Family Matters by Kitty Burns Florey Page A

with Will (boning up before the reunion), the 365 wonderful days of 1941 (minus Pearl Harbor, though she remembered that she and Will were dancing cheek to cheek that morning in the kitchen, and she had new shoes, when they’d heard it on the radio), that she figured it out. Her real mother. Not that she’d forgotten she was adopted. Like her love for Will, it was always at the back of her mind. But she hadn’t been aware of the intensity of her curiosity, and then she saw that article in the Times and took it as a sign.
    Often, when she lay there and seemed asleep, she was going over and over what she knew. Loftig? Was that what Marion had said? Or Lofting? She had asked her aunt once. One Thanksgiving, after dinner, when Frank was snoozing in his chair and Betsy was off wherever Betsy went, she had said to Marion, “Tell me what you know about my adoption.”
    Marion got sullen and stubborn. “It was a mistake ever to spill the beans to you, Violet,” she said in a low voice, glancing over at Frank. “I won’t say more than I did then. You know, and that’s that. You don’t need to know more. My sister Helen was your true mother, the one who raised you and cared for you.”
    â€œBut my real, actual, biological mother, Marion! How can I help being curious? Did you know her? What was she like?”
    â€œIt’ll do no good to dredge all that up,” Marion whispered fiercely. “It’s dishonoring Helen’s memory. And Frank! Hasn’t he been a good father to you?”
    Her father snoring quietly in the corner, full of turkey, full of love. It had been a pleasant family dinner. Betsy had been in a good mood for once, Marion had brought a fruit cake and wine, the turkey had been just right. It was their first Thanksgiving without Helen. It was nicer without her. Violet had repressed that thought, just as, faced with the turkey, she had repressed her vegetarian ideals. And she retreated in shame from the conversation with her aunt. I let her get away with it, she thought now, remembering how easily Marion had cowed her. It’s my right to know! It said so in the Times .
    â€œAnd don’t you say a word to your father about this, unless you want to break his heart” were her aunt’s last words on the subject.
    Well, it would be her secret project. Wasn’t she entitled to a secret project, now that her days were numbered? She blotted out the Thanksgiving scene and went back to 1941. She concentrated fiercely. She could recall the toque, the suit, the lobster, her blue dress, the chair, the palms.… Betsy. Betsy would be her salvation. She would turn it all over to Betsy. She smiled, knowing she’d begun to depend on Betsy lately like a child depends on its mother, and dialed her number, realizing belatedly that it was four in the morning.
    Waiting for her daughter, she dozed, and awoke with the empty sensation in her body that wasn’t hunger but something worse, something bad. She waited quietly for it to pass. It seemed hours since she had called Betsy. Why didn’t she come? She dialed the number again: a man’s voice. Him. She hung up. The emptiness ran along her arms into her hands and down her legs to her feet. She couldn’t feel her body at all. Maybe that’s death, she thought. When I’m all hollow I’ll be dead. She would be one of those chocolate Easter rabbits she never used to let Betsy have and Frank used to sneak into her basket. She reached for a candy bar, thinking of her daughter.
    Elizabeth Jane. Betsy had always been a good child, she couldn’t have asked for a better. If only she got along more easily with people. With her mother and her grandfather, with selected friends, she could be so charming, but Violet knew the charm could desert Betsy, and she got scared and tongue-tied and less pretty when she was flustered. Betsy’s diaries, when she was in high school, had been painful to