Paper Daughter Read Free Page B

set aside enough for his schooling and then left the rest to the natural history museum where they'd served as directors.
    She liked to tell that part because the same museum had once funded some of her own parents' research, and she always said, with a coincidence like that, how could she and Dad
not
have ended up together?
    So, no, there was no way my dad had had to work his way through school.
    I knew that, yet I made one more call.
    This time I telephoned the museum to ask about my grandparents. The man in charge of the museum's foundation was very nice on the phone. And very certain.
    "Yes, the Chens were active with the museum for many years," he told me. "But," he went on, "they died in the 1970s, quite elderly and without any children or grandchildren." He knew that positively.
    No children. No grandchildren.
I thought of another possibility. "Perhaps there was some other couple by the name of Chen on your board of directors?"
    "Possibly, before my time," he said, but then, after checking, he told me, "No. I've looked all the way back to when the museum was built."
    I hung up, feeling as though I'd been yanked upside down and that everything that should be steady and familiar was now swinging by, blurry and weird.
    Arms crossed tightly, I fought for control. A turmoil of questions and answers raced across my mind.
    Why?
Why would my father, who'd always said a person was only as good as his or her word, have lied about his parents and about how he'd been brought up?
    I couldn't come up with an explanation that would make his lie be all right. In fact, I couldn't think of one that I could even believe.
    He made up a story because he was ashamed of the truth? I couldn't imagine it.
    Because he wanted a background that would help him fit in with the business world he wrote about? That seemed even less like him.
    Again, I tried to tell myself I'd stumbled onto a trail of mistakes. The prep school, Columbia, Mr. Ames, the museum man—I wanted so much for them all to be wrong.
    Yet along with learning not to lie to others, I'd grown up being taught not to lie to myself. Dad had been particularly big on that.
    "Don't ever deny what you know," he once told me. He'd been talking about a business that had gone bankrupt because its owner had closed his eyes to problems he hadn't wanted to see. But Dad had made the point seem personal, a lesson for me. I shouldn't ever refuse to look at the truth.
    And eventually a truth that I couldn't ignore emerged from my circling thoughts. Dad had never adequately explained his decision to bring us to Seattle, and now I had a reason. The move made sense if it had nothing to do with coming here and everything to do with avoiding New York and the East Coast, where he'd be closer to a phony background. Where he'd be at more risk for his lies being discovered.
    I stayed by the phone a long time, thinking. I turned around and around the heirloom jade ring Dad had given me one Christmas, saying it was to remind me to be proud of who I was. Was it just a stage prop, bought from some jeweler who sold antique pieces?
    I didn't care what family Dad came from. And I cared even less whether he came from a ton of money or from no money at all.
    I just wanted him to have been honest about it.
    Then another idea occurred to me. Maybe Dad didn't
know
where he came from. Didn't know
who
he came from.
    That last morning, he told me I didn't have to decide, at sixteen years old, who I'd be the rest of my life.
    Is that what he'd done? At some point, did he pick who he'd be? Because he didn't know?
    I remembered the notebook entries I'd read just that morning, and I went out to the garage and read them again.
    "Progress on family project, finally? Possible search..."
    What if that didn't refer to a story Dad had been working on, but was about looking for the unknown persons who were his own family? What if he'd started a search to find out who he was, but had kept it to himself? Maybe he'd wanted to tell Mom