by Cynthia Hand
I couldn’t help it—an incredulous laugh slipped out. “Oh my God. Why?”
“It’s complicated.”
“I think Evelyn’s a total she-demon, so it doesn’t seem that complicated to me.” I lowered myself carefully onto the couch next to him. “Are you going to be okay?”
“I’m fine.”
It struck me then that, in so many ways, he and I are exactly alike. “Are you sad?” I asked.
“I’m sorry about Evelyn,” he said. “How she treated you.”
“Which time?”
He gave a miserable, humorless laugh. “Do you want to come home? You asked me if you could come home, before. Did you mean it?”
My breath caught. Of course I’d said that. But did I mean it? Would I want to go home, if Evelyn was gone?
Dad glanced around the room, like he finally cared and was figuring out if this place I’ve been living in was good enough for his little girl. I was instantly aware of the shabby carpet, the dinosaur television straight out of the eighties, the faint stain on the couch cushion right under my leg.
Dad sighed. “If you feel like I pushed you into this—being here, giving up this baby, any of it, you don’t have to do it, honey.”
“You didn’t push me,” I said automatically. “I made the decision on my own.”
“But if you want to come home. If you want to bring the baby home, too, you can. I’ll help you. We could hire a nanny.”
I started laughing that self-defense laugh where I can’t stop. I laughed and laughed until I peed a little. Then I stood up.
“What about your constituents? It would look bad for you. You’d come off as a hypocrite. It’d hurt your career.”
“I could handle it,” he said.
I felt like I was going to throw up. I haven’t vomited in a while, I realized. Almost nine months in, and I’m finally past the morning sickness. Hooray for the small favors.
Dad stood up, too. He had come to tell me something, and he had. He could now check that errand off the list. It was time to flee. “Think about it,” he said.
“I will.”
I was thinking about it as I walked him outside and down the sidewalk to where he’d parked his car on the street. I was thinking about it hard.
“I’ll be in touch,” he said, which I thought was a strange thing to say to your daughter. It must have been habit—what he tells people at the end of a meeting. In touch. But that doesn’t mean he actually wants to touch me.
“Bye, Dad.” I went to hug him, but my belly got in the way.
I tried to imagine the life he’d just offered me: the big brick house on the hill, with him and me and no Evelyn and possibly a nanny. And you.
You. Who currently has the hiccups.
You could be mine again. I could hold you and talk to you and play you all my records and push you around in a stroller and actually be your mother.
The word felt like it got stuck in my throat.
Mother.
And then I thought, having access to a nanny doesn’t suddenly turn me into a suitable mother. The problem was never that I wouldn’t have childcare. It wasn’t Evelyn. Or my dad’s career. Or that I wouldn’t have money to feed and clothe you, like so many of the girls here at Booth have to struggle so hard to do.
The problem was that I’m not mother material. Not yet, anyway. Maybe not ever.
“Who’s that?” Dad said, and a car door slammed, and I looked up to see Ted ambling up the sidewalk toward us.
It was a full day of visitors here at Booth.
“Hi,” I said. “Long time, no see.” I meant this to be funny, since I’d only seen Ted a week ago.
“Hi.” He handed me something small and disc-shaped wrapped in brown paper. “They have these great chocolate chip cookies at the SUB today. I brought you one.”
“Thanks.” I stared at him, charmed and suddenly hungry and wildly confused. I like Ted. I think about him, probably more than I should. I mean, what pregnant girl gets a crush on her baby daddy’s former roommate who she hardly knows?
But, and I think this is an equally important question, who visits a pregnant girl at a home for unwed mothers to bring her a cookie?
“Oh. And I brought you this.” He handed me an envelope.
I peeked inside. It was the non-identifying information form I’d given Dawson last week, all filled out, it looked like, in Dawson’s messy scrawl.
“Thank you,” I said.
You shifted inside me. I instinctively put my hand on my belly and rubbed. It’s getting crowded in there.
It was getting pretty crowded out here, too.
“Don’t tell me this is the father,” Dad said then in this hard voice that made me turn to look at him. He seemed like a different person than he had ten minutes before, staring down Ted with this furious expression like he was considering taking a swing at him.
Ted looked genuinely alarmed and embarrassed, which didn’t help matters. “Um, sir, I—”
Dad kept going. “Where are you from?”
Oh, NOW he gets protective, I thought, now he cares. But then I watched his lip actually curl back, and I realized, he wasn’t acting like this because he was trying to protect me, his poor pregnant daughter.
Ted said the name of the college.
Dad shook his head. “No. Before that. Where’s your family from?”
Ted’s jaw tightened. “Uh, Homedale? I also have some family in Jerome. But my parents live in Homedale.”
“You should be ashamed,” Dad snarled. “You know you don’t belong with my daughter.”
Right. So this was because Ted doesn’t look white. Or white enough, anyway.
This was because, apparently, my dad’s a racist.
Excuse me, X, but I lost it for a minute.
“He is the father,” I blurted out. “So can he move in with us, too, Dad? Help raise our daughter? I could even marry him, if you wanted.” I tried not to notice the way Ted’s face went pale and slack with amazement. I kept on talking. “We’d be one big happy family then, wouldn’t we? That’d be nice. I can picture our Christmas card.”
“I don’t think that’s a good idea.” Dad cleared his throat again. “You’re doing the right thing with the adoption.”
At that moment I hated him, because I knew. It wasn’t only Ted my dad was rejecting here. It was you too, X, if he thought Ted was your father. Just like that, he’d decided he couldn’t love you.
But I pretended not to understand. “What, now I can’t come to live with you again, either? Why not? What’s wrong, Dad?”
He turned and unlocked his car. “We’ll talk about it later.”
“Will we?”
He didn’t answer. He got into his car and drove away.
So that’s a no.
I turned to Ted, who was still standing in the middle of the sidewalk with his shoulders kind of caved in, looking at me.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “There’s no excuse for him.”
“What about you?”
“I don’t know why I said you were the father.”
“I do. You wanted to stick it to him.”
“Maybe.”
“I should go,” Ted said.
I tried to fix it. “Ted, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to—”
“It’s okay,” he said. “I just don’t really like being used. Enjoy the cookie.”
“Wait, can I at least call you?”
“Uh, sure,” he said, but I could tell he meant no. Then he got back in his car and drove away.
It’s been a lonesome afternoon. But today has been illuminating. It’s made me face two big truths that I’ve been dancing around lately:
I am doing the right thing with the adoption. I need to get you out of here, X, get you somewhere you’ll have a chance to grow up around decent people.
I can’t go back to living with my dad, not even after you’re born. I can’t go home. I’m not even sure, at this point, where my home is.
Now I only ha
ve to figure out where I’m going to go.
S
35
“I will sail my vessel,” Nyla’s singing really loud, “till the river runs dry. Like a bird before the wind, these waters are my sky . . .”
It’s a fine Sunday morning, cold but with clear blue skies. There’s snow on the ground today, and the sun is shining. Mom and Dad think I’m at the strike-the-set party and then staying over at Nyla’s tonight, but instead we’re taking a little drive with Garth Brooks.
I didn’t tell my parents about the letter. Not yet. I didn’t want to excite my mother, is how I explained this decision to Nyla. There’s only so much that her new heart can take. But the real reason for not telling Mom is a question that’s been bugging me since last night.
What if she doesn’t want me to get this letter anymore, now that she’s not dying?
And now that I know for certain that there is a letter from my birth mother, and all I have to do is show up to get it, it hasn’t felt like a choice.
I have to see this letter.
Or letters, plural. That part was a bit unclear.
So it’s just Nyla and me, cruising along in Bernice with the heater on high, singing country songs, driving west, again. To Boise, again. Cutting school tomorrow, again. Paying a visit to the Bureau of Vital Records and Health Statistics. Again.
But this time it’s different.
“You okay over there?” Nyla asks, glancing at me.
“Yeah,” I say tensely. My stomach rolls. I try to focus on the faraway horizon and not the stuff we’re zooming past.
“Well, I know I’m freaking out a little,” she says. “So I can’t imagine how you’re feeling.”
I’m trying to manage my expectations. I’ve been burned so many times with this adoption thing in the past few months that the truth about my birth mother has started to feel like a myth, something that doesn’t exist in reality. Like a fairy tale.
“What if this is opening up a can of worms, like you said?” I ask suddenly. “What if I shouldn’t do this?”
She grips the steering wheel more tightly. “It’s just a letter, Cass. You can decide what to do about it after you read it.”
“Right, but what if reading it really messes me up? I can’t unread it.”
“I don’t know. But if there was a letter from my mother, I would want to read it,” Nyla says quietly. “No matter what.”
I readjust my seat belt along my collarbone. I can’t get comfortable. “It’s just a letter,” I say again.
The next morning we show up at the Bureau of Vital Records and Health Statistics the moment they open. This time I am issued number E05, and the current number is E03. Nyla and I take a seat in the waiting room.
“What makes a record vital, exactly?” Nyla asks, cocking her head to one side.
I don’t know. This place feels pretty vital to me.
She takes out a ball of fuzzy, bright yellow yarn.
“What is that?” I ask her.
“It will be a hat for your mom. She told me once that yellow is the color of happiness. Of sunshine and daisies and baby ducks. So I’m making her a happiness hat.”
I sigh and twist the star ring on my finger guiltily.
“Your mom is going to be fine.” Nyla arranges the yarn and the needles and starts to knit, a mesmerizing, repetitive motion that instantly makes me feel calmer. “It was her idea, remember?”
“I know. But what if she changes her mind?”
“What if she doesn’t?”
My phone buzzes. A text from Bastian. I’ve received a barrage of texts from him over the last twenty-four hours, but I haven’t answered him yet.
Bastian: You and Nyla skipped the cast party. Now I’m at school and you’re both not here. This is getting ridiculous. Where are you? Please, you can’t avoid me forever. We need to talk.
I can practically hear the hurt in his voice.
I sigh. He deserves some kind of answer.
Me: I’m not avoiding you. Something came up, and I had to skip the cast party and go to Boise to take care of it.
Bastian: Boise? What’s in Boise?
Nyla glances at my phone. “Bastian? Oh boy. Here we go.”
Of course I’ve already told her everything. Here’s how she responded:
“Well, that makes sense.”
And I said, “Sense? What kind of sense does that make?”
“He said kissing you was the first time he’d ever kissed a girl. Not the first time he’d ever been kissed.”
“Oh. Oh.”
“We should have known. He loves Hello, Dolly! And he has excellent taste in shoes.”
“Nyla,” I explained. “Not every gay man loves musicals and has good shoes. They’re all individual people. Like my uncle Pete. He’s a florist, but he also has a scraggly beard and rides a Harley.”
“Oh, right, your uncle Pete.”
And now she seems to think the entire thing with Bastian is kind of sweet and also vastly amusing.
“Tell Bastian hello from me,” she says now.
Bastian: Look, I’m sorry. Please forgive me. I want us to be friends, Cass.
That’s what he always wanted, wasn’t it? That’s the word he used. Friends. Why didn’t I listen to his words?
Bastian: I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry.
Me: Don’t be sorry! I’m the one who should be apologizing. It was me who misinterpreted everything. I completely misread your signals. But it really is fine. I’m over it.
It’s true, I find as I type the words. I’m fine. I mean, I’m still wildly embarrassed, especially when I think of how it must have looked when I flung myself into Bastian’s unsuspecting arms. Or how I screamed “go away” at him through the front door. But my heart didn’t get broken over Bastian Banks. My heart is still very much intact.
Bastian: Wait, you’re OVER it?
Me: I want to be friends, too. I already have a best friend, obviously, but let’s be second-best friends. Okay?
Bastian: Sure. Second-best friends.
Me: Oh, and Nyla says hello.
“Want me to teach you to knit again?” Nyla asks, dangling the will-be-a-hat at me. “It might get your mind off things.”
I shake my head. The last thing I need is to get tangled up in a mess of yarn right now.
Nyla sighs and throws the hat back into her bag. “You’re killing me here, Smalls. I can’t knit when there’s so much tension in the air. I keep messing up.” She grabs a magazine and flips through it. I don’t know who’s more nervous right now, her or me.
Someone calls number E05.
I thrust my phone into my pocket and stand up.
“Hello, my name is Cassandra McMurtrey,” I tell the woman at the counter. “I got a call on Friday regarding some letters that are being held for me?”
“Oh, yes,” says the woman, smiling warmly. She turns and calls into the back. “Linda!”
I get that surreal feeling again as Linda steps up to the counter. Maybe it’s because Linda is wearing the same pink sweater she had on last time. In fact, she looks exactly the same as she did the last time I saw her—the same pearl earrings, the same perfectly manicured pink fingernails, the same hair. Only this time she doesn’t look annoyed. In fact, she seems happy to see me.
“I came for the—”
“Letters,” she says. “I know. Sign here.”
I sign a paper and show her my various forms of ID, which she hardly glances at, because she knows I’m me.
“I have to say, I’ve never seen anything quite like this,” she says as we’re filling out the paperwork. “It’s unusual, to say the least.”
I stare at her. I’m floating somewhere above my body again, like my head is a balloon full of helium bobbing near the ceiling and I’m holding on to it by the string.
“Here you go.” She reaches down and pulls out a large stack of yellowed envelopes, held together by a red rubber band. She plops them onto the counter in front of me. “All yours.”
“All of them?” It seems impossible that these could all be for me.
Linda beams. “All of them. Good luck.”
I fall back into my body for a second so I can draw the stack to my chest and lift it off the counter. It’s not as heavy as Linda made it look. I turn and float over to Nyla, who glances up at me.
“Ready to—whoa,” she says. “What the what?”
I sink into the chair beside her. I should wait until I get somewhere private, but I’m not exactly in control of my body right now. I don’t wait. I pull the top letter free from the rubber band and open it. Inside is a piece of yellow paper, and when I unfold that, there’s the weird handwriting I recognize from the non-identifying information form. Half cursive, half print.
It’s her. She wrote this. My birth mother wrote this.
Dear X,
Today Melly has us writing letters to our babies. . . .
I fold the letter up again quickly, stuff it back into the envelope and the envelope back into the pile. I snap the rubber band around them.
“Hey.” Nyla touches my shoulder. “Just breathe.”
I look up at her. A tear trickles down my cheek.
She reaches up and brushes it away. “It’s going to be okay, Cass.”
“I know.” I take a deep, shuddering breath.
She stares at the pile in my lap. “So all of these are letters from your birth mother?”
“I think so.”
“Holy crap,” she murmurs.
Yeah. Once again, that about sums it up.
36
Back in the car, as we’re driving to Idaho Falls, I read the letters—all seventeen of them—in the space of an hour. At one point Nyla has to pull over so I can throw up at the side of the road, because reading in the car really exacerbates my car sickness, but I can’t stop. I keep reading, one letter after another, in a rush, like I’m at the birth-mother buffet and it’s all you can eat. I gobble the letters up. Then I read them aloud to Nyla, and we spend the rest of the ride in silence, mostly, digesting the letters. These words, written for me.
When Nyla finally drops me off, I stagger back into my house and lock myself in my room and read each letter again slowly, taking it sentence by sentence, line by line, until they all start to bleed together into a single conversation.