS, meanwhile, seemed to think they had done all they needed to do, and behaved as though life had returned to normal. I spoke briefly with Dad about it, the morning after I found out. We were in the kitchen, while Mum was showering.

  “So. A cousin,” I said.

  “Yes.” He cut a triangle-shaped bite of fried egg with his fork. “Unexpected, isn’t it? Would be nice to meet her sometime.”

  “Then you’re all right with it?”

  He nodded, chewing egg. “Your mum told me a month or so ago. Bit hard to dredge up all that again – had a difficult week or two there, round when you came home for Thanksgiving – but she needn’t have kept it secret. It’s natural she’d want to know about her sister.”

  “Then you and Evelyn, that wasn’t…” I didn’t really know how to elaborate.

  “Didn’t work out, that’s all.” Dad had another healthy bite of his egg.

  Fair enough. I myself had said that about a number of girls already. But would my actions set off some chain of events that would eventually land my son chest-deep in crap? Made you think twice about how you treated people. The sins of the father really did get revisited upon the next generation, if you could judge by my family.

  I got on the Internet to see what I was up against here. Did anyone, anywhere in the modern world, have a normal, healthy, romantic relationship with his or her first cousin? Royals didn’t count, nor did cultures that traded their daughters for cows. What about ordinary Brits, Europeans, Americans, Australians…?

  There’s a webpage for any given fetish in the world – I already knew that – so I wasn’t surprised to find at least two sites specializing in cousin couples. What did surprise me is that they weren’t porn. They appeared to be legitimate collections of facts, figures, and legal information. What I learned, with a combination of panic and relief, was that my love for Julie was not incest – not technically. Aside from the totally unfair fact that I hadn’t known she was my cousin until after falling in love with her, my situation was not as uncommon as I had thought.

  First cousins could legally marry almost everywhere in the world – including my native UK. (Again, given the royals, I had suspected that already. Still, all the normal English people I knew had an instinctive “ick” r
eaction to that kind of thing.) In the United States, however, it varied: about half the states allowed first-cousin marriage, and the other half didn’t. To judge from the map on one of the websites, there was no particular geographic pattern to the legality. But our state, Oregon, was one of the places where a marriage between first cousins was against the law.

  I frowned and clicked on Oregon for more information. I obviously wasn’t thinking about marrying Julie yet – we weren’t even a couple – but was it also illegal to sleep with her? That could be good to know, since I desperately wanted to.

  When I worked my way through the legalese, I learned that in Oregon incest was a Class-C felony, and that you’ve committed it if you have sex with your parent, grandparent, child, grandchild, sibling, half-sibling, aunt, uncle, niece, or nephew – but not your cousin. Cousins, it seemed, got a free pass. You just couldn’t marry your cousin, was all.

  Well, that was because of the horrible mutations your children were likely to have, right? I found a link about the subject, and followed it. Okay, that turned out to be not such a big deal either. Modern genetics, overturning several decades of popular assumption, had concluded that while there was a slightly higher risk of birth defects in the offspring of first cousins than there was for non-related couples, it was insubstantial compared to the risk of birth defects in, say, the children of smokers. And smokers were allowed to marry.

  When I realized I was brooding over an imaginary future in which I eloped with Julie to California (where cousin marriage was legal) and got her pregnant and argued with the tobacco-loving Sinter and Clare that their children were at higher risk than ours, I shuddered and turned off my computer. Getting a bit ahead of ourselves, aren’t we, Daniel?

  Two elephant-sized problems loomed in my path right now, blocking my way before I could even get to those more grown-up considerations. The first was that despite the mostly-legal status, and the mostly-okay genetics, shagging your cousin was a social taboo for just about everyone in England and America. Not as gigantic as shagging your sister, but still not the kind of thing you would brag about or even admit to in most circumstances. Our parents undoubtedly subscribed to the notion that it was wrong, and they would be horrified. Julie would probably be horrified too. I was only just now getting over being horrified, so I could relate. (No pun intended.) I might be able to convince them, if I could get them to read these web pages, but it would be an uphill battle, to say the least.