I can still remember how the doorbell ripped through the silence at dinner that night. It had become somewhat of a tradition that we would all eat at Mum and Dad’s on Sunday nights, the only mandatory interaction required. I didn’t have any issues with going, I just had better things to be doing. I was glad I went that night, though.
“I’ll get it, don’t worry,” Dad said, pushing his chair from the table and limping toward the door. Dad was reluctant to admit that his hip had never fully recovered from his surgery. When he finally reached the door, I heard the clanging of the chain as he opened it but I couldn’t make out the muffled conversation afterwards.
Dad popped his head around the doorway a few minutes later. “Irene, are you able to come to the door please?” Something was wrong. He had suddenly become very sombre and almost worrisome. Mum went to the door to see what was wrong and my siblings and I all stared at each other in silence.
Adam was sitting closest to the doorway, most likely to have heard anything that was happening. “Adam, who is it? What’s happening?” Claire whispered at him. She was demanding in tone, with a natural sense of elitism as the oldest. Adam waved his hand to silence her as he tried harder to listen to the conversation.
“Fuck this,” I said, swiftly pushing my chair out and making my way through the living room to the front door. A man was standing outside. He looked almost identical to me except for a few scars and a fuller beard. It was like looking in a mirror.
“Jamie, go back inside now!” Dad raised his voice at me. Dad never raised his voice at me.
“Jamie, please just listen to your father, please Jamie just go back inside,” my mum was begging me now. I knew that it must have been something serious if they both wanted to keep this from me, whatever it is.
“Who are you?” I queried, stepping past my parents and closer to the door. The man looked frazzled. He was just as nervous and awkward as I.
His hand shot out toward me. “I’m Jonathan, you’re Jamie I suppose?”
“Jonathan who? Who are you? Are you a friend of my parents? What are you doing here?” Jonathan’s name only left me with more questions. My parents didn’t know anyone called Jonathan, not as far as I was aware.
“Look, you’ve interrupted a family dinner and I think we’d all appreciate it if you’d come back at another time. I’m sorry, you really must leave now,” my dad attempted to close the door before I pried it back open, determined to discover who this Jonathan was.
Jonathan stood there just staring at me, and I at him. Both attempting to figure out what was going on.
When my mum gave me the papers, I didn’t believe her. What sort of parent tells their son that he’s adopted when he’s 26. I was sure that my whole world would fall apart, but it didn’t. It split right open.
I didn’t speak to them for a week after they had told me, I was still processing the news myself and to their credit, I got the space I needed.
When I went to see them after a week, we talked about the whole thing. “You’re a twin. Your birth mother wasn’t able to raise two boys,” she had said, tears welling in her eyes as she spoke. “You have to understand, she wasn’t in a good place. She could barely afford to live herself. She hadn’t a job. She couldn’t have done it with two of you.”
My knee was shaking with anger, but I couldn’t stop the tears from streaming down my cheek. Mum placed her hand on my knee and looked me in the eyes. “You’re still my son.” Her words were sincere but at that moment, they meant little. I brushed her hand off of my knee and walked toward the back door.
I reached up to the cupboard above the sink, moving bottles of bleach and washing up liquid out of the way until my hand touched the cardboard packet of cigarettes that I had hidden in the back. I took out a single cigarette, placed it between my lips and lit it from the stove. I opened the back door and stood outside, taking long inhales and longer exhales.
Mum went and stood by the back door, waiting for me to react in any way. She had always been like that though, she was always there to hear my side of the story whether it was good or bad or morally ambiguous.
“I just don’t understand why you’d keep it from me. I deserve to be told, I have a right to know.” The cigarette was shaking between my fingers at this point, and my knees were struggling to keep me up. I knew that it was just a natural shock to the situation. I couldn’t help but feel overwhelmed by the rage that she had kept from me. “You should have told me!” I screamed at her. I immediately regretted the tone, but not the words. She was crying silently now, and I felt terrible for both the way I was reacting but also the way my reaction was making her feel. “You should have told me,” I said again, softer now, whilst walking in and wrapping my arms around my mother as she holds me tight.
“I know, I’m sorry, I know,” she said calmly into my ear as I sobbed louder, all of the anger and shock flooding me in waves of tears.
I knew that dad wouldn’t be happy when I invited him in, to this day I think that perhaps that’s why I did it. Jonathan sat on the sofa opposite me whilst Mum and Dad went to make teas, and no doubt gossiped about the situation and how my barging into the hallway was going to negatively affect their life.
“So…” Jonathan said as we stared at each other in silence for days. He hunched over on his knees. I almost took pleasure in his discomfort. It mirrored mine but I hoped only that it exceeded it. If I had to be in shock, pain, and awkwardness, I was sure that whoever this man was deserved to feel it tenfold.
“Do you want money? Is that why you’re here? Are you running some sort of scam? Because they’re old but they’re not that old and they’re not going to fall for it. You won’t con them out of anything–”
“I don’t want your parent’s money, Jamie. I just want to know them.”
“Why would you want to know them? They’re strangers? As far as I know, they’ve never met you and don’t know who you are so unless you’re going to explain somehow who you are and what you are trying to do to my family, I suggest that you get up and leave right now because you are not welcome here!” I was screaming so loud that I didn’t notice that my siblings, who had been sitting at the table the whole time, had stood up and were ready to step in. I was never going to become physical with this stranger. I had an urge to hit him though, I had a fire that was ripping through my body and culminating in my fists to throw my whole force at his cheek.
I didn’t though. I couldn’t. My parents ran in when I was shouting and started to fuss. “Jamie! Jamie! Jamie!” They made feeble attempts to calm me down but ultimately the room remained silent, I didn’t say anything more to him and he said nothing more to me.
I walked out of the room and out through the front door. The blood pulsing in my ears, I could only hear my heart. I shouldn’t have shouted. Thump. I should go back and apologise. Thump. They should have told me who he was. Thump. Why does he look like me? Thump.
“Jamie!” I heard someone shout.
I turned around and without even a glance at who it was, I had balled my fist and punched the centre of their face, causing them to stumble and fall backwards with a groan and a thud.
It took me a minute, but then I realised that it had been my dad. I had punched my dad and he had fallen onto the pavement.
I looked at him at that moment, lying on the floor with his eyes closed and his blood collecting beside his head.
“Are you sure that you want to go? You could always write them a letter,” Mum said. “I don’t even know that they still live there. They might have moved.”
She wasn’t keen on the idea of me showing up at their house. She thought that it would seem invasive and rude. She had never been a fan of getting off on the wrong foot.
“Even if they haven’t moved, what if they’re busy? You might interrupt something really important. It’s going to be a shock any time, you should really try and make it easier on all of you and do it at the best time. Small steps, don’t you agree?” Mum was scared, I could tell. She somehow still had a fear after all of these years, that they were going to change their minds and take me back and steal her baby from her. I understood where she was coming from, I just didn’t like what she was saying.
“I get that it might inconvenience them, but it is a little inconvenient for me to find out that my whole life has been a lie, don’t you think?” I knew that it would hurt her, I shouldn’t have said it.
In the days since she’d told me, I just couldn’t stop thinking about what my life might have been like. I had looked them all up on social media and tortured myself with thoughts of the life that I missed out on, all of the memories of having brothers and sisters and having a father. I could have avoided the grief and the trauma of losing him if my birth mother had just decided to keep me.
“You’re a grown boy and it’s your choice Jonny, I just want you to make sure you’re doing this the right way,” she was holding my arm now, pleading with me to reconsider but by this point, my mind had been made.
I had written a letter to give to my birth parents, laying out my feelings about their abandoning me all of those years ago and how I wanted to reconnect with them. I was firm in the letter, they’d never be my parents. They had sacrificed that opportunity all those years ago.
I was ready to leave the house later that afternoon. I had dressed in my best clothes, wanting for some reason to impress these people who didn’t want me. My stomach was somersaulting as I waited for the taxi. I was so unsure of myself and my actions that I didn’t trust myself to drive over there, I knew I’d flake at the first service station and that I was too awkward to tell a taxi driver to turn around so I’d continue in the car until the journey was complete.
The taxi took well over two hours, driving at first through many rural parts of the country admiring fields and barns. I noticed a considerable amount of livestock. I’d never thought of it before, but most of these animals had been ripped from their parents and sold off to the highest bidder to be used for meat, milk, wool and whatever other commodities were needed.
I was no different to these animals.
The ambulance had taken longer than I thought it would. I sat on the brick wall next to Dad for the whole time that we waited. I couldn’t say anything. Everyone came and checked on me but I still sat there, just staring at him. I was watching the blood spread, slowly filling the cracks between the slabs on the pavement. It wasn’t as red as it should have been. Whenever I thought of blood, I thought of a rich velvety crimson but this was darker, closer to a scarlet tinted maroon. I remember thinking it meant something about the state of Dad’s health and telling myself to make myself bleed later on to compare.
When the paramedics finally did arrive, they hoisted Dad up onto the stretcher and he started to regain some consciousness and my stomach started to unfurl itself. I will never forget the way that Mum looked at me as she got into the ambulance. It was as though she was looking at me and didn’t see her son but instead saw a stranger.
The way she spoke to Jonathan before the ambulance departed angered me. I wished that it was him, not Dad, being driven away to the hospital. I found myself wishing I had punched harder. I found myself wishing I had punched him again and again again.
He walked over to me as the ambulance drove away and he sat down next to me.
“I probably shouldn’t have shown up the way I did tonight,” I didn’t like the way he spoke to me, as though we were friends. We had been nothing to each other before and I wanted it to stay that way.
“Smoke?” he said, pulling out a carton of cigarettes and holding it in front of me. I silently took one, placed it between his lips and took the lighter that he offered me.
We sat there for what must have been ten minutes, smoking in silence. My thoughts spun and spiralled to the thought of Dad lying in hospital and then straight back to the anger of this stranger sitting next to me.
At some point as we sat in silence, it all became too much and the faucet of tears opened and I started sobbing. Jonathan reached over and put his arm around me and I found myself comforted by the silent embrace of this man.
“He’s going to be okay, you know?” he said as my sobs quieted.
“I thought it was you,” I spoke finally, standing up on the pavement only a foot or two away from the spot where my Dad had laid.
“I know,” Jonathan responded. “And I don’t blame you. I’d have done the same. I doubt I’d have been able to give that good of a punch thought, it seems as though I got the scrawny genes.”
I chuckled faintly then. My fears and worries and images of Dad in the hospital disappeared and finally, I was fully present in the moment.
I had been surprised that Jamie agreed to get a taxi with me to the hospital. I offered to order him one, not expecting to accompany him but his siblings had already gotten one up and his Mum travelled in the ambulance and it probably wasn’t a good idea to leave him alone.
I thought that the taxi would be a journey of silence but Jamie was a fountain of questions. It was the first time that night that I had felt anything other than hatred and disdain from him. I knew it was the stress and panic and shock of what had happened to his Dad, but trauma response aside it felt good to finally lay some pre-foundations for bonding and actually getting to know each other.
Our conversation was interrupted about twenty minutes away from the hospital when his sister rang him, asking where he was. “We’re about ten to fifteen minutes out, can you meet us by the taxi rank?” he spoke in a hurried rush and then hung up the phone after a series of “Okay, yeah, sounds good, okay bye.”
When we arrived at the hospital I remained in the car initially, unsure as to whether or not it was appropriate for me to go up with Jamie or not. “Come on dude, we haven’t got all day,” he said through his open car door. The invitation was appreciated and so I stepped out of the vehicle.
The minute I caught the attention of Jamie’s sister, my presence invoked guilt within me.
“What is he doing here?! Mum explained everything. They didn’t want him then, and after what’s happened tonight, I doubt they’re going to want him now!” she spoke in a deceptively calm manner but the words of this stranger/sibling stung like a wasp.
“Stop it!” Jamie responded, his voice raised significantly louder than hers. “He’s our brother. That’s his dad in there too, we can sort out the arguments and the history later. We all need to be up there right now, by dad’s side. That’s the only thing that matters.”
Jamie and his sister looked at me then, as though waiting for my input into this conversation as though I hadn’t appeared within their family within the last few hours.
“I agree,” I said, shrugging my shoulder.
“Great, let’s go then,” Jamie took the lead, walking into the hospital.
“I’m Amber, by the way,” Jamie’s sister finally extended what had looked like the seed to an olive branch.
“Hi Amber, Jonathan,” I responded, now walking alongside her. “I’ve never had a sister before.”
