I looked carefully at Chrissy, but she did not seem pregnant to me. She laughed at me lightly and kissed me and said, “The specialist said not to do a thing or worry about it for three months, and it’s not three months yet, so I am doing what I’m told. So don’t you worry either.”
“Okay,” I said. “I’m not worrying.”
We sat at a table and they said, “Now tell us everything!”
So I told the girls everything that had happened on the trip and they listened carefully. They were amazed by what they learned about Catherine, as I had been. Then I said, “Have you spoken with him?”
They both nodded, and Chrissy said, “But he’s being a dickwad.”
I said, “In what way?”
“Not communicative. You know how he gets.” Chrissy tossed her hair back.
“Well, I think he was really hurt.” I said this looking from one girl to the other. “Look, he got a double whammy: Estelle leaving him and then this half-sister who didn’t want to see him. He got a triple whammy, really. Because he also saw his mother’s house. You guys, that house was so—so—awful. I mean he had no idea she came from such a place. No idea at all.”
They had both seemed astonished—as William and I had been—when I had described the childhood house that Catherine had come from. “It’s just so weird, I mean the woman played golf,” Chrissy said. And I knew what she meant.
After a few more minutes, Chrissy, taking a bite of her frozen yogurt, said, “You know, we have a half-sister, Mom, and I feel really responsible for her. I wish I didn’t, but I do.”
“How is Bridget?” I asked.
Becka said, “She’s in pain, Mom. It makes me sad.”
“Have you seen her?”
And the girls said that they’d had a date with her a few days earlier; I was surprised to hear this, and touched. They had taken her to a hotel for tea. “She was nice to us,” Chrissy said. “And we were nice to her, but she was sad. So it was hard.”
Becka said, “Maybe taking her for tea was dumb. But we didn’t know what else to do with her. We couldn’t think of a movie. Maybe we should have taken her shopping.”
“Oh God,” I said. After a moment I said to Chrissy, “Why do you feel responsible for her?”
And Chrissy said, “I don’t know. I guess because, you know, she’s my sister.”
“Well, it was very nice of you two to do that,” I finally said to them, and they only shrugged slightly.
Becka said, “I’m sorry I asked if you and Dad were getting back together.”
“Oh, don’t be,” I said. “I can understand the question.”
And Chrissy said, “You can?”
“Of course I can,” I said. And then I added, “We’re just not going to, that’s all.”
“Smart,” Chrissy said. And then she said, “It’s so strange to think of Grandma being this Catherine person you’re describing. I thought she was the most normal person in the world. I loved her.” And Becka said, “I did too.”
They spoke of memories of their grandmother then; they recalled her house and the couch that was tangerine-colored and how their grandmother would hug them. “She’d just squish me to pieces,” Becka said. “I loved her so much.” And I had to agree with them that it was strange to think of their grandmother having had this life that they knew nothing about, that neither I nor William had known anything about.
They asked me again about Lois Bubar. “But did you like her?” Becka asked, and I said, “Yes. Kind of. You kids have to remember, she had spent her life thinking that Dad knew about her. So really, given all, she was perfectly pleasant.”
“On Pleasant Street,” said Chrissy, and I said yes, on Pleasant Street.
Becka said, “This stuff is happening everywhere now. Because of those websites.” And she told us how a person she knew had just found out he was half Norwegian; his father turned out to be a different man than the one he was raised with. His real father had been a Norwegian fellow. “Literally the postman,” she said.
“Get out,” Chrissy said.
But Becka nodded and repeated that the guy’s father had literally been the postman. Of Norwegian descent.
* * *
—
I told them how their father said “Fucking Lois Bubar” when we were at that train station and picturing his mother running away. “It surprised me,” I said.