“That’s a cop-out.” Alice still sounded angry. “You’re always telling me each person is responsible for her own decisions. Right? So this was your choice. And now you’ve taken away my choices.” Evelyn could hear a cabinet door slam. “I wanted to decide how to break this news to my kids.”
“It’s not really your news to break.” Evelyn flinched. Alice wouldn’t like that, the implication that something regarding her children was out of her control. But she was learning this lesson anyway, right? With Adrian’s reading and Teddy’s discipline problems? The Julienne news was just one more example of something she’d have to roll with. Before Alice could answer, Evelyn continued. “Look, can I come in? I’m outside. I figured this would be an issue, and I wanted to discuss it in person.”
“God, Mom.” Evelyn watched Alice walk into the family room and peer out the window, verifying that indeed, Evelyn’s car was there. Evelyn raised her hand in a wave, though Alice probably couldn’t see her in the dark. Alice hung up.
Evelyn killed the ignition and pulled the collar of her fleece jacket up. Alice had never been one of those adopted children who seemed consumed by curiosity about her biological origins. Even as a teenager, Alice had been content with just the most basic health information. She’d never even asked for her birth parents’ names. Evelyn thought that maybe when she divorced Frank, Alice might feel a sense of loss that guided her back in history, but it was only after the intake appointment at her OB-GYN when she was newly pregnant with Teddy that she’d posed any specific questions. “Do you know how long my birth mother’s labor was with me?” she wanted to know. “Did she need a c-section?”
Evelyn hadn’t known those answers. She still didn’t, though she knew quite a bit more now than she had then. For most of Alice’s life, Evelyn felt relieved by her daughter’s ambivalence. She’d seen patients who fixated on their “bio parents,” as she called them. The kids and adoptive parents in these cases seemed decidedly different from one another. Although Evelyn would never say “ill-suited,” she did think it sometimes—a highly athletic mom and a kid with no hand-eye coordination, for example, or a dad with a PhD and a son who couldn’t for the life of him maintain a 3.0.
Of course, a biological bond never guaranteed an easy affinity. And despite their disparate DNA, Evelyn had always felt completely connected to Alice. And, Evelyn realized with a touch of pleasure, Alice now needed her more than ever. There was the sudden storm in her own nuclear family, and the arrival of Julienne in her family of origin. Evelyn would support her as she always had.
She grabbed her file and traversed the front walkway, making a more formal entrance than she usually did through the garage.
“You should call first before you just show up here,” Alice said as she opened the door.
“I know.” Evelyn encouraged her clients to set boundaries all the time, and in almost all areas of her life, she adhered to them perfectly. “It’s just that this is an emotional situation, and I wanted to follow up in person.” Evelyn raised her eyebrows. “And now I know you’ve met Julienne.”
“I don’t need to be scolded.” Alice walked away from her toward the kitchen. Evelyn looked down at her own pilled yoga pants and compared them to Alice’s brand-new-looking ones. The wool socks Alice wore over them—gray with turquoise contour lines—made the casual outfit somehow chic.
Evelyn glanced up the stairs, where she assumed the kids were. Neither of them seemed to have heard her come in. “But it was wrong, right? To go to Green Haven? How did you think it would play out? Obviously we’d all realize eventually.”
When they’d reached the kitchen, Alice collapsed onto the stool where she usually sat. She pulled out her ponytail and then refastened it, an old habit. “I told you, okay? I made the appointment before I knew. And yes”—she raised a hand and lowered it again in concession—“I guess I couldn’t resist.”
“Okay.” Evelyn laid her file folder on the counter, thinking of the several pieces of legal paper she’d shoved inside. It was Frank who’d always loved the yellow lined paper, but Evelyn had gotten accustomed to using it, too. She’d kept pads around even after they’d split. “I get that, and so I hope you’ll also understand what I’m going to tell you next.”
Alice put her head down, her forehead touching the counter. “No more surprises,” she said, and for a moment, Evelyn doubted her purpose.
“Just one more.” Better to get it out, she realized, than to keep another omission between them. “I just want to clear all of the air.” Alice raised her head and blinked slowly.
Evelyn craned her neck around Alice’s shoulder to be sure the kids were still upstairs. “I’m not sure where you are on this these days, and I definitely didn’t want to overstep.” Alice rolled her eyes at “overstep,” but Evelyn pressed on. “I’ve been doing some research,” she said.
Alice sipped ice water from a narrow-lipped mason jar. At least, Evelyn thought, she wasn’t having a second or third glass of wine.
“I think it’s going to work out with Milo Underhill,” Alice said. “Julienne recommended her partner for Teddy. It was insanely awkward after what I did, but I think we’re set on the therapist front.”
“Not that.” Evelyn went for it: “I’m talking about you. About your birth parents.”
“What?” Alice stood and opened the pantry. She extracted a handful of fun-sized Snickers bars and dropped them on the counter. She opened one and shoved it whole into her mouth.
Evelyn wondered if she’d have to repeat herself.
“I didn’t see that coming,” Alice said, her mouth full.
“Really?” Evelyn had figured with all of the adoption talk, Alice would have at least considered her own origins. “You really haven’t been feeling any enhanced curiosity about your birth parents?”
“Mom.” Alice’s long eyelashes fluttered. “I don’t know if this is the best time.”
“You’re saying it hasn’t come up for you at all, even with my news?”
Alice unwrapped a second Snickers. “Is this therapy?” Evelyn could still see the remnants of the first candy bar in Alice’s mouth as she shoved in the second one.
“Okay,” Evelyn said. “But now that I’ve brought it up, I feel like I should be totally honest. I did a little Internet research using the birthdays I have. Julienne told me how she’d done it to locate me. And now I’ve done it for you.”
“Mom!” Chocolate spewed from Alice’s mouth. She grabbed a cloth from the rim of her sink and hastily wiped the steely gray counter. Evelyn studied her daughter’s face. The dark hair at her temples had just the slightest hint of gray. Her collarbones, always visible, seemed to jut a bit more than usual under her formfitting athletic shirt.
“I have their names and birthdays.” Now that Evelyn had started, she couldn’t resist. She opened the folder she’d prepared, the information transcribed neatly on the legal paper. “They don’t live in Minnesota anymore, as far as I can tell,” Evelyn said. “If you feel anything like I felt after meeting Julienne, if you recognize something in yourself that you didn’t even see before—” Evelyn reached for her daughter as she felt tears coming, but Alice slid her stool back just a few inches, putting herself out of reach. “I just want this for you,” Evelyn said, her voice quieter now. “I want you to feel whole, too.”
“Really?” Alice grabbed a third Snickers, and Evelyn knew she’d be sick. “Because it feels like you’re trying to eject me from the family.”
Meredith Yoshida
Meredith glanced again at Alice’s text as she sat down to lunch in the clinic’s break room on Wednesday. “Happy birthday to Sadie. Can we talk?” Meredith pried open her glass bento. She and Sadie were both having smashed chickpeas with pita. Meredith had included a stick of Trident in each of their lunch bags to counteract the red onions. She’d snuck a Kit Kat, the first of the newly opened Halloween candy, into Sadie’s as a birthd
ay treat.
Meredith could still feel the warmth of Sadie’s body pressed against her in the school hallway last Thursday. It had been hard to leave her there after Teddy’s messages, even though Sadie insisted she was okay. Clearly, regardless of what she said, she wasn’t herself. Goading Tane into making that Instagram video was completely out of character, though Meredith could see why she’d done it. She was just trying to help him recover some of his social standing after Teddy’s cruel prank. Sadie always had rooted for the underdog. Meredith loved that about her. And now she was officially a teenager. It was normal, Meredith knew, for teenagers to have lapses in judgment and to make mistakes.
Meredith could have ignored Alice’s text, but she decided to be the bigger person. She’d embody the behaviors she hoped to instill in her daughter.
“I’m not ready,” she’d typed. With each letter, she felt her anger balloon. “I’m not sure I’ll ever be ready.” Her thumb had throbbed as she’d hit send, Teddy’s all-caps “SLUT” flashing in her mind’s eye.
“Okay,” Alice had written back, “but it seems like they’ve both done thoughtless things, right? Maybe we can move past this. Onward? I’m working with Teddy on his sense of significance, and we started therapy.”
Bullshit, Meredith thought. Excuses, rather than real contrition. She wouldn’t respond. Teddy had called her daughter a slut, and even though Sadie had played a role, “slut” was a line in the sand.
Meredith opened the clinic’s charting software on her laptop. She might as well multitask, to prepare for the onslaught of afternoon patients. She didn’t want to spend her evening catching up when they’d be celebrating Sadie’s birthday as a family. Meredith had two dozen cupcakes on their kitchen counter ready to send along to synchro practice. Mikaela and Chloe were set to come over for a sleepover on Friday.
Her phone pinged just as she was about to pack up. She sighed, half expecting another plea from Alice, but instead the message was from her daughter. Before she slid it open, she looked at the time: 11:24. Sadie should be in class. A shot of fear froze Meredith’s arm.
“Don’t panic,” read the first text. Too late. Meredith felt a swell of terror beneath her rib cage and quickly skimmed the next message. “But something’s happening again with Teddy. And Tane.”
Meredith’s first thought was that Teddy had a gun. Of course he doesn’t have a gun, she chastised herself, though it was easy to catastrophize about school shootings when they seemed to happen every other week.
“And Mom,” another text read, “don’t freak out, but there’s something about me.”
Meredith blew a long breath out, an attempt to expel her anxiety. Sadie’s was certainly a junior high girl thing, the kind of problem she’d been dreaming about solving since the ultrasound tech had shouted “Pink!” in the exam room.
“Whatever it is,” Meredith wrote, “we’ll tackle it together tonight. I’m sure we can solve it.” Meredith had been a whiz at navigating the social scene as a teenager.
“But Mom, it’s out there.”
“What’s out there?” She shoved the remaining half of her lunch into her thermal bag. “Just tell me. What’s going on?” Meredith kept her eyes on the response bubbles, waiting.
“There’s a picture,” Sadie finally wrote. “I don’t know why I did it, but Tane asked for a snap, and I sent it.”
Meredith gaped at the message, and then she jerked her head up as the door to the break room opened.
“Are you okay?” Meredith’s colleague Adriana crossed from the door to where she stood. Meredith jerked her phone toward her chest, hiding it.
“Whoa!” Adriana took a step back and put her palms up.
Meredith kept her head down, embarrassed. “I’m so sorry,” she said. “I think this might be an emergency.” She forced herself to type the next question, “What kind of picture?” She closed her eyes as she waited for confirmation, praying she was wrong. A few seconds later, she felt her phone pulse.
“My chest,” Sadie had written. “With half my bra off.”
Meredith’s legs shook with adrenaline. “I have a family emergency,” she blurted. “Adriana, can you get Jill to cover for me?” She didn’t wait for an answer or clear her lunch or grab her computer. She just ran.
Alice Sullivan
We have to talk.” Ramona stood at the entry to Alice’s office. Alice filled a seagrass basket with files from her desk drawer. Fabric and wallpaper samples stuck out of her folders, options she’d planned to show Ramona or clients in upcoming meetings.
That morning, Alice had backed up all of her electronic files and all of her drawings to her personal Google account. She wasn’t sure she could sustain a studio on her own, but she planned to ask Patrick that weekend to review her noncompete clause just in case.
“You’re distracted,” Ramona continued. “It’s obvious.” Alice looked up in time to see Ramona gesture at her whole person, sweeping her hand down the length of Alice’s torso as if criticizing her outfit. Alice looked down at her green V-neck. There was nothing wrong with it. There was nothing wrong with that or her black jeans, and certainly nothing wrong with her leopard-print flats. Nothing about Alice conveyed distraction.
And while Alice definitely had a lot going on—an understatement, she thought, before pushing the admission out of her mind—this was Ramona grasping at straws. She needed excuses for stealing Elle Decor and excuses for not treating Alice as the partner she deserved to be.
“I made a new Slack channel for a powder room remodel,” Alice said. “I sent you the wallpapers for the Kerrigan rumpus room. I booked three estimates for the O’Brien kitchen. I’m getting my work done.”
Alice collapsed a framed photo of Teddy holding newborn Adrian in a hospital bed and put it in her basket. In the picture, Alice had the kids encircled in her arm, her plastic ID bracelet wrinkled against Teddy’s five-year-old elbow. “But for the rest of the week,” Alice said, “I’m going to get my work done at home. We need space.”
Alice had always felt under the microscope in this glass office, but it was worse since Ramona’s backstabbing, the way she’d undermined Alice’s growth.
“Working from home isn’t really part of our agreement.” Alice fell into her desk chair and woke up her computer. If she looked at Ramona, she’d lose it. So instead, she thought of Oprah and scanned her desktop for files she’d missed. Alice felt her teeth grit. She felt the same anger from the night before when her mother had given her that folder. Everyone seemed to want to expel her.
“I can think of a lot of things that weren’t part of our agreement.” Alice racked her brain for a list. “For instance,” she continued, triumphant, “I’m pretty sure it’s not part of our agreement for you to schedule client meetings in the conference room when I’ve already—”
Alice’s phone rang then. She startled at the caller ID: Elm Creek Junior High. “Shit,” she said aloud, and then she regretted it. If she was trying to appear put together, swearing wouldn’t help. Without looking up she said, “I have to take this.” Ramona crossed her arms and stayed put. “Do you mind?” Alice asked as the phone buzzed against her palm. Of course, even if Ramona moved, Alice still wouldn’t have any privacy in this goddamned office. She pushed her chair back and rushed past her immobile boss, jostling her slightly. She hit the answer button on the phone once she’d reached the reception desk. By the time she’d said, “This is Alice Sullivan,” she was safely in the hallway.
“Jason Whittaker.” His tone was flat, almost regretful.
Alice froze. “What is it?”
“We’ll need you here right away. Hold on—” She could hear muffled talking then, something about “getting Officer Larson” and “isolation.” Alice wrapped an arm around herself, feeling chilled.
“Can you give me any information?” Alice raised her voice to speak over whatever else Whittaker was doing.
&n
bsp; “Sorry,” he said, “it’ll be easier to talk when you get here. How soon can you come?”
Alice looked back at the office door. She could see Ramona flipping through the basket she’d packed. Ramona had already plucked out a couple of fabric memos. Alice seethed. The samples weren’t the property of Ramona Design. Alice herself had called the companies and requested them.
“I’ll be there in ten.” Although Alice feared whatever Whittaker needed to tell her, she was more than happy to escape her boss.
Meredith Yoshida
Meredith called Bill from the car, but she could barely speak the words to explain the emergency. Poor Bill, Meredith thought. He had pretty much ignored Sadie’s foray into puberty. Meredith had bought the next sizes up in clothes and skating costumes. But they hadn’t approved any makeup or dating. Meredith had insisted that she and Sadie shop for bras together, and Sadie had shrieked when Meredith had asked to come into the fitting room. Meredith hadn’t mentioned it to Bill when she’d slipped some organic cotton menstrual pads under Sadie’s sink.
“Do you want me to meet you at school?” Bill asked.
“You won’t make it,” she said. Her husband was three suburbs away as Meredith pulled into a parking spot in the junior high’s back lot. After she turned off the car, she closed her eyes, steadying herself. Sadie was the kind of kid who did Service Club and Quiz Bowl. How could she also be the kid who sent naked photos?
Meredith shivered just thinking about it, and then she forced herself out of the Jeep and into the school. Was there any way they could deny the photo was of Sadie? Though Meredith dreaded seeing the picture, she knew she’d have to study it, to memorize every pixel. As she speed-walked past the choir room, strains of “Let the River Run” escaped into the hallway, and Meredith realized Sadie might need a lawyer. The thought stopped her for a split second, and then she propelled herself forward again.
Are We There Yet? Page 20