Etched in Sand (27 page)

“When you were a toddler,” she says, laughing. “Now we know where they came from.”

A few weeks later, in late February 1998, Camille receives a phone call from Norman in Idaho. “Mom’s been diagnosed with cancer,” he tells her. “They told her it can’t be cured.”

I have hope that in Cookie’s suffering she accepts responsibility for all the pain she inflicted on us and will finally ask forgiveness rather than point fingers. Still, I know there’s no way I can actually forgive her . . . not for what she did to me, but for what she did to Rosie.

C
HERIE AND
C
AMILLE
pay for Cookie to fly in from Idaho, hoping finally this woman will try and redeem herself before her death. “Good luck. I’m not sticking around for this,” I tell Camille, opting instead to join the Irish guy I’ve been dating and his family for the holidays in Dublin.

On January 1, 1999, I call Camille’s house to wish her a Happy New Year. In response, she tells me that Cookie refuses to acknowledge any wrongdoing during our childhoods. “Nothing’s changed, Regina, but we knew better than to hold our breaths for an apology. You’ll be back in New York the day before Cookie’s scheduled to go back to Idaho. Don’t you think saying good-bye could give you some closure?”

Apparently Cookie told my sisters that everything we believe happened to us was in our imaginations. “I did a fine job raising you girls!” she said. “Look how well you turned out.”

Disregarding her denial and my loathing of her, I indulge Camille by seeing our mother one last time. My siblings and their kids crowd around me and my sister’s dining room table as I share pictures from my Ireland trip. Cookie sits in the living room, watching television by herself.

“Gi,” Camille says, “it’s getting late. Should Cherie and I get you to the rail station?”

“Sure.” I close my album slowly and kiss each of the kids good-bye. After I put on my coat, I turn and whisper to Camille: “Just a minute.” In the living room, I leave a wide space between myself and the recliner where Cookie’s sitting, knowing that distance from her is the only thing that has kept me both physically and emotionally safe. Wearing a blue flannel shirt, black stretch pants, and a scowl, she slowly meets my eyes. The TV’s reflection flashes off the lenses of her huge, shaded eyeglasses. “Good-bye,” I tell her. It comes out cold and flat. When she responds with silence, I nod. This is all I’ll get. Cherie opens the front door, and Camille and I exit with her.

When the three of us get to the train station, we all break down in tears. It’s a cry of anger for our mother’s failure to take responsibility, for the unfairness of having had no say in choosing who brought us into this world . . . and for our relief knowing that soon she’ll be gone, for good.

I
N THE SPRING
of 1999, I receive a call from Camille at work. “Gi, I have some wild news for you. It’s something that you’d think could never happen to Frank and me.”

“You . . . won the lottery?”

“No! Think of the thing that wasn’t supposed to happen.”

“You’re pregnant?”

“Yes! We’re having another baby!” I feel her beaming on the other end of the phone. In 1996, Frank was diagnosed with a cancer that the doctors said would affect their ability to have any more children. Camille stayed with me in Manhattan while her mother-in-law took the kids so that Frank could receive treatments at Sloan-Kettering.

“But after the cancer, the doctors told you it wouldn’t be possible to have more babies.”

“Well, God thought differently,” Camille says. “We’re expecting Baby Number Four in October.”

As Camille’s belly blossoms, so does my relationship with Julia. I receive handwritten notes from her at least monthly, and anytime I travel from Manhattan to Long Island, I make a point to see her. We’re both discreet in keeping our relationship from her daughters and her extended family, but Julia’s genuine interest in my life has prompted her to become reacquainted with Camille. On holidays and birthdays, she sends letters and cards to both her and Cherie.

In October 1999, Camille delivers Danielle Grace. The birth of a baby girl is a good excuse for all of us to celebrate, made even sweeter thanks to the fact that of the seven children in the family, five are boys: Frankie and Michael, who belong to Frank and Camille; and Cherie’s three sons, Anthony, Matthew, and Johnathan. Finally, Camille’s daughter, Maria, will have another little girl to grow up with.

With every new life that enters our family, more and more joy abounds. Silently, there’s a satisfaction inside me that Cookie can never be part of it: We don’t know how long she has, but it’s clear she will not outlive this decade. In November, a month after Danielle’s birth, I find myself with an irresistible urge to write Cookie a lengthy letter.
Don’t ever deceive yourself into believing that you should be credited for our achievements,
I tell her.
Despite the odds and your attempted influences, we’ve prevailed. Many women can give birth, but that doesn’t make them a mom. To us, you’re just Cookie.

Norm reports back that he began to read the letter to her but she told him to stop after the first paragraph. He also informs us she’s made a last-minute switch from being Mormon to American Indian because she believes it will be better for her after death.

Thanksgiving passes and Norman shares reports of Cookie’s imminent demise. “I have only one wish,” I tell Camille. “I pray she will not pass on December sixteenth.”

Camille looks at me curiously.

“December sixteenth is Julia’s birthday.”

By now, Julia and I have grown extremely close and I don’t want her special day of the year to be spoiled or overshadowed by my mother’s death. But of course, in the early morning hours of December 16, shortly after one
A.M.
in Idaho and four
A.M.
in New York, my phone rings.

“She’s gone,” Camille tells me.

We sit on the phone in silence, letting it all sink in. The chapter of our lives that we’ve waited so long to close is now over.

I take the day off from work and Camille picks me up at the rail station. Without discussing our plan, she pulls onto the highway and we both know where we’re headed. We drive out to Saint James General Store—past Wicks farm stand, where we used to steal apples, and King Kullen, where we used to sneak our meals out of the store beneath our clothes. We drive past the Glue Factory apartment, now a Sal’s Auto Mechanics, where we spent the longest time consecutively as a family. We head to Saint James Elementary School, where we wander the back grounds . . . and we finally end up at Cordwood Beach—the place we used to play for hours, writing our names in the sand, hunting the rocks for clams, and picking fistfuls of onion grass for our dinners.

Arm in arm, my sister and I walk the beach, saying nothing. Under the gray December sky, we look out at the Long Island Sound to where the floating dock once was anchored; to the broken stone house that we used to climb on.

“She did one thing right,” Camille says.

“What?”

“She gave us each other.”

The lives Cookie gave us were only etched in sand; able to be erased and written all over again . . . better, with meaning. We’ve all made our stories into what we wanted for ourselves.

Standing side by side on the cold beach, there’s just one thought keeping Camille and me from feeling total completion: Rosie. She doesn’t want us to be a part of her life or to know her family.

Rosie got married and gave birth to a son, but by the time we knew about any of it, all the momentous events had passed. Occasionally, she mails Camille and me photographs, in all of which she’s clearly a loving, doting mother . . . but on the rare occasion the photos are accompanied by a letter, the communication is all very matter-of-fact.
Everyone here is fine,
she says.
Hope you’re great.
She wants us to be aware that she’s adjusted well as an adult, but she doesn’t want us to be present for it.

In December 1999, a colleague tells me he’s venturing into Times Square to ring in the new millennium. “You used to work for the City, right?” he asks. “What’ll be the best way to navigate the streets?”

I call someone whom I heard now works as the special assistant to the NYC police commissioner: Todd Ciaravino, the handsome, stoic aide to Giuliani whom I knew from my years at the comptroller’s office. After sharing the layout of the security route, Todd remembers my burgeoning golf hobby and says it might be nice to hit the driving range at Chelsea Piers when the weather warms up a little.

Todd is sensitive to my guardedness—unlike other guys I’ve been attracted to, he’s consistent, mild-mannered, and kind . . . not at all overbearing or arrogant. Instead of what so many former partners and people from my childhood promised—
You can trust me
—Todd
shows
me he deserves my trust. He looks out for me, and coming from the same field, he doesn’t give me a hard time about how busy my work keeps me. By late spring, we’ve entered potentially-serious-romance territory when Todd begins traveling with the Bush-Cheney presidential campaign. At the same time, I’m transitioning from my position on Wall Street back to working with the public sector and, as a hobby, I begin to appear on Fox News, supporting the Democratic presidential ticket. By August, our courtship, pleasant and passionate as it is, ends . . . not due to our differing views on politics, but because of how committed we both are to our careers.

It’s another intense undertaking that distracts me from my split from Todd: It’s now two and a half years since I first visited Julia in February 1998, and the more I see pictures of Paul and his brothers, the more convinced I am that he is my biological father. For years I’ve been emotionally prepared to learn the truth, but now I’m also in a financial position to pursue paternity litigation if he chooses not to amicably resolve my request for DNA.

I
SPEND EARLY
August researching Paul’s address online to find that he now lives in the U.S. border town of Blaine in Washington State. In addition to determining where he lives, I also study Washington’s paternity statutes and map out what my next steps will be if he rejects my request for a paternity test. I advise Julia that I plan to contact Paul.

“Given what I’ve done by forming a relationship with you,” Julia says, “please let me make the connection.”

When a couple weeks go by, I estimate he’s ignoring me . . . or researching potential legal steps. In late August I receive a phone call. “You should know that you are causing my wife and me deep anxiety,” he says. “I’m experiencing heart problems, and your so-called curiosity could be making it worse.” This familiar response from him confirms to me: yes, he’s got a lawyer. The first argument the defense would make in a case like this is to advise the opposition at the outset that they’re inflicting emotional distress. “What is it you want?”

I respond that my intentions are pure, that I only want to know if he’s my father. “I don’t want any support,” I assure him.

Then he reveals what he’s really worried about. “If I admit that I’m your father, it will be a long and painful process for us all if the State of New York tries to sue me for back child support.”

“Paul, you won’t have to pay New York State back the money it cost them to keep me in foster care,” I explain flatly. “Even if New York does that now, they certainly didn’t have such a law in place when I was in foster care as a child. Also, just to appease any concern you have about why I’m contacting you: I do fine on my own. I don’t need any money. I just want to know if you’re my father.” I also want him to know that I know that he’s my father—to face the fact that he left me to be brutalized as a child simply because I’d come from him. Of course, as a teenager, I’d hoped to track down my father so that I could actually have a relationship with him, and in my twenties, I wanted to show him how well I’d turned out . . . but now, I just want him to acknowledge his failure to take responsibility.

“I have to go, Regina,” he says. “Now’s not a good time.”

The next day he calls me twice at work, but I’m with clients both times. Then he calls a third time, and again I’m unavailable. He leaves me his fax but not his phone number, so I have no way to call him back and actually carry on a conversation. When I want to speak to him I have to fax him or wait for him to call me, so my correspondence is in writing but his is all verbal . . . another strategic move by him and his lawyer to keep the upper hand.

Then I finally get a fax back, not from him, but from a Wayne Teller, Paul’s lawyer. I fight to steady the paper in my shaking hands as I read that Paul no longer wants me to contact him and his decision is final. Then to ensure that I never contact him again, his attorney ended the letter by stating if I fail to comply with his request and contact Paul again that I will be admonished for violating Rule 4.2 of the Rules of Professional Conduct.

Camille is angrier than I am. “What on earth does Rule 4.2 even mean?”

“Rule 4.2 restricts an attorney from ever contacting someone who is represented by counsel. Even though I could be his daughter, I’m also an attorney. He’s threatening to bring charges of professional misconduct against me if I ever directly contact him again.”

“So he’s used your achievement against you,” she says. “How unfair, Gi. No good would have come from meeting him anyway.” We both know she’s just trying to comfort me. “What are you going to do now?”

“I have to try to find a qualified paternity lawyer in the State of Washington who’s willing to take my case . . . and it won’t be easy. An adult has never successfully sued another adult for paternity before, only minor children have been permitted to sue for DNA. So whoever takes my case must not only be qualified to fight this battle, but also has to really believe in my case.”

“I believe in your case,” Camille says.

The simplicity of her statement arrests me. In this moment, it’s clear: My sister is the only person who has always stood by me, no matter how extreme the scenario. “You do?”