CHAPTER 20
Tessa and Roger drive me to the Honolulu airport together. Neither of them seemed surprised when I said I had a flight home today. I guess, what else was I going to do? Sleep on their couch forever? The first half of the drive is quiet, but then Roger turns on a local radio station, and the three of us listen to the slow guitar instrumental. When a vocalist comes in on the sweet, simple melody, Tessa softly sings along, and after a few bars, Roger jumps in on harmony. I haven’t heard him sing yet, but his voice blends nicely with hers. While they sing, I sit back in my seat and watch the island go by. We’re on a highway, and not a particularly pretty one. But beyond the concrete, the ocean extends forever.
I wonder if Tessa feels like she belongs here, like she’s found a place where she fits. When I think about my manicured suburb, I realize that it doesn’t really suit me, not deep in my core. It’s trying so hard to be perfect, and the strain shows. But Hawaii doesn’t suit me, either; I think if I stayed here I’d fall asleep beneath a palm tree somewhere and, like a character in a fairy tale, wake up a hundred years later none the wiser.
I begin to spin together dreamy images of an unself-conscious place edged with energy, where musicians gather in damp basements and play music until 4:00 a.m., where artists mingle and make wondrous, messy things. I wonder if somewhere, such a place exists.
Tessa and Roger both get out of the car at the airport. Roger hugs me first. His eyes shine as he squeezes my shoulders and says, “Don’t be a stranger.” For the first time, I wonder what all this has meant to him, and whether he wishes that he and Tessa had met when they were younger, when they might have had kids of their own.
Tessa pulls me in next. “You sure you don’t want that dress?” she says. “I could mail it to you.”
But as we separate, I shake my head. This morning, I put on my least dirty T-shirt and jeans, leaving my flowy dress from last night folded on the side of the couch. “This is more my style,” I say, gesturing to my outfit. We stare at each other for several awkward seconds before I pull out my phone—fully charged now—and say, “I don’t think I got your number.”
She looks relieved as she gives it to me. I text her, This is Nora. But then I realize that this might seem strange to her, so I add, (aka Summer).
I slide my phone into the back pocket of my jeans and say, “If you’re ever in California, I’d love to see you again.”
“And you’re welcome here, anytime,” she says. “Maybe on one of your school breaks.” There’s no sign of pain as she says, “If it’s okay with your parents.”
I can’t find the words to respond, but Tessa seems to understand. She pulls me in for another hug and says, “Thank you for finding me, Nora.”
It’s the first time she’s said my real name, and that feels like all the good-bye we need. I go through security by myself, and once I’m on the plane I turn off my phone without having to be asked.
I see my parents before they see me. They’re standing just beyond security at LAX, looking tired. The word haggard comes to mind, though I don’t think I’ve ever used it in a sentence before. I’m not even certain why I know what it means, except that it perfectly describes how my parents look right now.
I’ve been trying to plan what I would say to them when they picked me up, but now that I’m here, all coherence has evaporated. I wish Irene were with them, but she’s taking a final. I won’t see her until she’s out of school.
The words THIS IS GOING TO BE BAD flash through my mind in marquee neon, and I feel a brief stab of regret that I didn’t linger in Hawaii a few more days. It occurs to me that I could double back to regroup in a bathroom, but the dark circles under my mom’s eyes prompt me to step past the NO REENTRY sign and call out to them.
When my mom sees me, she lunges forward in a very un-Megan-Wakelin-esque display of emotion. Her arms encircle me, and my dad comes around behind to create a Nora sandwich. I quickly become uncomfortably warm, but I don’t have the heart to say anything. Because even though I’m bound to be punished for turning off my location tracker, and going to Hawaii by myself, not to mention missing the first day of finals, I also know that they love me, and I can’t stand the thought of causing them any more pain.
As we separate from our hug, my dad looks away quickly, but not before I see him wipe some moisture out of his eyes. My mom leaves an arm wrapped around my shoulders, which is awkward because I’m taller than she is, but I lean into her, enjoying the calm before the storm. I’m not sure when they plan to launch into the question-and-discipline part of today’s agenda, but I know it’s coming soon.
When we get home, I head upstairs to take a shower, and by the time I’m dressed, Irene is home. She’s walking into her bedroom just as I’m stepping out onto the landing. I move toward her, prepared for a welcome-back hug, but she gently sidesteps me—it could be an accident—and says, “I’m going to put down my stuff. It’s—” She glances at me sideways. “It’s good to have you back.” Then she goes into her room and shuts the door.
Before I have a chance to wonder what that was all about, my dad appears at the base of the stairs and says, “Come down to our office when you’re ready, Nora. Your mother and I would like to speak to you.”
Even though I’ve been expecting this ever since we got in the car, I still feel a shudder of anticipation, both because of what they’re about to say to me and because of what I need to say to them. None of it is going to be fun. But it’s necessary, and I deserve it, and they need to hear it, so I say, “Sure. I’ll be right down,” as neutrally as I can.
After my hair is towel-dried and pulled back into a damp bun, I walk down the stairs, through the kitchen, and around the corner to the threshold of their office. As I approach, my dad pulls open the door and waves me forward.
“Have a seat,” he says, gesturing to the same chair I sat in during our last conversation. My parents are positioned as they were that night, too—my mom sitting at her desk, my dad leaning against the table by her side. As I wait for one of them to start, I think about Tessa’s long, complicated history, and realize how lucky I’ve been to have a stable home to grow up in and parents who love each other as much as mine do.
My parents have a brief, silent conversation consisting mostly of eyebrow maneuvers, and then my mom says, “Nora—”
Irene pokes her head around the door. “Can I come in?”
My dad says, “Give us a few minutes,” but my mom touches his forearm and shakes her head. He reconsiders. “Actually, go ahead and join us.”
I’m expecting her to ask them something specific and quick—Should I make dinner? Are you still able to chaperone Grad Night?—but instead, she steps all the way inside the office and closes the door behind her. There isn’t another chair, so she just leans against a wall, careful not to upset my parents’ array of framed degrees and family photographs.
“Okay,” my dad says. He claps his hands once, awkwardly, then looks down at my mom for help.
She seems smaller than I remember; older, too. On the computer screen behind her, I see the bolded number of her inbox tick over from 87 unread emails to 92. For a brief moment, I can almost feel the weight of everything she’s carrying, and it nearly crushes me. But she speaks as serenely as ever as she says, “Nora, your father and I think we know where you went, and why you went there.” I start to say something, but she holds up her hand and continues, “Irene declined to tell us where you were flying in from, but Cameron said something when we spoke to him that suggested you may have been looking for your birth parents . . .” Good grief. Cameron is so bad at keeping secrets. “And since only one flight was arriving today at precisely 1:25 p.m., we deduced that you went looking for them in Hawaii.” She pauses, presses her lips together, breathes. “Is that correct?”
So much for my planned comments. I look down at my feet as I say, “Yes.”
My mom’s voice sounds somehow thinner as she says, “It was very wrong of you to go off on your own, to travel to another state without permission, to turn off the location tracker on your phone, but—” She inhales for several seconds, holds it, then lets it all out. “But your father and I also want to tell you—to make it clear that—”
Now she’s the one who’s struggling to find the right words, so my dad jumps in to help her. “We want you to know that you could have come to us with whatever questions you had about your—” He hesitates. “Your biological relations. We might not have had the answers, but we could have helped you search for them.”
There’s a pause, and when I look up, I realize that the general consensus is, it’s my turn to talk. Once again, my brain is empty; all the eloquent speeches I mapped out in my head have evaporated, and all I can think to say is, “But I know it’s a sensitive subject. I mean, we never talk about it.”
Before either of my parents can answer, Irene jumps in with, “Because it doesn’t matter.” When I look at her, I realize that her eyes look a little red, maybe even swollen. I don’t think I’ve ever seen her cry before; I didn’t think she was the crying type. “It never mattered to me, anyway. You’ve always been my sister, not my adopted sister. My sister.”
“I know that,” I say. In my reckoning of all the people I’ve hurt this week, it never occurred to me to include her. Clearly, I could turn Being Wrong About Stuff into an Olympic sport. “But that doesn’t mean I don’t have questions about why—” How the hell do I say this without sounding like angst manifested in human form? “Why I am the way I am. I mean”—I look at each of them, sitting there with their identical postures, with their tidy hairstyles and their pressed, matching outfits—“I know we’re a family. Obviously. But in a lot of ways, I’m nothing like you. I guess I just wanted to find out why.”
My sister doesn’t look appeased by this at all, but my mom is nodding along, as if I’ve made some kind of sense. Finally, she says, “I felt like that when I was your age.”
Based on the way my dad’s hand automatically goes to my mom’s shoulder, I can tell that this isn’t news to him, but it’s sure news to me.
“What? Why?”
She spreads her hands out in front of her, then says, “I was the first person in my family to go to college.” I’d never really thought of it like that, but I know her dad was in the sales department for a dairy company and her mom does crafty stuff with gemstones and clay, so I guess it makes sense. I’m not seeing her point yet, though, so I keep my mouth shut, and after a moment she goes on, “My dad only got a corporate job because he couldn’t make a living as a painter and he had a family to support. But more than anything, he wanted your aunt Jeanette and me to be artists, to fulfill the dream he never achieved.”
I can’t help looking surprised, both by this revelation about my grandfather and by the mention of my aunt. I’ve only heard my mom talk about her a couple times, and always within the context of a rare story about her own childhood.
I chance a glance at Irene and see that she’s as stunned by all of this as I am.
“You know your grandmother,” our mom goes on. “She lives in her pottery studio. She used to paint, too, before her hands became so arthritic. And Jeanie was just the same. Even as a tiny child, she had an eye for things that I never did. And so even though I excelled in academics and got scholarships to the best schools, I always felt”—she takes a deep breath—“inferior, somehow. My parents didn’t just not go to college; they disapproved of college. But they could see that I didn’t have whatever spark lit up the rest of them, so they reluctantly subsidized my higher education.”
I’ve never heard my mom sound this bitter before. I’m kind of enjoying it—not because I’m glad she feels bad about her childhood, but because it’s something we finally have in common.
“Of course, your aunt Jeanette was a talented artist,” my mom says. “And even though my parents did their best not to show it, I always knew that she was the favorite. How could she not be?”
My mom seems to get lost in her own thoughts, so my dad jumps in and says, “I hope we’ve never given you the impression that we have a favorite child, because—”
“No,” I say quickly. “Not really.” And it’s true. They haven’t. I’ve never doubted that they love me as much as they love Irene. Before I have a chance to edit myself, I say, “But there’s love, and then there’s acceptance, and it’d be nice to have both.”
“Oh, sweetie,” my mom says, wilting a little. “Of course we accept you.”
“Then why are you making me do an internship in D.C. when I already know I want to be a musician?”
That makes them pause. In my peripheral vision, I see Irene’s mouth turn upward into a half smile; it’s nice to know that even if I’ve hurt her, she’s still on my side.
Our parents look at each other, and the silent conversation this time starts with a heavy sigh and ends with a nod.
“You’re right,” my dad says, eventually. “Our intention was never to shape you into something you’re not, but perhaps in our effort to encourage you to explore all your possibilities, we overlooked who you already are.”
My mom narrows her eyes at me. “You know we’re going to punish you, right? We’re going to have to ground you for running off to Hawaii and breaking nearly all of our rules.”
“I know.” I expected nothing less.
My dad squares his shoulders, probably glad to be back on solid footing. “Effective immediately, you are grounded from all social engagements for two weeks. This summer, you will also complete forty hours of community service for a charitable organization of your choosing.”
I’m already thinking that my old middle school does a music summer camp for sixth graders. I wonder if they could use a student instructor. There are worse punishments, for sure.
“However,” my mom cuts in. “In light of this conversation—”
“And your compelling argument,” my dad adds.
“—you no longer have to do an internship this summer, if you don’t want.”
Somewhere in the house, a clock ticks, and suddenly I’m thinking about M. J.—his Mohawk, his Subaru wagon, his contented suburban life with Julie. He thought he was one thing, but he turned out to be something else. I think about my mom, too, and how she’s so much more, so much fiercer, than she seems.
I surprise even myself when I say, “But if I still wanted to go to D.C. . . .” Both of my parents tilt their heads to the side at the same angle, and it seems so choreographed it almost makes me laugh. But my mind is racing too fast to fully enjoy the absurdity of their synchronicity. I suddenly remember that Dexter Holland of the Offspring also does molecular biology research, and the drummer for Blur is an attorney. Mira Aroyo of Ladytron—didn’t she study genetics at Oxford? And I’m pretty sure Art Garfunkel was a math teacher. I know that I want to be a musician—I am a musician—but maybe I don’t have to be one thing or the other; maybe it’s possible to be many things at once, to be more, not less. “Could I?”
My parents look at each other, then back at me. My mom says, “Of course.”
“As long as your location tracker remains on at all times.”
“Understood.”
Now I’m thinking about Santa Barbara, San Francisco, Hawaii, even Reedley and Watsonville—all the places I’ve seen in the last few days. Each had something different to offer, a different music thrumming beneath its surface. Suddenly, the world seems enormous, enticing, and accessible.
“Then, I’d like to work for the environmental lobbyists in D.C., if that’s still all right with you.” I take a deep breath, then say, “Besides, Blue Miles broke up. I don’t have a band to record with, even if I wanted to.”
My mom’s brows pucker sympathetically. “We’re sorry to hear that.”
My dad, though, pushes himself away from the desk as he says, “I’ll make the call now. We can arrange everything else this evening.” He takes out his phone, and my mom’s eyes drift toward her computer. It appears that our talk is over, which is perfectly fine with me.
“Aren’t we going to talk about what Nora found in Hawaii?” Irene says. The three of us look at her. “If it’s important to Nora—if it’s part of who she is—then it should be important to all of us.” She seems to shrink a little, becoming unsure of herself. “I mean, I know it’s Nora’s business, but if it’s a part of who you are”—she looks at me—“then it’s a part of who I am, too.”
My mom sits back in her chair. “You’re right, Irene.” Then she closes her eyes, like she’s preparing herself for something painful. And right then, I get it. I finally understand, really understand, why my parents haven’t liked talking about my adoption, why they never wanted me to know that my biological parents named me Summer. All this time, I’ve been afraid that someday they’d reject me, because I’m not the perfect daughter that their genetics might have produced. But meanwhile, they’ve been worrying that someday I would reject them, that I’d want to shed the identity and the name that they gave me and go back to the people who gave me up.
I want, more than anything, to step across this office and cry on their shoulders and tell them that could never happen, that they’re my parents, now and forever. But histrionics don’t get you very far in this family. We don’t speak the language of music, or tears. We speak the language of rhetoric, of reason. If I want them to know how I feel, to know me, I’m going to have to use my words.
Still, when Irene says, “So, tell us what happened,” my first instinct is to filter the truth, to say the things they would like to hear. But then I remember what Tessa said about honesty, about being honest with Roger so he could be honest with her, and I realize that if I want these relationships to heal cleanly, then I need to tell them the truth.
So, I gather up all the music and emotion inside me—is this what Tessa meant by my erratic inner life?—and translate it into a story. And as the words come, I discover that I’ve spoken this language all along, or maybe I learned it gradually, through exposure. Maybe Tessa gave me music and my parents gave me words, and all of it adds up to an erratic soul organized by a logical mind—some combination of nature and nurture, fate and family. Summer, Nora, me.
I tell them all about Plumeria Grille, and Roger, and the house surrounded by forest, and the candlelit party on their gravelly front yard. I tell them about Tessa’s insecurities, and how she’d been imagining me as something completely different from what I am. I tell them she doesn’t really know who my biological father is, but it wasn’t M. J. Croft, or the man she left him for. I tell them that she doesn’t know who her own biological father was, either, but that her mother—my biological grandmother—was mostly German, or so she thinks. She’s not entirely sure. With a shrug and a sigh, I try to tell them that I’m honestly kind of over it. Maybe what’s lost isn’t always better off found.
I tell them everything about the day and night I spent with her, but in the music underneath the words, I hope they can hear what I’m really saying:
I’m here.
I love you.
I’m yours.