FAMILY

                                                (for previous chapters, please scroll down)

S3 Round Robin (2025)

Chapter 8

Jessica Webb

 

Diana was at breakfast with Vincent, Father, Mary, Susan, Alex and Jacob when one of the children ran into the dining chamber, handed her a note, said it was from Dr. Peter, then ran back out.

Diana opened the note, read it, and handed it to Vincent to read.

“News?” Mary asked.

Diana nodded, then looked pointedly at Alex and Jacob.

Mary took the hint. “Alex, Jacob, are you both done with your breakfast?” she asked. They nodded, and she continued. “Good, then I need you to do something for me. We are going to be working on Winterfest decorations today, but I need to have all the supplies transferred from the classroom to here. We will be using the tables in the corner near the entrance. Would you please go to Mouse’s chamber and borrow his cart, then use it to bring everything back here?”

Eager to please and excited about Winterfest, they both jumped up and ran out.

“And don’t run,” Mary called after them, then turned to Diana. “I know all about little pitchers with big ears,” she said with a smile.

“Peter wants me to go to his office this morning to have blood drawn. He has found a lab to do genetic testing,” Diana told everyone at the table. She looked at her watch. “It’s only nine; he wants me there about 11:30. I should put on something besides these sweats.” She got up, and Vincent rose to follow her.

“Don’t you want Susan to go with you?” he asked her as they walked.

“I think I’d rather just go by myself,” she said. “Susan is so uptight about this that she makes me nervous just being around her. Besides, I’m only having blood drawn today. The note said that the lab would send the results to Peter, and he would let me know. We can make our decisions based on that.”

“Even if you are a carrier, that is no guarantee that any child you have will actually have the syndrome,” Vincent reminded her. “You have a 50% chance of passing the mutated gene on to your children, but then they aren’t guaranteed to have it; they might just be carriers.”

Diana nodded. “And it’s not like I would consider terminating the pregnancy, anyway,” she said as they reached their chamber. “I just want to know what to expect.”

 

Later, after having the blood drawn, Diana sat in Peter’s office. Peter was semi-retired and only worked 4 mornings a week, in the office he shared with another general practitioner and an OB-BYN.

“Have you decided what you are going to tell your OB-GYN yet?” he asked.

Diana leaned over and fished a piece of paper out of her bag. She handed it to him. “I stopped at my place to pick up my mail,” she told him. “That was in my box.”

Peter read the letter and looked up at her. “That’s convenient,” he told her.

“Yeah. When I saw her, she didn’t say anything about not doing obstetrics anymore, but I can understand it. She’s been my doctor forever. She’s my mom’s and Susan’s doctor and delivered Alex. She must be over 60. As you can see, she’s not retiring completely; just won’t be monitoring pregnancies or delivering babies anymore, so I won’t have to come up with an explanation about why I’m going to another doctor.”

“Once we know all the facts, you can make a decision about who will be your doctor,” Peter said. “But Dr. Sloane, in this office, can be trusted. He doesn’t know about the tunnels, but I’ve been considering bringing him and my other partner, Dr. Adamski, in on the secret. In the meantime, I told the lab to expedite the testing. They said that it normally takes 2-3 weeks, but they might be able to shorten that to a week to ten days. Their lab is in the city, and I’ll drop the sample off on my way home. I’ll tell you the results as soon as I get them.”

Diana nodded. “What about other testing?” she asked.

“Since we have an OB-GYN in this office, we also have ultra-sound equipment; we can do that here after hours. If we want to do amniocentesis later, Dr. Sloane can do that, too. He would do the procedure, and I’d handle the lab again.”

“It sounds like you have it all figured out,” Diana said.

“Been doing this a long time,” he told her with a laugh. “I’ve had to order lab work for Vincent a few times.” 

XxX

Devin joined Susan after lunch on Sunday for the trip to her apartment. They emerged from the tunnels in the park and then walked out to Central Park West to the subway station. Susan was carefully carrying a white bakery box.

“What’s in the box?” he asked.

“I talked William into letting me have one of his coffee cakes. I promised Nate cake, but I haven’t been home to make one. And William’s coffee cake is better than anything I could make anyway.”

“Have you had any luck finding a job yet?” she asked later after they were seated in the subway car.

“Pops put the word out among the helpers who own or run businesses,” he told her. “The only thing I’ve heard so far is that a public library branch that is run by a helper is looking for an assistant. The assistant doesn’t have to have a degree; he just needs to know the Dewey Decimal System, know the alphabet, and be able to type. I can do that. I’ve got a high school diploma and two years at a community college for basic studies. But they are both in different names.” He laughed. “I was still using Devin then, but the last names are different.”

Susan nodded. “That shouldn’t be too much of a problem. You know several lawyers, maybe you can devise a paper trail to show a name change. But do you want to be a librarian?”

The train stopped and they got up and got off.

“It’s a job and place to start. And I do know about libraries,” he said sheepishly. “I had a job as a school librarian in an elementary school in British Columbia.”

He was surprised when Susan laughed. “I’d forgotten about your extensive experience… What branch does the Helper work in?”

“Battery Park.”

“That’s near my place,” she told him. “That’s where Alex and I go.”

They reached her apartment, a two-bedroom, fourth-floor walk-up. It wasn’t in a high-rent area, but she’d made it cozy and comfortable.  

They shed their coats, and Devin followed Susan into the kitchen and watched her unbox the cake, put it on a plate, and cut it up.

“What time is your friend supposed to be here?” he asked.

“That’s probably him,” she said, just as the buzzer from the street went off.

She went to the intercom, made sure it was Nate, then let him in. He was at the door a few minutes later.

Susan let him into the apartment and then introduced him to Devin.

Devin was surprised at the man’s apparent age. He had to be 90 if he was a day.

When they were seated in the living room and Susan had put the tray with the cake and coffee on the coffee table, Nate spoke.

“So, you’re Grace’s boy,” he said.

Devin was a little taken aback by the straightforwardness of the statement.

“Ah, yeah. I think so. My father told me that my mother’s name was Grace Dorrance, and she was from Bristol, Pennsylvania. Susan told me that you used to work for a family by that name.” He reached into his shirt pocket, pulled out the photograph, and handed it to Nate.

Nate looked at the picture.  

“Yeah, that’s the family. John Dorrance and his wife Ethel were grandparents, and the couple next to them were Grace’s parents. The other couples are their sons and their wives, and the children are the grandchildren, Grace's nieces and nephews. They were a nice family, even if Mr. Dorrance was a little hard on the kids.”

“Do you know how old my mother was when that picture was taken?”

“I didn’t work for them at that time,” he pointed out. He turned the photo over and looked at the date. “She would have been about 16 then.”

Devin did some quick math in his head. “Then she would have been about 37 when I was born.”

“So, your dad wasn’t Luca Ferrari?” Nate asked.

“Ah, no. Who is that?”

“Well, he was the reason Gracie left. She was on a trip to New York with her mother, and she met Luca Ferrari, the doorman, at the apartment building where they were visiting Gracie’s grandparents, John and Ethel. They were there for several weeks, and they started talking. Before Mrs. Dorrance knew what was going on, the two of them had run off and got married. Grace was about twenty-two at the time. That was something like 1935 or 36. I had been working for them for a few years at that time.

“Her parents weren’t happy, but since she was already 22 and still single, and it spared them the expense of a big wedding, they allowed it to stand. Then World War II started, and Luca was drafted. They found out that he spoke Italian and sent him off to Europe as soon as he was out of training. He was a member of the staff of one of the big-shot Generals, so everyone figured he was safe. But the General sent him to work with another officer to help talk to some Italians. It was near the end of the war, but the group was ambushed on the road back to his boss, and he was killed along with all the others in the group.

“From what I hear, Grace was pregnant when Luca was drafted and hadn’t had the baby by the time he left the country. The baby was a boy, but he died of whooping cough shortly after Grace got word that her husband had been killed.

“When her husband was drafted, Grace contacted her parents and asked if she could come home for the duration of the war. The little bit of money she was getting from the Army wasn’t really enough to live on, and since she was pregnant, she couldn’t find work. Her parents said they didn’t have room since her brothers’ families had moved in when her brothers were drafted. But the Ferraris, Luca’s family, took her in, and from what I hear, she lived with them until she and Luca’s son died. I heard one of her brothers say she’d found a job and left the Ferraris.”

“You weren’t drafted?” Devin asked.

“No, I have asthma and a heart murmur. They didn’t want me, but I was part of the Civil Defense volunteers.”

“What happened to my mother after she left her in-laws?” Devin asked.

“I’m not sure. I quit working for the family about that time, and came to New York to start my own business. Grace’s brother asked me to look her up; that was in 1948. He didn’t know where she was living but he did know where she worked. It took me a few months to get around to looking her up, and when I asked at the place she’d been working, they said that she’d been fired when the company had to cut expenses. No one knew where she went. I guess she did all right since you are here?”

That last was more of a question.

Devin didn’t want to give anything about the tunnels away, but knew he had to say something.

“Well, I never knew her. She died not long after I was born. My father is a doctor, but there wasn’t much he could do to help her.”

“Sorry to hear that,” Nate said sincerely. “Grace was a sweet girl, smart, but not real educated. She had a big heart.”

“Why wasn’t she educated? I assume the family was well off.”

“Her father didn’t believe in educating girls past high school. She finished high school, but since her father was one who thought women were only good for keeping the house and making babies, he didn’t want to waste money sending her to college. But you say she wound up with a doctor, so I guess she did OK for herself.”

“Well enough,” Devin agreed. “Until she died. She was only 37.” Devin stopped for a moment. “Do you know if any of her brothers are still around?”

“Didn’t really keep in touch with them, but my youngest sister still lives in Bristol. She has kept me up on all the town gossip.” He laughed. “Although she calls it news. She said that the last Dorrance brother died. His dad hadn’t been involved in running the business for years before he died.  And none of the kids were interested in running it or even working there.”

“Do you have any idea what the Campbell Soup association is?”

“That was the family business,” Nate said with a grin. “Mrs. Dorrance’s maiden name was Campbell, and her hobby was writing a history of the association between the Dorrance’s and the Campbell’s. All the way back to Scotland. Supposedly, they fought on the same side in many battles supporting the Scottish Crown. And her father-in-law was the person who came up with the method Campbell’s Soup used to make their canned condensed soup.”

Devin had to laugh. “So, I’m related to those Campbells. I’ve been eating their soup my whole life. Wait until Pop’s hears about this.”

 

After Nate left, Devin helped Susan clean up; she’d sent Nate home with the rest of the coffee cake.

“How long do you plan to stay Below?” Devin asked when they reached the park threshold.

“Until the second Monday in January, or at least the weekend before that. My office closes for the whole month of December,” she told him. “The boss vacations in the Bahamas. He still pays us a little, but it’s not the full amount, and it makes things tight. Father has been allowing me to stay Below for the month of December for the last few years. It keeps my utility costs down at the apartment, and I don’t have to buy groceries. I help out Below and am a Helper throughout the year… What about the librarian job?”

“I’m going to go talk to the Helper tomorrow. If I get the job, maybe you can help me hunt for an apartment.”

“As a matter of fact, I don’t know if you noticed the sign on the door of the building, but there is a studio apartment on the second floor of my building available.”   

 

XxX

Devin walked with Susan to the chamber she was using, then promised to meet her for dinner before he headed for Father’s study. He found him reading a medical journal, as a cup of tea cooled on his desk.

“Got a minute, Dad?” Devin asked from the top of the stairs.

Father looked up, smiled, then closed the journal and tossed it on his desk.

“That was about to put me to sleep,” he admitted. “So much is going on in medicine these days, and it’s hard to keep up with it. What is it?”

“I just wanted to talk to you about what I learned from Susan’s friend.”  

“Yes. Grace never really talked about what happened before we met.”

“She was from a wealthy family,” Devin said.

“I could see that,” Father said thoughtfully. “She was well-read and had good manners. She wrote well, but she didn’t seem to have any marketable skills.”

“She did work for a while, but I’m not sure what she did. Nate, the man who used to work for her family told me…” and he went on to relay everything he’d been told.

“Campbell’s soup, huh?” Father chuckled. “That explains her penchant for bringing canned soup back to the tunnels whenever she found some. The markets would sometimes throw out cans that were dented, or that had lost their labels. She knew all the places to find them. She kept us fed. Do you think you’ll contact the family?”

“I don’t think so. I have no proof,” Devin told him.

They were both quiet, thinking about what Devin had learned.

“Are you still planning to find a job Above?” Father suddenly asked.

“Ah, yeah. There’s a Helper who works at a library branch. They need an assistant, I was thinking I’d apply for that.”

“And you’ll live Above?”

“I’m not sure yet; until I get established, it might be better to stay Below. No matter where I work, I’ll need suitable clothing and things like subway or cab fare. I’ll just have to wait and see if I can afford rent,” Devin said with a laugh. He was finally beginning to feel like it was possible that he and his father could maybe start acting like other fathers and sons.