“Or maybe we’d both be dead. You can’t obsess over what-if scenarios, Adrian. You can’t blame yourself.”
The drive from Seneca Lake to Spring Brook takes about five hours, but that morning your father made the trip in three and a half. I can only imagine what was going through his mind as he barreled down the interstate. Adrian and I were still at the police station, plying ourselves with sugary snacks to stay awake, when your father arrived. I can still remember the precise moment when Detective Briggs led him into the room. He was tall and thin with shaggy hair, an unkempt beard, and deep sunken watery eyes. At first I thought he might be a criminal from a neighboring cell. But he was dressed like a farmer, with work boots and Dickies pants and a button-down flannel shirt. And he knelt down and took my hand and started to cry.
* * *
I could write an entire book about everything that happened next, but I’ll try to keep things brief. You and your father went back to Seneca Lake, and Adrian moved back to New Brunswick to finish his last year at Rutgers. He invited me to come with him, to live rent-free in his apartment while I figured out the next stage of my life. But my whole world had turned upside down, and I was afraid of making big commitments in a moment of weakness. So I moved to my sponsor’s guest bedroom in Norristown.
You might not think of a sixty-eight-year-old man as the ideal roommate, but Russell was quiet and clean and he kept our pantries stocked with countless varieties of protein powder. I took a job at a running shoe store, just to get some money rolling in. The other employees had a little informal running club and I started going out with them, two or three mornings a week. I found a good church with plenty of twenty-and thirty-something parishioners. I started attending NA meetings again, sharing my stories and experiences with the goal of helping others.
I wanted to visit you in October, for your sixth birthday, but your doctors advised against it. They said you were still too fragile and vulnerable, that you were still “assembling” your true identity. We were allowed to speak on the phone, but only if you initiated the conversation, and you never showed any interest in speaking to me.
Still, your father called once or twice a month to update me on your progress, and we exchanged a lot of emails. I learned that you and your father were sharing a big farmhouse with your aunt and uncle and cousins, and instead of starting kindergarten, you participated in a slew of therapy programs: art therapy, talk therapy, music therapy, puppets and role-playing, the works. Your doctors were astonished by the fact that you had no memory of being roused from bed, dragged into the woods, and pushed up into a tree. They concluded that your brain had repressed these memories as a response to the trauma.
Your father was the only person who knew what really happened in the forest that night. I told him the whole story, and of course it sounds crazy, but once I sent copies of your mother’s drawings, in her inimitable style, he had no doubt I was telling the truth.
Your doctors gave you a very abridged version of the facts. You learned that you were born a girl named Flora and your real parents were József and Margit. You learned that Ted and Caroline were very sick people who made a lot of mistakes, and their biggest mistake was taking you away from your parents. Their second-biggest mistake was dressing you in boy clothes and changing your name from Flora to Teddy. Going forward, the doctors explained, you could choose to be called Flora or Teddy or Some Brand-New Name, and you could choose to dress as a boy or a girl or a little bit of both. No one pressured you to make any quick decisions. You were encouraged to take your time and do whatever felt right. The doctors warned that you would likely spend years grappling with your gender identity, but the doctors were wrong. Within eight weeks you were borrowing your cousin’s dresses and braiding your hair and answering to “Flora,” so there really wasn’t much confusion. Deep down inside, I think you always knew you were a girl.
* * *
A few days before Halloween, I answered the phone and was shocked to hear my mother’s voice. She said my name and immediately burst into tears. Apparently she’d been following our story on the news and she’d spent weeks trying to reach me—but with all my efforts to avoid the media, I’d made myself impossible to find. She said she was proud of me for getting sober, and she missed me and would I please consider coming home for dinner? I kept my composure just long enough to ask “When?” and she said, “What are you doing right now?”
My mother had finally quit smoking and she looked great, and I was surprised to learn that she’d remarried. Her new husband, Tony—the man I’d glimpsed on the ladder, clearing leaves from the gutters—was a gem. They had met in a support group after Tony lost his son to methamphetamines. He had a good job managing a Sherwin-Williams store and he channeled all his excess energy into home improvement projects. He’d painted every room in the house and repointed all the bricks out front. The bathroom was completely renovated, with a new shower and tub, and my old bedroom had been converted into a fitness room with an exercise bike and a treadmill. The biggest surprise was learning that my mother had started running! All through high school, Beth and I could never drag her off the couch, but now she was pacing nine-minute miles. Now she had Lycra shorts and a Fitbit and everything.
My mother and I sat in the kitchen and talked all afternoon and late into the night. I was prepared to tell her the whole story of the Maxwells, but she already knew most of the details. She had a giant folder stuffed with printouts of stories she’d read on the Internet. She’d clipped every article from the Inquirer and pasted them into a scrapbook. She said she’d become a minor-league celebrity, that all my old neighbors were so proud of me. She’d kept a list of all the people who’d called the house hoping to reconnect with me—friends from high school, old teammates and coaches, my housemates at Safe Harbor. Mom had dutifully recorded all their names and numbers. “You should call these people, Mallory. Let them know how you’re doing. Oh! And I nearly forgot the strangest one!” She crossed the kitchen to her refrigerator and lifted a magnet to retrieve a business card: Dr. Susan Lowenthal at the University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine. “This woman actually knocked on my door! She says she met you in some kind of research project? And she’s spent years trying to track you down. What the heck is she talking about?”
I told her I wasn’t really sure and then I put the card in my wallet and changed the subject. I still haven’t mustered the nerve to call the phone number. I’m not sure I want to hear what Dr. Lowenthal has to tell me. I definitely don’t want any more public attention or celebrity.
Right now, I just want life to be normal.
* * *