Revised Excerpt from "North"

North

I walked into my mom’s room and I remember she looked like she was dead. Her skin was so pale, it matched the bed sheets. Most of her hair was gone and her eyelids looked very heavy. She knew I was in the room, I could tell because she smiled.
“Who’s the Father?”
At first, I didn’t know what she meant and then Andrew squirmed a little in my arms and I remembered. Joe and I had been married for ten years, Andrew was our first child.
“Joe, Mom.”
“Oh,” she sighed “I always liked him.”
She closed her eyes. A few hours later, with all of us by her side, she passed away.

James, Bernie, and Dad sat in the dining room. We had been up all night. Joe was at home with Andrew getting some sleep before funeral arrangements and half hearted telephone calls would take over our lives. I couldn’t sit in the dining room and drink coffee. Their conversation kept going in circles.
“Well, she led a good life.”
“Yep. Yep. A good good life.”
“Yep. A full life.”
“Very full.”
I slipped away to the basement where Dad kept the safe. I swept away the dead pill bugs from the damp concrete and began turning the dial. My mom had told me the combination when she was in treatment in California. I take care of things in my family, maybe James will pull some of the weight, Bernie would never, but I take care things.
The safe had many envelopes all labeled in my mom’s slanted pointy handwriting. I pulled them out and started sorting them in my lap. I found the will, certain tax forms, and the lawyer’s card. The last envelope, however, was different. At the top left corner, almost going off the envelope, was my mom’s handwriting.
“Adoption Papers”
Somehow I wasn’t completely surprised. James and I thought for sure that he was adopted. We used to scour the house in search of his adoption papers. Now in his thirties, James looked like an immigrant, but it wasn’t a Polish one. But when the certificate slid out of the envelope and into my lap, James’ Carl Dudek was not on it.
“Bernard Joseph Dudek.”
Bernie. Bernie? Bernie was ten years older than me. I can’t say I knew him particularly well. He already had a wife and kids by the time I was ten. I had accepted that the differences I saw between us were because of our ages. Now that I had my own husband and child, I could see that the differences were more than our ages.