Freudlandia

If I accept my mother’s physics, there are infinite universes in which Dad is not adopted.

Maybe he stays in Colorado with his birth kin, a sprawling clan of Irish immigrants, railroad workers with half-open eyes that look past the camera and into some corner of a room.

I’m speaking, of course, of the one-inch-by-one-inch photos that I found on findagrave.com after learning the maiden name of Dad’s biological mother. For each presumed great-aunt or second cousin, there is a headshot and a tombstone. The photos are microscopic and drown on their black backgrounds and I can’t zoom in.

The men in the photos are whiskeys deep, grinning coyly or maybe thoughtfully. A houseplant in the background, withered from Rocky Mountain sunlight. The ones who made it to old age flaunt blown-out blood vessels on their large noses.

They are handsome men. You get the sense that they know that. They’d probably hold the door for you and give a sly wink; probably track mud into your house without realizing. Their names are Puddin, Wylie, Babe, and James.

Dad’s name is James, too.

Dad has given up drinking again; he has resurrected the ancient Soloflex from the basement and performs butterfly dips and military presses and waits for someone to notice him. He plays guitar to an empty room.

The women in Dad’s other family have short, coiled red hair and long noses. They are glamorous in their glamour shots: costume jewelry and tight-lipped leers.

Dad doesn’t know the whole story, but the part he does know goes like this: he was born to a father with a second family in a second train town, dropped off at a hospital, and whether “James” comes from his birth or adoptive parents, he tells me he’s never asked.

Dad’s new parents moved him to Virginia and sent him to Catholic schools where they taught him how to hate himself. Dad’s good at it now, he holds tightly to his shame and won’t let us see.

My husband and I just bought a house in Richmond: a brick row home with a tiny patio in the backyard. We’d like to renovate the kitchen someday. Dad came over and tracked mud on the floor, which he says is heart pine, he says it’s original, and he would know.

Now I stare at findagrave.com, imagining the many universes in which my father is still in Colorado, and I selfishly wonder whose daughter I am in those worlds. I wonder what changes in the slope of my nose and the curve of my hips. What becomes of my birth certificate, my bachelor’s degree, the driver’s license with the photo of me with my eyes half-closed?

Meanwhile, in this universe, Dad sits on the chapped leather sofa with a lemon-lime seltzer, refreshing Ancestry.com on his iPad, waiting for a response from a cousin. A train that will never come.