Ch 18: Revisionist History
My mom's best friend offers an alternate theory to how it all happened
I let some time pass – a few days, a few weeks, I don’t remember – and then finally screwed up my courage to call Jarrett and tell him the story Marcia had shared with me. I knew telling him was giving her story legitimacy, even if I expressed any lingering doubts I could still muster. I related the story of how Marcia found me, what she told me about Marlee, and about the headstones, the bracelet, and the photos.
Then I said the words, “Her dad told her Norman was our real father.” I let the declaration hang unsupported in the air between cell towers. Before it crashed to the ground with the weight of the silence, I swooped in, “What do you think?”
Jarrett’s stoicism could win awards, so I didn’t expect much response, but I wanted to hear something. He surprised me when he said, “Before she died, I asked Mom if Norm was our real father. She denied it.” He paused and then added, “But I think he was.”
The chant that resounded unabated in my head after meeting with Marcia made room for another line:
Norman is your real father, you know.
You can call him Norm.
She denied it, but I think he was.
“Yeah, you’re probably right,” I finally said.
I longed to say more. I wanted to tell him how angry I was they never told us, how sad it made me to think of what they went through to hide it, how hurt I was that they could never trust us enough. But that’s not what Jarrett and I do. We hold our emotions inside until there’s no room left, and they erupt in a gusher, or we bury them even deeper to silence any further discussion. I did the latter.
“Now that they’re both dead, I guess there’s no way to know for sure” I said.
That was the extent of our conversation.
When I hung up the phone, I didn’t know whether to feel affirmed by his questioning of Mom, frustrated that he wasn’t more upset, or solidarity that we’d finally talked about it with each other. Maybe all of the above. But whatever I was feeling, at least it was clear that the secret could no longer be hidden behind our red hair or lies about who our father was.
A few days later, I received an email that suggested that Jarrett was doing more ruminating than he let on. The subject line, “Origin Theories,” sounded like the detached scientist he liked to pretend he was, but I knew him well enough to know the news had troubled him. I opened the email with a bit of trepidation–I wasn’t sure I was ready for more.
The email said, “Here’s Carolyn’s theory.” Carolyn was Mom’s best friend and someone who held Mom in the highest regard. I felt that deep-rooted, genetic fear of what people would think rise inside me. I wish he hadn’t shared it with Carolyn. I hated to think Carolyn’s opinion of Mom might change. Then I caught myself. I was at it again – operating from my old secret-keeping, protectionist place I’d worked so hard to move on from. That’s what got us into this mess to begin with, being so concerned with what others would think that our parents erased the truth of our lives as if painting over graffiti on a bathroom wall. I knew nothing could impact Carolyn’s love for Mom, and she might have some insight that could help us understand this whole thing.
Carolyn knew Mom better than anybody. If she had a theory that was different than Marcia’s, I wanted to know it. I had to know it. Perhaps she’d figured it out. Maybe she knew something she’d never disclosed, maybe her version might get me closer to the truth, or at least help me understand it.
I clicked to open the email and instead of a story, I saw two lists. One labeled “Facts” and the other, “Theory.” I assumed the facts had already been established, so I didn’t expect any surprises there.
Facts
Helen and Norm were both devout Catholics, as I suppose were Bob and Betty.
Helen always put others before herself.
Helen would do anything for the ones she loved.
Helen was always very conscious of what others thought.
I always knew there was something "big" bothering her but could not press her to tell me.
Helen and Bob and Norm and Betty were very close friends who spent time together.
Helen loved Bob very much, from all I heard her say.
Bob never got over the loss of Marlee.
Bob and Helen were married a number of years before Marlee was born.
Marlee was 11 years old when she died, and they never had any other children.
Two of Carolyn’s “facts” caught my attention. It’s possible that the “something big that was bothering her” was not related to our origins but instead to my sexual orientation. Mom would never have shared that with anyone of her own volition. When I came out to Carolyn after Mom had died, she said, “I’ve known that since you were in high school, and it’s fine with me, but I never wanted to bring it up to your mother. I figured if she thought I didn’t know, she would believe her secret was safe.”
To this day, I don’t understand Carolyn’s reasoning around this. Mom lived her life according to what she believed would be the opinions of others. If her best friend told her it was fine with her that I was a lesbian, maybe Mom would have been forced to rethink her stance.
So, the “something big” that Mom hid so well from her best friend could have been our origins, could have been my sexual orientation, or could have been a combination of the two. If Mom had trusted that Carolyn would love her no matter what, perhaps she could have found a way to tell us the truth, and maybe even come to accept me. Trust is the operative word here.
For reasons she never disclosed, Mom didn’t trust people to have her back. I wished Carolyn had found a way to break the lock on Mom’s lockbox, to make her feel safe enough to share some of what she kept buried deep inside. If she could have broken through Mom’s shame, it could have made a big difference in so many ways. But I also don’t blame her. Carolyn wanted to protect her relationship with Mom and believed that her silence was the best way to do that. Silence won out again.
I found it curious that one of Carolyn’s “facts” clearly states that, “…they [meaning Mom and Bob] never had any other children.” That indicates Carolyn is certain we are not Bob’s children. How did she establish this as a “fact,” I wondered?
I read through the facts a second time before moving on to Theory. I wanted to make sure I hadn’t missed anything, and truthfully, I wanted to stall before being forced to consider another possibility.
Theory
Helen would do anything to help Bob with his deep depression.
Helen wanted to have another daughter for Bob to love.
They were unable to have more children for whatever reason.
Norm volunteered to "help" and so Helen had a son, not a daughter.
It did not help Bob's depression.
Norm again offered to help and this time it was a girl, but Bob had died and never knew.
Did Bob die of a heart attack from finding out the truth? Or just from "giving up?”
Daisy (Manufacturing Company) moved to Rogers, Norm's restaurant closed, and he went to work for Daisy in Denver.
Norm asked Helen to marry him so he could help raise "his" children.
He also cared a great deal for Helen, as well.
Helen agreed and moved to Denver where they were married.
Whoa! That’s quite the theory. And so strange to see it as a bulleted list, as if a fuller presentation to elucidate each point was waiting to be told. Her concluding paragraph summed it up.
“I am sure you have thought of all sorts of things, and like you, I could believe part of the story but not the rest. Helen could NEVER just have an affair. I would stake my life on it. There has to be more to the story.”
The thought that Mom and Bob and Norm and Betty made an agreement to give Bob more children seemed inconceivable to me and at the same time, bizarrely comforting. Maybe they didn’t have an affair after all. Maybe they decided to have children the way a lesbian or gay couple might establish an agreement with a surrogate. An open, honest pact. No secrets. Just two couples sharing the most intimate part of their lives together.
My mind flashed to the home movies that years before I’d converted from 8mm to VHS. I’d edited the various 8mm clips into one chronological story from Jarrett’s baptism to our move to Denver. They featured both Jarrett and my baptisms with everyone passing us around like we belonged to all of them. They showed Mom and Betty taking us to the beach and enjoying Plymouth’s 4th of July parade. They showed all four of them working in Norm’s garden, inspecting Norm’s bee hives, and enjoying cold beers afterwards. If Mom and Norm had had an affair resulting in two pregnancies, either Betty and Bob were very understanding people when it came out, or it was the best kept secret ever.
When I gave Mom the video for Christmas one year, I’d expected her to be overjoyed. I imagined that she’d love seeing these old clips cobbled together, to be reminded of those early days when her cute red-headed kids enjoyed their first years on earth. I knew that after her daughter and then her husband died, this was a difficult time in so many ways, but I thought these images might bring healing and joy. Was I ever wrong. I’d never seen Mom so angry.
‘Don’t you ever show this to Jarrett!” she screamed. She jumped up from the sofa in front of the TV and shouted at me, “How could you do this to me?”
“Do what, Mom? Do what?” I was so confused. I felt my heart drop through the floor. I wanted to bring her joy, make her happy, but I’d succeeded in doing the opposite. “I don’t understand what’s going on, Mom.”
“I don’t want Jarrett to see those pictures of Betty. Promise me you will not show that to him?”
I promised her, although I’ll admit that I didn’t keep that promise. I couldn’t in good conscience keep it from him. It was his life, just like it was mine. And he had a right to see it.
I’ll never know why Mom reacted the way she did. Was she embarrassed that Norm had divorced Betty to marry her? Did she feel guilty because she had broken their agreement? Or had their affair finally come out? I don’t know and I never will. I just know that it makes me sad to know how much pain my good intentions caused her.
In a subsequent email from Carolyn, she questioned Marcia’s and her parents’ credibility. I figured that came from Carolyn’s own struggle to accept that Mom and Norm, especially her dear friend, Helen, could do something that unbelievable. Carolyn adored my mom so much that she couldn’t ever think of her as a sinner. Instead, she created her alternate scenario that ascribed honorable motivations to Mom’s behavior. I couldn’t blame her for that.
And, who knows, maybe she was right. I needed to find a way to understand what they did, too. If I accepted the fact that Norm was my father, something that was becoming harder to deny, I wanted to learn that Mom and Norm didn’t intentionally set out to hurt Bob and Betty—or to hurt Jarrett and me. I longed to discover that there was something more to the story, something that explained why it was so difficult for them to share the truth.
Just like Alfred Hitchcock’s The Three Investigators, the books I loved as a kid and was reading when Mom told me about Marlee so many years ago [See Chapter 4: Whisperings], it was time to dust off my detective skills and do a systematic review of what I knew, some of which I gleaned from Mom over the years, a little I learned from Norm, some from Marcia over our visits and phone calls -- and some from my own scrutiny of records, census data, and other sources.
Maybe somewhere in there, I could understand why they did what they did, how it happened, and why they worked so hard to cover it up. It was my hope that in understanding this I could answer my real question, how did this secret make me who I am?
Read Chapter 20, “All That Can Be Known”
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It can be crazy-making sometimes, can’t it, not knowing the truth. All we can do it imagine!
I so get this, Annette - having two very different narratives in my own head, one about my adoptive parents, and one about my biological - all incomplete. I'm looking forward to the conclusions you ultimately come to. 💙