The Mistress's Daughter by A. M. Homes Read Free Book Online

everywhere detailing how payment is to be made: all checks must be certified. He offers to get them the cash, but they can’t accept cash, only certified checks. He goes to the bank downstairs and for some reason is unable to get one. He returns, flustered, humiliated. He insists that the technician make a call, that he try to get an exception, but it is all to no avail. The check and the blood must be sent together. Because this test is often part of a lawsuit, the lab insists on being paid in advance to avoid the complication of collection. This is the stuff of murders, rapes, proof. Are you or are you not my father?
    The next morning we try again.
    â€œLong time no see,” I say.
    â€œWhat if we get in there and the nurse is the Dragon Lady? She’ll come at us with a square, blunt-tipped needle,” Norman jokes nervously. I laugh but it is not funny. We have a tacit agreement not to tell Ellen what we are doing. What we are doing is insulting to her.
    The technician calls in a small child who is ahead of us. The little boy screams when they take him.
    â€œYou’re not going to do that, are you?” Norman asks.
    Worse, I’m thinking, far, far worse.
    As Norman walks up to the counter, I notice that his butt looks familiar; I am watching him and I’m thinking: There goes my ass. That’s my ass walking away. His blue sport coat covers it halfway, but I can see it broken into sections, departments of ass, high and low just like mine. I notice his thighs—chubby, thick, not a pretty thing. This is the first time I have seen anyone else in my body.
    I stare as he turns and comes back to me. I look down at his shoes, white loafers, country-club shoes, stretched out, fading. Inside the shoe, his feet are wide and short. I look up; his hands are the same as mine, square like paws. He is an exact replica, the male version of me.
    â€œFine thing,” Norman says, seeing me stare.
    I go first. I roll up my sleeve. The technician pulls on his gloves, assembles his tubes, and ties the rubber tourniquet around my arm. I make a fist. Norman is watching.
    The needle goes in, a sharp metal prick.
    I look at Norman. It feels strange. I am giving blood for this man, I am letting my flesh be punctured to prove that I am of him. It is beyond sexual.
    â€œLet go of the fist,” the technician says and I relax my hand.
    The blood is drawn, tubes and tubes of it, and then there is cotton on my wound and a Band-Aid over it.
    I have allowed this because I understand the need for proof, for some true measure of our relationship, and also because I have a fantasy that there is something in it for me, that Norman will keep his word, that he will take me into his family, that I will suddenly have three brothers and a sister—a new and improved spare family.
    â€œPlease sign here.” The technician hands me the tubes, one at a time.
    â€œWhat?”
    â€œYou have to sign the tubes.”
    They are warm in my palm, filled with the chemical sum of who and what I am. I sign quickly, hoping not to faint. I am holding myself in my hands.
    Norman is next. He takes off his jacket, revealing short shirt sleeves, sad-old-guy style. His arms are plump, pale, almost fluffy. There is something so white about him, so soft, so exposed that it is perverse. He lays out his arm. The technician ties it off, swabs it, and I look away unable to watch this strange genetic striptease.
    I am sickened by it all. I wait in the hall. I do not watch him holding his blood, signing his tubes. He comes out of the room, puts his jacket back on, and we are out the door.
    â€œI would have liked to take you for a nice lunch if you’d worn something better,” he says when we are in the hallway.
    I am dressed perfectly well—in linen pants and a blouse. DNA testing is not a black-tie occasion. I am tempted to say, That’s okay—I would have liked you to be my father if you weren’t such a jerk. But I