Lost At Sea

by Erica Boyce

  The results were less than inspiring. A single page, typed out in the same font she used to write her school reports. Her birth mother had been seventeen, brown hair, blue eyes, 5′6″. No information available on the father. “Hmm. That’s less than I thought it would be,” her mom said, reading over her shoulder. “Don’t worry. I already printed out the identifiable information follow-up form. Did you know we can submit that now, as long as you’ve got my signature on it?”

  Lacey did know. So one month later, it was the same deal. An envelope waiting by the door, her mother standing behind it with her hands clasped. “You’d better not be this annoying when my college decisions start coming in,” Lacey said, but her hands shook slightly as she ripped the envelope and pulled out one impossibly small sheet of paper.

  “What does it say?” Maureen said, tears in her eyes.

  “It says she doesn’t want to be found.”

  “What?” Her mom snatched the paper out of her hands and scanned it. “No, that can’t be true. There’s got to be some mistake. This never happens.”

  “It’s rare, but it does happen sometimes.” Lacey dropped her backpack and started hunting through it for a book, hiding her face. “It’s fine, Mom. She just doesn’t want to be contacted.”

  “No, it’s not. It’s not fine.” Maureen tossed the letter onto the couch. “We’ll go down to the agency this weekend and sort it all out, okay?”

  Lacey nodded weakly.

  The beetle got louder over the days that followed. “Don’t you think it’s a little suspicious she’s so eager to find you another mom?” it hissed. “Seems she doesn’t really want to know you anymore, either.” Ridiculous things it said. She gripped her hair close to the scalp when no one was looking, trying to dislodge the words. By the time Saturday morning rolled around and she hoisted herself into Maureen’s van, she was exhausted.

  “Don’t worry,” her mom said as she put the car into gear. “We can fix this.”

  Lacey said nothing and stared through her reflection in the rearview mirror.

  The adoption agency was twenty miles away, a low, brick building surrounded by a shell of colorful tulips and lilacs and daffodils blooming incongruously in the brisk December air. When they got closer, Lacey saw that they were fake, their cheap fabric petals fraying at their edges. Next to the door, there was a single potted poinsettia, garishly red. Someone must take it inside every night and put it out every morning.

  Maureen put one hand at the small of Lacey’s back and steered her toward the door. Lacey fought the urge to shrink away and run. Inside, they had to take a number, like at the deli or the DMV, even though Maureen had called ahead to make an appointment. They sat in the waiting room on vinyl chairs that creaked when they moved. The room was filled with bored-looking pregnant women—some of them girls, but a lot of them older, mom-aged—and a few couples holding hands, their knuckles whitened with the effort. There was nobody in there who looked like Lacey and her mom. Maureen’s toes tapped across the linoleum.

  After an hour, it was their turn. They were ushered into a cubicle where a woman sat staring at her computer. Her nameplate read “Elizabeth Clancy,” and someone had stuck glittery star stickers along its edges in a neat row. Maureen motioned for Lacey to sit in the only chair and glanced around nervously until Elizabeth Clancy reached around her desk and retrieved a folding chair.

  “What can I help you with?” Elizabeth said as Maureen settled into the chair.

  “It’s this letter you guys sent my daughter.” Maureen pulled it from her coat pocket and held it out. “She—we requested identifiable information, and it says her biological mother doesn’t want to be contacted.”

  “Hmm.” Elizabeth flicked the letter open with one hand and glanced at it. “And are you the sole adoptive parent?” She lowered her chin to glare at Maureen from over her glasses.

  “Yes.” Maureen folded her hands in her lap.

  “Hmm.” Elizabeth began to type something into her computer. There was a plaque hanging on her cubicle wall. In jaunty Comic Sans, it said, “Well-behaved women seldom make history.” Lacey stared at it until the letters ceased to make sense.

  Elizabeth pushed her glasses up the bridge of her nose and squinted at the screen. “Yes, the letter is correct.” She slid the sheet across her desk. “The biological mother did not sign the identifiable information release.” She looked straight at Lacey. “Means she does not wish to be contacted,” she added unhelpfully.

  “But that can’t be right,” Maureen said. She placed her hand on the paper and didn’t pick it up. “It’s very rare that birth mothers don’t want to get in touch with their children. Everybody says so.”

  “It’s rare, but it does happen.” Elizabeth shrugged. “At the end of the day, we need to respect her wishes.”

  “Respect her wishes? What kind of person wouldn’t want to know this girl?”

  Lacey looked up, startled.

  Maureen’s hands flew to her face, and she wiped briskly at her tears. “I just don’t understand.”

  Elizabeth glanced between Maureen and Lacey and sighed. “Look, I know it’s hard to hear, but adoption can be a very difficult process for the biological parents. Sometimes, it’s simply too painful for them to open that door again.” She took off her glasses and folded them into her palm. “I wish I had better news for you, but I’m afraid my hands are tied. Now, is there anything else I can help you with today?”

  “No.” Maureen sniffed. “No, that was it.” She didn’t look up as she took the letter and stuffed it into her pocketbook.

  Lacey knew Maureen was embarrassed. She tried to smile goodbye on her mom’s behalf as they left the cubicle, but Elizabeth was already frowning intently at her computer and typing something new.

  By the time they got back to the car, her mom had recovered. As she slung her arm over Lacey’s headrest to back out of the parking spot, her hand brushed gently over the crown of Lacey’s head. It sent warmth all the way down into her toes.

  “Well, that was a bust,” Maureen said with a halfhearted chuckle. “Last night, I was reading online about these investigators. They call themselves ‘search angels.’ Apparently, with just a few details, they can help you find your—”

  “That’s okay,” Lacey said. “I really don’t need to.”

  “Are you sure? I don’t want you to grow up regretting anything.”

  “The only thing I regret is not tearing out all those stupid fake flowers. Who were they kidding with that shit?”

  Maureen threw her head back and laughed. “They were pretty terrible, weren’t they?”

  “The worst.” Lacey hoisted one foot up and fiddled with her shoelace, though it didn’t need retying. “Seriously, Mom. I’m fine. I kinda wish you would drop it.”

  Maureen grew quiet until they reached a stoplight. She patted Lacey’s knee and said, “Consider it dropped.”

  * * *

  “You’ll meet me after school so we can go to this pawn shop, right?”

  “Yeah,” Lacey said, opening Ella’s bedroom door. “You sure your mom won’t mind?”

  Ella shrugged as she thumped down the stairs, one hand skimming the bannister. “She probably won’t even notice. She’ll be busy with other stuff.” She paused, and as if on cue, Diane’s voice echoed up the stairwell from the kitchen.

  “Yes, I heard you, dammit,” she was saying. “I was there when John drafted it for Christ’s sake. I’m just having a hard time understanding why he amended it to this particular arrangement. He knows how I feel about—”

  In the silence that followed, Ella turned and raised her eyebrows at Lacey. “See?” she stage-whispered. “She said he knows, not he knew. He’s still alive.” She skipped down the remaining steps and out the front door.

  Lacey swallowed her response and followed her.

  They barely made it to the sidewal
k before the door opened behind them again. “Ella, wait!” Diane said, phone clutched to her chest. She hesitated only a moment before running down to the sidewalk in her stocking feet.

  Ella stopped, staring out at the street.

  “Are you sure you want to go to school today?” Diane said when she’d reached them. “You could stay home with me and watch TV. I could make you grilled cheese and soup.” She tugged lightly on the handle at the top of Ella’s backpack.

  Ella jerked away. “No.” She gripped her backpack straps with both hands. “I’m going,” she said and walked away without a single glance back.

  Diane turned to Lacey, waiting for something. Her eyes roamed Lacey’s face.

  Lacey tried not to look away and said, “I’m sorry.”

  Diane’s mouth pursed. There was a particular shade of lipstick she always wore, a sort of coral pink. Lacey used to wonder how she got the lines so precise. Now, her lips were bare, cracked. There was a tiny spot of blood in one corner where she’d chewed it too much. Diane nodded once, folded her arms across her chest, and walked back to the house. “Be careful with my daughter,” she said with her back turned. “You fucking addict,” she said, or maybe it was just the beetle who added that part.

  Chapter Eleven

  February 27, 1998

  Annie Fitzpatrick was seventeen when she took the pregnancy test. She locked the door of the basement powder room and wedged a chair from her father’s workbench up under the doorknob, even though hardly anyone came down there. The bathroom wasn’t even finished, the floor still concrete, and she could feel the dirt and dust through her socks while she tried to aim her pee into the tiny plastic cup.

  The cup was warm when she finished, almost disturbingly so. She tried not to dwell on it too much as she placed it on the tissue she’d laid out on the sink counter. She leaned over and read the instructions she’d tossed on the floor and tore open the packaging on the test itself. She dipped the test into the pee.

  Now, she was supposed to wait. For ten minutes, according to the instructions. Which seemed like an awfully long time, considering. She stood up and studied her face in the mirror. She’d forgotten to line her eyes that morning, and she looked so much younger that way. Innocent, even.

  She wasn’t, though. She brushed her bangs to one side. Her boyfriend had just left for Alaska, along with his brother and a passel of other Devil’s Purse boys. Her ex-boyfriend. They made a mutual decision to break up the night before his flight. He’d be fishing out of a village with only two phones, and she wasn’t about to keep up a relationship via letter. They’d had one last night in the bed of his Dodge Ram, and it was reckless in the way that goodbye sex sometimes was. She’d loved the fact that he’d had his own car, a nice used one that he paid for with his own summer earnings and only a little help from his parents.

  And now she’d gotten maybe pregnant, literally in the back of a truck.

  It had to have been ten minutes by now. She held her breath and leaned in to look. She’d heard these things could have false positives with faint second lines.

  Hers wasn’t faint. It was there. Two harsh lines. Definitely pregnant. Her stomach turned all the way over. She gasped for air around it. “Shit,” she whispered and sat down on the floor. It was the first time she’d sworn under her parents’ roof, and a little thrill frizzed between her shoulders in spite of everything. She thunked her head back against the unpainted drywall and closed her eyes. They burned with tears. She took a deep breath and tried to slow her heartbeat, thrumming in her throat. How could this happen?

  She couldn’t tell her ex. He’d probably left on a fishing trip by now and wouldn’t even be back on land to read a letter until God knew when. Besides, she wasn’t sure he’d be much help. They’d met during one of her shifts at the local movie theater when he was on a date with another girl. He seemed to intuit that his white, cockeyed grin was irresistible enough that she would overlook his date. He seemed not to recognize Annie, even though they’d both gone to DP High.

  In other words, they were a fling, something with which to fill the time, although she supposed they’d been exclusive. Her parents didn’t even know about him. He would have no clue what to do with this accusatory plastic stick.

  And her friends? She didn’t have very many, or at least none who she could trust not to spill the news elsewhere. In a town like this, it would spread in a second, and then she wouldn’t be able to walk down the halls without the whispers sticking to her skin like cobwebs.

  Which pretty much just left her parents. Annie almost laughed at the thought of telling them. Talk about a meltdown of epic proportions. She dipped her head down between her legs, pushing her knees into her temples. From there, she studied her stomach. She poked at the tiny bulge of flesh that always appeared there when she bent like this. It dimpled around her finger. She felt her face start to compress with a sob, but she swallowed it down. No time for that.

  She poured her urine into the toilet and flushed. She rinsed out the cup and wrapped it in a wad of toilet paper along with the test. She stuck it all up under her shirt to throw out later, at work maybe. At least she’d worn a sweatshirt that day. You could barely tell she was hiding something under there. She gathered a handful of nails and screws from her dad’s dusty toolbox on her way up the stairs.

  “There you are,” her mom said when she emerged from the basement. She stood up from the oven, where she’d been checking on her Tuesday night tuna noodle casserole. “Dinner’s almost ready. What were you doing down there?”

  “Grabbing some stuff I need for a shop project.” She held out her hand.

  Her mother shook her head. They’d had a long, drawn-out fight when Annie’d told her she wanted to take shop instead of presentation skills, like a proper future member of corporate society. Apparently, the fact that Annie had found working with her hands fun and interesting was not reason enough for her mom.

  “I’ll be right back,” Annie said and headed up the stairs to her room.

  “Okay, but remember, dinner is in five minutes!” her mom called up after her.

  Annie suppressed a sigh. They had had dinner at the exact same time every single night since she was a kid.

  She dumped the nails and screws onto her desk. One or two rolled onto her carpet, a pink monstrosity she’d picked out when she was six. The toilet paper bundle went into her backpack, buried under her astronomy textbook and some old, crumpled homework assignments. She hoped it wouldn’t smell too much like pee. That would be a hard one to explain.

  At six o’clock exactly, she sat down at the table with her parents. Her mom served them from the casserole dish: two scoops for her father, one and a half for Annie, and one for herself. Iceberg lettuce with ranch dressing and garlic bread all around. Annie picked at her plate, peeling individual egg noodles out of the congealed mass, and watched her parents.

  They were so painfully polite with each other. She asked him how his day was as she unfolded her napkin. He regaled them all with stories from his fascinating life as an accountant. He, in turn, asked her mom about the PTO meeting. Annie had heard they were making a movie starring Robin Williams where he played a robot servant. Her parents were something like that.

  Then again, she seemed to be having no trouble keeping this secret from them, the biggest secret possible. She told them about pop quizzes and the upcoming winter formal with the exact same noncommittal tone she always used with them. She was feeling kind of numb about it all, actually. Only the slightest sting in her eyes when she considered shielding them from this for the rest of her life. Maybe she was a sociopath.

  In bed that night, she drew the covers up to her chin and tried to keep her thoughts straight for long enough to figure out what the hell she should do. She’d always assumed she’d have kids, in a vague, far-off kind of way. Being a mom wasn’t her number-one goal in life right now, though. Not even close. She wasn�
�t sure what her number-one goal was yet, but it definitely wasn’t that. Plus, she was pretty sure she’d make an awful mom at this point. Minimum wage at the movie theater probably wouldn’t cover diapers, and between that and school, she’d barely be around for the kid.

  The thought of ending the pregnancy was not something she could study straight on. At seventeen in Massachusetts, she would need her parents’ signatures to have the procedure done. Her churchgoing, tuna casserole–eating parents. In theory, she could forge their signatures, but just over three years before, a man had shot five people in a Planned Parenthood clinic in Brookline, less than an hour away from Devil’s Purse. She learned all the details in school when they came back from Christmas break. Two receptionists had died. The president had called it terrorism. The gunman had asked if it was the preterm clinic before taking out his gun and saying something religious about God or Jesus. The FBI had hunted for two days before they found him. The clinics didn’t seem safe to her.

  There was adoption. She thought she liked the idea of giving another family a chance to raise a baby, maybe a couple who really wanted one but couldn’t have their own. She couldn’t picture such a couple, what they looked like or what she wanted them to say. But there were plenty of them out there, she was sure.

  Adoption meant carrying the baby to term, which meant telling her parents. The thought made her feel sick. She would tell them at some point. Soon, she promised herself as she settled back into her pillows. She would find a way.

  And she meant to, she did. But every time she opened her mouth, over breakfast while her dad sipped his coffee or in the afternoons when she did her homework and her mom cooked dinner, she would picture their faces. Her dad would be furious, no doubt, in that scary-quiet way he had whenever she missed curfew. And her mom would probably cry.

  At first, it was fairly easy to hide the pregnancy. It was winter in New England, so she layered old flannel shirts and her puffy jacket over her slowly growing belly. Every once in a while, she had to rush to the bathroom to puke, peering under the other stalls afterward to make sure no one had heard, but that was the only symptom she had. Sometimes, she would look down in class to make sure it was still there, that hard, round mound. It felt like something entirely separate from her body. Doctor’s appointments were out of the question, and she couldn’t even think about using the family computer to look up adoption agencies or anything for fear of her parents somehow finding evidence.