Finding Cassidy (16 page)

Crows are not good parents. They get helper mom and dads. If they have too many babies, they throw them out of the nest.

Cassidy MacLaughlin, Grade Four Science Project

Y
ou look fine, Cassidy. Come on.” Quinn watched me stare into the rear-view mirror and meticulously apply Geisha Girl red to my lips. Her impatience radiated out like heat from an angry star.

Cypress Hills Fertility Clinic loomed out the window to our left. It was a pale stucco building, faintly Spanish-looking with its adobe tile roof and ornate wrought-iron gate. A small brass sign above the door said simply Cypress Hills.

I was about to meet the doctor who had impregnated my mother, and my thought as I sat behind
the wheel of my Cabrio was to be beautiful for him. Irresistible.

“Come on,” Quinn said again as she checked her watch. “Your appointment is in two minutes.”

I needed more than two minutes to psych myself up. The lipstick was a stalling tactic. Truthfully, I was afraid. All my hopes rode on this meeting. I was determined to get a name, to find out whatever I could about my father. But what if I failed?

Not only that, I felt guilty just being here.

Frank was worse. A small bleed had started the night before, about an hour after they’d let us see him. He’d slipped into a coma sometime in the middle of the night. When I called Mom from the ferry, she told me they were probably going to operate.

I was at war with myself.

I wanted to leave Victoria, but I didn’t want to leave. And I certainly didn’t want to come to Vancouver alone. Mom and I had a huge, screaming fight. I mean, it was her fault I was in this stupid donor mess to begin with, and of course I was being unreasonable, but I couldn’t be mad at Frank, not when he was almost comatose. Besides, I figured it was my mother who had insisted on lying from the beginning, so why was she all of a sudden being honest and keeping her word to Frank and forcing me to leave for the appointment?

Unfortunately, this huge, screaming fight took place in the hospital lobby.

Fortunately, hospital staff are trained to deal with crazies.

The other good thing is that Mrs. Harper was still on shift, and she came and took us to the cafeteria, where we—okay,
I
—calmed down. Then she said that Quinn could come with me. Quinn’s boyfriend, Dean, lived on the Mainland, she was familiar with the area and she was quite capable of directing me from the ferry to West Vancouver.

Which is why Quinn now stared at me as I checked to see if the under-eye concealer had done its job. “Don’t worry about your eyes,” she said.

“Oh yeah?” I couldn’t help but smirk. “This from a closet Bobbi Brown fan?” Quinn had insisted on ducking into the ferry bathroom and applying foundation the moment we got on the boat. She wouldn’t even buy breakfast first.

“So I like to have nice skin. Big deal.”

“We need to work on extending nice to below the neck,” I said. Considering some of Quinn’s outfits, today’s brown cords weren’t half bad, but I could do without the yellow Mickey Mouse hoodie.

“Quit procrastinating. Let’s go.” She popped the door and stepped from the car.

Heart thudding, I followed.

Inside the clinic, a grey-haired woman wearing triangular gold earrings sat behind a sleek mahogany counter. She smiled as we approached.

“I’m Cassidy MacLaughlin,” I said. “I’m here to see Dr. Anderose.”

Her smile froze. “Of course. Have a seat.”

“It’s her,” I whispered to Quinn as we sat in two padded armchairs. “The woman who wouldn’t tell me anything on the phone.” I’d recognize that voice anywhere.

Quinn studied her; I didn’t care to.

Instead, my eyes gulped in my surroundings. So this was where I’d been conceived. Thick, plush carpet. Beautiful beige linen wallpaper. Soft generic music. And a long corridor behind the desk with a zillion closed doors.

Which one of those doors had been
the
room? Which one of these chairs had the Fake and the Snake sat in?

Which one had my real father sat in?

He had been here, too. He had walked through the same door, gone down the same long corridor.

Why
had he donated? For money? On a dare? As a joke? Because of his ego? I couldn’t begin to imagine. I wondered, Had he even thought of
me
when he was here?

A phone buzzed; the grey-haired woman murmured something into the receiver. She stood. “Dr. Anderose will see you now.”

My heart galloped in triple time. Quinn and I stood, too.

“The appointment is for Ms. MacLaughlin and her parents,” the woman said as she came out from behind the desk. Her gaze settled on Quinn; she bristled with smug superiority. “You can’t come in.”

“I’ve been given permission by her mother to be here.” Quinn pulled the letter from her purse and handed it over. The woman accepted it gingerly, like it might be contaminated with anthrax or something.

She read it and looked up. Distaste was clearly evident in her frown. “Fine.” She turned on her heel and marched down the hall. “All this fuss for a whole lot of nothing,” she muttered.

Quinn made nasty faces as she followed her. Once I would have laughed. Not today.

The woman stopped to the left of an open door. She gestured. I hesitated, but Quinn gave me a quick push and we were inside.

Dr. Anderose was tall and thin. White-haired, blue-eyed, heavily wrinkled. He had to be, like, ninety years old.

I could only stare.

He knows who my father is. He knows everything about him.

Dr. Anderose gave me a brief, sharp glance before turning his attention to the door. When the woman shut it behind us, his smile slipped. A perplexed frown took its place. “I understood your father and mother would be here, too.”

“He’s not my father,” I blurted.

“He’s been in a car accident,” Quinn said. She handed over the letter.

Dr. Anderose sat down behind his desk—more mahogany—and read the letter. Quinn and I settled in the chairs in front of him.

My knees shook; I was surprised at how nervous I felt. I quickly took stock of his office, noting the long bank of baby pictures on one wall, the huge floor-to-ceiling filing cabinet on the other.

Was
my
file in there?

“Well.” Dr. Anderose looked up. “I’m sorry to hear about your father.”

“Frank MacLaughlin is not my father,” I repeated. “And I’m here to find out who is.”

Something sparked in his blue eyes—anger, maybe?—but it quickly disappeared. He pulled a silver pen from
his white lab coat, twirled it between his fingers like a baton. “My dear, the records are sealed, the contract is ironclad. There’s really nothing more I can tell you.” The words were practised; the smile was false.

“What do you mean
more?
” Quinn interrupted. “You haven’t told her
anything
yet.”

The doctor turned to Quinn. “This is a matter between Ms. MacLaughlin and myself. I don’t have to meet with her. And I don’t have to allow you to stay.”

In other words, keep your mouth shut.

His dismissal of Quinn made me angry. “But my friend’s right. I don’t know anything. And I have a right to know some basic facts. His ethnicity. His health history. How do I know if he was healthy?”

“He was,” Dr. Anderose assured me. “All my donors are.”

“How do I know that?”

“You have to take my word for it.”

Take his word for it.

His gaze was implacable, resolute. Frustration slammed into me. He was in complete control. He had the information I wanted. I glanced at the filing cabinet again.

Somehow I had to make him give it to me.

“What about genetic history?” I forced myself to stay calm. “My—Frank MacLaughlin has Huntington’s
chorea. How do I know my real father doesn’t have some kind of genetic illness?”

Dr. Anderose cleared his throat, tapped his pen noisily against his blotter. “Genetic screening wasn’t done when you were conceived. But all my donors had proven track records.”

Quinn and I exchanged frowns. “What do you mean, ‘proven track records’?” I asked.

“Just what I said.” He shifted in his chair. “They were all fathers of healthy children. Not a genetic problem in the bunch.”

All fathers of healthy children.
I had siblings out there somewhere. People related to me.
Who are they?
I wanted to yell.
Tell me!
Instead I said, “All I want is a name. Nothing else. Just that.”

“I’m sorry. Donors are guaranteed anonymity.”

“And without the donors there wouldn’t be a program,” Quinn chimed in sarcastically, “so the offspring get to pay the price for everybody else’s selfishness.”

The good doctor gave her a filthy look.

“For another thing,” he continued, “there are privacy laws.”

“There are freedom of information laws, too.” My frustration built into a fury that surprised me with its intensity. “You
saw
my father. You played a role in
creating
me. How can you keep his name from me?”

Dr. Anderose simply studied me. That’s when I knew: I wasn’t going to get my father’s name. “Why did he donate?” I whispered. “What made him do it?”

“That’s privileged information.”

I
wouldn’t
leave without something to hold on to. “What does he do for a living? What are his hobbies? Where was he born? Does he have sisters or brothers?” My mind raced; the questions poured out of me. “What about his parents? Are they alive? What are they like? Did they die? What from? Tell me…” My voice slipped, cracked. “Tell me if my father…likes birds.”

The doctor looked away. “We don’t ask those kinds of questions,” he said stiffly.

“What do you ask?” I whispered.

He didn’t answer.

Quinn cleared her throat. I stared down at my hands.

I had given blood once, during a blood drive the year before. The only good thing about it was the juice and candy I got afterward. But I remembered one thing: they wanted a huge history on me, including where I’d gone on holiday for the last five years.

When you gave blood to sustain life, you had to tell them everything. When you gave sperm to
start
life, you were allowed to tell them nothing?

It wasn’t fair. Maybe I’d been wrong. Maybe this issue was bigger than me. Maybe QTGYRL’s fight for the rights of donor offspring was mine, too. When I trusted myself to speak, I said, “We’ll subpoena the records, and my mother will swear that she signed the contract under duress.” It was a flat-out lie—my parents had said no such thing. “We’ll fight for the right for me to know my own father.”
I
would. I didn’t expect my parents to. They had Frank’s disease to deal with, and I couldn’t fault them for that.

“I’m sorry, Ms. MacLaughlin, your file no longer exists.” He wasn’t sorry. I could tell by the matter-of-fact way he spoke. The way his careful smile didn’t reach his eyes. “After ten years, my records are destroyed. It’s a matter of policy, and of space.”

He was lying. Judging by the snort of disbelief from Quinn, she knew it, too. But I knew something else: my file
did
exist, it wouldn’t by the time we got in the car.

Tears clogged the back of my throat, forming a lump I couldn’t swallow. I had to leave; I had to get away and try to make sense of things.

I stood. Quinn did, too.

The doctor reached across the desk and grasped my hand. His smile grew wider. “My dear Cassidy, don’t you see how lucky you are? Think about it. You come
from a wonderful, caring home with two parents who love you. You’re healthy. You’re happy. By anyone’s standards, you lead a most comfortable life.” Through a film of tears I caught a glimpse of his patronizing smile. “Perhaps you should spend more time being grateful for what you do have and less time thinking about what’s missing.” Embarrassed, ashamed and filled with rage, I watched him give my fingers a final squeeze.

He had the same weird, knobby knuckles I did.

I dropped my hand, looked up, wiped my eyes.

Was he…
my father?
This wrinkled, old doctor with the watery blue eyes and the condescending smile?

It wasn’t possible.

Of course it was. Anything was possible.

But I’d never know.

It was one of a million things I would never know.

The Native Peoples say Canada Geese teach us to cooperate and take turns. Sometimes geese lead and sometimes they follow. It depends on what kind of day their having.

Cassidy MacLaughlin, Grade Four Science Project

D
id you see the word ‘prick’ tattooed on his forehead?” Quinn asked as we walked through the mall. “‘Cause I sure did.”

Grunting a word that could have passed for yes or no, I dragged Quinn into another store. I hadn’t reached Mom, I had no idea how Frank was and we had two hours until the next ferry. I needed a major, all-out, mind-bending distraction. Like shopping.

“This won’t fix what’s wrong,” Quinn said, “and spending money is a classic way to avoid dealing with loneliness and pain.”

“The only pain I’m worried about is the pain I get when I look at your clothes.” I handed her three new outfits. “Go try these on.”

Of course, she was right. A Louis Vuitton bag or Manolo Blahnik shoes wouldn’t fix this. Nothing would. But I figured shopping would help. And it did until Quinn complained about clothes made in sweat-shops. We argued about Third World economics for a while until I got mad and told her she could wear whatever she wanted and I would wear whatever I wanted, and that it might be
suede.
She shut up pretty fast. It was like the good old days, only better.

In less than an hour, my charge card got quite the workout. Clothes that don’t itch—at least, clothes that don’t itch on Quinn—were surprisingly expensive.

However, the pain hit me hard on the ferry.

“I’ll never know who my father is,” I told Quinn as we sat in the boat’s cafeteria. Cassidy the Separate Anonymous One. That was me for the rest of my life.

“Define ‘father.’” She shovelled in the last of her hot dog, licked the mustard from her fingers, eyed my untouched dog. “Are you going to eat that?”

I handed it over. “Come on, Quinn, you know what I mean.”

She opened the foil wrap, slid out the dog, slathered mustard and relish onto the bun. “If you think
a real father is defined by DNA, then you’re dumber than I thought.”

Big Mac had said the same thing, only in a much nicer way.
Belonging is about love, not genetics.
Would he and Quinn still feel that way if part of
their
history was missing? “Thanks for your sympathy.” Condensation from my Coke slicked my fingers as I fiddled with the can.

“I
am
sympathetic. But my sympathy is about as helpful as that doctor telling you to count your blessings.”

A picture of Frank lying in the hospital flashed through my mind. It would be a blessing if he got well. I couldn’t think about that quite yet. “Somewhere in the world is a guy who donated sperm so I could live.” Noting the curious looks from the table beside us, I turned my back and lowered my voice. “I don’t know why he did it, and that matters. I mean, what kind of guy was he? Altruistic or egotistical? A nice guy or a psychopath?”

“Well, you are weird, but you’re no psychopath,” Quinn said around a mouthful of hot dog. “I’d pick the first one.”

I didn’t want her joking about this. “It’s like there’s a big black hole inside me,” I whispered, “a part that’s blank. How am I supposed to deal with
that?
”

“I don’t know,” Quinn admitted. “You either wallow for the rest of your life or you accept that it sucks and move on.”

And look everywhere for tall, blue-eyed men with weird knuckles. And wonder if every guy I meet is somehow related to me.

“Did you hear Dr. Anderose?” I asked her. “The guy had kids. I have brothers or sisters somewhere.”

“Brothers are overrated,” she joked. “You don’t know how happy I was when Liam left for college.”

“Quit it!” Disgusted, I pushed my drink away.

“I’m sorry.” Quinn flushed. “That wasn’t fair.”

“No, it wasn’t.” The people at the table beside us stood to leave. When the little girl stumbled over the chair leg, her father swooped her up in his arms before she hit the floor. Giggling, she patted his cheeks. “Thank you, Daddy bear.” He kissed her forehead.

I wanted to be little again. I wanted to fall and stumble so Frank could swoop me up in his arms, too. Instead, I was stumbling all over the place and there was no one to catch me.

“Maybe I’ll contact QTGYRL.” I voiced my thoughts out loud. “Find out about her plans to lobby for offspring rights.”

Quinn leaned forward, her eyes bright. “That’s a
great
idea,” she said. “There are hundreds of thousands
of offspring out there in your exact situation.”

I snorted. “Maybe I’ll find a thousand siblings and get into the
Guinness Book of World Records.
”

She ignored my sarcasm. “The more people who fight for the rights of donor babies, the more likely the law will change.”

“I’m not about to carry the banner and march at the front of the parade,” I said. “I’ll just see what she has to say.”

“Why don’t you contact Jason, too?” Quinn suggested. “See what he has to say?”

“No.” Jason was bossy-stubborn. And charmingly persuasive. “He’ll just tell me I’m imagining things. That we aren’t related. That it’s okay to…you know.” I dropped my voice. “To be together again.” Of course, being related was a long shot. But so was Huntington’s. So was finding out your father wasn’t really your father. I was the queen of longshots.

“Maybe just listen to what he has to say.”

Something in Quinn’s tone roused my suspicions. I narrowed my eyes. “Have you been talking to him?”

She filled her mouth too full with the last bite of hot dog. “Maybe,” she mumbled in a spray of crumbs.

“Is there any way in the
world
to get you to mind your own business?”

“Not really.” She grinned. “I’d be bored silly if I did
that.” She leaned close. “Besides, Jason and
Yvonne?
Come on, Cass. What were you thinking? She might be your friend and everything—”

“She’s not my friend.”

“Then spare the guy. Fight for him.”

“You don’t think I should leave him for the shark?”

“Shark?” Quinn raised an eyebrow. “I can think of way better words to describe her.”

For the first time that day, Quinn made me smile.

I dropped Quinn off and headed for the hospital. Mom had finally called; Frank was through surgery. He was back in ICU, and still in a coma. When she asked how the meeting went, I spared no details. “We’ll talk later,” was her only response.

ICU was quiet when I arrived. The dark-haired nurse at the desk said Mom had just slipped out and I could have five minutes.

I walked past the curtained-off cubicles to the last bed on the right. Machines still beeped and whooshed, and I still smelled that rancid mix of antiseptic and sickness, but maybe I was used to it, because it hardly bothered me.

However, seeing Frank still did.

I couldn’t get used to all that
white.

Swallowing my nervousness, I slid into the chair beside him, picked up his uninjured hand and gently squeezed his fingers. “It’s Cassidy,” I whispered. “Mom said you came through surgery great.”

No response. Studying the rhythmic rise and fall of his chest, I remembered what the nurse had said yesterday:
He looks like he’s asleep, but he can hear you.

“I…uh…went to the clinic. The guy was an asshole.” I glanced nervously over my shoulder. The curtain separated me from the others, but someone could still hear. I leaned closer to the bed. “Don’t worry, I have a plan.”

I didn’t—not really. But I didn’t know what else to say. I stared at Frank’s eyelashes, red-gold against his skin, his bleached-out freckles. Grinning slightly, I whispered, “Remember when I used to count your freckles?” Usually it was at night, after he’d read me a story and I didn’t want him to turn out the light. “And how you’d complain because all I ever wanted you to read was that story about Millicent and the wind?” Wind made me think of the time he’d made me a kite and Quinn and I had wrecked it the first time out and he’d built us another one. For some reason that sparked a memory of a school play, when I was
so disappointed at playing the wicked witch instead of Snow White and how he’d insisted the witch was better. More range, he’d said.

A different nurse, with short, brown hair, pulled the curtain aside and smiled at me. I pushed back from the edge of the bed. “And you are?” she asked, picking up Frank’s wrist to take his pulse.

“I’m his daughter.” The response was automatic, and surprising.
I should correct myself.
But then I looked at Frank—at that warm, dear man with his messed-up red hair and his freckles—and I knew it was true. The big, black hole was still inside me, but a part of Frank lived inside me, too. And I realized that that made me his daughter, in all the ways that counted. “I am his daughter,” I repeated, the words catching in the back of my throat a little. “I’m Cassidy MacLaughlin.”

“I’ll be monitoring him from the desk,” the nurse said as she adjusted the IV line, “but feel free to call if you have any concerns.”

“Is he going to be okay?”

“We hope so.” She pointed out the white call button and then left.

We hope so.
What kind of guarantee was that?

It was no guarantee at all.

I scooted the chair forward and leaned over until
my head rested on Dad’s shoulder. I realized from some far-off distant place that I was crying. It didn’t matter. Something needed to be said, and I couldn’t leave the hospital without saying it, just in case Frank never did leave the hospital and died without knowing how I felt. “I love you, Dad. I just want you to know that, okay?” I didn’t expect an answer, so I kept on babbling. “Because you are my dad and I am your daughter and everybody’s been telling me that since the beginning—Jason and Quinn and Mom and Big Mac, too. And they were right and I was wrong.”

That’s when I heard a soft mumble, only slightly louder than a breath. I drew back to make sense of it, but Dad wouldn’t let me. His good arm grabbed for my shoulder. “Cass,” he whispered, pulling me into a weak hug.

I choked back a sob. I was stumbling and Dad was swooping. Okay, so it wasn’t much of a swoop and I wasn’t a little girl anymore, but he was my dad and I knew he’d be there to catch me for as long as he could.

“It’s okay, Dad.”

The mumble came again, louder this time. His eyelids flickered. I stroked his cheek. “You rest, okay? I love you. I’ll be back later.”

As I gently disentangled myself, I saw Mom standing by the curtain. “How long have you been here?” I asked.

“Long enough to hear you say you loved him.” Her eyes shone with tears. “Long enough to hear you call him Dad.” And she smiled.

“I hate what you did.” We sat in the kitchen, devouring cheese on toast and drinking milk. Frank was still in serious condition, but the doctors were optimistic that he was coming out of the coma. “I’d never do it. I’d go without kids before I’d let some strange guy’s sperm inside me.”

The words were petty and designed to hurt. Judging by the way Mom flinched, they did. “You don’t know for sure until you’re faced with that decision.”

“I do know. I’d never do it.”

She drank her milk, dabbed at her lips. “I wanted children so much—I never thought until later that I was signing away your rights.” Her lower lip trembled.

I pushed the box of tissues in her direction. “Not just my rights, my roots.” Frank was my dad—I couldn’t think of him as anything else now—but I had a biological father somewhere, too.

Mom looked stricken. “I know. And I’m so sorry. I
wish I could change that.” Dabbing her eyes, she said, “We tried to give you a brother or a sister.”

“You did?”

She nodded. “I wanted you to have a genetic sibling, but the donor had moved away.”

Relief made me temporarily light-headed. So Dr. Anderose wasn’t my father. But cynicism brought me crashing back to earth. I didn’t know that for sure—the good doctor could have lied.

Mom got up, ran water into a cup, popped it into the microwave. I took another piece of toast. Now that Frank was improving, so was my appetite.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” I asked. “In the very beginning?”

Mom was silent. When the microwave beeped, she slid a tea bag into the cup and sat back down at the table. “Not only did the doctor recommend we keep it a secret, so did Grandpa Hunt.” Her voice was soft. I leaned forward to listen. “People confuse male infertility with male virility. Your grandfather was no exception. He thought it reflected badly on your dad’s masculinity, not fathering his own child. And then, well, the secret just grew.”

She still hadn’t answered my question. Not really. “Mom,” I probed gently, “you and Dad could have told me. Why didn’t you?”

Eyes brimming, she looked everywhere but at me. “This is so hard,” she finally whispered, “and I feel so guilty. I’ve abused your trust for so many years. I’m afraid things will never be right between us again.”

Her pain touched me. It hadn’t occurred to me that Mom had paid a huge price for giving me life and love. For keeping the secret. “We’ll be okay, Mom.” It was true. I was still shaky on the trust thing—it would take me a long time to accept that they’d lied to me—but I loved her and I loved Dad and I knew we needed to pull together to fight the Huntington’s. “Just be honest. From here on, no more secrets, okay?”

Mom sniffled. “Okay.” Methodically, she dunked her tea bag up and down in the water. “Remember what your dad said? That when you were four, he thought about telling you?”

“Yeah.”

“He was afraid to. He thought it might change your relationship. And your relationship with your dad was so lovely.” She put the used tea bag aside, sipped at her tea. “He wanted to protect you from any social backlash.”

“But he wasn’t in politics then. I don’t understand.”

“It had nothing to do with politics. There was a lot of negative press about the whole donor thing. Not only that, if we told you, we’d have to tell the
rest of the family. They’d ask questions we couldn’t answer. They might think of you as half ours. How would they treat you afterward? And what about at school, when you had to draw up a family tree?” A shadow darkened her eyes. “If you told the truth and you kept your father’s side blank, how would your teachers and classmates treat you? We couldn’t ask you to lie.”