CHAPTER 31 Evelyn

SPRING 2017

12:35 p.m.

It’s nearly time.

Evelyn is in a state of high agitation, and she’s been doing her best to keep herself busy this morning. She’s washed and folded three loads of laundry since she woke up at four o’clock after an almost sleepless night. The third load was a set of towels she’d put through the laundry two days ago and didn’t need washing again. She made herself one cup of strong coffee around five, and has since switched to decaf; she doesn’t need addictive stimulants putting her any more on edge than she already is today.

Nancy is arriving at one o’clock. With Angela acting as her proxy, Evelyn invited Nancy to meet for tea at her apartment, and in the intervening two days since Nancy accepted her offer, Evelyn has thought a great deal about the ridiculousness of the invitation. One “meets for tea” with an old friend to catch up after a few months apart, discuss the politics of a wedding guest list, or plan a weekend getaway in the country. You don’t “meet for tea” to reunite with your long-lost daughter.

But in a situation this absurd and remarkable, how else are you supposed to officially reunite? What are the expectations? There is no normal way to do this. No handbook. What could Evelyn have offered Nancy, except to meet for tea?

Angela spoke with Nancy and confirmed that she was indeed the Nancy Mitchell who worked with the Jane Network, then she explained who Evelyn really was. Angela says it took Nancy a while to absorb it, believe it. They talked for over an hour. But now she knows, and she still wants to meet with Evelyn.

After changing her outfit four times, Evelyn finally decided on a pair of neat jeans and a blouse in the same shade of yellow as the booties she knitted for Jane all those years ago. She wonders whether Nancy ever saw them. She makes a mental note to ask.

She’s smoothed her gray hair and even put on a little bit of lipstick, which she rarely does. She scrubbed her entire house from top to bottom yesterday and refilled the vase on the windowsill with fresh lilacs. The smell fills the room now as she opens the window a crack to let in a whiff of the cool spring breeze. The smell of the city in springtime—mud and exhaust and flowering trees—fills her nostrils and the familiarity calms her nerves, if only a little.

Evelyn glances at the clock again.

12:40.

She breathes her nervousness out through pinched lips just like she does in her yoga classes, and heads for the door. The sound of the traffic and chatter rises as she steps out onto the sidewalk. The sunlight hits her, and she winces, but smiles. Springtime and the return of the sun is such a relief at the best of times, and today it cracks a grin into Evelyn’s usually serious features.

She doesn’t bother locking the door; she’ll only be a minute fetching Angela from Thompson’s. It’s Saturday afternoon, so there’s another person working in the shop today who’s agreed to cover Angela’s break while, at Evelyn’s request, she acts as a buffer for the reunion. Angela offered to come directly to her apartment, but Evelyn told her she wants to see the mailboxes. She needs to see the mistake that cheated her out of so much time with Nancy.

Outside Thompson’s, Evelyn stops in front of the two boxes screwed into the brick wall beside the door. The chatter of pedestrians on the sidewalk behind her, the car horns, and the screech of the streetcar all fade into the background. She pictures Nancy reaching her hand under the creaking, rusted metal flap to retrieve the unwanted junk mail and hydro bills, never knowing there was supposed to be another letter for her. It hurts Evelyn’s heart just to look at it.

While Evelyn is in quite good health for her age, she’s in the home stretch now, and there isn’t enough time left to make mistakes. And, even more critically, to fix those mistakes.

When you’re young, you get to look at time through the reduction end of the telescope. The wrong end, the generous end that makes everything appear so far away, that gives the impression that there are light-years of space between you and those magically distant objects. And then, without warning, time turns it around on you, and suddenly you’re looking through the correct end, the end you were always supposed to be looking through, if you were paying attention. The end where everything is magnified and perilously close. The end that zooms in without mercy and forces you to see the detail you should have been focusing on all along.

While Evelyn and Nancy were so close to one another for years, they never knew each other’s true identity. Evelyn has tried to think back on those memories and count them as time spent with her daughter, but it’s not the same.

She returns her gaze to the mailboxes, considering the turn of events. Even if Frances Mitchell’s letter had been delivered properly, it might have taken Nancy the same number of years to locate Evelyn, or she might never have been able to find her at all, given Evelyn’s name change. In a way, perhaps Frances’s letter being delivered to the wrong mailbox made sure that the two women were reunited. If not for Angela finding it and making the connection, maybe Evelyn wouldn’t be meeting with Nancy today at all. Maybe she would have gone to her grave never knowing that Nancy Mitchell is her daughter Jane.

Evelyn hasn’t believed in any kind of god for decades now, and she doesn’t subscribe to the concept of fate. Life is simply too cruel for those things to exist. But, like many people, she does wonder every now and then about the strange and serendipitous ways in which things sometimes seem to just work themselves out.

The sound from the street roars back into focus as Evelyn turns the doorknob and enters the shop with a jingling of bells overhead. Angela is perched on a stool behind the antique cash desk. She’s tapping a pen at breakneck speed and her eyes are bright underneath her dark bangs. She looks up at Evelyn, then at the clock on the wall. Evelyn’s eyes follow.

12:48.

“It’s time?”

“It’s time,” Evelyn replies.

Angela comes around the desk to Evelyn and pulls her into a hug. Evelyn is surprised at the affection she’s developed for the young woman.

“How you doing, Eve?”

Evelyn’s throat is stuck, but she nods and leads Angela back out the jingling door of the shop. They walk a few minutes in silence back to Evelyn’s apartment. Once she’s shut the inner door behind Angela, she lets her breath out.

“I’m really nervous, Angela. I don’t know what to do with myself.”

“That’s completely understandable. Just remember that Nancy wants to see you. And you aren’t meeting each other for the first time today, as weird and wonderful as that fact is. She knows you. Her adoptive mother encouraged her to find you. This is all going to be okay. It really, really is. This is just one huge hurdle that you have to get over. Waiting for today was probably the worst part. Once she’s here… I think it’ll feel different.”

Evelyn tries to take Angela’s words to heart, but her mind is racing. “Before I knew Nancy was Jane, I dreamed about meeting her, what that would be like. But this is far worse than I imagined. It’s so real now. I mean, what if she doesn’t— When do I tell her about— What do we even talk about? I feel like I’m going to vomit. Or maybe have a heart attack.” She’s panicking now.

Angela takes a step toward her, eyes shining. “I’m adopted, Evelyn.” Her words distract Evelyn just enough that she’s able to listen.

“You are?”

“Yes. And when I met my birth mother, we were both nervous, too. I remember that anxiety so vividly. But I needed to meet her, and my mom was supportive of that.” Face flushed, she rests one hand on her midsection, and Evelyn notices a curve that wasn’t there a few weeks ago. Her own stomach gives a little jolt, remembering how that felt, a lifetime ago. “I know my situation isn’t the same as Nancy’s,” Angela continues, “and my birth mother’s wasn’t the same as yours, but I can tell you I’m sure this is going to go a lot better than you’re imagining. This is a good thing, I promise. Now let’s sit down. I’ll get you some water.”

Angela disappears into the kitchen and comes back with a cold glass. They settle down together on Evelyn’s puffy couch and Angela reaches out for Evelyn’s hand. They intertwine their fingers on the seat between them.

“Thank you, Angela,” she mutters, taking a sip. “For everything.”

“You’re welcome.” Angela smiles, squeezes her fingers.

They sit there, side by side, for a few minutes, each staring out the window ahead of them as the clock on the wall ticks away the seconds until Nancy’s arrival. It’s a breathtaking wait.

And then the doorbell rings.

A little gasp escapes Evelyn’s mouth.

“I’ll get it,” Angela says, releasing Evelyn’s hand.

Evelyn knows she should answer the door herself, but she’s rooted to the spot. “Thank you,” she whispers.

Angela pulls herself up off the couch and walks toward the door. A moment later, Evelyn hears the street level door unlocking, sounds from the city floating in.

Her daughter’s voice.

Jane’s voice.

“Hi! You must be Angela!”

“Yeah! Hi, Nancy. It’s nice to finally be able to put a face to your name. Come on in. Evelyn’s just upstairs.”

Nancy’s voice echoes in the stairwell.

“Thank you so much for making the effort to find me, honestly,” Nancy says. “This is the best shock I could possibly imagine. I know I was a bit speechless when you called.”

They’re right outside the door.

“You’re welcome. I just, well… I had to.”

Evelyn rises from her chair with difficulty. Her legs feel like they’re made of glue. She stands still in the middle of the living room. Angela is turning the handle. She’s back inside the apartment. Nancy follows closely behind her, and the room becomes cloudy and silent to Evelyn, as though she’s about to faint. Now all she can see is Nancy’s face. Her daughter’s face.

Jane’s face.

She’s aged since Evelyn saw her last, on the cold January night when the Janes celebrated legalization together, raised a glass to the fact that their underground operation was no longer needed. Nancy’s brown temples are graying, her face is a little more angled, with crow’s-feet around her eyes and laugh lines in her cheeks. She’s in her mid-fifties now. Evelyn notes how thrilled she is that her daughter spent her life smiling so much that she now has such generous wrinkles. They are the precious souvenirs of a life well lived.

Angela retreats and closes the apartment door quietly, leaving Evelyn and Nancy alone.

Nancy clears her throat, and sets her purse down. Her hands twitch at her sides as she steps forward toward Evelyn.

Toward Maggie.

Toward her mother.

“Nancy…” Maggie begins.

“I can’t believe it’s you,” Nancy says, her voice breaking.

“I know.” Maggie nods. “I know. I was worried you wouldn’t.”

Nancy shakes her head, and Maggie can see the tears welling in her daughter’s eyes now. “I have so many questions,” she says. “How did you— How?”

A knot the size of a golf ball is fighting its way up Maggie’s throat. “Nancy, I—”

“You can… you can call me Jane, if you want.”

The tears start to slip from the corners of her daughter’s eyes now, but Maggie continues to fight her own, worried that once she starts, she won’t be able to stop. She needs to control it.

And then, in an instant, she understands that there’s no need for control anymore. This moment will only happen once, and it’s perhaps the most important moment of her entire life. There are no do-overs on this. She can’t stifle the tidal wave of feelings raging in her heart right now, and if she tries, she’ll certainly regret it later. And there’s been too much regret already.

So she lets the moment flow through her, lets the tears fall, and in a few hurried steps Jane is in Maggie’s arms again, the arms that have been aching to hold her since the day Maggie handed her to Agatha and felt her heart tear into two pieces. Two pieces, she thought, that could never be put back together again.

But she was wrong.

“Jane,” she whispers into her daughter’s hair, rubbing her hand in soothing circles on Jane’s back as they press their grief into one another, holding each other up against the gravity of all those years of lost time. Maggie remembers her daughter’s tiny body, swaddled tightly in the crook of her arm in the Goodbye Room as she tucked the yellow booties and note deep into the folds of Jane’s blanket. Holding her grown daughter in this moment, she can still feel her baby.

“Jane,” she says again, and her daughter pulls her head back from her mother’s shoulder, her face shining with tears and joy. Maggie looks deep into her daughter’s eyes and finds herself there in the streaks of brown and gold.

“I’ve been looking for you.”