Inheritance: A Memoir of Genealogy, Paternity, and Love

Chapter 10 addresses truth. As a memoirist, Shapiro believes there is no such thing as absolute truth, only subjective truths. Experiences and memories vary, even for members of the same family. The only immutable facts are documentable, such as the weather on a particular day or the date of an event. The dearth of documentable facts about her past was daunting, so writing about her parents challenged Shapiro. She could not piece together their inner lives and thoughts with certainty, nor could they correct her when she went astray. The question of what her parents knew and when haunts her.

Chapter 11 focuses on Shapiro and Michael’s first moments in San Francisco. Shapiro makes small talk with the Uber driver, despite being in a state of shock. The hotel room in Japantown offers views of a pagoda and a shopping center filled with sushi restaurants and tea shops, reinforcing the surrealism of the moment. Shapiro writes down her thoughts, afraid she won’t be able to remember them clearly in the future. A casual email from Susie responding to the news makes Shapiro feel even more unsettled. She wonders how she can move forward knowing that she is the product of her mother’s egg and a stranger’s sperm.

Chapter 12 describes Shapiro’s first morning in San Francisco. She lies in bed grief-stricken listening to Michael work on his computer. Michael comes across the name Bethany Thomas while trying to uncover the identity of Shapiro’s mystery first cousin, A.T, surmising that the two are related. He suggests seeking help from Jennifer Mendelsohn, a Baltimore-based journalist with a subspecialty in genealogy. Shapiro reaches out via direct message on Twitter. Jennifer instantly replies with her phone number.

Chapter 13 outlines Shapiro’s call with Jennifer, who helps her locate Bethany Thomas’s family tree. They discover that Thomas’s maiden name is Hort, which leads them to her Facebook account. Shapiro notes that she and Bethany have nothing in common: They share no friends, nor do they like any of the same pages. Further research reveals that Bethany is married to a man named Adam Thomas. Shapiro finds a picture of Adam, a man in his late fifties with a round face, a big smile, and a receding hairline. He does not look like Shapiro. Jennifer learns that Adam’s mother, Eloise Walden Thomas, died in 2010 in Cleveland, Ohio, leaving behind five children, twenty grandchildren, a sister, and two brothers. One of her brothers is a thoracic doctor named Benjamin Walden from Portland, Oregon. A website identifies Ben as a graduate from the medical school at the University of Pennsylvania. Shapiro suspects he is her father.

In Chapter 14, Shapiro draws attention to the role of chance in learning about her paternity. Although Shapiro did not realize it at the time, the decades-old conversation with her mother about the fertility institute in Philadelphia provided vital information about her origins. Moreover, Adam’s appearance on Shapiro’s Ancestry.com page led directly to Ben. Shapiro sees herself in Ben when she watches a video of him giving a talk at Reed College. The timbre of Ben’s voice is also familiar, as is his literary taste, which she gleans through references in his talk. Ben raises his hands as though bracketing the air when he speaks, a gesture Shapiro also recognizes as her own.

Shapiro reaches out to Ben. She sends him an email introducing herself, describing her findings, and inviting him to communicate with her.

Chapter 16 focuses on a gathering in Paul and Irene’s backyard in the late 1960s, when Shapiro was five or six years old. A family friend named Mrs. Kushner told Shapiro that her blond hair and blue eyes would have been useful in the European Jewish ghetto, specifying that she could have gotten bread from the Nazis. Shapiro has few childhood memories, but these remarks stayed with her because they implied she didn’t belong, in addition to sparking feelings of guilt at not having been alive to help Jews during the Holocaust. People often told Shapiro that she didn’t look Jewish. Some even asked if Shapiro was her married name. These intrusive, borderline anti-Semitic questions only made her double down on her Jewish identity.

An old friend reminds Shapiro of an incident that occurred when they met at a writers’ conference in their twenties. Mark Strand, a Poet Laureate of the United States, challenged Shapiro’s Jewish identity, insisting that she couldn’t possibly be Jewish. Her friend recalls being taken aback by the biting comments, but Shapiro has no memory of the encounter. She wonders how it is she never suspected she was not related to her father. She ignored the evidence, even when it was right in front of her.

Shapiro describes her shock in the wake of learning the truth about her father. She goes about her day in San Francisco to avoid obsessively checking her email and dwelling on her DNA test results. She wanders through the Japan Center with Michael and has lunch with a friend, all the while wondering if she will hear from Ben.

In San Francisco, Shapiro and Michael tell two friends about their discoveries over vodka martinis. The alcohol has a numbing effect, allowing Shapiro to keep the conversation light. Not wanting to hijack the conversation a second time, she opts not to share her story at a dinner party the following night. The next morning, she writes Ben a second email in hopes he will respond.

In his first email to Shapiro, Ben apologizes for his delayed response, claiming he needed time to process the information and discuss the situation with his wife. He tells her they live in a retirement community and that they are enjoying their children and grandchildren. He also asks Shapiro to send him more information. Shapiro analyzes every word of his message. She later deduces that he would have been 23 years old at the time she was conceived. She included the link to her website in her first message to him. She hopes he will see her achievements and be proud to call her his daughter.

Shapiro and Michael spend the Fourth of July weekend in Malibu. Shapiro composes a letter to Ben hoping for more information about her parents. Alongside the medical staff at the fertility institute, Ben is the only person who might have answers to her questions. She comes across a widely circulated article from 1958 claiming that 30 to 40 thousand American children owe their lives to test tube science. The source for this information is Dr. Edmond Farris, the director of the Institute for Parenthood in Philadelphia. Dr. Farris defends the practice of artificial insemination, adding that couples are urged to have intercourse immediately after the procedure to leave the question of paternity open.

Shapiro and Michael visit with their son, Jacob, at his UCLA summer film program. Shapiro opts not to tell Jacob about her discovery, despite its impact on his own medical history. She recalls looking for links between her father and Jacob when he was a child. She also remembers being comforted by the thought of Jacob’s future children carrying part of her father with them. She ponders God’s first words to Adam and Eve in Genesis: Pru u’rvu, be fruitful and multiply. The comfort and pleasure she took in thinking of Jacob as Paul’s descendent are now gone. She is heartbroken for her father. The chapter ends with a letter from Ben, who thanks Shapiro for respecting his privacy, informs her he plans to take a genetic test, and congratulates her on her successful writing career.

Chapter 23 describes past and current debates surrounding artificial insemination. Many people were outraged by the practice in the mid-20th century, including ethicists, religious scholars, lawyers, and physicians, who believed it was unlawful and immoral. The doctors at the forefront of the movement, however, praised the secrecy, anonymity, and even the perceived genetic benefits of the practice. Current articles about reproductive medicine use terms such as bio-dad and social dad, which Shapiro dislikes. Commemorative jewelry with donor numbers make her equally uncomfortable. She comes across the name Wendy Kramer in her research. Kramer created the Donor Sibling Registry, a resource for people conceived by artificial insemination who are searching for genetic relatives. Shapiro’s goal is not to find relatives, but to have an expert confirm the story she has been telling herself—that her parents were duped by a doctor and unaware they conceived using donor sperm. She reaches out to Kramer, who tells her how unusual it is to locate a donor quickly. Kramer also reveals that Shapiro’s parents likely knew they were receiving donor sperm. In her experience, the mother always knew.

Shapiro recalls posing for a well-known children’s photographer with ties to advertising, her mother’s profession before she married. According to her parents, the photo was supposed to be a personal portrait, but executives from Kodak asked to use it for a Christmas poster after seeing it in the photographer’s studio. The poster hung in prominent locations in New York City and across the US. Her parents laughed at the sight of their Orthodox child wishing the country a Merry Christmas. Michael examines the poster upon their return to Connecticut. It shows Shapiro playing with green and red elves, revealing that the picture was shot as a Christmas ad from the outset. Shapiro is the epitome of confirmation bias, that is, the idea that the mind confirms what it already believes. She was secure in her Jewish identity, despite the words of Mark Strand and Mrs. Kushner and being on a Kodak Christmas poster.

Chapter 25 focuses on Shapiro’s meeting with Haskel Lookstein, a prominent New York City rabbi and a friend of her father’s. Shapiro tells him about the results of her DNA test. She asks if he thinks her father knew the truth, or if her mother deceived him into thinking Shapiro was his biological child. Rabbi Lookstein tells Shapiro she will never know. He then reminds her that Judaism is matrilineal, which makes her Jewish, regardless of who her father is. According to Rabbi Lookstein, Paul would have seen the fertility treatments as a fulfillment of pru u’rvu. In other words, he thinks Paul knew. He then offers to contact the chief rabbi of Jerusalem for his thoughts on her situation as it relates to the halachah, or Jewish law.

Shapiro is grateful she uncovered her Ben’s identity and that he is open to answering her questions. However, she continues to wonder if her mother lied to her father about using a sperm donor. She also suspects there was a cover up at the fertility institute. She comes across a 2010 article emphasizing the importance of anonymity in sperm and egg donation. Ben was guarded when Shapiro first contacted him. As a medical doctor, however, he understands the importance of having a complete family health history. Ben tells Shapiro about his rare hereditary eye condition. He also reassures her that there is no history of cancer, heart disease, or Alzheimer’s in his family. Citing privacy concerns, he refuses to take a DNA test. Shapiro believes this means the Waldens are ashamed of her. Ben was a sperm donor at a time when the practice was shrouded in anonymity and secrecy. Shapiro’s existence is, for him, an inconvenient consequence of his actions. She invites him to coffee in Portland, and he agrees to think it over.

Shapiro tells Jacob the truth about her history over his favorite meal of steak and pasta. Her approach to parenting is antithetical to that of her parents. Her childhood home was cold and formal. By contrast, she and Michael created a simple, warm, and open environment for their son. Unlike her family, Michael’s relatives are a strong presence in Jacob’s life. Despite the absence of her relatives, however, Shapiro strove to make Jacob feel connected to her family. She remembers how complete she felt when she presented Jacob with her father’s tallis (prayer shawl) and her great-grandfather’s tallis clips at his bar mitzvah. She also recalls telling him how proud his grandfather would have been of him. Jacob reacts to the news of the DNA test with compassion. Shapiro realizes that her parents’ actions made her and Jacob’s existence possible. Jacob asks if he can meet his biological grandfather. Later during the meal, he asks if the news means he wouldn’t end up bald.

Shapiro contacts Dr. Leonard Hayflick, an endocrinologist at the Wistar Institute at Penn. Dr. Farris worked at Wistar until he was summarily dismissed for performing artificial inseminations in the mid-1950s. Dr. Hayflick explains Dr. Farris’s groundbreaking research, which involved injecting albino rats with women’s urine to detect hormonal surges during ovulation. He also tells Shapiro that Dr. Farris studied sperm specimens for evidence of low motility and poor morphology, in contrast to other doctors, who generally assumed infertility was a woman’s problem. Shapiro realizes that her mother, who was older, and her father were ideal candidates for artificial insemination with donor sperm. She imagines her mother’s urine being injected into a rat, her father racing to Philadelphia when she ovulated, and Ben ejaculating into a cup.

Shapiro describes the longing she felt before she met Michael and had Jacob. Many people conceived with donor sperm or eggs report feeling this way. As a child, Shapiro addressed her feelings by snooping. She went through her parents’ things, searching for clues about their inner lives. Shapiro also tried to flee her parents. She walked the dog constantly and spent time at neighbors’ houses to find a place where she belonged. When she returned home, she would enter through the back door and go directly to her room. Her babysitters never asked where she had been, or why she was gone so long. Shapiro now realizes that what drove her to strangers’ houses was the knowledge that her love couldn’t save her father, who was crushed by secrets and losses.

Shapiro visits with her father’s sister, Shirley. Shapiro is initially reluctant to tell her 93-year-old aunt about her findings, but Michael reminds her that Shirley might have useful information. Shapiro fears learning that her family colluded to keep her identity secret from her. Shirley hands her an envelope with three pictures: one of Shapiro and Jacob in Cape Cod when he was a toddler and the others of her grandparents. Shapiro tells Shirley the truth about her birth. Shirley claims she was unaware of her brother’s fertility problems. She then tells Shapiro that the news changes nothing—she is, and always has been, Paul’s daughter. She describes Ben as an alien and an outside element. Further, like Rabbi Lookstein, Shirley dismisses the question of halachah, confirming that Paul would have prioritized having children over concerns about Jewish law. Shirley is not surprised that her brother kept his fertility problems to himself, because the matter was private and also to protect his wife. Shirley believes that Paul knew the truth, confirming Shapiro’s worst fears. However, she affirms that Paul is her father regardless of DNA, presenting Shapiro’s newfound knowledge as an opportunity to get to know a different side of her father.