Happy Family Part 19

"Yeah. That was for my nephew, Medal of Valor. Died in the line of duty. He was my sister Janice's kid, I raised him after she pa.s.sed." He takes the photograph from her and dusts it a bit with his sleeve. "Closest thing to a kid of my own, Mikey was." He pauses, catching his slip. "Of course, I didn't know about-" She holds up her hand. "It's okay," she says, then adds, "I'm sorry about your nephew."

"Yeah. What are you gonna do." They share a nod. Her mind is buzzing; all these men in the photographs-Christmas morning, fishing in the Rockaways, weddings-are stamped in the Eddie Norris mold. Men whose square shoulders and broad backs cry out to wear navy blue uniforms, caps at that straight-down-the-middle angle that signals a deep knowledge of the creed, membership in the tribe. She'd had the same sense of pride and duty when she was wearing that uniform. "That there's my old man with his brothers. Think I got one of his pops somewhere, never knew him," Gerry says, rummaging.

"All the men in your family were cops?"

"Yeah, typical micks, huh? Whole family of cops, except for yours truly. Those two jokers in uniform there are my younger brothers, Johnny and Odell, both retired, living the good life off their pensions." He keeps looking for the picture of the paterfamilias, going on about all the noncop jobs he'd tried to do: speed-reading teacher, handyman, carnival barker, janitor, typewriter salesman, drunkard. "What did you expect?" he says. "You probably didn't think I'd be a lawyer or have a fancy job. Guess you could say I was the odd man out." What did she expect? Not mick cops. Her stomach's doing loop-the-loops. She comes from a long line of cops. Maybe heeding the call to join the NYPD was less an act of rebellion and more a return to her roots. She can't help but laugh.

"I say something funny?" he asks, slightly bewildered but wanting in on the joke.

"No," she says, putting her hand over her mouth. "Not at all."

"You laugh when you're nervous? That's me, do it all the time. It's gotten me in trouble my whole life."

She nods. They drink their beers. She asks a bit more about Johnny and Odell, and they talk about Howard Beach, the way the city has changed so much in the decade she's been away.

"Sheesh," he says, slapping his hand to his forehead. "I almost forgot to ask how things turned out for you. You got a husband? You work?" Cheri pauses, thinking about how to answer.

"My husband died. I did a few different things in my life. Looking for the next one. But it all turned out all right." She considers, for a moment, telling him about her time in the NYPD. But that would invite conversation about other parts of her life, and she isn't ready for any of that.

"Sorry about your loss," he says. They sit and nod at each other. "Here's mud in your eye," he says, tipping his bottle to her, knocking back what's left. The red Budweiser clock on the wall above their heads ticks. They slip back into an awkward silence.

"Well," she says, "thanks for the beer."

"You want another one? Can I get you something else?"

"No, thank you. I should get going."

"Look, you came here all the way from Chicago," he says. "If you want to get together again...I mean, meet up later or whenever...I'd like that."

"Okay. Well, the door is open now. And I get to New York from time to time."

"Okay, then," he says. They both rise and walk to the front door. She reaches for her coat but he takes it off the coat stand and holds it out for her. As she's about to leave, he reaches in his pocket and pulls out some bills wrapped in a rubber band. "Let me give you something for a cab or...for yourself. I'd like to give you something." This gesture, his hand holding out the bills and the look in his eyes, makes her sad and a little ashamed. It makes her want to stop, maybe share a little more of herself.

"I'm good," she says, "but thank you. Thank you for meeting me. We can talk again sometime, okay?" At that, he smiles. A few minutes later, as she's walking down the street, she has the desire to turn around, like a little girl, to see if he's still there.

There's nothing like a dive bar to make time stand still, and it's good to know that as much as her old neighborhood has changed, she can still count on Double Down. It's a narcoleptic remnant of the Lower East Side's grittier past with a barely ambulatory clientele in bad Santa hats. The floor is sticky, the beer s.h.i.tty and cheap. Someone puts Etta James on the jukebox. She hasn't told Cici she's in town; it would break her heart to know what Cheri was doing here. But before Cheri leaves New York, there's one more stop to make. The PI also tracked down the foster family who'd briefly taken her in before her adoption. The father is deceased and the mother is in a nursing home, but she's been given the address of a William Beal in Asbury Park. He must be a relative. She's been trying the phone number listed for him. No one answers and it doesn't go to voice mail. William Beal could be out of town. But there's only one way to know for sure. Tomorrow she'll take the Path to Hoboken and, from there, rent a car and meander down the sh.o.r.e to Asbury Park.

As Cheri is walking to her hotel, she calls Cici. There is so much she wants to say, but she can manage only a hoa.r.s.e "Thank you."

"For what? Is everything okay? You are not back in the depression?"

"I'm fine," Cheri says, realizing it's actually true. "But I wasn't, when you came to Chicago. I was an a.s.shole. And you helped me. So thank you." There is silence on the other end of the phone. Cheri presses it closer to her ear.

"Cici. Mom? Are you crying, don't cry-"

"No, no." Cici's voice is thick with emotion. "All I ever want to do is help, cara. Thank you for allowing this. I love you."

"I love you too," Cheri says. When she hangs up, she feels the weight of grat.i.tude. But also an edge of guilt, as if she's betraying Cici, the mother who had actually wanted her.

The Jersey Sh.o.r.e has a magical loneliness in winter. As she drives, she can see the Twin Lights lighthouse behind her, Sandy Hook to the left, and the monochromatic gray ocean ahead. It's the flip side of Malibu. If she turns her head she can make out the New York City skyline winking. Her axis of origin is all here. She thinks of the circ.u.mstances of her birth, how Cici said Sol had brought her back from what she'd a.s.sumed was an orphanage. Now she knows it must have been from the Beals'. She thinks of the freakish coincidences, that, despite her being raised by Sol and Cici, she ended up becoming a cop. Was that in her genetic predisposition, like hair color or being right-handed? If there is a G.o.d, He hides knowledge where we least expect to find it: in ourselves. Is the knowledge of who we are in our DNA? The genetic code pa.s.sed down through the family, with the lies and half-truths we tell each other to protect the hope that each generation might be better, make fewer mistakes than the one before? Are the lies even necessary to survive? Was this why she didn't have a child? Was her infertility a manifestation of her deepest fear-the fear that she'd be perpetuating something she herself did not know, was afraid to face? "I could have told you that," Michael would have said. But maybe she needed to find out herself.

She stops in Sea Bright. The town is mostly boarded up, but she finds a lone fish shack that's open. The chowder is some of the best she's ever had. There's a cold drizzle that starts and stops but she needs to stretch her legs and walk down the boardwalk a bit. The beach is deserted except in the distance there's a huddle of parkas. As she gets closer she sees a group of older men and women. They strip down to bathing suits and put on caps, slap their white flesh, and start running into the frigid water. She'd heard of people swimming in the Atlantic in winter, but seeing them do it is something else. "Come in, the water's fine," someone shouts. She is moved by the audacity of these old people, the brilliance of their bodies as they bravely skip into the sea and bob under. Cheri ties to picture herself skinny-dipping in the ocean at that age. Who would she be surrounded by?

She decides to try the Beal number one last time before she's forced to go pound on his door or canva.s.s the neighbors. She's about to hang up after the fifth ring when she hears "Yeah?" He's got a deeper voice than she imagined. She's so surprised he answered it takes her a minute to say something. "Who is this?" the voice demands after a few seconds of silence.

"Is this William Beal?"

"Billy, yeah, what do you want?"

"I've been trying to reach you," Cheri says. "Ellen Jameson, the PI who contacted you about a year ago, gave me your number. About the baby your family fostered in August 1962?"

"Yeah," he says. "And what's that got to do with you?"

"I'm that baby," she says.

When he speaks again, his voice is flat so she can't get a read on him. Billy. That's what you called a kid. By now he should have become a Bill or a William. He's fifty-seven years old, divorced, works as a super for apartment buildings. He tells her he's working, but he should be home sometime "around six." If he wasn't there, she was to buzz number 225 and a Mrs. Crenshaw would let her in to wait for him. When she hangs up, she figures there's a fifty-fifty chance he'll even show. He wasn't exactly forthcoming on the phone.

The address is north of the train station, in a part of town that looks like it's halfway between gentrification and Baghdad. His apartment building looks like renovations started and then stopped. There's still scaffolding on one side and plastic over a few windows. "I got to go to work," says Mrs. Crenshaw, letting her in the front door. "But you look okay to me. He doesn't have anything worth stealing anyway. Here's the key. Super's apartment has no number, just go to the end of the first floor. It's on the right." Mrs. Crenshaw is a tall redhead wearing a c.o.c.ktail-waitress outfit under a long puffy jacket. She doesn't answer Cheri when she asks, "Did Billy say he'd be back home soon?"

Cheri's not thrilled about this half-a.s.sed arrangement, but she lets herself into Billy's apartment. It's small, spa.r.s.ely furnished, and smells like medicinal Chinese herbs. He's got a fake Christmas tree in the living room with a little tinsel thrown on it and a saggy, futon-type sofa. Two bar stools are snugged up to a plastic table in the kitchen.

She tries calling Billy's cell. He doesn't answer. She might as well take off her coat. Something's on her sleeve, something gray embedded in the fabric. Ashes. She'd been wearing Michael this whole time. She can't find a napkin or a paper towel anywhere. But look what she does find: a midnight special, unloaded, badly in need of cleaning. There's no ammunition, although a quick search of the kitchen reveals a bounty of interesting items. There's a stash of what smells like very old homegrown weed, an unopened box of extra-large condoms, an extensive REO Speedwagon tape collection, tons of plastic bags tossed under the sink, and rat poison. The smell of those herbs is suddenly making her nauseated.

This is taking too long. She goes to the bathroom to pee. Stuck to the mirror above the sink there's a photograph of a boy, maybe twelve years old, in a baseball uniform posed in cla.s.sic pitcher's stance. It's creased and dog-eared, like he carried it around in his wallet or pocket. His kid? She peeks into his medicine cabinets and barely has time to look at the prescription labels-lithium and Depakote, which she thinks are heavy-duty mood stabilizers-when she hears footsteps and a key in the lock.

"You Cheri?" The man who must be Billy walks in and throws his keys on the kitchen table. He takes off his hat and whatever hair hasn't receded stands up a bit from the static electricity. "You got in okay. That's good. You want to sit down?"

They sit at the kitchen table. The kid in the photo has his same wide gray eyes. Billy Beal smells like Irish Spring soap, not what she'd expect from a super who was working all day. "How do we do this? You going to ask me questions?" He's been chomping on a wad of chewing tobacco; she can tell by how he talks it's stashed in his cheek. He's taking her in. Not kindly or unkindly. Just intently.

"Okay, let's start with your parents. Where are they now?" Cheri says, going into cop mode to mask the emotional investment she has in finding out about Miriam.

"Pops died of a heart attack, and Moms is in an old-age home in Trenton."

"Sorry to hear that."

"She's got her good days and days she's in total lala land. Some days she wakes up and says she's going to open the deli." He's staring at her harder now.

"Is this a bad time? You just got home from work. I can come back."

"Nah, it's fine. Hey, let me ask you something. What's your favorite baseball team?"

"I'm not really into sports," Cheri says, taken aback at his non sequitur.

"But if you had to pick a team, who would you root for?"

"In Chicago?"

"Aw, c'mon! The Cubs or White Sox? You're from Jersey. What team did you like growing up?"

"The Yankees. Yankees over Mets any day."

"Bingo," he says, rocking back on the stool, and for the first time his face shows a little expression. "I knew it! Listen, there's something I have for you. Stay right there." Maybe this guy has taken too many mood stabilizers. She's still feeling a little queasy.

"This has been through a lot with me," Billy says, coming back into the room. "I never thought I'd see this day. I'm still blown away that PI lady found me." She looks at the gift he's holding out-a simple silver hamsa pendant on a leather cord. "Take it, it's yours," he says.

"Is this supposed to mean something to me?"

"It was hers. Your mother's."

"Miriam? She gave this to you?" There were questions she'd formulated, but now, holding something concrete, makes her voracious to know everything. Every detail, nuance, the weather on the day she was born, what Miriam was wearing, what she said to Billy Beal. "Wait," she says, "don't say anything yet. I want to start at the beginning." She gets her purse and pulls out the PI's file, a pen, and a pad of paper. "Okay, go on."

"I remember everything about that day," he says. The night before, on the top sheet of her notepad, Cheri had scribbled a list of newsworthy events that happened on her birthday: Marilyn Monroe's death, Jamaica's independence, and Nelson Mandela's arrest. She had been afraid these impersonal details were all she would ever know. She looks into Billy Beal's steel-gray eyes.

"Okay," she says. "I'm ready."

August 5, 1962.

Marilyn Monroe found dead, drug overdose.

Jamaica celebrates independence.

Nelson Mandela arrested for illegally leaving South Africa.

Trenton, New Jersey: Generator blowout at St. Mercy's.

Twelve-car pileup on the New Jersey Turnpike, worst in state's history.

This is the story of family.

Like any story, what happens and why changes depends on who is doing the telling. Two siblings raised by the same parents in the same house often have different versions of shared events. Multiply that over generations, and you see why wars are started, religions divided, secrets held forever.

Who really knows about their parents' life before they were parents? Who wants to know about their parents' s.e.x life? Forget about grandparents. Throw divorce and fertility science into the equation and you can have multiple parents and more stories in the mix. What if you knew the uncut version, the whole story, not just what was interpreted for you?

What if you were adopted and got a glimpse of your birth parents? Would your biological father have your flat b.u.t.t, explain your love of guns; would your birth mother have two different-colored eyes? If you discovered that your adoptive father had another family living two towns away and hated him for his deception and yourself for being complicit, would it change anything if you knew the reasons why? What if you learned that your parents had a baby who died just before they adopted you? That your adoptive mother nursed you on the milk of her dead son, a mixture of her grief and hope-hope she'd put all on you because she'd never be able to carry another child? Would it change how you feel about your parents and about yourself? Would this knowledge rewrite the story enough so you could find forgiveness for a bigamist father, compa.s.sion for a mother who stalks you with her love?

If life is a river, we can see only a small patch of it. A little in front of us, some behind. We don't know when we're going to run into a tributary or hit a waterfall. If you could pull back and up to see how it all connects to the ocean, if you could see the whole story of all of your parents and their parents, would it alter your memories of them? Would it change what you translate to your kids, what they then revise and tell their kids?

If you could do that, even for a moment, you'd get G.o.d's sense of humor. You'd know your story is perfect. That your terribly imperfect parents were perfect for you, that your life could only have been written by and for you.

This is the story of the Matzner family. Its end is its beginning. August 5, 1962: Marilyn Monroe is found dead, Jamaica celebrates its independence, Nelson Mandela is arrested. In Trenton, New Jersey, a pregnant teenage girl walks into a clinic and gives birth, then walks out, leaving her baby forever. The baby is adopted, named Cheri, wears her Girl Scout uniform to school but ditches the troop for shooting practice at the local 4-H, pierces her tongue, has a love affair with speed, becomes a cop, discovers her father leads a double life, witnesses a murder, buries her father and her husband, forgives her mother, eats a T-bone steak with a stranger in the rain, meets her biological father and the person who rescued her from the clinic, without whom this story would have been very different.

Oh, and the baby ends up having a baby. The result of that T-bone steak in the rain, some excellent whiskey, and the stranger who showed her how to open herself up, to tell her story. That baby is you, Henry. I named you Henry in honor of Michael, who wanted a Hank. I wrote this book for you. So you can smell the ocean. Have a wider view. And be able to laugh at it all just a little bit sooner than I did.

-Cheri Matzner, October 7, 2015.

Acknowledgments.

For their courage in helping me see them outside of their roles as my parents, I thank my mother, Cynthia Barber, and father, David Birenbaum. Tireless readers, they provided not only love and support but incisive comments. Thanks also to my stepmother, Vanessa Ruiz, for her calm and counsel.

For their enormous generosity of spirit, I am indebted to these friends who were there for me, unfailingly: Philipp Keel, A. M. Homes, Angela Janklow, Maria Semple, Tamar Halpern, Rick Mordecon, Matthias and Melodie Mazur, Ingrid Katal, Susanna Brisk, Janet Yang, Amy Raine. For their early, close reading, thanks to Cathy Coleman and Judy Sternlight.

For her encouragement, guidance, and patience, I thank my wonderful agent, Susan Golomb. Thank you to my editor and publisher, Lee Boudreaux, for putting both her heart and intellect into and behind this book. To Reagan Arthur, Lisa Erikson, Carrie Neill, Carina Guiterman, Lauren Harms, Tracy Roe, and the entire team at Little Brown, a debt of grat.i.tude for believing in me and working so hard to bring this book into the world.

To Shaun, who was here at the conclusion, thank you for a new beginning.

Lastly, thank you to my beautiful daughter, Zoe, who has grown faster than my ability to write these words. I know you will be able to laugh at it all far sooner than I did.

About the Author.

Tracy Barone earned a BA and an MFA in dramatic writing at NYU and has worked as a screenwriter and a playwright. A former film executive in Hollywood, she was the executive producer on Wild Wild West, Rosewood, and My Fellow Americans and was instrumental in acquiring and developing the films Men in Black and Ali.

Unusual stories. Unexpected voices. An immersive sense of place. Lee Boudreaux Books publishes both award-winning authors and writers making their literary debut. A carefully curated mix, these books share an underlying DNA: a mastery of language, commanding narrative momentum, and a knack for leaving us astonished, delighted, disturbed, and powerfully affected, sometimes all at once.

Lee Boudreaux on HAPPY FAMILY.

I like a novel that surprises me, and Tracy Barone's Happy Family did just that, in spades, from first page to last. And the whip-smart, fiercely independent, and complicated woman at the heart of the book supplies more than her fair share of those surprises. She's not always likable, but I found myself rooting for her all the more as she simultaneously hungers for meaningful connection and pushes it away with both hands. And who can blame her for her deeply suspicious nature? After all, the whole truth of her existence is shrouded in secrecy and shame until the fact that she's adopted emerges, in all sorts of puzzling detail, when she's eight years old. As an adult, she's a flawed, messy, deeply relatable modern-day woman trying desperately to sort out her career, her marriage, her past, and her future before the clock runs out, all chronicled in a voice that's as cracklingly intelligent and wryly observant as its heroine. In the end, there's no one whose long, hard road to happiness I'd rather witness.

______________________________________.

Over the course of her career, Lee Boudreaux has published a diverse list of t.i.tles, including Ben Fountain's Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk, Smith Henderson's Fourth of July Creek, Madeline Miller's The Song of Achilles, Ron Rash's Serena, Jennifer Senior's All Joy and No Fun, Curtis Sittenfeld's Prep, and David Wroblewski's The Story of Edgar Sawtelle, among many others.

For more information about forthcoming books, please go to leeboudreauxbooks.com.

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