Thirteen

Each of us is here for a brief sojourn; for what purpose he knows not, though he senses it. But without deeper reflection one knows from daily life that one exists for other people.

—ALBERT EINSTEIN

MELISSA

It’s a cute two-story house with an enclosed porch on the side. The smaller trees have Christmas lights, and strands are wrapped around the shrubs in front of the porch and outline the roof. I knock on the door and feel my pulse knocking hard. A teenage boy answers wearing a white T-shirt and flannel pajama pants. “Hi, is Karla home?”

“She and Dad and Gramps went to the hospital already. Were you the lady who was bringing food?”

Crap. I didn’t even think to bring anything. “No. I work with Josh at Wilson’s. I just wanted to talk to your mom about your grandma.”

“Grandma’s here. Do you want to talk to her yourself?”

I feel the pulse on the side of my head. “Yeah. If she’s up and doing okay. Josh told me she was sick.”

He tips his head back and says, “Come on.”

I follow him through a living room decorated in warm browns, plums, and gold, through a hallway, and then step down into a family room with a plush sofa and big, comfy chairs. There, in one of the chairs by the window is Josh’s grandmother. “Grandma, this lady works with Josh.” I hadn’t told him my name, and he doesn’t ask as he bolts from the room.

She turns to look at me and my eyes fill. Her hair is white and her full face is lined with wrinkles, but her eyes are as brown and openhearted as I remember. “Mrs. Schweiger,” I say, choking on her name.

Her face opens in recognition and she puts something from her lap into a box on the table beside her. “Melissy!” She tries to stand and I move to her side, sitting down. She puts her hands on each side of my face and water covers her eyes. “Look at you! Look at what a beautiful woman you grew up to be!” It feels like my throat is cracking, and streams of tears spill over my face. It’s been close to thirty years since I’ve seen her, but all my life I’ve loved this woman as if she were my mother. She puts her arms around me and I crumble, remembering her hugging me as a child.

“I heard you were sick,” I say, swiping at the tears on my face.

“I was sick, but now I’m much better.”

“But you didn’t go to the hospital this morning.”

She shrugs her shoulders. “So this morning I’m not as better as I was yesterday.” She sticks her finger up as if popping a balloon. “But tomorrow I’ll be better than today. Eight years ago Albert and I moved to Albuquerque; the weather was supposed to be better for this and that ailment but look what happened. I got sick anyway.” I love hearing her voice again and watching her gestures. “You are here.” She makes it sound like she’d been expecting me. “Look at you. So beautiful. So smart. You were always so smart in school, bringing home those As in spelling and math. What do you do?”

“I just work in the mail room at Wilson’s.”

“What do you mean ‘just’?” She looks at me and her face is solemn. “My Al just worked in the stockroom at the supermarket until he managed the place one day. Just is nothing but a phony-baloney word. You’re good enough to work in the mail room and smart enough to work your way out of it.” She believes that, too. She reaches for the box on the end table and smiles. “I never stopped praying for you, Melissy.” She takes the top off the box and pulls out a stack of photos. “I pick up each of these pictures in here everyday and I pray.” She puts down a picture and names the person in the photo. “Josh, Eric, Taylor, Arianah, Drew, Taj, and Asia—my grandchildren. Karla, Mike, Madden, Grace, Louie, and Jen—my children and their spouses.” She smiles at me. “And then all of my adopted children.” She hands a photo to me, a picture of a kid about six or so standing in front of the old apartments where Ramona and I lived next door to the Schweigers. “Do you remember him? Bruce Linton from upstairs? Always had a runny nose?”

“Of course! He played with me and Louie everyday! Mean little kid.”

She laughs. “He was spirited! He’s the fire chief now somewhere in California. These…” She rummages through the photos until she finds one. “These were Bruce’s parents. Remember?” I nod. “Such nice people. His father died of a heart attack a couple of years ago, but his mother lives near Bruce.” She puts another picture on my lap. “That’s Rachel. She was Karla’s age, so you might not remember her.”

“She always wore her hair in a thick braid,” I say, studying the picture.

“This was taken the day she got her hair cut. She’s in Florida and is a fourth grade teacher.” She flips through one picture after another. “That’s Tommy. I don’t know where he is. Garland lived next door to us after we moved away from the apartments. He works with computers. Ronnie is a policeman in Wyoming.” On and on she went through a pile of worn photos of kids who wouldn’t know her if they passed her on the street, but she prays for them anyway. She hands another picture to me, one of me when I was around nine, wearing green shorts and a striped yellow shirt and standing next to Karla, Madden, and Louie in front of a Ferris wheel at the county fair. “I saw your face every day. And I prayed for you.” I look down at the photo and shake my head. “I prayed that God would protect you and guide you and your mother.”

I look at her. “You remember what my mother was like, Mrs. Schweiger, so I’m not sure if praying worked.”

She lays her hand on top of mine, and her voice gets quiet. “I know life was hard for you at that time in the apartments, and I always prayed that you would be strong and that you wouldn’t give up. I know that you haven’t, because look at you! You’re here and your heart pops right out of your eyes.” She squeezes my hand and leans in close. “I know your mother must be proud of who you are.”

“Ramona died less than two weeks ago.”

The sound of air escaping her lungs fills the room, and she wraps her arm around the small of my back. “I’m so sorry, love.” A single tear sneaks down my cheek and I brush it away with my finger. “How did she die?”

I search the floor for answers. “Alone in her apartment. Her heart stopped.” I laugh. “I could have told the coroner that years ago!”

She rubs my back and leans over to the end table for the tissues, handing me two. “How was she at the end?”

I shake my head, trying to put it into words. “The same.” It’s all I can say about Ramona. “I feel awful—”

“Of course you do,” she says, cutting me off.

I look at her. “No.” My throat feels like it’s closing but I force the words through it. “I feel horrible because Ramona died and I feel free.”

Her eyes are watery as she smiles, patting my hand. We sit in silence, and I know Mrs. Schweiger is trying to say something nice about Ramona but she’s coming up blank. There is nothing to say about her. “You will have a place in your heart for your mother.” I look at her. “You will. One day, someday, you will remember things and will store them away. You will love her in your own way.” She squeezes my hand. “You always had so much love, Melissy.”

Words clot together and form a ball in my throat. “You don’t know me.”

“I knew you as a child and I’m looking at you now.” I feel a tear leak from my eye and snake down my cheek. Mrs. Schweiger dabs it with a tissue and pulls my head onto her shoulder. “I loved you like one of my own, Melissy.” That makes me cry more, and I hold a tissue under my nose. “You were always such a special child.” I haven’t heard anything like this since I was a child inside her apartment, and I press the tissue into one eye and then the other. Mrs. Schweiger sits with me in the quiet and lets me cry, rubbing my arm and patting my leg. “It is okay to feel free.” I look up at her and she works at a smile. “You are not horrible. You’re human.”

I cover my eyes with the tissue. “This is the first time I’ve cried since she died.”

She hands me two more tissues and pats my leg. “There will be more to come.” She leans back and looks at me. “How did you know I was here?”

“I don’t know,” I say, wiping my face. “Josh works at Wilson’s with me, and I don’t think I ever paid attention when he was talking, but it all came together and made sense early this morning. I saw you and Karla yesterday as you got out of the elevator at the hospital, and this great sadness or something pushed down on me. I don’t know what it was other than a great coincidence that I was leaving as you were getting there.”

She smiles and lifts my picture from the top of the stack. “Or was it a finger snap from heaven letting you know to be aware and open your eyes?” I smile at her and she waves her hand in the air. “We pass everything off as coincidence. ‘Eh, I needed more money to pay the rent and lo and behold I got paid more than I thought this week.’ Or, ‘I haven’t worked in ten months. What a coincidence to run into an old friend who needs help!’ Or, ‘I think I’ll stop by Josh’s house and ask if his old grandma is Mrs. Schweiger from the apartment days in Florida but what’s this? It is her and she’s actually sitting here talking to me.’ Is it all coincidence or is it God’s way of letting us know that we are heard and seen?”

I throw both hands in the air. “I give up!” She laughs and touches her head to my shoulder. I lean down and lift Ramona’s note out of my backpack. “I suppose you’ll say that my finding this in Ramona’s apartment wasn’t a coincidence, either?”

She puts on a pair of glasses that were sitting on the end table and reads the note, her eyes widening as she smiles. “This isn’t a coincidence,” she says, her voice getting louder. “This is destiny!”

*   *   *

It’s midafternoon by the time I make it home. Mrs. Schweiger wanted me to stay and talk with Karla, Mike, and Mr. Schweiger when they got home from the hospital, but I could tell she was tired and needed to rest. I discovered that Karla and her husband moved to Grandon two years ago, when Mike got transferred and Mr. and Mrs. Schweiger visited them for a week last summer. I wonder if I passed them in the car or saw them strolling through downtown? I’m smiling as I pull into my driveway and see Miriam’s car at Gretchen’s. It feels like I’m leaping as I run the length of sidewalk between our homes. I rap on the door to the rhythm of “Shave and a Haircut” and surprise myself. I’ve never done that before. Gretchen opens the door and I nearly burst inside. “You’ll never believe what happened.” I expect to see Miriam and I do, but she’s sitting next to a man I don’t know.

“This is my dad, Phillip,” Gretchen says.

He stands and makes his way to me with his hand extended, but I take everyone off guard and hug him.

Gretchen laughs at the sight. “Are you drunk?”

“I’m so sorry,” I say to Phillip. “I didn’t mean to burst in but I just had to!”

“This is Melissa from next door. And she’s never like this.”

“I thought you were coming later,” I say to Phillip.

“He was,” Gretchen says. “But he came to help Mom with the kids so I can go to Texas.” She looks at me with a wary eye. “Why are you acting weird?”

I tell them everything as we eat pizza for dinner, and I remember Mrs. Schweiger said she would call about getting together with Karla tomorrow. I walk to my backpack and discover my phone is still on vibrate from my visit with her. There is a voice mail, and I hold the phone to my ear to listen. I feel the blood draining from my head and my legs turn to Jell-O as I walk back to the kitchen table. “Listen,” I say, pressing the speakerphone button on my cell and holding it out at arm’s length.

“Hey, Melissa, this is Jodi. I know it’s Sunday and a weird day to call, but I really wanted to share this information with you. If you get this in the next hour, call me. If not, I’ll be out of pocket the rest of the day. If I don’t talk to you … well, I know you work at Wilson’s in the morning, but if there’s any time to come in in the morning, I think you should. We have some information on one of your siblings that Robert just discovered. A hospital called him back. I don’t want to take up all your voice mail. Just drop in tomorrow morning if you’re dying to know, or you can wait till you come in in the afternoon.”

She left the message three hours ago while I was with Mrs. Schweiger, so I can’t call her back.

Miriam is beaming, Phillip looks confused, and Emma says, “What’s all that mean?”

“It means,” Gretchen says, “that Melissa is about to meet one of her siblings.”

*   *   *

I slept, but barely. It seems I woke up on the hour staring at the clock, anticipating and dreading the morning. Gretchen offered to go in with me when I talked to Robert and Jodi, but I didn’t want to take her away from her dad, and I knew she needed to pack for her trip to Texas. I talked with my supervisor at Wilson’s after I received the message from Jodi yesterday and told him I’d be in just as soon as I left the law office. My hands feel slippery on the wheel as I drive to the law office, and my chest feels like it’s buzzing. I open the door and Jodi looks up from her desk, smiling. “You got my message,” she says, coming into the entryway. I don’t have time to respond. “Come on. Robert’s here.”

I follow her to Robert’s office and feel nauseated or headachy, I’m not sure which. “I can’t believe you already found one of them,” I say.

“I told you that sometimes all it takes is one phone call.” She uses the file in her hand to wave me into Robert’s office and I walk past her. “The second sibling is proving problematic, but we’re keeping at it.”

Robert is at his computer and takes off his glasses when Jodi sets the file on his desk. He rubs his hands together and smiles. “So a sibling has been discovered! Are you ready to know?”

A sibling has been discovered. Never in my life did I think anyone would say those words to me. He bounces the file in the palm of his hand, a tiger pacing in its cage waiting for the door to open, waiting to be let go. I nod and he opens the cage.