THEY SAW ONE of the Hobbit movies, which was diverting, if long. When it was over, they met up with Fritz, who, Todd was right, was clearly mooning for Sunita, and Miles, who, Maribeth was surprised to discover, was not so old. Maybe late twenties. And clearly besotted with Todd.
Even though she’d bought the popcorn, Maribeth let the couples sit together, sitting between Sunita and Todd. The second film was the third installment in one of those dystopian franchises. Maribeth had not seen parts one or two so Todd and Sunita whispered in her ear, catching her up as the film played.
“Gale was the one she loved first,” Sunita explained. “But now she loves Peeta, too. Classic love triangle.”
“I thought those only happened in books,” Todd whispered, “until I met you.”
“I’m not in a love triangle,” Maribeth whispered.
“That’s what Katniss said,” Todd replied.
62
THE ALLEGHENY CHILDREN’S HOME
ADOPTION REFERRAL FORM
REFERRAL:
Mother was referred to Allegheny Children’s Home on January 8, 1970, by the Beacon Maternity Home, where she has resided since December 27, 1969. Upon entering the Maternity Home, Mother was in her sixth month of pregnancy and it is both her and her family’s wishes that she remain there until the birth of the child.
MOTHER:
Mother is twenty years old and hails from the redacted area of Pittsburgh. She is petite (five foot four, 108 pounds prior to pregnancy) and attractive, with blue eyes, fair skin, brown hair, cut into a modern style. She has a pert nose, some freckling on her cheeks, excellent posture, and straight teeth that did not require braces. She has excellent oral hygiene, and no cavities.
Mother’s background is Swedish and English on the paternal side and Polish and German on the maternal side.
Mother is in excellent health. Aside from a childhood bout of rubella, she has had no major illnesses. Before her pregnancy, she was athletic, playing field hockey and ice-skating. Mother is allergic to penicillin and strawberries.
Mother’s personality appears to be good natured and intelligent with a keen interest in the arts and world affairs.
In high school, she was an honor roll student, a member of the debate society. Last year she entered redacted redacted College in hopes of transfer ring to a four-year university to get a degree. It was there that she met the Alleged Father and became pregnant.
Mother was initially shy and reserved at the Maternity Home but after a few weeks, staff say she revealed a sense of humor and a more garrulous nature. While she remained wary of staff and of social workers, she made fast friends with other residents, organizing many events, including a games night and even staging a short comedic play that she wrote and directed.
The pregnancy was a result of an affair between Mother and Alleged Father, a married professor at redacted redacted redacted. While Mother is quite forthcoming about the affair and it being extramarital in nature, she refused to name Alleged Father and offered scant details about the man. It is unclear whether Alleged Father, who Mother says has a family of his own, is aware of the pregnancy.
Mother was resolute in her decision to relinquish the child. As soon as she became aware of
the pregnancy--not until her fifth month, which is not entirely unbelievable given how light she carried--she told her family and immediately was brought to Beacon Maternity Home.
Mother is the only daughter in a family of five children, and since the death of her own mother, she has assumed a care-taking role for her three younger brothers. In describing her family, she seems burdened by this turn of events and bereft by the sudden loss of her mother several years ago.
Mother is Catholic and Protestant by parentage but describes herself as not religious. She has not attended church since the death of her mother.
Family:
Mother’s father is fifty-seven years old and in good health. He is the owner of redacted restaurant in redacted. He is described as tall, fair, muscular, and athletic.
Mother’s mother, whom she described as sharp-witted and sometimes melancholic, is deceased. She collapsed at the age of forty-two, when Mother was sixteen, of a suspected heart attack. Prior to that, she had been in good health.
Siblings: Mother has four siblings, a brother aged twenty-two, brother aged seventeen, and twin brothers aged fourteen. She describes her brothers as energetic, sweet, athletic boys, though lacking intellectual curiosity.
Older brother is currently serving in the army in Vietnam. Seventeen-year-old brother works in the family restaurant. Younger brothers still in school.
Aunt paternal, fifty-one: A spinster aunt lives with the family since the death of the mother. In good health aside from deafness in one ear, a result of childhood meningitis. The aunt’s relationship with the Mother appears to be contentious since the death of Mother’s mother.
Uncle paternal, fifty-four: A dairy farmer who lives in redacted. In good health.
Aunt maternal, forty-seven: In good health, lives in redacted.
Grandparents: Maternal grandmother, seventy-two, is in failing health in a nursing home. Maternal grandfather deceased, cause of death unknown. Paternal grandmother, deceased, lung cancer. Paternal grandfather deceased, automobile accident.
Alleged Father: Alleged Father is a professor at redactedr redacted redacted where Mother attended. Mother is reluctant to divulge any further detail, possibly for fear of it leading to professional and personal repercussions because Alleged Father is married.
EVALUATION:
Although intelligent, Mother appears to be a naive young woman who entered into an extramarital affair about which she expresses little remorse beyond her disappointment at having to leave community college because of the ensuing pregnancy. While she speaks with pride of being the first member of her family to attain higher education, she seems disconnected from how her own actions have likely derailed her educational aspirations and is therefore unwilling or unable to take full responsibility. She believes that after the pregnancy she will be able to return to college, though Mother’s father and aunt say that is unlikely.
Mother makes frequent mention of a desire to escape her household, to escape the family business, and it’s not beyond the realm of possibility that she viewed the pregnancy as a means of escape. It is clear that in spite of her age, Mother is by no means ready for motherhood, a fact she readily acknowledges, which suggests at least a modicum of insight and maturity.
ADDITIONAL INFORMATION:
Mother made a particular request that the child not be adopted into a strongly Catholic household.
BIRTH INFORMATION:
Mother gave birth to a healthy baby girl at Shadyside Hospital on 10:55 a.m. on March 12, 1970, three weeks before term. Child’s birth weight was a healthy 7 pounds, 4 ounces, which suggests a possible incorrect due date. Mother, who had remained unemotional and removed for much of the pregnancy, became atypically emotional and reflective after the baby’s birth. She had previously expressed no desire to name the child but after the birth insisted on giving her a name. Child remained in the hospital for five days before being transferred to nursery at Allegheny Children’s Home to await the termination of Mother’s parental rights and subsequent adoption.
COURT INFORMATION:
Relinquishment hearing took place on May 17, 1970. Mother appeared unaccompanied and seemed in good spirits. Birth mother’s parental rights were terminated on July 8, 1970.
63
Maribeth read the report in the living room of Janice’s tidy brick ranch house. She had to put the paper in her lap. Her hands shook too much to hold it.
“Are you okay, dear?” Janice asked, hovering from a respectful distance.
“I’m fine,” Maribeth heard herself say.
“It’s lucky that she was at the Beacon.” Janice stopped herself. “Maybe lucky is the wrong word. But I can make an appointment to look at the files from the maternity home on Monday. We might be able get more
information then. Maybe about that play she put on . . .”
Maribeth wasn’t really paying attention. “Okay.”
“I’ll see to that Monday. I promise.”
“Do you think I might use your computer?” Maribeth asked.
“Help yourself,” Janice said. “It’s in the office.”
Maribeth walked down the hall in a daze. Behind her, Janice called, “Can I get you anything? Tea? Whiskey?”
“I’m fine,” Maribeth repeated.
She held the form in her still-shaking hand. It told her everything—her grandmother, dead of a heart attack at age forty-two—and yet it told her nothing. The report read almost as if her mother were glad to be rid of her. But then it said she had grown emotional after her birth. What did that mean? Had she loved her at all? Had she wanted to keep her at all? Did she regret abandoning her at all?
She opened her e-mail program. She typed in Jason’s address.
I found her, was what she meant to write. Something like that.
But what she wrote was this: Why did you leave me?
She stared at the screen, at the question that had been hidden in her heart all this time. And then she started to cry.
SHE STAYED AT Janice’s all afternoon. They watched reruns of Bewitched on TV. They ate microwaved popcorn. When Maribeth wept over a Dove commercial, Janice handed her a tissue and didn’t say a thing.
SHE STAYED FOR dinner, the two of them quietly cooking in the kitchen. When they finished and Maribeth was helping with the washing up, she looked around Janice’s house. Janice said she’d bought it thirty years ago, but it looked not unlike Maribeth’s anonymous furnished apartment, albeit with many more potted plants.
There were no family pictures. No evidence of a husband, children. No framed diplomas or old chipped photo mugs. The pictures on the walls were the yearly class photos of her students at school. And suddenly Maribeth realized she’d gotten Janice wrong. She’d gotten so many things wrong lately.
“You didn’t start BurghBirthParents because you were adopted, did you?” Maribeth asked.
“No,” Janice said.
“You gave someone up?”
“Little girl, born June 25, 1975.”
“No other children?”
“ ’Fraid not.”
“But weren’t you married? I thought you said you and your husband bought this house because of the schools.”
“We did.” She smiled sadly.
“But you didn’t have any?” She corrected herself. “Any others.”
“Sadly, no.”
“What happened?” Maribeth asked.
“Infertility, if you can believe it,” she said. “Not mine. That’s pretty clear, though Richard, my ex-husband, insisted it was. I had to undergo so many dreadful tests because, of course, he didn’t know. Finally, when I couldn’t bear any more tests, or blame, I told him.” She held up her palms, then flipped them over, batting away the memory. “He said it was as if I’d cheated on him. Even though it all happened long before we met. He was not a terribly understanding man.” She sighed heavily. “Still, I suppose I can understand his point. I probably should have been more honest. I’m not always good at discussing unpleasant things.”
“You and me both,” Maribeth said. “And your daughter, does she know you’re looking?”
Janice nodded. “She knows. She agreed to receive my letters. She just hasn’t responded. Yet.”
“Yet . . .” Maribeth repeated.
“Yet,” Janice said, more emphatically. “Some things take more time.”
JANICE PULLED OUT the couch in the office and made up the bed. She put on fresh sheets that smelled of lavender. She left a glass of water on the nightstand, a box of Kleenex, too.
Maribeth tried but could not sleep. The computer stayed on all night, its hum a gentle reproach.
Maribeth had been caught out again. Only really, she shouldn’t have been.
Hadn’t it always been there, this knowledge? Behind the locked door in her mind, where she kept the unpleasant things, where she talked herself into thinking chest pains were gas, hadn’t she known that she and Jason had not really broken up? There was nothing mutual about it. She loved him. And he had left her. Just like her mother had left her. Like Elizabeth had left her. Like everyone, in the end, would leave her.
She cried, she cried until the sheets were wet. Outside the door she heard Janice pacing, but she never crossed the threshold. It was like she was keeping sentry, allowing Maribeth and her grief this wedding night to get acquainted.
JANICE HAD NO coffee so the next morning they drove to a Starbucks drive-through and bought a tall latte for Maribeth and a venti caramel macchiato (decaf) for Janice.
They drank their coffee in the car, in the lot, heater blasting. With the windows fogging up, it was cozy.
“I’m sorry I never asked you,” Maribeth said. “About your daughter.”
“I’m sorry I never told you,” Janice replied.
“How long have you been waiting?”
“I sent the first letter ten years ago. The most recent one two years ago. I keep thinking that if only I say the right thing, she will respond. I’ve been trying to write another letter, but I can’t seem to find the words.”
“I know,” Maribeth replied. “It’s hard.” She thought for a minute. “Maybe I could help you.”
“Aren’t you struggling with your own letter?” Janice licked the foam mustache with the tip of her tongue.
Maribeth smiled. “I’ve always been a much better editor than writer. It’s what I did for a living, in fact.”
“You’re an editor?” Janice asked.
“Well, I was, for more than twenty years.”
“Explains why you’re such a perfectionist.”
“Maybe, but I’m not one anymore.”
“Editor or perfectionist?” Janice asked.
Maribeth shrugged. “Maybe both.”
WHEN IT WAS time for Maribeth to go home, Janice said, “Come swimming tomorrow.” Then she smiled wryly. “In the pool, nobody can see your tears.”
Janice swam/cried? The secrets people kept.
“Do you regret it?” Maribeth asked. “Giving her up?”
“Every single day,” Janice replied. “And yet, I would still do it again.”
“Really?” Maribeth had a hard time believing this. Or maybe she just didn’t want to.
But Janice’s face was firm, resolute, and peaceful. “It was a not a good situation, where I was. Abusive. Keeping her would’ve sentenced both of us to that.” She turned to look out the window. The parking lot was busy, full of holiday shoppers. Any one of them could’ve been Janice’s daughter. Or Maribeth’s mother. “Sometimes leaving someone is the most loving thing you can do.”
“Do you honestly believe that?” Maribeth asked.
“I have to.”
“I left my children. I left them, too.”
Janice squeezed her hand. “Then you have to believe it, too.”
64
From:
[email protected] To:
[email protected] Subject:
Don’t ask me why I left.
Ask me why I came back.
From:
[email protected] To:
[email protected] Subject:
What do you mean?
From:
[email protected] To:
[email protected] Subject:
Ask me why I came back, Maribeth. Ask me why I came back to New York.
From:
[email protected] To:
[email protected] Subject:
I know why you came back. For your job. Your dream job.
From:
[email protected] To:
[email protected] Subject:
It’s not my dream job. It’s not why I came back.
From:
[email protected] To:
[email protected] Subject:
What are you talking about?
&nb
sp; From:
[email protected] To:
[email protected] Subject:
I got a job in New York City so I could come back for you.
From:
[email protected] To:
[email protected] Subject:
That doesn’t make any sense.
From:
[email protected] To:
[email protected] Subject:
Think about it, Maribeth. And if you don’t believe me, ask my dad. I was unhappy in San Francisco, had been for years, wondering how my life had gone so off the rails. And my dad said it was because I’d let you go. He was right. But I knew I couldn’t just e-mail you or Facebook you to get you back. I had to undo the damage. I had to come back and win you.
From:
[email protected] To:
[email protected] Subject:
That doesn’t make any sense.
From:
[email protected] To:
[email protected] Subject:
Think about it. It does.
65
She thought about it.
She thought about so many things.
So many things that had never quite made sense.
For one there was the way Jason had gotten in touch with her, via a Facebook message. A few months before he’d written her, Jason hadn’t been on Facebook. Maribeth knew this because she had been an early adopter of the technology and had checked periodically to see if Jason had posted a profile. Three months before he’d contacted her, he hadn’t. But then there was this message, something about him being offered his dream job in New York City, “an offer he couldn’t refuse,” he’d said. So he was relocating. Did she want to meet for a drink?
She’d always assumed he was being relocated for the dream job, that this was the offer he couldn’t refuse. It was why she’d resented his company for going to all that trouble to bring him to New York City and then not pay him well enough to live here comfortably.
But of course, they hadn’t moved him to New York City. Why would they have? Jason worked for a nonprofit, not a huge corporation. And there were probably any number of musicology or MLS grads in New York City who could’ve filled his position.