“The worst. I don’t know about you, but I could use a drink.”
I nodded absently. The room had begun to seem close and hot, and my equilibrium was off. I ran the back of my hand over my forehead, felt dampness. “I can’t stay in here.”
“We’ll talk outside. I’ll be right with you.” When I didn’t move, John made a shooing motion. “Go!”
I went, stood at the foot of the steps, looking around. On the side of the knoll where John’s small yellow house sat was a bench, old and splintery, that he and Joey had stolen years before from a downtown bus stop. When I lowered myself onto it, my limbs felt leaden and I had a premonition of what it would feel like to be a very old woman.
The night was clear and cold. Below me spread the pinkish streetlights of the quiet neighborhood and San Diego’s nearby Encanto district. They backlit the yucca trees that crowded the downslope, their clumps of long leaves leaning together like the heads of shaggy-haired people in hushed conversation. A couple of yards over, a cat screeched and another replied in kind.
John came out with two glasses, thrust one into my hand, and sat, placing a piece of paper on the seat between us. The petition for adoption, smoothed out as best he could. I didn’t pick it up; instead I raised my glass and sniffed. Bourbon, what I used to drink before I decided to cut back on the hard stuff. The first sip burned my throat, the second went down just fine. Maybe I’d get drunk and blot out all of this.
“Okay,” I said after a minute, “you didn’t know. But you must’ve suspected something.”
“Well, early on I wondered why you didn’t look like Joey or me. And when Charlene was born, I started asking questions. Ma and Pa gave me that stuff about you inheriting more of Great-grandma’s genes than us, and later we had a unit on genetics in science class that more or less confirmed it was possible.”
“And that’s it? You never wondered again?”
“Sure I did. Especially when the rest of us started having kids. I mean, Karen and I had our three, Charlene her six, Patsy her three. No recessive gene ever came out in any of them. Besides, you’re different in other ways.”
“Such as?”
“… You’re hardworking. Focused. Ambitious. You got great grades in high school, put yourself through college, bought a house, started your own business. You’ve really made something of your life.”
“And you haven’t? Mr. Paint is one of the most successful contracting companies in the county. Charlene’s going to get her M.B.A. next year, and Patsy’s a partner in two restaurants now.”
“Yeah, but then there’s Joey. Sometimes I think it’s a wonder he can feed himself. And the rest of us came by our work ethic late in life. Yours was always there. You never fucked up like Joey and I did.”
“Well, in those days it wasn’t customary for girls to steal stuff or get into brawls in bars.”
“No, but you also didn’t screw every guy who came along, like Charlene. Or run away from home and do drugs, like Patsy.”
“Maybe I just didn’t carry that kind of behavior to the extremes they did.”
“Hey, I’m your big brother; I don’t want to hear about what you did.”
I looked solemnly at him. Was he still my big brother, or had the discovery of that document nullified the relationship?
After a moment I said, “Didn’t you think that if I was adopted I had a right to know?”
“I thought about that a few times, yes. But what was I supposed to do? I had no proof, and you didn’t suspect anything. Besides, I wanted to believe the genetic explanation.”
“Why?”
“Because I love you, dummy. I wanted you to be my natural sister.”
“… I love you too.” I put a tentative hand on his arm, squeezed it. “Okay—d’you think the relatives knew?”
“If they did, nobody ever said anything about it in my hearing—and you know how hard it was for that crowd to keep their mouths shut.”
“They must’ve known, though. The family was always around: Aunt Clarisse and Uncle Ed, Great-aunt Fenella, Grandpa, Uncle Jim and Aunt Susan. Even Great-grandma, for a few years. They’d’ve known Ma wasn’t pregnant.”
In the darkness I felt, rather than saw, John shrug.
“What d’you remember about the nine months before I was born? Was Pa stateside or overseas?” In the Navy, he’d spent much of his time on long deployments in the Pacific.
“I don’t—Well, of course, that might explain it. For most of the time Ma should’ve been pregnant with you, Pa was in the Philippines. And Ma’s mother was sick—she died early the next year—so she spent a lot of time with her up in San Luis Obispo. Joey and I lived with Ed and Clarisse—no picnic.” Our Aunt Clarisse—Ma’s brother’s wife—had hated children and taken it out on all of us in small, sadistic ways.
“Joey and I hardly ever saw Ma,” John added, “and neither did the relatives. When Pa came home a couple of weeks before you were born, he said Ma was having a difficult pregnancy and asked Ed and Clarisse to keep us till the two of you were home from the hospital.”
So the whole thing had been carefully and deliberately orchestrated. A well-manufactured lie. But even lies of the finest workmanship have a flaw, if you look hard enough for it.
“John, are Aunt Susan and Uncle Jim still living in Jackson?”
“Yeah. He still owns the bowling alley—no, we’re supposed to call them bowling centers now. Why?”
“Just curious.”
“Right. Shar, what’re you gonna do?”
I didn’t reply.
“Goddamn it, you’re gonna investigate this.”
“That’s what I do.”
“Yes, but for clients. People who pay. You shouldn’t be—”
“Why not? It’s not as if I’m a doctor attempting to perform brain surgery on myself.”
“But what if…?”
“Yes?”
“Well, what if you find out something unpleasant? Or just plain nasty? There has to be a reason Ma and Pa kept your adoption secret.”
“If I do, I’ll deal with it.”
“Are you sure?”
“The only thing I’m sure of is that there’s nothing worse than not knowing who you are or where you came from.”
“You know who you are.”
“Apparently I don’t know as much as I thought I did.”
We sat in silence for a long time, and after a while the stars paled and the yucca trees began to take on greater definition. John spoke first.
“Promise me one thing.”
“What?”
“Promise—cross your heart, and if you lie, I swear I’ll get horrible old Aunt Clarisse to come back and haunt you—promise that no matter what you find out, you’ll always be my sister.”
I looked into his eyes, saw love overshadowed by anxiety. He was my brother, no question about it.
“I promise.” And I crossed my heart, just as I had so many times when we were children.
1:30 P.M.
“McCone, I’ve been trying to get hold of you. Don’t you ever turn on your cellular?”
“Couldn’t. I just got off my flight from San Diego. I’m at Oakland. Listen, Ripinsky, are you planning to use the plane in the next couple of days?”
“Don’t think so. Why?”
“I need to take it, at least overnight.”
“Wait a minute. When’re you coming back to the office?”
“How are things there?”
“Busy. I’ve got the feeling I’m barely holding the agency together. Christ, Ted’s doing a better job than I am.”
“So let him.”
“This isn’t like you—”
“Look, if you don’t want me to take the plane, just say so!”
Silence.
I said, “It was my understanding that it was our plane, not just—”
“Okay, what’s the matter?”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“Yes, you do. You’re all wound up, and it isn’
t about the agency or the plane—or your father dying.”
I couldn’t even fool him on the phone. “All right, it’s not, but I can’t talk about it right now. I’ve got something I need to do first.”
“Then go do it. But call me.”
“I will, tonight. I’ll explain everything then.”
I switched off the phone and pressed my forehead against the cool metal door of the stall in the women’s room, where I’d hidden to make the call. Maybe I was old-fashioned, but I’d never adapted to the common—and annoying—practice of talking on the thing while striding through airports or sitting in restaurants or pushing my grocery cart.
Hy was right: I was all wound up. But he couldn’t suspect what I’d found out, or that one of the things that had me in this state was the prospect of telling him about my discovery. As unlikely as it seemed, on some level I was afraid that the news I was adopted would make him look at me differently, perhaps wonder who this woman he loved really was. And why not? It was making me look at myself differently, making me wonder.
After a moment I pulled myself together and went to fetch my car to drive to the general aviation terminal at North Field, where our new Cessna 170B—a sexy red one with blue accent trim—waited in the tiedowns.
When Hy’s old Citabria had been totaled last winter, we decided we wanted a bigger, faster, more practical aircraft. But after test-flying dozens of planes and finding serious fault with each, we realized how much we missed the old high-winged tail-dragger. Then Sara Grimly, a flight instructor at Los Alegres Municipal Airport, where I’d learned to fly, heard of our dilemma and called me. Friends of hers had a special plane up for sale, and she thought we ought to take a look at it.
Two-five-two-seven-Tango was also a tail-dragger, and a beauty. The couple who owned it had rescued the nearly fifty-year-old aircraft from languishing in a derelict yet structurally sound state at a small airfield in North Carolina and flown it at risk of life and limb to Los Alegres, where they then embarked on the most ambitious restoration project of their lives. The engine was replaced, upgrading it to 180 horsepower; the dashboard was redesigned and loaded with the latest instrumentation; ailing and ancient radios were traded for state-of-the-art communications gear; a portion of the tail section was rebuilt. Then came the cosmetics: new seats, paint, upholstery, and carpets. By the time Hy and I test-flew the plane, what the owners described as once having been a “disreputable tin can” had been transformed into a magnificent machine, capable of flying 120 miles per hour—rather than being outdistanced by cars on the roads below—and of holding three adults with luggage or four without.
Plus it handled like a dream. I soared effortlessly above the hills through the airspace where I’d once been a struggling student pilot, glided feather-light onto the runway where I’d often committed what my instructor had called “arrivals”—as distinguished from real landings. And I lusted after Two-five-two-seven-Tango. One glance at Hy told me he was similarly enthralled.
So, we asked the owners after we taxied up to their hangar, why were they selling this paragon of a plane, the fruit of three years’ expense and labor?
The couple exchanged glances. Hy and I did too: something wrong here?
Then the man confessed: Last month they’d traveled to Louisiana and again risked life and limb ferrying a derelict Cessna Bird Dog—originally manufactured for the Army in 1950 as a reconnaissance and observation aircraft—to Los Alegres. It was now tucked in the hangar awaiting rehabilitation once the 170B sold.
Yes, the woman admitted, some people never learn.
We made a deal and shook on it before Two-seven-Tango’s engine cooled.
Now, as every time I arrived at the field and saw the Cessna tied there, I felt a fierce stir of pride—doting mama admiring her offspring. Leave it to me to have an airplane, rather than a child.
It was better I hadn’t procreated, though. Lord knew what kind of genes I might have passed on.
I stowed my things in the backseat, preflighted, and soon was airborne, complying with the controller’s instructions to turn right and follow the Nimitz Freeway over the city. Once the ATC terminated communication, I set a northeasterly course for Amador County Airport. The meandering channels and sculpted islands of the Sacramento Delta lay below me, and then the vast, flat valley crisscrossed by farm roads. I noted landmarks to stay on course, but otherwise ignored the scenery, preoccupied with my thoughts and feelings.
Usually when in the air I experienced a tremendous sense of freedom and control; no one could lay claim to me there, no earthbound problem was so serious that altitude didn’t make me capable of coping. But today I felt trapped by insurmountable circumstances. I flew joylessly and tentatively, chafing at a strong headwind that slowed my airspeed.
Stupid to let a piece of paper dislocate my life. Stupid to let other people’s falsehoods make me feel false.
Just plain stupid.
4:10 P.M.
Jackson was nestled in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada, the old Motherlode gold country. A former mining town with a historic business district and the beginnings of small-city sprawl, it was flanked on the west by wheat-colored ranchland dotted with oak and madrone, and on the east by forested hills. As I drove my rental car south on Route 49, signs along the highway warned that fire danger was high today.
My Uncle Jim hadn’t been at the bowling center on the southeast edge of town—taking the day off, the woman at the desk told me. So I kept going into the wooded countryside to the small ranch he and Aunt Susan had bought after he quit the pro circuit and built Jim McCone’s Lanes. It was three miles or so off the highway, bordered by split-rail fences, with a long graveled drive leading past grazing cattle to the redwood-and-fieldstone house. Hummingbird feeders hanging from the eaves by the door glinted in the afternoon sun. For a moment I remained in the car, watching the play of light.
Jim and Susan had always been my favorite relatives: easygoing with fine senses of humor, understanding of the difficulties we kids had growing up, even though they had no children of their own. But as I flew up here I’d begun to wonder if there hadn’t been a touch of condescension—maybe even pity—in their treatment of me. After all, I wasn’t really a relation, had probably come from bad stock. And then I’d begun to fear that my confrontation with them would turn as unpleasant as the one with Ma. And finally I’d begun to think I’d developed a full-blown case of paranoia.
Finally I took a deep breath, got out of the car, went up and rang the bell.
After a bit the door opened and Jim’s ruddy face appeared, looking so like my father’s in his younger days that I felt a sharp wrenching in my gut. He peered at me with some anxiety, seemed relieved at what he saw, and said, “We’ve been expecting you.”
“Oh? Why—”
“Katie—pardon me, Kay—called. Come in, please. Suzy and I were just cracking a beer on the deck. Spent the day getting our spring bulbs in, and that’s enough work for a couple of geezers like us.”
I remained where I was, stunned by what my mother had done. The word was out, the willful silence imposed. Now I’d never get any information from Jim and Susan.
“Come on now,” he said, holding the door wide. “Whatever’s happening, we’re on your side.”
I followed him into the cool house and through a series of rooms to a deck that overlooked forestland and distant mountain peaks. Susan sat on a lounge chair in shorts and bare feet, her gray hair tousled. She gave me a look as penetrating as Jim’s earlier one, glanced at him, and nodded in silent agreement. “We were wondering when you’d turn up,” she said.
“Ma must’ve guessed I’d want to talk with you. John knew I was coming, but he’d’ve never told her. What’d she say?”
“That you were all bent out of shape over something you found out after Andy died, and behaving irrationally.”
“Great.” I sat down on the chair next to her.
“Of course we discounted that. We’ve never known you to be
irrational.”
“As usual, Ma’s exaggerating.”
“Well, you know your mother.”
No, I don’t. Not the way I thought I did.
Jim had gone back into the house; now he returned with a glass of white wine for me—remembering what I drank in spite of not having seen me for several years. No condescension or pity here, but thumbs-up on my paranoia.
I asked, “Did Ma tell you what I found out?”
Jim reclaimed his chair, shook his head. “Nope. And after seeing you, I’d say Katie’s the crazy one. What’s all this about?”
I took the petition for adoption from my bag and handed it to him. He fished his glasses from his shirt pocket, read it, and whistled softly. His surprise seemed genuine. “Suzy, take a look at this.”
She scanned it, frowning. “Incredible!”
“That’s what I thought when I first found it,” I said, “but then things began to make sense. I confronted Ma, but she refused to explain.” Briefly I described Ma’s reaction and repeated what John had told me about the time when she allegedly was pregnant with me.
“Well, they kept us in the dark too,” Jim said. “This is sure a shock.”
“Why do you think they did that? It would’ve been so much easier if everybody—including me—had known the truth.”
He looked at Susan, shrugged.
“Did Ma say anything else when she called?” I asked.
“Told me you’d probably ask a lot of questions that we wouldn’t be able to answer. Said we shouldn’t take everything you said at face value, it was a complicated situation. She thought you’d want to talk about the past, and would we please not mention Fenella.”
“Great-aunt Fenella?” She’d kept house for my grandfather and helped care for Pa and Jim when their mother died of cancer when Jim was a baby. “What on earth does she have to do with this?”
“Damned if I know.”
“Could she have been—?”
Listen to the Silence Page 3