Even now, the fear still lingered.
I began with a brisk walk on the treadmill until confident enough to close my eyes and block out all other activity in the room. Minutes passed, and just as I was beginning to feel my dream-induced anxiety decrease, a raspy voice startled me out of my reverie.
“Who are you, my damned conscience come to life?”
I opened my eyes to seek out the speaker and nearly lost my footing.
Veronica stood at the treadmill next to mine, wearing shorts and a tank top that barely covered her flat belly. Didn’t she ever get cold?
Though my mind remained clear, my body shut down as if it had taken a liver punch during a boxing match. Why was this woman, this replica of me, acting like a bitchy Disney queen, and why was she directing her bitchiness at me?
“What are you hiding beneath those baggy pants?” she asked. “Hairy legs?”
I ignored her and continued my walk, though at a slower pace.
“My hair was blonde once,” Veronica said. “But I didn’t much care for the way it made me feel. Fortunately, it only took a little L’Oréal Black Sapphire to repair nature’s mistake. Going black was easy.” She stepped onto the rotating platform and went straight into a maximum-speed run—no panting, no heavy breathing. Who was she, Jane Fonda? “Couldn’t do anything about the color of my eyes, though.”
I sighed, hoping this strange one-sided conversation would end soon, but even before she’d worked up a sweat, Veronica continued, “You know, blue eyes can be traced back to a single mutation, in a single person, along the coast of the Black Sea.”
The girl was missing a few screws in her head.
“So how do you deal with your blondness, Marjorie?”
The question came so unexpectedly and sounded so ridiculous that I didn’t respond. As far as the color of my hair and eyes was concerned, Mom was Dutch, Dad Italian. I took after Mom. Period.
“Cat got your tongue?” Veronica asked.
I was hallucinating, caught in a nightmare, looking into a fun house mirror. “How’d you know my name?”
“Morgan told me. Wonder what color he prefers.”
Another comment that didn’t warrant a reply.
“It’s like looking in the mirror,” Veronica said, “except you’re so squeaky-clean. I’d have to ditch the losers I hang out with before I’d be taken for a nice girl.”
Her mention of looking in a mirror brought back my father’s words only weeks before he died. “Let the mirror broadcast the feelings you feel, my precious one. Let it help you look past the mask you hide behind.”
I had all the signs of a dangerously high heart rate, thanks to Veronica rather than an intense workout: excessive sweating, shortness of breath, dizziness. “You consider Morgan a loser?”
“Oh no, not Morgan.”
Comments about mistakes of nature and nice girls and losers? Why wasn’t she addressing the important stuff, like how the exact same genes had combined in the exact same way at nearly the exact same time to produce two, nearly identical people? I mean, what were the chances?
“Okay, twin stranger,” Veronica said. “Who do you think was adopted? You or me?”
Her question came like a slap—swift and with perfect aim.
“Well?” she said with amazing calm. You’d think the issue of adoption was no big deal, instead of a gut-wrenching topic that made me want to throw up. “We’re identical,” she said. “What are the chances we’re not related?”
I hit the stop button on the treadmill console. “My mother’s name is Truus. My father’s name is Gerardo.”
“Your birth parents?”
“Of course.”
“You sure?” Her voice was pitched low, almost kind.
“Damn right, I’m sure.” They would have told me otherwise.
Veronica presented me with a you’ve-been-had smile.
“I’ve got to go,” I said, stepping off the treadmill platform.
I sensed her watching me as I picked up my bottled water and draped a towel around my neck. “I know you’re curious,” she said, “because I sure am.”
I headed for the locker room on weak knees.
“I’ve already texted Pop,” Veronica called after me. “If you don’t get an answer, I’ll clue you in on mine.”
🗲🗲🗲
What could I hold onto? What was real?
🗲🗲🗲
She answered after the first ring. “Marjorie, is that you?”
“Hi Mom.”
“Thank God you called. I’ve been trying to reach you but keep getting a message that your cell number is no longer in service. I never got a chance to apologize for what happened at church.”
I imagined her pacing the kitchen, wiping countertops, and rinsing stray glasses and cups. “Mom, I just met a woman who looks exactly like me.”
An intake of breath from her end of the line.
“Her name is Veronica. Do you know her?”
“Oh my God, oh my God.”
“Am I adopted?”
Silence, except for a mewling sound, like a kitten in distress.
“Mom?”
“I knew it would come out some day.”
“Mom?”
“We’d been married for over five years and were desperate for a child. The doctors couldn’t explain why I hadn’t gotten pregnant. I’d tried ovulation prediction kits, conception kits, herbs, even Robitussin . . . Maybe I was just trying too hard.”
So, here’s where I should have expressed sympathy for the pain my mother was going through by telling her that I understood and how much I loved her, but I was too freaked out by what she was telling me to offer that kindness. Her over-protectiveness made sense to me now, but understanding with the mind doesn’t translate into understanding with the heart.
“We found a woman in Monterey,” she said. “A midwife, who knew of a baby for sale.”
For sale?
At my intake of breath, she paused. “Are you okay?”
“Yes.” No. “Go on.”
“The moment we saw you, we fell in love. Your eyes were such a startling blue, so full of love and trust.”
Mirror, mirror, on the wall . . . “Am I a twin?”
“Yes.”
“Then why didn’t you adopt us both?”
“We would’ve jumped at the chance, but your sister had already been adopted by a couple on the East Coast. Maryland, I think.”
Something about this wasn’t right. A midwife, with babies for sale, who allowed the separation of twins? “Mom, were Veronica and I adopted legally?”
“From what I was told, your birth mother put Veronica up for adoption before she died, and kept you.”
Died?
“I don’t know why you were put up for adoption later.”
My birth mother was dead. I’d never get to know her, love her.
“Your mother must have had extended family willing to take you in.”
I’d never get to know my birth family.
“Fortunately, you were too young to understand.”
How convenient, an infant too young to question what was going on. But I had plenty of questions now, starting with, “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“The midwife warned us to keep your adoption secret. If anyone found out that you were part Native American, you’d be taken away from us because of the Indian Child Welfare Act.”
Native American? Jeez. Not Dutch? Not Italian? It felt like I was melting and re-solidifying into a person I didn’t know. “But I have blonde hair and blue eyes.”
“Exactly. You don’t look a bit Indian. But the woman was firm about it. You’re a descendant of intermarried Rumsen Costanoan and Esselen of the Mission San Carlos Borromeo, otherwise known as the Ohlone/Costanoan Esselen Nation.”
Ohlone/Costanoan Esselen Nation? A uniting of Joshua and Margarita’s tribes. No way. “Did she provide you with the identity of my birth parents?
“She only told us about your Native American ancestry and how important it was not to tell.”
“Half? Quarter?”
“She didn’t say, dear. Does it matter?”
Of course, it matters. “I can’t believe Dad was party to this.”
“He knew how much I wanted a child and that I’d make a good mother.”
“You should have told me.” Damn it, you should have told me.
“I know that now, and I’m sorry, but I couldn’t risk losing you. Will you be okay?”
I wanted to reassure her but couldn’t. “No.”
I’d come to Carmel Valley to find myself; did this count? The puzzle pieces were scattered all over the place, and I had no idea how they fit together.
Through a haze of regret and self-pity, I ended our call, relieved that my mother hadn’t noticed that I’d used the hotel landline, blocked by *67. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d cried, but I was crying now.
Instead of calling Dr. Mendez, I followed my own counsel for a change by writing everything down in my journal, sentence after angry sentence, punctuated with question marks, dashes, and exclamation marks. To hell with interconnectedness. To hell with shifts in consciousness and parallel realities and holographic models of the universe. I hated what was happening here, what was happening to me.
Bet Doctor Mendez would say I was getting exactly what I needed.