The Visitor_a Short Story (in draft)

THE VISITOR-(c)2012

A blustery afternoon on the last day of March and I had just kicked my shoes off in front of a fire in first roaring blaze. The doorbell sounded sharply with its wavy Adams Family gong-like sounds. I put my tea cup down harder than intended, slid my feet back into my stiff shoes, and started down the dark hallway, feeling agitated. Who would come unannounced, and on such a cold, windy day?   

     A glance through the front door's concave glass window showed the blur of a broad hat. When I opened the door not knowing who was on the other side (something I'm not supposed to do, according to my children), I stared first at the hat, noticing that it sat well on top of a pile of curly dark brown hair. 
   The face below a fringe of curls wore a tense expression. Before I could say "What do you want?" her monotone voice stopped me. "You were close to my grandmother. I'm Catherine Wells."  Her voice was low, but her face spoke of cautious expectation. Whether of good or bad, I could not tell.    
    "Yes?" It finally came out of my mouth, as a surprised inquiry... "True." 

    
My hands shook as i directed the tall woman inside and gestured toward the narrow hall to the back of the house. And the fireplace. As she proceeded, I took a right turn into the kitchen to pour a second cup of hot tea. I peeked around the door frame for another look, then joined her. 

She sat in one blue-fabric chair before the fire; I sat in the other. I swiveled lightly, a counterpoint to her stiffness. Yet, I thought I saw hints of a friend from many years past. They fit this young woman's face, demeanor, and skin.... 

       She stirred the cup, held lightly, then spoke.
     "I'm curious," she began. "I had to come. I've heard so much...since I was little...." she paused. I stayed quiet, looking into her eyes, waiting. 
     "I know that you and Ruth were close," she added. 
     She was right about that. We had been close and had paid a price to guard our friendship. Our paths had kept meeting and touching, by routine and by choice.

     "I can't explain why I looked you up," she continued, "but I was in this area again, and I thought..." She added, proudly i thought, that she worked with surgeons at Pennsylvania Hospital.

"Well, then, tell me more about yourself," I said. If I could keep her talking maybe I could find out her real reasons for being in my house. I had had no contact with my dear friend  Ruth's family since her death 10 years before. Could it be that she knows Victoria? I wondered. My youngest child and only daughter was a surgeon in Philadelphia. But this young woman, probably about Vicky's age, had only said "a Pennsylvania hospital." 

Catherine spoke first about why she was in the area and her connection with medical diagnostics and equipment design and testing. It sounded interesting, and so we talked briefly about her experiences, then family news. It did not surprise me when she included events of note where she had grown up, where I had met Ruth.

She told me about learning to play the piano at Grandmother Ruth's.

"I loved playing Bach. I know people laugh at that, but I still get a thrill when I recognize a Bach Two-Part Invention without being told what it is!"

"There's a piano in another room. Would you like to play?"

Catherine blushed, then giggled. 

"I'm am so very rusty, got out of touch, probably my 'Chopsticks' now would make our ears shriek...But thank you for the offer."

That sounded so like Ruth, her quiet, subtle fun.

I laughed with Catherine and prompted, coming down from a good chuckle: "You should write," I said.

"I do," she said. "I get so much material from doctors telling me about patients' comments and questions. They're not mean but hit the nail on the head. I send them to a couple of journals, insider stuff, and some are cartooned as well. It's fun."

She launched into a couple of quick examples. Then looked at me seriously.

"Enough about me, tell me about your family," she urged. "I only know what we last heard from you, after Grandmother died."

"You are so like Ruth!" I said, remembering Ruth's little stories and also her drawings. Then, I told Catherine about my husband's death, the five grandchildren living nearby. I felt such rapport with the young woman sitting before me. I felt blessed in a rare way, with the mixture of past and present that we shared. Was this going to become a sort of friendship, between us, I wondered? Ruth would almost have danced to hear such a thing!

"I have two sons, as you may know, and a daughter who is married...no children...yet," I added, smiling and trying to convey my hope. "She is in the medical profession, too. A surgeon. That's her photo behind you, on the table over there." I indicated the elaborate French antique that Elizabeth had given to her father and me in her second year of medical practice. Elizabeth's wedding photo was there.

"That's Dr. Ransom! She's not your daughter!" Catherine exclaimed, then caught herself before saying more. I felt she had lots more to say.

I objected, glaring at her: "Yes! She is my daughter!"

"That cannot be so," she said. "I don't understand."

She rushed to add that she had seen Dr. Elizabeth Ransom, now a well-known, break-through neurosurgeon. Their paths had crossed at professional awards ceremonies and conferences.

"My research relates to neurological diseases," she added. "But," she insisted, "She cannot be your daughter!"

How rude she was, how unlike Ruth, and how angry she was making me!

"I think you should leave," I said, trying to hold back my temper...almost failing.

She seemed not to have heard me and tried to turn the subject to my sons and grandchildren.

I could not cooperate, my thoughts churning. Why is she so angry? 

Maybe she was not mentally all there. Why had I allowed this stranger into my home?

 

Those ideas ran through my mind while she talked on and on about new topics, such as a book she was writing, speaking engagements, successful projects, and I wondered, then, if perhaps she was in competition with Elizabeth's achievements.

The visit could not last long, given its odd turn. When I stood and indicated I had an appointment, she said only, "So do I."

The oddity grew when our paths crossed again at an evening event two nights later. Catherine tried to smile at me and I tried not to frown at her or make a worse face. She walked over to me, but all I could think of was my daughter and this woman's strangeness. Only the connection with her grandmother, Ruth, if there really was one, prevented me from ignoring her. h

She tried to be friendly, but when someone joined us she introduced me mentioned nothing about our brief history through her grandmother...and beyond.

Her friend, in another surprising coincidence, turned to her, excited: "Did you know that Dr. Ransom might be able to speak at that Johns Hopkins symposium?"

Catherine nodded, saying nothing in response. Her friend looked puzzled and stood with us, silently. Nervously, she left us, alone again. 

Catherine bothered me the next week, showing up as before, without a phone call. I saw her through the front window as I walked to the door. I gazed at  her through the glass door and then, after brief hesitation, I opened it.

"I was in the area again," she said, "and I thought to drop by."

"Oh, Elizabeth is coming by soon. You can officially meet her."

I was being very bad, as Elizabeth would say, for it was not true. I wanted to see Catherine's reaction.

Her face appeared to freeze, then relax enough for her mouth to form the words, "I should leave, then."

"Why not come in for a few minutes," I offered. What other kind of test could I give her, I wondered. Our family history is well-known, more than her family's in fact, and I wondered if she did not like to think of Elizabeth as being connected from a somewhat historic family, albeit from generations past. If jealousy was her problem, the news that Elizabeth was connected to our family could be the reason for her odd behavior.

She did not stay long. I cut our visit very short, with no excuse. The wedge that had appeared earlier had grown larger and harder from my perspective. It made no sense to allow her to remain any longer in my home, a woman who rejected my connection with my own daughter. It would make no sense to invite her in, and I did not want to do it. It would be wrong, because it would mean that I disrespected my daughter as who she is, in the family. What if _____  arrived as we were talking? I would embrace her, introduce her more familiarly, in person, and I knew in my heart that our guest was capable of saying something insulting, an exclamation of disbelief.

Our family is close, open to all, except in this kind of instance. Discord, disagreement, and eventually arguing would ensue, I felt then. I had rarely turned away anyone before this, yet I knew it is right to do so now. It would be dishonest to do otherwise. She distrusted me, I disliked her.     

This experience was wrenching, and my thoughts returned to it often. Then, it occurred to me just this morning that that experience is like a glimmer of insight into the mind of God. People deny that Jesus is His Son. That helped me calm myself. I felt so protective of my three children, now two men and a young woman. I felt especially protective toward my daughter, and she toward us.

 

I am so very human. Yet, I see now a new way perhaps to understand God and His insistence that Jesus be accepted as His Son. I am a mother, a parent in an unusual, yes...an unusual family.

I wanted to run things by Elizabeth, to find out if maybe she remembered meeting Ruth's odd granddaughter. Anywhere. When I called, I went into messaging.

When E called back, I gave her a blow by blow of Catherine's visit.

At one point, E defended Catherine. Even after she learned that Catherine had refused to believe that she is my daughter. 

My slanted profile of Catherine ended in a kind, I thought, nutshell: "She has a very bad way of expressing herself." 

"Maybe she's the nervous, impulsive type," E said. "Or, as you say, not a good communicator. It's a shame. I know you and her grandmother Ruth were so close."

 

"Close, yes. But you are my daughter!"   

"But Mom," she continued, "this isn't new, is it?"

"Yes it is, E, in its harshness. She was almost brutal!"

"I wish I could help. But my identity our family is unchangeable, thank God. I mean it, nothing anyone says can change that for any of us."

She said it so sweetly, then said she needed to go soon.

We said goodbyes and I reflected how my daughter, who grew up under...now a cloud, but a challenge, daily...became so unusually successful as a neurosurgeon, and how she is able to slough off non-medical matters, even rejections. I wished I could do as she does. So like her father.

Why would anyone have the nerve to insist so vehemently that E is not my daughter? It seemed my blood pressure was rising as my heart pounded hard. I wondered, "Is Ruth's granddaughter a jealous trouble-maker, or even dangerous?"

The fact that Ruth and I had been friends...was her granddaughter jealous of that? It had been a long, winding, often frightening path. Was that why she had come to meet me, with no idea about "Dr. Ransom"? 

Catherine and my daughter were almost contemporaries, E a bit older of the two,I figured, and both in the medical arena. E's last name, since she married, is not the same as mine. She's been known as Dr. Ransom for over eight years. I had other suspicions beyond jealousy about Ruth's granddaughter. There were, I strongly suspected, other obvious explanations.

E called again the next day. "Why don't you invite her for dinner? Or take her to that 'down home' place you're always talking to me about."

"I don't want to see her again. She is nothing like Ruth and could be dangerously jealous of you!"

"You must have been afraid, then. Forget what I said about inviting her."

"I was not afraid. I was insulted." That was not entirely truthful, but fear, I well know, can spread like wildfire. And I had felt angry and baffled at the same time. The experience had been like being called a liar...except for the parts of the truth that I knew could elicit disbelief.

"I have to go in a minute," E said. "I want to be sure you'll be all right."

We hung up and I kept the phone in my hand. I tried to picture Ruth's granddaughter at my dining room table, with the family of three generations. Seven of us.

You'd have protection and reinforcements, I told myself. 

I found the business card Catherine had left on the hall table, still lying there in a bowl. She'd put it there before we had talked about E's relation to me.

Catherine said she could come to dinner if it could be the next week. After that, I called Robert's wife and Elton, my younger son to invite them.  

Our visitor came two Friday nights later, and my sons came with their families. I told them no more than that our guest was Ruth's granddaughter.

Catherine seemed to enjoy the food and the company after she came out of a brief clam-like phase at first. When I mentioned talking with E, she almost withdrew into a shell again. She lowered her head over the table as if praying, but I doubted it.

What is wrong with her! I felt exasperated and blocked. She's so resistant, I thought, and then, to my surprise, I suddenly felt sad for her. It was a specific sadness that I had not felt for anyone for a long time.

At dessert, Elton asked her, "Did you see the family gallery?" He assumed not and arose quickly, motioning for Catherine to go with him.

"Excuse us for a minute, everyone?" He winked at me. He was so natural, and I was glad I had not told him anything specific about the short history of Catherine and me.I suspected he wanted to be sure she "met" E.

My younger son and our guest came back and I knew that she had seen E's photographs in the family lineup along the walls of the bedroom wing.       

The evening ended nicely, I had to admit, and before our guest left I urged her to give her mother and daddy our greetings. She nodded and then left, after saying she'd had a good time.

Had she?

She had said nothing all evening about E, whom she still believed, I knew, could not be my daughter. And, she'd not said a word about the medical field, her career, or anything else about herself except her cats, Nucleo and Chromo.

What a CIA-type girl!

PART I

PART II

The Visitor_Final Part of Three, in edit phase (third draft)

"Will you be at home for a while? I'd like to come by."

Catherine's voice seemed hesitant. Do I want to say yes? I wondered. Hadn't the dinner last week gone far enough?

The idea to ask her to dinner had not been mine, for sure. It had been Elizabeth's. 

Now this annoying Catherine wanted to come into my home again. I did relent.

"If you can come now, then come." Surely Catherine, who noticed (and seemed to worry about) almost everything, detected the lack of excitement in my voice.

Undeterred, she answered, "I'll be there soon." 

This would likely be the last time I would see her, regardless of my close ties with her now-deceased grandmother, Ruth. Catherine's refusal to believe me about my daughter Elizabeth, or "E," as our family calls her, set up an enormous barrier that only E's intercession could have breached up to now. Elizabeth's desire that I reach out to Catherine had made the family meal here possible.

I had planned the dinner, then, for E and maybe, a little, also because of my friendship with Catherine's grandmother until Ruth's death. My move to a northern state had not stopped our friendship, which continued to thrive and laugh by letters and phone calls. And we had both warned our families that trouble would find any one of them who tried to intercept our letters or to interfere with our friendship in any way. 

Every Wednesday had been Ruth's and my day, our day, to go to the fresh foods market together, picking out vegetables and fruit, advising each other, enjoying every minute of it. We had a connection that we could not explain, describe, or claim was not unique. For it was.

The day of Catherine's call, asking to re-visit me, was a Wednesday, too, when I still pondered questions about her.

My daughter Elizabeth and I had had a few hurried phone conversations about all of this.

We shared an assumption about what might be behind Catherine's refusal to believe, or accept, that E truly is my daughter, flesh of my flesh. 

"You're more curious than you want to admit," E had said. "You want to know why Catherine would not at first accept that I am your daughter! I think we both know the bottom-line problem. But what do we know about the cause of her rude insistence? Is it her doing, or others'?"

Elizabeth's path had crossed Catherine's, by her own admission. But E was more prominent than the annoying visitor. E meets new people all the time and all over the country, sometimes other countries. She has no memory of Catherine. How could she?

And Catherine admitted knowing E only from a distance, emphasizing that they had never been introduced.

I had told E: "I cannot welcome into our family circle anyone who will not admit that you are my daughter!"

Not even if Catherine reminded me of her grandmother's best manners and qualities...which I have yet to see in Catherine. She has her Grandmother Ruth's quietness and, I am sure, her fierce determination. But in Ruth those were attractive, once I got to know her better. I shiver at trying to spend much more time with Catherine if she continues to cling to this barrier of her own making...about Elizabeth.

Catherine's visit today would have to be the opening to talk straight with her and insist that she explain herself...and admit. 

The doorbell sounded just as I finished pouring hot water over tea leaves in a teapot. At the door, with the storm door separating us, I saw Catherine's demeanor, as if she carried an invisible rock load on her shoulders. Her face and her body pose suggested an intense heaviness.

Can you believe we sat silently in the living room for a few minutes after that? She had wanted this meeting, so I said waited. In silence I served her a steaming cup of tea and indicated the cream and sugar containers.

Eventually, she looked up, still fiddling with the edge of a cloth napkin, not taking any tea. "Drink," I said, then got up, went past her, and opened a window. Spring air wafted across my face and arms. That's better, I thought, and took a deep breath.  

"Do you have any idea why I am here?"

She had finally spoken, tea cup leaving her lips. Again sitting across from her, I saw her head tilting down, her eyes looking up at mine as if locked there.

"It's up to you to clear the air, Catherine." I went straight to the target, my voice low and probably more annoyed than ever. This difficult young woman evoked frustration.

Yet, didn't my heart go out to her a little bit? Didn't I even feel some pity...or empathy?  

"Dr. Ransom is your daughter," she admitted, speaking of Elizabeth finally as mine. She seemed to push the words out. Then she sighed loudly and sat back.

I sensed again the sad feeling I'd felt briefly toward her over that dinner, where we all sat, in the next room now returned to its undisturbed setting.

"Don't be angry with me," she said, adding, "please just let me try to explain and get it all out. I have known this, but it shocked me. I came here first to meet you, my grandmother's friend...an unusual close friendship. I was not prepared to hear that Dr. Ransom is your daughter. It shocked me. That was why I dug my heels in to refuse it. And rudely, I know. But I could not believe it. I had to understand it to a certain extent, and I had to let it all sink it...including the fears it gave me. Not for myself. For her. when she will be in Atlanta soon. Just a few months from now. Did she tell you she'll receive an award at a meeting of breakthrough neurosurgeons and researchers? I guess she has no idea that my family will be hosting a big reception and other amenities for the honorees and other guests!"

I nodded and then shook my head, and I meant both understanding and irritation.

She began her side of the story, the ridiculous and yet not uncommon side, with a preface about how much she admires Dr. Ransom, as E is known by so many, regardless of her intentionally low profile, or at least whatever she can control.

"I prefer to focus on what I'm doing," E has often said, for she loves her husband, family, and what she does as a surgeon. Those are her life, and I realize that.

Catherine was continuing on, remarking that my daughter and she, Ruth's granddaughter,  are committed to medicine, although in different specialties.

"Isn't that a coincidence? A weird one?" she asked. "I admire Dr. Ransom so much, but now I fear for her."

"There is no need to fear for her," I interjected. "She never pretends or hides. She is herself." I paused. "But what can I do if you have fears for yourself?" I felt very sure we were talking about the same, as yet unspoken, matter.

Catherine spoke as if to herself: "She is a gifted neurosurgeon. She is a person! She deserves respect."

I nodded.

"She does, but don't you think that she also knows how to take care of herself?"

"With people like my family?" Catherine blurted. It was not what I expected. Was Ruth's family still living in the past?

Then Catherine summarized what I now was sure clung deeply, like a root, to this puzzle. The ramifications would not surprise me, either, now that I had just learned more about about Ruth's descendents. Catherin's family.  

"Oh, yes, we get together with people from all over the world," Catherine continued, " 'every tribe and nation,' as the saying goes. We know people from medical, legal, the arts, and other foundations helped by the family. Yet how often do members of different 'tribes and nations' visit and stay in each other's homes!" she emphasized rhetorically.

I remained quiet. There was more to come. 

Catherine described it: "Dr. Ransom...uh, your daughter" (there, she'd said it without hesitation!) "Elizabeth...does not remember ever seeing me in a crowd or receiving line, I'm sure. She is in a different medical stratosphere than I am. But my family is enormously prominent in Atlanta, and they are leaders where Dr. Ransom will be speaking in only a few months. They do not know that she has any connection with you, my maternal grandmother's closest friend. They do not know or suspect any of this! How could they? I worry for Dr. Ransom. That was part of my denial. My family might make a bad show of themselves when she is in Atlanta if she or anyone mentions her, or introduces her, for example, as Elizabeth DeVries Ransom. Or if she has told anyone about her connection, through you, with Atlanta. Your husband's family name is not that common, and they know you by your married name, through my grandmother's letters addressed to you, and yours to her."

She paused, nervously wringing a napkin in her hands. I saw the pain on her face. Who was she hurting for--Elizabeth or herself? 

"I still don't understand myself," she continued, "how Dr. Ransom is your daughter. Is she adopted?"

"Do you really think that's it?" I countered, again upset with her.

You are hedging, I thought. Say it, I heard my head and heart tell me.

"Look at me, Catherine. You are in medical research, you know about many disciplines. Hasn't another possibility occurred to you?"

"Yes. That she is your biological daughter and a genetic anomaly." She spoke it softly.

"You are correct. Finally."

I could see her struggling to put it all together and to sort out the years of linkage between her grandmother and me, which she had known all along, then the identification issues presented by Elizabeth, along with fear regarding her family's likely non-acceptance of what E's prominence meant...and her background.

"You have a very determined family," Catherine said softly, almost whispering. "I saw that with Elton and Robert, their wives, the grandchildren, here at dinner with all of you."

"You saw how they treated you, Catherine. They, more than most, are not race-focused or intimidated. They really don't care what anyone thinks, on any side. They do care about the harm done because of it, however. And, Catherine, they have trained themselves to reject being angry at anyone for any reason, except where Elizabeth's and all of our protection is concerned. All of my children were brought up to be loyal, fair, and forgiving."

My sons had always treated their younger and only sister as...a sister. Even in the early moments of shock, at her birth, her father and I loved her and felt this anomaly only strengthened that we had been given a special gift in our third child, our first daughter. We had no more babies, but not on purpose. We would have welcomed any number of children. And thankfully we had moved to a part of the country where, although still problematic, E's difference from us, and ours from her, had not been as much like a circus show as it would have been elsewhere, especially over 30 years ago.

My thoughts turned back to Catherine's words and demeanor. I reflected on what I knew about communities and sub-communities of power and influence in cities and small towns. I knew the gaps of rich and poor, regardless of regional differences, of race, of whatever.

"Catherine, will you be in Atlanta for the award events?"

"I will. And I need to understand soon how this happened."

"This? We know what this means. But is that the most important? Don't you think something similar could happen in your family?"

I had to get straight to it and so I began in detail.

"Not every family has known intermarriage between races or what happened during slavery in the north and south of the U.S. Yet, since the 1600s, intermarriage or rape could have happened in any family, and did happen in many more than you would like to guess. What followed were other unusual alliances across racial lines that slowly changed family gene pools. And then, there are the genetic irregularities, if you want to call them that.

     "A child can be born into a family whose DNA reverts back generations to Africa or Europe, including the Nordic countries... to wherever might be the "opposite" of their own heritage, their own genetic roots. Then, there are those rare genetic anomalies, added. The unexpected deviations. Incongruities between what is expected genetically and what is."

"E looks like 'us,'" Catherine said. "Everyone in our family looks the same in that way."

She said that on the night of the dinner with E's family, she had realized that Dr. Ransom is a rare example, as if her DNA had sided with one heritage and no mix of races, yet not the same as her biological family.

"It seemed to me, being here that night at dinner" Catherine claimed, "that data had reversed, maybe across generations, from what I know of genetics. Now I see Dr. Ransom differently and yet the same. It involves a mind shift.  

     "That night, I saw proof of her connection with this family in your sons and also your grandchildren, for in spite of, well...skin color, facial characteristics, hair color and texture, all opposite from yours...I saw major resemblances anyway, in certain facial expressions and mannerisms. She has those too, even when she is speaking in public, and especially when answering questions, when a subtle humor can come out sometimes."

I interjected, "After her father, my husband, died, she got a lot of 'fathering' from Elton, and much of his discipline she sometimes rebelled against. They are very close now. I think she is a lot like him. He seems very serious at times, but you know already that he can be very kind too. He used to be a good practical joker, too."

Catherine said she had been proud to look forward to meeting Dr. Ransom with her family at the award dinner in Atlanta... until the day she saw E's photo and I said she was my daughter. Up to then, she knew her only as Dr. Ransom, a prominent neurosurgeon. Not my daughter. I, her grandmother's friend, was the mother of this prominent doctor whose background her family would never intentionally honor, from what Catherine knew of them.

"She looks just like..." Catherine stopped. Then added, "I hate that I put it like that."

No prestigious award and no outstanding achievements in medicine could override the family tree that, if it came to light, would offend her family, Catherine tried to explain.

"That means that in Atlanta, if my family learns the connection between Dr. Ransom and you...that you are her mother, it could be used to embarrass Dr. Ransom. My family can be rude when they want to be."

"I will tell Elizabeth what you have told me. E will continue to do well, God willing. She knows there are prejudices everywhere, from different races towards others. But not everyone is in that trap."

"I know," Catherine nodded. "I understand differences that make each 'tribe and nation' distinctive. But those differences should make no serious divides. We are more than our looks or cultures. I am very different from my family, Mrs. DeVries, in these beliefs."

Suddenly and to my amazement, a calm silence seemed to hold us together, as if we were embraced in an understanding beyond description. Then each of us smiled at the other. I felt that if Catherine ever felt she needed to tell her family about my daughter, she would. I also knew that she wanted to protect Dr. Ransom, who never hid her identity yet was naturally assumed to be of another race than her family's.

As she started to leave Catherine looked at me as if struck by a new thought.

"What about Dr. Ransom's husband?"

I smiled, deliberately excluding sensitive topics.

"He's a terrific guy," I said proudly. "Maybe he will be able to go to Atlanta with her."

THE END (link to notes on Author Support after second draft Part III)

Jean Purcell

2012, 2013 Comments invited.