So. Damn. Much. My knees almost collapse under the weight of my revelation. It feels like my shoulders are being crushed by a giant tidal wave that is both pushing me under and drowning me. It sucks my breath from me. In that moment of stark clarity, all the things we argued about and got petty about with each other cease to matter. They are all gone in a flash. In losing her, I finally have the clarity to see her, something that had been fuzzy during the last year.
I still love Natalie.
That should not be a great revelation to have about my wife. I get that. But there, in that moment, faced with the actions that decimated her and us, I realize the full extent of my feelings for her.
That epiphany made shoving my work back on my desk, donning my coat, and walking out the door without another glance as easy as walking out of a grocery store. I am so done here. It is over. Whatever happens to me from here on out, it won’t be here.
****
It is the middle of the night now. I pull onto our street and my stomach twists. There are no lights on. Natalie is a careful person. Especially when it comes to outdoor lighting. Nothing. I knew before I walked through the open front door, which was not locked, that she is gone. I walk through the house, finding evidence of only a few things missing. Her dad’s baseball mitt, a beloved possession. A few photos. I open her drawers. I’m pretty sure they were messed up. I don’t know exactly. She rarely keeps things folded. She doesn’t believe in an iron. But I know she’s gone.
The real pisser is, as I sit down on our rumpled bed, I have no idea where she’s gone. Dustin? Maybe. But since he’s my brother, I think she’ll try to keep my family out of it. Shame makes my skin heat up as I think of them finding out. My parents… Dustin… shit! They will never speak to me again. Maybe no one will.
She has friends at work. Her entire life, like mine, is her career. But somehow, I can only see her fierce pride. And her humiliation. I don’t picture her going there with that. It would hurt and embarrass her, and I can’t imagine her letting anyone she works with see her as either of those things. She always keeps a cool, professional exterior at all times with her coworkers. As a woman cop, she works too long and hard to be judged just for being a woman. She works harder than anyone I know, and dutifully hones the necessary skills. She can be calm, cool, rational and analytical. She keeps her emotions under guard. Didn’t she keep all her emotions tucked far away from everyone, even me? I clench my fist as my anger starts to percolate. She keeps a lot from me too, not just those whom she works with.
So much so, I haven’t the faintest idea whom she’d run to about this.
Natalie
Town. Ellensburg to be exact, or so my GPS says. It feels like a stretch to call the place where I’ve pulled into a town. I’m just off the highway in the parking lot of a Super 8 motel. I can see far off into the distance. The land is flat, like one would expect to find the ocean, but it’s all land; and the sky seems like an endless dome of blue over me. I tap my fingers on my steering wheel, feeling completely aimless. My car idles. I glance around. McDonalds. Dairy King. A Starbucks. A truck stop with gas and a café. They all surround me, but it’s completely underwhelming. After traveling across three states in a numbing, catatonic stupor, all I keep thinking is, This is it? An abundant display of all things American and cheap? Cheap food. Cheap lodging. I notice some mountains with purple smudges and trees mixed in here and there. Farms dot the horizon. The sign ahead of me indicates Central Washington University is up ahead. I have no idea what to do now. I’m here. So what? So the hell what if I’m here? No one knows I came here. No one knows I was coming here. No one knows where I am, or what I’m doing, including me. It’s tempting to swing a U–turn and head back down the interstate, going further down the same road I’ve been traveling for the last three days. I’m anonymous. Completely and utterly anonymous to those I pass and all I pass through.
The anonymity makes me feel numb and invisible. And silent. My entire insides feel frozen. I don’t want to think about Sam or our past, and definitely not what just happened. Thoughts of Sam, however, stubbornly stab through my numbness with the laser precision of a scalpel. I can’t deal with the sharp, sucker–punch–in–the–gut sensations. So I’m not thinking or feeling. I’m just numb. Teflon. Rubber. I’m trying to convince myself I’m anything but who and what I really am.
I finally park and grab my keys and purse before heading towards the café. I enter a large room, brightly lit, which looks out towards the parking lot. It is half full of semi–trucks, and beyond that, all I can see is farm land, which acts as a backdrop. Big red booths with yellow Formica tables fill the space. It’s mid–morning and the pleasant buzz of voices combined with the clatter of dishes cheer up the atmosphere. It has the familiarity of any small–town diner/café/truck stop. I think every town must have one. This place with its worn, ripped booths from all the years and all the patrons probably attracts most of its customers from town to eat there. Although it’s unhealthy, it most likely is melt–in–your–mouth good.
I slide into a booth and pick up the large, rectangular menu, coated in plastic and smeared by greasy fingerprints. I browse it, but nothing appeals to me. My stomach is queasy. Now that I’m here in Ellensburg, the town I believe my birth mother lives in, I feel totally conspicuous. It seems like any person passing by me should stop by my table and recognize me, which is ridiculous. My first clue that isn’t true, however, is my supposed half–sister. She is as lily–white as a snowflake. I’m sure my birth mother is also white, and I’m Latino. Somehow, I don’t expect my birth mother to be white.
Still, I feel as if I should have scarlet letter on my back somehow indicating what I’m doing here. Even though I don’t have the foggiest idea why.
“Hey, hon, you want to start with a coffee?”
I jerk to attention as the terse waitress comes beside me with an empty tray in her hands. I nod. “Yes, thanks.”
“Unless you already know what you want?” The waitress nods at my menu, which has dropped flat on the table while my thoughts drift off into space. I nod again. “Uh, sure. How about just the oatmeal?”
“Okay. Easy enough. Be right back.”
In not even three minutes, the fast-moving woman wearing the red–and–white uniform of the establishment returns with a half-full pot of coffee. She deftly flips over the white cup that is already set. “You visiting a student there at the college?”
I glance up. An opening! A perfect, clear, easy opening to ask about the name Hendricks. It’s all I have. I wasn’t sure I would even stick around here long enough to inquire, but a casual inquiry is the perfect opener.
“Uh, yes. I think. She’s a local. A friend I met recently. She told me to look her up if I was ever in town. Do you know a Christina Hendricks?”
The woman was only half listening as she filled the cup. “Hmm. Christina? No. But I had a Hendricks who installed central heating in my old, drafty house a few years back. Will Hendricks. Any relation?”
How should I know? But any Hendricks seemed a good place to start. Thank God their name wasn’t Smith, or Brown, or something even more generic than Hendricks. “Uh, yes. Sure. You wouldn’t happen to remember their number?”
“Nah. Look it up. He advertises under Hendricks Heating and Cooling Systems.”
And there it was! I smiled my thanks and stared into the black depths of my coffee. I had a name. A resource. A place to start. I can’t believe this. Too bad I threw my phone out or I would’ve just looked it up. Stupid, careless and short–sighted move on my part. And I’m so freaking stubborn I won’t just ask someone for help.
I eat the oatmeal she serves ten minutes later. Lead burdens my legs as I get up and take my meager bill to the front cash register. A young kid stands there who quickly handles my transaction. As I turn to leave, on a whim I ask, “May I see your telephone book?”
The kid smiles. “Phone book? I don’t even know if we have one. Hold up.” He leans down behind the counter and starts
ruffling all around it. He comes back up a minute later blowing dust off of one whose date shows it being several years old. I step to the side and take the book with a curt Thanks. I’m still numb. Out of body. I find it. A small advertisement for Hendricks Heating and Cooling Systems with a number. I write it down on the back of a gum wrapper I dig out of my purse. I push the book away and turn to leave.
What do I do with this now? I have no idea. Again in my car, I stare at the gum wrapper. Is this just some stranger’s phone number? Or is it the number? I wish now I’d taken Christina’s number when she came to me. I intended at the time to never, ever see her again, much less investigate her claims and her family. But now? I have a business number. What do I do? Call it and ask for Christina?
There’s a relic of a phone booth tucked off behind the front office of the motel in front of me. I groan. Really? A pay phone? Weren’t those all scrapped by metal recyclers by now? But no, right there, as if waiting for me, is a phone. They are nowhere else, and yet in middle of nowhere, I find one? I’m not a believer in fate, and I don’t usually think that signs can guide us to places where we should be, but this coincidence is too much to deny.
I face criminals. I face situations where I don’t always know what the outcome will be before going into it. Some things like domestic abuse calls, I handle without much hesitation. But this? An innocuous phone booth? I wish now for the confidence of my chosen profession. I feel devoid of it in ways I’ve never known before, but I finally cross the parking lot. There is a phonebook there too. I haven’t looked at one in a few decades, and I find two in one day now? I reach down and glance through the white pages that list the local residences. There are three Hendricks and one is W. Hendricks. It’s a different number. Their home residence? Sighing, I copy it down too. Now I have two leads. And two other Hendricks residences to try.
Taking in a slow breath, I dig the change out of my purse. I put the change in the slot and dial before my nerves motivate me to cease and desist my efforts. It starts to ring and my heart lodges right up into my throat. Not really, but my nerves soon have my fingers tapping the wall near me. The rings sound loud and insistent. Hang up! My brain can hear me screaming in a secret corner to hang up. Two. Three. Four—
Shit. There’s an answer. A woman’s voice says simply, “Hello?”
I’m shocked that anyone answered and pull the receiver off my ear and stare at it as if expecting it to morph into a writhing snake before striking me in the face. But no. Just a black, typical phone receiver. I jerk it back to my ear and hear the tail end of the woman’s next Hello? Her tone reveals her annoyance at my lack of response. She’s going to hang up. I should let her. Let this be done and over with. Don’t do this. Just move on. Go back to the disaster I already have going on. But then…
“Hi.”
There’s a pause after my rushed greeting. “Can I help you?”
I blow out a breath but it doesn’t do much to soothe my nerves. “Yes, I, uh was looking for Christina.”
There. That would determine if I called the right number. It is probably the wrong number. Just some woman I’ll never meet. Just—
“Oh, she’s still at school. She won’t be home until next week. You can reach her on her cell phone. Who is this?” The woman’s voice warms slightly, believing me a friend of her daughter’s. Her daughter who must be at college. Christina would be about that age. This woman… and it socks me in the gut this time… this woman could be my birth mother!
“That’s all right; I’ll just call… some other time.”
Maybe. Never. No. I’ll be gone. Most likely back to San Francisco. Right? I mean how long can I stay hidden and running? How much longer can I avoid this? I can’t. I know that somewhere in my heart, but something else inside me wants to keep running.
Is it my tentative pause? The woman is silent. I feel a shift in something. Her breathing perhaps? I don’t know how, but I swear, I can physically feel the woman’s energy changing.
“Are you a friend of hers?” The tone is soft and crisp. Like she’s trying to keep herself steady.
I squeeze my eyelids shut. Hang up. Hang the fucking phone up! I scream inside my head. But I remain… silent. It goes on and on. Her breathing changes again and she seems to take in a sharp gasp. Is this one of Christina’s sisters? I want to think so, but somehow, I know it’s a middle–aged woman I’m talking to. I know for sure, I just know deep down, in the sinking of my stomach, this voice belongs to my mother.
Finally, she says, “Please call back. She’ll want you to.”
With that surety, I suspect she somehow figured out who I am. Is it the mysterious way I answer?
“Um… how do you know who I am?”
She is quiet. “I wondered if you’d ever try to find her. She never thought you would. But she’s black–and–white about things like that. She’s very young. She doesn’t understand sometimes how complicated things can be.”
“Things like us?”
“Yes, Natalie, things like this us.” Natalie. My name crosses her lips. Her voice shakes something deep inside me. I’ve never heard my biological mother speak my name. Assuming of course, this is she.
“Are you… I mean, is this…” I can’t get the words my mother past my throat, which feels swollen shut. I finally almost whisper, “Christina’s mother?”
Pause. Shuffling. I wonder what the woman is doing. I must be blowing her day to hell, just as Christina did mine that day. “Yes.” Her tone is heavy with reserve. Regret? Regret I’ve called? Or regret I exist? Or regret she now knows my name? “My name is Jessie. Jessie Hendricks.”
“Married to Will Hendricks, the Heating and Cooling Systems provider?”
She lets out a soft snort. “The one and only. You found us through an advertisement of the business?”
“Yes. Christina told me your last name and the town. Nothing else. I didn’t give her a chance.”
There’s another long pause. No idle chit–chat. We’re strangers. We don’t even know what the other looks like. Yet we can’t be totally casual or whatever to each other; because there is something. We do have some kind of connection. Wanted or not. It’s biological. And I’m still trying to grasp the name of my true mother: Jessie Hendricks. Her voice is nice. Feminine, clear, and kind of soft. She talks with confidence about Christina. From a quick glance, it seems she’s very much in Christina’s life like any normal mother would be.
“Would you like her cell phone number?”
“I don’t know.”
“The area code you’re calling from tells me you’re already here. In this area. I can’t believe it is only a coincidence you’re traveling through. I think… you came specifically to see her.”
“Well, I sure as shit didn’t come to meet you!” I snap, biting down on my tongue, and causing sharp pains to resonate in deep tugs throughout my body. I didn’t mean to say that. But typical me, I said it anyway. I never thought the phone booth would show the local number. I wasn’t prepared for this woman to know where I actually was. I thought I could hide longer, safe in my anonymity.
“Fair enough. But don’t let me stop you from knowing her. She isn’t me. She hasn’t hurt you. She never would.”
“What did she say about me?”
“That you were tall with dark hair. Half Latino. Which I knew, of course. She said you seemed confident, successful, happily married with a nice house and that your husband, Sam, seemed pretty cool. Her words, not mine. She was upset you wanted nothing to do with her. But she understood why too.”
Sam. Damn. There was that name again. Everywhere and in everything. Happily married. Who was ever happily married? Who knew if anyone really was? It had been a long while since I could classify myself as happily married.
“If I call her, she’ll come home and be here in two hours. She’d do it without blinking. Would you consider coming here?”
She knows her daughter. I feel it by the way she so easily speaks about and predicts her daughter’s
behavior. I squeeze the phone in my fingers. My real mom used to know everything about me. Before she died. I miss that connection. A relationship so close that people can speak for others. I suck in tears as a sharp jab of longing fills me and makes the back of my eyes sting. I want my mother back. The real one; the one who died. I want her now, here, to help me deal with what I witnessed Sam doing. I miss my mother. I don’t want this stranger.
Have I come here on this strange odyssey simply to search for someone to fill a dead woman’s shoes? I wilt and sag in the small phone booth. I don’t want a stranger, I want my real mom.
“Please, Natalie. If you’ve come this far, don’t let me stand in the way. I’ll even leave if you prefer. I’ll tell her where to meet you. Something. Give her some kind of chance here. She goes to college, which is just over two hours from here. You met Max too, right? Her boyfriend?”
I remember the kid, short and quiet. He was nice enough, and respectful too. He was Latino like me. I suppose that is something. They aren’t racists. Good to know. “Yeah. I remember him.”
“He lives in town here. Would you meet with him? At his house? He lives with my sister…” She trails off. “That sounds a little odd. Max and Christina… are cousins by adoption, so it can get awkward to explain. Anyway, you’d be welcome there. They… neither of them is responsible. I did it to you.”
Wow, I didn’t picture the first conversation… No. Scratch that. I never pictured we’d have any kind of conversation, ever, but here we were and already she admits she did something to me? I turn my shoulder and stare out with unseeing eyes at the parking lot. The few cars parked randomly before me blur. I don’t care what I’m looking at, yet it all seems to suddenly sharpen in my eyesight. I twist the old fashioned, metal phone cord that connects the receiver to the phone booth with my finger. I am tempted to forever end this conversation; not because of my anger over her abandoning me, but because the desperation I hear in this woman’s voice isn’t owing to any desire or need to meet me, but rather, because she is acting on her daughter’s behalf. Her daughter, my sister, who harbors an urgent desire and need to meet me. And, good mother that Jessie is, she wants to make sure that happens. I can hear the guilt in her voice, not towards me, but towards Christina.
Leanne Davis - Natalie (Daughters Series #2) Page 4