Scissors, Paper, Stone

by Martha K. Davis

  Laura has promised to visit me this afternoon. It will be the first time I have seen her alone for more than a year. Since she graduated from Kenyon and moved back to San Francisco, she has always had Min with her. They are lovers now. When Min told me, over two months ago at the end of summer, my immediate reaction was: of course. They belong together. Their friendship has always contained an element of wooing. My second feeling, following fast on the heels of the first, was a mixture of dismay, discomfort, even anger. I thought, I hope they don’t kiss in front of me. I thought, Now they’re going to shut me out. These are feelings that still stir around inside me. I am happy that Laura is visiting me today, and I know that one reason is because I will have a chance to claim her back.

  I pick up another book, blow the dust from the top edge of its compressed pages. Despite my sore back, I like the rhythmic monotony of this work. I like categorizing the books, escorting them properly labeled to their respective shelves. I like the dreamy time inside these four walls, as lasting and as irrelevant to the outside world as time is inside the pages of a novel. Surrounded by row upon row of books that other people have read, other people have handled, cherished, and perhaps reluctantly let go, I feel I’m among an extended family of parents and spouses and siblings who’ve come to live with me for a while before moving on to other homes, their future lives. I only wish I could live with people this way: inviting them into my life without conditions, allowing them to leave without the fear they will never come back.

  I have been dreaming more about Laura. This week I’ve dreamt about her almost every night. She takes me by the hand to the ocean’s edge, then vanishes. Or I search for something I have misplaced, and Laura comes to help me. Or I look for something missing and finally discover it is Laura, who is my daughter, my lost daughter. The daughter I gave birth to. Each time I’ve woken up from these dreams in the dark, sweating. Each time I’ve realized immediately that in the dream I forgot about Min; she didn’t exist. That scares me. I don’t know why it happens, and I am afraid of it. In the night I lie curled up at the edge of the bed, my sweat cold on my skin, willing myself to fall back asleep. In the mornings I am exhausted.

  The little bell on the front door of the bookshop tinkles as the door creaks open. I swivel my body around and look up to see Laura clicking the door carefully shut behind her. On the other side of the front windows, a white pickup truck slowly drives down the street, while a young man and woman walking hand in hand past the store glance at the book display but do not stop. Laura’s gaze moves from the tall bookshelves to the empty counter where the cash register sits to the poster on the wall behind it, a portrait of Emily Dickinson looking very proper and yet defiant. Then Laura’s eyes shift as she sees me bent over my boxes with my rag in one hand and a hardbound book in the other. In the dim light it seems to take her a moment to recognize me. When she moves forward, my heart is dazzled by the light of her smile.

  As soon as she grins at seeing me, I find myself inside my nighttime dreams of her. The feeling is exactly the same: this is my daughter; this is the child I have been missing all these years. It is as though I have never looked at her closely until now, when all the while the proof was in plain sight. The joy I feel is sharp, like the cold ache of ice cream in summer. For a second I experience a sense of completeness I haven’t felt for many years and never expected to find again, though I have dreamed it. She approaches me, that radiant smile still on her face, her arms extending toward me. If she is saying anything, I cannot hear it. Somehow I get to my feet, move toward her. I haven’t lost her. She is right here in front of me.

  As soon as I feel the warm, living weight of Laura’s body against mine, I remember Min, and I am overwhelmed by guilt. How can I wish for even one moment that Laura was my daughter, as though Min had never existed? How can I think of Laura as the daughter I would have had, when it is Min who has been my daughter for the past twenty-two years? Is it because Laura and I are more alike and see things in similar ways? My relationship with Laura is so much simpler, more relaxed than mine with Min that perhaps it is normal to feel that Laura could be related to me. Yet I am uneasy, almost afraid. I remember when the girls were growing up, strangers on the street used to assume it was Laura who was my daughter. Because she looked more like me than Min did. Because she was white too.

  My limbs go cold. That’s why she inhabits my dreams. I feel frozen by surprise, horrified by my own impulse. Laura is the daughter that Andy would have accepted. Because she is white. I can’t believe I have this wish. I want the daughter that Andy would have loved.

  At the thought of Andy, I begin to cry. I never cry. Even more alarming, I can’t get myself to stop. I sob, half-hicupping, trying to swallow to keep down the huge balloon of sorrow that is suddenly swelling inside me. I feel Laura’s surprise in the way her arms start to lift from my back, uncertain. Her head pulls away from where it was resting against my shoulder. Then she tightens her grip, holding me more firmly. One hand makes small rubbing motions up and down my back. This only makes me cry harder. I stand sobbing in Laura’s arms, silently asking for Min’s forgiveness.

  I try to get a grip on myself, but I can’t do it. Something long stopped up has been forced open in me. I am afraid I will never stop crying. I can’t bear it that I am capable of denying my daughter, even for a moment. How can I possibly feel the same thing Andy did? I hated that it mattered to him that Min was Asian and so couldn’t be, or even pass for, my biological child. As we walked silently back to the car, I could only feel how irrevocably I had become her mother. No one, I thought, not even Andy, could come between us.

  Suddenly my despair is so great, I can hardly feel Laura’s reassuring presence against me anymore. I couldn’t hate Andy. And I couldn’t forgive him. The balloon of pain spreading from my chest seems much larger than my fragile body’s ability to hold it. I’m afraid I will burst apart. I hear a groan, like a tree sawed through starting to fall, and I realize it’s me. I am still waiting for him. For twenty-one years I have not allowed myself to accept that Andy is dead. I need him alive too much, to set right what he put askew in me. He told me my daughter was too different to be mine. Then he died. I’ve been trying to prove him wrong ever since.

  I let him come between us after all.

  I am holding on to Laura now to keep from sliding away, carried off into a whirlwind of grief and regret. If I open my eyes, I am certain everything will be spinning around me; already my head seems to be floating somewhere above the rest of my body. All I can do is cry and hold on tight. Behind my closed lids, I can see Andy clearly: brown curly hair, straight long nose, generous face. He’s still young, not even out of college. It’s as if I was with him just yesterday. He is looking at the ground as I speak, his thick brows lowered in concentration. He starts to nod. He looks up at me, and his eyes change, becoming warmer, softer. He doesn’t agree, but he understands my feelings. This is my memory of who he used to be, and this is my dream.

  Finally the tears start to subside. I become aware of my trembling legs, my feet still standing on the firm floor, of the traffic sounds out on the street. My chest and throat feel sore, raw, but the sadness feels manageable now. As Laura pulls slowly away from me, I register with shock how separate her small body is from mine. And then she is Laura again, standing uncomfortably before me, and I am a woman puffy-eyed and snotty from crying. I have no idea how long it’s been. I pull out a crumpled tissue from my jeans pocket and blow my nose. Laura plunges her hands into the pockets of her wool jacket and offers me another tissue. I blow into it too, then use the dry edges to wipe my cheeks and chin. I feel as if my face has swollen to twice its size. I feel as though there’s still a reservoir of tears pooled inside me, deeper than I could ever dive.

  “Thanks,” I say, starting to hand back the tissue. Then I realize what I am doing and pocket it. Laura smiles at me. She has such a kind face, open and intelligent. Her newly shorn hair suits her. I look around and remember where we are. There are the ta
ll shelves full of books, the racks of cards near the front, the bulletin board filled with notices of rooms for rent and jobs wanted, the radio playing a piece for horns I don’t know. There are the cardboard boxes I was rummaging through, and the piles of books I have dusted and divided to be sold. The store is still empty, except for the two of us. If a customer came in while I was crying, I never knew it.

  “Are you all right?” Laura asks me. She looks worried, as if at any moment I might launch into something else unforeseen.

  It occurs to me that I have frightened her. And why shouldn’t she be scared? I was afraid myself. I put my hand on her arm and try to smile reassuringly. “I will be. Why don’t we go to my office in back? I could use some tea.”

  She nods, her gaze dropping away from mine.

  At the front door I turn the lock and flip over the “Open” sign to “Closed.” On the sidewalk outside, the wind scuttles a crumpled brown paper bag underneath a parked car. The sky is a uniform dark gray, threatening rain. I hope for a thunderstorm, crashingly loud and blindingly bright, but those are rare here on the West Coast. In Northern California there is no dramatic weather like back east, only the threat of earthquakes. There are no snowbound winters or dripping hot summers, only seasons of fog and rain. I miss the landscape I grew up in. I glance at my storefront display of books and make a mental note to change it tomorrow. It needs more fall colors, red and yellow to catch the eye.

  In the tiny room I use as an office, I gesture at the desk chair, the only place to sit, and take the electric kettle to the bathroom. I’m glad there’s no mirror in there; I don’t want to know what I look like. A wave of exhaustion breaks over me. I take off my glasses, splash cold water on my face, and fill the kettle. When I return to my office, Laura is sitting down, looking idly at the overdue bills and notes to myself I have taped to the wall above the desk. She looks around at me guiltily as I enter the room.

  “Oh, go ahead, snoop around,” I tell her, plugging the kettle into the wall socket. “I don’t have any secrets. Chamomile, Raspberry Zinger, or Earl Gray?”

  “Raspberry Zinger. Thanks.”

  “I bought a package of Pepperidge Farm cookies for the occasion,” I say, holding it up. “I remembered that you like them. How are your parents? Did you have lunch with them?” I crank open the small casement window, letting a cool breeze into the stuffy room.

  “Oh, they’re fine.” She pauses, then says rather meekly, “Catherine? I don’t mean to pry. I mean, it’s probably none of my business. But about what just happened . . . did I do something?”

  Surprised, I turn around. I’m dismayed by the look on her face. “No, no, please don’t think that, Laura. It has nothing to do with you.” What can I tell her that isn’t a lie? “I was thinking about my brother.”

  “The one who lives in New York? I forget his name.”

  I shake my head, clearing off a corner of the desk to sit on. “No, my younger brother, Andy.”

  “Oh, the dead uncle.”

  I look at her sharply, and she smiles, apologetic. “That’s what Min calls him.”

  “Not Uncle Andy? I always refer to him as her uncle Andy.”

  Laura shakes her head. “No. She said you hardly ever talk about him at all.”

  I look away. “No, I don’t suppose I do,” I answer. I remember walking with Andy, Min on my back, in the hills above the ocean, imagining our lives twenty years in the future. She doesn’t even have my memories of him. He is a cipher to her, someone from my distant past she doesn’t even know enough about to call by name. I close my eyes, squeezing the tears back. I will not cry again.

  I take a breath. “Andy died a long time ago. He was your age, twenty-two. He went sailing with a couple of friends off the coast in Maine. The boat capsized. Only one of them survived.”

  “I’m sorry,” Laura says, her voice subdued.

  I look up. She is squinting at me, the skin around her eyes flinching as if she can feel a little bit of how painful his loss was to me. My throat aches. I swallow, and swallow again.

  “Thank you,” I answer her. It is all I can say; then I realize it’s all that is needed.

  Outside the window, the rain has started falling with a soft patter. Laura asks, “You were close, weren’t you?”

  I can’t speak now, my throat is too constricted. I nod, staring at the silver handle on the bottom drawer of the filing cabinet. My head hurts. I close my eyes. Andy is there behind my eyelids, grinning at me as he walks into my arms, as alive as ever. I miss you, I want to tell him. If I let him be dead, I’m afraid he’ll disappear, no longer even a memory I can keep close to me.

  The tea kettle whistles, startling me away from Andy into the present.

  “I’ll get it,” Laura says, jumping up from her chair. I lift my glasses and brush my hand against my wet cheeks.

  Laura pours boiling water into two mugs and hands me one. I hold onto its warmth with both hands, blowing at the rising steam. The tea-bag floats at the surface.

  We drink our raspberry tea in silence. Its sweet-sour taste on my tongue soothes me. The heat strokes my throat, warms my chest. It’s very companionable sitting here with Laura in my little office, sipping tea.

  “He was incredibly focused,” I say. Laura turns her face slightly toward me so that I know she is listening. “Not so much when he was little. During the summer we’d go down to the stream and make up stories to play. But when he got older he’d lie on his stomach looking into the water while I read or sketched. He liked to observe things up close, like insects crawling from one blade of grass to the next. He always had a scientific side.”

  “What was he looking at in the water?” Laura asks. Her question surprises me. It is so specific, as if he is a real person to her.

  “I don’t know,” I admit. “I assumed he was watching the fish swimming around the bottom, but maybe he was interested in the water’s surface. Maybe he was listening. I always liked the quiet down there.” I still remember it, the humid, still air, the call of birds above us, the trickle of the water. The last time I was in Rhinebeck, Min was about five. The stream was still the same, but I had become someone else. Now, perhaps, other children play in the water. My parents sold the house and moved to Florida six years ago, when my father retired. “I remember once lying in the grass looking up at the trees. There were only a couple of weeks left before I was leaving for college, and Andy had been mad at me all summer. I had spent most of my time with my friends from school, knowing I might not see them again, or if I did, that we might have all changed. Andy came and lay next to me under the trees. I told him about the countries I wanted to visit when I graduated. He had plans too for when he was old enough to travel by himself. I still remember the places he named. The coral reefs off Australia. The ruins of Pompeii. He was interested in everything at one point or another. I never knew what I wanted my future to look like. I just knew I wanted to get away from my family. Andy always had specific goals, even if they kept changing.”

  It is searing to remember, knowing Andy will never do these things. But I like speaking about my brother, sharing who he was with someone else, someone whose only connection to him is through what I tell her. “He was very disciplined,” I continue. “He always followed through once he made up his mind. He was going to go to law school that fall. I don’t think it was what he really wanted.” I stop myself. This isn’t right, what I am doing. I lift my tea to drink it, but the cup is empty. I set it on the desk beside me, pushing aside a stack of mail.

  “Laura, I shouldn’t be talking with you this way. I’ve never told any of this to Min.”

  “Why not?” Laura asks.

  I hesitate. “Because if I talked about her uncle Andy, I’d have to tell her what happened during his last visit with me. It would be painful. For both of us.”

  Laura doesn’t say anything. If it were Min I was having this conversation with, she’d be on me in a minute, pressing me to explain myself, asking for details, seeking out the words th
at wound. So often when we talk she expects me to say something that will offend her. Of course, she has every right to be sensitive, but her bristliness doesn’t ease our conversations. I feel a breeze through the window. I glance out at the rain.

  “I’m glad you came to visit me today,” I say. Laura looks skeptical. “No, really, I know you couldn’t tell from my breakdown out there, but it’s nice to see you.”

  “I’m glad too,” she says. “You know,” she ducks her head down, “I used to be jealous of Min because she had you for a mother.”

  Immediately I have the feeling again of rightness—this is my daughter, she has been looking for me too—but weaker this time, as if it is washing away. I want it to go, yet I am sorry too.

  “Oh, I think almost everyone wishes they had someone else’s mother,” I say, trying to diffuse her shyness and my undeniable pleasure. It sounds insensitive. I don’t want to diminish her feelings. Or mine. But at the moment my affection for Laura has a bitter taste. “I’m flattered, Laura,” I say carefully, adding, after a moment, “You’re very important to me.”

  “I am?”

  Does she really not know? I nod. Then I say, “Sometimes I think about when you and Min were younger, when you used to come over to the house all the time. A lot has changed since then.”

  A creeping pink tinges the clear, milky skin of Laura’s face. I hadn’t realized before that their sexual relationship embarrasses her, at least in relation to me. I was thinking of other, less recent changes: my divorce from Jonathan, Min’s becoming a lesbian, her move to the city, Laura’s years away at college. Perhaps they don’t matter now. We’ve all come through relatively intact. Even Min and I. How did we do it? How did I change, accept her lesbianism? It wasn’t just because of my desire not to do to her what Andy had done to me: deny the truth of her life. It was Min herself. She was my daughter.