new york city
june 2005
Rachel arranged the hand-labeled cheeses and truffled quail eggs, lined up a row of liquor bottles, and placed sprigs of dill on the crème fraiche with fond thoughts of her mother’s herb garden. A digitized rendition of Bach’s Fugue in D minor rose from her pink Motorola RAZR, and she grabbed the quaking thing off the kitchen counter, flipping it open distractedly without bothering to check the incoming number.
She expected someone to wish her happy birthday. Instead, over the music from her living room, where a dozen people were already packed into the six-hundred-square-foot apartment she shared with her roommate, a woman’s vibrant voice rang out through the receiver.
“Is Rachel Sprague available, please?”
Rachel moved to the kitchen sink to unwrap a bouquet of flowers and fill a vase with water. She propped the phone on her shoulder and wrestled with the leaky dual spigot. “This is she.”
“Rachel? My name is Dr. Marisol Rey. We haven’t spoken before. I wasn’t sure I had the right number. Did I get you at a bad time?”
A distant siren cut through the music as a friend squeezed past Rachel to grab the vodka from the makeshift bar. A few feet away, Rachel’s roommate plucked a grape from the cheeseboard and loaded a cocktail shaker with ice, rattling it adeptly.
“It’s not the best time,” Rachel said.
“I apologize for calling you out of the blue,” the woman went on. “It’s just that I have some important information I wanted to share with you.”
The door buzzer bleated. Nearby, a bottle of chardonnay blubbered out a rising scale as wineglasses were filled and distributed. Guests were cramming in, glossy gift bags dangling from manicured fingers. A flush crept across Rachel’s neck.
“Dr. Rey, did you say it was?” Perhaps she’d missed an appointment. She called to mind the list of practitioners’ names engraved on the brass doorplate of her doctor’s Park Avenue office, but Rey didn’t ring a bell.
“Please, call me Mari,” said the woman.
“Where did you say you were calling from?”
“Well, I’m from Miami.” The woman sounded uncomfortable. “But I’m here in New York right now. I work for an organization in South America.”
Rachel wished she hadn’t answered. “How can I help you?”
“Well, like I said, there’s some information I want to share with you. I was wondering if we could arrange a time to talk in person. I know it’s short notice, but if you’re free tomorrow—”
“What kind of information?”
The woman cleared her throat. “It’s in regard to your identity.”
Pinpricks traveled over Rachel’s chest. She paused for a moment, glanced at the tap water dripping from her long, slim fingers—her mom always called them pianist’s fingers, though she never played—and wondered fleetingly if her debit card had been stolen.
“Hold on just a minute, will you?” Rachel yelled into the phone, then shook her hands dry and headed for the door.
Outside her first-floor apartment, plane contrails scraped the late sunset. The summer sky trapped stale heat. Rachel shifted her weight from one heel to the other, flattened her free hand against the concrete balustrade, and lifted the phone to her ear.
“Hello? Are you still there?”
“Yes, hi,” said Mari. “I’m here.”
Rachel leaned into her palm. Near the entrance gate to John Jay Park across the street, a crescendo of laughter rose from a group of teenagers.
“What is it, specifically, that you’re looking to share with me?” She turned to face her apartment window. Propped on her kitchen windowsill was the thick floral card that had arrived earlier that afternoon, filled with her mother’s disciplined handwriting: Happy birthday, sweetheart! Wishing our favorite girl an unforgettable year. Love you always, Mom & Dad.
“It’s about your adoption.”
Rachel’s heart knocked against her rib cage. One spaghetti strap slid off her shoulder as a merciful breeze billowed her dress. Her mind raced, lifting all the stones she’d turned countless times throughout the years: the private investigator her father hired when she was sixteen; the story of how she’d been left on the front porch of the family center; the only remnant of her abandoner, a pale square of cotton fabric no bigger than a large scarf—still Rachel’s most beloved possession.
Rachel’s pitch rose. “Are you sure you have the right person?”
“Actually, no,” said Mari. “We’re not sure at all. That’s what we’re hoping to find out.”
“Who’s we?”
“It’s—there’s so much to explain. Why don’t I give you my contact information? You might be more comfortable reaching out to me directly when it’s convenient for you.”
Rachel failed to see how any outcome of this conversation could be comfortable or convenient. Her living room window was lit with her friends’ silhouettes, market lights strung from her potted palm, the muted bass from a Mariah Carey song emanating from the speakers. She’d had lavish birthday celebrations every year of her life—to overcompensate, it seemed now, for the fact that she’d never been entirely certain of her actual date of birth—and suddenly it was as though the woman on the other end of the phone had called her out on this lie, exposing the pretense of her party right in the middle of the celebration.
“Can’t you just tell me over the phone?” Rachel asked.
Mari paused for a long beat. “I think it’s better if I speak with you about this in person.”
Rachel shut her eyes, impatient, confused. Up the block, horns clamored as cars nudged each other along York Avenue.
“Okay,” she conceded. “Tomorrow’s fine. Meet me at the farmers’ market in Union Square.” She was going there anyway.
Mari agreed on the time, gave Rachel her contact information, and they hung up.
Rachel sat down on the front steps of her apartment building and let her heart rate slow.
It was summer, she thought suddenly, but the leaves started changing early.
She hadn’t thought of this in years. It was the beginning of a story her mother had told her every night of her childhood, recited like a fairy tale, describing in detail the day Rachel had been found: a little miracle sent straight from God, as the story went, with her birth parents depicted as angels—vanished but omnipresent, ever loving. Even now the idea of her biological parents held a mysterious, supernatural quality.
She wrapped her arms around her torso, fighting the instinct she never fully allowed herself to feel. There, in a dark place she kept tucked away, was an unspoken truth: the notion that she’d arrived at her life unnaturally. It wasn’t unworthiness—she knew she’d been “chosen”; this had been drilled into her to no end. It was the exhausting obligation to feel grateful for this, and the suffocating expectation to be content occupying only the smallest region of who she was—a domain that had been carefully illuminated, plotted out, and defined for her. She lived within the parameters of the life she’d been given, but she knew there was a broader landscape beyond them, vast parts of her history that were unexplored. She’d been restricted, sequestered, cooped up inside herself for as long as she could remember. It kept her from growing.
What else was there, inside of her, and why did it feel so forbidden? The phone call sparked her latent desire to know the truth.
Beside her on the stoop, Rachel felt the sudden scorn of a familiar presence, the ghost of the biological daughter her parents never had: tall and blond, with some horticultural name like Dahlia or Iris. A girl to whom Rachel played a distant second fiddle, who fit in perfectly where Rachel didn’t and never failed to remind her of it. A girl who would have been more than satisfied with a life like Rachel’s.
She stood up and brushed off her dress, ignoring the blond ghost. Rachel turned toward the celebration brimming on the other side of her apartment window and took a step, but the questions for Dr. Marisol Rey had already begun crowding her mind, piling up like rocks along an endless shore.