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inside, all while
answering a smart phone. Mom would have ironed while timing her roast and
answering the mustard colored rotary phone. Mom would have shook her head at my
graduate studies. “A girl your age should be married.”
    The thing about answering a
phone while stepping over Grace’s garbage was that I had to ask for everything
to be repeated.
    “Donnelly?”
    “Donnell. Heinrich and
Donnell.”
    “Oh, Mom’s lawyers. I’m
sorry. I just got home from the airport. So everything is okay?”
    “Of course. I’m calling
regarding a special request.”
    “Oh?”
    “Your mother, Katherine H.
Faro, left a very unique stipulation in her will.”
    “Didn’t we go over her will
already?”
    “This is Sarah R. Faro?”
    “Yes.”
    “Please verify your date of
birth.”
    It was always the birthday
that messed me up. It felt like a trick question, like they only asked to watch
me squirm. They were waiting on the other end for me to mess up my own
birthday.
    “Uh, July el–
fifteenth. July fifteenth, 1989.” Just when I was about to have them fire off
their next question, I pictured Receding Hair Line Parker, staring out of Mom’s
windows and mocking me. He was the type that never got his date of birth wrong.
“Is this about Mom’s house?”
    “No, Ms. Faro. Your mother
had some information to share with you.”
    “Information? But it’s been a
year and half. Shouldn’t I have received this already?”
    “She wanted to wait until you
passed your prelims. We have verified that you have passed and we are ready to
disclose the document.”
    “It’s a document?” My head
was spinning. Who was I talking to anyway? Was this Heinrich or Donnell?
    “Yes, Ma’am. You mother
wanted you to know who your father is. Can you stop by our office today?”
    “My– Today?” It was
difficult to tell if I stood in the middle of the apartment, gaping, or if I
melted into the floor boards. The gelatinous legs were the same either way.
“You have a document?”
    “Yes Ma’am. We do not
disclose sperm donors over the phone. Once the document is in your possession,
you’re free to do with it as you please.”
    “Sperm donor?” We were back
to repeating everything.
    “Yes.”
    So all of Mom’s If you
don’t like it, you can take up your complaints with the Sperm Donor remarks
were in reference to an actual sperm donor?
    The walls of my apartment
were collapsing in on me, crushing the shock out of me, reminding me to breath. Why now? Why only after I passed my prelims?
    Oh Mom. My head nodded. I was
beginning to take on Swanson’s defense mechanism. Yes, I too would nod rather
than deal with emotion. The student becomes the faculty.
    “Today should be fine. I’ll
be there by two.”
    Nod.
     
    ***
     
    Swanson’s door absorbed any
knocking, forcing me to bloody my knuckles any time I had to pound on his door.
This day was no different, as one hand thumped and the other held the delicate
little photograph. At least Ellen Hall was lit up, illuminated by the spring
sunshine flooding into every available window.
    Even the shimmering sunlight
on Swanson’s door seemed to be apotropaic, like nothing harmful could possibly
happen here. Perhaps that explained Gabi’s fixation with the light over her front
door, or Mom’s obsession with never entering dark doorways. Maybe a luminous
door could ward off evil in this little world.
    Swanson nodded me in, as he
always did, inarticulately. I watched his nod more closely, wondered if it was
always part of his personality or if he grew into it like a pair of
hand-me-down jeans.
    I handed over the
transcriptions while I stared. Were his eyes always that green? Did he remember
Russia, or just his Russian mother? These and a thousand other thoughts swam
through my consciousness as Swanson glanced through my work. A solitary thumb
stroked the picture in my lap, the fragile snapshot that could disintegrate at
any moment.
    The framed picture of Gabi
sitting on his desk captivated