“I need to talk to Cate and Isabelle. They deserve to know about this too.” I opened the door and stepped outside. “Either you tell them or I do.”
In the motel parking lot, Cate was leaning against the Volvo, her expression unrecognizable. Over her shoulder, I could see the bar where Tom and I had been laughing just a handful of hours ago, now a deserted shell of itself, parking lot empty. Cate was reading something. A stack of papers. When she looked up, she wasn’t even surprised. She’d been waiting for me.
Over my shoulder, Junior inhaled tightly. “That’s my book,” he said. “She found my book.”
40
Excerpt from The Man, the Myth, the Miracle-Worker: The Shocking True Story of My Father, Dr. Joseph Bellanger, by Joseph Bellanger Jr.
But despite all I’d learned on the road with the “Miracle Babies,” my true crisis of faith occurred when I was forced to contend with rumors of a tenth pregnancy, one that my father was allegedly not involved with. If a true “virgin birth,” then this tenth pregnancy obviously threatened to upend my father’s legacy. While there is no doubt that the original nine Girls are the results of my father’s work, this tenth pregnancy apparently happened without his oversight or involvement.
Conveniently, the tale of Lily-Anne’s pregnancy was one that nobody else could corroborate. The woman who relayed this story to my companions was too ashamed of where she came from to share the history with her own daughters. In light of this, I had to ask: Is it possible that she was inventing things?
Whether the woman is lying out of malice or simple confusion, I’m not sure, but I couldn’t help but think of alternatives. What if this tenth pregnancy was not a virgin birth at all, but rather a traditional pregnancy, caused by some nocturnal visitor? I can understand why the shame of such a liaison would lead the pregnant woman to lie about her condition and the reasoning behind it. History has been scattered with so many women who lie about “virgin birth” in order to save their honor and reputations, or perhaps through simple ignorance of biology, that my father had to work uphill against these rumors when his own experiments took place. Ironic, then, that his detractor could be using the very same lies to attack my father’s legacy.
41
“I can explain.”
“I don’t think you can.” Cate sounded bitterly exhausted, as if all the other times she’d quieted her doubts had led to this. “There’s no excuse for this … this book you’ve been scribbling away in secret all this time. Let’s take a look at some choice excerpts, shall we?”
Junior ran his hands through his hair. A familiar gesture, but one that belonged to somebody else, to Tom, and I had a sensation as if Junior had stolen it from a friend of mine. He was frantic and resigned at the same time. We’d retreated into Cate and Isabelle’s room.
“I was just brainstorming that chapter,” Junior said, voice strained. “I wasn’t going to necessarily leave it in. I realize that it’s not fair. I never knew Lily-Anne. Or Barbara. I shouldn’t have accused them of lying.” He clasped his hands between his knees.
Only Isabelle was calm, sitting on the bed and switching languidly through channels like a kid ignoring her parents’ fight, Delilah’s stolen diary opened up on her lap.
Cate flipped through the pages, pausing. “Okay.” Her tone turned arch: “‘Like her mother, Josephine Morrow is beautiful. Long brown hair, even longer legs, high cheekbones, and eyes that seem to be evaluating you at every turn. She is driven to a fault, though her cool demeanor cracks a little when you get to know her. Making her laugh,’” Cate read, shaking her head, “‘feels like a triumph.’” She lifted her gaze from the page, eyebrow raised.
I turned to Junior, my cheeks and neck hot with chagrin, and he wouldn’t meet my eyes. Hearing myself rendered in third person was jarring, like I was being lifted outside of my own body and flattened and smoothed into a paper doll. “I asked you to stop writing this,” I said. “But you never were going to stop. You didn’t care.”
“This story is important to me,” Junior said.
“The question is, Junior, are you the one to tell it?” Cate asked. “Because personally, I think our story has been told by the wrong people all along. You don’t see anything wrong with having a front-row seat to all our most private tragedies. We’re just inventions to you.”
“Like light bulbs,” I said softly. “Like telephones.”