The Remedy for Regret

by Susan Meissner

  Each imperfect step brings Tim’s face closer to my own. For some reason I am drawn to his eyes and yet apprehensive of meeting his gaze. When Tim and his father reach the patio, Blair, Jewel and I stand up.

  He is nearly as tall as John, and his brown hair is flecked with golden highlights. His eyes are blue; the same shade as his infant blue eyes, and his cheeks are speckled with light freckles. He is handsome in an easy, boy-next-door way. His face looks kind and gentle, but also cautious.

  I see Tim’s sapphire blue eyes and I am transported back to the day we found him, to the first time I saw those eyes. The last one of us to hold him that day was me. He was asleep in my arms when the police arrived, wrapped in my yellow baby blanket and I leaned down to kiss his forehead, above the row of mosquito bites that looked just like Orion’s Belt…

  The two dogs jump up onto the patio, fracturing the frozen moment in time.

  John Penney calls their names.

  “Bandit! Cosmo! Get down!”

  I am standing closest to Tim and our eyes meet. There is commotion all around us and yet I hardly sense any of it. It is like everything around us is happening in slow motion. I smile at him and the corner of his mouth lift a fraction.

  He was too young to know how to smile the last time I saw him. But those eyes are the same.

  “Hi, I’m Tess,” I thrust my hand forward.

  He takes it and grasps it more firmly than I thought he would.

  “Tim,” he says, like I don’t already know his name. He realizes this and the rest of the smile comes, awkward and sheepish, the way fifteen-year-old boys smile when being introduced to women in their late twenties.

  This eases the tension on the patio and we all laugh. John has corralled the dogs and sent them off to play in the yard.

  “Hi, Tim. I’m Jewel.” Jewel extends her right hand.

  “And I’m Blair.”

  When Blair offers her hand, Tim pauses for a moment before taking it.

  “You look just like your picture,” he says to her.

  “My… my picture?” she says, blinking several times.

  “The photograph in the newspaper article,” John says. “Tim has it in his baby book.”

  “Oh,” Blair says, wondering if that is good or bad.

  There is an awkward pause in conversation. Patricia invites us to sit back down and then excuses herself to get us something to drink. We spend the next twenty minutes in tedious small talk, telling Tim and his parents where each of lives now, where our lives have taken us since the last time we saw Tim.

  When Blair shares that her husband died of a massive heart attack less than two weeks ago, Patricia is appalled. I am sure she is wondering why Blair is looking for Tim when she should be at home grieving with her two little girls. She will never know Blair’s true reason for coming, just like she will never know mine.

  John stands up then and suggests to Patricia that we might like to visit with Tim alone for a few minutes.

  Patricia is not enthusiastic about this idea in the least. But she gets up and flashes a look at Tim that says something like, “I will be just a few feet away.” Tim looks a little nervous, too, but he says nothing. He watches his parents disappear into the screened porch and then into the kitchen. He looks back at us.

  Blair clears her throat.

  “Oh, God…,” she says and I think she might actually mean it. “Tim, I…” but she stops. I can imagine that her heart is racing, that her mouth feels dry.

  “Okay,” she says as she tries again. “Tim, I have to tell you something. When we found you in the peach box, there was something—two things, actually—inside the box with you. Jewel and Tess didn’t know about them. Only I did.”

  Blair reaches into her purse and pulls out the locket and the folded note. Her hand is shaking a bit. Tim’s face is expressionless.

  “Your… your birth mother left these for you. She meant for you to have them. I am so sorry I kept them. I am so sorry! I just… I was… I didn’t want to give you up. I didn’t want the police to come and take you. And this note was so…was so… I am so sorry, Tim. Please forgive me!”

  Blair can’t say anything more. She pushes the note and the locket across the patio table to where Tim is sitting in stunned silence. Jewel reaches underneath the table to Blair’s other hand and holds it gently. I just sit there waiting for the absolution to come.

  Tim waits a second before taking the locket. He opens it slowly and I can see that he is disappointed the little frame is empty. Then he takes the note and opens it slowly. I watch his face as he reads. I can see every line as his eyes move across the small piece of paper. I can tell when he reads the words “I will always love you.”

  Tim’s lower lip begins to tremble slightly and I can tell he wants it to stop. Instinctively I reach out to him and touch his shoulder. He doesn’t resist but he shakes his head like he can shake the tears back down to his heart where they came from. When he is able to control his quivering lip he says three words.

  “I always wondered.”

  “Please, please don’t hate me,” Blair wipes her eyes with the back of her hand. With her other one she is holding tight to Jewel’ hand.

  Tim fingers the note, touching the words that probably mean the most to him. Sorry. Love. Always.

  “I don’t hate you,” he says.

  And Blair’s soft crying is obviously mingled with a sense of relief.

  “So you forgive me?” she says.

  Tim can’t bring himself to look at this crying woman across the table. He just shrugs his shoulders.

  “Sure, I guess,” he says, unable, I think, to see past the wonder of having this note from his mother—the mother who loved him—to the offense that kept him from having it until this moment.

  Blair sighs heavily and the flow of tears seems to ebb.

  “I’m so sorry,” she says, one last plea for justice from the boy she wronged.

  “I can see that,” Tim says instead, not meaning to be comical, but it sounds funny to me and I start to giggle. I can’t stop. Jewel is smiling next to me. Even Tim has a slight grin on his face. Jewel and Tim seem more amused at my reaction than Tim’s actual words.

  “Why are you people laughing?” Blair starts to smile now, too, and I notice for the first time she has eye make-up running down her face.

  I reach into my canvas bag sitting by my feet and I hand her a tissue. I’m a little puzzled that I don’t need one myself; that I’m not awash in my own tears. This is not how I expected it to be. I expected my deliverance to come the way Blair’s just did, with the grief of thousands of days poured out around me. I expected this to be my Beautiful Gate. I expected to feel an island breeze blowing away my unmet longings and oldest regrets. I should feel like a weight has been lifted. But what I am feeling right now is simple relief for Blair, compassion for Tim and nothing out of the ordinary for me. All at once I understand why some people start laughing when they should be crying. It is a defense mechanism.

  It didn’t work for me.

  There is no gate.

  Eighteen

  We don’t stay long after Blair returns the locket and the note to its rightful owner. Before we get ready to leave Tim shows us his dogs, Bandit and Cosmo, as well as his kennels and the two visiting dogs presently in his care. Patricia and John rejoined us and I’m sure John used the time they were in the house to explain why we had come. I have the impression that Patricia isn’t entirely happy about what transpired on her patio.

  We exchange email addresses and street addresses and then we make our way to Blair’s car. Tim graciously submits to hugs from Blair, Jewel and I. Patricia suddenly heads back into the house while all this is happening, but she quickly returns holding a pale yellow baby blanket in her arms. It once belonged to me and seeing it takes my breath away.

  “This must belong to one of you,” Patricia says and I wonder if she wishes she had not kept it all these years. Or if she thinks by giving it back it will make Tim that mu
ch more hers and less anyone else’s.

  “It’s all right,” I never expected to get the blanket back. It was my gift to a helpless infant who had nothing of his own. “You can keep it.”

  “It was yours?” Tim says and I just nod.

  Tim reaches for the blanket and his mother gives it to him. He takes a couple of steps towards me and holds out his hands.

  “Seems like a good day for returning things,” he says and he looks at me with those eyes that amaze me with their sameness. Only the size and shape of the head that holds them has changed.

  I reach out and take hold of the blanket, folding my fingers into its softness. As Tim lets go and I take hold it suddenly occurs to me that this blanket, which is yellow—not blue or pink—was perhaps bought by my mother for me on a happy day when she was simply carrying a child whose gender she did not know. Instinctively I clutch it to my chest.

  “Thanks for loaning it to me,” Tim says and steps back to stand by his mother.

  “My pleasure,” I reply.

  As we head back into Memphis I am both grateful and despondent about the blanket that rests on my lap. It is both a reminder of everything I cherish about my mother and everything I wish I could change.

  When we get back to Jewel’s, and after we tell Corinthia about our amazing afternoon, Blair suggests we cancel our reservation at the Peabody, pick up our things and head back to St. Louis.

  “It’s only a five-hour drive from here,” she says. It is obvious she wants to go home and start living the rest of her life. Things can only improve for her. I envy that. But I don’t want to stumble into her mansion at midnight. I am tired. In every possible way a person can be tired.

  “It might be best to just start your long drive fresh, tomorrow,” Corinthia says to Blair, but she is looking at me.

  It takes a little convincing but Blair finally agrees and then decides to order pizza for all of us and to call her girls. She disappears into a quiet room to make her calls.

  Corinthia invites me to step outside onto Jewel’s porch and we settle onto a glider for two that is sprinkled with Bob the Builder toys. We move the toys and make ourselves comfortable. She knows something is up. She is going to ask me about it.

  “What is it, Tess?’ she says, her voice full of compassion.

  “It didn’t do what I thought it would do,” I say honestly, knowing but not caring that this can hardly make any sense.

  She studies my face for a moment but I am not looking at her.

  “Did you hope to discover something by finding this boy?’ she asks.

  “Yes. No.”

  I pause and she waits.

  “It wasn’t that I wanted to discover something,” I finally say.

  “What was it, then?”

  I feel like a child sitting here next to her, like I should gather up the toys we removed from the cushions we are sitting on and put them back in my lap. I feel as young and vulnerable as the child I was when I first met Corinthia.

  “I wanted to find a way to make it right.”

  “Make what right?

  Corinthia leans toward me, intent on understanding. I want to tell her everything but I don’t want to feel foolish in front of her. It was bad enough feeling that way in front of Simon.

  “I… I thought if I helped Blair find Tim, if I was a part of helping Tim understand why his mother left him it would somehow compensate for how my mother died.”

  I peek at Corinthia’s face but her eyes and expression reveal nothing. I don’t think she is considering how foolish I am.

  “How did your mother die, Tess?”

  I pause a moment before saying out loud what I hardly ever say.

  “She died of an embolism. Amniotic fluid got into her bloodstream while she was in labor. Pieces of my hair and skin were in it. When they reached her lungs, they killed her.”

  I can’t keep my voice steady as I say this.

  “And you feel responsible for this?” Corinthia says calmly.

  “Well… yes! I’ve tried to tell myself it was just an accident, that it is something I never would have chosen to have happen, but…” I don’t quite finish the sentence.

  “But…” Corinthia leads me to continue.

  “But the feeling won’t go away.”

  Corinthia’s face is a picture of puzzled wonder.

  “Why do you suppose you would feel responsible for something you had no control over?” she ponders. “You didn’t choose the day you were born. You did not choose to be born. You did not send that fluid into her lungs of your own accord. It happened within her body, a body that is separate from yours.”

  “Yes, I know, but Corinthia, I can’t get past it! I’ve never been able to get past the idea that if I hadn’t been born my mother would be alive.”

  Corinthia rests her back against the glider and starts to rock gently. She is deep in thought.

  “I wonder why you would feel this way, why you have always felt this way,” she murmurs. Then she turns her head to me. “Do you ever talk to your father about this?”

  “He… He has never liked talking about it.” I answer, remembering those times I tried and he refused.

  “So you’ve never told him how you feel?

  “Well, no. He doesn’t even know that I know it was an embolism that killed her. He would never tell me when I would ask how she died. When I was twelve, I begged a friend of his to tell me. And even this friend wouldn’t tell me what an embolism was. I found that out myself five months after we moved to Blytheville when I stumbled across my mother’s medical records.”

  “So, your father never told you how your mother died and you never let on that you knew.”

  I just nod my head. I can see that Corinthia is working an equation in her head. It frightens me.

  “Now why would your father not tell you how your mother died when you asked him?” she says.

  “Well, I guess he was protecting me from having to feel this way.”

  “And why would a reasonable adult who knows that there is no way a helpless infant could kill its mother think that you would feel that way? Why would he think you would need to be protected from feeling responsible?”

  Inside, I can feel something within me—something big and wide like a fortress wall—start to crumble. Even as I sense this, I’m instantly aware that I’ve been holding it up for years with the mortar of loyalty to my father. But I try to buttress the collapsing wall with one last brick.

  “Because he didn’t want me to feel like it was my fault,” I say and my voice trembles like a lost child’s would.

  “But Tess, why would he think you would? The man is a doctor. He knows whose body failed. He knows it was not yours.”

  The wall is falling to pieces all around me, the crushing weight of the fallen bricks are heavy on my chest. Corinthia’s eyes are misty as she looks at me, as she aches for me.

  “I think I know where that feeling came from,” she whispers.

  I know it’s true even before she says it. As each word leaves her lips I hear Simon’s voice in my head, telling me he had an argument with my father. I hear Simon telling me that I don’t know the source of my pain—that I think I do but that I’m wrong. I hear him telling me not to mention to my dad that there had been an argument between them. Wait and see if he mentions it first, Simon is saying in my head.

  But my Dad didn’t mention it. I gave him the bait three times and he did not bite.

  I close my eyes as I begin to imagine what Simon’s and my father’s conversation was probably like.

  “I am worried about Tess,” Simon probably said. “I don’t know if you know this but she has this ridiculous notion that she’s responsible for what happened to her mother.”

  My dad probably paused for a moment to let this sink in.

  “What makes you say that?”

  “Well, because she has told me. Several times. I have tried to tell her it wasn’t her fault but she can’t let it go.”

  “Of course it
wasn’t her fault,” my dad might’ve said.

  “Yes, but she has got in her head that it is.”

  “Well, surely she knows that things like that just happen sometimes.”

  “Mark, I am telling you it is a huge problem for her.”

  “I appreciate your concern, of course, but don’t you think you’re perhaps blowing this up a little out of proportion?”

  Simon probably started to get very frustrated.

  “No, I don’t. I don’t think you have any idea how much this affects her. I think you should talk to her about it.”

  “Well, why don’t you talk to her about it, Simon?”

  “I have! It hasn’t done any good. She won’t listen to me.”

  “What makes you think she will listen to me?”

  I imagine Simon was on the edge of exploding.

  “For one thing, you are her father. She has felt this way since she was a child. Long before she met me. And for another, you were there when it happened. You are also a doctor, for Pete’s sake!”

  “I don’t see any reason to get sarcastic, Simon.”

  “Don’t you get it? This is a huge deal for Tess! It’s why she can’t bring herself to marry me. She’s afraid of starting a family. She’s afraid she will die!”

  “Look, Simon. I don’t think it is fair to lay your relationship problems on me. I’d like to see Tess married and happy, of course, but that’s between you and her.”

  By this time, I can imagine that Simon realized it was useless to try to convince my dad to see what he doesn’t want to see.

  “Will you please talk to her about it?” he said, resigned to my father’s blindness.

  “About what? What am I supposed to talk to her about?

  “Just tell her it wasn’t her fault.”

  “It wasn’t.”

  “Then tell her.”

  “I think we’re done talking about this, Simon.”

  There were maybe a few more words between them—short goodbyes with the thinnest layer of good manners atop of them. I can picture them both hanging up in anger.

  It is all achingly clear to me. All of it. And to think that Simon pretty much figured it out before me. The only thing he doesn’t know is it’s not the prospect of dying giving birth to his child that has kept me from marrying him. It is dying and leaving that child to live with what I have had to live with all these years.