Something They Never Told Me

Something They’d Never Told Me

There’d been an accident on the motorway, and I was even later than I thought I’d be. 

Sunday lunch was sacrosanct and if we didn’t make it on time, boy did Mum give us a thrashing. A verbal beating, I mean, because Mum, a tiny wisp of a woman, couldn’t even kill a fly, unless she talked it to death. Now in her late fifties with hair that was starting to turn gray, she was still formidable. She’d always run a tight household fueled by strong words, but we all knew that her strictness belied a heart that was as soft as the gooey centers of her Sunday meringues. 

            “Sorry I’m late. I slept in today. I just couldn’t get going,” I said, expecting a scolding. As a junior copywriter at an advertising agency, my boss always had me working late, even on a Saturday night. I was exhausted.

            But surprisingly, neither Mum nor Auntie Liz even looked at me. One or the other always gives me the ‘once over’ when I arrive home at the weekend, commenting on my hair or my nails, whether I looked tired, was too fat, or too thin. Sometimes I feel it’s like having two mothers. They are so over-the-top—Mum being the loudest, but her younger sister Liz is a close second. They’re both very opinionated. So, the silence was eerie. Something was wrong. 

The aroma of Mum’s lasagne mixing with Auntie’s Liz’s strong French perfume filled the air, comforting Sunday smells. I know I was very late, which was perhaps why everyone was already seated, but the mood in the room was weird. Mum was at her end of the kitchen table with Dad facing her at his end. Auntie Liz and Uncle Bill were in their usual seats; they’d come for Sunday lunch for as long as I could remember. I could see a bowl of salad sitting on the table. It was already dressed with Mum’s homemade vinaigrette. It looked soggy and unappealing. Mum would never serve something like that, even if she was angry.

I shrugged off my new pink suede jacket and draped it over the back of my chair before plonking myself down. I tried to catch my brother Davey’s eye, but he was fiddling intently with his iPhone. I wasn’t surprised that he didn’t look at me. Like most teenage boys, he hadn’t said much since he was twelve, four years ago. He spends most of his waking and sleeping hours squirreled away in his bedroom and only comes out for food. Uncle Bill, next to Davey, was cleaning his fingernails with the tines of a fork, and Aunt Liz was giving her wine glass an intense polish with her table napkin. Mum and Dad just stared each other. No one spoke. The atmosphere in the room was as thick as treacle.

            “What’s up?” I asked. “I’m sorry I didn’t text you that I’d be late, but I couldn’t get service on my phone.” I babbled on, “The traffic was backed up for miles.”

             My mother shot me a look from behind her tortoiseshell eyeglasses. I couldn’t tell if it was an angry or a guilty expression, but either way it felt awkward. 

            The plastic on Dad’s cushion cover squished noisily as he shuffled in his seat. It was an embarrassing noise, rather like a whoopie-cushion fart. It usually made everyone laugh, but no one even cracked a smile. My stomach flipped nervously. Auntie Liz snatched the fork from Uncle Bill and slapped his hand, her lips pursed tight as if she was biting the insides of her mouth. Tears were welling up in her eyes.

            “Is someone going to tell me what’s going on?” I asked. I looked hopefully at Davey, but he kept hanging onto his phone as if it was some kind of a lifeline.

“Have I done something wrong?” 

It was Dad who finally broke the silence. He stood up and walked over to the kitchen counter. He picked up a bundle of letters. 

“These came in the post yesterday and I opened ours. I haven’t opened yours.” 

“What are they?” I asked. Then I saw the company logo on an envelope and my heart trembled.  

Several months earlier, I’d been given one of those genetic testing kits by a friend as a birthday present. We’d both sent off our DNA samples at the same time, excited to find out more about our families. Unbeknown to my parents, I’d bought a kit for each of them and had sent off their DNA samples as well. I couldn’t remember putting my parent’s names as the return address, but I must have done so. The results of our three tests had arrived here at the same time.  

As I studied the findings in my letter, my heart went from trembling to pounding in my chest.

“What does this mean!” I gulped. “It doesn’t make sense. I only sent the DNA off to find out where we come from, and if we have any skeleton relatives hiding somewhere. I thought it would be fun. I wanted to surprise you.”

I heard my mum take a deep breath; it was more of a shuddering sob really. Then she finally spoke.

“I wish you hadn’t done it,” she wept. “We spent years trying for a baby and you were our cherub sent from heaven.” Tears dripped down her face. She picked up her table napkin and blew her nose noisily.  

“You can see from your results that you’re not our biological child. You’re Liz’s.”

“But not Uncle Bill’s.” I said, looking down at the sheet of paper. My voice was quivering. I was confused.

“No, you’re not Bill’s child.”

Auntie Liz started to say something, then her face seemed to crumple like torn up wrapping paper. Her anguish was heartbreaking. My hands started to tingle, and my head spun around and around. I said something, but my words sounded like an echo. Everything went dark.

Music was playing softly in my head and when I opened my eyes, five faces were looking down at me. I must have hit the table hard because Mum was holding an ice pack on my head. She was stroking my arm and I noticed my shirt was wet from her tears.

 They left me sitting there for a couple of minutes, and then Dad gathered me up in his big, loving arms. He carried me over to the sofa and gently lay me down. Auntie Liz had made tea. She handed me a mug. 

Apart from the sound of my little brother sniffing, it was as if we were in the reading room at the local library; it was so quiet. I heard my own head throbbing

 As the minutes ticked by and still no one spoke, emotions I’d never felt before started to rush through my body. I thought I might have had a stroke; my hands were trembling, but I couldn’t lift my arms. Sadness, confusion, and uncertainty about what all this meant boiled up together, rendering me incapable of speech, movement and almost the ability to breathe. I lay on the sofa curled up like a big question mark, waiting for an explanation, but the silence continued.

It was all the sugar Auntie Liz had put in my tea that finally brought me to my senses. The sweetness gave me a jolt. If no one was going to tell me what was going on, I was going to have to take control. I was twenty-two after all, and an adult. I sat up.

“Can we start at the beginning,” I said. “Who’s going to tell me who my parents are?”

“You’re our Julie,” Mum whispered. “We love you now and always have. Ever since I held you in my arms the day you were born, you were mine and your dad’s. Don’t even think that you weren’t wanted or loved. And Liz loves you too, but perhaps not in quite the same way.”

I wasn’t quite sure what to make of Mum’s remark. Did she mean that Auntie Liz had a reason not to love me? We look a lot alike, which I’d never thought surprising, she is my aunt. But I noticed for the very first time, that we shared the same habit of clenching our fists when we’re nervous. And I always push my thumb through my first two fingers, as she was doing now. But if she was my real mother, why didn’t she love me like a daughter?

Dad went to the fridge and took out a bottle of white wine.

“Can I get you a drink, Liz?” he asked.

“Yes. I think I’m going to need one,” she replied. She sat down next to me on the sofa cradling the glass in her hand and started talking.

“Twenty-one years ago, I’d just left University and my first job was at an advertising agency. As you already know, I studied English just like you—we share the same love of words. I was an intern, making coffee and doing errands for a team working on a campaign for a Distillery – gin, I think it was. It involved lots of testing the product I remember. Far too much drinking went on. It meant lots of late nights at work, and I rarely got home before midnight.” 

“One night I was waiting for the last bus. It was pouring with rain and a car pulled alongside the bus stop. I remember that there’d been a man at the stop when I’d got there, which made me nervous. Anyway, the man in the car was someone from work. He was one of the rising stars in the company, quite a bit older than me. Even I, in my lowly job, knew who he was though. He rolled down his window and asked me if he could give me a lift home. He said he’d seen me around the office. It all seemed to be legit, so I leapt at the offer of a ride. I didn’t want to wait alone in the dark with a strange man. I was such a stupid idiot. I should never gone have with him. He didn’t take me home.”

“Where did he take you?” I asked. My mind was all over the place by now, thinking of all sorts of horror scenarios.

Auntie Liz’s face was flushed as she remembered what had happened. Her voice quavered as she told me that the man had taken her to a parking lot not far from her house where he’d raped her. She didn’t go into too many details. I didn’t know what to say. She’d been violated by someone, and I was the result. She’d had to look at me for the past twenty-two years, knowing how I’d been conceived and perhaps see his face in mine. I couldn’t even imagine how that must make her feel, let alone how to manage my own emotions as I listened. 

“I left my job shortly after I it happened, and I never went back to advertising. I just couldn’t. Anyway, I found out I was pregnant with you. At first, I couldn’t tell anyone about it. I was ashamed and embarrassed that I’d put myself in that position. I should have taken better care.”

“Surely it wasn’t your fault that you were raped.” I said. “Did you report it to the police?”

“No, I didn’t. I should never have accepted the ride with him. I felt as if I done something wrong because I’d agreed to go with him. I was stupid, naïve, whatever… The next day at work, he completely ignored me.”

I put my arms around Auntie Liz, or my mother as I now knew her to be. 

“How can accepting a ride from someone be an invitation for them to have sex with you? What a vile man,” I said. 

“That’s what your mum said when I finally told her. It was heartbreaking because I knew that she and your dad were desperate to have a baby. They’d been trying for a long time and there I was pregnant with a child I didn’t want. I was thinking of having a termination. That’s when we came up with idea for them to adopt you. And here you are. I love you very much, but they are your real parents.”

In the background I could hear Davey sniffing again. He was snuggled next to Mum, and I heard him whisper very quietly, “If you couldn’t have kids, am I adopted too?”

“No, sweetheart.” She hugged him. “You’re my beautiful twilight child and Julie is my angel.” 

            Tears crept their way into my eyes as I heard what Mum said. I’d always felt loved. I didn’t care they’d never told me, and I could see why they wouldn’t want to disclose something as personal as the rape. Auntie Liz was now curled up next to me with her arm around me. She was crying quietly. It was as much upsetting for her as it was for me, but in a different way. I can only imagine what nightmares must be going on her head. But something else kept worming around at the back of mine.

“You didn’t work for the same ad agency that I work for now, did you?” I asked. I had a creepy feeling that there was some sort of connection. 

Auntie Liz was breathing hard. 

“No, I didn’t,” she said. She gripped my hand so tight, I winced. “There isn’t an easy way to tell you this… The man who founded your company was the man who forced himself on me. He retired well before you joined, but you will know who he is.”

I’d begun to feel relatively calm about everything until I heard that. My head started to spin again. 

“I think I’m going to throw up,” I said, and promptly puked the contents of my mug of sweet tea on the carpet. 

Bob O’Malley of O’Malley, Smith & Rogers, was my father. I’d even seen the man a couple of times. He was the genius who’d started the company. Everyone knew that he was as rich as Croesus, with a fancy flat in Manhattan and a house in the Virgin Islands. I tried to remember what he looked like. Did I look like him? Do I have brothers or sisters? Does he even know I exist and if he does, does he even care? I could almost see the words I would say to him floating around in the air above my head.     

We all sat there, everyone silently contemplating and dealing with the afternoon’s revelations in our own way. Auntie Liz now had her arms around me, and Mum had come over to hug me on my other side. I was squeezed between the two women who would always love me. I was like the filling of a love sandwich, the best bit, the morsel everyone loves the most. I could only feel tenderness. In that moment I knew that I didn’t want to know anything about Bob O’Malley. The man was a scumbag. My family was all that mattered.

I stood up and glanced over to my little brother. I swear I’d heard his stomach grumbling from across the room. Sixteen-year-old boys need food.

“Hey kiddo, you must be starving,” I said. “Do you want to help me get lunch on the table?”

I watched him jump up. He was getting to be so tall and handsome. He looked like Dad. He nodded and gave me a huge grin. I’d never known him help before, but miracles do happen. He came over and put his arms around my waist. Dad and Uncle Bill had their arms around each other too. My heart tugged sweetly at my chest.

“Come on then,” I said. “Let’s make another salad and put that phone away. Mum’s going to kill you if you have it out during lunch!”

 My world hadn’t turned upside down, it had just tipped a little for the briefest of moments, and love was all that was needed to set it straight. It was Sunday and time for lunch. It was family time. My mum had made sure nothing could ever destroy that.