CHAPTER 5 Angela

JANUARY 2017

Standing at the door of her apartment, Angela catches a whiff of garlic and onions, the scent dancing with the muted sounds of soft jazz. Tina has already started on dinner. As usual, minced garlic gets tossed into a frying pan before they’ve even decided what they’ll be having, and Angela knows Tina will have a glass of wine waiting for her on the side table in the living room. Smiling, Angela turns her key in the lock and pushes open the door.

Their apartment is a good size for downtown Toronto: one master and two other tiny bedrooms, a larger open space that doubles as living room and dining room, a galley kitchen, and a windowless bathroom. Their only storage is the entryway closet, the telephone-booth-sized bedroom closets, and whatever they can manage to shove underneath the beds and the bathroom sink. Tina has lived here for twelve years, and Angela for six, so they’ve had plenty of time to make it their own. Their walls are painted in bright, bold colors—teals, reds, yellows, and greens—a haven to hibernate in during the bleak winter months when everything from the streetscape to clothing to the cloudy sky above is shrouded in a hopeless shade of gray. Multicolored rugs soften their footfalls on the creaky parquet floor, and cast-iron candle sconces warm the rooms with a soft glow.

Angela shuts the door behind her now, tosses her keys into the blown-glass bowl on the spindly wooden entryway table, and hangs her coat up in the closet. Swapping her slushy winter boots for slippers, she hangs her purse on a hook, fishes the envelope from its depths, then shuffles down the hall and into the living room.

“Hey-hey!” Tina calls. Steam is emanating from the kitchen doorway, and her face appears in the pass-through window out into the living room, pink with heat. “I’m making fresh pasta. Your wine’s on the table.”

Angela plants a kiss on her wife’s lips through the window. “I knew I married you for a reason.”

Tina smiles. “My pasta?”

“M-hm.”

“Well, I’m glad my good looks, charm, and exhaustive education haven’t gone to waste in attracting a mate.”

Angela laughs and kisses her again.

“Go sit, I just need to get the sauce simmering.”

“Thanks, T.”

“What’s that?” Tina nods at the envelope clutched in Angela’s hand.

“Something I want to talk to you about, actually. I’ll wait till you come out.”

“Everything okay?” Tina’s brow instantly crinkles underneath her short blond hair.

Angela nods. “Nothing to do with me. Don’t worry. I just want your advice on something.”

“Oh, okay. Good.” Her wife’s face muscles relax. They’ve both been on edge since the miscarriage. They’ve spent eighteen months and tens of thousands of dollars only to watch their dream of a family repeatedly slip through their fingers. Neither of them can handle any more bad news at the moment.

“I’ll be out in a sec.” Tina disappears back into a cloud of steam.

Angela wanders over to the couch and flops down in her spot at the end of the three-seater. Their black cat, Grizzly, slinks around the corner of the coffee table. He’s the size of a large raccoon, but nimbly hops up into her lap.

“Hey, Grizz.” Angela strokes his glossy fur in an absent sort of way as the sounds of Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong harmonizing waft from the record player on the sideboard.

She picks up the envelope and slips the edge of it back and forth through her fingers, thinking. On the bus back from work she started having misgivings about opening the envelope and removing it from the shop. Which is silly, of course. It didn’t belong to the shop to begin with. And no, perhaps she shouldn’t have opened it, but it had been posted so long ago, and was clearly forgotten. Was she not doing the intended addressee, Nancy Mitchell, a service by opening it? If she hadn’t, it might never have been discovered at all, and this woman would never know that she was adopted. Angela sets the envelope down on the couch cushion beside her and picks up her wineglass with the other. She takes a sip and grimaces. It’s the fake wine she’s been drinking out of desperation since they first started their fertility journey. Her wife emerges from the kitchen, holding a glass of her own.

“I figured after last night, you might want to revert to the fake stuff,” Tina says, indicating Angela’s glass.

“Yeah, you’re probably right.”

“How is it, anyway? Is it basically just grape juice?”

Angela stares into the red depths, considering. “It’s more like wine than grape juice, but more like vinegar than wine.”

Tina chuckles and settles herself down on the other end of the couch. Both women turn their bodies inward to face each other, knees tented in front of them, the toes of their matching slippers touching.

“How was your day?” Angela asks, stalling.

Tina takes a sip of her real merlot. Angela catches a whiff of it and her stomach churns. “Fine. Uneventful. Did some cleaning, got groceries. Prepped for lectures tomorrow. How was the store? Usual sleepy Sunday?”

Angela looks down into her glass, swills it in her hand like a gold prospector, hoping the right words will float to the surface. “Not quite.”

“Do tell.”

Angela isn’t sure how to begin, so she opts for fessing up. “I found a piece of mail that must have gone astray at some point, was never delivered to the person it was addressed to. The weird thing is, it was addressed to the shop. Well,” she corrects herself, “the address of the shop. But it was meant for someone named Nancy Mitchell.”

“Is that it?” Tina asks, pointing down at the envelope between them. “You opened it?”

“Yeah. I know. I feel weird about it. But the postmark said it was mailed in 2010 and it was buried in a box inside a drawer that no one’s opened for years. Aunt Jo never bothered to organize that place. It was never going to be found.”

“So what’s in it?”

Angela gives her wife a meaningful look over the top of her knees. “It’s a huge letter. It’s not long, but I mean the contents. It’s… heartbreaking.”

“What’s in it?” Tina asks again.

Angela removes the letter and the accompanying note from the envelope. She passes them to Tina, then reaches for her wineglass, taking another sip as Ella and Louis begin the chorus of “Our Love Is Here to Stay.” A few seconds later, Angela hears the hiss of water on the stovetop.

“Can you—”

“I’ll put the pasta in,” Angela says at the same moment. Tina smiles, and Angela walks into the kitchen. When she returns a minute later, Tina has finished reading.

“That’s some letter.”

“I know. And this woman, Nancy, her birth mother was at one of those maternity homes they had after the war, for unmarried mothers, you know? Religious organizations like the Catholic Church and Salvation Army ran them. I did a quick search today; it’s a part of our history I didn’t really know about, and it’s bleak as hell.”

“Poor girl.”

“Yeah.”

Tina pauses. “So, what now?”

“That’s what I want to talk to you about. It seems the adoptive mother’s last wish was that this Nancy person go find her birth mother. I feel like I need to find Nancy and give her the letter and the note. She needs to know. I did the math, and the birth mother is probably still alive.”

Tina is quiet for a moment. Angela has trouble with silences; she always feels a need to fill the empty space.

“I called my mom right after I opened it. I was actually quite upset.”

“I can imagine. Must have hit a bit close to home for you.”

Angela nods. “Exactly. It did. Mom thinks if the birth mother really wanted Nancy to have the information, then I should try to find her. She knows how much I needed to find Sheila, how that affected me growing up. And it worked out well, right?”

Tina lets out a sigh. “That may be true, but honestly, Ange, I don’t think you should do anything about it.”

Angela freezes. “What?”

“It’s such a huge confession, like you said.”

“I know! That’s why I think I need to find Nancy.”

“But what good will it do? What if she doesn’t want this information? It would upend her life. This is an enormous shock.”

Angela sets her glass down again and pulls her knees back toward her chest, clutching the letter against her body. She feels somehow betrayed by Tina’s reaction, though she doesn’t quite know why. A lump forms in her throat. “But why shouldn’t she know? Do you have any idea what it’s like to be adopted and not know your birth mother?”

Tina touches her arm gently. “Of course I don’t, hun. I wouldn’t ever pretend to understand how that feels. But this Nancy person doesn’t know what she doesn’t know, right? And I just don’t think it’s your place to decide whether or not she has this information. It was her mother’s place to tell her, but the letter never got delivered. I won’t say maybe it was never meant to be delivered, but…” She shrugs. “Maybe it’s just as well that Nancy never received it. Her mother died with peace of mind, thinking her daughter would receive her confession and go find her birth mother. But because it wasn’t delivered, Nancy’s life wasn’t turned upside down with the knowledge.”

“What are you saying?”

“I’m just saying maybe it’s better this way. Maybe you should just leave well enough alone. If you go looking for Nancy, you could end up in the middle of something really messy.”

Angela feels a surge of defensiveness. Tina is a women’s studies professor at the university, still getting traction in her career. She’s the rational sort who makes decisions based on evidence and fact and isn’t as tuned in to her emotional side as Angela is. It’s part of what makes them a good match, the way they counterbalance each other, but it means they sometimes butt heads.

“I felt like…” Angela takes a sip of her fake wine, now wishing it were alcohol. “I love my mom so much, but before I finally met Sheila, I felt like a piece of me was missing. Like there was this hole in my identity that nothing could fill but her. I felt like an incomplete puzzle, but I didn’t even know what the missing piece looked like, you know? And after I found Sheila—”

A buzzer goes off in the kitchen.

“I’m so sorry, sweetheart, but the pasta’s ready.” Tina squeezes Angela’s knee as she pushes herself up from the couch.

“Seriously, T?”

“If it overcooks, it’ll be total shit. Just give me a sec.” Tina rushes into the kitchen. There’s more clanking of pots, then the gush of water as the pasta is drained. “Come on and eat,” she calls.

Angela nudges Grizzly off her lap and counts to ten to calm herself down. She wanders into the dining room and refills her glass. Tina appears moments later with two steaming plates full of tender homemade tagliatelle and marinara sauce.

“Cheers,” Tina says.

Angela clinks her glass with an ill grace, still mulling over her wife’s reluctance. But how could she possibly understand? There’s silence for a few minutes as they each dig hungrily into their dinner and Angela lets her thoughts marinate.

“The thing is,” she says, “I have a different perspective on this than I would have had before.”

Tina sets her fork down. “The pregnancies?” Her face seems to sag a bit as she says it.

Angela takes a sip of her drink to try to ward off the tears that are prickling. “I feel like a mother already, T. Regardless of… everything. And I just can’t fathom Nancy not having this information when her birth mother and her adoptive mother both wanted her to know where she came from.”

Tina holds Angela’s eyes across the candles in the center of the table. The record plays quietly in the background.

“And this Margaret, the birth mother,” Angela continues, “I know it’s not the same thing, but she had a child forcibly taken away from her. Just imagine that for a second. You and I both know what it feels like to lose the possibility of a child. How exhausting it’s been to chase motherhood. Sheila gave me up willingly, for reasons that made a lot of sense for her. But to be forced to give up your child, it’s just…” Angela searches for a sufficient word, then shakes her head. “Unspeakably cruel, I guess. I can’t not act on this.”

Angela keeps eating out of respect for Tina’s efforts with the meal, though her appetite has evaporated. She can sense the heat of Tina’s gaze on her forehead.

“Okay. I get it,” Tina says gently. “Do what you want to do, love. I just wanted to play devil’s advocate, you know? I just think there’s another side to this that you may not be fully considering because you’re a bit… biased, I guess is the word for it. Clouded. Not everyone would choose the same thing you did. Not every adopted child wants to find their birth parents. And those who do, don’t always find what they hoped to. They’re not all like Sheila, you know? That’s all I’m saying.” Tina pushes her chair back with a scrape and steps over to Angela to plant a kiss on the top of her head. “Really, do what you want, Ange. I love you and I’ll support you whatever you decide, okay?”

Angela sighs, avoiding Tina’s eyes. She nods.

Tina squeezes her shoulder and collects Angela’s plate and cutlery, stacking it on top of her own. “I’m gonna go get on the bike, if you don’t mind. Work off some of this pasta.”

“Sure.”

There’s a prickly tension between them now.

“What are you gonna do?”

“Oh.” Angela hesitates. “Probably just finish this so-called wine and relax a bit. Maybe read a book.”

“Okay. Love you.”

“Love you, too.”

Tina drifts off in the direction of the kitchen while Angela retrieves her phone from her purse. She flops back down on the couch, opens Facebook, and scrolls through the inane chatter and disconcertingly targeted ads in her news feed, pausing to like an occasional post. She isn’t on social media much anymore. The never-ending stream of pregnancy announcements and baby photos just triggers rage in her. She knows it’s unfair to feel that way, and that she should be happy for her friends’ growing families, but sometimes—like now—the generosity of spirit she would like to feel gets weighed down by bitter jealousy.

When she hears the spare bedroom door shut, followed by the muffled beep-beep-beep of Tina turning on the stationary bicycle, Angela wanders down the hall, past the closed door where Tina has started her spin session, and turns the handle on the third bedroom door.

It’s dark and cool in here. A faint whiff of paint still lingers in the air, weaving with the woody smell of new furniture. She only comes in here once in a while, usually when Tina isn’t home, or when she’s in the shower. Angela saw the look in Tina’s eyes once when she caught her sitting in the rocker, clutching a teddy bear to her chest, imagining it were a baby.

Angela walks over to the dresser and switches on the small table lamp, setting her glass down beside it. The bulb casts a golden glow over the whole nursery as she sits down on the unworn cushion of the rocking chair. She glances over at the white slats of the crib to her left, the blankets folded neatly over the side of it in a rainbow of pastel colors. A mobile hangs from the ceiling, felt pieces in the shapes of elephants and giraffes are suspended in midair. The changing table beside the crib is well stocked with unopened diaper cream and brand-new flannel receiving blankets. They set up the nursery last year, back when they were temporarily overjoyed at the seeming success of their first round of fertility treatments. But now the room just feels fake and cold, a stage for a play that Angela fears will never be produced.

She heaves a deep breath, listens to the whirring of the bicycle in the room next door, the faint beats of up-tempo hip-hop music that clash with the serenity of the nursery. She looks up at the row of stuffed animals perched on the floating shelf on the wall across from her and wonders whether Margaret Roberts ever bought anything for her baby. Based on what she read in her web search today about the maternity homes, she doubts it. And then to have that child taken away from her, against her will…

Angela sees Tina’s side of things, but she isn’t sure doing nothing is truly an option now. She knows herself, and she knows this will eat at her. In Angela’s experience, people regret the things they didn’t do far more than the mistakes they actually made. It’s inaction that causes you to lie awake into the early hours of the morning, second-guessing your own judgment. It’s the what-ifs and should-haves that crouch down deep in that buried chamber of your soul. They latch on tighter; their teeth are sharper.

With a sense of self-righteous recklessness, Angela reopens the Facebook app on her phone and types the name Nancy Mitchell into the search box. Several profiles pop up on her screen. She filters for the greater Toronto area, though Nancy could be living in Australia by now, for all she knows. But it’s a place to start. She scrolls through the profiles, clicking on each one who looks vaguely the right age. She sees snapshots of the women’s lives, some with open profiles and others with higher privacy settings. Photos taken on family vacations, the women’s arms wrapped around the shoulders of sullen teenagers who grudgingly agreed to pose with their mother. Posts about hobbies, gardening, and crafting. Political opinions. Senses of humor. As the personalities and histories of the women take shape, Angela’s fingers grow cold with nerves. Is she doing the right thing? There’s a living, breathing woman on the other end of each profile whose life could be ruined with this bombshell now in Angela’s possession.

She finds five Nancy Mitchells who fit the specs of her search. She types out a message to the first of them, then copies it and sends it to the others.

Hi, I work at a store called Thompson’s Antiques & Used Books in downtown Toronto. I recently found a letter addressed to a Nancy Mitchell, and I wondered if you have ever had any connection to the store. If so, this letter might have been intended for you. Let me know. Thanks!

She sets her phone down on her knees and takes a deep breath, followed by what habit tells her will be a grounding swig of wine, though the non-alcoholic imitation does nothing to calm her nerves.

Two responses come back almost instantly, and Angela’s heart leaps up into her throat. The first is a terse, Not me. The other is a more compassionate and polite decline, wishing her luck in finding the intended Nancy Mitchell. She feels both disappointed and immensely relieved, but still she waits another few minutes. When no other messages arrive in her in-box, she sets her phone down on the side table. Without noticing what she’s doing, her other hand comes to rest on her own belly button.

“Oh, Margaret,” she whispers to the young girl, a shadowy ghost in her mind’s eye. “Did you ever find your baby girl?”