The Crooked Branch by Jeanine Cummins Page A

slowly, like a drawbridge inching up from the moat. In the background, I can hear my father mumbling at her.
    “What’s that, Stu?” she says away from the phone. “Well, I don’t know. Is she still keeping you up nights? Pop wants to know.”
    “Well yeah, Mom, she’s three weeks old,” I say irritably.
    “You slept through the night right away,” she says. “You always did, and when I would tell people, they didn’t believe me! But you did. You were a great sleeper.”
    I yawn loudly enough for her to hear me.
    “Anyway, it doesn’t last forever,” she says. “The sleep deprivation.”
    “Yeah, it’s fine.” Her pep talks tend to make me suicidal. “In fact we’re just getting ready to head out to the market. I only called because I wanted to ask you something.” I hadn’t intended to ask her anything, but I need a diversion.
    “Sure, what’s up?” she says.
    “I found this diary in the attic.”
    “What were you doing up there?”
    “Nothing, just having a look around, and—”
    “Majella, you should be taking it easy. You have your hands full enough with the new baby and your recovery, without climbing those steep stairs all the way up to the attic.”
    “Mom, PLEASE, stop lecturing me,” I say, in the horrible, ungrateful bitch tone that I reserve only for her, a tone that’s inevitable, but steeped in immediate regret. “I didn’t call to ask your advice about sleep deprivation or whether or not I should be hanging around in my frigging attic!”
    In my defense, I know I’m being nasty. Is self-awareness a passable defense for bitchiness? I’m
aware
.
    “Oh,” she says, and I can actually hear the deflation in her voice, like an untied balloon. It seeps down the phone line and into my shoulders.
    “I’m sorry, Mom,” I say, shaking my head, my eyes welling. “Really, I don’t mean to be so cranky.”
    “I know, it’s okay.”
    “I’m just so tired,” I say, rubbing the heel of my hand into my eye. “And I only wanted to ask you about this diary.”
    “Go on,” she says.
    “Who was Ginny Doyle? I think it belonged to her. Was she like a great-great-grandmother or something?”
    “I’m not sure. There was a Virginia Doyle somewhere in there.” I can hear her drumming her fingers on something. “You know we actually considered that name for you—Virginia? There were a lot of Virginias, on my side and your dad’s, too. But then we both just loved
Majella
. Did I ever tell you how we came up with
Majella
?”
    “Yes, Mom.” Seventeen thousand times.
    “We were on our honeymoon in Montreal, and the local church we attended on the Sunday was called after St. Gerard Majella, and I just thought the name was so unusual and so pretty, I always remembered it.”
    “I know, Mom.” I try to strangle that awful bitch-tone out of my voice, I really do. But why does she always bother asking me if I know the story, if she’s just going to repeat it anyway? Why? WHY?
    “I’m glad you didn’t name me Virginia,” I say then, because I want to say something nice to her. “But what about Ginny Doyle?”
    “Yeah, I’m not sure. I’ll have to check my genealogy log.”
    “Great, yeah, if you wouldn’t mind.”
    “Sure thing, honey. You know I just love all that stuff. It’s so interesting, all those family stories just waiting to be discovered.”
    My mom has been an amateur genealogist ever since my sixth-grade family tree project, and in recent years, she’s gotten serious about it. She’s traced certain branches of our family back to like the eighth century or something. She has this ravenous curiosity about dead people’s lives. But I’m less interesting, and her other line is beeping in. She’s about to drop me like a fad diet.
    “Hey, is Pop still there, can I say hi?” I preempt.
    “No, he just left—they’re having a casino day down at the clubhouse.”
    My parents are taking full advantage of the programs on offer at their Floridian retirement