An offhand remark from a relative unlocked a lifelong family secret, and a quest to find her
Id been having dinner with my cousin Danny, in town for a few days on a business trip, when he lightly dropped the bombshell. We'd been talking about the usual things that families talk about — the trouble we'd gotten into as kids, the Thanskgivings we'd shared. Then I asked him what, if anything, he remembered about my father. Danny, seven years older than me, easily summoned fond tales of my mom's boyfriend horseplaying with him and his brothers. Of course, I'd never known that side of my father, I'd said, because he'd left my mother before I was born. "Well, yeah," Danny had replied, "he was gone, except for the thing with your sister." I sat in stunned silence for a moment, then flagged down a waiter and ordered another glass of Malbec. I had a sister.
My mother was 21 when she got pregnant with me. This was before Roe v. Wade, and anyway, she was Catholic. So her parents did what any Irish Catholic parents would do at the time — they threatened to kick her out unless she got married. It lasted three tense months. That part of the story I'd long known. What I'd never imagined was the sequel.
Danny described what he'd remembered — how, when I was three, my mother and I had decamped from our home in Jersey City to his in a quaint Boston suburb. He recalled his Aunt Bets getting "fat," and going off to the hospital with his mother one day. He said that years later, his father had told him they had offered to adopt the baby, but my mother would have none of it.
I flagged down a waiter and ordered another glass of Malbec. I had a sister.
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