Chapter Two Mallory
June 2022
Cape Cod, Massachusetts
Paige calls me on the way home from dialysis.
“Can you talk?” she asks.
I glance at Sam in the seat next to me. He’s got his AirPods in, delivering music. For his twelfth birthday I broke down and gave him a phone, because I needed to be able to contact him in an emergency, right? His hair flops over his forehead now, a few shades darker than when he was little. I can’t pick out his expression as he watches the dunes go by. Sometimes it hurts, the way he’s growing up, turning into somebody else. I used to understand every thought that crossed his face.
“I’m listening,” I tell Paige.
She gathers herself up in a sigh. “So, it’s about Mom,” she says.
It’s about Mom.
As it happens, those were the exact words she used to break the news when Mom died, four and a half years ago. I remember it was October because I was making Sam’s Halloween costume. He was eight years old and wanted to be a space alien. I designed the whole thing myself. I was just finishing up the hands—kind of a cut-and-stitch of this puke-green satin I’d found among the fabric remainders and a pair of rubber household gloves—so I was a little irritated that she’d interrupted me with her damn phone call.
I sighed and said What about Mom? You know, expecting another thorough sister-to-sister discussion about Viljo, Mom’s latest lover. Viljo was this blond Finnish god about seven feet tall with whom Mom was apparently having the best sex of her life, so naturally Paige disapproved of him. Blah, blah, he’s too young for her. Blah, blah, he wants her for her money.
To which I might reply something like, What money?
To which Paige might reply something like, Grandma and Grandpa were loaded, right?
To which I never replied because Paige didn’t know what I knew, which was that Mom considered that money tainted and gave away every dollar to the Appalachian Mountain Club for hut refurbishment as soon as she inherited it. God knows Paige would have fainted if she knew that. She always hated those hikes in the White Mountains where Mom hauled us every summer. Literally the worst weather in the world, she’d remind us. It says so on the brochure. So I would redirect the conversation, and it was kind of a shock for Paige when the lawyer read out Mom’s will, which left Paige the little house in Provincetown and me the leftover cash in a trust for Sam’s education.
But I digress.
Paige told me to sit down, and I told her I was sitting down already, could she get to the point, and Paige said, All right. The point is, Mom’s gone.
I said I already knew Mom was gone. Gone to Peru with Viljo.
Honey, I mean the forever gone, said Paige. I mean she’s dead.
She and Viljo—Paige called him Dildo—had been climbing the terraces at Machu Picchu and Mom had lost her footing. I don’t know if you’ve ever visited Machu Picchu, or seen the photographs, but those terraces are steep, apparently. She fell some way and hit her head on the stones. By the time they got her airlifted to a hospital, she was in a coma with a brain bleed. She died in Viljo’s arms the next day.
Honestly, you can’t make this stuff up.
I’ll spare you the drama of flying out to Peru to arrange for Mom’s body to be flown home. The memorial, the cremation, the scattering of ashes off the Cape Cod shoreline at sunset. Tracking down Dad on the backstretch at Santa Anita, from which he sent his condolences but refused to attend the services, on the grounds that funerals were a drag and the Breeders’ Cup was around the corner.
I’ll spare you the stages of grief and the way I still find myself reaching for the phone to tell her something, only to realize she’s not there. You’ve heard all that before, and if you’ve experienced it firsthand, I’m so sorry.
The point of this story is that Paige called me to break the news of Mom’s death, instead of the other way around. I mean, Mom and I were peas in a pod, right? She told me everything, things she probably shouldn’t, like where she lost her virginity and how often Viljo went down on her. She told me the whole story with Dad, and about the year she dragged her cello to Paris and busked in a Metro station to pay for food. She called me up when she got a bad Pap smear, or found some terrific new cheese at the farmers market, or had to take the cat to the vet.
She called Paige to tell her what she ought to get me for Christmas.
So how come Paige knew about Mom’s death before I did?
Because she listed me as her emergency contact, Paige said, a little bashfully.
Well, that made sense. Paige is everybody’s emergency contact. She’s my emergency contact. If you’re having an emergency, you want Paige on the other end of the line. Paige will answer the phone, she’ll drop everything, she’ll donate her own blood. (Paige is O negative, as you would expect.) When disaster strikes, you want Paige making sure there’s toothpaste in the overnight bag and that specialist in Dallas is flying in for a consult.
You sure as hell don’t rely on Mallory to fix things.
I understood. I understood just fine.
But that doesn’t mean it didn’t hurt.
Oh, and what happened to Viljo? He was so shattered about Mom’s death, he went home to Finland and took orders at a monastery just inside the Arctic Circle. He still sends us Christmas cards every year.
Like I said, you can’t make this stuff up.
The hand-me-down Volvo is just young enough to have a Bluetooth connection to my cellphone, and Paige’s voice blares through the speakers.
“Mallory? Are you still there?”
I glance at Sam, who’s still staring out the window. His finger taps his knee to the beat of whatever’s coming out of his earbuds. I turn down the volume on the car’s speakers.
“I’m still here. What about Mom?” I ask warily.
“So, I have a confession to make,” she begins.
“Oh, crap.”
“Well? If you’re not going to start this thing yourself, I don’t have a choice, do I? I mean, we could sit around waiting for our asshole father to change his mind and give his grandson a kidney—”
“Paige, for God’s sake. Don’t swear in front of the kid.”
“What, Sam’s listening?”
“He’s in the car with me. He’s got his AirPods in.”
Paige makes a noise of frustration. “Mallory, this is important. This is…this is big.”
“Then why couldn’t you wait for me to get there in person?”
“How far away are you?”
“I don’t know. Half an hour, no traffic? Just passed the Orleans exit.”
She makes another noise. “Fine. I’ll pour the vodka Spindrifts.”
Since Mom left Paige the house in Provincetown, at the tip of the scorpion’s tail that is Cape Cod, Paige and her husband Jake have done a lot of work to it.
I don’t know how to say this delicately, so I’ll just come out with it: Jake makes a lot of money. He’s in some kind of finance partnership with a couple of Yale buddies, and apparently he’s good at it, although you wouldn’t know this to bump into him in a crosswalk. He would apologize and ask if you were okay and pick up that thing you dropped, and you would go on your way, crossing the street, never imagining that the spindly guy in the slim fit khakis and the Red Sox hat and the navy L.L. Bean fleece vest with the embroidered East Rock Partners crest on the left side made five million bucks last year. (I’m just throwing a number out there. I have no idea how much bread Jake makes—Paige scrupulously never talks about money.) He is six foot two with dark, wispy hair and a face so bland as to defy description. Paige met him at Yale, junior year, and they got married twelve years ago at the Catholic church here in Provincetown, reception on the beach at Mom’s house.
In those days, we used the word quirky to describe our childhood home. It was nine hundred square feet of stone and cedar shingles that had survived a hundred years of nor’easters, plus the occasional hurricane, without much alteration to the original plan, except to add electricity and hot water. I remember it had a bedroom for Mom and a bedroom I shared with Paige and a bathroom down the hall that groaned when you filled the tub and groaned when you emptied it again. The kitchen was a lean-to and the parlor also served as a dining room and library, with great big windows that faced the ocean and had to be battened down with sheets of plywood before every storm.
To her credit, Paige, who is respectful of history, did not tear down this house when she and Jake undertook renovations. It now serves as their master suite, in fact, and the pipes no longer groan when you fill the tub, maybe because Paige knocked down a couple of walls to enlarge the bathroom into a haven of marble and reclaimed driftwood that smells of spa.
Then they built on to our original house a whole other house, a coastal grandmother type house, which Sam calls a vibe. (Paige and Jake call it Summersalt—get it?) We stay here for several weeks every summer, trying not to spill anything, while Sam and I make the thrice-weekly trek to Barnstaple for dialysis, as we did today, and back again. We park our car next to the garage and walk across the gravel to the exemplary mudroom where everybody has his own cubby, like at preschool. In the snowy kitchen, Paige talks on the phone to someone who’s sourcing new wallpaper, by the sound of it. She spies us and tells this person she has to go now, they’ll talk later.
“So!” She looks at Sam. “How’d it go, buddy?”
Sam gives her a strange look. “Great. Thanks. Is Ollie around?”
“They’re down at the beach with Brittani, sweetie. You want to go down and join them?”
“Sure.” Sam turns back to the mudroom.
“Remember not to drink too much water!” I call after him. At the new bathhouse on the edge of the lawn, right before you get to the causeway over the inlet that leads to the dunes, Paige has installed a drinks station, which is, I have to admit, pretty handy. Ice and water and a fridge full of Spindrift.
“He’s okay, right?” asks Paige. “He’s so hard to read now.”
“He’s fine. So what’s up?”
She’s still staring at the mudroom entrance, brow knit. “Did the doctors say anything? I’ve been reading up on the effects of renal failure and long-term dialysis—”
“Look, I know what you’re trying to say, all right? Yes, my son needs a new kidney. Yes, he is on the donor registry. Yes, we have tested all our known relatives for a good match. Yes, you know how that went.”
“Fucking Dad.”
I shrug. “It wasn’t an ideal tissue match anyway. Three out of six. And it’s not like Dad’s taken the greatest care of himself all these years.”
“A shitty kidney is better than no kidney.”
“Plus, he’s in his seventies. It’s a stale kidney. And it’s his decision, right? Organ donation is not for everybody.”
“Just so you know,” she says, “I no longer consider him my father.”
“And I appreciate your loyalty. Now, where’s my drink?”
“Oh, shoot! I forgot. Decorator called. Wallpaper drama. Hold on a second.”
“No drama like wallpaper drama, I always say.”
She scurries to the booze cabinet. “Seriously, you’re going to need this. I’m still kind of shaking.”
“Shaking? What are you talking about?”
Paige sets the vodka on the pristine quartz and opens the beverage fridge, not to be confused with the industrial Sub-Zero on the opposite wall that requires its own Eversource substation. “You want to slice up some lime? Cutting board’s in the cabinet just below you.”
I bend to open the cabinet door and retrieve the wooden board. In this kitchen of immaculate stone and stainless steel and appliances from outer space, the cutting board is a relic from childhood. I love the stains and scars, the familiar grain of the wood. I can picture Mom slicing up onions, tomatoes, eggplant, zucchini, basil. I reach for a lime from the citrus arrangement in the middle of the island.
“It used to freak me out,” I say, “the way you could even think about wallpaper or limes when you’re upset about something. You know, making sure everyone has an afternoon cocktail in tasteful surroundings.”
“Wait, what? What’s that supposed to mean?”
I slice the lime into halves, and the halves into quarters. “Then I realized that’s how you cope with shit.”
“It’s better than denial.”
“Who’s in denial?”
“It ain’t just a river in Egypt, right?”
I wait for her to finish pouring the Spindrift and pop a lime quarter into each glass. “I’m not in denial, okay? I live with this thing every day. No french fries, no bananas. Every day I look at my son and I hear the clock ticking, right? So don’t tell me I’m in denial.”
She sips from her drink and I note that her hand is, in fact, shaking.
“Look, we tried the family members, okay? We just don’t have that many of them. Mom’s dead. Her parents are dead. Dad doesn’t give a shit. You do give a shit, for which I’m eternally grateful, more than I can say, but you’re not a good match. Your kids are too young.”
“Honey,” she says, “I know all this. We’ve been over this.”
“So we’re stuck waiting for our turn on the transplant list. Which, thanks to Covid, and thanks to Sam’s rare tissue type, isn’t exactly moving fast.”
“We are not stuck waiting on the damn kidney list, okay? There are options.”
I set down my glass. “No.”
“Mallory.”
“That is not an option, Paige. That has never been an option.”
“Not even to save your son’s life?”
“So, let’s unpack that for a second—”
“There’s nothing to unpack, Mallory.” Paige lifts her fingers to form quote marks around the word. “He’s Sam’s father. Biological fact. He has kidneys. Also a biological fact.”
“Number one, if you think it’s possible for me to even start that conversation with, like, a man in his position, you’re delusional.”
“Delusional? All you have to do is email him. It’s not like he doesn’t know your name.”
“If Monk Adams reads his own email, then I’m Beyoncé. His handlers probably get ten emails a day from women claiming to have given birth to his love child. Or wanting to.”
Paige points a finger at me. “Do you know what you are? You’re a coward.”
“Are you fucking kidding me?”
“You’re so scared of getting hurt, you’ll sacrifice your own son.”
“That is total bullshit. Total. I’m doing Sam a favor. I’m sparing him.”
“Sparing him from what, exactly? From having a father? A working kidney?”
“Do you think—do you honestly think—I could just walk up to one of the most famous men in the world and say, ‘Hi, Monk. I gave birth to your son thirteen years ago, and by the way, could you spare him a kidney?’?”
Paige folds her arms. “Yep. That’s exactly what I think you should do.”
“What if he rejects Sam? There’s not enough therapy in the world for that, Paige. Or worse, what if he sucks Sam into that life of his, that whole music world celebrity bullshit?”
“You have to try, Mallory.”
“He’s not even a good match.”
“How do you know that?”
“Odds are.”
“Odds are? Are you serious?”
I look down at the cutting board and the two remaining wedges of lime, reclined on their sides. The paring knife sits between them, one of those German brands with the deadly black handle. For the first time, I notice the music piping in from the magical speakers. Some piano piece, probably Chopin. Mom used to play Chopin when we were babies to settle us down. Since Paige never leaves a single detail to chance, I imagine the choice of music is no accident.
“Paige. Leave it alone, okay?”
“I’m just saying that if he were my child—”
“Well, he’s not your child, okay? You don’t know. You don’t know what it’s like to raise a kid without a dad—”
“That’s your choice, Mallory—”
“You don’t know! You have no idea what it’s like to do this alone.”
Paige picks up her vodka Spindrift and jiggles the ice. A ponytail holds back her blond-streaked hair; some pink balm tints her lips. She’s wearing navy Lululemon capris and a navy V-neck tee. Everything about her is burnished and symmetrical.
“You know what?” she says. “You’re right. I have absolutely no idea what it’s like to shut the father of your child out of his life. I have no idea in the world why you would do such a thing to yourself and to Sam. And do you know why that is?”
“Because you have no fucking imagination?”
“Because you’ve never told me, Mallory. You won’t say a single word about what happened that summer. How you ended up pregnant. I mean, Monk Adams. Of all people. So, yeah. Don’t blame me if I fill in the blanks myself.”
“Let’s all remember he wasn’t famous back then, right? He was a college student. He was nobody.”
“He was somebody to you.”
“He was a mistake, that’s all. A big fat fucking mistake for which I’ve paid every single day of my life since, believe me.”
Because I’m saying this into my glass, as I reach for the Spindrift can to top myself up, I miss the look of horror on my sister’s face until I notice she’s made no reply.
I look up. Paige stares over my shoulder at the mudroom entrance.
I knock over my glass as I spin around. Booze everywhere. Paige grabs a dishtowel.
“Mom?” says Sam. “I forgot my swimsuit in the wash.”
“To be clear,” I say, rummaging through the laundry pile, “you are not the mistake, okay?”
“Mom, stop.”
“You are not what I regret. I don’t regret you for a second and never have. These aren’t yours, are they?”
I pull out a pair of pink trunks, spangled with small blue whales. Sam shakes his head.
“Those are Uncle Jake’s,” he says.
“Gawd, it’s like a Vineyard Vines fever dream. What color are yours?”
“Blue. Like, dark blue.”
“Anyway, my point is—you know, I love you and all that. I wouldn’t trade having you for anything.”
“Mom, stop, okay? I know what you meant.”
I uncover a pair of skinny dark blue trunks with a neon green waistband. “These look familiar?”
He swipes it. “Thanks.”
“So what do you think I meant?” I ask.
Sam sighs. He’s wearing shorts and a T-shirt that says Bear Lake Campground—there’s no such place, I think the shirt is from J.Crew Factory—and it hangs so loosely on his skinny frame, I want to feed him a hamburger. He’s been growing out his hair and the curls spill over his forehead. He pushes them back and says, “You mean it sucks raising me all by yourself.”
“What about you? Does it suck for you? Not having a dad?”
He shrugs.
“What about Uncle Jake? He’s like a dad, right?”
“Kind of.”
“Do you ever think about your real dad?”
“Kind of.”
“Do you ever wonder why he isn’t around?”
“I know why he isn’t around.”
“Why’s that?”
“Mom, stop.”
“Stop what?”
“Stop trying to be my therapist.”
“But you don’t have a therapist.”
“Duh.”
“Do you think you need a therapist?”
“Mom, you are so bad at this.”
“I’m sorry, okay? I just want you to be all right. I hate that you don’t have a dad like the other kids. I mean, even the divorce kids have dads, even if they’re not around as much. So I feel bad. That’s what I meant about paying for my mistake. My mistake was not giving you a real dad.”
“Mom, I know.”
“Know what?”
He sighs at me, the way only a thirteen-year-old boy can sigh at his mother. Sighs and pushes his sand-colored hair back out of his face again, and for a second the gesture feels so exactly like a similar gesture, fourteen summers ago, I can’t breathe.
“I know who he is, all right? My dad.”
“What?”
“I said I know who he is.”
“Who? Who do you think he is?”
“That singer guy.”
“Which singer guy?”
“Monk,” he says. “Monk Adams.”
I laugh like a maniac. “That’s just silly. Monk Adams. What makes you think that?”
“One, I have ears, okay?”
“Oh, that? You mean down there in the kitchen just now?”
“Mom, please. Like all the time. You and Aunt Paige. Aunt Paige and Uncle Jake. The girl who cuts my hair who’s like, Dude, you look just like Monk Adams.” Sam rolls his eyes. “Plus, it makes sense, right? I mean, I know how to use Google. You went to the same prep school and everything. He lives on that island where you used to work.”
I sit down and lean back against the clothes dryer. “All right, Sherlock. So what else?”
“What do you mean, what else?”
“What else makes you think you’re Monk Adams’s love child? Other than your otherworldly handsomeness and universe-exploding charisma, I mean.”
Sam wads up the trunks in his hand and turns to walk out of the room.
“Because you never play any of his songs.”
The words flash back into my head as I close the dishwasher door and press the Start button.
It’s about Mom.
I turn to Paige, who stands at the kitchen island, refilling her glass of rosé. We’ve been dancing carefully around each other since the afternoon—prepping dinner, managing kid traffic, every word pitched half an octave higher than usual. Paige hires a local college kid to keep her three girls on track with all the tennis lessons and swimming practice and Khan Academy and what she calls beach time, which is now the official name for the way we spent all our summers when we were kids, just messing around under minimal adult supervision, but Brittani goes home at five to get ready for her waitress shift at the Black Sheep and Jake, of course, spends the weekdays working in the city.
So with one thing and another, I’ve been distracted.
I reach for the wine bottle. “Hold on a second. What about Mom?”
“Mom?”
“In the car. On the phone. Something about Mom.”
She sets down the glass and claps a hand over her mouth. “Oh my God. I can’t believe I forgot to tell you.”
Paige’s office sits off the kitchen, like a pantry except it holds all the family admin in exquisitely organized shelves and file drawers that slide in and out on their soundless tracks. The wallpaper is kind of a mod paisley on a sea-colored background. There is a stack of art books on the window seat. Her laptop lies shut on the built-in desk. Next to it, a glossy file folder of madras plaid coordinates with the wallpaper colors in some indefinable way.
She picks up the folder and opens it.
“So, I decided to do a little research,” she says.
“What kind of research?”
“Family research.”
“Oh, Paige. Come on. Do you really think some third cousin twice removed is going to donate a kidney to Sam?”
“Mallory,” she says, “I have to do something.”
“Because I won’t. Is that what you’re saying?”
“The baby daddy situation is what it is. I’m not going to change your mind.” She nudges the folder against my chest. “But maybe this will.”
Some reflex causes me to grab the folder. I hold it between my fingers like you might hold Yorick’s skull. “What do you mean by that?”
“I mean I went through all those boxes of files Mom left in the attic. Stuff she kept from our childhood, stuff she kept from her parents.”
“And?”
Paige folds her arms. “Look at that first page.”
I look down.
Certificate of Adoption, it says.
“Holy shit. We were adopted?”
“Not us, stupid. Her. Mom. Look at the date. Twenty-seventh of June, 1952.”
My brain feels like it’s spinning on a wheel. The old typescript blurs together. I can’t comprehend this; I can’t even read it. Adopted.
I think of my grandparents. Elderly, formal. Having us to dinner at their house in Brookline, the smell of lemon polish. Mom lighting up a cigarette after we left.
I look back up at Paige. “What the fuck? Why didn’t she tell us?”
“Who knows? I mean, I guess it explains why she’s an only child. Grandma and Grandpa adopted her out of a Catholic orphanage near Galway—”
“Wait, Ireland? You’re saying Mom was born in an Irish orphanage?”
“And that’s not the really weird thing. The weird thing is that the mother wasn’t some unwed teenager—”
“Wow, thanks.”
“Shut up and listen.” Paige snatches back the folder and rifles through a few more pages. “Look at this. There’s no name, right, because it’s supposed to be anonymous. But where it lists the description of the birth mother, it says—right here—it says she’s white, English, thirty-four years old…”
She plucks the paper out of the stack and dangles it in front of me.
“…and married.”