Hello,
I know this is a very strange message to receive on here. I am your half sister, living in Italy. Our father died in 1993, not long after he returned from America. I was two at the time. He was never married to my mother, and there were always rumors of other children. I live and work in Milan now but grew up in Sorrento, not far from where our father is from, and I studied and worked in London after university. My job is in interior design and architecture. I have my own firm and work all over the world. I have also found some cousins I did not know existed through this site. I would love to connect with you when you are ready.
Warmly,
Anna Farina
I read it again.
And again.
And then one more time, as if by doing so the words might disappear. But they did not. I shuffled over to the bed to sit down, pants now around my ankles, and typed her name into Google, misspelling it three times because my fingers were so shaky.
Sure enough, a link to her design firm popped up, a visual orgasm of modern homes and sleek, angular spaces. My heart pounded, knocking around my entire body.
I’d only ever known the barest-bone details of my father’s existence, and he was so far removed from my life that he never seemed entirely real to begin with. Most of the time it felt like my mom got knocked up by a ghost who then chose not to haunt me. And it never dawned on me that he could have had other kids. People who might look like me. Act like me. Get me. The new realization had left me unable to act, hands frozen, gripping my phone.
And while it felt ridiculous to admit, I had never even considered that this could happen. It had always been easier to not give him much thought, place the idea of him on a shelf and let it collect dust. But of course he had been a real person, with a life, and a family, and people who cared about him. And kids. He had kids. More than just me.
And he was dead. Dead. This thought devastated me, in a way that felt totally unexpected. Why was I sad about the death of someone I’d never even met? I was overcome with the weirdest feeling in my chest, tight and hard. Then I blinked and realized why: I was about to cry.
In a panic, I did the only thing that made sense to my brain. I pulled up my pants, shoved on my sneakers, grabbed my bag, and ran out of my apartment.
“Cleo!” I shouted into the phone the second she picked up. I knew she’d be awake; she was always up early to meditate and go through emails before work.
“Holy shit! What’s wrong?” I could hear her spring into friend-emergency mode through the phone.
“I think I’m having an anxiety attack. Or is it a panic attack? What is it when your heart feels like it’s beating in your head?” I raced down the street toward the subway, power walking.
“What happened?”
“That DNA-test thing we did? I just got mine back. I have a fucking half sister.” The words were coming out of my mouth at twice their normal speed.
She let out a drawn-out “Holy crap.”
“In Italy. I’m not half–Italian American. I’m half–Italian Italian.”
The lady standing in the doorway of the Laundromat gave me a strange look as I passed by, still shouting.
“Wow, your mom got knocked up by an Italian dude. Way to go, Diane.”
“Cleo! He’s dead.” There was that tightness in my chest again, crawling back up my throat.
“Oh my god,” she gasped. “Okay, look, where are you? I can hear outside sounds.”
“I’m going to spin class! I already paid for it, and I don’t want to eat the cost.”
“Franny, what? Can you just stay where you are and I’ll come find you? You don’t need to go to a spin class right now.”
“I’m going to that place on Atlantic. I need to pedal out this energy.”
“What time does class start?” she asked, her breathing suddenly huffy, like she was running.
I whipped the phone away from my ear to check the clock. “Thirty minutes.”
“’Kay. I’m on my way.”
“What? Seriously?” I shouted as I jaywalked across the street. But all that was left on the other end of the line was silence.
*
Twenty-seven minutes later, I was clipping my shoes into the pedals on a bike, Jay-Z pumping from a speaker that was turned up entirely too loud for an 8 a.m. class. Here, in this dark room full of bikes and sweaty strangers, I could avoid the unsettling reality that awaited me. I didn’t just have new genetic info to wrap my head around.
I had a sister. And a dad I’d never get to meet.
I was already breathing heavily and was only sitting on the bike, barely moving my legs. The panic was still here. My plan to pedal it out of me was beginning to seem absurd, and I leaned my head onto the handlebars and watched as a petite woman in bright striped leggings hopped on the bike next to me.