Black Evening (34 page)

Eyes swollen from tears, you manage to drive back to your parents' home. An estate on Lake Michigan, north of Chicago, the mansion feels ghostly, hollow without its proper occupants. You cross the enormous vestibule and enter the oak-paneled study. One wall is lined with books, another with photographs of your precious father shaking hands with local and national dignitaries, even a president. As you sit at the massive desk to resume sorting through your father's papers, the last of them, the documents unsealed from your parents' safe-deposit box, your wife appears in the study's doorway, a coffee cup in her hand. She slumps against the wall and frowns as she did when you obeyed your repeated, so intense compulsion to go back — yet
again —
to the cemetery.

"Why?" she asks.

You squint up from the documents. "Isn't it obvious? I feel the need to be with them."

"That's not what I meant," Rebecca says. She's forty-nine, tall, with dark hair, a narrow face, and pensive eyes. "All the work you've been doing. All the documents and the meetings. All the phone calls. Can't you let yourself relax? You look terrible."

"How the hell should I look? My father's chest was crushed. My mother's head was… The drunken bastard who hit their car got away with just a few stitches."

"Not what I meant," Rebecca repeats. Using two hands, both of them shaky, she raises the coffee cup to her lips. "Don't make sympathy sound like an accusation. You've got
every
right to look terrible. It's bad enough to lose
one
parent, let alone
two at once
, and the way they died was" — she shakes her head — "obscene. But what you're doing, your compulsion to… I'm afraid you'll push yourself until you collapse. Don't torture yourself. Your father assigned an executor for his estate, a perfectly competent lawyer from his firm. Let the man do his job. I grant, you're a wonderful attorney, but right now it's time to let someone else take charge. For God's sake, Jacob — and if not for God, then for me — get some rest."

You sigh, knowing she means well and wants only what's best for you. But she doesn't understand: you
need
to keep busy, you
need
to distract yourself with minutiae so that your mind doesn't snap from confronting the full horror of losing your parents.

"I'm almost finished," you say. "Just a few more documents from the safe-deposit box. Then I promise I'll try to rest. A bath sounds… Lord, I still can't believe… How much I miss… Pour me a Scotch. I think my nerves need numbing."

"I'll have one with you."

As Rebecca crosses the study toward the liquor cabinet, you glance down toward the next document: a faded copy of your birth certificate. You shake your head. "Dad kept
everything
. What a packrat." Your tone is bittersweet, your throat tight with affection. "That's why his estate's so hard to sort through. It's so difficult to tell what's important, what's sentimental, and what's just…"

You glance at the next document, almost set it aside, take another look, frown, feel what seems to be a frozen fishhook in your stomach, and murmur, "God." Your breathing fails.

"Jacob?" Your wife turns from pouring the Scotch and hurriedly sets down the bottle, rushing toward you. "What's wrong? Your face. You're as gray as — "

You keep staring toward the document, feeling as if you've been punched in the ribs, the wind knocked out of you. Rebecca crouches beside you, touching your face. You swallow and manage to breathe. "I…"

"
What
? Jacob, tell me. What's the matter?"

"There has to be some mistake." You point toward the document.

Rebecca hurriedly reads it. "I don't understand. It's crammed with legal jargon. A woman's promising to give up two children for adoption, is that what this means?"

"Yes." You have trouble speaking. "Look at the date."

"August fifteen, nineteen thirty-eight."

"A week before my birthday. Same year." You sound hoarse.

"So what? That's just a coincidence. Your father did all kinds of legal work, probably including adoptions."

"But he wouldn't have kept a business affidavit with his personal papers in his private safe-deposit box. Here, at the bottom, look at the place where this was notarized."

"Redwood Point, California."

"Right," you say. "Now check this copy of my birth certificate. The place of birth is…"

"Redwood Point, California." Rebecca's voice drops.

"Still think it's just a coincidence?"

"It has to be. Jacob, you've been under a lot of strain, but this is
one
strain you don't have to deal with. You know you're not adopted."

"Do I?
How
?"

"Well, it's…"

You gesture impatiently.

"I mean, it's something a person takes for granted," Rebecca says.

"Why?"

"Because your parents would have told you."

"
Why
? If they didn't need to, why would they have taken the chance of shocking me? Wasn't it better for my parents to leave well enough alone?"

"Listen to me, Jacob. You're letting your imagination get control of you."

"Maybe." You stand. Your legs unsteady, you cross to the liquor cabinet and finish pouring the drinks that Rebecca had started preparing. "
Maybe
." You swallow an inch of the drink. Made deliberately strong, it burns your throat. "But I won't know for sure, will I? Unless I find out why my father kept that woman's adoption agree-merit with his private papers, and how it happened that I was born one week later and in the same place that the woman signed and dated her consent form."

"So what?" Rebecca rubs her forehead. "Don't you see? It doesn't make a difference! Your parents loved you!
You
loved
them
. Suppose, despite Lord knows how many odds, suppose your suspicion turns out to be correct. What will it change? It won't make your grief any less. It won't affect a lifetime of love."

"It might affect a lot of things."

"Look, finish your drink. It's Friday. We still have time to go to temple. If ever you needed to focus your spirit, it's now."

In anguish, you swallow a third of your drink. "Take another look at that adoption consent. The woman agrees to give up
two
babies. If I
was
adopted, that means somewhere out there I've got a brother or a sister. A
twin
."

"A stranger to you. Jacob, there's more to being a brother or a sister than just the biological connection."

Your stomach recoils as you gulp the last of the your drink. "Keep looking at the consent form. At the bottom. The woman's name."

"Mary Duncan."

"Scot."

"So?" Rebecca asks.

"Go to temple? Think about it. Have you ever heard of any Scot who… It could be I wasn't born Jewish."

Your uncle's normally slack-jowled features tighten in confusion. "Adopted? What on earth would make you think — "

You sit beside him on the sofa in his living room and explain as you show him the documents.

His age-wrinkled brow contorts. He shakes his bald head. "Coincidence."

"That's what my wife claims."

"Then listen to her. And listen to
me
. Jacob, your father and I were as close as two brothers can possibly be. We kept no secrets from each other. Neither of us ever did anything important without first asking the other's opinion. When Simon — may he rest in peace — decided to marry your mother, he discussed it with
me
long before he talked to our parents. Believe me, trust me, if he and Esther had planned to adopt a child,
I'd have been told
."

You exhale, wanting to believe but tortured by doubts. "Then why…" Your skull throbs.

"Tell me, Jacob."

"All right, let's pretend it
is
a coincidence that these documents were together in my parents' safe-deposit box. Let's pretend that they're unrelated matters. But why? As far as I know, Dad always lived here in Chicago. I never thought about it before, but why wasn't I born here instead of in California?"

Your uncle strains to concentrate. Weary, he shrugs. "That was so long ago. Nineteen" — he peers through his glasses toward your birth certificate — "thirty-eight. So many years. It's hard to remember." He pauses. "Your mother and father wanted children very much.
That
I remember. But no matter how hard they tried… Well, your father and mother were terribly discouraged. Then one afternoon, he came to my office, beaming. He told me to take the rest of the day off. We had something to celebrate. Your mother was pregnant."

Thinking of your parents and how much you miss them, you wince with grief. But restraining tears, you can't help saying, "That still doesn't explain why I was born in California."

"I'm coming to that." Your uncle rubs his wizened chin. "Yes, I'm starting to… Nineteen thirty-eight. The worst of the Depression was over, but times still weren't good. Your father said that with the baby coming, he needed to earn more money. He felt that California — Los Angeles — offered better opportunities. I tried to talk him out of it. In another year, I said, Chicago will have turned the corner. Besides, he'd have to go through the trouble of being certified to practice law in California. But he insisted. And of course, I was right. Chicago did soon turn the corner. What's more, as it happened, your father and mother didn't care for Los Angeles, so after six or seven months, they came back, right after you were born."

"That still doesn't…"

"What?"

"Los Angeles isn't Redwood Point," you say. "I never heard of the place. What were my parents doing there?"

"Oh, that." Your uncle raises his thin white eyebrows. "No mystery. Redwood Point was a resort up the coast. In August, L.A. was brutally hot. As your mother came close to giving birth, your father decided she ought to be someplace where she wouldn't feel the heat, close to the sea, where the breeze would make her comfortable. So they took a sort of vacation, and you were born there."

"Yes," you say. "Perfectly logical. Nothing mysterious. Except…" You gesture toward the coffee table. "Why did my father keep this woman's adoption agreement?"

Your uncle lifts his liver-spotted hands in exasperation. "
Oy vay
. For all we know, he found a chance to do some legal work while he was in Redwood Point. To help pay your mother's hospital and doctor bills. When he moved back to Chicago, it might be some business papers got mixed in with his personal ones. By accident, everything to do with Redwood Point got grouped together."

"And my father never noticed the mistake no matter how many times he must have gone to his safe-deposit box? I have trouble believing…"

"Jacob, Jacob. Last month, I went to my safe-deposit box and found a treasury bond that I didn't remember even buying, let alone putting in the box. Oversights happen."

"My father was the most organized person I ever knew."

"God knows I love him, and God knows I miss him." Your uncle bites his pale lower lip, then breathes with effort, seized with emotion. "But he wasn't perfect, and life isn't tidy. We'll probably never know for sure how this document came to be with his private papers. But this much I do know. You can count on it. You're Simon and Esther's natural child. You weren't adopted."

You stare at the floor and nod. "Thank you."

"No need to thank me. Just go home, get some rest, and stop thinking so much. What happened to Simon and Esther has been a shock to all of us. We'll be a long time missing them."

"Yes," you say, "a long time."

"Rebecca? How is…"

"The same as me. She still can't believe they're dead."

Your uncle's bony fingers clutch your hand. "I haven't seen either of you since the funeral. It's important for family to stick together. Why don't both of you come over for honey cake on Rosh Hashana?"

"I'd like to, Uncle. But I'm sorry, I'll be out of town."

"Where are you going?"

"Redwood Point."

The biggest airport nearest your destination is in San Jose. You rent a car and drive south down the coast, passing Carmel and Big Sur. Preoccupied, you barely notice the dramatic scenery: the windblown pine trees, the rugged cliffs, the whitecaps hitting the shore. You ask yourself why you didn't merely phone the authorities at Redwood Point, explain that you're a lawyer in Chicago, and ask for information that you need to settle an estate. Why do you feel compelled to come all this way to a town so small that it isn't listed in your Hammond Atlas and could only be located in the Chicago library on its large map of California? For that matter, why do you feel compelled at all? Both your wife and your uncle have urged you to leave the matter alone. You're not adopted, you've been assured, and even if you were, what difference would it make?

The answers trouble you. One, you might have a brother or a sister, a twin, and now that you've lost your parents, you feel an anxious need to fill the vacuum of their loss by finding an unsuspected member of your family. Two, you suffer a form of mid-life crisis, but not in the common sense of the term. To have lived these many years and possibly never have known your birth parents makes you uncertain of your identity. Yes, you loved the parents you knew, but your present limbo of insecure uncertainty makes you desperate to discover the truth, one way or the other, so you can dismiss the possibility of your having been adopted or else adjust to the fact that you were. But this way, not being certain, is maddening, given the stress of double grief. And three, the most insistent reason, an identity crisis of frantic concern, you want to learn if after a lifetime… of having been circumsized, of Hebrew lessons, of your bar mitzvah, of Friday nights at temple, of scrupulous observance of sacred holidays… of being a Jew… if after all that, you might have been born a gentile. You tell yourself that being a Jew has nothing to do with race and genes, that it's a matter of culture and religion. But deep in your heart, you've always thought of yourself proudly as being
completely a
Jew, and your sense of self feels threatened. Who
am
I? you think.