“That’s so cool! Rub your lips together. Now blot.” She handed Maribeth a tissue. “I’ll bet she’ll be so glad to hear from you.”
“I’m not so sure about that,” Maribeth said. “Maybe she doesn’t want to hear from me. She did give me up.” And then realizing she was speaking to someone dumped in a box, she added, “I’m sorry.”
“Oh, that’s all right. The way I see it, it had to be the hardest thing in the world for my mother to leave me at that orphanage, right? And besides, who wouldn’t want to hear from you? You’re so pretty.” Ash dramatically swiveled Maribeth around to face the mirror.
The makeup had transformed her face, made it look different, younger. When she stared at her reflection, she saw that face again, like hers, but not. And though she had no way of knowing this, she felt that she’d just caught a glimpse of her mother.
49
Dear Oscar and Liv,
Do you remember last summer when we walked by that truck with all the dogs that needed homes and, Liv, you asked the woman how to buy one and she said that dogs were not for sale but up for adoption? So Oscar, you said, “Can we take one?” And the lady said, no, you needed to fill out forms and pay. And then Liv, you said, “But you just said the dogs weren’t for sale.” And she said that dogs in pet stores were for sale. These dogs were up for adoption because nobody wanted them.
Maribeth hadn’t been so sure that this was the best explanation for it, but she wasn’t going to get into it. Besides, by then the twins had moved on from the nuances of adoption to begging for a dog. (Out of the question; their building didn’t allow them and their landlord was just waiting for an excuse to evict them and raise the rent.)
But they must have brought it up again with Jason because a few nights later, before bed, he asked her why she hadn’t told the twins that she was adopted. “It hardly seemed like an apt comparison, their mother and an unwanted pit bull. Besides, they’re too young,” she’d said. She could tell by his silence that he disagreed.
There is something you don’t know about me. When I was a little baby, the mother who gave birth to me couldn’t keep me. So she put me up for adoption and Grandma and Grandpa became my parents. They are my parents. But I have other parents, too. I don’t know anything about them. And now, for the first time, maybe I want to. So I can know more things about me, and also about you.
50
They were in a holding pattern with Maribeth’s birth-mother search, Janice said, until they had additional information about her adoptive parents. It was frustrating because Maribeth knew exactly where that all was, at home, on her laptop, in well-organized files.
She could just ask Jason.
He might ignore her.
Then again, what did she have to lose at this point?
Strange request, she wrote. Do you think you could get my parents’ social security numbers for me? She told him where to find everything.
He sent her the information the same day. Maribeth forwarded it to Janice. Jason had not commented or questioned why she needed any of this and she did not need to explain, but somehow felt compelled to. Jason might have operated in the land of the opaque. But Maribeth liked clarity. Even now. Even with him.
In case you were wondering, I’m not applying for a new passport or anything. I’m looking for my birth mother.
And because it no longer seemed much of a threat to disclose her whereabouts—it was clear no one was going to drag her back—she added: In Pittsburgh.
I figured you might be, he wrote.
That surprised her. Even for someone intuitive, it would’ve been a leap, and Jason was not intuitive.
So you knew I was in Pittsburgh?
He replied, How would I know anything, Maribeth? I just suspected. From your note.
What had she said in her note that had implied that she was coming here? She’d been in an emotional fugue state when she’d written it, and last week when she’d seen the first line, she’d had a sickening déjà vu. It was the same sort of gut-plummet regret she’d experienced all those years ago when she’d opened the college newspaper to her profile of Jason.
My note? she fished.
Jason replied, Yeah. Your note. Which I still can’t get over. It’s not even the whole, out-of-the-blue Dear John part of it, though that wasn’t fun. But your implication that you have some claim on terror because you’re a mother . . . I know what you were getting at but, Jesus, Maribeth, did you really think that? Do you still think that? Even now?
She didn’t know what she thought because she didn’t know what she’d written. But what did she know, what she could feel pulsing through the computer’s monitor, was Jason’s anger. And it was the strangest thing because though it was what she had been imagining, resenting, dreading, since his silent treatment—since she’d left, really—now that it was here, all she felt was relief.
51
Allegheny Children’s Home had a record of a baby girl born March 12, 1970, adopted by a Mr. and Mrs. Seth Klein.
Janice broke the happy news after their fourth swim lesson—kickboard again, to work on her arms—while they were taking a leisurely steam. Upon hearing the news, Maribeth passed out.
SHE WAS FINE. It wasn’t her heart. It was the heat. And the shock.
She was fine. Really.
“I should’ve waited until we got out, but I couldn’t keep it in. I saw the e-mail on my phone when I went to the locker to get my toiletry bag,” Janice said, wringing her hands. “I thought the steam room would be a relaxed place to tell you. I feel just awful about it.”
The club manager was not helping matters. “I’ll need a doctor’s note for you to use the steam room,” he said. “That was very irresponsible.”
“It was my fault,” Janice said. “The steam room was my idea.”
“I’m an adult, Janice. It’s not your fault.” Maribeth turned to the manager “And a doctor’s note, really?”
“It’s for legal purposes,” the medic who was examining her explained.
“In fact, I’d feel more comfortable if you had a note before you returned to the club,” the manager said.
Fine. She was seeing Stephen tomorrow for lunch.
Once Maribeth was deemed in no imminent danger, she was allowed to get dressed. “Let’s get out of here,” she told Janice. “I’ll buy you something frothy and decaffeinated.”
“Only if you let me treat. Seeing as I made you faint.”
They went to a nearby Commonplace Coffee. Janice was still self-flagellating and therefore would only order a tea. “I never should’ve let you go in the steam room,” she said.
“I’m fine. I’m a big girl,” Maribeth said. Though in truth, she felt rather like a little girl, waiting to see what was in that big wrapped box. “So now what happens?”
“Allegheny Children’s Home has the intake file and they just have to redact it and give us a copy.”
“Redact it?”
“Yes, they’ll cross out names and identifying details. And then, if you want, the agency will reach out to your birth mother and see if we can initiate contact.”
“When can I get the file?”
“Maybe in a week. But there’s more.”
“What?”
“Your birth mother spent her confinement at the Beacon Maternity Home.”
“What’s that?”
“It was a home for unwed pregnant girls. A lot of young women spent their pregnancies there. We forget how taboo it was until recently.”
“Isn’t that the Children’s Home what’s-it?”
“No, that’s the adoption agency, where you would’ve gone for several months while the adoption moved through the courts.”
“Months?” Maribeth had always thought it was faster than that. She was born, she was adopted.
“It usually took several months,” Janice explained. “Sometimes up to a year.”
In her childhood home, there used to hang a series of framed photos in the hall—Sears portraits of the ea
rly years, replaced by school portraits once Maribeth started kindergarten. But the pictures began when she was a year old, already with a shock of hair, and four baby teeth. Maribeth had always assumed it was because the photos were a yearly event, a marker of milestones. Now she wondered if it was because there were no other pictures before then.
How long had Maribeth’s mother known that Maribeth was to be hers before she was hers? What was that like? To know she was out there but not be able to hold her? Feel her? Comfort her? Was she scared that her birth mother might change her mind? Might take her back? Maribeth remembered being pregnant with the twins and how reassuring it was always to have them with her, inside of her. She felt that she’d been their mother long before they were born.
“We’re getting close,” Janice said. “It might be you find all the health information you need in the narratives, but if you want more . . .” she trailed off.
Did she want more? She didn’t know. Maybe. Maybe it was okay to want more.
“I’m not sure,” she told Janice.
“Well, if you do,” Janice said, “it’s time to start that letter.”
52
She and Stephen met for lunch at a bistro in an up-and-coming neighborhood called Highland Park. The place was airy and bright and the waiters recited specials with ingredients like duck confit and locally sourced lamb.
Stephen told Maribeth about settling on a Christmas gift for Mallory. “I decided to buy us tickets to something after all. A musical, which is something Felicity would not have taken her to, but I think Mal will like it,” he said. “The Book of Mormon. We’re going on New Year’s Eve. It’ll be over by ten, and then I can go back to my hotel like the geriatric I am, and she can go out.”
“Sounds like you found a great gift,” Maribeth said politely.
It was the first time they’d seen each other since the kiss and perhaps that was why everything was so formal, so nice.
She told Stephen about passing out in the steam room. She had assumed he’d find it an amusing anecdote, but instead he was alarmed. If he’d had his doctor bag with him, she suspected he would’ve examined her on that spot. (Not that Maribeth knew if he even had a doctor bag; he just seemed like the kind of old-fashioned physician who would.)
“It’s nothing,” she reassured him. “It was just the . . .” She stopped short of saying shock. She did not want to tell him that she’d found her birth mother. It felt too intimate now that they were skirting a different kind of intimacy. “The heat,” she finished.
“You have to be careful,” he said.
“I know. They won’t let me back in the club until I get a note from my doctor.” She paused. “That’s still you, right?”
“If you still choose me.”
“What?” She had not mentioned Jason, his existence, let alone the fact that they were back in touch. And Maribeth had kissed Stephen once. She did not know if that warranted a discussion about choosing.
He gently reminded her of her own statement from their first appointment. “Oh, yes. I still choose you,” she said. But the statement felt perjurious now.
“I’ll fax over a letter,” he said. “I know the manager.”
“Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.”
They carried on like this, low voices and safe conversation, until Stephen called for the check.
Outside, the sky was bright and the air smelled of snow. The shopkeepers were salting the sidewalks. Stephen offered her a ride home but Maribeth preferred to walk. There was a park nearby and she liked the looping trail around the reservoir. It was up a steep hill but she could handle those now.
Before they parted, there was an awkward pause.
“I keep thinking I’m not going to see you again,” Maribeth admitted. “Now that we don’t have weekly appointments.”
“We can do this weekly,” he said. “Or more often. I have time.”
“I did wonder about that. Do you have any other patients?” Now that they were outside in the raw cold, it was like they could be themselves again.
“Most of my patients were ones who loyally followed me from the old practice and I don’t take on many new cases, but yes, I have other patients,” Stephen said. “I just had Louise schedule you last.”
“Why?”
“The same reason I eat dessert last.”
“You just skipped dessert.”
He smiled. “It felt redundant. And at that first appointment, you seemed like you needed, I don’t know, a soft place to land.”
“Is that why you had me come weekly? And why you charged me so little?
“I charged what the standard Medicare reimbursement would be.”
“You still didn’t answer the question.”
“And you still haven’t told me who you really are,” he said.
“All I’ve been doing is telling you who I really am.”
He didn’t look entirely convinced. Which, she supposed, was fair enough.
“Are we going to talk about that kiss?” he asked.
“What kiss?” she asked.
He held her chin in his hand. The kiss that followed was as delicate and fleeting as the snowflakes that were starting to fall.
“That one,” he said.
53
She wrote five drafts of a letter to her birth mother. Each one worse than the last.
My name is Maribeth Klein and forty-five years ago you gave me up for adoption. I am not angry. I am not seeking explanations or recrimination, but mostly answers. Recently, I suffered a heart attack and—
It sounded like a cover letter. She tore it up.
I am the daughter you gave up for adoption. I’ve had a good life. I’m not angry. Four years ago, I became a mother myself and there are things in my own children I don’t recognize—
Why bring up the twins? What if she wanted to meet them one day?
On March 12, 1970, you gave birth to a baby girl. That girl was me. I don’t know why I haven’t tried to get in touch with you before. I’m not angry or upset. But recently, I . . .
This all felt wrong. And why did she keep insisting she wasn’t angry?
Upstairs she heard a roar and a woot. It was Sunday. It must be a football game. Todd and Sunita had not invited her to watch, but she knew she would not be unwelcome, and she needed the distraction. She shoved the notepad underneath the scrapbook she’d just bought to hold her letters to the twins and went upstairs.
Todd opened the door, wearing his jersey, eyes blackened. “This game is going to kill me.”
“Is it close?” she asked.
“I can’t handle the stress. I hate the Falcons.”
“Is that M.B.?” Sunita called.
“Yes, I believe she came to watch football with us. Is that right?” Todd asked suspiciously.
“I’d love to. But do you mind if I check my e-mail first?”
He made a pfffing sound. “Can we dispense with the charade and admit that you’re using us for our Internet.”
“I’m using you for your Internet the way that you’re using me for my cooking abilities.”
He grinned. “Doesn’t it feel good to come clean?” He nodded toward the laptop. “Help yourself.”
She sat down and Todd returned to the living room. It had been three days—and one more kiss—since the e-mail from Jason and she had yet to respond. It wasn’t exactly avoidance. She just didn’t know what to say. Where to start. I’m so glad you’re mad at me because at least we’re not pretending didn’t feel quite right.
But she didn’t have to think about how to reply because when she logged on to her Gmail, there was already a message from Jason waiting. The subject line was “Full Disclosure.”
Remember when you were pregnant and I had all those dreams? Maybe you don’t. I tried to downplay them. I didn’t want to scare you but they were very vivid, Maribeth. So vivid that I went to a therapist. She said the dreams meant I was afraid of losing you to the babies. But I said, no, I really thought you
were going to die, could feel the terror of it. Once you had the kids and didn’t die, the dreams mostly went away and I quit therapy.
When that doctor came out to get me in the waiting room to tell me there’d been a problem with your procedure, I thought he was going to tell me you were dead. The look on his face, Maribeth, was like the grave. I thought my own heart stopped. I really did. He said you weren’t dead. You were having emergency open-heart surgery. But still, terror.
So I guess that’s what got me most upset about your note, aside from you leaving. Your suggesting that I didn’t understand terror. Maybe I didn’t feel that same way you did that day when the twins were babies, but I felt the love, and I’ve known the terror.
—Jason
p.s. Fuller disclosure: After you came out of your surgery okay, I called up that original shrink, planning to let her have it, ask for my money back because my dreams had been prophetic. Dr. Lewis called me back, listened to me rant, and then asked if I might like to come back in and talk about some things. I’ve been seeing her ever since.
p.p.s. Dr. Lewis was the one who told me that if I were going to challenge your whole staking the claim on terror business, I needed to come clean about all this.
“Touchdown!” Todd and Sunita screamed.
“Falcons? Ha! More like sparrows,” Sunita yelled. “M.B., you’re missing the game.”
“I’ll be right there,” she said.
Jason was in therapy? Her Jason? In college, when his parents were in the midst of their split, he had fallen into what Maribeth thought was a depression. She’d implored him to talk to someone at the counseling center, but Jason had said he couldn’t stand to listen to himself like that. It seemed so indulgent. “But you’re a deejay,” Maribeth had said. “You listen to yourself talk all the time.” “That’s different,” he’d said.
Jason was in therapy. Had been when she was pregnant. Had been even before she’d left home.
“Are you going to watch any of the game?” Todd yelled from the living room.
“They seem to be doing okay without me,” Maribeth said.