She had already decided she wasn’t going to make a big deal out of this. Just because some guy who was looking for his family had decided they might be related did not mean she had to hold a family dinner and provide entertainment. She asked Joe if he would accompany them to the nursing home and that was going to be the end of it. Just because Phillip Winston thought he might’ve found a sister did not obligate her and her family to a celebration.
However, Anna went to see her mother the day before Phillip would arrive. Blanche was in a very cranky mood. Her legs were terribly swollen; she’d been in bed with her legs elevated, had been given diuretics and pain meds, so she was mean and loopy.
“Hi, Mom,” Anna said, kissing her forehead.
“Is it time for you to visit?” she asked tersely.
Well, at least Blanche knew who she was. “I was in the neighborhood.”
“It’s not a good time,” Blanche said. “I’m dying.”
“I hope not,” Anna said. “I heard your legs are particularly bad today.”
“That’s what happens when you waitress for fifty years.”
She was relatively lucid, which could last seconds or more than an hour. Anna jumped on it. “Mom, I have been wanting to ask you something important. Do I have a brother?”
Blanche gasped. “What?”
“Did you have a baby boy before I was born? A baby you had to put up for adoption?”
Blanche looked at her in disgust. “Just because marijuana is now legal doesn’t mean you should be smoking a lot of it! You’ve lost your mind.”
“Well, I had to ask. You said something...”
“With all the shit they give me in here, I imagine I say a lot of things!”
“Sure. So tell me about what’s going on with your legs,” Anna said.
“They hurt and ache and won’t hold me up. They’re big as elephant legs and just as useless.”
“Can I get you some juice or something?” Anna asked.
“You can get me out of this hellhole,” she said.
“Why don’t I read to you,” Anna said. “Maybe you’ll be able to close your eyes for a while.”
Blanche didn’t say okay or thank-you or anything. She rolled onto her side and Anna picked up a book from the bedside table. It was a large-print, illustrated copy of Watership Down that Jessie had given her for Christmas. Blanche could no longer enjoy reading, but she had pictures and if someone read to her it sometimes soothed her.
Anna might’ve been disappointed for Phillip; he had not found his mother. But it was what she had expected. And she had a grudging respect for Phillip coming all the way to San Francisco in hopes of finding his roots.
Joe came over the evening before, after Anna had seen Blanche. They cooked a light dinner of chicken and vegetables, had a glass of wine, and she told him about her visit with Blanche. “I do wonder why I have so little interest in lost or missing family,” she said.
“Maybe you’re just fine with what you have,” he suggested.
“And yet they keep turning up all over the place. First Amy and her family, then my mother in her delirium suggesting another child somewhere, now this man flying all the way from the east coast. I’ll tell you what, it could be a lot of trouble if he turned out to be a relative.”
“How so?” Joe asked.
“Think about adding one more and his family to this group,” she said. “I only have a twelve-place setting of china!”
The next day Anna and Joe met Phillip at a small restaurant not far from the nursing home. They had a nice, if perhaps slightly nervous, lunch and Anna explained that she had tried, once again, to ask about a possible brother. And it had made Blanche angry and uncooperative.
“I tell you this so you’ll check your expectations at the door,” she said.
“Understood,” Phillip said. “It’s not my intention to upset anyone.”
“And I want to make certain you’re not completely disappointed.”
They walked into Blanche’s very small space in a three-bed room. Anna was smiling. Blanche was sitting up in her chair, looking a little better than she had the day before.
“Hi, Mom,” Anna said. “I’ve brought someone who—”
Blanche went completely pale. She wiped a hand over her face. “Rick,” she said. “Rick!”
“Mom?” Anna asked.
Blanche looked up at Anna. “Where did you find him? How did you find him?”
“Who, Mom? Do you know this man?”
Blanche held out her hands to Phillip Winston. “Did someone tell you? I called your mother but she said she hadn’t heard from you. If she did, she would give you a message. Did you get the message? Did you?”
Phillip came forward, taking both her hands in his. He sat on the side of her bed and looked into her old rheumy eyes. “I didn’t get a message,” he said.
“I thought so,” she said. “I thought you’d find a way to get in touch if you had. That’s what I thought.”
“Where did you think I’d gone?” he asked.
“The army. That’s what you said.”
“Mom, do you know this man?”
“Of course,” she said. “It’s Richard Allston.” She looked back at his face. “You don’t look a day older. I knew you’d age well. Not all of us did.”
“Do you remember what year it was?” he asked her.
“I’m not sure but...I was eighteen. It was a boy. What happened to him? I was eighteen. You should not have left like you did.”
“Eighteen,” Anna said. “Nineteen fifty-four.”
“Did you give him up?” Phillip asked.
“What else could I do? I thought you’d come back and we could start over. Are you mad? Because I was eighteen.”
Anna and Joe stood helplessly in the room, Phillip sitting on the bed, feeding Blanche careful questions, asking her for names and dates and other information, but it wasn’t long before her mind wandered off. She stopped remembering or answering, one or the other. Anna knew for elderly people with dementia that it wasn’t unusual for them to have vivid memories of things that happened fifty, sixty or even seventy years before, sometimes things they’d never spoken about, sometimes things they wished they could forget, while events that happened the day before were long gone.
After just a few minutes, when it appeared Blanche was losing her focus, Joe went to the car to get Anna’s briefcase. She spent a few minutes helping Phillip find his ancestry account, pulled up the names that had been sent to him as people with whom he shared DNA, people who might be relatives, both living and departed. There was a Richard Allston Jr. who was registered. He was sixty-three, four years younger than Phillip. His picture was posted and the resemblance was astonishing.
There was a picture of Richard Allston Sr. in an army uniform and it could have been a younger Phillip, the resemblance was so strong.
“I’ll be damned,” Anna said.
Phillip Winston stayed for a week. For two nights following the recognition that Blanche was his mother, he stayed in the hotel, researching on his laptop and visiting Blanche during the day. She was able to repeat the same things over and over again—it was 1954, she was eighteen, she had a baby and gave him up—but she really couldn’t elaborate. She had other very old stories—there was a girl named Carol who had lied to her and stolen money out of her purse, there was an incident at a dance club when the police rounded up a lot of young people, there were protest marches going on in San Francisco. There was a baby, this time a girl who she couldn’t give up, and she did not know the baby’s father’s name. It could be she couldn’t remember or it could be she never knew.
Phillip discovered that Richard Allston Sr. had died at the age of fifty-five. Heart failure was named the cause but there had been no autopsy. However, Richard Allston Jr. was alive and well, so another reunion would soon be in the works.
Phillip was invited to Anna’s house to stay a few more days and given Michael’s room. Joe stayed, too. Just because Phillip was a long-lost brother and had been carefully researched by Anna and her clerk didn’t mean he was beyond any possible suspicion. They talked and talked and talked, drawing for each other life histories and sewing the details together.
After a week it was time for Phillip to get back to his family, his kids and grandkids. His parting was bittersweet; he had found his mother but he was unlikely to see her again. He’d plan another trip for the early spring, but Blanche was failing.
As for Blanche, she seemed to have come alive a little with Phillip’s visit. For a while she believed her long-lost lover had come back to her. Her health seemed greatly improved, though it was a brief improvement.
The family was both elated and quite tired by the time Christmas was upon them. Anna planned a dinner to include Michael’s new fiancée, Jenn; Martin and Bess; Amy, Nikit and Gina; Jessie and Mr. Wriggly. Joe helped with the cooking and more family stories were told until they could tell no more.
“No one is to look up or research any more missing or secret relatives until I’ve had a chance to get to know the ones we already know about,” Anna said. “I think my head might explode.”
EPILOGUE