The Mistress's Daughter

Unpacking My Mother

Ellen Ballman

It is seven years before I can open the boxes I took from Ellen’s house. It is 2005, and I am still on the same page, I am still wondering exactly what happened.

“Moribund on the sofa”—what did that mean? Half dead, already dead, well on the way to being dead? Was she in a coma? Did she know someone had come for her? Did she hope to be saved? How does someone live to be sixty and end up so alone? I go through the few papers I have — her death certificate says she died at 3 A.M. in the emergency room of the hospital. Who called the ambulance? How long was she in the emergency room? She must have been a little bit alive when she got there, otherwise the DOA box would have been checked. I think of calling Atlantic City 911 and asking for a transcription. And why am I remembering someone saying something about her being discovered by a Chinese deliveryman?

Seven years after the fact and it is as fresh as when it happened. It seems that this is the nature of trauma — it doesn’t change, soften, go dim, mutate into something less sharp, less dangerous.

Even now I want to call Ellen and ask what it was all about. Did she kill herself? Sort of. She chose to check herself out of the hospital against medical advice and went home to die alone on her sofa. Her fear of fear, her dislike of doctors, her underlying anxiety were certainly contributing factors.

I remember the birthday card—“This card is being sent early as I am not sure I will still be here on the 18th of December. I go to Jefferson Hospital on December 4 for a kidney procedure. What the outcome will be I do not know.”

I remember calling Ellen, half annoyed, half concerned.

“I canceled the procedure,” she said.

I never understood what the procedure was for; the closest thing I got to an answer was something about blood flow to a kidney and that she’d seen a lot of doctors — including one in Atlantic City who sent her to someone in Philadelphia — but she was scared to have anything done down there, to be alone in the hospital, and I knew I was supposed to say, I’ll come and take care of you.

Part of me thinks that if she’d asked in the “right way,” I would have helped her, and I am annoyed with myself. What does it matter how she tried to ask? She was afraid and she’d probably never gotten good results with asking — probably in part because she didn’t know how. So instead of getting what she wanted, she continually got what she didn’t — she pushed people away.

And I cannot escape the nearly biblical connection of the kidney — I was adopted into my family on account of my mother’s son Bruce dying of kidney failure. Is it my fault that she died? Was I expected to give her a kidney? Just after her death, I called her doctor in Atlantic City; in death I was to her what I couldn’t be in life. “This is Ellen Ballman’s daughter, I’m looking for some information.” I paused, waiting for him to say, “Ellen Ballman was unmarried and had no children. I have no idea who you are.”

“A transplant would have saved her,” he said, without prejudice. There was nothing in his voice implying that it should have come from me. Without prompting he went on to say that the kidney she needed would not necessarily have to have been my kidney. Had they talked about it — did he know who I was? Had he asked her, Do you have a family?

“I don’t know why she checked herself out of the hospital. I don’t know what she was thinking. Her condition was treatable — she could have been saved.”

After she died I wrote letters — to the brief list of friends her lawyer gave me, to the friend who called to say she was dead, to her niece in California, and so on. I wrote to them, telling them who I was and that I would very much like to hear more about Ellen, their memories, experiences, anything they wanted to share. I dropped the letters in the mail and nothing happened. The only person I heard from was Ellen’s Polish cleaning lady — who didn’t speak English. The woman she worked for on Tuesdays called me and together they left a message on my answering machine. It was a message left in translation as relayed by her Tuesday employer — the cleaning lady is heartbroken, she loved Ellen, she had no idea she was so sick. The cleaning lady had gone to Poland to visit her family; “she was away but now she is back.” I should call her anytime. I should come visit. She loves me very much. The Tuesday employer also left her name and phone number—“Call anytime,” she said. I couldn’t bring myself to call.

It is human nature to run from danger — but why did I have to be so human? Why could I not have been more capable, a better biological daughter? Why did I not have the strength and perspective to both protect myself and give? I failed her — I was so busy protecting myself from her that I didn’t do a good enough job recognizing the trouble she was in. I expected her to ask for what she needed in the way that I thought was appropriate. I could not see her selfishness with perspective, could not see that this was a woman in enormous pain, could not escape myself, my own needs, my own trapped desire. What does it matter how she asked? I should have given. I should have given despite not wanting to give. And what self was I protecting — does bracing oneself against something offer any protection?

People tell me how to feel. “You must be relieved,” they say. “You must be confused.” “You must be ambivalent.”

I failed her. I didn’t pay enough attention to the last letters, to the last time we spoke. She had called telling me to “hurry up and call your father, he may not last long.”

The idea that she was calling about him, that she and he had a relationship that extended beyond me, was galling. And that he was my father and had made me prove it, only to then not talk to me, and now I should hurry and call because he may not last — that these people who had so suddenly arrived might now so suddenly disappear was all too much.

My mother is dead. My mother called to tell me my mother is dead? This is the dissonance, the split, the impossibility of living two lives at once.

Yom Kippur, autumn, 1998. I am in Saratoga Springs, New York, at Yaddo, an artists’ colony. It is just a few weeks after the funeral. I go to services hosted by the local temple. I am alone among strangers, in a place safe for grief, and for me this is the memorial—“May he remember.” There is a part of the Yom Kippur service called the Yizkor — during which they read the names of all those related to the congregation who have died that year. I add her name to that list. The names are read aloud. There are other names before and after hers. Her name is called out, it is heard — equal to the others, it is not alone. Her name is said aloud, it is offered to everyone. I see other people crying and feel that I have done something, I have given her one thing she wanted, to be recognized, to be noticed. This is her Jewish funeral. I am holding a memorial service for a mother I never knew in a room full of strangers. We are embracing history and grief and all that has come and gone, and it makes more sense than anything has.

I am thinking about Atlantic City and walking out on the pier and how the clouds cracked open and rays of late-afternoon rainbow-colored light came streaming down. I am thinking about the time I sent her rose petals from the Yaddo garden. I am thinking of how she wanted everything and anything and how insatiable she was. I am glad I am there, alone, among strangers. I cry throughout the service. I am crying not just for her, but for myself, for every accident that has been a part of this, for every failing on everyone’s part, for the damned fragility of being human, for being afraid, ashamed. This is my atonement; I am confessing my sins, beating my chest, asking for forgiveness for what I have said and for what I have not said, for what I have done and for what I have not done, for those I have hurt or offended knowingly or unknowingly, for my errors of omission — this confession is known in Judaism as the Viduy. I am crying for how isolated I am, how alone, and how I have to go through life like this.

Did I ever say how precariously positioned I feel — on the edge of the earth, as though my permit could be revoked at any second?

The boxes. I come home from Yaddo and the boxes are in my apartment waiting for me, greeting me, nudging me to remember what I can’t forget. I cannot open the boxes. I am afraid of them, as though they contain something that might hurt me. Peeling the tape off them might unleash a virulent bacteria, just touching them might somehow infect me with her. I live with them like furniture, taking care to steer around them, to not let anything I care about come in contact with them, and then finally, more than nine months later, I put them in storage. I banish the boxes to the netherland of ministorage — before they go I mark them carefully in Sharpie marker on all sides, Dead Ellen 1–4. She put me up for adoption — I’m sending her to ministorage. She will join my tax records, my vinyl record collection, my dot matrix printer, my old typewriter, becoming a piece of my life I am unwilling to entirely unload but that is best kept off-site.

What is the half-life of a toxic box? When will I be ready to look inside — does the potential to rattle and shake lessen over time?

In the spring of 2005 I promise myself to once and for all deal with dead Ellen. I bring the boxes out of suspension, deliver them back to my apartment. Over time they have ripened; there is a certain smell to them — active disintegration. And again they sit, linger, become furniture. I stack things on top of them: suitcases, books, things of great weight. I am covertly holding them closed.

In the fall of 2005, twelve years after she found me, I take the boxes with me to Long Island for a weekend — just me and the four corrugated cardboard containers of dead Ellen. I take the boxes to the same small house where I stood in the yard and listened as my mother told me that my mother was dead. The house, then a rental, now is mine — a piece of something people call home. I take four boxes to the house on Long Island, a safe and controlled place — where like a bomb squad I plan to detonate them. I put the boxes on the kitchen table — my grandmother’s table. There is no escaping them now, no way around it.

I ask my family to stay home. I cannot do this with an audience, I have to be alone, able to sit with whatever I find. I need to not have to explain what can’t be explained — all that I am now of course trying to explain. I sit before the boxes, preparing to take inventory, giddy like a child playing the game of going through the mother’s purse, and then also feeling a more serious weight — I am the guardian, the keeper of what remains, and if I was not able to know her in life, perhaps I can crawl closer in death. Is there such a thing as intimacy after the fact? Will I find her in these boxes, will I know her any better after I am done? There is a piece of me that wishes I had taken more — perhaps if I’d taken ten boxes there’d be more of something, not just more of the same.

Box 1—the item on top is sheet music. “Hail to the Redskins.” I don’t know exactly why I was so surprised that this was the first item — was it because my biological father was a college football player, or that I could all too easily picture the two of them going to Redskins games while his wife was home with the kids? But it was especially interesting in light of other information I discovered: Ellen’s 1971 arrest for gambling — setting up a gaming table in the Sheraton Park Hotel and taking bets during a Cowboys-Redskins game — and an antitrust lawsuit that my father filed against the Redskins and pro football when he wanted to bring a new football team to town and ran into difficulty. And as soon as I see the sheet music, I also see myself at thirteen with braces in my bedroom in my parents’ house in Chevy Chase and my clarinet teacher, Mr. Schreiber, sitting beside me while I honked and screeched, stopping to lick the reed of my rented clarinet, wanting to get it right. Mr. Schreiber was the leader of the Redskins marching band — the Indian chief — who with a long headdress over his thick white hair would lead the band out onto the field at halftime.

Under the sheet music is a faux leather portfolio of photographs. I reflexively take a deep breath — preparing for what comes next — but on account of the dust, I have a coughing fit and have to go get a drink. The photos are the work of Harris & Ewing — the largest photo studio in Washington, photographers of presidents and high society — and apparently several are of my mother as an infant. In the first two portraits she is about four months old — there’s one serious, one smiling — and then she is somewhere near two, in a white dress with a big bow in her hair, white lace-up shoes, delicate and delighted — again and always looking off to the side. And then a little older, maybe three or four, posing with a big beautiful Dalmatian. And again — maybe part of the same shoot — in lederhosen or a pinafore. There is the palpable sense of her as Daddy’s little girl — devilish glimmer in the eye, she is shy and she is charming and she is defiant — and I have the strange sense that she knows more than she is able to fully understand. She is not a baby but a girl, and still and always there is a tentativeness and a need for confirmation — one can see it all. And for me there is a dull familiarity, an inescapable, unnamable relatedness — we do not look alike but in common. There is something similar in the arms, in the cheeks and the eyes — we have the same eyes.

There is a Harris & Ewing portrait of Ellen’s mother — cool, crisp, cold, proud of herself if no one else. The fact that these photos exist at all speaks to a certain kind of prosperity. The average person in the early 1940s did not have portraits taken of themselves and their children. It also reminds me of something Ellen once said to me—“Let’s have our portrait painted.” When she said it, the words seemed to exist in another world. Did she once have her portrait painted? Was it something promised that never happened? There is another photo taken on board a ship by someone else, of Ellen’s mother and a woman I assume is her mother’s mother, Mary Hannan — sometime in the 1930s. And then there is another of Mary Hannan long ago — a youthful, beautiful young woman.

Mixed between the pages there are random snapshots — Ellen playing on the beach, with her brother deep in the background. There is one that I assume is her father and brother in the backyard of their house. And then Ellen at about seven or eight standing outside the house with her brother — he is in his military school uniform, fists clenched at his side, his mother the photographer’s shadow a dark outline on the sidewalk — and by now her father is gone. And then Ellen is on a sofa next to her mother — adolescent, chubby, and excruciatingly uncomfortable. The images are frozen moments of family relation; they are documents taken to serve as proof and memory when there is no longer anyone to tell the story.

Things fall out — dozens of unopened bills with the yellow forwarding stickers from the post office, Notify Sender of New Address. Hers was a life lived in motion, spiraling down, running, barely one step ahead of herself. Envelopes slip to the floor — insurance overdue notice of $530 and another from a collection agency for $13,043.75 due to the office of comptroller of revenue. There is a set of legal papers relating to the reopening of a case filed by a family on behalf of their children to recover damages suffered by lead paint poisoning in buildings owned and managed by the defendants — specifically and especially Ellen Ballman.

There is a letter from Security National Bank: “This is to advise you that because of an unsatisfactory relationship on your account, we must request the account be closed within 15 days of this letter.” There is a commercial gas and electric bill due for over $10,000. And an envelope with an autumn 1995 Mark, Fore & Strike catalog, Fun Casual Clothing Since 1951. The odor wafting up from the box stings — it’s a little mothball, a little hamster cage, a little asthmatic, and definitely something turned sour. There’s a letter from the Maryland Department of Public Works dated June 6, 1984, a citation for general nuisance, vacant lot conditions, overgrowth of tall weeds and brush, scattered bottles, cans, and paper, a rat running along the front of the lot. The address, 4709 Langedrum Lane, Chevy Chase, Maryland. It is a few miles from where I grew up — and a place not known for rats. There is a notice of cancelation of insurance and another notice for delinquent taxes on a property on Seventh Street in Washington, D.C.

Under the photographs and all through the boxes there are notes, scraps of paper with little rhyming poems scrawled in pencil and pen and always signed “JC” (Jack). Who was he to her — a lover, an old friend, a friend of her father’s? I know from my research that he was arrested more than once for gambling, that he owned a dry cleaning store and later lived in Atlantic City. And I know how sad Ellen was when he was ill and after he died. How did they meet? He had a wife, Katherine — I see her name on some of the documents and I find a card from her to Ellen. Clearly, he cared a great deal about Ellen — he once wrote me a letter, attesting to the validity of Ellen’s stories about her mother.

The boxes are like a paper trail version of This Is Your Life. Inside one of the boxes is a smaller box marked Master Bedroom. I peel cracked cellophane tape off. Inside is an open metal file — in each compartment a manila folder, each folder trouble, a case in and of itself, literally. The rack is filled with file after file of real estate transactions gone wrong, buildings bought and sold, backup loans, trusts, deeds, dozens of letters to lawyers, lots of back-and-forth, motions to counter, depositions. Motion for leave to withdraw as counsel for plaintiff and for counterdefendant. There is nothing about this that is good news. At the back there is an old telephone message book — with duplicates. Call Rudy at work. Ms. Watson — important. Re Rose, verification was sent on wife last week. For Alex, re Lackey could he come by at 3pm today? It’s been years but I feel like returning the calls. Hi there, can you tell me about Ellen Ballman? How did you get to know her? Was she nice? Was she fair? Was she a good person? And then there is yet another file with a note on top. Please talk to Ellen about this! She’s annoying me to death about it. What does she want me to do except bring it to your attention!!! There is a piece of paper — on which someone has scrawled “For Your Information” and a notation that looks like “EB hours 300 as of 8-8-89.” (I take this to mean she has served three hundred hours of community service so far, but I could be wrong — maybe she had three hundred to go.) It is attached to a document that reads:

IN THE CIRCUIT COURT FOR MONTGOMERY

COUNTY MARYLAND

Criminal No *****

Upon consideration of Defendant’s Motion for Modification or Reduction of Sentence, the State having deferred to the Court’s ruling, and verification having been received that——has completed the terms of her probation, it is…

ORDERED, that the guilty finding against the Defendant in this case be, and the same hereby is, STRICKEN, and it is further ORDERED, that a disposition of Probation before Judgment under article 27, Section 641 be entered, and it is further ORDERED that supervised probation be, and the same hereby is TERMINATED, and case closed, and it is further ORDERED, that the hearing scheduled for August 5, 1989 be removed from the Court’s calendar.

I do not think that the above pertained to Ellen. I think it pertained to the woman who was sentenced along with her, and was sent to Ellen to prompt her to complete her community service. Curiously, the woman who was sentenced along with her was the same woman who called my mother to tell her — us — that Ellen was dead.

There are pharmacy receipts. I jot down the names of the drugs and make a note to look them up. Meprobamate, for short-term relief of the symptoms of anxiety. Tenormin, a beta blocker used to treat high blood pressure and angina pectoris. It is also used after a heart attack to improve survival. Dyazide, a potassium sparing and thiazide diuretic used to treat high blood pressure and swelling due to excess body water. Wygesic, an analgesic combination used to relieve pain. Premarin — conjugated estrogens used to reduce menopause symptoms. Imipramine, a tricyclic anti-depressant used to treat depression.

Just going through the list gives me chest pains. Maybe her father really did die of a heart attack — her maternal grandfather did at age fifty-three. Whatever was going on, it sounds complicated by her emotional state — did she have high blood pressure, did she have a heart condition? “It was all those damn diet pills,” my father said. “No matter what they said to her she wouldn’t stop taking the diet pills.” She was depressed, anxious, and dying when she checked herself out of the hospital, and she could have been saved.

Does any of this come as a shock? Not really. Among the first facts I had about my mother came from the private investigator — interestingly, an adopted woman who had never searched for her own family — who said, “In a nutshell she was indicted and driven out of town.” I never knew exactly what she was talking about, but it’s starting to make sense. I find articles about Ellen in the Washington Post—stories about her business practices, which amounted to her and a friend running a “chop shop” for documents in which they changed people’s income records, forged tax documents, and without customers’ knowledge qualified them for loans in excess of what they would otherwise be allowed to borrow. In court she admitted to falsifying documents for mortgages worth tens of millions of dollars and was sentenced to an eighteen-month suspended prison term, three years’ probation, and ordered to perform five hundred hours of community service.

What was surprising to me was how it all seemed to go on and on for years and years. The arrest and conviction were just the last straw. Not everything she did was illegal, but even that which wasn’t was done in the most difficult way possible — there was no grace. Did she plan these things? Was she scheming all along? Did she have a pathological need to make a deal, to do business in a certain way? Did she just not know how to do it the right way? It would seem that to do anything the way it was supposed to be done was fundamentally against her grain. There are times I think maybe she was a sort of Robin Hood and it’s okay, and then I think not. The possibility that it is pathological makes me want to know more about her father. I write to the FBI and request his FBI file under the Freedom of Information Act, only to find out that it was destroyed on schedule in 1971 according to government rules pertaining to document storage. But at least it confirms something — there was a file.

My mother as a kind of Bonnie and Clyde — always on the run, a Bonnie on her own always looking for Clyde, always looking for her father. And just as one worries about a genetic predisposition to a heart attack, I worry about a genetic predisposition to gambling, to midlife disaster. Will I suddenly become a criminal? I think about her in relation to the father — he too had midlife career disaster, not exactly criminal but certainly unbecoming. The bank he was president of went under largely due to a kind of good-old-boy mismanagement — the bank’s board favored loans to officers, directors, and their relatives above a responsibility to customers. I wonder if it was some sense of themselves as exempt from the rules that brought them together. Were they clever and crafty together? Did they take pleasure in their outlaw status — did they think they would somehow get away with it — what ever that might have meant? I think of Ellen in middle age — a woman with physical and emotional problems, cobbling it together, living alone in a kind of postmodern version of the Atlantic City portrayed in Louis Malle’s brilliant 1981 film.

And in the end, almost after the fact, I find an unopened letter from the Hebrew Home of Greater Washington in Rockville, Maryland, dated March 29, 1989. I open the letter, “There are no words which can fully express my sincere appreciation for your most generous gifts to the Hebrew Home. The Computers will allow us to do our work more effectively and ultimately, the residents of the Home will benefit.” The letter goes on to acknowledge the donation of four computers, five monitors, five keyboards, and a printer. I find myself wondering if this is a Robin Hood moment — all the more compelling because the letter was never opened.

There are no pictures of her at seventeen — the age when my father asked her to marry him. No pictures of her at twenty-two, pregnant with me, no pictures of her in the hospital — holding me, dressing me in my “going-home” outfit. Do those pictures exist, were they in some other box I didn’t find? What did she dress like in the 1950s, when she worked for my father at the Princess Shop? After all, that was the time of the French designer knockoff — Dior’s A-line, Givenchy’s sack, the boxy Chanel jacket, the swing coat, perfect for hiding a pregnancy. Did she like the new “modern” materials, nylon, Crimplene, and Orlon? Did she wear cone bras or all-in-one girdles? Was she the kind of teenager who dressed like an adult, or was she wearing poodle skirts, bobby sox, and going to drive-in movies? What was she thinking? This was the era of atomic anxiety, of Perry Como, Dean Martin, Connie Francis, and the beehive hairdo. It was the time of air-raid sirens and fallout shelters, the Rosenberg electrocutions and the McCarthy hearings. This was Washington, D.C., in the 1950s — and it was prime time for my mother.

I had hoped to find her in these boxes, to find a description of her childhood, the games she had played, clues to her troubled relationship with her mother and what she really knew about her father, her memories, the trinkets that she kept as talismans to protect or guide her. I hoped to have some idea of how she saw herself, what her hopes and dreams had been. I wanted to know her secrets.

I take the empty boxes to the dump, crack them in half, and toss them into the recycling bin — I am sending dead Ellen around once more. Maybe she’ll come back as napkins or paper or some kind of shopping bag. I hurl the old metal file into one of the bins. It lands hard, the sound exploding like a grenade — everyone turns and looks. I shrug. I throw away the old mail, the scraps of paper, the bits and pieces, keeping enough to fill one box — a box to remind me. I put the box in the car and drive it back to New York, where it waits in a corner of my apartment, and then once again gets sent to ministorage.

It is 2005 and all I can think is that this is not how the woman who was so concerned about appearances would want to have been seen, this is not how the woman with thirty-two Chanel lipsticks would want to have been presented — but this is who she is and what she left behind.

Imagining my mother.

I think of my mother and imagine a young woman who hoped for more. I think of my mother and try to inhabit her experience.

In the 1950s ladies still wore hats and gloves and men wore overcoats. Young men and women met at socials, organized dances, chaperoned. The men hoped to go to college; the women hoped.

At Catholic school the nuns told Ellen very little about the birds and the bees and a lot about sin and all that could go wrong. Almost everything already had gone wrong for Ellen, but no one acknowledged that. She was surrounded by people who didn’t want to know, and quickly learned that faith got her nothing — in fact her belief that something would save her got her into trouble. At Catholic school she protected herself by insisting — at least to herself — that she was Jewish. Her mother was Catholic, her father was Jewish, and she always described herself as her father’s little girl.

Pin money. Her mother didn’t have much — whatever she had she got from her new husband, and she didn’t want to share. Ellen got a job working in the dress shop — one night, weekends, and holidays, and a good discount. She liked working, liked acting like a grown-up — helping the ladies with their shopping. They treated her in the motherly sort of way that she wished her own mother would.

Ellen opened a bank account — vowing to save half, or at least part, of what she earned. She had a future. The boss offered her a ride home — she accepted. In the car they talked. Again, her boss offered her a ride home, she accepted, and he asked if she wanted to go out for dinner.

And then again her boss offered her a ride, took her out to dinner, and after dinner they parked the car somewhere where they could talk. She asked him about what he hoped to be, what dreams he had — he found that appealing. He appeared interested in her — she found that appealing. She was practicing on him — being girlish and tempting. He took it as an opportunity. Imagine the fumbling. He wants it but doesn’t want to say what it is; she doesn’t want it but has no idea how to set a limit.

Where did it start — in a car, in a hotel, in the back of the store, in a borrowed place? What did he say to her? Did he believe it himself, did she believe him? How often did it happen? Does he think he’s stealing something — sampling something he shouldn’t? What part of her is his favorite? Imagine her newly formed figure, fresh, tender, perfect. Imagine him. Does she worry about getting pregnant — does she even know how girls get pregnant? Does he worry about it?

This is their courtship; she is waiting, she is waiting for him, she is waiting while he is at work, while he is with his family. While she is waiting she does mischievous things; she tells her friends, she makes sure her mother finds out, she thinks there is cachet in the fact that she is the younger girl of a much older man. She wants something else, something more — more than she wants him — but what she gets is sex, and then he’s gone. He has her in ways his wife would never allow, gets from her things he would otherwise never think to ask.

They go for drinks — martinis, gimlets, or Tom Collinses, mai tais, Singapore slings, and sea breezes. They snack on salty cocktail nuts and have prime rib and salad of iceberg lettuce with Maytag blue cheese dressing.

He offers to set her up in a place of her own — she’s thinking they’re setting up house, he’s thinking it’s a place to be alone with her. She’s thinking it’s a way out, an escape from her mother — and her mother’s husband. She accepts defiantly, half in anger, half wishing her mother could stop her — knowing she will not allow herself to be stopped.

At seventeen she is the boss of herself; she is glad to be getting out from under her mother’s coldness, the years of opposition, out from under the eye and hand of her stepfather.

“He’s nice to me — he cares about me,” she tells her mother.

“He doesn’t care about you — married men don’t care about girls like you,” her mother says.

“He’s getting an apartment for us.”

“He’s never going to leave his wife.”

“He’s going to marry me.”

“He’s already married.”

She starts to pack a suitcase.

“There is something wrong with you,” her mother says.

“You are what’s wrong with me,” Ellen says.

“I would send you to boarding school, but now that you’re ruined the nuns won’t take you — no one wants used goods.”

Her mother grabs the suitcase. “It’s my suitcase, I never said you could use it.”

Ellen gets paper bags, grocery sacks from the kitchen. She packs her clothes in the paper bags. Her mother goes through her dresser drawers throwing things at her. Ellen goes into the attic and finds an old traveling bag that had been her father’s — later she finds a dead mouse in it, a shriveled furry husk. She stuffs her bags with clothing, with the trinkets from the top of her dresser, with the stuffed animals her father gave her long ago. She goes out to the door.

“If you go out that door, don’t think you’re ever coming back,” her mother yells after her.

He is not waiting for her outside — he is afraid of her mother. He is down the street, around the corner. She toddles off, dropping things on the sidewalk as she goes.

The apartment is in a big building on Connecticut Avenue, a small one-bedroom in the back, with a view of another apartment. It is “furnished.”

Whose furniture was it? The woman who lived there before — who finally got married, who took a job in Ohio, who went home to live with her mother, who died lonely of old age at forty. Whose was it really? It was a little of this and that, what people left behind, what no one wanted.

They have fun together — he is able to play with her, to joke and push in a way that he has never been able to before. He has always been the one teased. She tolerates it because it is familiar, and she gives it back to him and then some. He teaches her to drive — he teases her, she gets mad, and he laughs all the more.

When he is not there, she sleeps with the stuffed animals she brought from home.

It is incredibly quiet. She has a radio and then a secondhand television set, and later a phone. There are a few mismatched dishes in the kitchen cabinets, things he’s taken from his mother’s basement, telling her it’s for the kids to play with or needed at the house. There are crocheted rugs on the floor — all of it is a little nubbly, a little dark and depressing, an echo of World War II, but she gets plants and sometimes she gets flowers and she feels like a grown-up, a woman with a home of her own. She sleeps with the light on. If she has one of her high school girlfriends over — they lie and say they are going to someone else’s house — they roast marshmallows on the gas stove, eat candy for dinner, and go to the movies and drink coffee for breakfast. There are other times when she goes to a friend’s house — and is reminded of what most girls/other girls are doing, living at home with their mothers and fathers, eating dinner in the dining room, wearing clothing that is washed and ironed for them, feeling protected. The mothers feel sorry for her and worry that she might be a bad influence. She walks to the zoo, she takes the bus downtown, and she works in the clothing store.

He and she are a good match, except that he is already married and is not going to divorce his wife, and she is already emotionally on edge. They are two people who lost their childhoods, two whose parents abandoned them to one degree or another, two people a little bit lost. I see her entertaining him, tempting and teasing him. I see him as being fatherly and calming and temperate, and I see the two of them having drinks and going wild. I see him excusing himself, washing up, and going home. I see her being angry and taking it out on him — she is dramatic and an actress.

I see her in cashmere sweaters. I see her body, new and fresh and entirely unmarked. I see her and him simultaneously discovering themselves. I see them going out on the town. I see a certain amount of swagger and bravado.

And sometimes he doesn’t have time — his wife needs him, his kids need him. Sometimes he brings one of the kids. His oldest boy waits in the living room while they talk privately for a few minutes in the bedroom; the talking involves giggling and sighing. And then he tells her he can’t do it anymore, it’s too hard on his family. He tells her he means it this time.

She cries. She thinks she will die. She is sure she will die, she feels sick, and she feels pain in her chest. She is up all night. She drinks. She calls a friend of his, his buddy — she cannot bear to be alone.

He returns, promising that soon he will be hers completely. She pretends she is not going to take him back — she pretends she has fallen for his friend. The friend gives her some money — he also gives her something that itches.

She is lonely. She goes out at cocktail hour, to get back at him, to remind him that she is alone and he is married with children. Men buy her drinks, sometimes they buy her dinner. He is irate. He is trying to be in two places at the same time. His wife has found out. She tells him that the girl can’t work at the store anymore.

When she is alone, she eats peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and drinks the liquor he has left behind. At night, when she’s sleeping, she sometimes hears the sound of the men who brought her father home — she hears their voices, their footsteps. She remembers being asleep when it happened, waking up, being afraid to open the door. She remembers looking through the keyhole — seeing her father’s arm hanging limp. She remembers being terrified.

His wife has told him to stop. He has told his wife that it is over and done — he tells Ellen that it is over and done. He sneaks around. He is angry with both of them for wanting so much — for wanting more, wanting it all.

There are times she wants to leave him. She tells him she has met someone new — it is a little bit true. She tries, she attempts to replace him, but it never lasts long. She spends time with friends of his — maybe they have wives, maybe not. Once she spent the night with a friend and his wife.

I picture Norman furious and jealous.

She and his wife are at the same holiday party — they see each other across the room, they know who they are. He is there with his wife, and he ignores Ellen — or tries to. She drinks too much and throws up on the new sea green carpet in the dining room. Someone has to drive her home.

“What was she doing there?”

“She was invited.”

“She should know better.”

“He should know better.”

Red faced.

What is she thinking? She wants to be a little girl, she wants to be taken care of, loved — she thinks his wife could take care of her if only she wanted to. It’s a strange thought but it makes a measure of sense to her — she wants to be part of a family.

And then she is pregnant.

Does she know she is pregnant, or does someone have to tell her?

Does she confide her symptoms to a girlfriend who says, You’re pregnant!

Does she go to the doctor thinking she’s ill?

Does she know that his wife is pregnant too?

She waits to tell him. The day he calls to tell her that his mother has died, she blurts, “We’re going to have a baby.” She wasn’t exactly planning on doing it this way, but it just comes out.

She is thinking that it is good news, that it will make him happy, that now finally they will be together.

He is speechless.

His mother is dead, his wife is pregnant, and now she is too.

What was supposed to be a moment that would inexorably bond them — sharing the grief of his mother’s death, sharing the news of a baby on the way — is all too much.

She is angry with him for not being pleased. He is angry with her for not being more careful.

They fight.

She is angry with herself and she is justifiably angry with the world. Is she angry with her baby?

He sends her to Florida, promising to follow. She waits for him; he never shows up. When she moves back to Maryland they get an apartment together; he stays for four days before going home.

He offers to take her shopping to buy things for the baby.

His wife finds out that she is pregnant and lays down the law.

At some point she tells her mother, or maybe her mother just figures it out. Her mother looks at her and says, “You’re pregnant, aren’t you?”

She nods, wishing someone would have something nice to say. She likes being pregnant, likes the feel of this baby growing inside her, but has no idea what to do. She talks to her baby — she asks the baby, What should I do?

More pregnant and now unable to find work, she moves in with her mother, who has divorced the second husband.

In the end, in labor, she is alone at the hospital. And she still has the fantasy that he will come, that he will snap out of it and rush to her side. She wants to call him. A hundred times she wants to tell the nurse to dial his number.

“Where is your husband?” someone asks, and she cries hysterically.

The baby is beautiful. The nurses encourage her not to hold the baby. “After all, you’ll never see her again,” one of them says.

“You’re making it up,” someone says to me. Maybe and maybe not. I’m certainly imagining it. The only other option is for someone to tell me how it was, what really happened.

I think of Ellen and Norman before this, I picture them in the spring driving along the Potomac River in Washington, D.C., in a powder blue Cadillac convertible, the radio playing, wind blowing through their hair, and thinking, This is it, this is the life.

The Electronic Anthropologist

Claire Ballman

Jewel Rosenberg

I am compelled to look for more information — I have always known things that I don’t know that I know. Unidentifiable bits and pieces would visit me in my mind’s eye as if somewhere between dream and reality, but now I want to understand what I know and why.

The twenty-first-century search for roots is decidedly different from what it was as recently as the late 1990s. Now it is all about the Internet — Google, Ancestry.com, RootsWeb, and JewishGen. It is about electronic message boards and user-submitted family trees, and all of it a far cry from the days when you pulled out the family Bible and checked the names written in the front, when cousins lived next door, when you sat down and talked with old folks who, even if they weren’t related, had known your family intimately for generations.

On the Internet, one can within seconds locate the long-lost and create a portrait of family out of the scraps of information that float randomly like atoms smashed, like fractured molecules desperate to reconnect. Every clue leads to another; first you find that there are several versions of the person you are looking for — the wrong ones, the almost right ones, and then the one.

Genealogical research is currently one of the top-ranked hobbies in the United States — in some ways it’s more like a sport, collecting ancestors like baseball cards. It’s also a kind of couch potato way of traveling through time — it’s done in isolation, at odd hours, in a virtual world — and yet it is about connection, getting back in touch. And it is addictive. I am at it round the clock, a twenty-first-century Sherlock Holmes, trying to make this information age work for me. I pay $200 to join Ancestry.com. I buy electronic multipacks of articles from the Washington Post archive. I am perpetually punching in my credit card information — blindly buying anything that might be relevant.

I begin with my father’s parents. I do not know their names, I know only that my mother told my father she was pregnant on the day his mother died — so I’m thinking it had to be sometime in 1961. I search the Washington Post archive and there she is, my grandmother Georgia Hecht — passed away on April 11, 1961. (Not so long ago, in my collection of stories Things You Should Know, I wrote about an unmarried woman getting pregnant. She names the child Georgica. Conscience, or coincidence?)

Each time I locate something — a detail, a fact, a missing fragment of information — I have the sense of having made a match. Something lights up. Bingo! We have a winner! And for a moment everything is clear, and then just as quickly I am all too aware that still, always and forever, there will be an enormous amount that remains a mystery.

My father’s father is more difficult. Before I find him I locate his mother’s parents. I put the name Georgia Hecht into a 1930 census search and find her living with my father, who is five, at her parents’ house in Washington, D.C. Now not only do I have her maiden name — Slye — but I have her mother and father, my great-grandparents Mary Elizabeth Slye and Chapman Augustus Slye. I discover that Chapman A. Slye was a steamboat captain and also find in quick succession a dozen great-aunts and-uncles.

Within a week, I have traced the Slye family back to George Slye, born in Lapworth, Warwick, England, in 1564. I locate Robert Slye, born July 8, 1627, in England, who came to America and in 1654 was named as one of the parliamentary commissioners to govern Maryland under Oliver Cromwell, lord high protector of England. He was also speaker of the Lower House of the Maryland General Assembly and captain of the colonial militia in St. Mary’s County, and served as a St. Mary’s County Court justice. Linda Reno, a wonderfully generous researcher I meet online, forwards a historical note showing that on April 24, 1649, a court in Hartford, Connecticut, fined Robert Slye ten pounds of tobacco for exchanging a gun with an Indian.

I am in the Washington Post archive looking up the Slyes, and there — buried in the January 25, 1955, obituary of Mary Elizabeth Slye, wife of the late Captain Chapman A. Slye, mother of “Mrs. Irving Hecht” (aka Georgia Slye) — is the information I’ve been looking for: Irving Hecht — my father’s father. I try to find Irving Hecht in the census and can’t — it is as though he was absent on the day in 1930 when they counted all the people. Who was he? Where was he? What were the circumstances that took him away from his wife and son? What did he do for a living?

Once it begins, the search is urgent; I am up in the night surfing, connecting the dots. Suddenly there are pieces of information I can’t live without. Locating Irving Hecht takes me several more hours, but when I find his obituary — Thursday, July 5, 1956—I also find his brothers, Nathan of New York, Arthur S. of San Francisco, my great-uncles!

And as I am finding the right people I am also just as rapidly finding others that are right for a moment and then are proven wrong. For a long time I am sure one of the Harry Hechts is my grandfather, and then before I find the right Irving Hecht, I find the wrong Irving Hecht, living with his wife, Anna, and young son, Bertram, in Brooklyn on January 6, 1920. With each discard comes the lingering sense that invariably we’re all interconnected, all responsible for one another, and that no one Hecht is any more or less compelling than the next. Coming from a position of having no history, having any history, even if it is the wrong history, is fascinating. Every life lived is of interest.

Bloodlines — I find myself more and more interested in the strangers I never knew, in the blood relations that are unveiling themselves before me. I notice that I am not as motivated to dig for the history of the mother and father I grew up with, and am not sure why. Is it because I already feel familiar and familial with them — or is there something psychically unique about discovering this new biological narrative? There is no escaping that what I am finding resonates; there is the hum of identification, a sense of wholeness and well-being. On a cellular level it makes sense — it matches. And simultaneously there is a kind of contradiction, a challenge to who I think I am, how I experience myself. The best way I can describe this experience, which eludes conventional language, is to say I think of this as the difference or dissonance between the unknown or dormant biological self that I arrived with and the adopted, adapted self that I became. The looking, the digging awakens numb spots, labyrinths in my own experience, in my ability to process. I feel a peculiar overexcited high and at other moments a devastating depression. I continue to dig, thinking that if I consume information, I will be able to inhabit it, I will feel more complete — not realizing that perhaps the exact opposite is just as possible.

The desire to know oneself and one’s history is not always equal to the pain the new information causes. At times I have to slow down to accommodate a self that is constantly struggling to catch up, to recalibrate. I go to bed at midnight, and at 2 A.M. find myself at my desk — logging on. In the middle of the day I nap. My brain is constantly reshuffling the files and organizing and accommodating the new information. On the one hand I want to know my history, and on the other it is overwhelming to become aware of so many lives and to realize that most, if not all, of my ancestors are completely ignorant of my history and/or even my existence. There is a part of me that resents how hard I am working to locate information that they have lived with all along — information that is theirs for the asking.

I am looking at the records of the Slyes of St. Mary’s County, who owned other people and who sold or gave them away. I am looking at these early settlers wondering, What were they thinking? Why, having come from such incredible privilege, did they not do more with their lives? They got here first, came with land and labor and power, and what did they end up building for themselves? Why did none become president, or direct a large corporation? Why did they not lay the railroad, or discover electricity? Why did they not start a nonprofit or fund philanthropy? I am frustrated with them for falling through the cracks of history. I think a lot about responsibility — did they take responsibility for who they were and what they did? What quality of people were they? And why does it mean so much to me? Why do I need for them to be good — better than good — need them to be great?

These are my souls.

I go to the New York City Municipal Archives at 31 Chambers Street. To get in, you have to show identification, tell them what you are there for, get a pass, and then go through metal detectors. I am stopped because somewhere in my bag I have a pair of tweezers. I leave the tweezers at the desk. In room 103, I sign in and pay $5 to use the microfilm machines. The people who work there have been there forever — they know the contents of each of the flat metal drawers, they know the Soundex system of organizing information, the difference between a marriage license and a marriage certificate. They know how to dig for buried treasure — but they are cranky about answering questions. It is like a civil servant episode of Taxi, with Danny DeVito playing the hostile clerk behind the counter.

Still, there is an undeniable beauty to the things found in this room — reels and reels of microfilm, images of lives lived long ago, documents writ in an ornate Old World hand of variable legibility. I go through the reels slowly at first, not wanting to fast-forward, not wanting to miss anyone, feeling like each one of them is due a visitor, an appreciation.

The room is full of people each piecing together their private puzzles and the first thing that occurs to me is they’re not all adopted — so what are they looking for? I remind myself that the quest to answer the question Who am I? is not unique to the adoptee. In this room everyone is looking for something that will help them either confirm or deny part of what they believe about themselves. They are looking for backup, support, for definition. They are all deep in it — buried in names, dates, codes — but most are also happy to render assistance. Some volunteer helpful hints, while others tell their stories. I often ask, “How long have you been at it?” “Seven years,” one woman tells me. “It started as a hobby, a birthday present for my husband,” another says. “It started when my father died,” another woman says. “Have you tried the Italians? They keep good records, even on the Jews.”

Another woman leans over and whispers, “Have you been to Salt Lake City?” Salt Lake is “the mountain,” the mecca for genealogical information — home base for the Mormons, who go around the world collecting genealogical data. Every month five to six thousand reels of microfilm are added to their collection. Unbeknownst to much of the general population, the reason the Mormon Church has such wonderful genealogical records is that they’re collecting people — they hope to determine the genealogy of everyone in the world to prepare them for posthumous conversion. Basically they’re making Mormons from the dead — baptism by proxy. They have a purification ritual through which they claim you as their own. There has been outrage from the Jewish community because the Mormons took the information of Holocaust victims — people who were killed because of their religion — and made them Mormons. In 1995 the LDS church said it would honor an agreement to stop the proxy baptisms of Holocaust victims and other deceased Jews, and yet it continues. “And they are making more Mormons every day. I went once for two weeks,” the woman tells me. “It was heaven. Think about it,” she says.

There is the whir of the machines, juxtaposed against the virtual silence in which everyone works — it is difficult to stay focused. Repeatedly and anxiously I lose track of what I am looking for. A guy in a white shirt is hogging the files; he’s got multiple drawers open, his arms filled with reels, and he’s blocking the way. The rule is one reel at a time — take it, look at it, and put it back — which also makes it harder to misfile upon return. “Excuse me,” I say, “it’s one reel at a time.” He ignores me. “Excuse me,” I try again. “Just a minute,” he grumps, digging through a drawer. I push my leg against the drawer, threatening to close it on his hand. “Excuse me — Is your dead person somehow more important than anyone else’s?”

I find marriage certificates for David and Rika Hecht, my paternal great-grandparents, both born in Germany, and with each come the names of their parents, my great-great-grandparents: Nathan Hecht and Regina Grunbaum and Isaac Ehrenreich and Rosa Steigerwald. Within the hour I have birth certificates for Irving (born Isaac), Arthur Samson, and Nathan — my grandfather and great-uncles.

I locate Moriz Billman, born in Gomel, Russia, in 1846, who came into America in 1888 with a second wife and children from two marriages, and who later petitioned to become a citizen of the United States as Morris Bellman of 466 Bergen Street in Brooklyn. I find Billmans who became Bellmans and then Ballmans. I get a copy of the marriage license of my maternal grandfather, Bernard Bellman, to my maternal grandmother, Clara Kahn, and find that Bernard was married before and in 1925 divorced a woman named Margaret R. Bellman. Did his children — my mother and her brother — know? Were there other children from the first marriage? The man at the desk tells me that if I am curious I can look upstairs on the seventh floor — if the divorce was filed in New York City, I might just find it there.

With each name and date comes imagery. I start making mental pictures of who they were — who I might be. I am the granddaughter of an English Southern belle. I am the granddaughter of a Romanian/French immigrant. I am the granddaughter of the Lithuanian farmer girl, the granddaughter of the Russian bookie, the granddaughter of an Irishwoman. I am the adopted daughter of the guidance counselor and the left-wing artist and the biological daughter of the philandering adulterer and the wayward girl, the little girl lost.

I am back in time, wading across a clear running creek. I am a farmer on a plantation, I am captain of a ship. I am the woman in a long white dress, my curly hair high up on my head; I am feeling the heat of summer — the Southern humidity, the thick stagnant afternoon air, the coming of thunderstorms. I am conjuring sea captains and drinking glasses of blood red wine. This is the stuff of poems and fever dreams. I am of a plantation and I can say I knew it all along at some preconscious level. I am imagining the lives of indentured servants and slaves — some of whom had the very same names as the people I am looking for. When were they freed and where did they go?

What becomes clear is that all of this is about narrative — the story told. I can’t escape the oddity of how it happened that I, a person without a past, became a novelist, a storyteller working from my imagination to create lives that never existed. Every family has a story that it tells itself — that it passes on to the children and grandchildren. The story grows over the years, mutates; some parts are sharpened, others dropped, and there is often debate about what really happened. But even with these different sides of the same story, there is still agreement that this is the family story. And in the absence of other narratives it becomes the flagpole that the family hangs its identity from.

As children we are all gullible by nature. It doesn’t occur to us to question the family narrative; we accept it as fact, not recognizing that it is a story, a multilayered collaborative fiction. Think of the variations, the implications in terms of time, place, social status and structure. You are from Topeka and have been for five generations; your grandfather was a preacher, your grandmother half Indian. Or your grandmother is from a small village in Italy; she came here after her entire family was killed in a flood of volcanic ash when Mount Vesuvius erupted. Your mother was married once before and had a child she gave away — somewhere you have a sister. Your mother was out walking one night and someone came up behind her — and the product was you.

I take the elevator to the seventh floor. The smell of stale paper smacks you as soon as the elevator door opens; the hallways are filled with metal shelving units, packed with paper, precariously perched files that are threatening to tumble onto the floor. This is the history of New York, the history of America — and it’s as though I’ve plunged into a Coen brothers movie.

It is a room of tables pushed together into a center square. There are current and not so current newspapers on the table and people sitting around, doing nothing — I am not sure if they work here or are people with nowhere to go. Maybe this is a historical day treatment center; maybe people are doing a certain kind of “time.” The room is absent of air, of the passage of minutes, hours, and years. “Where would I find a divorce from the 1920s?” I ask the entire room. One man perks up. “Might be over here in the card catalog,” he says, nodding toward the corner. There are huge metal cabinets, with cards for each lawsuit filed. Next to the card catalogs there is a large metal locker. Curious, I pry the door open. Old directories sigh and crumbling pages tumble out, dumping what looks like sawdust — or mouse bedding — onto the floor. Quickly I close the door and go back to the card catalogs. Again, I am flying blind, looking for anything and everything under any of the names on my list — Hecht, Bellman, Ballman, Billman.

“What kind of case is this?” I say, showing the man the card for Hecht vs. in RE.

“Oh, that’s going to be interesting,” the clerk tells me. Is he serious, or sarcastic? “The in RE cases usually mean that someone was either a minor or otherwise incompetent to represent themselves.”

Just the phrase, “In Re:,” gets my mind going. I sing to myself, “In Re:, a drop of golden sun.”

“If you want the files you have to fill out a request — the old cases are stored off-site.”

“Great, where’s the form?”

“Sixty Chambers Street. Room 114.”

Sixty Chambers Street is impossible to find, even though it’s supposedly right around the corner. The narrow streets of lower Manhattan are dwarfed by large hulking buildings — some incredibly old, others more modern fortresses. Between the buildings there are police patrolling with machine guns in hand — this is our new world, post 9/11, and we seem to believe that people patrolling with guns makes us safer. There is a prison right there and a woman standing guard outside with a flak jacket and a big gun. “Excuse me, where is 6 °Chambers Street?” She tells me, “I have no idea,” and in a minute I discover that it is just across the street, and I’m thinking it’s a problem that the guard doesn’t know where she is and doesn’t seem to care — especially if she had to tell someone where she was or which way someone went.

The dissonance is shocking — on the outside there is the Jersey wall, men and women with guns, the bright wash of summer light, the incredible baking heat, and inside, the smell of age, of mold and dust and things not touched for fifty years. I am depressed as hell, reminded of how unattached I am, and how crazy it is to do this digging — nobody cares. Whatever I find, it’s only ephemera, the thinnest bits of information. I think of the papers that blew from lower Manhattan into Brooklyn when the World Trade towers fell, burned notes from people’s desks, and how people clung to these scraps as if they held the secrets of the world, of creation.

At 6 °Chambers the guard at the metal detector stops me and I confess that I have tweezers in my bag. He doesn’t care. All he wants to know is, “Do you have a camera on your phone?” No. Inside I file my requests. It’s noon. I am exhausted.

From my apartment I am exchanging e-mails with strangers and with relatives I have known for the whole of my life. I pull the adoptive relations in a little closer. I have the sense of belonging to my adoptive family more than I did as a child — this comes from having shared the experience of growing up within a narrative that, while it is not my own biologically, is now mine socially and culturally. I write to my adoptive maternal relatives in Paris and London. From them I collect tales of Jacob Spitzer’s dairy farm on the Mohawk Trail in North Adams, Massachusetts — the dog, the cow, the horses, Nigger and Dick. There are stories about the children (the great-aunts and-uncles that I grew up with), Lena, Henry, Helen — who died in 1912 of diphtheria at fourteen — Maurice, Samuel, Solomon, (known as Charlie), Harold, Doris, and my beloved grandmother Julia Beatrice.

I collect information about Simon Rosenberg and Sophie Rothman — my adoptive maternal great-grandparents, born in the 1870s in Braila, Romania, a town on the Danube. My grandfather, Bernard, their eldest child, was born there in 1896, and by 1898 the family moved to an apartment at 64 rue Vieille du Temple in the Marais district of Paris. In France they had a successful hat factory and a very large family. My great-aunts and-uncles there include Rachel, who burned to death at three when the children were left home alone and her dress caught fire — my grandfather and his brother tried unsuccessfully to put the fire out. Among the other children were Joffre (who died at six), Raymond, Etienette, Henriette (who lived for six days), Adele, Maurice and Julien (who both died at Auschwitz), Emmanuel (who died of wounds in World War II), and another brother, Leon. In 1972, when my grandfather died in Washington, I got two of his hats, a winter hat and a summer hat. Elegant and understated, he never went out without a hat. At thirteen, I visited Paris and met Adele and Etienette. We went to 64 rue Vieille du Temple — my grandfather’s family name was still on the buzzer, more than fifty years after the fact.

Through my adoptive father, several aunts in Florida, and a cousin ten blocks from me in New York, I cobble together the story of my adoptive paternal grandfather and grandmother — Jacob Homes and Minerva Katz. Throughout my childhood they never spoke of their past — I knew them only as hardworking people with a fondness for cheese Danish and stewed fruit. Jacob Homes (Homelsky) was born in Russia in 1892 and had three sisters and a brother. In 1910 he walked from Russia to Finland and found work on a boat, which landed him first in Canada and then in Philadelphia — where he earned enough to bring his mother and siblings to this country. In 1916 he met Manya Kvasnikaya (Minerva Katz) from Ekaterinoslav, Russia.

Minerva, the youngest daughter in a large family, was a late-in-life baby, rejected by her parents and largely raised by her oldest sister. She was educated for two years in a Russian school and then tutored by someone who gave her lessons while she sat atop a pickle barrel at the herring stall her sister ran. At home, Minerva slept above the oven on a bed of straw.

As a young teenager she traveled to the United States with her sister and brother-in-law, and they settled in northern New Jersey. She worked as a cashier in Atlantic City, went to school through sixth grade, and later lived in Philadelphia with a woman who sold goods to immigrants. There Minerva slept on a board over the bathtub.

In Philadelphia, Jacob Homes delivered meat from the butcher to the house where Minerva was living — he liked her because she could read and write. They married; a first son died at birth. In 1918 Joseph Meyer Homes, my adoptive father, was born, followed by five sisters. No one recalls whether Jacob’s father came to this country — but all believe he was killed in an accident, run over by a wagon.

In 1929, when they were living in New Jersey, the family’s butcher shop burned down and they moved to Washington, D.C., where Minerva’s brother lived. In Washington Jacob found a tank in a junk pile, filled it with gasoline, and took it to the farmers’ market — selling gas by the five-gallon bucket to the farmers for their return trips after the market. He progressed to selling gas on the streets for ten cents a gallon and grew the business into the Homes Oil Company.

It was only when I started asking questions about the family history that my adoptive father told me one of the stranger stories of his youth — a moment where his own history collided with a particularly ugly and now forgotten moment in American history. In July 1932, he was working at his father’s gas station on Maryland Avenue in Washington, D.C., when generals Douglas MacArthur and George S. Patton lead four troops of cavalry, four troops of infantry, a mounted machine gun squadron, and six tanks on a mission ordered by President Hoover to run the “Bonus Marchers” out of town. Soldiers on horseback with bayonets chased the Marchers — World War I veterans — out of their makeshift housing. Men and animals came charging right through the gas station. My grandfather grabbed my father and pulled him to safety. The story of my father and the Bonus Marchers — twenty thousand unemployed World War I veterans who marched on Washington, demanding payment of a cash bonus — is one that I hear for the first time when I am forty-four years old. I am thrilled to have it. I feel as though I’m slowly reconstructing an ancient lost tapestry.

At home in New York the electronic dig continues. I hire two researchers to help me — one in New York and one just outside Washington, D.C. We communicate by e-mail only. I tell them about the bits and pieces, the fragments of facts that I’m looking for, and they go in search. I am happy to have more than one mind on this — more than one thought pattern trying to piece the puzzle together.

I am in correspondence with someone living in Israel who may be related to my adopted father’s family in New Brunswick, New Jersey. I am talking with the Reverend John Gray in Ohio, whose interest in genealogy was sparked by the idea that he might be related to his movie hero, Roy Rogers, aka Leonard Franklin Slye. The Reverend Gray sadly reports that he is not related to Roy, but in all likelihood I am — Roy was a Slye from Warwickshire, England, and Ohio. I am exchanging regular e-mails with Linda Reno in St. Mary’s County, Maryland. She is, in fact, a distant relative and has done enormous research charting the Slye family. Each of my correspondents is as nearby as the computer keyboard, and yet as ethereal and vaporous as memory itself. And still and always I feel on the outside. I worry that at any minute I will be busted, and my pen pals will say, You are not part of this family, and you are not entitled to this information. With my chest tight I e-mail Linda Reno confessing my illegitimacy, and when I don’t hear back for two days I am terrified — and then enormously relieved when I do, and her response is warm, genuine, and accepting.

It goes on for months — in waves. I hunt and gather and then, exhausted and often disheartened, I stop and I pull myself together and do it again. I become convinced that I can crack the case of my biological maternal grandmother’s second husband — I have what I am quite sure is a photo of him and my grandmother, on what looks like a New Year’s Eve in the 1950s. I find a lot of Barney Ackermans in Florida; it seems like the kind of place where a Barney Ackerman would retire. I find a scrap of information that seems to indicate there was a Barney Ackerman who died in Canada in the 1990s but I can’t piece it together. When were Barney Ackerman and Clare Kahn Ballman married and divorced? Finally, through the Washington, D.C., researcher there is a crack in the case — she finds the wedding license. They were married September 22, 1950. Ellen would have been twelve years old at the time — vulnerable to this already twice-married stepfather. Another crack in the case brings me his obituary — it lists him as a dry cleaner and says that he was born in Calgary, Alberta, Canada, and died March 28, 1993, at the time of his death married to Jeanne Ackerman of Hebron, Nova Scotia. That makes at least four marriages — with the first divorce in Florida, the second in Reno, the third probably in northern Virginia around 1960. He has one daughter and at the time of his death one granddaughter. Did Ellen know he died — was she relieved? It was never clear to me what Ellen’s relationship to this man was. From what she said to me in phone conversations and from what Norman was later able to add, my sense is that the relationship was at least to a degree sexualized and made her very uncomfortable.

More digging. I find Pearl B. Klein, sister of Bernard Bellman, admitted to the Washington, D.C., bar in 1924 at the same time as her husband, Alfred Klein, who later became chief law officer of the Civil Service Union.

I find Bernard Bellman’s brother John (born Jake) Bellman, whose son Richard became a major figure in the mathematics world, conceiving the idea of “dynamic programming.” Richard taught at Princeton and Stanford and worked for the Rand Corporation and at Los Alamos, while also writing forty books related to mathematical theory. I go back and forth through the material and each time I sift, new crumbs fall out — last names, the married names of sisters, the names of uncles, cousins, locations, each bit a piece of the puzzle.

My search expands. I use Internet search engines such as AnyWho.com to locate addresses for random people named Slye, Bellman, Ballman, Hecht (there’s almost no one named Homes). I write letters explaining that I am a journalist working on a family history project and would like to talk with them. As exciting as it is, I find it difficult to get the letters into the mail, difficult to make the follow-up calls. I want to talk to them, but I worry they won’t want to talk to me — and by the way, what am I going to say if and when they ask me who I am?

I hire a graduate student to help me make the first round of calls, answering any basic questions — establishing that, yes, this is a legitimate research project. I do the follow-up interviews. I speak with two Slyes who happen to be reverends, Harry in Texas and John in Virginia — neither knows the other, but both are incredibly nice, warm, forthcoming, proud of their family. I talk with Chapman Slye, who runs twenty-eight school cafeterias in Fredericksburg, Virginia, and is named after my great-grandfather. Chapman tells me about the family ties to the Eastern Shore of Maryland, about the adventures he had with his grandfather Harry E. “Skipper” Slye Sr., a shipmaster who lived to be 102 years old and guided boats up the Potomac River until he was eighty-five. He also suggests I talk with his mother, widow of Harry E. Slye Jr. I speak with her and numerous other Slye cousins. And when I ask about Georgia Slye Hecht, no one seems to remember much, except that she was “formidable,” “dominant,” and many of them were a little scared of her — especially women marrying into the family. The Slyes I speak with are a lovely, hardworking, earnest, good-natured group, very proud of their family history; but as in many American families, each successive generation seems to move farther from the family seat and is less in touch with its extended family, less aware of the family history. They ask me nothing about how I might be related to the family and when I ask one of them if there was any intermarriage, he tells me that the biggest thing was when Catholics married into the family. There is no sense of there ever having been a Jew among them — no mention of Georgia Slye marrying Irving Hecht — which gives me further insight into my biological father, Norman’s, determination to go out of his way to identify himself as not Jewish. The Reverend Harry L. Slye speaks of family reunions, long ago, when his grandfather, also Harry L. Slye, a prominent Washington, D.C., undertaker, would bring chairs from the funeral parlor out to the family home in the then rural suburbs, and the full extended family, cousins of all ages and generations, would gather, feasting on St. Mary’s County oysters, playing games, and dancing on the lawn.

My assistant reaches someone in New York named Robert Hecht, who is not likely a relative. He tells her that he’s leaving for Paris and I can call him there — I wait a few days and try. A woman answers the phone and explains that he’s now gone back to New York. “What is this in reference to?” she asks and I am on the spot. I make an effort to explain. “I’m not sure he’ll be interested,” she says, “but you might want to e-mail my daughter and plead your case.” She gives me the e-mail address of her daughter, a lawyer in New York. Ruffled by her use of the phrase “plead your case,” I gather my courage and ask, “What’s your name?” “Elizabeth Hecht,” she says, and a chill runs through me. Elizabeth Hecht, that was my name — that was the name on the little bracelet that I wore home from the hospital. All the more odd because my adoptive mother had planned to name me Elizabeth but, when she saw the bracelet, she changed her mind. “Elizabeth Hecht,” she says, and it was the last thing I was expecting. Chemicals of every sort flood my system, telling my brain to hang up, to flee, telling my brain to laugh, telling my brain this is so strange — she’s not really Elizabeth Hecht; she was once Elizabeth Somebody Else and she married Hecht. “You can try my husband,” she says. “He’s back in New York.”

I dial the number in New York; an older man answers and tells me this is not a good time for us to talk. “I’m on my way out.”

The tenor of these conversations makes me wonder who these people are.

I Google Robert Hecht and Elizabeth Hecht and find out that he is a very famous dealer of antiquities and part of an international scandal involving the sale of allegedly stolen Italian artifacts, and as of the end of 2005 was on trial in Rome, along with former Getty Museum curator Marion True, accused of trafficking in ancient art.

As far as I can tell, Robert and Elizabeth Hecht are not my relatives, but again, I find the story fascinating.

One day as I’m going through the Bellman documents, I feel brave and leave a phone message for an Eric Bellman, a therapist in California. I call knowing that somewhere I have a relative named Eric Bellman — son of Richard Bellman and brother of Kristie, who I wrote to after Ellen died and never heard back from. It takes Eric weeks to call back, but it is a match. I’m pleased with my ability to deduce which of the Eric Bellmans in the United States is a biological relative. I tell him about my project, about the dozens of letters sent. I tell him that I’ve heard from a lot of Slyes and Hechts but no Bellmans. He tells me that Bellmans are like that — whatever “that” means — and while we don’t have an enormous amount to discuss, I am glad to have made contact.

What I don’t tell him is that after I decide that he was the Eric Bellman that I was looking for, I Googled his image and then compared the photograph I found online to one of his father taken many years ago. Playing my own version of FBI analyst, I compared their hairlines, their eyebrows, the shape of their chins and concluded that this Eric Bellman was the right Eric Bellman.

In my searching, I find newspaper clips relating to the Hecht family in and around the New York area. Again, I Google and come up with Warren Hecht, a dentist. I call his office. He answers the phone himself, I attempt to explain the project. “Write me a letter,” he says gruffly. “Okay, but can I just ask you a quick question? Are you by any chance related to Arthur, Nathan, and Irving Hecht?” Elated, he repeats the names. “Arthur, Irving, Nathan,” he says. “Yes, Nathan was my father.” “I thought so.” “Who is this?” He asks. We talk excitedly for a few minutes and he proposes that we meet the following Tuesday at 7 A.M. Surprised by his enthusiasm, I agree. It’s as though he’s discovered a long-lost relative — which in fact he has. When Warren asks how I fit in, I tell him that I am the daughter of Norman Hecht but that Norman and my mother weren’t married, so I didn’t grow up with him. That seems to land without much complication. He says how much he’s looking forward to meeting me and we hang up.

The following Tuesday, my phone rings at six-fifteen in the morning. It’s Warren Hecht calling to cancel our meeting. “I’m just too busy,” he says. “I’ll call you in a couple of weeks.” When I push him to find out if he’s really too busy, or if there’s more to it, he seems nervous. I find myself wondering who got to him — who turned off the enthusiasm? Devastated, I let him go — I hadn’t realized how much I was looking forward to meeting him. I wanted to show him what I’d found, his father’s birth certificate, his grandparents’ marriage certificate. I wanted to ask what he knew about his grandparents, his uncles, and so on. After that, I decide to suspend the live interview portion of the adventure at least for now. It’s too much of a setup for rejection and too painful to continually repeat.

I sign up for the National Geographic genealogy project. I pay $100 and scrape the inside of my cheek, twice over a period of twenty-four hours — collecting DNA — and send it off, as if to join the family of man. Online I spot another DNA test that promises to tell me the most likely names of my ancestors. I think about how truly interesting and odd it is that when a woman marries, traditionally she loses her name, becoming absorbed by the husband’s family name — she is in effect lost, evaporated from all records under her maiden name. I finally understand the anger behind feminism — the idea that as a woman you are property to be conveyed between your father and your husband, but never an individual who exists independently. And on the flip side, it is also one of the few ways one can legitimately get lost — no one questions it.

Months later I go online, punch in the ID number that came with my test kit, and am given the information that my DNA belongs to the Haplogroup U, and that yes, like every woman I am descended from “Mitochondrial Eve.” But who was she? Can I look her up on AnyWho.com? Can I write her a letter? From the information provided, I learn very little about my genetic journey. I am given the option of printing out high-resolution documents, including a personalized certificate that says I participated in the Genographic Project, but other than that I feel like I spent $100 to find out what I already know — I am related to everyone.

Among my best online discoveries is Random Acts of Genealogical Kindness, an organization of almost five thousand volunteers who will search for information in their local area — investigate historical records and church documents, trace headstones. Their volunteers are spread throughout the United States, Canada, and forty-four countries — the group averages eighty-two hundred requests a year.

Dipping further into history, I go to 6 °Centre Street in New York City, another of the city’s record offices, and request all files with the relevant surnames.

A week later the New York county clerk calls and leaves a message saying that some of my files have come in and that others cannot be located because they have been destroyed. Downtown I plunge into the labyrinth. Over a high wooden counter the case files are handed to me; they are crisp with age, these brittle documents, the onionskin paper dried out, each piece like a pathologist’s slices of the skin. The pages are typed, the signatures and notations made with an inky black pen. I am pouring quarters into the Xerox machines, hurrying to photograph the faded pages — as though to copy them as quickly as possible before they evaporate, as though taking these poor copies out of the building with me makes them permanent, real, present in this world.

I examine the cases, having no idea if these people are related to me and to a large degree not caring. Each is a history, a story drawing me in.

Magdaline Bellman vs. William H. Bellman

Action for an absolute divorce alleging: “That defendant on the 14 day of August 1923 at Hollywood Crossing in Cedarhurst Long Island, in the borough of Queens City and State of New York committed adultery with a woman whose name is unknown to the plaintiff…. That the sole issue of said marriage is one child Howard Bellman who was born on the 11th day of February 1913.

The divorce, granted January 30, 1923, stipulates that William H. Bellman was not free to marry again without permission of the court. In January of 1934 William Bellman returns to court, asks for and receives permission to marry.

Did Magdaline Bellman really not know the name of the woman her husband slept with, or is this a way of being polite? Where at Hollywood Crossing did the affair occur — was it a motel? And is the street name Hollywood Crossing not incredibly ironic? Was the unnamed woman William slept with the same woman he married ten years later? What happened to Magdaline and her son, Howard? And are they related to me?

The clerk at 31 Chambers was right — the in RE cases are the most fascinating. The outer folders are stamped in faded large red letters: LUNACY.

B. Kahn vs. In Re: Case 20101 1928

Bernhard Kahn of West 104th Street, born in Russia, aged fifty-four, arrived in the U.S., lived in Chicago and after being in New York six months, on May 19, 1928 was committed to Manhattan State Hospital, Wards Island.

He had been brought to Bellevue from the 10th precinct by ambulance.

Officer stated patient turned on fire hydrant on Lexington Ave; said he wanted to wash down the germs; the city was full of malaria germs and insane germs and the people were all going insane; had thrown away his hat because it was full of germs and bugs — was talkative.

In the presence of the doctors, the patient said:

I went to Cook County hospital — they took so many people from our trade and they tortured and they killed them — In Chicago I was against prohibition — I was against whores — We had had brown taxis and yellow taxis — Three million people tortured me in my city of Chicago — From the psychopathic I came to New York — the Jews are writing about the Hazenz here — then they got the attendants who are insane — three degrees of insanity — there is no such thing as perfect — I admire you — you are perfect.

Was there any one line in particular that sealed his fate?

When I first came across this case, I thought for a moment that this might in fact be the story of my biological mother’s great-grandfather, and in that moment, it seemed to make sense. It still does in some way, except that the dates are way off. In my mind’s eye it was a perfect case, until, of course, a more perfect fit came along — the case of Benedict Kahn.

BENEDICT KAHN, Plaintiff, against JACK ROTHSTONE and JOHN J. GLYNN as administrators with the will annexed of the Estate of ARNOLD ROTHSTEIN, deceased, Defendants.

This case immediately reminds me of a line in Richard Bellman’s autobiography, Eye of the Hurricane, noting that his father’s brother Bernard “Bunny” Bellman “married the boss’s daughter.” For the first time I have a clue about what that might mean — I am thinking this case likely involves my mother’s maternal grandfather, Benedict Kahn, and that it was through Benedict Kahn, that Bernard “Bunny” Bellman learned his trade.

Filed against the estate of the infamous gangster Arnold Rothstein, who was shot on November 4, 1928, the case states that Benedict Kahn and his business associate Harry Langer — who filed a separate case for $76,000—both made loans to Arnold Rothstein that had not been paid back at the time of his death. Benedict Kahn’s affidavit reads:

I am the plaintiff herein. This action is brought to recover $21,000 with interest thereon upon two promissory notes aggregating $19,000 and a check of $2000.

It goes on.

I never gambled with Arnold Rothstein in my lifetime. I never borrowed any money from him. He and I were intimate personal friends, and from time to time he borrowed money from me. He knew I was always possessed of large amounts of cash.

Nowhere in the papers is there any explanation of what business Kahn was in that had him “always possessed of large amounts of cash.” Basically there was no defense for this case because the only option was for the Rothstein estate to prove that this was a gambling debt and therefore not legal or valid.

After much back-and-forth the motion for a judgment is granted, “in favor of the plaintiff for $21,000, together with interest, as demanded in the complaint.”

The fact that the man who appears to be Ellen’s maternal grandfather had the nerve to make a case against the estate of Rothstein, a man described as “the spiritual father of American organized crime,” and a “criminal genius,” tells me that Benedict Kahn must have been someone that both the estate and the court took seriously — but beyond that I find nothing, except the seeds of a strong interest in numbers and gambling that echoed throughout subsequent generations.

And then there is the sad story of the Bellman who got bumped on his head — big time. Here is another Henry — this time Bellman, not Hecht — but for inexplicable reasons, I remain convinced that somewhere I do have a biological relative named Henry.

Henry Bellman vs. In Re: George Bellman vs. Timken Silent Automatic Co.

Henry Bellman, born in Germany in 1902, arriving in New York in 1928, is brought to Bellevue saying he can’t sleep, has a headache, lights are bothering him. In the presence of the doctors, he said:

The way it looks they throw lights, right into my room, and I can’t sleep. I hear them talking. They laugh at me. I moved five times in three or four months. They follow me in the street. They make fun of me. I heard them say c.s. and s.o.b. I don’t know if they want to kill me. They are down here too.

He was committed to Central Islip State Hospital.

George Bellman as guardian for Henry Bellman files a case against the Timken Silent Automatic Co. asking for $150,000 in damages, stating that Henry, never injured or ill, working as a driller for $8.80 a day, was on September 8, 1934, on First Avenue between Ninety-sixth and Ninety-seventh Streets, struck by a truck. The truck, which swerved to avoid a granite block in the roadway, bumped another car into a ditch, and then ran through a barricade, striking Henry Bellman, knocking him unconscious for more than ten minutes. His injuries, initially thought to be mild, became progressive. His condition deteriorated, and in July 1935 Henry began to complain that people were spying on him. The case was filed first by Henry and then by the family — seeking to be able to afford a better-quality care for their brother. It was settled without trial for $27,500, of which $13,750 was paid to the attorney the brother hired before his condition had so deteriorated. The Honorable Edward R. Koch was presiding justice, April 8, 1936. Case file stamped LUNACY.

I can’t help but think about the difficulty of these immigrants’ lives, of Bernhard Kahn and Henry Bellman and thousands of others. They left their homes and families in Europe under what were often pressured and fearful circumstances. With only the belongings they could carry on their backs they set off on a difficult journey to a mythical faraway place, hoping for Utopia, finding instead a foreign language, discrimination, and poor working and living conditions. I am amazed at the resilience and fortitude most immigrants demonstrated and am also surprised that more didn’t simply go mad — there are times I think, how could you not?

Whether or not Magdaline, William, and their son, Howard, or Bernhard or Henry are related to me by blood, they are all related by humanity and by the stories the files tell, and it is all lunacy! I am including the stories here because I cannot bear for them to be forgotten.

I continue to dig, off and on, stop and start, and collect the fragments of hundreds of lives. The technicality of biological relation becomes somewhat irrelevant — I am thrilled by what I am finding, by dipping into history, by seeing how people lived and died, noticing what else was going on in the world at each of these points. As stressful it has been, I have enjoyed the process; it amazes me how deep and expansive the World Wide Web is (at only fifteen years old) and I am thrilled to have met and corresponded with so many people along the way. My search is no longer all-consuming, the initial urgency has settled into a perhaps healthier continuing curiosity and no doubt will continue on and off over time. And yes, there is comfort in having connected some of the dots — in having names and dates and some sense of where my family lines and I fit into history. I can juxtapose Robert Slye’s birth in England with the reign of Queen Elizabeth. I note that Friedrich Nietzsche is born in the same year as Jacob Spitzer (the father of my beloved grandmother Julia Beatrice), and that in 1959, the year of my brother Jon’s birth, the Dalai Lama escapes Tibet and goes to India, while Alaska and Hawaii become the latest additions to the United States. In January 1961, the year of my birth, at the inauguration of John F. Kennedy, the American poet Robert Frost stands to recite a new poem, “Kitty Hawk,” but is frail and fumbles the words. He begins again, instead reciting “The Gift Outright.”

My Father’s Ass

Norman Hecht as a boy

Norman Hecht as a young man

I have not spoken to my father since the conversation in late 1998 that ended with him saying I could call him anytime—“Call me in the car, my wife’s not usually in the car.”

In the summer of 2005, as an extension of my genealogical adventure, I decide to join the Daughters of the American Revolution. My desire is not political but personal. I want to join the DAR because it is a lineage organization — and among the first things my father told me about myself was that I am eligible. And while I am an unlikely member of such an organization, I want to try it on as a piece of my biological identity — I want to see from the inside the thing that I am not. My friends are upset by the idea; they view the DAR as right wing and racist. In 1939 the DAR refused to allow the black singer Marian Anderson to sing at Washington D.C.’s Constitution Hall. (Subsequently Miss Anderson sang at Constitution Hall six times.) I explain to my friends that understanding my background is not just about embracing the parts that feel comfortable, and that, in this case, my interest is in the concept of lineage. I trade e-mails with the president of the Port Tobacco, Maryland, chapter — the hometown chapter of the Slyes of Maryland. She sends me a copy of the worksheet, which asks the applicant to walk back through time and provide the documentation for fourteen generations proving the link to the one deemed “the Patriot.”

I am assured that this documentation can be assembled if I can provide the more current information — namely my father’s birth certificate and my own. A complication — my father’s name is not on my birth certificate. And my father’s birth certificate is available from the District of Columbia Department of Vital Records, but only to next of kin — photo ID required. I explain to the DAR that my birth parents were not married and that I was adopted and I do not have a birth certificate with my father’s name on it, but that my father and I had a DNA test to prove our relationship. The DAR responds that they do not care if my parents were married or not, they will accept the DNA test as sufficient proof. A further complication — I don’t have a copy of the results.

Why didn’t I ask him for a copy of the test in July 1993 when the blood was drawn? I could say I felt shy, but the truth is I felt infantile — thrown back through time. It was all I could do to hold on to any semblance of self. I wanted him to like me, I wanted to know more about who I was, where I had come from. I felt I had to do what I was told. As much as he and I were equal participants in the test, he paid for it, refusing to accept my offer to share the expense. I was intimidated. I didn’t want to cause trouble. I didn’t want to be rejected again.

I imagine asking him and am intimidated even now. Just the idea of it hurts. And I always worry that my call will come too late — he will be dead. And even if he’s not, what will I say—“Hi, I want to join the DAR and I need a copy of your birth certificate and the DNA test?”

I imagine him answering the phone — his voice will tremble and he’ll say, “This is not a good time — can I call you back later?” How will I feel if he doesn’t call back? And what if I do manage to ask for what I want and he stalls, and there is an awkward and heavy silence? Do I continue, “We were equals in submitting to the test and both have the right to the information?” And if he says, “I don’t think so,” I’m not sure where I go. “I’ve never asked you for anything, but now I am asking you for something and I hope you will reconsider.”

I think of calling him — in my imagination, his wife answers the phone, and is not pleased. To her I am illegitimate. Does it mean I don’t exist, that I never existed, that I am something to be forgotten, left behind, basically a big embarrassment?

In my thoughts I can call him; in reality I can’t pick up the phone.

I ask Marc, my lawyer — the same lawyer who called him years ago to tell him Ellen was dead — if he would mind giving him a call. I give Marc the phone number and explain that his wife might answer. We discuss what he is going to say. The call is made.

The wife answers the phone and my father goes into another room to take the call. My father tells my lawyer that he will not provide the test result, that in fact he does not even have the test result — he gave it to his own lawyer for safekeeping. Marc is told that he should not call my father anymore, that any further communication should go through my father’s lawyer. Marc calls my father’s lawyer and the lawyer tells him that, yes, he did have the test result but that he did something with it — can’t remember what, so it’s not to be had. Marc tells him that an affidavit of paternity will do and is told that that’s not possible, that’s not going to happen.

Call me naive — there was part of me that thought when my lawyer called and asked for the test results, the answer would be, Yes, of course, and how is she?

When Marc calls to tell me how it went I’m feeling hopeful, cheered by the swiftness of the response. “I spoke to your father,” he says and I’m pleased, proud in a certain way, and then he says, “And it didn’t go well,” and my spirits sink. “He declined to provide the information and asked that we not contact him directly again.” That’s my father we’re talking about — my father is saying, Please don’t call again. Was it something I said, or just the fact of my existence?

The idea that my father asked me to participate in a DNA test — asked me to prove myself to him — and now won’t share the results is not okay. It is about power and arrogance and the negation of my right to own my identity. I feel a moral obligation — a social and political obligation, an obligation that is larger than me — to try and get a better resolution, a better end.

“What did you expect?” a friend asks.

“More,” I say.

“This is nothing new,” she says. “He’s behaving in character. Look at what he did to your mother. He’s not a good guy.”

“He’s my father.”

“You’re screwed.”

I am waiting for this man to do the right thing. What I want from him is not his money or even his love — at this point, in the absence of his affection, I want a context, a history, a way of understanding how all this came to be. Will I ever have the question answered: Where did my paternal grandparents meet, what was their courtship like, how did it happen that the son of a Jewish butcher married a Southern belle?

And now I also have to defend my dead mother. My friend is right about this. It’s not about me, it’s about him, it’s about the way he behaves, how he values people, how he does only what he wants, what’s good for him. My mother had no life after she gave me up — she never married, never had another family. She had invested in him from a very early age — he used her and then said good-bye. She never recovered.

“Law is not about what is fair, you realize that,” a friend says to me.

I call another friend, who calls Lanny Davis, a well-known Maryland lawyer who acted as special counsel to the White House under Bill Clinton. I remember Davis from when I was growing up and he was an up-and-coming local politico. I instinctively trust him and explain the situation. Lanny offers to make a call for me; he is quite sure that if he explains the situation to my father — and the reason that I am asking for this document — it will be forthcoming.

“There’s no reason to think we’ll have to take this further.” I give him the telephone number and again mention that the wife might answer the phone. He calls me the next afternoon — shocked. My father took his call, seemed to know why he was calling before he even said anything, and flat out refused. Lanny, being careful about his description of the events, told him, “I was approached by your daughter and asked to consider representing her, but having heard the story, it is my hope that this can be resolved without my having to put my lawyer hat on.” Norman refused. “Should I put my lawyer hat on? Should I be speaking with your lawyer?” My father refused to even tell Lanny his lawyer’s name and/or provide the lawyer’s phone number — both of which I already had.

Lanny called my father’s lawyer. The lawyer said, “You don’t have a leg to stand on, there is nothing to go to court about, there is no case, and you cannot have the document.” He said no and no and no. The lawyer was cautiously reminded that if this became a court case it also became a public event. He was unfazed.

“Is there anything else I should know?” Lanny asked me. “Some other reason why he wouldn’t want you to have this?”

“There are only two things I can think of: one is that he is not really my father, but somehow wanted to be, in some strange way; or maybe he’s worried I’ll make a claim on his estate.”

Long ago, when he stopped talking with me, I thought it might be because he was worried that I would sue his estate for a “piece of the pie.” I explain to Lanny I want nothing from his estate and in fact would feel compelled to refuse anything were it to come.

Once again in my head I am writing letters.

Dear Norman,

Are you kidding? You are writing your own history. You are painting a portrait of yourself that is less than flattering — want to reconsider?

I confer with lawyers — everyone is surprised. It shouldn’t be this difficult.

“Is it something about your family and the DAR? Something maybe you don’t know? Something that bubbles beneath?” someone asks.

What bubbles beneath is rage — nuclear-hot rage. And below that, deep grief — profound disappointment that he is not capable of more, cannot rise to the occasion, does not feel compelled to do better.

I go to see the rabbi. I am hoping for some insight, hoping there is learned example, spiritual intervention that will guide my decisions. We talk a lot about what is to be gained and what is to be lost — the actual importance of the piece of paper and the larger picture.

The rabbi suggests I write a letter — a simple note: I am writing to let you know that if I don’t hear from you to the contrary, I am going, from now forward, to act as if and assume that you are my biological father.

The rabbi suggests that I run that past the lawyer. I do and the lawyer points out that it proves nothing, that it simply sets me up to wait — for nothing.

I write more letters in my head:

Dear Dad,

My interest in the DAR is about genealogy and lineage and I cannot let your actions stop me from joining with hundreds of years of my biological decedents.

You long ago promised to take me into your family — and I understand that life and families are complicated things. What I am asking for is not about your immediate family, your sons and daughters who are biologically no more or less related to you than I — what I am asking you for is to provide the link, so that I may make my own connection to my past, allowing me to join my relatives of the last four hundred years. It is the history that interests me, the history of all of the families that I am part of….

Dad—

You fancy yourself a man of belief, of good character; I would think as one grows older one would think about that belief, about what one’s God expects of him, about one’s behavior through the course of his lifetime. I am a person of great optimism and faith and it remains my hope that we can resolve this with some measure of grace.

Pop—

Take responsibility for your actions, be a bigger person, be a man.

Mr.

You are an old man — don’t you want peace, don’t you want people to feel good about you?

Dad—

Fine thing. Isn’t that your expression for events such as these?

The lawyers debate what to do — is there a way to compel him to produce the document? If we were to take him to court, what would we take him to court for — breach of contract? unfair use of the results? He’s had more than 50 percent use of a co-owned result for all these years. If in fact he lied to me, saying, I want you to do this test so I can take you into my family, when he may have wanted the results to explicitly exclude me from his family, from his estate — it’s fraud. Was he acting fraudulently?

“Where was the test done?” one of the lawyers asks me.

“The blood was drawn in Washington, D.C.”

“What was the name of the lab?”

“I don’t remember. I’m not sure it even had a name — it wasn’t so much a lab as an office, a collection site.”

“Maybe you can get the result directly from the lab.”

Once again I am digging. I am looking for blood labs that did DNA blood testing in 1993—before it was all the rage, before everyone and their mother wanted to know who throughout history was their brother. I uncover Orchid Cellmark — the leader in DNA testing — and give them a call.

“This is Jennifer,” the voice of Orchid Cellmark says.

“Hi, I’m trying to locate the results of a DNA blood test I had done in 1993.”

When I say 1993, it’s as though I’m saying 1903—the world we are living in is so brutally advanced and ahistorical.

In a millisecond Jennifer tells me, “Oh, we wouldn’t have that. Anything over five years we don’t keep.”

“What do you do with it?”

“We shred it,” Jennifer says. And I don’t believe her. I’m thinking, Jennifer, you can’t shred it because it doesn’t exist on paper — it lives in a computer. And then images of laptop computers being fed into a giant shredder fill my mind.

“Thanks,” I say, hanging up. I try another lab.

According to Pat at LabCorp of America they too don’t have the results. “We keep our records for seven years.”

“When did you start doing DNA testing?”

“Hold on.”

I’m on hold with tin can music in my ear. I’m on hold for a long time and it occurs to me that she just put me on hold to make me wait and is sitting there on the other end, picking her nose. It occurs to me that she might not come back. “First in its industry to embrace genomic testing,” says the background tape.

“Nineteen eighty-one,” she says, coming back on the line. There is a peculiar coldness, a kind of self-satisfaction to the way these people say, We don’t have that, as though they have no idea what that might mean, they really don’t care, as though they get enormous and perverse pleasure from emptying the electronic trash can on their computer screen. Gone, gone, and gone.

One of the lawyers asks if I have any letters from him. I think somewhere I might have a birthday card. Would there be enough DNA on the envelope to get a result? And anyway, without him already in a database, how would we deny or confirm?

Again the lawyers debate. We talk about the fact that I have not said his name in public, have never printed the information. I am wondering if my father realizes that until now I’ve never told anyone who he is. In fact, the origin of this book, a long piece I wrote for the New Yorker in 2004, reflected my desire to continue to protect him. In that article, I called Norman “Stan” and Ellen “Helene.” I’m wondering if Norman knows that what I wrote for the New Yorker was so convincing that when it was time for the magazine to fact-check the article, they e-mailed me and asked for “Stan’s” phone number. “My father’s name is not really Stan,” I explained. And again they asked for his name and number. I told them that I had never given anyone that information and I would not be able to provide it to them.

Only after the magazine first threatened and then did briefly kill the piece did I question why I was ruining my professional reputation protecting the identity of someone who had never shown any particular concern for me. Still, I didn’t think they needed to bother the man. They insisted. The New Yorker has what they call a double standard for fact checking — if the subject is to be unidentified or masked, not only does the subject have to be rendered unrecognizable to others, but also unrecognizable to himself. My father, simply by knowing that he is my father, had his cover blown.

The way the magazine killed the piece — as if doubting me — practically killed me. For the first time in years, I felt that my right to exist was in question. That there was any doubt to the truth of my story sent me into a spin. It had never been my desire to expose my father — and at the same time I couldn’t help but wonder, why was I being so protective? Finally I gave the New Yorker his phone number. I have no idea what was said between the magazine and my father and his lawyer. I asked to be there, a witness to the conversation, but the fact-checker refused. From what the fact-checker told me, I understood there were thirty-five questions the magazine wanted to ask; they detailed them for my father and his lawyer — and my father and his lawyer declined to answer any of them. The piece was published by the New Yorker in December of 2004.

I confer with my lawyers about the DAR application — it occurs to more than one of them that the lawyer for my adoptive parents might actually have a copy of my original birth certificate, because it was a private adoption and because my mother never signed the papers, and someone had to provide the court with a copy of the original birth certificate.

The lawyer I have to call is the man who called my parents in 1992 to tell them that Ellen had contacted him, the same lawyer who opened the letters from Ellen, who recognized my father’s name and called Ellen to say, if you’re going to give her (me) that information, you’d better tell him.

Dialing the lawyer’s house, I have chest pains. His wife answers — she is tentative when I ask for him. “May I ask who’s calling?”

“A.M. Homes.”

“May I ask, what is it about?”

And I explain, “Mr. Frosh helped my parents finalize my adoption back in 1961. It was a private adoption and I spoke with him several years ago when my birth mother contacted him trying to reach me — and now I have some questions.”

There is a pause. “He’s not entirely well.”

“I’m so sorry,” I say, wondering what that means — again, always the fear that I’ve called too late.

“He’s eighty-seven and some days he knows everything and the next remembers nothing. But I will ask him when it seems like a good moment.”

“Thank you,” I say. “What I’m looking for is the file, a copy of the file.”

“Maybe my son Brian,” she says.

“Yes,” I say, “if he could find it, that would be great. I think he knows about it. When my birth mother called, she actually first called Brian.” (Brian is also a lawyer).

And then she tells me a story of someone, maybe her daughter, maybe a neighbor, having adopted two Romanian children. At this point I’m having what I call situational deafness. I am worrying about the fact that I may not be able to get this information. I’ve half of a mind to say: Do you know where he kept his files? Are they stored somewhere? But instead I say, “Did it work out?” And I think she says yes, and I say something like, “That’s good. Good or bad, up or down, it’s all interesting, isn’t it?”

“Are you having a good life?” she asks, like she wants to know, did it all work out?

“A good life? Yes,” I say, both lying and not. I’m having a great life. “I’m really lucky. I have a great life.” And it is equally true that I am suffering, otherwise I wouldn’t be calling her. “Everything is good,” I tell her.

“That’s good,” she says. “Have a good life.”

I contact the lawyer’s son Brian Frosh, now a Maryland state senator. We exchange e-mails; I tell him about my conversation with his mother and remind him of the call he intercepted from Ellen years ago. I ask Brian if, when he visits his parents’ house, he might check for the file. He is incredibly gracious and understanding. We trade stories of what it is like to have an aging parent, our concerns for our families, for the history that is lost. Brian Frosh makes a special trip to his parents’ house to look for the file — he looks everywhere, but finds nothing.

I am running out of options.

The question of whether or not to sue, to attempt to legally compel my father to produce the DNA document or an affidavit, remains open. Joining the DAR is not essential to my health and well-being, but the idea that my father — or any one person — can decide to exclude someone from her lineage profoundly bothers me. The real question is not about the DAR but about adoptees’ rights to access and join their own heritage — and for that reason I am not entirely willing to drop the subject.

I think of my father asking me to have the DNA test and then later refusing my request for the DNA document, refusing to sign an affidavit, and refusing to acknowledge me. I think of my father and can’t help but think of Ellen — falling for him when she was just a teenager, being his mistress for seven years, and then pregnant with his child. I think of Ellen and I think of how my father behaved — making her promises, stringing her along, and ultimately abandoning her.

Nothing has changed. More than forty years later he is still behaving exactly as he always behaved. He is doing what is good for him, what suits his needs and desires. I see my mother as a teenager in love with an older man, a young woman who had to give up her child, who lived the rest of her life in the shadow of that loss, a woman who never married, who never really recovered — and for her I am angry with him.

This is not just about the DAR — that’s clear. I wish there had been more: a father-daughter relationship, a friendship. I wish I could know more about his family (my family) — where they came from, how they lived their lives, what they valued. I would have liked to know his children, to learn what we have in common, to feel what it means to have a blood knot. And I would have liked to have come out from the shadows, to be seen not as the product of an affair but as a person, an adult — who is no more or less of them than they are of one another.

Based on nothing except my own blind faith, I am cautiously optimistic that there will be some natural opening, some give on Norman’s part. I resolve to do nothing for the moment, to watch and wait, to allow myself to catch up to my feelings and to see over time where the story leads me.

Like an Episode of L.A. Law

Deposition: a curious word meaning to remove from office or a position of power and/or testimony under oath — a written statement by a witness for use in court in his absence.

Deposition: I think of suing my father to prove that he is my father and just the phrasing — suing my father to prove that he is my father — has the equally surreal echo of the moment my mother told me that my mother was dead. Suing my father — I picture the papers being filed, a summons served telling him to appear at a certain place at a certain time. I imagine there being a man, a stranger to both of us, someone hired to do the job, to ask the questions.

Mr. Hecht, before we begin I would like to remind you that the length of a deposition is limited to seven hours a day, over the course of however many days it takes to do the kind of call-and-response, asking of questions, related to the actions and activities of the last forty-four years — that’s how old she is now, the infant in question.

Rules of Civil Procedure. Rule 26—Discovery. We will be asking you, the deposed, to provide a copy of your birth certificate and a copy of the DNA test that you and Ms. Homes jointly participated in. Given that a potential witness is anyone who has information relevant to the issues of a lawsuit or who has information that may lead to relevant information, we will also call your wife and your children. Unlike a trial, where a judge can rule on objections, at a deposition lawyers can ask irrelevant questions and inquire into hearsay.

Is all of this clear?

Have you ever had your deposition taken before?

Do you understand that you are under oath — sworn to tell the truth?

Are you prepared to answer my questions?

Is there anything about your physical state — are you taking any medications that will prevent you from giving me complete and truthful answers?

If you need to take a break at any time, let me know.

What is your full name?

Your place and date of birth?

Your parents’ names and places and dates of birth?

Mr. Hecht, can you tell me why are we here today? Is there a particular issue?

In 1993 you asked Ms. Homes to participate in a DNA blood test that would genetically compare DNA samples from both you and Ms. Homes to prove that in fact you are her father. And the result of that test showed that it was 99.9 percent likely that you are her father, and recently when she requested a copy of that test from you, you declined to provide it — is that correct?

You asked Ms. Homes to participate in the test, but you don’t believe you should both have access to the results. Why is that?

You participated equally?

You paid for the test, Mr. Hecht — actually you had some trouble paying for the test, didn’t you? You scheduled the appointment for the test in July of 1993, Ms. Homes traveled from New York to Washington and met you at the lab, but you didn’t have the right kind of payment, the right kind of check — and you had to go back again the next day?

At the time you scheduled the test, Ms. Homes offered to pay for the test as well or split the cost with you?

Now, if it is all about the money — the costs associated with this meeting here today are in excess of the charges for the test. So perhaps this is not about money?

How would you describe yourself, Mr. Hecht?

Would you describe yourself as a family man?

Is there more to you than that — than just a retired businessman?

Are you close to your family?

Do you go to church?

You have a son who shares your name — what does that name mean to you?

What is your identity, Mr. Hecht?

Did you always know who you were?

Have you ever been arrested?

Been charged with a crime?

For the record, can you tell us about any and all claims, lawsuits, that you’ve been involved in over the years?

What was your age and place of first employment?

And your last — were you fired, or asked to step down?

Did you feel any personal responsibility?

Do you think of yourself as someone who gets things done?

Has anyone ever called you a big shot?

Do you think you’re an average man?

Same level of ambition as your peers?

Did you graduate from college?

Were you in the army? Ever kill anyone?

Where did you grow up, Mr. Hecht?

How would you describe your childhood?

Who raised you?

How was it that you lived with your grandparents — where were your mother and father?

How did your parents meet?

What did your father do for a living?

How would you describe your relationship with your father?

Were you close?

Did he love you?

Do you think it’s true that boys are closer to their mothers, and girls to their fathers?

Are you proud of your family history?

Involved in any lineage organizations?

What clubs are you a member of?

Have you ever wanted to join a club and not been allowed in?

What kind of name is “Hecht”?

Was your father Jewish?

Was he raised in a Jewish home?

Did your mother’s family consider you Jewish?

Was your father’s father a kosher butcher?

Why did your paternal grandmother carry a gun?

Would you describe yourself as charitable?

Do you give money to charities?

Do you give of your time and abilities?

Do you drink?

Did you ever use recreational drugs?

Ever smoke marijuana?

Ever take pills for energy?

Ever use cocaine?

Ever try Viagra?

Where did you meet your wife?

At what age were you married?

Did you engage in relations before the wedding?

Was she a virgin?

Were you?

Have you ever had a sexually transmitted disease?

When did you last have sex, Mr. Hecht?

With whom?

Would you say that you and your wife had a good sex life?

Did you and your wife ever discuss open marriage?

So, initially she didn’t know that you were having a sexual relationship with Ms. Ballman?

Was Ms. Ballman your first relationship outside your marriage, or did someone precede her?

How did your wife find out about Ms. Ballman?

Can you tell me the names of your children?

Do you know their birth dates?

Besides Ms. Homes — did you have any other children outside your marriage?

Is it possible, Mr. Hecht, that there are others?

How many relationships did you have outside your marriage?

How long did they last?

Your wife was pregnant at the same time as Ms. Ballman?

How old was Ms. Ballman when you met her?

How would you describe her physically — her appearance?

Did you know that she was a minor?

What were the circumstances of that meeting?

Were you the owner of the Princess Shop?

How long did Ms. Ballman work for you?

When did your sexual relationship begin?

What were the circumstances of that first encounter?

Was she a virgin?

Do you think your libido is average?

Was Ms. Ballman a nymphomaniac?

Was she a lesbian?

Did you once tell Ms. Homes that Ellen Ballman was a nymphomaniac and on another occasion that she was a lesbian?

Did your male friends also have girls on the side?

How many of them knew Ms. Ballman?

Did you worry that Ms. Ballman was sleeping with other men — your friends?

When your sexual relationship with Ms. Ballman began, how old was she?

What would prompt a teenage girl in the 1950s to leave her mother’s care and take up with a married man?

Did Ellen Ballman tell you that someone was molesting her?

You told Ms. Homes that Ms. Ballman told you something that would have indicated that something was happening in her mother’s home and that you probably should have listened better.

Did you take advantage of Ms. Ballman?

Did you use birth control?

Did Ms. Ballman meet your family — your mother?

Your children?

Your wife?

How did it happen that your eldest son spent time with Ms. Ballman?

When did you realize you were in love with Ms. Ballman?

So, were you or were you not in love with Ms. Ballman?

Did she believe you were in love with her?

On more than one occasion did you propose marriage?

Even though you were already married, Mr. Hecht, you proposed to Ms. Ballman when she was seventeen — you called her mother and asked for permission to marry her?

How did you think you would explain that to your wife?

Do you believe in polygamy, Mr. Hecht?

How and when did your wife find out that you and Ms. Ballman were having a relationship?

Did your wife know how old Ms. Ballman was?

And what did you say to your wife? Again I’d like to remind you that you are under oath and your wife will be answering the same question.

Did your wife contemplate divorcing you?

Is divorce in opposition to her faith?

Are you and your wife of the same faith?

Is adultery in opposition to your faith?

Are you a religious man, Mr. Hecht?

Do you believe in heaven, Mr. Hecht?

What was your nickname for Ms. Ballman?

Was “the Dragon Lady” one of them?

Where did that come from? Was it from something you shared?

Did Ms. Ballman have you arrested for deserting her?

When Ms. Ballman was pregnant, you sent her to Florida to live and said you’d be joining her there — but you never showed up?

And your wife was pregnant at the same time as Ms. Ballman?

You must have felt like an exceptionally fertile man?

Later in the pregnancy did you visit Ms. Ballman at her mother’s home?

Did you offer to take her shopping and buy things for the baby?

Did you have Ms. Ballman meet with you and your lawyer and together discuss the fact that “there are only so many slices of the pie”?

Did you ask either Ms. Ballman or your wife to consider an abortion?

Can you swim, Mr. Hecht?

I’m just wondering if at some point during all this you felt like you were going under. Drowning.

When was the last time you saw Ms. Ballman pregnant? What month was that?

How did you hear about the birth of your child with Ms. Ballman?

Were you ever asked to sign any legal documents relating to the child?

How long did your relationship with Ms. Ballman last?

Did Ms. Ballman ever marry?

Are you proud of your daughter, Mr. Hecht?

Are you proud of Ms. Homes?

Have you read her work?

Did you ask your daughter to meet you in hotels?

Why not coffee shops?

What is the nature of your thoughts about your daughter?

Did your wife know when and where you were meeting your daughter?

If you had been meeting one of your other children, would she have known?

Are you circumcised?

Is this common knowledge?

Does your other daughter know?

Why was this information that you shared with Ms. Homes?

How did your other children find out that they had a sister?

And what was their reaction to discovering that information?

Do you think of yourself as a good father?

Let’s backtrack a little bit…

In May of 1993 you read a review of Ms. Homes’s book in the Washington Post and called her in New York City?

What prompted you to call her on that day?

If Ms. Homes were not a successful, well-known figure, would you have ever called her?

You made a plan to meet in Washington several days later?

Was anyone else at the meeting? Was the meeting taped or otherwise recorded or monitored by anyone?

What was your reaction to meeting Ms. Homes?

When you met her, were you surprised by the degree to which she looks like you?

Does she look more like you than your other children?

Despite the physical similarity at that meeting, you asked Ms. Homes if she would consent to a paternity test — saying that you had no question as to the likelihood that she was your child, but that your wife was insisting, and that you would need that in order to be able to take her into your family. Is that correct?

What made you question Ms. Homes’s paternity?

After the blood was drawn, as you were walking out with Ms. Homes you told her you had something you wanted to give her — and yet you didn’t give her anything?

What did you want to give her?

Was it something of your mother’s? A family heirloom?

Several months later, you phoned Ms. Homes to say you had the results of the test, and you asked Ms. Homes to once again meet you in a hotel in Maryland?

At that meeting you told Ms. Homes that you were in fact her father — that the DNA test said it was 99.9 percent likely — and you asked, “What are my responsibilities?”

What did you envision as your responsibilities?

What were your intentions toward Ms. Homes when you asked her to submit to the test?

Did you follow through by “taking her into your family”?

Before you discussed the results with Ms. Homes, did you discuss them with anyone else?

Did you discuss them with your wife?

Why did you not offer Ms. Homes a copy of the test result?

What did you do with the test result?

When did you give a copy to your lawyer?

Did you keep a copy for yourself?

Do you typically give the one and only copy of an important document to your attorney?

Did you not put it in your safe deposit box because you didn’t want your wife to discover it?

But didn’t you tell Ms. Homes that it was your wife who insisted on Ms. Homes’s having the paternity test before you could “take her into your family”?

Was the reason your wife wanted Ms. Homes to have the DNA test that you had portrayed Ms. Ballman to your wife as a floozy to make it seem like you were Ms. Ballman’s victim?

You arranged for your eldest son to meet Ms. Homes?

How did that meeting go?

Was your son happy to have more information about something that had only been a dim memory from his childhood — the time he spent with Ms. Ballman?

Was there a lot of tension in your home when your eldest son was a boy?

What was the occasion of your wife meeting Ms. Homes?

Is there a reason why your wife wouldn’t like Ms. Homes?

Why did you say to Ms. Homes later that she and your wife didn’t hit it off?

Did Ms. Homes ever ask you for anything?

Do you have concerns about Ms. Homes making a claim on your estate?

Did she ever in any way indicate that she had any interest in your estate?

Did you have her take the paternity test in order that you might by name exclude her from your estate?

When did you last speak to Ms. Ballman?

And what was the substance of that call?

Did you see Ms. Ballman in the months before she died?

Did your wife know you were meeting her?

How did she look? Was she still attractive?

Did Ms. Ballman ask you to ask Ms. Homes if she would give her a kidney?

And what did you tell Ms. Ballman?

Did you later tell Ms. Ballman that in fact you had asked Ms. Homes and that she said no?

Did it occur to you that Ms. Homes did not know about Ms. Ballman’s condition, nor did she have a chance to say good-bye?

Did you go to your own personal doctor and inquire about donating a kidney to Ms. Ballman?

Did you tell Ms. Homes that you had done that?

And what would your wife have thought about that — would you have had the surgery without telling her?

Did you know that Ms. Ballman was going to die?

How did you feel when you heard that Ms. Ballman had passed?

And your last phone call with Ms. Homes — several months after Ms. Ballman’s death — how did that go?

How did it end? Did you say, “Call me anytime. Call me in my car. My wife’s not usually in the car”?

Why would Ms. Homes need to call you in the car as opposed to in your home?

Is anyone harming you, confining you, not allowing you to make and receive calls and/or mail?

Are you angry with Ms. Homes?

When Ms. Homes’s New York lawyer called you — the same man who called you to tell you that Ms. Ballman had passed — and asked you for a copy of the DNA test, you told him never to call you again and referred him to your lawyer.

Mr. Glick called your lawyer and was told by your lawyer that the DNA document had been misplaced and that you would not sign an affidavit of paternity.

Did you know that Mr. Smith had misplaced the test results?

Are you concerned that other important documents may have been misplaced or mishandled?

Does it not seem a little too convenient that Ms. Homes is asking for this document, and now it is missing?

You have children and now grandchildren? Do they look like you, Mr. Hecht?

You have adopted grandchildren as well. Do they look like you also?

Do they have a right to know who they are — where they came from?

What is your understanding of why Ms. Homes wants this document?

If Ms. Homes is your biological relative, why should she not be treated in the same way as your other equally biological children are treated? Why should she have different, less than equal, rights?

Does that seem fair? Are you a fair man? A just man?

Could you please repeat for the record your name?

And Mr. Hecht, could you please for the record state the names of all your children?

My Grandmother’s Table

Jon Homes, Jewel Rosenberg, and A.M. Homes

Jewel Rosenberg, my grandmother, my adoptive mother’s mother, graceful, grandiloquent, profound. She is in some ways why or how this book exists. I am not sure that I would have become a writer if it weren’t for her, nor would I have gone to such lengths to become a mother. Without Jewel Spitzer Rosenberg there would likely be no Juliet Spencer Homes — a girl who is now almost three, with no biological relation to my grandmother yet bearing a striking physical relation to her.

When the events charted in this book began to unfold, my grandmother was too old to make good sense of them and my mother elected not to tell her about the return of my biological parents. That decision bothered all of us — my grandmother was the ruler of the family, the queen bee; she was the one we went to about everything, the one with good advice, the one who was remarkable.

She was born in June of 1900, the turn of the twentieth century, in North Adams, Massachusetts. At fifteen she got glasses, looked up at the sky, and saw it wasn’t all black — for the first time she realized there were stars. At sixteen, enrolled at North Adams Normal School (Massachusetts State College) and studying to be a teacher, she was called into the president’s office and told she would never get a teaching job because she was a Jew. She didn’t tell anyone about the incident — except her brother Charlie.

In my grandmother’s house there was a table built in the year of my birth by the Japanese-American artisan George Nakashima from wood my grandmother selected at his shop in New Hope, Pennsylvania. The table is seven feet long, lush — French walnut. It is subtle, not announcing itself as something special until you spend time with it, until you get a feel for it. Then its significance becomes clear.

This was the family seat. This was where we gathered, where my grandmother, our matriarch, held court, where her brothers and sisters and their children and their children’s children came to celebrate, to discuss, to mourn.

There have been great multigenerational political and philosophical debates at this table, especially when my grandmother’s brothers Charlie and Harold would visit — the family radicals. They put themselves through college, changed their name from Spitzer to Spencer, ostensibly to protect the family from their radical reputations, but conveniently also hiding their Jewishness. They both studied law but never practiced. Charlie went to work in a Chicago steel mill and became a union organizer, and Harold married the dancer Elfrede Mahler and went to Cuba, where he taught English and she became the head of Cuba’s modern dance movement. When they came to town, we would spend hours at the table, debating everything from the current political situation to the lyrics of songs they made up as children.

This table was where my grandmother fed us. She had long ago taught herself to prepare the traditional French cuisine that my grandfather had grown up with — and had long ago progressed from a Massachusetts farm girl to a seriously sophisticated intellectual.

As a writer I think of narratives — family stories. Growing up, I was never sure about whether or not I could or should absorb the family history. At family gatherings great-aunts and-uncles from around the world would pull their chairs in close and tell stories about life on my great-grandparents’ farm in North Adams, Massachusetts. I fell in love with these stories, felt attached to them, but also was made uncomfortable — this agreed-upon narrative was not my narrative. “It’s not my history, not my family,” I would whisper to my mother. “We are your family, believe me,” my mother would say. I wanted to believe, but something felt off, inorganic.

Growing up, I had two adopted cousins who were black — they lived in upstate New York and we didn’t see them all that often. Once when we were all at a relative’s house for dinner — the adults downstairs, the three of us playing in the upstairs bedroom — I said, “I’m adopted too,” trying to make a connection. The cousins looked at me blankly—“No you’re not.” “Yes I am.” I was insulted that they didn’t believe me — it didn’t occur to me then that because I was white like my parents they thought I couldn’t possibly be adopted. “Mom, am I adopted?” I yelled downstairs. “What are you children doing up there?” was the answer.

When she was in her late nineties I would visit my grandmother at her home outside of Washington every couple of weeks. We sat at the table and drank tea and talked. While we talked, she rubbed the table, her hand unconsciously moving in circles as if polishing the wood, repetitiously stroking it like a talisman, for comfort, for the giving and getting of wisdom.

We each sat in her familiar place, my grandmother at the head, I just to the left.

At her age, she was perhaps now even older than the tree the table had come from — in my mind they are inexorably bound.

“We went up to the old farm,” I said very loudly.

“You did? And you were able to find it?”

“Yes.”

The weekend before, my cousin (also a writer) and I had driven up and down the hills of North Adams on an impromptu pilgrimage to find the farm where my grandmother grew up. The dirt driveway had long ago dissolved; the only way in was by foot. We climbed quickly, ascending into the mythology of the farm.

The original buildings remained, crumbling, collapsed, but still identifiable. I conjured images of my grandmother as a child, one of nine born to Lithuanian immigrants at the turn of the century on this Massachusetts dairy farm. I imagined her walking down the dirt road to a one-room schoolhouse, picking wild blueberries, helping my great-grandfather milk the cows and tend the chickens. I remembered her telling me the Mohawk Trail was just out the back door, and in my mind she was outside playing a real-life version of cowboys and Indians, substituting farmers for cowboys, cows and plows for horses and guns.

My cousin went on an ersatz archaeological dig, using a knife to poke in the dirt near one of the buildings. After a few minutes, he pulled out an old bottle.

“This must mean something,” he said.

I nodded. We each took a couple of slate shingles from the crumbling roof and made our way back to the car.

“Tell me about the farm. How was it?” she asked, as if half expecting there was still someone there leading the cows out to pasture in the morning and back home again at night.

“Interesting.” I told her about the landscape. She closed her eyes. I told her about the rolling hills, the tall trees, Mount Greylock in the distance.

“Just as I remembered it,” she said.

She looked at her table. I imagined this table echoing something, some other great long farm table in my great-grandmother’s country kitchen. I see my grandmother’s nine brothers and sisters as children underfoot in their mother’s kitchen. I see my great-uncles as teenagers in the summer selling buckets of water to overheated cars on the Mohawk Trail. I feel their grief when their fourteen-year-old sister, Helen, dies of diphtheria in 1912. I see their brother Maurice staying in North Adams — becoming the town doctor, delivering over twelve hundred babies.

My grandmother rubbed her finger along the grain of the wood.

Again, her hand circled the wood. “Tell me about you,” my grandmother said.

“I’m fine, I’ve been working hard, I’ve been thinking about buying a little house out on Long Island, a cabin where I can go and write.”

She nodded. “It’s important to have a house of your own,” she said.

“Tell me about you,” I said back to her.

“I’ve got nothing to tell,” she said. “I’m bored.”

She had worked her entire life — full-time until she was eighty-six. In 1918, two years before women won the right to vote, she came to Washington by herself, got a job in the War Department, and soon brought her brothers and sisters down from the farm. In 1922 she met my grandfather, the Romanian-French hatmaker, during a summer visit home when he happened to be working at his uncle’s hat shop in nearby Pittsfield, Massachusetts. In the mid-1920s my grandfather sent for his younger brothers Julian and Maurice, hoping they would stay in America. The boys came for a summer but didn’t like it — they couldn’t get girlfriends because they didn’t speak English. They returned to Paris and in the 1940s were deported from Paris to concentration camps — Julian to Drancy and then Auschwitz, and Maurice to Auschwitz. Neither survived.

Later, in Washington, D.C., my grandparents started a successful wine importing company, and when she was seventy-eight, Jewel Rosenberg became a founding director of the first bank in the United States organized by women for women.

Whatever I know about how to live my life, I learned from her. When I graduated from college and wanted to become a writer, she lent me the money to buy an IBM Selectric typewriter. I dutifully paid her back $50 a month, and when the debt was repaid, she wrote me a check for the entire amount. “I wanted you to know what it means to work for something.”

Back at the table, she sighed. “I don’t know what to do with myself. I don’t feel useful anymore.”

“It’s your turn to rest and let others do things for you.”

“I’m not a rester, I’m a worker.”

“Let’s go for a ride,” I said, getting up from the table. We drove to a local farm, the place where my mother took me apple picking and pumpkin hunting as a child. I drove up a rutted road toward the berry patch.

“Where are we? This is beautiful, it reminds me of North Adams.”

I parked beside a row of blueberry bushes and opened her door.

She made her way to the bushes and started grabbing at the berries and popping them into her mouth, her ninety-eight-year-old fingers suddenly nimble. Sweeping her hair back, she looked up at the sky and moved down the row, picking rapidly. She was a girl again, filling the basket with ripe, warm berries. “This is exactly how it used to be.”

We drove home with the basket of berries on her lap. She squeezed my leg. “Buy your little house,” she said, and I did.

I called her from the little house on Long Island. I stood in the small yard and told her what I was planting: rosebushes, tulip bulbs, seeds for carrots, beets, and squash. I had turned over a small square of land at the far end of the yard and began calling it “the field.” I told her about tilling the field, tending my crop — the enormous satisfaction in this work, in being away from the city, my hands deep in the dirt.

She turned ninety-nine. “When are you coming home?” she asked several times in each conversation. “Soon,” I told her. “Soon, I am coming home.”

And then she was gone, the only person I’ve known to die unexpectedly at ninety-nine. I hurried back to Washington. I went to her house. I moved from room to room. I sat at the table, waiting. I had the feeling that she too felt she left too soon. She seemed to still be there, hovering, floating, packing.

I stayed for a while, just sitting, comforting myself with the echoes and objects that were like symbols, vessels of history.

At the end of the summer I pulled my carrots out of the ground, as proud of them as I was of any story or novel I’d written. She was the person I would most want to share them with; she was the one who would understand when I held up the green grassy ends and proudly said, Look what I made.

I see now that I am a product of each of my family narratives — some more than others. But in the end it is all four threads that twist and rub against one another, the fusion and friction combining to make me who and what I am. And not only am I a product of these four narratives — I am also influenced by another narrative; the story of what it is to be the adopted one, the chosen one, the outsider brought in. In the living room bookcase of my parents’ house there was a two-volume slip-cased set called The Adopted Family. One of the volumes was a book to be read to the adopted child, and the other was a book for the parents. I would often sit with that book not sure entirely what it was about but sure that it was of great import, that in some way it was quite literally about me. I felt like a doll whose package comes along with a book.

As a child, I devoured biographies — in particular a set of biographies for children called Childhood of Famous Americans. I read each of them again and again; two in particular stuck in my mind: Eleanor Roosevelt and Babe Ruth. And at some point they conflated into a character of my own making, Eleanor Babe, a sort of early superhero — not only did she start organizations like Unicef, she had a mean curve ball. Thinking back on those two books, it’s clear why they lodged in my thoughts; both Eleanor Roosevelt and Babe Ruth were sent away by their families — Eleanor to live in London with aunts who had no understanding of her, and Babe to a children’s home in Baltimore after his mother died. It was their outsider experience, their loneliness, that I identified with. They were invisible adoption heroes — not only had they survived but they succeeded.

It was the death of my grandmother that compelled me to try to have a child of my own. Motherhood was something that terrified me. I have a great fear of attachment and an equally constant fear of loss — I am not sure if this is true for everyone, but for me the ghost of the dead brother still and always looms. When I was younger I always thought I would adopt a child, but after Ellen’s death and then my grandmother’s, I felt I wanted a biological child, and so it was something that I decided to do. It had never occurred to me that it would be difficult to get pregnant. I started at thirty-nine, and in the end it took two years, thousands of dollars, the best of medical science, and two miscarriages before my daughter was born.

“What’s the matter?” my mother asked. “Isn’t adoption good enough for you?”

“Of course it’s good enough,” I said, but it wasn’t that — I felt compelled to try my hardest, to issue a biological echo, to see myself before myself, writ large and small and as fully related as one can ever be.

Months after my grandmother had passed, my mother called and asked if I would like my grandmother’s table.

“I know it’s big and that your house is small, but I think it would be nice if you had it.”

The table came in through the side door, carried by four men, carefully wrapped.

“These are tables of great weight,” one of the men said, and he was right, but the weight was not so much literal as emotional. I inherited much more than an object — it was a mandate to live and work as hard and with as much grace and style as she did.

At first the table looked out of place, lost. I oiled it. I rubbed it with a soft cloth, moving my hands over the surface and noticing the richness of the tone — the lived-in marks that Nakashima called Kevinizing after his son Kevin. I thought of the spiritual life of the wood, what it gave beyond a surface.

The first time I used the table, I invited a friend over for lunch. I took my usual spot. Instead of looking at a painting on my grandmother’s living room wall, I was now looking out a window at a bird feeder. I set two places at the table, hers and mine. My friend sat in my grandmother’s place and something felt strange.

“I need to change places with you,” I said.

The friend looked at me oddly — she didn’t understand.

“Could we switch?” I asked, and then I slid into her seat.

When the table gets dry — thirsty — its surface looks pale, parched. I rub it with oil; it drinks and then glows. And while it is only a table, an object made of wood, it is a perfect and constant reminder of how to live, how to stay connected. It was in this little house — which I wouldn’t have bought without my grandmother’s nod and a gift that helped with the down payment — that I got the phone call from my mother saying my mother had died. It was in this house that I first miscarried and that, a year later, I celebrated my child’s first Christmas and Hanukkah. It was in this house, at this table, that I sat alone unpacking the four boxes from my mother’s house in New Jersey. It was this table that could hold those boxes.

The table is the centerpiece of our family life. It is where on the weekends my young family gathers — my daughter draws her pictures here; together we make cookies and decorate them. Each time I sit here I remember myself in my grandmother’s kitchen, in awe and admiring her spice rack, her jars of cookie sprinkles and cinnamon hearts. Now, sitting in what was my grandmother’s seat, I watch my daughter sitting in my spot to my left. I watch this girl, who more than anyone reminds me of my grandmother. She carries the same facial expressions, the same gestures, the same simultaneous compassion and judgment. I witness the way she moves through her life, the confidence with which she carries herself. Like my grandmother, she takes great pleasure in making sure that others are taken care of. And as I am thinking this, she gets up from her spot, comes over, and gently pushes me out of my seat.

“I need your chair,” she says, climbing up, filling the vacated spot.

I am my mother’s child and I am my mother’s child, I am my father’s child and I am my father’s child, and if that line is a little too much like Gertrude Stein, then I might be a little bit her child too. Most important, now I am Juliet’s mother, and that brings with it a singularity of love and fear that I have never known before, and for that — and she is truly a blend of all four family lines — I thank all of my mothers and fathers, for she is my greatest gift.

Did I choose to be found? No. Do I regret it? No. I couldn’t not know.