The Road Taken (42 page)

When Markie became pregnant she was excited, but didn’t tell anyone but David because she didn’t want to tempt fate. It was only when the pregnancy began to show, at Angel’s wedding, that Markie finally felt confident enough to announce her success. By then she had been told she was carrying twins. “Twins!” Great Uncle Hugh exclaimed. “How nice, you can get it all over with at one time.” They all smiled. Life, they knew, would no longer ever be the same. Everyone was thrilled, Aunt Joan as much as her own parents, as Markie had expected. No matter what Aunt Joan did to hide the fact, they all knew Markie was her favorite.

If Peggy and Ed hadn’t really made peace with the idea of Angel marrying Juan, at least they were now pretending everything was fine. The thought of new grandchildren from Markie kept their minds off what their grandchildren from Angel would look like. Ed was over seventy and Peggy was old enough to qualify for Medicare. It was not so much a matter of age but of attitude; they would never be modern. Ironically, it was Grandma who was.

At the end of the year, near her own birthday, Markie gave birth to a perfectly healthy boy and girl. The boy looked just like her, and the girl looked like both her and David, but oddly also like Angel, and, Grandma told her, what Aunt Ginger had looked like as an infant. Everyone remarked on the family resemblance with enthusiasm, as if none of them remembered that Markie was adopted. She didn’t bother to correct them. Perhaps they had forgotten after all these years.

Right away it was clear that David would be a doting and helpful father. He needed to be; she was exhausted. Markie had a three-month leave of absence from work, but secretly she thought she might drag it out to six, even if they fired her. Maybe she’d even quit. She could always find another job when the kids started school. Despite her former aversion to old-fashioned names, she and David had named the twins Abigail and Glover. It was funny how when you became a parent yourself all the ideas you’d had about other people’s silliness went right out the window.

Chapter Fifty-Three

Her grandchildren! Joan had suspected but never really known to what degree these babies, Abigail and Glover, would cause her to melt into such a tender woman. She thought about them often, and missed them, and delighted in buying them presents, even the things they would not know about like clothing, which would be outgrown before they appreciated what it was or that it came from her. She tried not to give unrequested advice.

Unlike the protected and isolated infants of her generation, and even Markie’s, Abigail and Glover went everywhere with their parents: to restaurants, to parties, to public places; in their stroller or in chest packs, no matter that it was late in the evening, or that people were smoking, or that there were probably germs. Joan pretended she wasn’t concerned about it.

At Rose’s ninety-fifth birthday party, which the family gave for her in an elegant private room at the St. Regis Hotel, with speeches and tributes, music and dancing, all the great-grandchildren were present, even Abigail and Glover. They watched everything, pacifiers in their mouths, and didn’t even fuss. They were alert and socialized at a very early age, and Joan was constantly amazed at how intelligent they were, their minds like little computers, storing up everything.

She had free access to them as she had not had to Markie growing up, and although she didn’t want to be a pest, she seemed to find herself visiting them more than she had imagined she would. If Markie and David did not take them to Larchmont on a Sunday to see Peggy and Ed, or if Peggy and Ed did not come in, then Joan would be at their apartment. If the twins were available on a Saturday instead, then Joan would be there. Trevor liked them and usually went along with her, quite willingly in fact, but he wasn’t besotted the way she was. Of course not; he didn’t know they were his too.

Trevor’s grandchildren . . .

He was a caring man; he hadn’t made an issue of their own childlessness (as he thought it was), and he had accepted Markie fondly as a niece by marriage, noticed how much Joan loved her, and had never in any way indicated that they should be jealous of Peggy and Ed. But watching him hold little Abigail, seeing the soft look on his face, which he wasn’t even aware of, Joan suddenly had a shocking epiphany that made her throat clutch. Why had she never realized the enormity of her selfishness before? All these years she had cheated him.

First, he had been cheated of a daughter. At the time she hadn’t even thought of what he might want, except as a possible threat; she had simply used him. Her pain had been so great that it had not occurred to her to think of him as anything but a means to an end. He had missed Markie’s childhood altogether before he met Joan again, and she could only remind herself—to assuage the guilt—that he had been a different person when he was young, a footloose aspiring actor, and perhaps he would have found the situation of being a biological father much too difficult. If that were true, he would not be the first to feel that way. Then later, when they fell in love and he entered her family, she had simply told herself that Trevor didn’t have to know. He had still been part of her long-ago scheme.

She could rationalize that she had spared him distress, that if he had known he had a daughter and Peggy had kept them apart, he would have been hurt. And Peggy
would
have kept them apart. Peggy would have been even more threatened than she already was, by seeing a father as well as a mother breathing on the boundaries of her life. Joan could also remind herself of the very real possibility that Trevor would be angry or reject her if he found out what she had done. But now it was more than only beleaguered Markie at stake; Joan knew she had, finally, cheated Trevor of his grandchildren, of his immortality, of his look into the future.

She could not compound her first crime with this one; she knew too much, she understood him too well, she had loved him for too long. At this moment it was as if finally she also understood herself.

She came from a family of strong, determined women—a domestic world of almost all women, in fact, except for her kindly father, who had been in a way overwhelmed by so much rampant estrogen in that house, and dear Uncle Hugh, who had been more like an aunt. So, Joan now suddenly realized, trying to repair Peggy’s shattered life all by herself had been natural to her. The young Joan, the misfit, “bad Joan,” had been woman who could not dare to love a man, or accept love from him, who only saw him as a tool for what at the time had seemed her survival. The grown-up Joan saw what she had done as something that now caused her guilt and touched her with empathy.

She considered how far she had come from being that Joan of so many years ago. The pact of secrecy she had made with Peggy seemed odd now. Peggy’s grief had given one person control of the entire family. Yes, grief and anguish had their own tyranny, over others as well as the one directly affected. And when the suffering seemed to be gone, there was still Peggy’s hate, and her need to punish. All these years Joan, and the rest of them to a lesser degree, had waited and waited for Peggy to tell Markie, but Peggy would not do it. You’ve exhausted the statute of limitations, Peggy, Joan said to herself. It’s over. Now it’s my turn.

The other people who had known—the few there were left now—might tell her it was too late, that it was all over, that it was in the past. Joan knew Markie would not think so. Markie deserved to know that she had always been with her own family, that there was no mysterious “real” family somewhere out there in the world whom she would have to find.If the behavior of this family shocked and disturbed her, that was a gamble Joan would have to take. There was a whole story to be told, and it was long, but she couldn’t hold it in anymore.

But first she would have to tell Trevor. Joan wondered if telling him would make her lose him. In expiation for her youthful betrayal she would be giving him his grandchildren. Knowing that, at last, how could he hate her, how could he refuse to forgive? Rose, Joan knew, would be on her side, as she always had been. She did not even have to ask.

So in the end, since revelations of old secrets were sometimes caused by unexpected events, it was Joan’s understanding of what she had done to Trevor that made her decide to tell the story at last, not so much because of what she owed Markie, although there was always that too.

She waited for a day when he was not tired or busy, when he was feeling cheerful. She and Trevor were back in their apartment after having visited Markie and David and the twins. Looking around at all their familiar things, the photographs, the books, the record of their happy life together, Joan felt less afraid. He was not Peggy. She wasn’t taking anything away from him; she was giving it back.

“Sit down,” she said to him. “I need to tell you a secret. I have to begin at the beginning, so maybe you’d better have a drink.”

She told him about the accident, about the way it had torn the whole family apart until she finally had to leave. She told him about Markie’s conception and birth and adoption. She told him how Peggy, instead of forgiving her, had thought fearfully that Joan’s gift was a weapon against her, and thus, that nothing had been resolved. She told him she was sorry for not having told him, and that she loved him. At the end, when she had told him everything, Trevor was silent. Then he reached over and took her hand.

“My poor, crazy Joan,” he said. “How alone you were.” To her astonishment his eyes were glazed with tears.

“Yes,” she said. “I was.”

“I would have loved her, you know,” he said. “But when I think of who I was, I probably wouldn’t have been a very good father back then. Ed seems like a very devoted dad to me; a little old-fashioned maybe, a little stiff, but he has always had a good heart. You’re right, of course; you have to tell Markie. But I don’t even know if she would want me at this point—she’s an adult, with a family of her own. But when you tell her, tell her I’m there for her. And I’m delighted to have grandchildren. Don’t you think Abigail looks like me?”

“She does,” Joan said.

“I’ve always had that feeling.” The tears were gone; he was smiling now. In fact, Trevor looked very pleased with himself. “And Glover’s a little ham. I wouldn’t be surprised if he became an actor like the old man, would you?”

“Not at all surprised,” Joan said.

***

Now she wanted to give Peggy one final chance to end it herself. Joan called her to lay it out simply and decisively. Better to be abrupt, she thought, before she lost her nerve, and hope that at last, after all these years, there would be no fight.

“Peggy,” she said on the phone to that voice that would never truly welcome her, “knowing Markie’s children has made me think again about everything that has happened between you and me. I have decided that it’s time to tell Markie who her birth mother is.
You
can tell her now, or else I will. Your shot.”

There was a momentary silence, and then Peggy hung up. No scream, no cry of “No!” Just that soft click of the receiver being replaced, as if Joan were a lunatic making a crank call, someone to be gotten rid of.

Peggy thinks she can erase me, Joan thought. She doesn’t think I’ll do it.

***

Joan decided to tell Markie alone, without David there. Markie could tell him herself. If there were to be any retributions forthcoming, Joan wanted the encounter between her and her daughter to be one-on-one. Afterward, if Markie wanted to tell Peggy that she knew and have it out with her, it would be Markie’s own decision.

Joan asked her to leave the twins with David for a while and come over for a late lunch on Sunday afternoon; she said it was important. Trevor was in an Off Broadway play—the pay wasn’t good but it kept him busy and happy—and it was matinee day for him. Joan had told him to call her before he came home, in case the discussion took a long time, although part of her was afraid that Markie would run away in revulsion and it would not take long at all. Whichever was the case, Joan knew she herself would need a while alone to get over it. She had played the fantasy of the revelation in her mind innumerable times sometimes it came out as a loving reunion, sometimes as a distancing shock. Now she did not know what to believe it would be anymore. She had hardly slept for the past several nights. The best thing was to get it over with.

“What’s so important, Aunt Joan?” Markie asked curiously, poking at her salad.

Joan poured her a glass of wine. “I need to tell you a very long story about our family,” Joan said. “Yours and mine. Everyone’s. I’m going to begin with what happened to your sister Marianne.”

She told the story rather differently from the way she had told Trevor. This version was not about him but about herself. It seemed to her that in explaining everything that had happened, somehow she was beginning to understand it more objectively. As she told it she was both the storyteller and the participant, and now it was the storyteller who had the wisdom for both of them. Markie kept looking at her sympathetically, if a little confused, until Joan got to what was really the point.

“That baby girl I had, Markie, was you.”

Markie gasped. “You’re my mother?”

Joan nodded. She waited to see if Markie might be glad, resentful, or simply relieved to see the end of the mystery.

“And Trevor’s my father? And no one ever told me! Why not?”

“There’s more.” Joan went on, trying to explain what had happened through the years. How could you justify need—hers to be reunited with her family, Peggy’s to stay normal? She told Markie how Peggy had refused to let Joan tell, how Ed had barely been able to speak to her, how they had never understood. When she had finally finished she waited, at last with more resignation than anxiety, to see the verdict in her daughter’s eyes.

She could see she had been acquitted.

“Maybe that’s why you and I were always so simpatico,” Markie said thoughtfully. “I sometimes used to wish you were my mother. And all the time, you were.”

“Maybe you wouldn’t have liked me so much if I were the boring old disciplinary mom instead of the fun aunt,” Joan said.

“Do you think not?”

“I don’t know.”

“My god, Aunt Joan, what do I call you now?”

“Joan would be good enough.”

“The kids are your grandchildren!”

“Aren’t I lucky?”

“It’s just unbelievable,” Markie said. “I feel safe now. There’s nobody out there who’s a part of me who I don’t know, who I can’t find.”

“That’s one of the reasons I had to tell you.”

“I hate my mother,” Markie said. “
She
should have told me.”

“Then you should hate me too,” Joan said, but of course she didn’t mean it.

“No,” Markie said. “You were a prisoner of your own ethics. I can’t believe you all knew and nobody would tell me. This family is bizarre.”

“We are.”

Markie’s eyes narrowed. “Joan,” she said, “what would you have done if I had been a boy instead of a girl?”

“I prayed so hard I knew you’d be a girl.”

“But that’s nuts. What would you have done? Would you have kept me?”

“For myself?”

“For you, or just given me away to someone for adoption? I mean, you were replacing Marianne, you said.”

There was no point to protest that if it had been a boy it wouldn’t have been Markie but someone else. In Markie’s mind it would always have been herself, and Joan understood that. She thought for a moment, remembering what the young Joan would have done if biology had betrayed her. “Of course I would have given you to Peggy any way,” she said. “Infants look like infants. You can’t tell if it’s a boy or a girl right away. She would have fallen in love with you no matter what.”

“Well,” Markie said, “that’s a relief. I would hate to have had you go to all that trouble and find out that no one wanted me.”

“Everyone wanted you!”

“But you
would
have kept me if you had to?”

“Absolutely. You bet I would,” Joan said.

Finally Markie smiled at her, and Joan smiled back. “I guess in a way you were sort of like a surrogate mother,” Markie said. “Before they had such a thing. You always were modern, Aunt . . . I mean, Joan. You always were ahead of your time.”