“Yes,” I said. “Absolutely.”
He looked out the window toward the forest, as if gathering his thoughts. “It might not be the happiest story ever told,” he said, returning his gaze to me, “but it’s one for which I’ll be forever grateful, because it brought you into the world.”
I smiled, relaxing a bit as I folded my hands in my lap, ready to listen.
“So,” he said with a nod of his head, “I was twenty-eight when I received my doctorate from UNC and came home to Morrison Ridge. I moved back into the brick house with my parents and Claudia, who was still living there at the time. Trevor was already married to Toni and they’d built their house and had Samantha and Cal. So anyway, I got a job as a psychologist at a facility called Highland Hospital in Asheville. It doesn’t exist any longer, but it was a bit of an unorthodox place.”
“What does that mean?”
“They had a unique approach to treating patients,” he said. “They often used art or music or nature to try to heal troubled people instead of relying exclusively on medication or shock treatment or psychotherapy. I found that outside-the-box approach appealing, as you can probably imagine.” He gave me a conspiratorial smile. “At any rate, here’s something you don’t know about me, Molly,” he continued with a bit of a sigh. “I used to love to dance, just like you.”
“Really?” I could barely remember him walking, much less dancing.
“Trevor and Toni and Claudia and I would go dancing every weekend,” he said. “Then we started going to the coast. Wrightsville Beach or sometimes Myrtle. Everyone there was playing beach music and doing the Carolina shag and we really got into it. We brought the dance back here to the mountains and helped start a shag group.”
“Is that the group Aunt Claudia and Uncle Jim go to in Asheville?”
“Yes, Claudia actually met Jim there, and the group’s still in existence, although obviously I’m no longer a part of it. And Trevor and Toni lost interest somewhere along the way.”
“Is that where you met Mom?”
He shook his head. “No,” he said. “Nor is it where I met Amalia.” He shifted his head on the headrest and I could tell it was bothering him. “Amalia was hired by Highland Hospital to teach dance to the patients,” he said. “Well, not ‘hired’ exactly.” He looked off into space, kind of talking to himself. “Well, let’s just call it ‘hired,’” he said. “Easier that way. The hospital gave her room and board. She was only twenty years old and she was a wonderful dancer, as you know,” he said. “There was an easygoing element to her dancing that allowed her to connect to many different types of patients. She was so uninhibited.” He was someplace else in his mind, and I waited as patiently as I could. I was anxious for him to get to the part about me. “She had a very difficult childhood,” he said. “Her parents weren’t together and her mother was not a very good or caring mother. But that’s Amalia’s story to tell, not mine.” He gave his head a small shake. “Anyway, I told her about the dance group and she started going there with me. It was a friendship at first but gradually turned into … something more. I fell in love with her, although we were very different. I was nine years older, to begin with. She had a high school education and I had a PhD. We came from very different family and economic backgrounds. My parents and Trevor and Claudia discouraged the relationship from the start. But … well, you know her.” He smiled at me. “You know she has a sort of … magnetic personality.”
I nodded. This was so weird, hearing him talk about a romance with someone other than my mother. My stomach felt knotted up and I pressed my hands together in my lap, but I’d asked for the story, and I didn’t want him to sanitize it for me even if it made me squirm.
“I’d never known anyone like her,” Daddy said. “My family seemed so rigid … so uptight by comparison. It was as though I’d found someone I could finally relax around.”
I knew what he meant. It seemed impossible to do anything that would shake Amalia up. She rolled with whatever came her way.
“So, anyway, we had fun together and I decided our differences didn’t matter. But then I began having trouble with my legs. Sometimes when I danced—or even walked—my legs felt leaden and it took extra effort to make them move. At first I thought it was my imagination. I had no idea what was wrong with me. I saw a doctor—well, several—and had too many tests to count, and eventually got the diagnosis of MS. I didn’t handle that diagnosis particularly well.” He smiled again, and I had the feeling he was understating what had happened.
“Were you a basket case?” I asked.
He laughed. “You could say that. And at first, Amalia was very supportive, but then she—quite suddenly—seemed to withdraw. And one day, she simply disappeared.”
“Disappeared?”
He nodded. “One night, she packed up all her things in her room at Highland Hospital and left without a word to anyone. I was…” He looked at the ceiling. “Well, I guess the word is devastated,” he said, his eyes back on me. “I searched for her, but she had vanished, and I assumed the MS had scared her away. She couldn’t deal with it and couldn’t tell me to my face, so she simply left. It was too much for her.”
I couldn’t imagine the Amalia I knew behaving so cowardly. “That was cruel.” I frowned.
“It did feel cruel at that moment,” he agreed. “But anyway, a couple of months after she left, I met Nora,” he said. “She’d been hired by the hospital as a pharmacist and we struck up a friendship. She wasn’t the least bit put off by the MS. As a matter of fact, she invented ways I could deal with my ever-increasing limitations and accompanied me to doctors’ appointments and came up with work-arounds so that I could still do things I wanted or needed to do.”
“That is so Mom.” I smiled.
“She was amazing. She was definitely a person you could count on, and I needed that. I fell in love with her, and of course my family adored her. She fit in much better with them, plus they were so relieved Amalia was gone.”
“I still can’t believe Amalia deserted … Oh!” I suddenly got it. “Was she pregnant?”
“You are one smart cookie,” Daddy said. “She certainly was. Of course, I had no clue. You can draw your own conclusions as to why she thought she needed to leave. Maybe she didn’t want to tie me down to someone my family disliked, or she was just plain scared. So your mom and I were married and then one day Amalia appeared on our doorstep with a baby—you. She was overwhelmed trying to care for you as a single parent. Your mom—Nora—was unable to have children.… I think you knew that?”
I nodded.
“And while I was disappointed about it, I thought maybe it was just as well, given the progression of the MS.” He looked out the window toward the trees again, then back at me with a smile. “But then you showed up,” he said, “and your appearance seemed like a miracle. It made sense for us to make you ours, and Amalia was—although she loved you very much—relieved, and she entrusted you to us. But the three of us wanted you to be able to have a relationship with her, so that’s why she lives at Morrison Ridge. We thought it would be best for her to be close to you, and of course that’s what she wanted, so—”
“But no one really wants her here, do they?” I couldn’t forget a conversation I once overheard between my two uncles about the appropriateness of Amalia living in the slave quarters, since she was their housekeeper. “Cinderella,” they’d called her. “They don’t like her.”
“Oh, they’ve come to like her well enough,” Daddy said. “Your grandmother has never approved of her being here, but she’ll get over it one of these days.”
“It’s been fourteen years,” I pointed out. “If she’s not over it by now, I don’t think she ever will be.”
“Doesn’t really matter, does it? You have Amalia close by and that’s what counts.”
“Right.” I thought of my mother—Nora—and tried to imagine how I would feel, having my husband’s old girlfriend living so close by. “Has it been weird for Mom?” I asked. ??
?Having Amalia here?”
Daddy sighed. “Well, I’d be lying if I said her relationship with Amalia hasn’t had its share of tension,” he said. “I’m sure you’ve picked up on some of it from time to time. But you’re the most important thing in the world to Nora, so she and Amalia tolerate each other for your sake.”
I looked down at my hands. I thought about how many sentences he’d used to tell me about falling in love with Amalia. How few sentences he’d allotted to my mother.
“What’s running through your head, Moll?” he asked.
I looked up at him. “Are you still … are you in love with her?” I asked. “Amalia?”
He smiled. “I love her and always will, but ‘in love’?” He shook his head. “No. ‘In love’ belongs to your mother, who’s pretty extraordinary, wouldn’t you say?”
“Yes.” I wished I felt totally relieved by his answer, but I still couldn’t get the image of Amalia’s head on his shoulder out of my mind. “Daddy,” I said, my eyes locked onto his, “I saw you and Amalia on the bench last night. You were both asleep. She was holding your hand.”
He lost his smile. “I’m sorry,” he said. “Was that upsetting?”
“Confusing.”
“Are you wondering if Mom knows Amalia was there with me?”
I nodded.
“She knows. We have no secrets.”
“Doesn’t she get jealous?”
“I guess you’d have to ask her how she feels, darling. I can’t speak for her.”
I gave a small nod. I could never talk to my mother like this. She was an awesome mother in about a million ways, but she was not the sort of person you could easily bare your soul to.
“Now,” he said, “there’s one more thing we have to talk about, and that’s a family meeting coming up Wednesday night.”
I frowned. “Family meeting?” I vaguely remembered a family meeting from about three years ago. It had to do with our trash pickup and mail delivery. I distinctly remembered falling asleep with my head on Daddy’s lap.
“You don’t have to be there,” he said, as if reading my mind. “Nanny’s not coming, either, so she suggested you go over to her house and the two of you can watch a movie. How’s that sound?”
“Is this about Uncle Trevor’s idea for the land?” I asked.
“Yes, darling, as well as a few other issues,” he said. “It’ll be boring, that much I can guarantee. You’ll be better off with Nanny.”
“Okay with me,” I said.
“Great.” He looked at the computer screen. “Let’s give up on the book for today,” he said. “How about you save it—and back it up—and then push me to the kitchen? Save Russell a trip.”
“Sure.” I backed up the work I’d done and then turned his chair around. I was pushing him into the hallway when the phone rang. Someone picked it up, and in a moment Mom’s voice called from the kitchen.
“Molly!” she called. “Stacy for you.”
“Okay!” I called back. “I’ll be there in a minute.” I continued pushing my father toward the kitchen, wondering if I could ever adequately explain my family to Stacy. There was no need to go into the whole “Amalia on the bench with my dad” thing with her again, since she seemed to have forgotten about it … which was good, I decided, because no matter how easily my father had handled my questions, deep down I wasn’t completely sure of his answers.
13
San Diego
Aidan and I join sixteen other people in a large room at the Hope Springs Adoption Agency. We sit in a circle on folding metal chairs and as we wait for the arrival of Zoe, who will lead the group, everyone talks in hushed whispers as if we’re in church. I don’t really want to be here. I’m afraid it’s going to be one of those soul-baring groups where I end up crying my eyes out over the baby I lost.
I feel an air of desperation in the room and wonder how much Aidan and I are contributing to it. I glance furtively around the circle. There are a few people who are older than us and several who are younger. We are comfortably in the middle, agewise, I think, and that’s reassuring.
Although I feel as though I know Zoe after talking to her more than a dozen times on the phone during the application process, Aidan and I have never met her in person. From her voice and her gently supportive, almost maternal, attitude, I would guess her to be a matronly fifty-year-old. I picture her with dark hair streaked by strands of gray, so I’m surprised when a beautiful red-haired woman walks into the room in stiletto heels and introduces herself as Zoe. Aidan and I exchange a look.
“Not what I imagined,” Aidan whispers to me.
“This can’t be ‘our’ Zoe,” I whisper back, but as soon as the woman opens her mouth, I recognize her comforting voice.
“It may take some time,” she says, turning to take us all in, “but every one of you in this room is going to find your baby.”
A man begins to applaud and several people join him. Aidan and I share a nervous glance. He has his arm across the back of my chair and he gives my shoulder an encouraging squeeze.
Zoe asks all of us to introduce ourselves and tell a little about our “story.” I learn quickly that we are quite a mix of waiting parents. In addition to several straight couples waiting for their first child, there are two lesbian couples, one gay couple, and two single women, and there are two couples trying to adopt for the second time. One of them already has three adopted children and is coming back for a fourth. I feel bitter about them. I can’t help it. Let the rest of us have a turn, I want to say. I’m fairly certain I’m not the only person in the room with that sentiment. The stories of infertility are heartbreaking to hear. The failed IVF attempts. The multiple miscarriages. One of the lesbian couples talks about the nightmare of being chosen by a birth mother only to have the young woman change her mind a week after the baby had been placed with them. Everyone in the room visibly shudders as the women speak about the agony they went through after bonding with the baby they’d quickly come to think of as theirs. I feel tears growing closer and closer to the surface as I listen to everyone’s story and I make the decision I won’t tell them about the baby I lost. I can’t get through it. I will simply talk about our infertility and my hysterectomy. But when it is our turn, Aidan blurts out, “We lost our daughter when Molly was twenty weeks pregnant,” and there it is, out in the open before I can stop it. Murmurs of sympathy ripple through the group. Tears well up in my eyes and my voice is stuck in my throat. I try to smile a grateful smile and don’t even attempt to speak. I let Aidan do the talking for both of us.
“I came from a very loving, happy family,” he says, “and I want to re-create that. Molly’s parents both passed away when she was young and she has no siblings and I know she wants the opportunity to create a real family of her own.”
I’m relieved when Aidan is done talking and Zoe takes over again. Balancing on her stilettos in the middle of the room, she gives us information most of us already know. She describes the legalities surrounding our relationship with the—so far phantom—birth parents. She tells us the agency will provide counseling for the birth mothers, and goes over the cost of medical care and other potential expenses we’ll be expected to cover. She talks for about twenty minutes, then suddenly shifts gears.
“So,” she says, “I’d like each of you who is here with a partner to tell us why your partner will make a good parent. Those of you here alone, of course, will tell us about yourselves.”
She looks directly at us, and I know we’re expected to go first. I’m embarrassed by my inability to speak during our last attempt at sharing, so I dive right in. I talk about Aidan’s easygoing nature and how he’d love a son or daughter to share his passion for sports and adventure. “He’s the sort of person you can count on,” I say. “He has strong values and puts them into action, which is why he practices immigration law. He’ll make a wonderful role model for a child.”
I turn to Aidan and he smiles at me. “Thanks, babe,” he says. Then he looks around the c
ircle.
“Molly is the most generous person I know,” he says. “She’s one of those people who sees what other people need even before they know they need it. I first realized this about her when we were dating. Of course she was very attentive to my needs back then.” He offers a mildly prurient smile to the group. “But it was the way she treated other people that I really noticed,” he continues. “The way she’d look out for the needs of the underdog or help her friends who were in trouble. She offers pro bono legal services at the women’s shelter downtown. She arranged one of those meal trains for my sister after my sister gave birth to twins, even though it was only a few months after Molly had lost our own baby. I don’t know how she did it; I couldn’t have.”
My throat tightens again. I don’t know how I did it, either.
“She takes extraordinary care of the people she loves,” Aidan says. “She’ll make a phenomenal mother.”
He turns to the woman on his right to let her know he is finished and it’s her turn. She begins to speak, but I don’t hear her. I’m overwhelmed by Aidan’s description of me. Am I really the generous, caring person he described? I want to be. Maybe I truly am. I’m so hung up on my dishonesty these days that I’ve lost track of anything good about myself.
“Now, you know when we talk about open adoption that there are many different levels of openness,” Zoe says after everyone in our circle has had the chance to speak. “There’s no right or wrong,” she says, “only that degree of openness you and the birth parents settle on in your ‘contact agreement.’ I thought it would be fun, though, to invite a family here today that epitomizes openness in adoption.” Smiling, she nods toward the door behind me and I turn to see two women, a man, and a little girl. They move toward us and Aidan gets up to make room for them to walk into the center of our circle, where Zoe and another man are setting up three chairs.
The man and women sit down and one of the women offers a stuffed kitten to the little girl, who cannot be much more than a year old. Zoe introduces them to us. They are an adoptive couple in their late thirties with their little girl and the child’s twenty-year-old birth mother. They begin to tell us about their relationship.