The Mistress's Daughter Read Online Free

do have a problem with bronchitis. This is treated with medicine. Damp weather is not for me. I do take pills for high blood pressure. Other than that, I am fine. I am nearsighted and do have soft teeth. Both inherited, my eyes from my father, my teeth from my mother.
    She ends her second letter, “…I have a great fear of being disappointed with what I am now doing.”
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    Later, she will tell me that Frosh, reading the letter, recognized the father’s name and called her saying that if she was going to give the father’s name, she’d better let the father know what she was doing. She will tell me that she called my father and that he was shocked to hear from her, horrified at what she was doing, and told her that watching Oprah and Maury was beneath her.
    Frosh is driving me crazy with his tinkering. It is an intrusion and interruption of the events—whose side is he on, what is he looking for, who is he trying to protect? I don’t want anyone reading my mail. I get a post office box. I call Frosh and ask him to pass my new mailing information on to Ellen. I purposely do not give her my last name, or my phone number. Having had no control over this situation for thirty-one years, I need to measure things out, moderate the amount of contact.
    The father, another name to look up in the phone book, another set of blanks to fill in. What did his name mean to the lawyer? Why did he recognize it? Who is my father?
    I call a friend in Washington, a native, a man who knows things.
    â€œDoes this name ring a bell?”
    There is a pause. “It does. He used to come into one of the clubs.”
    â€œAnything else?” I ask.
    â€œThat’s all that comes to mind. If I think of anything I’ll let you know.”
    â€œThanks.”
    â€œHey, is this someone you’re thinking of writing about?”
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    The next week, without warning, my parents visit me in New York.
    â€œSurprise, surprise.”
    They are being incredibly nice, warm and loving, as though I have a terminal disease—six months to live.
    â€œWe’d like to take you out to dinner,” they say.
    I can’t go and I can’t tell them why. I send them to dinner, knowing that while they are gone, I will call her.
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    Hers is the most frightening voice I’ve ever heard—low, nasal, gravelly, vaguely animal. I tell her who I am and she screams, “Oh my God. This is the most wonderful day of my life.” Her voice, her emotion, comes in bursts, like punctuation—I can’t tell if she is laughing or crying. In the background there is a flick, a sharp suck of air—smoking.
    The phone call is thrilling, flirty as a first date, like the beginning of something. There is a rush of curiosity, the desire to know everything at once. What is your life like, how do your days begin and end? What do you do for fun? Why did you come and find me? What do you want?
    Every nuance, every detail means something. I am like an amnesiac being awakened. Things I know about myself, things that exist without language, my hardware, my mental firing patterns—parts of me that are fundamentally, inexorably me are being echoed on the other end, confirmed as a DNA match. It is not an entirely comfortable sensation.
    â€œTell me about you—who are you?” she asks.
    I tell her that I live in New York, I am a writer, I have a dog. No more or less.
    She tells me that she loves New York, that her father used to come to New York and would always return with presents from FAO Schwarz. She tells me how much she loved her father, who died of a heart attack when she was seven because “he liked rich food.”
    This causes an immediate pain in my chest: the idea that I might die of a heart attack early in life, that I now know I need to be careful, that the things I enjoy most are dangerous.
    She goes on, “I come from a very strange family. We’re not quite right.”
    â€œWhat do