Beach Plum Island

by Holly Robinson

  “Jesus, I hate being this old,” Elaine muttered, squinting at the girl’s tight buttocks and toned legs as she pranced off to join a group of girls who looked like they could be her sisters, all ten of them.

  “We all get to be young and beautiful exactly once,” Tony said. “Be grateful that you and I have now moved on to become elegant and wise.” He flipped over onto his stomach. “So is this really your life you’re telling me about, or some Dickensian novel full of intrigue, plague, hunger, and orphans?”

  Elaine laughed. “Oh yeah, I own it, baby.” She told him about Ava inviting Gigi to work in her pottery studio, and about discovering Gigi at Ava’s, playing music with her nephews. “I acted badly and had a little snit fit over it,” she admitted. “Mainly because Ava clearly lured me up there to make nice with Gigi without having the decency to tell me anything about her being there first.”

  “Ava’s scared of you,” Tony guessed.

  “Unlikely. Ava’s tough. But afterward I went a little crazy, I was so mad at her.”

  She confessed to going out that night and drinking so much she blacked out, and about do-gooder Gabe saving her from a tattooed motorcyclist. Finally she told Tony about Dad’s deathbed confessions to Ava and Gigi about a brother named Peter, and how once again Ava had tricked her into driving north, only to find out Gigi was coming along for the ride to ask Finley about their brother.

  Elaine left no sordid detail unrevealed; watching Tony’s expressions unfold while she talked made her feel like she was a movie he was watching. When she’d finished, she flipped onto her stomach, too.

  “So much drama, and so soon after the funeral,” Tony marveled. “Wow. You must be wrung out.” They were lying side by side, propped on their elbows and staring out at the sailboats and oil tankers on the sparkling blue harbor.

  “I am.” Elaine reached around to unhook the back of her bathing suit. She wasn’t about to start having tan lines now. “The other thing I’m feeling is dread. I don’t want a new sister in my life. I don’t want a brother, either, especially not this one.”

  “Why not this one?”

  “Because it’s all too complicated! I love Ava. That’s why I went with her yesterday to Maine. I felt bad about storming out of her house just because that little freak was singing with my nephews. Plus, I knew Ava’s Honda wouldn’t make it that far north. I was happy she asked me. I really was. I know this is important to her, this brother. But I didn’t expect her to invite Gigi along for the ride and rub that whole connection in my face. Ugh. And I don’t know why we should search for some defective brother anyway.”

  “Because you want to know what happened to him,” Tony said promptly.

  “No I don’t. Not necessarily.” Elaine laid her head down on the towel. The hot cement made her cheek feel like she’d been slapped. “If he’s alive—and that’s a big if—Peter would be in his early forties and probably demented after being passed around a dozen foster families or institutionalized. He probably has hyperactivity, attachment disorder, depression, bipolar disorder, PTSD, or any number of those other horrible disorders kids suffer from when adults abuse them or lock them up.”

  “That is a long list,” Tony murmured. “Like a whole year of Lifetime movies.”

  “Right!”

  “What about Gigi, though? She’s had two parents up until now. A solid start in life.”

  “True. And I sort of get why Ava wants to bond with her. Ava misses our dad and the two of them are like clones, all artsy and barefoot and everything, and Gigi’s the same age as Ava’s sons. Ava doesn’t see her like I do.”

  “And how’s that?” Tony propped his chin up on one hand to look at her.

  “She’s insufferable! The girl’s an entitled little prep school brat who deliberately pierces herself and dyes her hair to look like some punk, when meanwhile she takes riding lessons at this fancy country club and probably sleeps in a frilly pink canopy bed. Such a poser! God!”

  “She’s only fifteen,” Tony reminded her. “Of course she’s a poser. Who knows who they are at that age?”

  “I did. At fifteen, I was president of my class and thinking about colleges. Whatever. Maybe Ava needed a mini-her since I’m always at work and unavailable.”

  “Do I detect a snit of jealousy here?” Tony asked.

  “About my brother, you mean?”

  “And about the girl, Gigi. Such a sixties name. Love it.”

  “Probably her mother’s choice. My stepmom’s younger than I am. Did I ever tell you that?”

  “Many times.” Tony said this kindly. “And now Gigi’s mom is a widow and that girl is fatherless. Could those factors have entered into Ava’s thinking, when she brought the girl home and introduced her to her sons? Who would also be Gigi’s nephews, if I’m following the story?”

  “Oh, blow me.”

  “I would, gladly, but you’re not my type.” Tony pushed his sunglasses up so that Elaine could see his brown eyes reflecting the sunlit harbor beyond the chain-link fence. “What is it you’re really worried about, sweetie? That Ava will stop loving you because she’s looking after this little poser? That your brother, Peter, will somehow turn up and eat up the rest of Ava’s free time, because he’s in a padded helmet and has a guide dog? Is there maybe a part of you that misses Ava’s mothering, now that your dad is gone and you’re grieving, hmm?”

  “Oh fucking hell,” Elaine said miserably. As always, Tony could hold up a mirror to her life. “I suppose.”

  “You know, there’s another way this story could go,” he said.

  “How?”

  “Maybe your brother, Peter, survived his shitty childhood and will be glad to know he’s not alone in the world,” Tony said. “Maybe he was one of those kids who was resilient enough to make something of himself as an adult, despite whatever obstacles he faced.”

  It was only then that Elaine remembered Tony’s own chaotic childhood. She closed her eyes and groaned. “Oh, God. I am so, so sorry. I completely forgot.”

  “Of course you did!” he said cheerfully. “But don’t you see? That’s how miraculously resilient the human spirit can be, that you forgot I was a foster kid.” Tony rolled onto his back. “I actually loved my foster mom,” he said thoughtfully. “I still do. She was the rock to my barnacled little self. Now will you please help me choose the best-looking lifeguard? Nobody has an eye for man candy like you do.”

  Elaine laughed. “What about George? Isn’t he waiting for you at home?”

  Tony checked his watch. “No. He’s probably still at church, singing his little heart out,” he said. “Once a choirboy, always a choirboy. Then he’ll stop at the grocery store and bring us something to feast on for dinner. Did I tell you about his mango chicken?”

  “Did I tell you that I’m jealous every time you tell me George is cooking for you?” Elaine said. “I always imagine him in a frilly apron and nothing else.”

  “George will be thrilled when I tell him that. You know, you could get yourself one of these homey, live-in boyfriends yourself someday, if you ever get tired of blacking out at clubs.”

  “Shut up. You sound like my sister.”

  “Because we both love you,” Tony said. “Seriously, honey. These lifeguards are tasty to look at and so are bar boys. But you and I both know boys under thirty are only tolerable until they open their mouths. What about trying somebody maybe a tad older? A guy with something to offer you outside the bedroom?”

  “You mean like a nicer car than mine?”

  “I mean like somebody who can offer you a decent conversation in the clear light of day in addition to fun slutty pillow talk,” Tony said. “I mean a dinner cooked at home and eaten in pajamas. When was the last time you were in bed with a guy and both of you had clothes on while you talked?”

  “I don’t typically go to bed in clothes,” Elaine said. “My high heels destro
y the silk sheets.” But she was thinking of Gabe, of his warm brown eyes and deep laugh, and the way he’d held her and wouldn’t stop stroking her hair.

  She shook off the image. The last thing she needed was some sensitive needy guy in a nonprofit T-shirt making goo-goo eyes at her. She sat up. “Come on, hunky man. You promised me an ice cream.”

  “And pizza. I wonder if they have gelato here?”

  Tony pulled on his T-shirt and stood up, offering his hand to her. Elaine took it and they held hands on their way to the snack bar like a pair of children at recess, so happy to be best friends they wanted the whole world to know.

  • • •

  They weren’t going to find out anything more about their brother today. It was Sunday, Ava reminded her when Gigi called that afternoon, so offices were closed. Finley hadn’t known which adoption agency had originally placed Peter with a family, but there were only a few in Maine. Ava planned to call them all, she promised Gigi.

  “But not until tomorrow,” she said, “so you might as well find something else to do today. Why don’t you spend time with your mom?”

  Ava didn’t understand that her mom probably didn’t even know if Gigi was here or not. Mom wasn’t like Ava, who seemed tuned into everything Evan and Sam did, even though she put on a good show of pretending she wasn’t. It wasn’t like Ava friended them on Facebook or anything. She just asked them questions and Evan and Sam usually told her the truth, maybe because they knew Ava wouldn’t blow up at them.

  Gigi was in her bedroom, where she spent another hour on the computer. She’d tried Facebook first, to see if Peter Laurent was on there. He was blind, but maybe they had computers that talked to you or something. When she couldn’t find him, she wondered if his new family had changed his last name. That was a horrible thought. How would they find him then? A family could even adopt him and change his first name, too.

  Well, she had to start somewhere. Gigi started researching adoption resources next. There seemed to be a lot of them online. She surfed through Bastard Nation, the National Adoption Clearinghouse, and the International Soundex Reunion Registry. What all adoption registries had in common was this: You couldn’t find somebody who had been adopted unless that person wanted to find you. All you could do was put your information into the registry and hope the person you were looking for did the same.

  This site seemed like the best choice. It had been around since 1975 and used Soundex, a phonetic way of indexing names by sound to make it easier to find information on names that sounded alike, but might be spelled differently (Mayer, Meyer, Meier, Maier, Mire, Myer). So Soundex could help find a name in a database, even if it had various spellings. Any adoptee, foster child, or person separated from family who was over eighteen could use it.

  Gigi scrolled through a few other sites, and discovered that if adoptions were finalized before 1984, which Peter’s must have been, both the birth parent and the child had to file their consent for an agency to arrange contact between them. Same thing for birth siblings age twenty-one or older.

  Basically, anybody looking for someone else could file information with the registry: birth parents, birth siblings, adoptive parents, foster children, legal guardians of people with disabilities. That was the line that stopped Gigi: “legal guardians of people with disabilities.” Peter had disabilities, so even if he wouldn’t, or couldn’t, look for them, maybe his legal guardian had registered to search for Peter’s family.

  It was worth a try. Excited now, Gigi read on to see how it worked. The process seemed simple enough. All you had to do was register online and your form was scanned. Information would be indexed on their computer. If data matched, and the ISRR volunteers discovered a relationship existed, they’d notify both people.

  Gigi called Ava to tell her all about the registry. “I can’t do it because I’m not eighteen, but you could,” she said.

  There was such a long pause that Gigi thought for a minute her cell phone had died, or that she’d lost the connection. Then she heard a light tapping and Ava said, “I found the site. But I don’t know if this will work. I don’t really know anything except my mom’s name. I don’t even know the name of the hospital or the month and year he was born.” She sounded tired.

  “Well, put in your best guesses,” Gigi said. “And maybe there’s somebody else who can help us, right? Dad’s parents are dead, but he must have cousins who are still alive or something.”

  “Maybe,” Ava said, but she sounded doubtful. “I’ll think about that.”

  After they hung up, Gigi wrapped her arms around her body, feeling jumpy and claustrophobic. Even if Ava put in her information tonight, they wouldn’t know anything right away. The Web site said it could take ten days. They probably got lots of registrations, an organization as big as that.

  And Peter, if he was blind and disabled, might not even know how to use a computer. If so, he couldn’t possibly know what Gigi had managed to discover in just a few seconds on her iPad: there are ways to find your family even if they’ve given you away.

  Which led her to other, more serious questions: What if Peter didn’t want to find them? What if he was already dead? Or so disabled, he was one of those people you saw sometimes in wheelchairs, being fed from a tube?

  Gigi didn’t want to consider these questions. She flopped down on the bed and put her iPod headphones on to learn “Stairway to Heaven.”

  She had been singing with her eyes closed, and the music was so loud that Gigi almost screamed when she felt something shaking her arm. Her eyes flew open.

  It was her mother, who almost never came into her bedroom. Mom was sitting on the edge of the bed and touching her arm, mouthing words Gigi couldn’t hear over the music.

  For the second it took her to pull out her earbuds, Gigi registered this fact: Mom looked good. She had washed and brushed her hair and she was wearing her favorite rose-colored sleeveless blouse, the one that set off her gray eyes and made her cheeks look pink. She smiled down at Gigi.

  “What?” Gigi said, once she’d silenced the music.

  “You sound good.”

  “Oh. Thanks.” Gigi scrambled to a sitting position. “Why are you here?”

  Hurt shadowed her mother’s eyes, but she quickly smiled again. “I wanted to ask if you’d go riding with me.”

  “When? Right now?” Gigi glanced out the window. With the hours she’d put in on the computer, she would have guessed it would be dark already. But the sun was still blazing, trapped in the branches outside her window.

  “Won’t it be too hot in the ring?” she asked, not daring to add, Are you friggin’ insane? I’m not going back to the barn to train for Nationals. Ever.

  “I thought we could go trail riding. Just you and me. I’m sure Bantam and Dolly miss us. We haven’t been to the stable in weeks.”

  Gigi stared at her in disbelief. When had her mother ever wanted to ride in the woods? Mom was all about drills, taking jumps, or doing dressage for hours at a time. Perfection, not fun.

  “I don’t know,” Gigi hedged, searching for an excuse. “I still think it might be too hot.”

  “We could go to Bradley Palmer State Park, maybe swim in the river.”

  That was tempting. Gigi did miss Bantam, the black Morgan she’d shared with Dad since she turned thirteen. And she hadn’t been to the river since she’d gone with Dad last year. She had a sudden, blindingly painful memory of Dad on the rope swing, yodeling as he swung out over the lazy green water.

  “I can’t go back there,” she said, closing her eyes.

  There was a small silence; then Gigi felt her mother’s hand on hers. “I know you and your dad loved going to the river together. I don’t know if I can take being there without him, either. But I think we should try. Dad would want us to.”

  Gigi opened her eyes and saw that her mother’s cheeks were splotchy and red now, her gray eyes damp.
“I don’t know, Mom,” she whispered. “I don’t even know if I can ride again.”

  “You won’t know until you try. It’s hot. The horses would love the river. Let’s just go together and get it over with, and we can always turn around if it’s too awful.”

  She couldn’t disappoint her mother, not when for once Mom was the one trying to be brave. Gigi nodded. “Give me a minute to change. I’ll be right down.”

  The barn was empty, thank God. There was no riding camp on Sunday and most people were probably at their summerhouses for the weekend. They tacked up the horses and set off at a lazy trot. They talked a little, Mom mostly asking questions about Gigi’s pottery and the band, their dialogue interspersed with an occasional horse snort.

  Finally, Mom asked where Gigi had been all day yesterday, and Gigi had to tell her. She couldn’t lie; if she did, Mom might question Ava, and Gigi didn’t want Ava to get into trouble.

  Mom listened quietly until Gigi got to the part about Finley not knowing what happened to Peter, and how Gigi had been trying to help Ava on the computer. Then Mom said, “This sounds like it’s pretty important to you. Why?”

  Gigi was in the lead on the trail; she swiveled in the saddle to look at her mother. Mom’s head was bowed, the brim of her black velvet riding helmet shielding her expression. “Because if Peter’s alive, I need to tell him what Dad said. I promised I would. Plus, Peter’s a part of Dad, isn’t he?”

  Her mom raised her head a little and smiled. “Yes, he is,” she agreed. “I think it’s good you’re looking for him. Your dad would be pleased.”

  It was like a blessing, Gigi realized, to have her mother know what she was doing and approve of it. She felt some of the tension ease from her shoulders.

  They had worn about a gallon of bug spray, but an occasional mosquito still whined around Gigi’s ears. Still, she’d forgotten how liberating it was to feel the power of a horse beneath you as you set off into a forest, away from cars and houses and everything else that made you so pathetically human. Here, deep in the woods, Gigi felt like she was part of the horse, bigger and better than her own small self. Her back relaxed and she let Bantam have his head, breaking into an easy canter ahead of her mother.