For three years and change Anna had looked forward to going to work in the morning. Even during the pandemic when they kept going to the courthouse at a minimum for safety reasons, and when they did work there, they were few and wore masks. The plastic shields and face guards were still up in the courtroom.
On this Monday morning, Anna went in a bit early even though she wished to be somewhere else. Her weekend with Joe had been so wonderful. They had a beautiful Saturday road trip and stopped at several vineyards, then had dinner at an oceanfront bistro in Bodega Bay, the same town Joe’s daughter, Melissa, lived in. “That’s how I know the best spots.” Then home to Anna’s house and Joe spent the night.
After a long, slow Sunday morning with Joe, Anna had gone to see her mother in the afternoon. Blanche gave only a slight expression of recognition before she began asking for things.
“Can I have a glass of juice?
“Reach for that throw at the end of the bed—my knees are cold.
“Where is that other nurse, the one whose name I always forget?
“Are we playing mah-jongg today?
“When is dinner? Have we had dinner?”
Anna could coax her to talk a little bit, asking her questions about what she’d been doing or, better still, asking her questions about long ago. Her short-term memory was shot but her long-term memory was still pretty functional. So she asked, “Remember that apartment in Oakland with the dumbwaiter? It used to be a house and had a fantastic attic.”
“I think I left a few things there,” she said. “I have to put my feet up.”
“Your feet are up, Mom. Let me cover them with the throw.”
“Mom? Are you my mom?”
“No,” Anna said with a laugh. “You’re my mom.”
“I don’t think so,” she said. “That’s so unlikely.”
“That’s right, you said you had a son and gave him up. Do I have that right?”
“I said that?” she asked. “Can you tuck in this throw? My knees just stay cold.”
“Sure, of course,” Anna said. “Yes, you said that. You said there was a boy that you had to give away but you kept the girl.”
“I guess that’s right, then. I think I need another throw over my legs.”
Anna just patted the throw that was already there, as though she’d covered her anew. “Who was his father, then?”
“He wasn’t important, when you get down to it. I was young and as stupid as all young girls. He was older. He’s dead by now, I’m sure.”
“And who was the girl’s father?” she asked.
Blanche was quiet for a long time. She never did answer the question. An hour later when Blanche had started to doze and Anna was leaving, Blanche said, “It was hard then, you know. Having a baby without a husband. The hardest thing I ever did. I always wonder how I got into that mess.”
“Tell me about it,” Anna said.
She was answered by a soft snore.
The next day in her office, checking emails and looking through her calendar, she came across an email from the Family Tree Agency, which she had used to check her DNA, and they sent her a long list of names of people who were looking at their possible family connections, names of people who wished to be contacted if there was any kind of match. Most were expecting to find ancestral connections.
There was a man, a sixty-three-year-old white male, born in Modesto, California, with no information about his biological parents except that his mother put him up for adoption when he was a newborn and she never registered with any of the internet agencies giving her permission to be located. And according to the DNA ladder in the agency where Anna had sent her specimen, there was a possible partial match. A strong possible match.
His name was Phillip Winston and he was, of all things, an attorney. He lived in Rhode Island. She couldn’t use state or county money to investigate this man before contacting him, but she knew of many resources through the DA’s office of investigators who could work on the project for her, and if it looked legitimate, she would then contact this man.
TWELVE
Jessie was surprised to find how much she enjoyed going to therapy. She’d been cynical to start, but it certainly was true comfort. In just two more weeks of counseling and behavior modification, learning ways to keep herself from caving in to feelings of inadequacy, she was noticing an increase in her level of confidence. Most of that came directly from talking through situations that threatened to make her angry or leave her feeling as though she just wasn’t getting enough attention.
What struck her as so odd was that her sessions with Dr. Norton were not emphasizing that she change so much as reinforcing that her instincts were appropriate, though at times her responses were not. For example, expecting a man one is sleeping with to at least communicate was not wrong, but berating him in a temper was not going to get the desired response. Her tone could be harsh. Angry.
Rather than working on stopping the anger, she was learning to channel it into more positive encouragement to get her point across.
“Isn’t that manipulative?” she asked, aware that even her question held that edge of anger.
“You could look at it that way,” Dr. Norton said. “But I’m here to tell you, if your goal is to change the way you’re treated you will have to learn to speak as you wish to be spoken to.”
He gave her homework to do—sentences recited and repeated that softened and emphasized her kinder, gentler side without de-emphasizing her need to be treated a certain way. “It’s achingly simple. Rather than, ‘You never even bothered to call me!’ you might try, ‘It would feel so good if you could just give me a quick call to say you’re back in town and let me know your schedule.’ Just take the accusation out and replace it with a gentle request. And remember, there will be times the response could be that he’s very sorry but he’s all tied up. Then you have to think about whether your request is unreasonable. Be fair. People don’t respond well to being told what to do, especially angrily.”
“Why does it at times feel like a foreign language?”
“Who knows how we actually learn our communications?” he said. “It’s not always a simple matter of repeating what we’ve heard our parents say. Sometimes rooted into our words are competitive feelings, a need to fight for our space, a need to defend ourselves. It’s just a matter of being able to do that clearly, with confidence and without creating more conflict. And sometimes we have to push back. Just not all the time.”
It was a bit frustrating for her to think she needed help communicating when she was a highly educated physician!
“But you don’t always need help,” Dr. Norton reminded her. “You apparently communicate with your patients in an authoritative and empathetic way, something you no doubt learned in medical training.”
She had, and when pushed she had to admit it had not come easily. It was in fact an older and experienced nurse who had coached her, reducing the lessons to a simple, You’ll catch more flies with honey.
This was somehow harder.
“I’m going to be in therapy forever,” she complained to Dr. Norton.
“You’ll be in therapy as long as you are impatient,” he had countered. “If you think about it, you have a lot less work to do than a client who is battling early childhood abuse or addiction or some other difficult situation.”
While Dr. Norton was exceptionally kind to her, very encouraging and hopeful, he did not mince words. Being selfish and given to angry outbursts was a disorder. Perhaps not the worst imaginable disorder, but still... And behaving in a way that was jealous and entitled? Disorder, also. It was completely survivable, he assured her, as long as she was in the driver’s seat and wanted to make a change.
“Let’s be clear,” she said. “I just want to make a change so that in the end I get my way and don’t feel hurt and abandoned anymore.”
“I suspect that’s one of the best motivations there is,” he said.
He seemed to still want to talk a great deal about her family and her childhood, though she couldn’t imagine what that had to do with anything. The fact was, she’d had a very nice childhood. She had loved her mom and dad very much, and when her baby brother came along, she loved him. She couldn’t remember ever not loving them.
Little by little she began to remember very small things from when she was four, five or six years old. She remembered that she had to sit on her mama’s lap because her brother was sitting on Daddy’s lap. For a while her daddy slept in her brother’s room and didn’t sleep in her room because there wasn’t as much room for that extra bed. Her mom and dad both worked and she remembered that she was in a program at school and her grandmother went to her program while her dad went to Michael’s. It seemed like a Christmas program.