Part Three: Resolutions
Chapter Two: Donna, Summer, 1995
When her daughter was actually over there in Israel, and over there in that foreign country and over there with her long lost aunt, Kathleen Davidson (or as she and her newfound zealous friends and husband liked to fashion her—Reina Hadar,) Donna found herself having a harder time hiding from—whatever it was that she could not name. Perhaps it was the strained relationships between herself and both her older and younger sisters—or perhaps it was the sheer hostility between the three of them, which dated to years back, when Jack and Gerdie Davidson, their parents, were both newly passed on, and the three Davidson daughters, Deborah, Donna and Kathleen struggled to go on with their lives together, as orphans standing alone.
Or perhaps, she slowly admitted to herself, her bubbling unease, shifting inside of her like a bad stomachache, had little to do with her sisters at all.
Donna paced around the small apartment that she lived in with her daughter, Michelle, (and at one time, her sister, Kathleen,) and she tried to fix it. She had decided to call her older sister, Deborah, and tell her about Michelle being with Kathleen and her husband, Doran, in their home in the Upper Galilee of Israel. The circle was now complete—with the three sisters knowing of Donna’s plan to send young Michelle to Israel as her envoy, and as her diplomat. What would become of this decision, and what news Michelle would bring back to the United States with her about Kathleen’s life, or Kathleen’s home, or Kathleen’s husband, or Kathleen’s—baby (and here, Donna gulped just to think of her baby sister as being—impregnated by that hardcore fanatic of a man,) or even what 13 year old Michelle would take back to the United States with her for herself—what memories she already did harbor, or would now harbor, in re-awakening, about her aunt, Kathleen, who had lived with her and her mother, Donna, long ago, when she herself was a little girl. What sentiments would now rise to the surface of young Michelle’s perceptions and claim dominance over her personal telling of familial history? Who, then, would Donna’s daughter, Michelle ultimately support?
Once again, Donna attempted to shake herself from her paranoid ponderings—for a second time now—and urge her mind back to a more elusive possibility. Perhaps her unease had little to nothing to do with her sisters at all.
At her own wits end with herself, Donna made her way into her study, where all of her books on science—on chemistry, mostly—which were accumulated back from her earliest associations with the words back in high school and junior high school were stored in book cases, which surrounded a sturdy oak desk and leather swivel chair. She looked up to above that sturdy, oak desk to where a calendar was pinned to the wall—it was a nondescript piece of artwork, which bore no pictures at all, but instead did solely consist of blocked off date indicators printed in coarse black and white ink. She took up her sharp red pen in hand and marked off the day’s date—August 10, 1995—with a thick and decisive “X”. And then she stepped back and did stare at that red “X” for a long long while.
Every passing day, she was thinking forebodingly to herself, did bring her and her family closer and closer to the anniversary of the matriarch, Gerdie’s death. Ten years. It had been ten years ago since she had died, leaving behind her older two children with distinct messages and leaving behind the youngest daughter as a teenaged orphan, and leaving behind a granddaughter, Michelle, whom she would never get the privilege of getting to know.
Donna’s skin tightened dangerously, when she suddenly remembered just who else would never get the chance to know Michelle Davidson. Her head spun, and she sat down heavily on the swivel chair by her sturdy, oak desk, which of course, did little to nothing to help the matter of her dizziness, as she was still bereft of firm ground, after all.
It had been—since forever that she had thought in such terms. If she had ever thought in such terms, that is. This—predicament was something that Donna strove hard to ignore—from the very moment that she learned that she was pregnant, even. But now, her stomach did lurch, and she did wonder to herself that maybe, in trying to deny thinking on this subject… that she had always thought in such terms.
Donna groaned out loud and pushed herself out of her swivel chair, in order that she could pace again. She was pondering useless questions, she told herself firmly, beating her feet decisively into the carpet, and she was acting like a philosopher. And she was thinking—with this premonition, she was forced to stop pacing yet again—like “Mr. X” himself.
So, she now thought to herself, to be direct about this, to finally be direct, as much as she may fight against it. The ten year anniversary of her mother, Gerdie Schreiber Davidson’s death, was coming up rather quickly. And Gerdie, perspiring on her own death bed, had known. Donna pressed her lips into a tight and seamless line and ran her coarse hands through her thinning hair. She was getting old, she realized; she was 41 now, and it was 13 years after—the events, which had changed her life and her daughter’s life (and… his life,) so drastically forever. It was a fateful decision she had made—a fateful decision which was supposed to be a secret decision, and a private decision. But yet again, her mother had known about it. Donna’s fingers tightened in her hair. And she had wanted her daughter to be forthright with her granddaughter about—the state of affairs. Donna breathed in deeply through her nose. Gerdie had wanted Michelle to know—the truth.
Donna had no friends to turn to, like her sisters, Deborah and Kathleen once did when they attempted to make or face the perilous decisions of their lives. Her closest friend—ever—was Mr. X, after all, and seeing as how he was a part of the problem, she would not dare to assume that such a person could be of help to her in this instance. And she was an orphan, so she could not count on parents for advice—but once again, her mother had already given hers. Not that her mother’s advice was not causing all of these problems to in the first place.
She sighed in defeat and at long last, Donna Davidson admitted the words to herself, even if only in her own head. She would have to tell her daughter, Michelle, about the truth. She would have to tell the girl about her phantom father.
And now, she had two weeks to spare in which to marinate before she could do anything in regards to this next tumultuous decision in her life. She had two weeks, of course, to spare in which she could come to terms with this decision. She had two weeks to spare before her daughter, Michelle, would return home from Israel.
That night that Michelle returned, however, there was no hiding from it. Donna carefully prepared Michelle’s favorite meal—which consisted of something that she personally despised, chicken cutlets and chocolate milk, served together. She placed them in and on plastic silverware, and set them carefully in front of her daughter. Michelle, as usual, was saying nothing, but her eyes did remain focused and tracked her mother’s every mood, which signified that she was at least marginally aware that something was going on. Donna poured some tea in to a mug for herself, and then oh so carefully, she sat down across from the girl who had come from her body in the vast and darkened dining room.
“Are you all unpacked?” she asked, as a means of starting the conversation.
“Mostly,” Michelle answered, and took her place in the social order of things.
Donna nodded before going on with the charade. “How is the jet lag? Are you tired?” she added hopefully.
Michelle sighed and laid her fork down. “Mom, whatever it is, you will probably feel better about it when you get it out in the open,” she said, with a surprising amount of directness. “Whatever it is, it can not be that bad, right?”
Donna choked slightly, and then coughed in order to let it out. Before she then added a chuckle to the mix. “I would imagine that you are not used to seeing me like this,” she admitted nervously, “at such a loss for words.”
She jabbed at her lips forcefully with a napkin. And Michelle, meanwhile, simply continued to survey her.
Donna sighed, and dropped her napkin. “You are right. I should just come out with it,” she said, both grudgingly and nervously. “This really is awkward for me.” She stood, in order to pace; it was easiest, she would imagine, to address her daughter whilst in motion or in flight.
“I have… secrets, Michelle,” she said. “Well, every one has his or her secrets. I thought myself content enough, though, to keep certain—secrets, or certain matters from you forever, but—“ she let out a defeated gust of air. “Maybe with my mother’s—death anniversary, I do not know—and sending you to Israel and sending you to Kathleen after all of these years—maybe it was a sign.” She stopped, and then spoke more forcefully. “I know it was a sign.” Slowly and painstakingly, she turned towards her only daughter. “I have to tell you about your father,” Donna Davidson said.
Michelle sat perfectly still. None of her limbs shook, not even her curls or her eyelashes rustled. She stared at her mother, though, and she was open and vulnerable to Donna’s gaze. Her voice was another thing, which belied her shaky emoti0ons. “I thought… sometimes I thought that you never would,” she said.
Donna felt a stab of guilt pass through her—perhaps it was the most acute pain that she had ever felt in conjunction to this subject—exempting, of course, her pregnancy itself. She struggled to keep her voice and expression neutral and impassive.
“Well,” she said. “I am afraid that you will not like what I have to say.”
Michelle Davidson tentatively opened her mouth as if she was trying to speak for the first time. Her eyes were still wide and she looked at least four years younger than she actually was.
Finally, the words did come out—no questions from the mouth of Michelle Davidson as of yet, just curious compliance with her mother’s impending story. “All right,” she finally said. “Any thing is better than no thing at all.”
And with those none too simple words, Donna Davidson was finally and ultimately trapped in her decision of two weeks ago and her promise of ten years ago. Her daughter’s eyes were locked on hers, and she knew for certain, now, that something was coming, and that something was hidden in her mother, Donna’s mind—and she even knew that it was about her father, “Mr. X.” Donna closed her eyes slowly. She felt as she once did that day long ago in the hospital parking lot as she listened to the cars, which soared by her, free on the highway—while she herself was utterly trapped, then and forever, with the ghost of her only boyfriend as well as their secret child whom she carried, alone, in her womb. Donna opened her eyes.
“Your father and I—met as freshmen in college,” she began. “Your father and I—were both a bit of social outcasts. He was passionate about—the theatre and literature and all humanities, really, and I had my chemistry, of course.” Donna steeled herself, and found comfort in referencing to the union of herself and “Mr. X” as “your father and I”—it ground her in a repetitive idea, and she almost felt as if she was writing a report on him and the two of them for the lab, as though their strange love affair was an abnormal chemical reaction of some kind. And indeed, in many ways, Donna Davidson had always classified it as such.
So “your father and I,” she continued, “had a most unusual relationship. We,” she said, and she did gulp on the word, for she knew that she was likely about to speak some sort of non truth, which more so applied to her feelings on past matters than they did his, “we wanted an—unsentimental relationship. We worked for so long—we lasted for ten years in fact—because we did not form an—unnecessary attachment to each other. We—loved each other,” she said, and here she gulped again on these words because she was not sure that she was speaking for herself so much as him in this instance. “We did not need to be clingy or possessive with each other—we did not need to live together and we did not need a marriage.” This, she spoke forcefully, her sentiments reverberated firmly in her mouth.
Michelle nodded slowly, though her chin did tremble despite her obvious attempts to keep in control of herself. Her skin was otherwise taut, and her posture was upright and her hands were clutching dangerously on to the edges of the dining room table. “I… I knew that you and my father were not married,” Michelle said, which was a statement that was so glaringly obvious that Donna would have usually reacted with the utmost of disdain, which might have even displayed itself visually to her daughter, but no such compulsions ran through her tonight. Tonight she allowed the expected words to wash over her raw skin like sharpened nails and to wound her—especially when Michelle continued with what she had to say.
“Did… did he not want me?” She asked. “Did he want you to—give me up some how?” She slumped slightly.
And then it was time for Donna’s hands to clench and it was time for her fingernails to bite into her palms, which then stung enough to make her assume that she was about to lose some blood. “You have to tell your daughter the truth,” her mother, Gerdie’s voice echoed to her from the past. And Donna Davidson opened her mouth and finally, she did say the words out loud.
“Your father… Simon.” His name sounded easily on her lips, even after not being uttered in so many years, and it did taste like forbidden fruit on her tongue. “Simon does not—know that you exist, sweetie.” She slowly exhaled her life’s breath from her gaping mouth. “I broke up with him after I found out that I was pregnant with you.”
At this very moment, Donna Davidson did force herself to raise her eyes towards her daughter, now that the floodgates were officially opened between them with the mother’s harsh and unforgiving decree. And yet Michelle Davidson herself still sat completely still at her seat. She had even stopped her chin from trembling; it now stood completely open and gaping before the mother who had ensured that she would be her only parent. And looking down, Donna was sure that soon the dining room table would crack under the pressure of her daughter’s fingers.
One hour later, Donna Davidson was witnessing the relative quiet of her household that night explode into some determined noise. She had not yet moved from her chair in the dining room, as she felt utterly drained of all inclination to fight or to defend or even to explain herself. The food was growing cold, though she had long ago drank the rest of the tea that was in her mug. Michelle had stormed off to her room by that point, and had slammed the door so hard behind her that the walls rattled and the photo frames mounted to them twittered nervously in the reverberations. And even that did not stir Donna from her chair and towards her daughter’s bedroom door where she would have pounded angrily and demanded that the girl show more respect for the home they lived in, had this been but any other night in their lives. But not tonight. Tonight, she just sat, acting both still and silent, and nursed her ghosts in the dark until, like the famous bell for Pavlov’s dogs, an intense knocking on her front door jerked her back into this present reality. Michelle, she soon did realize, was not going to automatically gravitate towards forgiving and forgetting what her mother told her. Right now, Michelle was going to walk to the front door, it seemed, with her head held both high and erect in an obvious attempt to completely ignore her mother’s prone presence, off to the side in their shared family apartment. Michelle was going to open the front door and there, suddenly, stood Deborah, Donna’s older sister, on the threshold.
“I can not believe you,” was all that Deborah uttered to Donna, though she glared at her with more intensity and passion than she had shown her sister—or perhaps shown anyone—for quite some time now. She turned to her niece, then, and shifted her decorative scarf around on her neck. “I can start taking what you have already packed down to my car, Michelle, and you can take care of the rest.”
“Wait a minute,” And Donna was suddenly galvanized to action. She placed her hands on the armrests of her chair, and attempted to stand. “Just what is going on here? Where are you taking my daughter? Michelle?” She turned to the girl, but her daughter merely shifted her head with such a jolt that Donna could almost hear her muscles crack. It was then that Donna noticed that Michelle had apparently changed her clothes while moping in her room; gone were her shorts and t-shirt, and they were instead replaced with a dark sweater and jeans—less casual clothes, which signified that she was going out.
Deborah was the one who answered her younger sister’s query, with an expected amount of shortness in her tone. “Michelle has requested to stay with me until—she figures this whole thing out,” is what she said, and then she suddenly stopped dragging her niece’s bags across the floor, her gaze intensifying upon Donna’s tentative form. “I can not even believe that you would have had the gall to pull—what you apparently pulled.” She chuckled sardonically and threw her hands up in the air.
“You once,” she said, bringing one shaking finger down in order to pint at her sister, “you once took Kathleen from me for a much lesser offense, even you must agree. And to think, at that very time, you were inflicting such psychological harm upon your own daughter!” Deborah turned again, this time to address her niece who was still standing, completely frozen behind her. “Do you even have any thing else to take in your room?” she asked, straining to cover the angry note in her tone.
Michelle shook her head softly and whispered out an answer. “No.”
“Then go on, Michelle, go to my car, then,” Deborah said, and she tossed her car keys at the girl. The girl caught them and still wincing, obeyed her aunt’s instructions. Once the front door had snapped shut behind her, Deborah turned back to Donna yet again, no longer trying to hide the mask of sweat and smoldering anger, which threatened to take over her face. She still shook as she talked, and now her words did tremble as well.
“From the earliest of my memories of you, Donna Davidson, you have always been self-righteous.” Deborah spoke her decree coldly, and with no mercy. “You have always been arrogant and you have always been cocky, and you have always been too damn sure of yourself. And I should have known.” She scoffed, ducking her head briefly to angrily push her hair out of her eyes. “I should have known that it was you, dear sister, who hounded Reina so much that she could only find comfort with such—an extreme and different way of life.” She closed her eyes, and Donna was more than shocked to see tears seeping out from under her older sister’s eyelids. “And I should have known that it was you who broke your family apart—not him. I had always wanted to believe that it was him.”
Donna continued to say nothing, though her convictions railed at her, and they commanded that she defend both herself and her reasoning from so long ago. But—perhaps this was so for the first time ever—reason was abandoning her. And science was abandoning her. She simply watched her sister absolve herself from her tears, and sigh out the last of her emotional reaction, and bend down to pick up the last of Michelle’s bags. Slowly, she walked towards the front doors, and her foot steps echoed against the dull, wooden floor and rattled against Donna’s dull, wooden mind. As her fingertips touched the handle, she turned back for one, final time.
“I will call you once my niece gets settled in and calmed down and figures out what she wants to do,” Deborah spike this decree firmly. And with that, she turned the knob and stepped outside and was gone, and taking Michelle with her.
As the door clicked shut definitively, Donna Davidson was suspended from all of her energy and devoid from all of her resolve. She merely existed, as blank as a newly fashioned slate—not only of anything that she was personally tied to—but of everything at all. Slowly, the back of her right hand brushed against one of the corners of the dining room table. And slower still, she simply retreated and evoked repetitive and soothing movements as she sunk back into her one, worn chair.
Three days later, on sick leave from work, she shuddered and hefted her blanket more securely around herself. She had not really ever thought of herself as much of a mother, or at least in the term of being a mother. But with Michelle—first going to Kathleen in Israel, and now even further away, with Deborah in Queens, Donna found that she missed her daughter so terribly. She recalled the silken feel of the girl’s hair, or the way she would curl up into the window seat with her fantasy novels, or even what it felt and smelled like to change her diapers so long ago. Donna hid herself almost entirely under her blankets with this one truth—that she missed her daughter, Michelle in the same way that she missed her mother, Gerdie. Perhaps “mother” and “daughter” were words that meant one thing and the same.
It was at that moment that the phone rang, and its shrill call jarred at Donna’s skin. Cautiously, she untangled herself from her clammy sheets and grasped at the handle of her bedside device. Her heart thrummed dangerously, as she was pretty sure that she knew who would be on the other line.
“H-hello?” She cursed herself for stammering, and sure enough, it was Deborah who answered her greeting, though not with quite the message that she was expecting, she would come to find.
“I just received a call from Reina,” is what Deborah elected to say to her sister.
Donna’s insides churned in confusion and she pressed her palms in to her mattress in order to sit up properly. She could not contain her groan, however, as the room quickly and nauseatingly came into focus around her. “Kathleen?” she asked her sister.
“Yes, Reina.” Deborah answered irritably. “Apparently, your daughter talked her into coming back to the United States this October for Mom’s 10 year anniversary.”
Donna sat up completely now, bracing her back to the head board of her bed and yet, her sister’s words were not sinking in. “Michelle did that?” she asked, as she did need the confirmation.
“Yes,” Deborah answered, and her rhythm slowed as she was obviously trying to make a point about something. “It seems that you are not the only one who is thinking in terms of life changes centered around some memories of Mom, as your daughter understood the significance of Gerdie’s legacy as well. And so do I,” Deborah said, her voice changing to a somewhat softer and less certain tone.
Donna, however, did not take the bait to ask her older sister about what she was referring to with the end of her statement. For now, her mind was solely on Kathleen, her baby sister, whom she had raised from teenage-hood, and after 8 years of living abroad with zealots, had decided to come home for their mother’s death anniversary—and perhaps to make amends? Her mind continued to race with the possibilities, and then another thought hit her strongly.
“But how does she possibly mean to travel?” Donna asked, and she bit her lip, trying to contain her guilt at not knowing any more of specific information about her sister’s pregnancy. “She must be in her third trimester by now,” she guessed.
“I can’t really say,” Deborah responded. “All I know is that she is coming. And further, that she is coming alone.”
Donna’s ears perked somewhat hopefully. “Doran will not be with her?” she asked in order to clarify.
“No, Doran won’t be there,” Deborah repeated, and then she paused. “Perhaps that would make it easier to be able to make your peace with our sister, Donna. At least—you attempted such a thing with Michelle; at least I can give you credit for that.”
Donna’s blood again chilled at the mention of her daughter’s name and the phone did almost slip from out of her grasp. She licked her lips desperately, trying to find clarity and sustenance with which to go on with her immediate plea. “May I speak with her?” she asked, and she felt as vulnerable and as powerless as she must have felt during the last time she had asked her sister’s permission in doing something—though likely, it was almost four decades prior to this, when she was five or something akin to that age. But yet, at 41, she pressed on with her desperation. “Michelle. Please, may I speak with her, Deb?”
Deborah sighed, and the sound sizzled dangerously over the phone lines. “She… she is really not ready to speak to you yet, Donna,” she said.
Donna exhaled her own breath, as she tried to find an equilibrium and basically tried to come to terms with this simple and unrelenting fact. Her daughter was in no state or condition, three days after the fact, to forgive her mother, either for what she did, or keeping the secret from her for the duration of her entire life. She nodded her burgeoning assent with this fact before she remembered that Deborah nor Michelle could actually see her, and therefore, she would have to speak her affirmation, so she took a deep breath. “OK,” she said.
Deborah cleared her throat again, and she signified another unwelcome development. “I was actually hoping…” she struggled with the words. “I was thinking that I might stop by your apartment after work tomorrow, and collect some more of Michelle’s things.” She sighed. “I think she should—and she wants—to stay with me for awhile, Dee.”
The use of her old nickname unnerved her, given the circumstances of her sister’s call. Donna found herself, for one moment, sliding back into her authoritarian role. “And who are you to make that decision?” she challenged, and pressed a hand up to her throbbing temple. “Are you her mother, Deb?”
Deborah exhaled sharply herself, and when she spoke next, all of the softness in her voice had vanished away. “It would be the best thing for her,” she said, both coldly and challengingly, “and you know it.”
Donna did not speak again, seeding back into her passive state. She did, after all, know her sister’s words to be utterly and unrelentingly factual in their origin.
Deborah clucked her teeth after a moment, signifying that she had “won” this little part of the discussion. “So I will be over to your apartment after work tomorrow,” she repeated, but this time, in a tone, which was meant to conclude the entire conversation. “I will see you then,” she added, and audibly began to take the phone from her ear.
Desperately, Donna cried out her final word, and the last thing that she could think of, in which she would hopefully find her own defense. “Me taking Kathleen from you is not the same as you taking Michelle from me, you know,” Her voice cracked. “Because Kathleen is as much my sister as she is yours, Deborah. But Michelle… Michelle is only my daughter.” Warm tears suddenly seeped down her cheeks and yet she did not make a move to wipe them or even to hide them from her voice; instead, she spoke right through them. “This is not fair,” she declared.
“And when has life ever been fair?” Deborah asked in a challenging voice, and shocking Donna with her quick response. “I do not suppose that life has been fair for our family—ever, Donna. Not since Mother boarded that boat from Germany back during the Nazi era.” She paused one final time, and delivered her final decree. “We just have to do the best with what we were given. Good bye, Donna.” And this time, Deborah Davidson did hang up the phone with a definitive click.
Donna Davidson could only merely glance at her telephone before slowly placing it back on to it’s receiver. Slowly, she slid back into her comforting sheets, realizing that, for the first time ever, her life was truly and utterly out of her own hands.
