Annabelle

Genetic Mutation

You can be the sunshine or you can be the cloud. And, if you can possibly choose, the sunshine always wins more friends. Without fail, even when the going got really tough, Lovey was the sunshine. Mad at her as I was, old habits die hard. I might not have agreed with her choices, but her voice was still the one in my head, guiding me, ironically, to the right thing. So, before I walked into work that morning, I channeled my inner Lovey, put on my best sunshine face and crossed my fingers that I could make it through the day sans emotional breakdown.

“I can’t wait to tell you what we’re doing this morning!”

Father Rob was so excited that I momentarily forgot about the fact that my husband was having an affair with my only friend in town. My Lovey was not anywhere near the person I thought she was. She was still laid up in a nursing home recovering from her broken hip, so I couldn’t even have a conversation with her about it. And, to top it all off, I was pregnant. That was a lot of things to forget.

D-daddy was, predictably, back to his mute, sleeping-twenty-hours-a-day self after the exertion of coming back a bit during the emergency, surgery and hospital stay. I was facing so many personal crises that I was that poor, frightened deer in headlights. I knew I needed to run, but both of the directions that had previously been so safe were blinding and terrifying.

“I can’t wait to hear,” I said, but Rob already knew me too well to accept my fake enthusiasm.

He cocked his head. “What’s wrong?”

I raised my eyebrows. “How much time you got?”

He grinned even wider, and it was almost as if he was having to control himself from jumping up and down. “I have two hours because we’re going to go see Lovey!”

I shook my head vehemently. “I just got back from Raleigh, and, furthermore, I’m not sure I can deal with her right now.”

I have to admit that I felt a little guilty when his face fell. “Can’t deal with Lovey? Is she not the same since her surgery?”

“You could say that.”

“Well, it’s not uncommon for older people to be very cranky for a couple of weeks while the brain is recovering from the trauma of being put to sleep.” He paused. “Hey, have you had any surgery lately?”

I didn’t want to, but I smiled the tiniest smile. “I am not old, mister.”

He squeezed my shoulder. “All I know is that the Holy Spirit commands me to Lovey’s bedside today, so I must go. Should you choose to accompany me, there will be snacks and a box set of all of James Taylor’s hits.”

I couldn’t remember if I had told him how much I loved James Taylor, but, when you got right down to it, pretty much everyone with functioning ears loved James Taylor. His voice had such a soothing yet masculine quality, kind of like drinking champagne while lying on an animal skin by a crackling fire. I shrugged. “What can I say? You had me at snacks.”

For how terrible I was feeling, it was hard to believe that I lost myself in that drive, in the Bugles and Reese’s cups, the “Up on the Roof” and, of course, “Carolina in My Mind.”

“Can I ask you a question?” I asked.

“You may.”

“Do you drink?”

He shrugged and looked at me. “Sure. I mean, I’m not staggering around the bar or anything, but a couple of beers or a glass of wine with a good meal.”

“So why is it that some Christians don’t drink? I mean, Jesus turned the water into wine, people.”

Rob laughed. “Do you want to talk about what’s really bothering you?”

He was so good at reading people—especially me. I sighed. “My D-daddy isn’t my D-daddy.”

His face turned somber, and he reached to pat my arm supportively. “Oh, Annie, this must have been so difficult for you. For his body to be here, but his mind, the thing you loved about him most . . .”

He was so sincere that I felt terrible when I couldn’t control the laugh escaping from my throat.

Rob looked puzzled.

I shook my head. “No, no. You’re right. It sucks so bad that he’s living like this, but, to be honest, I came to terms with that a long time ago. His mind has been gone for years, and there isn’t a thing I can do to change that. So I have chosen to love him for who he is now, accept the good days and the bad and move on.” I inhaled deeply. “I mean literally, biologically, my D-daddy isn’t my D-daddy, and, so far worse than that, he isn’t my mom’s dad.”

Though I had promised to keep it buried tightly inside without so much as an “X” to mark the spot, I could hear the whole story rushing out of my mouth like an overzealous bride into the Kleinfeld sale. I had lived with all of these terrible secrets for days and had no one to turn to. I certainly couldn’t confide in Lovey or Mom when I was so confused about them, and I was making excuses to scarcely even look at Ben much less tell him about the sordid past I had possibly discovered.

“Now wait just a minute,” Rob interjected. “So what you’re saying is that Lovey had an affair and that affair became your mom and no one else knows?”

“All I’m saying is that Mom’s blood type couldn’t possibly have originated from two A positive people, and she seemed pretty darn shocked about the whole thing. I found some paperwork Lovey filled out for the adoption of my mom. And I can’t think of another possible explanation.”

“Maybe she was adopted and they didn’t want to tell her.”

I pursed my lips and shook my head. “She looks exactly, to a T, like her other four sisters. There’s no way they aren’t related.”

Rob turned down the radio and said, “Let’s not jump to conclusions. I mean, remember that black baby that was born to two white parents a few years ago and they determined that it was some sort of bizarre genetic mutation?”

“Yeah,” I said out of the side of my mouth, “a genetic mutation that that mother paid a whole lot of people to create.”

Rob laughed, and, as comfortable as I was with him in that moment, I decided to finally ask him a question that had always crossed my mind. “Don’t be mad when I say this.”

“I won’t.”

“And don’t question my faith because you know that I know that I couldn’t tie my shoes without Jesus.”

“I know.” He grinned at me.

“But what if, I mean, seriously, what if Mary was just an unbelievably impressive liar? I mean, what if she was so convincing and convicted about the Immaculate Conception thing that everyone just believed her, and our entire faith is based around a beautiful teenaged girl who didn’t want the whole town thinking she was a slut.”

Now that I was pregnant myself, I felt very close to Mary. And we were kind of in the same boat when we got pregnant. We could be as excited as we wanted, but the popular opinion wasn’t going to be so good. Father Rob paused for a minute and then burst out laughing. I could tell he was just trying to appease me when he said, “You know there, Ann, you make a good point. But I tell you what. Even if Mary is just the best liar in history, I’m going to love her anyway. Because she gave the world the greatest gift it has ever known.” He cleared his throat and took his eyes off the road for a beat too long as he said, “Same with Lovey.”

I looked him in the eye, and it was a moment that will linger in my memory forever. Because, in that instant, I knew that no one would ever see me as clearly as Priest Charming.

•   •   •

Some things in life are better left unsaid. And I’m pretty good at figuring out which things those are. But the blood-typing incident was generally all I could think about. It was a trick my mind was playing, obsessing over my mother’s DNA, when, in reality, I should have been obsessing about my husband’s infidelity and how on earth I was going to attempt to raise a baby on my own.

I had told Rob to go back to Salisbury after our visit with Lovey. I would get my mom to bring me back in a few days. It was a great excuse to stay away from Ben. But I underestimated how oddly alone I would feel watching Rob pull out of the driveway.

I wasn’t ready yet. Not to face Ben, not to admit that I had been wrong, not to disgrace my family, and, most of all, not to consider what being a single mother was going to be like. So I stuffed the pain away, hid it under my pseudo-detective skills and bandaged it up by finally responding to Holden’s messages.

How’s Lovey? he had texted me while I was sitting in the nursing home that day, trying to seem normal and nice while Rob was joking with Lovey and D-daddy and being generally adorable. I was about to burst wide open to say something to Lovey. But it was pretty clear that, though there would probably never be a perfect moment, this one was about as far from right as you could get.

She’s doing as well as a person who just broke her hip can be, I typed back, rapid fire, I’m sure shocking the daylights out of him after months of no response. Then, in what was an extremely calculated move, I added, I’m in Raleigh visiting her now.

Any chance I could buy you a cup of coffee?????

In spite of myself, I smiled. I’ve always been a hopeless romantic. Flowers, candy, candlelight, poetry, anniversaries, long walks on the beach, chick flicks. I love it all. It is my one greatest downfall. And, though Holden couldn’t get my blood pressure up quite like Ben, he was a master of the romantic gesture. He could whisk you off to Paris at a moment’s notice in a limo filled with champagne and flowers, and organize a surprise party so grand you couldn’t imagine how you didn’t know. It was a very tempting quality for someone seduced by romance.

Mom always accuses me of having a man “waiting in the wings,” of dating one but having my backup plan all lined up and ready for when that relationship inevitably ripped at the creases. That was how I knew Ben was the one. I didn’t have a backup plan. At least, I didn’t think I did.

That propensity to always have another man lined up has earned me some flak in my life. “You need to learn how to be alone,” one friend would say. “You need to find yourself to find happiness.”

All I knew was that my self was much happier when she had a man doting on her.

I looked down at my phone. I may have married Ben for love. Mad, passionate, can’t-bear-to-blink-without-you love. I had married for love, and look where it had gotten me. Miserable. Disgusted. Living with a man I knew I had to let go of. But I knew that, once I did let go, all of those Cinderella dreams I had had since childhood would be over. It was in that moment, when I texted back, I think that would be nice, that I realized that, more than rushing home to attend to Lovey in her time of need, I didn’t confront Ben and Laura Anne that day when she was climbing out of the golf bag, because I had nowhere else to go. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to see them squirm in their disgusting lie; it was that, if I didn’t have Ben, I didn’t know who I was.

Where?

I could practically taste a latte but realized that I couldn’t drink caffeine. And I certainly couldn’t risk being seen in public with Holden. Of course, my husband didn’t have much of a leg to stand on if he found out, but I didn’t want to embarrass my family by gallivanting around town with an ex when I was, presumably, happily married.

Your house.

His response was so uncharacteristic I laughed out loud:

A few minutes later, lying on my back beside my childhood swing set, wondering if my son or daughter would like playing on it one day, looking up at the clearest blue sky, trying to decide what I wanted to achieve out of this meeting with Holden, I couldn’t hold it in any longer. Mom was on a meditation kick, and I knew I shouldn’t interrupt the “oms” floating around in her head. But I couldn’t help it. I was hoping that she knew all about what that adoption box meant and that I wasn’t going to have to live the rest of my life walking around hiding something from her. “Did you ever figure out who made the mistake with the whole blood type thing?” I asked. “That could be kind of a big deal in an emergency.”

She barely turned her head, squinted one eye at me and said, “Momma said I was wrong about Daddy’s.”

She turned back and closed her eyes again, but I had a feeling that I had disrupted her chi with my question. I wanted to keep prodding. But she must have believed Lovey’s lie. And I guessed that was okay.

Sleepy and finally relaxed in the fresh air, I closed my eyes, the sun feeling warm and soothing on my tired skin. As I opened them again, a thin cloud was floating across the acres of blue, a wispy layer that took me back to my childhood, to D-daddy’s office. To the truth.

I was rolling an iron car back and forth in front of the mahogany desk that was hyperbolically huge, reserved for mob men in the movies. A puff of smoke that looked precisely like the cloud floating above my head ascended from D-daddy’s cigar. Perhaps it’s because smell is most closely related to memory, but that warm, woodsy scent of tobacco always relaxes me and puts me back into the safety of D-daddy’s office, into the lap of a man too big and strong to ever fail.

Louise was sitting across from him, her legs up on the desk. She was babysitting me that weekend, and we had just finished having lunch with D-daddy and Lovey.

How they got on the topic I couldn’t tell you, but D-daddy was saying, “One of Truman’s advisors made a speech in South Carolina at the end of the war about how the fighting might be over but not to be fooled: We were in the midst of a cold war.” He paused, chewing on the end of that sweet-smelling stick. “It must have been 1946—no, 1947—and our mayor, who had been at the speech, decided then and there that the town had to snap into action.” I remember D-daddy laughing here, his blue eyes gleaming in that way that made you remember how unstoppably good-looking he had been in his youth. “Kooky fellow, that old mayor . . . Anyway, instead of making emergency kits or building bomb shelters, he used city funds to tattoo blood types onto the entire town. That way, if we were hit, and people were running around in the midst of blown-off arms and burning buildings, the rescue crews would know which transfusions to give right off the bat.”

D-daddy had laughed again here, taking another puff of his cigar, the smoke billowing. Through that hearty chortle he had said, “If the Soviets had decided to nuke us, the cockroaches would’ve been lucky to survive.” Then he’d taken off the suit jacket that I never saw him without, pulled his neatly starched and pressed shirt out of his pants and lifted it two inches to reveal a distinctive “A” on milky white skin that hadn’t seen the sun in decades.

“Why we all agreed to that insanity, I’ll never know. But the horrors of war can make men do strange, strange things.”

I remember learning in science class that the more we remember a memory, the more distorted it becomes in our mind. I’d never thought of that black “A.” It was hidden in the recesses of my consciousness, waiting for a moment when I would need it. I wasn’t going to say anything to Mom, of course, but my heart sank all the same.

I closed my eyes, going through it again, picturing the piece of paper in the hospital with Lovey’s “A+” on it, D-daddy’s tattoo of the same. And I could see that Punnett square I’d looked up online, burned into my memory. The possible offspring from two A positive parents were A positive, A negative and O negative or O positive. That was it. No B.

But, on the other hand, one A positive parent, with the help of an AB parent or a B parent could create a B offspring. A B. Like my mom.

Everything I had known about Lovey, everything I had thought, how I had revered the way she stood by D-daddy through thick and thin, the way she had taken care of him tirelessly for the years he was confined to that chair had changed now. Because theirs hadn’t been true love at all. It had been a marriage of deception, a relationship filled with lies, affairs and an illegitimate daughter. It hit me all at once that the man I had thought nearest to God wasn’t even my biological grandfather. And, like that tattoo needle, the thought seared into me, making a permanent impression.