“Why? What made it strange?” I press, thinking of how often Belinda will deem a ridiculous romantic situation “complicated.” She and some idiot are going out, they’re not going out. They’re seeing other people. They’re on a break. They’re just hanging out. Is this the sort of crap Marian dubs complicated—or is it something more substantive?
“Our relationship happened suddenly,” she says as I focus on the word “relationship.” “Very suddenly. It was like—I didn’t know him at all—and then he became my whole world…”
I consider my next question, feeling that each one is critical, as if perhaps there is a limit and I might run out. What I really want is the full story, the long story about how they decided to have me—then give me away. So I finally blurt out, “Did he want you to have me? Or get an abortion?”
She flinches then takes several deep breaths before she finally meets my eyes. Then she takes my hands in hers and says my name as if ready to make a confession. And then she does.
“I never told him,” she says.
I know there is only one interpretation of her reply, but I still search for another as I look back down at the boy and girl in the photo. “You never told him you had me?”
She glances at me, then shakes her head, her cheeks turning as pink as they are in the picture but clearly from a very different emotion.
“So … did he even know you were pregnant?” I ask, the facts beginning to crystallize.
She shakes her head again, this time unable to meet my eyes.
“Why? Did he … leave?” I ask, imagining him standing her up, breaking up with her in a Dear Jane letter, perhaps the one she is holding, skipping town, never to be heard from again.
But she shakes her head again, her voice barely audible as she says, “No. I left.”
“You left him?” I say.
She nods and says, “Yes. When I found out I was pregnant with you. I broke up with him.”
“So … he doesn’t know about me at all?” I ask, still thinking that there is a possibility that she told him years later. That he now knows the truth, that he has a child out there, somewhere. Perhaps he is even dying to meet me. Maybe she contacted him in the past forty-eight hours and gave him the news.
But she shakes her head. “Nobody knew I had you,” she says. “Nobody even knew I was pregnant—except for my mother.”
I try to comprehend a secret of this magnitude, how she could have possibly pulled off such a thing. “What about your father? Or your best friend?” I say, thinking of Belinda, how she would be the first person I’d call if such a thing happened to me. Although I can’t even begin to imagine it, my sexual encounters limited to three pitiful kisses, all under the influence, awkward, forgettable.
She shakes her head again. “Just my mom.”
“So how did you hide it from everyone?” I ask.
“I deferred college for a year. Told the admissions people at Michigan I had a health issue. Told everyone else I was burned out from high school and needed time to just think. My father thought I was writing a script. He knew how obsessed I was with writing so … he believed me. And so … I went away for a while…”
“Where did you go?”
“To our lake house in Wisconsin. My mom went back and forth. She took me to all my appointments and to the adoption agency. Otherwise, I stayed in hiding until it was time to have the baby. Have you.”
I am speechless, spellbound by the story that is as much a part of me as the one my parents have told me a hundred times. “And then you went to Chicago to have me?”
She nods. “Yes. I went into labor on March thirty-first—it lasted all day and night. Then I had you on April first. Well, you know that.” She smiles a stiff, small smile. “Then I spent three days with you. Three of the hardest, saddest days of my life.”
“Did we … bond?” I ask, my eyes burning, my stomach churning.
“Oh, Kirby. God, yes,” she says. “I spent every minute—every second—with you.”
I ask her if she had a name for me. Did she call me anything for those three days?
She nods and whispers yes. Katherine, with a K.
“That’s my middle name,” I say. “After my aunt.”
“Wow. That’s crazy, isn’t it?”
I shrug. “It’s a pretty common name. Go on.”
She hesitates, then says, “So I named you, even though the social worker said not to. And I nursed you even though they said it was a really bad idea, that it would only make our separation more difficult. But I wanted to … I had to. At one point, a nurse tried to take you from me so that I could get some sleep but I refused. I knew I’d have to hand you over at some point—I couldn’t do it twice.”
She takes a couple shallow breaths and then continues, “Then the time came. The lady from the agency arrived in my hospital room with a nurse and two people from the Department of Supportive Services. There were four or five people in my room, all of them formal, official, with their folders and explanations. They handed me the papers, including a document called a Final and Irrevocable Consent to Adoption, and my mother held you on a rocking chair in a corner while I read and listened and then signed the papers.”
I feel myself start to well up, just as she asks me if I’m okay. I nod. She stares into my eyes and I stare right back, waiting.
“You had been fussy all morning, but stopped crying while they were all in the room,” she says. “It’s like you knew something really big was about to happen and wanted to pay attention. You had that quality. This intelligent, alert look on your face—this way of making eye contact with people. With me.” She swallows. “So then I asked for a minute alone with you. I asked my mother to leave, too.”
“Did you … almost change your mind?” I ask, hopeful, wanting to believe that it wasn’t easy for her to give me away.
“Oh, yes,” she says convincingly. “Many, many times in those seventy-two hours. Of course I did. There is no way that anyone could look down at your face—those big, wide eyes that never seemed to blink and your tiny, expressive, fuzzy brows, and those little curly lips—and not want to hold you forever … But I was sure that it was the best thing for you. To have a mother and father who were married and fully prepared to have you, take care of you, give you a family.”
“What about Conrad?” I ask, the emotion from her story giving way to a wave of indignation. “Did you think of telling him? Maybe you could have figured it out with him?”
She shakes her head and says, “There was already too much water under the bridge for that.”
“What do you mean?”
“I hadn’t spoken to him in nine months. It felt too late at that point. Besides, that would have been no life for you. Two teenagers pretending to be adults. And I knew there was a couple inside the walls of the hospital, waiting for you. I knew how desperately they wanted you.”
“So … you just … said good-bye to me?” I ask, my voice quivering, wishing that newborns could have memories, that I could have a recollection of that time we spent together.
“Yes,” she says. “First I nursed you one last time. Then I changed your diaper and dressed you in a little pink gown. It had a drawstring at the bottom to keep your feet warm, although I put little booties on your feet, too. And a tiny knit cap that matched the gown—pink with white stitching. My mother bought it for you…”
I nod, tell her that I remember the gown from a photo, obviously the first my parents ever took of me, but then remember I had another outfit on in a photo of the car ride home, which means they changed my clothes before leaving the hospital. I wonder why—whether I had spit up on it or whether they simply wanted me in an outfit they had chosen, as a symbolic fresh start, just as they gave me a new name.
“And then?” I say.
“And then … I sang you a lullaby, the only one I knew. ‘All the Pretty Horses.’”
“How does it go?” I say.
She tells me she can’t sing but then clears her throat and
recites the lyrics. Hush-a-bye, don’t you cry. Go to sleep my little baby. When you wake you shall have all the pretty little horses.
I breathe, waiting in suspense for the rest of the story, as if I don’t already know exactly how things end.
“You finally fell asleep. And I kissed you good-bye. Both your cheeks and your nose and your chin.” Her voice cracks. “And I forced myself to open the door and walk out into the hall where I found the counselor from the hospital talking to my mother. Without saying a word, I handed you over to her and went back in my room so I didn’t have to watch her walk away.”
I look at her, feeling suddenly very sorry for the girl in the story, trying to imagine how she must have felt as she packed up her room and changed back into her clothes and left the hospital without flowers or balloons or a baby in her arms. Then I think of Conrad again. Conrad, who is completely in the dark about my existence.
“So do you know where he is now?” I ask.
She shakes her head and looks guilty, but not guilty enough as far as I’m concerned.
“You’ve never tried to find him?”
She sighs, then admits she drove by his house once, but the Knights had moved; there was a new last name on the mailbox.
“And what about on Facebook? The Internet? Through friends? You’ve never once looked for him?”
“Oh. I’ve searched a few times over the years,” she says. “But I never found him. And I don’t really talk to anyone from high school anymore—not that he was the type to go back to reunions or keep in touch, either.”
“So that’s it? Nothing? It’s just like he’s … disappeared?”
She nods as we stare at each other, in silence. After a long time like this, she finally slides off her stool and pulls me into an embrace, the first since the day she gave me away. I let her do it, but refuse to hug her back, thinking only one thing: How could you?
10
marian
I owe her an apology. For so many things. For being able to give her away. For pretending that it didn’t happen, that she didn’t exist outside of that room and those three days. For not having a baby picture of her in my apartment. For not writing her long letters over the years, if only to keep in a drawer in anticipation of this day.
But most of all I’m sorry for not telling Conrad, her father, the truth. It is the part of the story that I repress the most, the part I kept from Peter, telling myself that it was a small detail even though I know, deep down inside, that it is way more than a small detail. It is huge, and I feel it all bubbling to the surface now. Kirby didn’t mention wanting to find her birth father, but I feel sure that she will. And what then?
I go to bed, remembering that day. The moment I lied to Conrad. Right before he told me he loved me and I said nothing in return. The beginning of my attempt to deny my feelings, erase him altogether. I remember the panic in my throat as I sat on the couch next to him, holding his hand as we watched The Simpsons, his relief over our “negative” test and occasional laughter over Bart’s one-liners only sinking me into a deeper abyss.
“What’s wrong, babe?” he asked at one point, when he determined that I was finding no humor in a show I usually enjoyed.
That’s when I blurted it out. “I don’t know if we should keep seeing each other.”
“You mean you want to break up?” he said. His face reflected the panic and sadness I felt over the idea of losing him.
But I still said yes.
“Why?” he said, looking more grief-stricken by the second.
“Because the summer’s almost over,” I said, staring at my lap.
“But it’s not over yet,” he said, seeming to imply that our breakup was a given—it was just a question of when.
“But it will be soon. And … I think it might be easier now.”
I looked back over at him, but he glanced away as if considering this. When he turned toward me again, his face was stoic. “If that’s what you want…”
“I just think it’s for the best,” I said, unsure if I wanted him to acquiesce or fight for me. I wanted both. I wanted neither. I wanted that pink line to disappear.
“For the best?” he echoed.
“Yes.”
He nodded. Then he shut off the TV and put the remote on the coffee table, staring at the blank screen, blinking, until suddenly, his long, dark lashes were damp. I looked away, horrified, fighting the urge to throw my arms around his neck, take it back, make love to him, and above all, tell him the truth.
The impulse only grew when I hear him whisper, “I don’t want to lose you yet.”
It was the “yet” that killed me the most, the desperation and resignation in that word. I held his gaze, both of us perfectly still, as I allowed myself to imagine another way, a different path. I could see the two of us having the baby, living together in Ann Arbor in off-campus housing, eventually marrying. Things would be really hard, but I knew my parents would help, and we could work it out. He could watch the baby during the day while I went to class—and he could pursue his music at night and on the weekends. It wouldn’t be a traditional college experience. There would be no frat parties and drunken kisses. No football games or sorority dances. But it could be done. And in the end, it could still turn out fine. I could still go to film school. I could still become a real writer and a producer. Conrad, too, could become a musician or do whatever else he wanted to do. We could be a team. Forever. The two of us—then the three of us. Maybe this happened because we were meant to be.
For one second, I felt myself caving, but then another vision overcame me. A life of late-night fights, doors slamming, a screaming baby, a failing grade that came from utter exhaustion—a grade that would ultimately keep me out of graduate school, steering me into a nine-to-five, dead-end job. I could almost taste the shame and resentment and bitterness and anger. I could feel the hatred and self-loathing. I could hear the endless what ifs.
“I really have to go,” I said, standing abruptly. “Can you take me home?”
He followed me to the door, then out to his car, looking frantic, devastated. But he didn’t say anything, nor did we speak most of the way back to my house.
As he pulled into my driveway, he asked if I could please call him later, to talk about this more.
I nodded, but I could see in his eyes that he knew I wasn’t going to call. Tonight or ever. That this was good-bye.
* * *
The next day, while sitting by the pool with my mother and going over a checklist of things I needed for my dorm room, I broke down in tears. By then, she had figured out the basics on Conrad: He was in a band, playing music with rated-R lyrics. He had an alcoholic father and no ambition, at least not the kind that she recognized. So of course, she assumed that he was the culprit, in some way.
“Did you and Conrad break up?” she guessed—which only made me cry harder.
I told her yes, but something else, too. Much worse than that. “Much, much worse,” I said. “The worst thing that could ever happen.”
“Are you pregnant?” she whispered.
I nodded, filled with shame—but also relief that she knew. My mother was smart—and always good in a crisis. One of our most oft-shared family tales was the time my dad choked on a bite of rib eye at Gene & Georgetti and she leaped to her feet and ran around the table, knocking over both of their wineglasses, and with swift textbook form, performed the Heimlich maneuver until the meat was dislodged from his throat. If she could save lives, she could fix this.
“I’m sorry, Mom,” I said as I curled into a fetal position on my lawn chair, crumbling under the weight of so much guilt and shame and embarrassment. My parents had given me so much—everything—and this was the thanks I gave them.
But my mother remained strong. “Honey, it’s going to be okay. We will take care of this,” she said, running her fingers through my hair. “We will get through this … What did Conrad say?”
“I didn’t tell him,” I said.
“Good,”
she quickly replied. And then added some disparaging footnote, blaming him for my predicament.
I felt terrible for not defending him, but decided there was no point. We were in problem-solving mode now. And Conrad, good guy or bad, my type or not, was not part of the solution.
* * *
The next day, my mother took me to her ob-gyn, and my news was confirmed with a blood test. According to Dr. Kale, who looked disturbingly like my grandfather, I was six weeks along—which meant that I was right about my theory: I lost my virginity and got pregnant on the same night. The ultimate curse. It was downright cruel and unusual, especially given that Conrad and I had used protection. I stared numbly at Dr. Kale as he took my full health history and discussed my prenatal care “should I choose to have the baby.”
Meanwhile, my mother took copious notes and asked occasional questions until there was nothing more to be said. Then the doctor put down his clipboard, took a seat on a stool, and slid over to the table next to me. I knew what was coming—and sure enough, he gave me a supportive smile, cleared his throat, and said given my age and circumstances, he wanted me to talk to a counselor. He looked at my mother for permission, and she nodded her consent.
Minutes later, after I had changed out of my paper gown back into my jeans and T-shirt, my mother and I were ushered down the hall to a small, cheerful office adorned with a child’s crayon drawings and a collage of photographs of towheaded boy-girl twins. Behind the pristine desk sat a petite, blond counselor named Megan, presumably the mother of the twins, who smiled at us, made insipid small talk, then calmly explained my “options,” all of which were perfectly obvious. I could terminate the pregnancy. I could continue the pregnancy and become a single parent. I could parent the child with the father’s involvement and support. We could parent as a couple. We could parent with help from our parents or other relatives. I could have the baby and place it for adoption—which came with another menu of options that she was available to discuss at any time. “You have a lot to think about, honey,” Megan said.
My mother thanked her for me.
“Is there anything you want to ask me?” she said.