Etched in Sand (19 page)

I have limited contact with my mother, so I am hoping that I can meet you to see if you could possibly be my father, as my mother is convinced you are. Please write me back at the address below.

Sincerely,

Regina Marie Calcaterra

For weeks I try to get the mail before my foster parents do to see whether there’s a letter from any of the Accerbis. On a Sunday night in early May, after I return around ten o’clock from working at Rickel’s, I’m preparing for school the next day. Addie knocks on my door. “Come in!”

She has a disturbed look on her face. “Regina, Pete got a weird call tonight around seven o’clock. It was very peculiar—there was this man who called, and when Pete answered the phone, he asked if you were home. When Pete said no, he asked where you were, so Pete said you were at work. When Pete asked him to identify himself he refused, but he asked Pete if he was your foster father.”

“Really?” I say innocently. “That’s odd.” Meanwhile my heart is pounding.

Addie’s face grows more puzzled and her words come out slower as she continues. “When Pete said yes, this person wanted to know when you would be home again. So Pete asked him again who he was, but he still refused, and Pete told him that you won’t be home until late, so if he wants to speak to you he should call back tomorrow after you’re back from school. Do you know who that could have been, and why they’re calling here?”

“I think it’s my real father, Paul Accerbi.”

I wish I could rewind my words . . . but already Addie’s taken them in, trying to calculate the facts. “Well then, how did he get our number, or know Pete’s name?”

“I don’t know,” I lie. “Well, actually . . . I may know how.” I tell Addie about the letter, how I’d been watching my father’s name in the phone book for years, praying that he’ll be there for me when I turn eighteen.

But Addie’s already lost in tears. “Why did you contact him?” she says. “Aren’t you happy here with us? Don’t we do enough for you? Do you want to leave us?”

I stand motionless, watching her pour out emotions that I’ve never seen before—toward me or anyone she knows. “You mean you want me to stay here?” I ask her. And suddenly it’s all too much to bear. I begin shaking. “I didn’t know that I could hurt you,” I tell Addie. “But I need to know who my real father is. I have been curious for years, since I was eleven and he walked into the back of the deli I was working in. He examined me so closely, Addie, and now he actually took the time to find out my phone number and Pete’s name. I know it’s him calling. I just wanted to let him know that I’m okay. That I’m a good kid.”

The next day I struggle to concentrate in school and skip my last two classes to come home early so I can sit by the phone and wait. But every time the phone rings, it’s never Paul, and I rush the person off the other end to keep the line open.

When Addie arrives home, she says she spoke to social services. “They said that you’re not allowed to meet him alone, and you may not even speak to him on the phone if Pete or I, or Ms. Harvey, are not around. This is a strange man—it’s possible he isn’t your father at all, it could be someone who likes seeing you at Rickel’s or who remembers you from having dated your mother. So they want to avoid you putting yourself in a bad situation with this person without us here to protect you.” As she finishes expressing her concern for me, the ring of the phone busts through the tension. She looks at me. “Regina, let me answer that.”

The exchange is curt. “Yes, I am Addie Peterman, the foster mother of Regina Marie. And you are . . . ? And you are . . . ? Mr. Accerbi—”

My heart leaps.

“—although you refuse to identify yourself, we know who you are. I’ll have you know: Regina told us that she reached out to you.” Then she shoos me toward the phone in her bedroom so she can listen in on our conversation from the kitchen phone. “Yes, Mr. Accerbi. I’ll get her on the phone now.”

I rub my sweaty hands on my Jordaches before I answer the phone. “This is Regina.” My heart pounds. My voice wants to shriek in delight.

“Young lady,” he says. “You should know what a disruption you have created in my life.”

“Pardon me?”

“My wife is sick and has been crying on the couch for days over this. I don’t have a strong heart, and your behavior could very well result in a second heart attack. I don’t know who you are or why you believe what you believe, or even why you wrote such a letter to my family members. You have created an embarrassing situation for all of us and I am sure that you have also upset your foster parents as well.”

Now this is personal—he will not get away with trying to manipulate me this way. “Hey Paul,” I dare ask him, “how did you get our phone number or figure out my foster parents’ names?”

“It is no concern to you how I found it out,” he says. “I just did.”

I know I’ve cornered him. This verbal volleyball is like fighting with Cookie. “Who was here? Was it you?”

He falls silent.

“So I’ll assume that you drove by the return address that I left you in the letter, saw the Petermans’ names on the mailbox, and looked up their number.” I whisper: “Didn’t you?” It’s in that breath I realize without a doubt that he has to be my father—why else would he be calling me, going to these lengths to find out the names of my foster parents, and our phone number?

He ignores my question and says he wants to meet me.

“Good, I want to meet you, too . . . but there are rules. Either my foster parents or my social worker have to be present.”

“I’m not meeting you with others around.”

“Look, I don’t have a choice. I’m a sixteen-year-old girl living under the roof of foster parents, and I have to obey or else I could end up back on the street. Those are the terms. That’s the only way.”

“I’ll think about it,” he says. “And I’ll call you tomorrow.”

The next day Addie speaks to the social worker who says Paul can meet me at the house in a room separate from the supervision. “Or if he wants to meet outside the home, Pete or I have to be there but we can make it inconspicuous,” Addie says.

I skip school as Addie and I plan how we can set up the meeting . . . and record it. If they weren’t going to be in the room then they needed to somehow bear witness to the conversation so that if Paul Accerbi changed his story later, it would be my word against his. “Ooh, I’ve got it!” Addie says. “He can come to the house, in the living room, and we’ll put your boom box with a blank cassette tape behind the chair he’ll sit in. Then, when he’s walking up to the front stoop, we press Record!” Addie’s relishing our sleuthing strategy.

“Pete and I will busy ourselves in the garage or outside in the garden! This way, we won’t impose, see . . . that will allow you and Paul to speak freely.”

Our plan is in place . . . but he never calls the next night.

Or the night after that.

Then, on Thursday night the phone rings. This time, Pete answers and hands the phone to me.

In my ear, Paul reiterates what an “uproar” I’ve created in his home and how disrespectful it was for me to have done such a thing. Then, after his lecture, he calms down and says, “I’ve decided I’d like to meet you.” When I remind him of the conditions, he raises his voice in anger. “Regina, what I wanted to tell you is that you are probably not my daughter. Your mother was promiscuous; she slept around a lot and was sleeping with many men all the time. She had quite a reputation for being—you know—you know what I mean. You’re old enough to understand what I’m saying, right?”

“What, that my mother was a slut?” I ask him. “Yes, Paul. I am well aware of my mother’s behavior and so are all my siblings. But when it came to who our fathers are, we were able to tell when she lied and when she told the truth. But when she would say the same story over and over again—the way she did about you, whether she was straight or sober—we knew that to be the truth. When her stories would change, that was the lie. She never changed her story about you, Paul. And she still hasn’t.”

“Your mother and I had a one-night stand and that was it,” Paul said. I note an emphasis in order to satisfy what seems like an audience on his side of the phone.

“A one-night stand. You are saying that you were a one-night stand of my mother, and that based on that, she thinks you’re my father. Really, Paul? Well, if you were a one-night stand, then how come she told me that you were in the Korean War, wanted to be a paratrooper, own a fence company, grew up in Lindenhurst, have an ex-wife named Carol and a daughter named Barbara? Frankly, Paul, you’re full of shit. If you were just a one-night stand, then you certainly talked a lot for one night!”

The call goes dead.

I slam the yellow phone back on Addie’s wall. “
That
man is my father!” I yell at Pete, who’s curiously watching me pull out my boom box from its hiding place. “I won’t be needing this back here since there will be no Paul Accerbi meeting to record.”

He never calls back, and I don’t care. He’s no better than my mother—I should have figured that out a long time ago. She picked some winners, and he was just like all the rest.

By the summer I’ve closed off the whole experience; compartmentalized it and detached from it, the way I’ve learned to do with all the craziness in my life, which always stems back to Cookie. I busy myself working at Rickel’s to save money for college . . . then there’s finally something to celebrate when Addie and Pete come through with a car for me. “You can buy our Pinto for two hundred seventy-five dollars,” Addie says, “if you’re willing to put down a seventy-five-dollar deposit.” There’s more good news when I come to them with the seventy-five bucks: They’ve decided to waive the two hundred and let me keep the car as an early graduation present.

The fall of my senior year, I’m named cocaptain of the gymnastics team. Under the guidance of Mr. Kelly and Mr. Maguire, I take my college exams and list my two schools of choice. They’re convinced that I’ll get accepted to the university, insisting that if I do, I have to go. “A bachelor’s degree from Stony Brook would serve you better than an associate’s from the community college,” Mr. Maguire says. It makes sense, but I’m afraid to get my hopes up. Preoccupied with whether I’ll have a home during or even after college, I look up a number in the phone book for the only possible family who might be able to help me:

Calcaterra, Michael and Rose

Grandma Rose warms up on the other end of the phone when I tell her I haven’t had a relationship with my mother for the last three years. I hear tears overcome her voice when she tells me, “We always wanted to know you kids. Will you let me take you shopping before you graduate? We’re so proud of you.” Before Easter, she and my grandfather—Grampa Mike—accompany me to JCPenney, where they let me pick out a prom dress and put it on their charge card. As Grandma Rose and the cashier exchange niceties at the cash register, I wonder: Why did you punish me when I was little by cutting me off? How was it acceptable for my siblings and me to bear the burden of Cookie alone? As she hands me the hanging plastic bag with my dress inside, Grandma Rose looks in my eyes . . . and suddenly I understand that this purchase is her amends to me. I realize that in this moment—as I’m about to leave high school and enter the world as an adult—I have a choice: I can distance myself and remain cynical toward her, or I can forgive her in the interest of developing a relationship with someone who’s actually my family.

After I graduate in June 1984, Addie knocks on my bedroom door. “Your mother’s on the phone,” she says.

My face twists in confusion. “Cookie? Called here?”

Addie’s expression tells me she’s confused, too. “Yes.”

I pick up the phone in her bedroom. “Hello?” I hear Addie gently hang up her end of the phone in the kitchen.

“I called to wish you a happy graduation.” Cookie’s voice is gruff and strained. “I’ve got something for you.”

I hesitate for the punch line. “What?”

“A boot up your ass!”

I chuckle along, slightly stunned that she’s contacted me.

“Actually, I have something in mind,” I tell her. “I’ve saved money to take a plane to Idaho for a visit. Would you be willing to have me?” My tone is sweet. If I disarm her, she may let me come out to see the kids. I still think about Rosie constantly, even though it’s been four years since we’ve seen each other in person. I try to convince myself that she knows I did everything I could to save her.

“I guess that’d be okay,” Cookie says. “If you agree to leave your attitude in New York.”

When I tell Camille I’m going, she’s concerned how I’ll do when I have to face Cookie. “You haven’t seen her since that day in the motel room,” Camille says. “Are you nervous?”

“Nah. She knows she has to pick me up from the airport, and I’ll make it clear right up front that I’m the boss of that relationship now.”

Cookie and Norman stand by as I lift my suitcase into the car. “Get a load of you,” Cookie says, looking me over. In the last three years, my hair’s grown back thick, and I set it with rollers so it’s shiny and full. The bare limbs stemming from my tropical pink shorts and T-shirt are fit and trim, and I wear gold jewelry around my tanned neck and wrists. I’ve grown into a young woman with features that Addie says intimidate the boys, and right before graduation I found out I was accepted to the local community college. Feeling certain about my future, I stand before Cookie with satisfaction of who I’ve become. Already it’s clear nothing about her has changed.

Rosie, who’s obviously afraid to speak in front of Cookie, is blossoming, too. Just a few months shy of twelve years old, my baby sister is almost unrecognizable from the little peanut I knew four years ago. She’s peaked much sooner than the rest of us did, already a head taller than fifteen-year-old Norm. Her father, Vito, was a tall, broad man and Rosie’s frame is taking after his. As a result, although she’s still a preteen, she could easily pass for a sixteen-year-old. Her body is muscular from working on the farm and her face has filled out with sharp cheekbones. Her hair has turned from blond to a shiny, sandy brown. No question, no paternity test needed: Rosie is Vito’s daughter.