The Mistress's Daughter Read Online Free PDF Page A

again.
    â€œRuggles slept in the hall,” she says. Ruggles is the stuffed animal I sent her, in a gesture of kindness. Tonight Ruggles is me.
    There is the flick of a lighter, the suck of a cigarette.
    â€œI’m angry with you, can you tell?”
    â€œYes.”
    â€œWhy won’t you see me?” she whines. “You’re torturing me. You take better care of your dog than you take of me.”
    Am I supposed to be taking care of her? Is that what she’s come back for?
    â€œYou should adopt me—and take care of me,” she says.
    â€œI can’t adopt you,” I say.
    â€œWhy not?”
    I don’t know how to respond. I don’t know if we’re talking in fantasy or reality. What happened to “in the best interests of the child”? Who is the parent and who is the child? I can’t say I don’t want a fifty-year-old child.
    â€œYou’re scaring me,” is all I can manage.
    â€œWhy won’t you forgive me? Why are you always angry with me?”
    â€œI’m not angry with you,” I tell her and it is entirely true. Of all the things I am, I am not angry with her.
    â€œDon’t be angry with me forever. If I’d known where you were I would have come and gotten you and taken you away.” Imagine that—kidnapped by one’s own mother, the same mother who had given you away at birth. She lived not two miles from where I grew up, and luckily didn’t know who or where I was. I cannot imagine anything more terrifying.
    â€œI’m not angry with you.” I am horrified at the way I see myself in her—the loose screw is not entirely unfamiliar—and appalled that in the end I may end up rejecting the one person I never had any intention of rejecting. But not angry. Not unforgiving. The more Ellen and I talk, the happier I am that she gave me up. I can’t imagine having grown up with her. I would not have survived.
    â€œHave you heard from your father? I’m surprised he hasn’t been in touch.”
    It occurs to me that “my father” may be having the same reaction to her that I’m having, that he equates me with her, and that may be one of the reasons he’s keeping his distance. It also occurs to me that he may think that she and I are somehow in this together, conspiring to get something from him.
    I write him a letter of my own, letting him know how surprised I was by Ellen’s appearance, and suggesting that, while this is something neither he nor I asked for, we try to deal with things with some small measure of grace. I tell him a little bit about myself. I give him a way of contacting me.
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    I go to the gym. Overhead there is a bank of televisions, CNN, MTV, and the Cartoon Network. I am watching a cartoon in which a basket containing a baby bird is left outside a wooden door carved into the base of a tree. The words “Knock, Knock” appear on the screen. A large rooster opens the door and picks up the basket. A note is pinned to the fabric covering the basket.
    Dear Lady,
    Please take care of my little one.
    Signed,
Big One
    The rooster looks inside; a small but feisty baby bird pokes up. The rooster gets excited. An image of the baby bird in a frying pan dances in the rooster’s head. A chicken wearing a bonnet comes into the house and shoos the rooster away. The rooster is disappointed. I am on the treadmill, in tears.
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    A couple of months pass. It is a cold night between the end of winter and the beginning of spring, and I am in Washington, D.C. I have spent an hour circling my father’s house, wondering why he hasn’t answered my letter.
    I am a detective, a spy, a bastard. The house is large; there is a pool, a tennis court, and a lot of cars in the driveway. I sit outside under the cover of night, imagining him with his family, his wife, his other children.
    I am on the outside looking in, the interior lights lay bare their lives. The lit windows