IT WAS LATE WHEN Finn returned home after that late-October day. As soon as she heard the front door close, Vanessa flew downstairs, disheveled and wild-eyed.
“She’s been beside herself, Finn,” said Lucy. “I’ve hardly ever seen her in such a state. What’s wrong with her? Where were you today?”
“Lucas is not here, Vee,” Finn said to his wife, falling into the armchair. Schumann had a supply of Tennessee whiskey, of which Finn and Isabelle and Schumann and Lucas had partaken most excessively before Finn and Isabelle left Cora’s house and staggered home. Finn could not have faced the end of this terrible day without a drink, but now that he’d had it, he still didn’t want to face anything, especially not Vanessa.
“Where have you been, Finn?” Vanessa said. “You’ve been gone all day . . . darling.” He could see she forced herself to add darling. “And you smell of alcohol most strongly. Have you been drinking?”
“Exorbitantly,” Finn said. “And with Lucas, too.”
“Finn!”
Finn turned to his parents. “Lucas’s mother, Cora McBride, died today,” he said, and turned away from their gasping reaction. They tried to recover, but Olivia burst into tears.
“I’m very sorry for Lucas, son,” said Earl, comforting his wife. “Now, now, darling. Oh, that poor boy.”
“I’m sorry, Finn,” said Olivia. “My poor boy.”
“Who is Cora McBride, Earl?” said Walter. “If you don’t mind me asking.”
“Cora is—was—Lucas’s mother,” Olivia said, blowing her nose and wiping her eyes and sparing her husband a response.
“But who is Lucas?” asked Eleanor.
“You don’t want to know, Ellie,” said Vanessa, crossing her arms. “Just look at the state of my husband. That’s the kind of person Lucas is.”
Finn remained in the chair, his arms and legs stretched out, his eyes closing from drink and sorrow. His head bobbed back. Through the haze, he heard his father’s voice. “We’re sorry to hear about Cora, son,” Earl said. “She was a big-hearted, kind, loving woman.”
“Would that I’d had a chance to discover her attributes for myself,” said Finn, raising his head and fixing his father with a scolding stare.
“That was not Cora’s wish,” Earl said. “And it was not our wish. This was the way the three of us chose to handle the situation. To the best of our abilities. You know something about that, don’t you, Finn? Dealing with things to the best of your abilities, even when others might judge you for your actions?” Earl turned to the rest of his family. “I suppose there is something you all should know, even though it’s really none of anyone’s business,” he said. “We adopted Finn when he was five months old. He was our Christmas miracle in 1898. Cora McBride was our son’s real mother.”
Earl began to say more, but before he could speak, Vanessa fainted.
After Vanessa came to and was settled in Finn’s chair near the fireplace, she said to Finn, “Darling, forgive me, I thought I had misheard. Last thing I remember was Earl saying that Lucas’s mother is also your mother.” She chuckled. “But I know that couldn’t be, my love, because that would mean that Lucas was your brother, and that would be just unbearable.”
In the heavy silence that followed, Finn squeezed Vanessa’s hand. “I’m afraid it’s true. He’s not a brother like Eleanor is your sister, in the fullest sense of that word, but biologically, yes, Lucas and I were born to the same mother and father.”
Earl piped in. “Vanessa, sweetheart, there is nothing to be upset about other than this is a terribly sad day because a good woman has died. Not a single other thing is changed with the knowledge.”
“Oh, Earl, now I know you’re joking,” said Vanessa. “Thank goodness! Because if it were true, it would mean that my precious girls are related to Lucas McBride, whom I consider to be one of the worst people on earth. It would mean my beloved sinless children are as closely related to a detestable man as they are to my own sister. Related to a man who has been in jail, who’s been arrested for stealing to pay for drink, for begging to pay for drink, and heaven knows what else he has done to pay for his drink. Related to a man who has been an awful influence on the father of my children. If it were true, it would mean my family and I have been duped into believing one thing when the ugly truth has been quite another. I’m glad it’s just a joke, and I wasn’t led to believe I was marrying an upstanding member of Boston society, a dependable, trustworthy man, deserving of my hand, who would not let me down, who would provide for me and our children, who would raise them with dignity and respect for the law. I’m delighted to hear that my husband did not marry me under false pretenses and sire children who are genetic spawns of the most downtrodden elements of our Boston society. Phew!”
Earl’s expression, filled with concern and sympathy only moments earlier, now acquired the concrete edges of a man who was being held in contempt to his face.
“Dad . . . wait . . .” Finn tried to say, swaying. The gavel was about to come down. His father wasn’t wrong. There was no order in this house.
“I’m not sure I want to get your meaning, Vanessa,” said Earl, extricating himself from his wife’s imploring hand and standing up, because some things could not be said while sitting. “Aside from maligning our son, I don’t see how this news affects your marriage or your family. It’s not open to public scrutiny, but if you must know, my wife and I were childless and deeply mournful about it. We had been married many years and had a wonderful life, but there was a hole in the middle of it that no amount of busyness could replace. Suddenly, as if by divine grace, we were given an opportunity to change our fate. My wife, who taught Cora’s children, knew what a wonderful soul Cora was and how deeply troubled her life had been. She was trying to take care of eight children almost entirely on her own, while her husband was either unable or unwilling to meet his most basic responsibilities as a father and provider. She asked us to adopt her baby boy, knowing it was our heart’s desire. Cora asked from us two things. One was to keep the name she had given her son who would now be our son, and the second was not to tell him the truth about where he came from. She wanted to give him a full chance at a new life, and she was afraid if he knew that his real mother had given him up, his life would be tainted, would be forever lived with one foot in one world and one foot in the other.”
A tormented Finn begged off from further conversation, feeling all the wrong words swirling through barrels of whisky in his head. He helped Vanessa to their bedroom, though he himself could’ve used a little help up the stairs. He was done speaking to everyone, including his wife.
Unfortunately, Vanessa wasn’t finished with him.
“You deceived me,” she said. “Tell me the truth, how long did you suspect? Maybe even know it for a fact?”
“I’m not capable of discussing this, Vanessa. Let’s try again tomorrow.”
“That’s what I said to you!” she cried. “And you said it can’t wait, we must talk now, the business of our life, blah blah, blather blather.”
“You weren’t drunk.”
“I was tired!”
“Not the same.”
“Oh my God!” Vanessa exclaimed, putting a hand on her heart. “Your friend, Travis McBride! He was your brother, too? How many of you McBrides are there?”
“Uh—I assume that’s a rhetorical question?”
“You were friends before the war,” Vanessa said. “And then you went off to Italy. You came back and he didn’t—but you came back a different man. Did you know, all the way back then?” Vanessa rolled her head. “Did you learn in the war he was your brother? Why didn’t you tell me, Finn!”
“I can see I’m not getting out of this conversation, not even on the day the woman who gave birth to me died,” Finn said. Just once in his life, he wished he could get a pebble of sympathy from his wife. He felt an intense desire, almost a physical ache, to be down in the cellar of his house, where another woman, one who offered him nothing but compassion, sat at his table.
“I asked my mother and father about it when I was back stateside,” Finn said, “and they denied it most strongly. I had no choice but to believe them. If you recall, I still spent years battling my doubts about starting a life with you. Nonetheless, on this day of all days”—his voice broke—“I want to confess to you the full force of what my parents’ deception meant in my life. Had they told me the truth,” Finn said, “I never would have married you—”
“I never would have married you!” she cried.
“. . . because I would have believed—and clearly correctly,” Finn went on, his body stiff with liquid exhaustion, “that I wasn’t worthy of your hand. I held you in the highest esteem, Vanessa. I had the utmost respect for you. But I would have gone my own way and never gotten involved with your father’s bank. And then I wouldn’t be where I am today, right now, in this awful moment with you. You want the truth? Every God-given day I feel I’m letting you down,” Finn said. “That’s a terrible way for a man to feel and to live, especially a proud man like me. I feel so knocked down sometimes that I can barely get up and carry on. But you know what?” Finn clenched his fists. “I do. I still do.”
“Do what?” she said rudely.
“Get up. Carry on. I don’t wallow in bed all day, wringing my hands. I get up for you, for our girls, for your father and mother, and for my own parents, who went to immeasurable lengths to keep me from failing. So when I see you recline on your down pillows and cry of what ifs, I—who have spent my whole adult life running away from those what ifs and remaking myself into a man worthy of your love—feel that I’ve failed even there, in the most intimate aspect of myself. So now that you and I both know the truth—yes, I’m adopted, yes, I came from the deepest well of Irish poverty, yes, I have one living brother who’s a drunk and a petty thief—I’m asking you: what do you want to do?” Finn was standing at the foot of the bed, and she was sitting against her pillows.
“What are my options?”
“If you can’t live with me because of who I am and where I came from, let me know now, before I spend another second trying to right this sinking ship,” Finn said. “If you feel you can’t bond with my children because they carry the genes you despise, as you’ve just told my father, tell me that too, because the girls deserve better than a mother who is absent from them the way you’ve been absent from them.”
“I always suspected there was something wrong,” Vanessa cried. “I always feared you carried a dark secret that would one day ruin me.”
“Here’s your chance to right your own sinking ship, my wife.”
“Why are you provoking me?” said Vanessa. “What would you do if I took you up on what you’re proposing?”
“My children and I know where the door is,” Finn said. “Do you?”
“I’m not rising to your bait, and it’s ridiculous for you to suggest that I should part with my babies!”
“Would you even know they were gone?”
“Finn!” Vanessa cried. “Stop yourself before you say something you’ll regret.”
“Too late,” Finn said, his heart aching and his teeth gritted. “I wouldn’t have married you, and you wouldn’t have married me. What a marital pledge! Take that into our bed, lie back with that to sustain you, while I go out and shovel coal for a pittance, and you can cry to your mother and sister, my darling, how I’m failing to deliver you the perfect fucking life your perfect self so perfectly deserves.”