The Mistress's Daughter by A. M. Homes Page A

I’ll stand in the back, unwelcome, and witness friends and family mourning the passing of a man I never really knew but was somehow a part of.
    â€œI understand,” he says. “Call me. Call me in the car. My wife isn’t in the car very often—we can talk.”
    â€œI’m not your mistress. I’m your daughter. And I’m not calling you in your car,” I say.
    â€œFine thing,” he replies.

Book Two

Unpacking My Mother
    Ellen Ballman
    I t is seven years before I can open the boxes I took from Ellen’s house. It is 2005, and I am still on the same page, I am still wondering exactly what happened.
    â€œMoribund on the sofa”—what did that mean? Half dead, already dead, well on the way to being dead? Was she in a coma? Did she know someone had come for her? Did she hope to be saved? How does someone live to be sixty and end up so alone? I go through the few papers I have—her death certificate says she died at 3 A.M. in the emergency room of the hospital. Who called the ambulance? How long was she in the emergency room? She must have been a little bit alive when she got there, otherwise the DOA box would have been checked. I think of calling Atlantic City 911 and asking for a transcription. And why am I remembering someone saying something about her being discovered by a Chinese deliveryman?
    Seven years after the fact and it is as fresh as when it happened. It seems that this is the nature of trauma—it doesn’t change, soften, go dim, mutate into something less sharp, less dangerous.
    Even now I want to call Ellen and ask what it was all about. Did she kill herself? Sort of. She chose to check herself out of the hospital against medical advice and went home to die alone on her sofa. Her fear of fear, her dislike of doctors, her underlying anxiety were certainly contributing factors.
    I remember the birthday card—“This card is being sent early as I am not sure I will still be here on the 18th of December. I go to Jefferson Hospital on December 4 for a kidney procedure. What the outcome will be I do not know.”
    I remember calling Ellen, half annoyed, half concerned.
    â€œI canceled the procedure,” she said.
    I never understood what the procedure was for; the closest thing I got to an answer was something about blood flow to a kidney and that she’d seen a lot of doctors—including one in Atlantic City who sent her to someone in Philadelphia—but she was scared to have anything done down there, to be alone in the hospital, and I knew I was supposed to say, I’ll come and take care of you.
    Part of me thinks that if she’d asked in the “right way,” I would have helped her, and I am annoyed with myself. What does it matter how she tried to ask? She was afraid and she’d probably never gotten good results with asking—probably in part because she didn’t know how. So instead of getting what she wanted, she continually got what she didn’t—she pushed people away.
    And I cannot escape the nearly biblical connection of the kidney—I was adopted into my family on account of my mother’s son Bruce dying of kidney failure. Is it my fault that she died? Was I expected to give her a kidney? Just after her death, I called her doctor in Atlantic City; in death I was to her what I couldn’t be in life. “This is Ellen Ballman’s daughter, I’m looking for some information.” I paused, waiting for him to say, “Ellen Ballman was unmarried and had no children. I have no idea who you are.”
    â€œA transplant would have saved her,” he said, without prejudice. There was nothing in his voice implying that it should have come from me. Without prompting he went on to say that the kidney she needed would not necessarily have to have been my kidney. Had they talked about it—did he know who I was? Had he asked her, Do you have a family?
    â€œI don’t know why