The Home for Unwanted Girls

by Joanna Goodman

  “Before she died?”

  Maggie squeezes her eyes closed. “Yes. Before she died. It was on the birth certificate.”

  “I have so many questions.”

  Me, too, Maggie thinks.

  “I want to know all about her,” Elodie says. “And do I have other relatives? What about my father?”

  “Would you like to meet in person?”

  “Yes,” Elodie says, and Maggie surges with excitement.

  They arrange to meet next weekend. Maggie was hoping for sooner—she’d drive to her apartment now if she could—but she senses that Elodie is more apprehensive about how quickly everything is happening and she backs off.

  She tries reaching Gabriel at Clémentine’s, but he’s already left and is on his way home. Maggie doesn’t mention anything about her conversation with Elodie. Gabriel has to be the first to know.

  Maggie paces around the kitchen, desperate to get her hands on that newspaper. She needs Gabriel to walk through that door. Still shaking, she sits down at the table, her head pounding with a burgeoning migraine.

  My daughter is alive. She never really believed Elodie was dead, but it still makes no sense that Sister Ignatia would have lied to her that day in 1961. Who would deliberately keep a mother from her own child? The inhumanity of it, the sheer cruelty, is something Maggie will never be able to comprehend or forgive. She robbed Maggie of thirteen years with her daughter.

  The back door opens and Maggie jumps up, flinging her body into Gabriel’s arms.

  “What’s going on?” he asks. “Kids asleep?”

  The kids. She completely forgot about them. They’re being quiet upstairs, probably thrilled she’s forgotten about them and they’re getting to stay up late. “I don’t know.”

  “You don’t know where the kids are?” he says, placing a bucket of blueberries on the counter.

  “Elodie called.”

  Gabriel stops and turns to face her. “Heh?”

  “Elodie called here,” she repeats. “She’s alive.”

  The color drains from his face.

  “She read your ad and she called!” Maggie cries. “How long have you been running it? It means that nun did lie to us, which I always knew. Do you remember her telling us how sick Elodie was when she was transferred to the hospital?”

  “Wait. What ad?”

  “In the classifieds. The Journal de Montréal.”

  Gabriel shakes his head, his expression blank. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

  They stand there for a moment, staring at each other. “Go to the store,” Maggie says. “Go get the paper.”

  “What about Elodie? What did she say? How did she sound?”

  “It was a very short conversation,” she says, and gives him a quick summary.

  Brushing tears from his eyes, Gabriel disappears out the back door. The store is just at the corner of their street, so it doesn’t take long. Maggie stands by the door until he returns and hands it to her. Silently, frantically, they tear through the paper to the back pages.

  “There,” Gabriel says, pointing to it.

  I am in search of a young woman with the given name Elodie, born March 6, 1950, at the Brome-Missisquoi-Perkins Hospital in the Eastern Townships. She was transferred in 1957 from the Saint-Sulpice Orphanage near Farnham to Saint-Nazarius Hospital in Montreal. I have information about her birth family. Please call—

  They stare at the ad, more baffled than before. “That’s our number.”

  “We have to call the paper,” she says. “Find out who placed this ad. Someone who knows our number.”

  “It’s Saturday night. We won’t reach anyone till Monday.”

  “Could it be Clémentine?”

  “She wouldn’t interfere,” he says. “Not with something like this.”

  “My mother?”

  Gabriel rolls his eyes.

  “No one knows about Elodie other than my mother,” she says. “The only people who knew are dead. Who else could it be?”

  Gabriel quickly pulls a cigarette from his pack and lights up. “What if this is all a hoax?”

  “It’s our phone number in the paper!”

  “How do you even know it was really her on the phone? What if it wasn’t?”

  “Who else would it be?” Maggie says. “Another orphan named Elodie? She knew things.”

  “What if it’s another girl from the hospital? Someone who knows the facts about Elodie’s life and is looking for a handout? We have to be careful here, Maggie. No matter how much we want it to be her, none of this makes sense!”

  “She has nothing to gain by pretending to be our daughter.”

  “Of course she does. A family, possible financial support. Any girl could say her name is Elodie.”

  “Since when are you so cynical?” Maggie accuses. “Why can’t you just let this be the miracle that it is?”

  “Goddamn it, Maggie,” he cries, banging his fist on the table. “I’m scared to let myself believe it might be her! This isn’t only about you. As far as I’m concerned, she’s mine.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  He sits down and runs a hand through his hair. “We’re going to have to wait until Monday.”

  “She thinks I’m dead,” Maggie tells him. “They told her I died in childbirth. It’s probably in her bullshit file.”

  “But why?”

  “God only knows. I went along with it over the phone,” she confesses. “I didn’t know what else to do. I said I was her aunt.”

  “Calice.”

  “I should call her back and tell her I’m alive. I shouldn’t have lied.”

  “You can’t tell her over the phone,” he says. “You gave her away, Maggie. It’s going to be a big enough shock for her to find out you’re alive, never mind that you gave her up.”

  “You’re right,” she says, defeated. “She’s going to hate me.”

  “If it’s her, she’s going to need time.”

  “It is her,” Maggie says, sounding a bit like Stephanie when she’s not getting her way. “Think about this, Gabriel. That day we went to Saint-Nazarius and asked about Elodie? She was there. We were probably just a few feet away from her on the other side of those doors. And what did the nuns do? They told us she was dead, and they let her go on believing I was dead.”

  Gabriel stands up again and circles the kitchen table. She watches him scan the room, knowing he’s looking for something to punch or throw, a way to vent his anger. His eyes light on the vase of Stephanie’s wildflowers, but he manages to restrain himself.

  Maggie gets up and goes over to him, touches his cheek, which is wet.

  “Do you really think it’s her?” he says softly.

  “We’re going to meet her,” she tells him. “And then we’ll know for sure. We have to focus on that right now. And we have to find out who placed this ad.”

  “Call your mother.”

  Maggie goes to the phone. While she’s dialing, Gabriel says, “I’m going to fucking murder that nun. And all of them who did this to us. If it is Elodie and they told us she was dead, it’s sick. And why? So they could keep her locked up in that fucking mental institution rather than give her back to us? Why the hell would they do that?”

  “I don’t know,” Maggie says, trying to stay grounded for both of them. “I don’t understand either. But listen to me. Listen. We’re going to have her in our lives after all. That’s what matters now.”

  Her mother answers after about a dozen rings. “Ma!” Maggie cries. “Are you the one who placed the ad?”

  “I’m watching La Petite Patrie!”

  “Did—you—place—the—ad—in—the—classified—section—of—the—Journal—de—Montréal?” Maggie repeats.

  “What ad?” her mother says. “What are you talking about? My show is about to end.”

  “You didn’t place an ad looking for Elodie?”

  “Bien non!” she says. “Why would I do that?”

  “I don’t know. I just th
ought . . . Doesn’t matter. Go finish your show.”

  Maggie hangs up, disappointed. “It wasn’t her,” she says, joining Gabriel at the table.

  “Of course it wasn’t her.”

  “Who then?”

  Gabriel shrugs.

  “I don’t think I can wait until Monday.”

  “I wonder if she’s mine,” Gabriel says, exhaling a ring of smoke. “We’ll know right away, don’t you think?”

  “Probably.”

  “Twenty-four years.”

  “She’s suffered,” Maggie says, her voice breaking. “If she grew up in that awful place?”

  “It didn’t sound so bad in the article.”

  “Maybe it didn’t tell the whole story,” Maggie points out. “You know how the French papers like to protect the church. Remember that book I read a few years ago? The Mad Cry for Help? That sure painted a different picture.”

  “No sense torturing yourself,” Gabriel tells her. “You’ll be able to ask her yourself soon.”

  “That’s what I’m afraid of,” Maggie says, reaching for the cigarette he’s left burning in the ashtray.

  Chapter 54

  First thing Monday morning, Gabriel calls the newspaper. Maggie hovers behind him. “Make sure you get a name,” she insists. “They may not want to say.”

  “I haven’t even been transferred to classifieds yet.”

  “Ask if it was a man or a woman,” she says. “And how long has the ad been running? And how often?”

  “Bonjour, madame,” he says, gesturing to Maggie to stop talking.

  Maggie steps away to give him some space. She chews on a nail, kills a fly buzzing around the windowsill, opens the back door to toss it outside. It’s a beautiful morning, the sun already blinding, the air thick and perfumed by her garden. She examines her hollyhocks, which are in full bloom, forming the towering wall of pink, coral, and white flowers she’d envisioned two years ago when she planted them.

  She goes back inside, and is disappointed to see that Gabriel is still on the phone. “Who placed the ad?” she mouths.

  Gabriel glares at her and puts a finger to his mouth.

  “Don’t forget to ask if it’s going to run again,” she says.

  “And is it scheduled to run again?” he asks, motioning for Maggie to hand him his coffee. “I see,” he says. “Please go ahead and cancel it. No need to run it anymore.” After a beat: “Yes. She did.”

  Maggie signals maniacally for Gabriel to wrap up.

  “Thank you,” he says. “You’ve been very helpful.”

  As he puts down the phone, Maggie throws up her hands in exasperation. “So?” she cries. “I’m surprised you didn’t invite her over for dinner.”

  “The ad was paid for by a Mr. Peter Hughes.”

  “Peter?” She shakes her head. “My brother? I don’t . . . That doesn’t make sense.”

  “Call him.”

  Gabriel hands Maggie the phone and she dials his number at work.

  “Peter Hughes,” he answers, in what Maggie perceives as a rather self-important tone. He recently made partner at a large architecture firm in Toronto—as per the photocopied letter he mailed everyone in the family at Christmas.

  “Elodie called me,” she blurts. No preamble. No greeting.

  Peter is quiet.

  “Did you hear me?”

  “Yes,” he says. “That’s a good thing, isn’t it?”

  “Yes,” she says. “But why? I’m stunned, Peter.”

  Peter laughs good-naturedly.

  “Really,” she says. “Why? And why not tell me?”

  “It wasn’t me, Maggie. It was Daddy.”

  It takes a moment for his words to land.

  “He started running the ad years ago,” Peter explains. “Before he got sick. The first Saturday of every month.”

  “He never said—”

  “He made me promise to keep doing it after he died. And not to tell you.”

  “I can’t believe it.”

  “I can’t believe she actually saw it and called you,” he says. “After all these years. I never thought she would. I told Daddy I thought it was futile, but he could be stubborn, as you know.”

  “Does Ma know?”

  “Are you kidding? Of course not.”

  Maggie leans over the sink and turns on the tap, splashes water on her face. It’s hot in the kitchen. She tucks the phone between her ear and shoulder and opens the window for some air.

  “Will you meet her?” Peter asks her.

  “Yes,” Maggie says. “Next week.”

  The week crawls by. Maggie and Gabriel go through the motions of each day, feigning normalcy for the kids. They don’t discuss Elodie much among themselves, preferring instead to process it alone. Maggie can think of little else, but with two children, life keeps moving forward whether she likes it or not. There are meals to prepare, moods to manage, tantrums to quell; fights to break up, baths, housecleaning. At work, it’s catalogue season, on top of which her publisher just sent her a book to consider for translation. It doesn’t end, and certainly doesn’t leave much time for anguishing over her fears.

  Still, the knot in her chest doesn’t go away. Not for a minute. Beneath every word or movement courses an unrelenting strum of anxiety; her thoughts stubbornly drift back to Elodie. What will she say to her when they finally meet?

  She keeps imagining that moment over and over in her mind—the way Elodie will react, the possibility of her anger and hatred, the withholding of forgiveness. Maggie can’t bear the thought; the dread in her body is visceral, as if Elodie were already standing in front of her, accusing and rejecting her.

  When Maggie’s mother gets wind of the reunion, she calls Maggie in a panic. “Some things are better left alone!” she cries.

  “She’s my daughter, Ma. This isn’t even a conversation.”

  “This is not a good idea, Maggie. You gave her up.”

  “It’s the seventies, Ma. No one gives a shit that I had a baby at sixteen.”

  “You can’t tell the kids. What will they think of you?”

  “They’ll understand. I told you, times are different now. They don’t judge like your generation did.”

  “What will she think of you?” Maman says. “What if she hates you? Have you thought about that?”

  “It’s all I’ve thought about,” Maggie says, and hangs up.

  The night before she’s to meet Elodie, Maggie wakes up with a racing heart. She snuggles against Gabriel. To calm herself, she tries to remember the stories her father used to tell her to help her fall asleep. One of his favorite aphorisms comes into her mind, and she can almost hear his voice, as if he’s speaking to her now. He who plants a seed plants life.

  At least she did that. She gave Elodie life, though not much else.

  Chapter 55

  Maggie pulls her cake out of the oven and sets it down on the counter to cool. The house is quiet. The kids are at her mother’s for the afternoon; it was easier than trying to explain everything. Gabriel is out in the yard, building a tree house for the kids, trying to keep his mind off everything. She watches him from her kitchen window, hammering and sawing, his Canadiens cap pulled down over his brow. She loves him as much as she did when she used to watch him working his cornfield.

  “Your cake sank,” Clémentine says. She’s here for moral support.

  Maggie looks over at the sad cake and her heart sinks with it.

  “You’re a terrible baker, Maggie.”

  “It’s this oven!” Maggie defends, and they both laugh. The cake goes in the garbage.

  “I brought crackers and cheese,” Clémentine says. “And cookies.”

  “Cookies from a package?”

  Clémentine rolls her eyes.

  “My mother would never serve packaged cookies to a guest,” Maggie mutters, and then regrets it immediately.

  Clémentine’s face falls and she quickly turns away. Sometimes Maggie forgets; she’s become so close to her sister-in-l
aw over the years, she can hardly remember that Clémentine was her father’s lover first, her mother’s nemesis.

  “I’m sorry,” Maggie says, grabbing Clémentine’s hand. “I didn’t mean it like that.”

  “Course not,” Clémentine says, tossing cheese on a platter. “Will Red Rose tea be good enough? Or would your mother have brought the leaves in from China?”

  Maggie bursts into laughter and Clémentine joins in, the awkwardness quickly dispelled.

  And then a knock at the door. They look at each other. Neither of them moves until Clémentine says, “Let’s go meet your daughter.”

  Maggie is frozen. Clémentine squeezes her hand, and they go to the front door in silence.

  She’s a few feet away, Maggie tells herself, trying to convince herself this is really happening. She’s on the other side of that door.

  The moment has a surreal quality to it, as though it’s just another one of her silly fantasies. It feels as if Clémentine is opening the door in slow motion.

  And then she’s there. Maggie hears herself gasp. It’s her. Her face has an unmistakable stamp of Hughes and Phénix.

  “Allô,” Elodie says. She attempts a smile, but doesn’t meet Maggie’s eyes.

  “Come in,” Clémentine says, stepping aside.

  Elodie enters the house. Maggie wipes her eyes, not wanting to frighten the girl with an emotional outburst before she’s even through the door. She has to keep reminding herself that Elodie has no idea who she is.

  “I’m Maggie,” she says, her voice sounding strange. “And this is my friend Clémentine.”

  Elodie says hello, again without making eye contact with either of them. She has a nervous, skittish energy, but who could blame her?

  Clémentine takes Elodie’s macramé poncho and shows her to the living room. Maggie notices she walks with a slight limp. She’s wearing jeans and an olive green tank top—she’s very thin—but it’s her face Maggie can’t stop staring at, even though it’s mostly hidden behind a curtain of long hair, parted in the middle. There’s an undeniable resemblance to Maggie’s side of the family, certain subtle traces of her sisters—the curve of Geri’s mouth, the wide space between Vi’s eyes, the thick Hughes eyebrows they all share. She’s fair and dirty blond, and her body—lanky and long-limbed—is pure Phénix.