Not Her Daughter

by Rea Frey

  Leaving Chicago had been excruciating. I marveled at how I could feel so connected to someone I’d just met. When I hugged Ryan goodbye, I wanted to tell him everything. I wanted to tell him about my mother. I wanted to tell him what I’d done. I wanted him to help. I wanted to go everywhere as a foursome, gorging ourselves on Coal Fire Pizza, winding through the Art Institute of Chicago, the Shedd Aquarium, and the Adler Planetarium. I wanted to pack a picnic lunch and eat in Grant Park. I wanted to live a normal life.

  As Emma glided up and down, gaining height and speed, I smiled. I had so many decisions to make, but watching her here, like this, wasn’t one of them. When I looked at her, all I could feel was joy. Our time together had been full of uncertainty, yes, but our connection had been pure. My phone buzzed in my pocket. My father.

  Have you made a decision yet? Your mother would really love to see you.

  My father had been calling obsessively as we charted our next destination. The irony wasn’t lost on me that we were in Kansas and could easily drive to Colorado. I considered what it would mean to see my mother. All of the old hurts that would rear their ugly heads, all of the memories that no longer served me. I thought of Emma’s mother. Did she deserve a second chance? Did my mother? Did all mothers deserve a second chance to right past wrongs?

  Emma ejected herself from the swing. She overshot, tumbling forward before brushing off her knees.

  “You okay?”

  She thrust her thumb in the air and kept moving toward the ladder. My mind was numb with information. Information about Amy, about her being the main suspect. About my license plate, the car swap, Ryan, the waitress, my mother, all of it.

  Emma flew down the slide, her feet spraying wood chips as her bright pink Converse made contact with the earth. She darted right, and I let my eyes sweep over the trees, the bike path, and the skate park that sat on a small hill ahead of us. The slap of colorful boards dropped in, squeaky wheels against concrete. Emma stood and watched the young boys and girls in their helmets and baggy shorts, descending off ramps and sliding across skinny metal beams to attempt new tricks.

  I took another sip of coffee. We couldn’t keep running. I couldn’t keep evading my business. I couldn’t keep avoiding my dad. I couldn’t pretend that the reality of Amy getting sent to jail might happen if I didn’t intervene. I stretched my back and neck, my chin almost touching my chest as I looked down and then up at the cloudy sky. I turned my attention back to the playground, all of the children circling around each other like sharks in a feeding frenzy. Emma was climbing the ladder again and patiently waiting her turn as kids trampled on top of each other to fight for space on the way down. We’d washed her hair obsessively until the blond had been toned. She was wearing a ball cap, the ends of her short hair tucked up tight in a small bun.

  I winced as a boy flew down after her, cracking her in the skull with his elbow. She rubbed her head, adjusted her hat, and kept jogging toward the small snake sculpture she could crawl through. A mother bounced her baby on her chest and yelled at her little boy to be more careful. She cast an apologetic look my way and I waved her off.

  “It happens,” I said.

  My phone buzzed again with the unanswered text, and I sighed and pulled it from my pocket.

  Fine. Give me the details. I’ll see what I can do.

  I pressed send before I could think about it. One decision made. Next. Cyclists moved across the windy path, a few joggers stretching in the grass. Emma sprinted toward the giant bush behind my bench and rustled a few of the prickly leaves with her palms.

  “Hey, Em. Stay where I can see you, okay?”

  She reemerged and came to take a sip of water. “I’m hungry.”

  I extracted her baggie of snacks and opened it, shaking out a few slices of orange and a handful of pretzels into her waiting palms. She popped the oranges and pretzels into her mouth at once, crunching and sucking loudly.

  “Are you having fun?”

  “Uh-huh.” She slurped the juice rushing down her wrist and shook one more pretzel into her mouth. “Can we stay awhile?”

  “Sure.”

  She was off again, and I relaxed as I watched her, trying to clear my mind. I’d asked myself so many times what the “right” thing to do was, as though a clear, defined answer existed. It didn’t. I wanted to keep her, of course I did. But would I be denying Amy her second chance? A second chance I would want if I was in her shoes?

  Fear began to strangle me again, but I willed myself to stay calm. The thought of handing her over. The thought of never knowing what might happen to her. The thought of saying goodbye. No. I shook my head and drained the last of my coffee, tossing the paper cup in the trash.

  A Toyota Corolla idled in the spot next to ours in the parking lot. I peered a little closer. A man with a beard sat behind the wheel, staring at the children. Engorged circles strangled the flesh beneath his eyes. There was no child in his car. Did he have a kid on the playground? I stepped back to the bench, a few leaves shaking loose from the tree beside me. I moved to the trunk and stared up into the web of tangled branches. Another child, a boy, was gripping the trunk and shimmying higher in his untied tennis shoes and red shorts. He whimpered.

  “Are you okay?”

  “I don’t know how to get down!”

  I scanned the playground for Emma, making sure she was okay, and looked around for the boy’s parents. “Just step down on that branch right there, okay? You’re not going to fall. I promise.”

  The boy’s legs trembled as he found the lower branch and clung to the trunk. Finally, he was within reach, and I helped him slide down the bark and plop softly on the grass. He took off running, and I sat back down.

  The mother with the baby approached. “Thank you for that. I have three boys here, and I can’t ever keep up.”

  “No problem.”

  No one questioned if I was a parent. It had all been so natural and easy, despite the circumstances. But a child belonged to her mother. That was the law of nature. No matter how much I loved her, no matter how much I wanted her, no matter how much I cared.

  The man in the car revved his engine, and I shuddered. Would Amy be able to protect Emma from strangers? Would Amy pay enough attention?

  Chills pocked my skin. Clarity was coming, sweet and painful, but I wasn’t ready to accept it just yet. I thought of what it would mean to return home without her. What was waiting for me there. I knew how easy it was to slip back into routines, to drive myself into an early grave with obsessive work. All the travel, the deals, the late nights and early mornings. In such a short period of time, I’d been awakened to other ways of life that had nothing to do with my business.

  I opened up my email and fired off a final response to Hal, checking and rechecking it before I sent it. This was the right thing to do. It made sense.

  My phone buzzed again. The address to my mother’s house. I mapped it, calculating how long it would take. Not long. I motioned to Emma and she came running, her hands smeared with dirt. “I’m making mud pies!” she exclaimed. Tiny hot circles lit up her cheeks, and I kissed her forehead.

  “Can I help?”

  “Come on! This way! I’ll show you the kitchen.”

  I followed her to the base of a tree, where dirt was saturated from leftover rain. I sat down beside her, thinking of the baby wipes wedged between the passenger door and the seat. We would clean up later. “Okay, tell me what to do.”

  “Well, we have to start with the main ingredients.”

  “Which are?”

  “Mud, mud, and more mud. In that order.”

  I laughed as I collected compacted dirt in my palms, shaping, patting, and rounding out a perfect circle on the earth. I’d made so many bargains with myself. I’d promised to do with the right thing when she was found in Chicago. I’d made promises after the close run-ins with the cops, with Ryan, and the Google alerts. But I hadn’t held up my end of the bargain.

  I packed more dry dirt into the wet and att
empted to pick up my pie. It disintegrated into brown bits that trickled against the tops of my thighs.

  “Uh-oh. You have to start again. Let me show you how I do mine so it won’t break.”

  I let her hands guide mine, her dirty fingers pressing into the tops of my hands. It reminded me of the dirt we’d scrubbed away back in June. The swollen cheek we’d iced. Those first timid conversations we’d had. That felt like another lifetime. A lump began to rise in my throat, but I swallowed it.

  I willed myself to stay in the moment with her just a little bit longer, for as long as I possibly could.

  now

  We pull up to the address. I double-check that I have the right place.

  “Who lives here again?” Emma asks.

  “My mother.”

  “And you don’t live with her anymore?”

  Her innocence tugs at my heart. “No, sweetie. Actually, my mom left when I was young. I haven’t seen her in a very long time.”

  “Why? Did she go on a trip somewhere?”

  “Something like that.” The engine idles, and I tap my fingers on the steering wheel. I don’t want to do this. I don’t want to be here. But I am here for my father, not her, because there is nothing on this earth she could ever say to make me hate her less for what she’s done.

  I told my coworkers I was going to find my mother, and here was the opportunity to actually do it. Finding my mother wouldn’t erase what I’d done and all the repercussions to follow, but it would make one part of my story true … even if it was a small fragment. Now was my one shot to get it over with, to appease my dad, to give him something when so much had been taken away.

  While I was able to move on because I was a child and that’s what children do, my father wasted the best parts of his life sitting in that sad house, becoming a full-blown alcoholic, waiting for her to come back. Never mind she didn’t know where we lived all those years. Never mind that he never went looking for her. He didn’t think about those details. He just gave up. He was the victim and hoped she’d somehow find him. And yet, all that pain had simply sloughed off from the euphoria of one recent call, like it was nothing but a twenty-five-year nightmare. He seemed to be forgetting one critical detail: it’s me she’d asked to see, not him.

  I ask Emma to wait in the car. We’ve been in and out of the car enough for me to know she won’t touch anything or do something unsafe. I unlock the doors, making the decision that I am not going into my mother’s house. I will stand on the porch and hear what she has to say, then I am getting back in the car and driving far away from here. I twist around to flip on Emma’s LeapFrog, and she is instantly immersed, the world becoming a backdrop as she homes in on the game at hand. I leave the car running, air-conditioning on high, music turned low, because it is hot out, and because I don’t want her to hear.

  I smooth my tank top, and look at the modest house, a ranch, just like the one we’d grown up in. I wonder if she has a husband, boyfriend, or even more kids? The thought slaps me in the face—could I have a half-sibling?—but I make my legs move toward the front door because I just want to get it over with.

  In all the years she’s been gone, I never imagined me coming to her. I figured I’d see her somewhere—in a movie, if she’d made it as an actress, or in a coffee shop, if it were random—but never at her new home with a life she’d built without me.

  I walk up the porch steps and crane my neck to make sure Emma is still in her car seat, buckled and playing her game. I slide on my sunglasses and knock. Suddenly, I am a child again. I am foolish, and I am imposing on a woman who could care less about me. All I have ever done in her world is fill time.

  She pulls open the door before I can make contact with the knocker, and she stands there, shifting forward and backward, wanting to hug me—I can read it all over her face—but knowing that our relationship was never built on physical affection, she refrains. She is still strikingly beautiful, which both irritates and pleases me. She has a classic face, like she was born in the wrong era, which is probably why she was so obsessed with old-school movie stars. Her hair is still brown and slicked back into a ponytail, and her face is bare except for her bright red lipstick. She wears small black readers and stands in a gray V-neck T-shirt, fitted jeans, and expensive sandals. She looks refined and casual—not at all like the uptight, rigid woman I grew up with—and I’m literally at a loss for words as she drinks me in.

  “Oh my God, Sarah. Is that really you?”

  I want to make a joke about blondes having more fun, to lighten the mood, but I can’t, so I simply nod. Then her arms are around me after all. She smells like freesias. I close my eyes and remember a million things that weren’t entirely awful, all folded somewhere neatly inside me, like origami.

  “You look beautiful,” she breathes as she pulls back and holds me at arm’s length, assessing and deciding with a curt nod that I am acceptable, that I am okay. “Please, please come in. It’s so hot out.”

  I shake my head and glance at the car. “I can’t.”

  She peers around me and squints at the Ford, which is about twenty feet away, where she can just make out the top of Emma’s head through the windshield. “Oh my.” She presses one delicate hand to her mouth, and I can see the blue veins roped beneath her thin, white skin. “Is that … is that your daughter? Oh Sarah. Am I a grandmother? Roger didn’t mention it.”

  Hearing his name on her lips snaps me back to who it is I am dealing with. I straighten and resettle. “Look. I’m only here because he asked me to come see you. I have no interest in rekindling a relationship or connecting or whatever. I just … I’m sorry to say, I don’t want you in my life. I’m here for him.”

  A million questions hurtle to my lips: Where did you go? Where have you been? Did you ever think about coming back? About calling? About finding us? But I don’t, because I don’t want even more drama stacked onto my back like bricks. I stand, stare, breathe, and step back to block her view of Emma, who seems to hold all the attention.

  “She’s so beautiful, Sarah. She looks just like you.”

  I want to laugh at her naiveté and fake compliments for a granddaughter that doesn’t exist. If only she knew what she’d made me. “Enough, Elaine. Seriously. Stop. Just tell me what you want. Why did you contact Dad? And why now?”

  “I—?” She startles, adjusts her glasses, and crosses her arms over her chest. “Are you sure you can’t come in for a second?”

  I shake my head but say nothing.

  “I wanted to see how he was doing, I guess. I’ve thought about both of you through the years. All these years. I read about your business, and I just wanted to tell you how proud of you I am.”

  So there it was. I was right. This was about money. “Not that it’s any of your business, but yes. My business is doing well. I’m doing well. Is that all?”

  I turn to go. I just want out of this place, away from her, but she reaches for my elbow. “Sarah, please. Don’t make this so hard.”

  I spin around. “Me don’t make this hard? What exactly do you mean by hard, Elaine? The fact that you made my childhood a living hell, or the fact that you abandoned your eight-year-old daughter and a husband who worshiped you?”

  She looks as though I’ve slapped her, and I think about actually slapping her, how good it would feel after all the times she’s slapped me, that bright hot sting spreading across my open palm. But I’ve never hit anyone, and I’m not about to start now.

  “You don’t understand everything,” she says.

  “What’s everything supposed to mean?” I angrily stab the air with quotes. “Where did you go? Why’d you really leave? Was it a man? Drugs?”

  “It wasn’t like that. It wasn’t for somebody else. Or for something else.” She readjusts in the doorway. “I went to Hollywood. I never planned to be gone for more than a month, maybe two. But once I got there, I just…” She shrugs. “You don’t understand, Sarah. I wasn’t cut out for motherhood. Your dad knew it. I knew it. I think you
knew it too.”

  “So what? That qualifies you to just walk away? Do you know how many mothers feel like that every single day? That it’s all just too much? That’s called being a mom. It’s hard. But you don’t just—Jesus, you don’t just walk away from your family. It doesn’t work like that.”

  “I know it doesn’t work like that. I was so selfish. I know that. I do.”

  I close my eyes and reopen them. “So you’ve been in Hollywood this whole time, then? Acting? Until you decided to move out here?”

  “No. That didn’t really pan out. I traveled for a while. I wrote to you, Sarah. I wanted you to know I was thinking of you.”

  I look at her, stunned. “No, you didn’t.”

  “Yes, I did. I wrote to you. But you never wrote me back, so I figured Roger either didn’t give you the letters or you just didn’t want to write.”

  My heart burns with this new information. She actually wrote me? I rack my brain for any memory of mail with my name on it. My father was always the first to the mailbox, sorting, stacking, and tossing with the obsessiveness of a postman. Was this the reason why? Would my father keep those letters for himself? “I have to go,” I say, almost tripping down the porch steps as I move to the car.

  “Sarah. Sarah, wait.” She runs after me, and she is surprisingly fast for her age. I try to calculate how old she is—only sixty?—and she closes the gap before I can open the driver’s side door. “Look, I know you can’t forgive me. Jesus.” She scratches her head and sighs at the sky, which is clear and blue. “I don’t know how to do this. I mean, listen to me. I sound like a bad movie script.”

  I nod because she does, and we are almost laughing, and I forgot about how sometimes, in the rarest of moments, we’d come together over something silly and just get each other in a way my father and I never could.