Saturday, April 18, 2015
Itasca, Minnesota
“So you never found him? You never found Lucky?” Liz asked, aghast at her mother’s story, sorry for her grief—and wishing desperately that Cecily would get to the part of the story where Liz came in, because she needed to know: Had Cecily ever—missing Lucky, grieving her lost child—truly loved her? Truly loved Sam? Nonsensical to wonder, maybe, after a lifetime of evidence that she had—but Liz had lost her bearings! Her whole family was a lie? And what had happened to Liz’s biological parents? Why had they given her up? (She had never been anybody’s first choice, it seemed!)
“No,” Cecily said. “I worked in Newport for a couple years, until the hurricane. Mr. Winthrop was visiting friends over in Westerly, and he was killed, and the house was damaged, and Mrs. Winthrop let half the staff go. I was glad to go, let me tell you. But I ended up back in Providence, and I couldn’t find a job, so I was living on the streets for a few weeks, and everybody was desperate. The place had been flooded so badly that everything was damaged and smelled horrible—moldy and salty and slimy. Awful, you know. Then I got sick with TB, and I got sent to the sanatorium, where I met your father.”
Cecily let out a long sigh, closed her eyes for a moment in obvious exhaustion—oh, God, Liz thought, what if she can’t go on?—then opened them again and continued. “Of course, it was years before we got married, but he was the central figure in my life from the moment we met. But I truly thought he wouldn’t want to marry me because I couldn’t have children. And I had trouble trusting in love, or anything, or anyone, in general—perhaps you can understand.”
“Grandma,” Molly said, in a hollow, shell-shocked tone. “You never told me you’d ever lived in Newport, not in all the years that I lived there. And you never told me that you’d lost a baby—or, I mean, that you thought you had—even when I lost four of them!” She got up and walked over to the window. Liz, worrying, watched her looking out, arms folded, shoulders trembling. Outside, tiny snowflakes poured from a matte gray sky.
“In Newport right now,” Molly said, “the daffodils are in bloom.” And Liz understood it—the wish to be elsewhere. Anywhere but here, facing this, hearing this truth after a lifetime of lies. But the truth—Liz needed it now. Molly turned. “Grandma, didn’t you think it would help me to know? To know that you had gone through something similar?”
Cecily shook her head. “But it was a secret, dear. I had kept it a lifetime. It had nothing to do with you. Only—I had to keep it to save us. To keep us intact together. Don’t you see that everything I’ve done, I’ve done because I love you and your mother so very much?”
“But, Grandma, you lied,” Molly said, and she turned to look back out the window, and Liz was suddenly shaking her head, too, as if to say, no, no, or as if the motion could clear her head of this muddle, make everything make sense. She needed food, sleep, something to set her right. (Would anything set her right, ever again?)
“I didn’t mean—” Cecily started.
“But, Mom,” Liz blurted, interrupting. “Where did I come in?” She could not bring herself to say: If I was not born to you, did I at least belong to Dad? “How—how did you come to be my mother?”
Cecily blinked again. “Oh, honey. It’s too much. It’s just too much. My baby. He’s all right? He lived? He’s still alive?”
Liz bit her lip to keep from saying, It’s a girl, a daughter. “Please, Mom. I need you to tell me everything. About me. This is my life. I need the absolute truth. After all this time, I think I deserve that, at the very least.”
Cecily’s eyes crinkled. “Yes. Yes, of course you do.” She sighed. Folded her hands. Took a deep breath, maybe to calm herself, or decide where to start. Liz tapped her foot, trying hard to be patient; failing. Molly was still looking out the window, her back to the room.
“Well, yes,” Cecily said, finally. “Well, honey, your father and I, we—well, you see, we just always considered you our gift from God—”
“So Dad isn’t my biological parent, either?”
Cecily frowned, shook her head slightly.
Liz felt sick. Could hardly breathe.
“But we always felt you were ours completely! And we—we didn’t want to complicate things for you by saying we weren’t your biological parents. We just wanted everything to make perfect sense to you. For everything to be easy for you. The way nothing was ever easy for me!”
“But, Mom, now nothing makes sense! You adopted me? Who were my biological parents? Do you even know? How old was I when you got me?”
“You were about five months old,” Cecily said quietly, looking at her hands, and Liz suddenly realized: the scar. The cut down Cecily’s midline. It was from this other baby—not from Liz at all.
Liz had never before known what it was to be truly speechless, to have no words.
Cecily’s eyes flashed up again. “Honey, this is a lot for one day. Would you just tell me, please—my son? My son is alive?”
Liz looked at Molly, and Molly, blinking back tears, nodded. “You have a daughter, Mom,” Liz said. “Other than me, I mean.”
By the time Kate and Clarissa got back from their walk, Lana had crafted emails to the half-sister, RHarris, and the biological mother, CLarson. “Wait,” Clarissa said, and she had to sit down—her vision was swimming, suddenly.
What if they wanted nothing to do with her? Did she want anything to do with them? Did she really want to know why her mother had given her up, or how much money she’d got for her?
No. Not really. She didn’t.
Except (Clarissa had to remind herself): As Kate had pointed out, the woman would have been a young girl at the time of Clarissa’s birth. She probably hadn’t had choices, and it was probably only the doctor who’d profited—
“Mom, are you all right?” Kate said. “Do you want some more coffee? Water? Maybe we should think about lunch.”
“Let’s just try your biological mother first, then, Mom,” Lana said.
Clarissa looked at Kate, folding her hands to stop them from shaking. “It’s too soon. I’m not acclimated to all of this.”
“But, Mom,” Lana said, “your mother’s bound to be really, really old. Don’t you want answers, before it’s too late? Don’t you want to know what happened?”
“Lana,” Kate said. “If Mom says it’s too soon, it’s too soon!”
Lana frowned. “It’s always been the two of you together, and me the odd man out. I’m tired of it, to be honest.”
“You’re pushing too hard,” Kate said, in a heavy, strained tone.
“I’m not wrong. You always try to make me wrong.”
Kate let out a little scream and headed for the kitchen, where she began opening cupboards, one after another after another, too quickly. “Damn it, can’t a person get a drink around here? It doesn’t seem like too much to ask!”
Clarissa and Lana exchanged alarmed looks. Quietly, Lana folded her computer closed and set it on the coffee table. “Katie?”
Kate let out another little scream, slapped her hands to her head, then snatched up a half-full blue glass tumbler off the counter and hurled it at the wall. It shattered, heavy pieces raining to the floor, water spattering the paint. “Kate!” Clarissa hurried toward her, skirting the broken glass, as Kate sank to the floor, leaning back against the cabinets, sobbing, head in her hands.
With effort, Clarissa got to her knees beside her. Lana was close behind. “Katie, Katie,” Clarissa said, trying to gather Kate up, but Kate was pushing her away, saying, “Damn it, damn it, damn it,” through her tears. “Leave me alone, leave me alone!”
“We’re not going to leave you alone,” Clarissa said, trying again to hold her. Lana had a hand on Kate’s knee.
Finally, Kate surrendered to Clarissa, though she began crying harder, too. “Oh, Katie,” Clarissa said.
“I had a baby,” Kate said, through her tears. “Lana, I had a baby! When I was fifteen and I went to the goat farm!”
Lana drew back. “What?” She looked at Clarissa. And all Clarissa could do was lower her eyes, take a breath like she was about to go underwater, and nod.