If Only

by Jennifer Gilmore

  “What? A letter?”

  “Yes,” Mom says quietly.

  “You kept it from me?” I stand up for emphasis but I decide to shelve the anger for when I need it one day, for when I’m about to be grounded for lying about where I was or what I was doing and I can say, oh, right, like you kept that letter from me, you guys are the liars! Then I remember I don’t really lie to them and that they really wouldn’t ground me, so I decide to embrace the anger in the now instead. “For how long? Let me see it!” I demand.

  Mom rises, too. “We’re not keeping it from you. We were just saving it.”

  “For what? For, like, the day I figure out to ask for it?”

  “I actually have no idea,” Mo says. She shrugs. “What we were waiting for. I really don’t.”

  She leaves and the screen door slaps three times. I always find it funny in this day and age where everything is so, I don’t know, technological, and modern and steel, and then there are these things like screen doors that have been here forever and just sound like the past.

  Claire and I exchange looks and then Mo comes back, not two minutes later, with a bulky envelope. She places it so carefully in my hands, like it’s a delicate bird’s nest, fallen from a tree.

  The first thing I notice is that it’s already been opened.

  “It’s open!” The rage grows. Who knew. I’ve never felt that before, not for my parents anyway. More for, like, the world and all the bad things happening in it, the cruelty to vulnerable people. To animals. I feel that a lot. It’s that kind of rage, though, for a second anyway.

  Next I notice the date stamp: July 28, 2012. That is a lot of holding on my moms did.

  Shaking, now also from fear, I think, I dip into the envelope that has something besides a letter inside. A stone, milk white and shaped like a small egg, smooth and shiny. Mom reaches out to rub my arm and I move away. My heart sort of lurches and then I take the rock, rub it shinier with my thumb.

  I look at my parents and Claire, blinking into the sun that’s going down over the tree line along the ridge, one last time to blind us before morning. I look at the rock that I know has touched her. My birth mother. The letter I know she wrote. What were her hands like? I look down at mine. Like these fingers? I look at them and they just seem foreign to me.

  Mo’s hands are on the table tapping nervously at the edge. Broad nails, perfectly square. Short fingers, so many silver rings. The skin is wrinkling a little, crepe-like, working hands. Mo hands. My Mo. For a moment I’m just sad because I don’t know what’s about to happen. I look up, though, and now I’m just angry again at being lied to.

  Bridget

  May 2000

  The Arizonas make me think more about the city and staying east. We’re not that far but far enough away that I have only had dreams about it. What would it be to look up all the time? To have so many people around you, all kinds, to never want for anything to do? To never be bored. When I was super little I had thought I wanted to be an artist. I traced all my CD covers. Drew all kinds of animals. I liked that feeling. Of drawing and being careful. And concentrating, hard. But then I just forgot, I guess. I don’t know why I stopped. This is some of what I’m thinking when Sally and Andrew, the next set of parents, the next interview, pull up.

  Their car is a piece of dog doo. So there’s that. Bumper sticker says Clinton-Gore but, okay, I guess, hooray for the nineties. Thankfully my mom has excused herself for the day—she doesn’t like city people—and I told Baylor he didn’t have to show. He hesitated and was like, it’s my choice, too. You know that’s my child also, don’t you?

  And actually, for the first time I think about how it is. His. Too.

  So come, then, I told him.

  He looked at me. Those Baylor eyes. Like look at me as if you are a puppy and, what, I will want to pet you? What? Why do guys always look that way when they want something?

  Like I said, Bayle, I’ll handle it.

  I don’t care that it is his child really anymore but it’s true, my choice matters to him. He will have a little girl in the world. Maybe, in the end, she will have those sweet eyes, too. Or that nose of his. His splash of freckles and long eyelashes. Or maybe his walk. How would that look on a girl? Is that a thing you learn or a thing you’re born with? Baylor’s walk: Have you ever seen a boy be so confident and so unsure at the same time? That is Baylor walking. That is Baylor in the world.

  But he didn’t want to come, I know he didn’t, we’re not in this together anymore. I’ve been watching the videos of birth parents from the agency and it’s not me and this boy holding hands and looking at each other and the camera, both, like all the couples they’ve filmed. We’re separate now. I get to decide. I will show him the people but he can’t say yes or no. He has lost that chance. That choice.

  Is that fair? I don’t really care.

  So here it is, just me. Dahlia, too, so she can see it and help me. It’s so hard to see everything you need to see all at once. All the things: what they look like and what they say and what they mean and what they bring and what they don’t bring. How they act. To me and to each other. All the things you can’t tell at one time. Alone.

  Let me tell you this: The people have to be spectacular. All the things I’m not is who they have to be. If it’s not going to be me or Baylor and me in our fake love or me and my mom or just me on my own with my little partner in life here, then it has to be something wonderful. They do. The life they have. A perfect life.

  The woman, Sally, is pretty, like I might want to be when I’m her age. Which seems sort of older. And wise, was what Dahlia had said when we set their profile aside. Long ringlets of dirty-blond curls. The profiles: the photographs of them with all kinds of children, are they real? Nieces, nephews, friends’ children. Their wedding in a backyard somewhere, super low-key. Will I even have one? I’m thinking. A huge Christmas tree in the middle of a huge city, everything lit up. And a letter to me. They all have a letter:

  To a Special Person,

  We want to thank you for your bravery and generosity in considering adoption. We hope our letter can offer some comfort. We think that your decision to bring a baby into the world is a wonderful gift, whether to our lives or another’s. We hope we can give you some insight into our family while letting you know that, should we be lucky enough to have you choose us to love and care for your child, we will be committed to welcoming you into our lives as well, in whatever way makes you most comfortable. We are excited and grateful to be considered as the adoptive parents for your child; we would be thrilled to be the family to accompany you on this journey.

  Sincerely,

  Sally and Andrew

  Who wants a letter like this? Let me tell you something: I never want a letter like this again. It says nothing. And everything.

  Also I gather they have wanted a child for a very long time, too. Imagine wanting something for years and years. I can’t imagine it right now. What I want and what they want has to be pretty different.

  Anyway, she’s pretty in a kind of hippie way. Long flowing print dress. Heavy brown boots up to the knee. The long hair and the bangs.

  It’s strange how I don’t see the guys so much. I guess I’m more focused on the mothers, but when I make myself pay attention I see his hair is longish, all salt and pepper. Tall, slim. Jeans and a nice shirt but I can tell it’s usually T-shirts and he’s dressed up. For me. For me? They would have had good-looking kids, I can see that. I picture it. Their daughter. She might not look so different than mine.

  Still, she is mine.

  “Look,” I say to Dahlia.

  She looks out the window. Swallows. “Yeah,” she says.

  They walk up to the house and Dahlia sits on the couch and I drop the curtains, clear my throat, here we go.

  “Hey!” Sally says, thrusting a small pretty bag toward me. I have learned already: the smaller the bag the better the gift. “Lotion,” she says. “I hope you like lemon verbena.”

  Do I like
lemon verbena? I really don’t care but it’s not something I have thought I needed.

  I explain about Dahlia being there and they smile.

  “That’s nice you have friends who can support you,” Sally says. “Is your mother here, too?” She looks heavenward, but I think she is actually looking toward upstairs.

  “She had plans,” I say.

  “But she’s supportive, too?” Sally asks. “About your adoption plan.”

  I nod peacefully. I am concealing the look that says, my mother is jump-starting this plan, lady. She is in front of it with a huge rope, dragging it, and we are hanging on by our fingernails.

  I look at my brittle, bitten nails and then I look up and smile.

  Andrew smiles back. “And the birth father is on board, too?” he asks.

  Sally throws him a look. You can see those looks coming and going even when they’re fast as a shot.

  “Yup,” I say. I can’t get into it. Like, dude, talk to the agency, the lawyer, whatever it is. He’s on board. He will sign her over.

  It goes like this: What do you want, and what do you want? Who are you, and who are you? What do you want from the future, and what do you want? How are these the conversations?

  Now Sally starts in about their summer plans, which involve being somewhere in the woods and painting and drawing. Getting out of the city, she says, like that’s a thing.

  It’s all so cool but she interrupts a lot and he does this weird look-away thing and I can tell they might be over. Over like my parents, even though they still live together. Even over like Baylor and me but that is a different kind of over since it wasn’t years together. It wasn’t, like, a lifetime. I can see that but the love is still big love. Was. Rosaria rises up in my mind and I can see her long arms around him. Just loose and casual, like they belong there and it makes me crazy.

  I am listening: we believe in public schools and museums or something like this and I am thinking of the other couples in the maybe pile: Orcas Island, the two guys from Oneonta, the baseball player and his wife. The vet and the real estate agent. Too many choices, really, but these ones feel like a leap of faith I do not have today.

  “I love to bake,” Sally says, and I can see Andrew make the smallest little laugh.

  Is she a bad baker? Is she lying?

  “What’s it like to be a dancer?” I ask her. I don’t think about it first, it just comes out. Because I really want to know.

  She looks down and beneath her gauzy dress I can see her muscular thighs. “It was amazing,” she says. “Dancing was everything to me.”

  I nod. “Was.”

  Sally’s eyes are watery. “It’s different now.” She pushes her smile out, I can tell. “Not bad. Different. Dancing is for the young.” She laughs and throws her head back, lionlike. Her long hair tumbles around her face. “It was a wonderful time. I danced all over the world. I have that with me forever,” she says. “But it’s over now. That part.”

  Andrew looks away and I can’t tell if it’s because he is letting her speak without getting in her way or if he just can’t stand hearing this anymore.

  “Now she teaches,” he says. “She’s such a great teacher. Her students are like her kids!” he says brightly. I can tell, when he pauses, that he’s wondering if that last bit is a selling point or not.

  For a moment, my heart, like, surges. With kindness for Sally. I like her so much. I can tell she’s unhappy. This baby, it’s for her, I know.

  Andrew says, “Painting, though, you can do that forever.” He grins slyly.

  Sally: city, sweet, pretty, intense, a cool girl once, I can tell. But a mother? What makes a mother? I am wondering, hard. I want to know. If it’s not the person who pushes it out, then what is it? Who I mean. Who is it?

  “That’s true,” Sally says brightly, trying to save the conversation. “Being an artist, it’s not for everyone.” She looks at me. She looks so motherly and warm and desperate. Okay, I am thinking, she can do this.

  But it seems wrong to me now and suddenly I can see the lights of the city fading out, fading fast. Andrew and Sally are disappearing into a crowd of people on a packed street. I can see her and see her and see her. Now she’s gone.

  I am a plane zooming over the building, three-dimensional in the night, I touch down, but now I pass it, through the clouds, back to the squares of farm land, the green grass, and cleared meadows. Back to the places I know.

  I smile when we say good-bye. Sally touches my hair. Like just a chunk of it, which she sort of moves over a little bit.

  “You are lovely,” she says. She looks at me so intensely. “I hope we can talk again. I wish all the best things for you.”

  She is so sad.

  I let them both hug me. I watch them walk out to that piece-of-crap duct-taped car. He puts his arm around her and she shakes him off.

  I don’t look at Dahlia and she doesn’t look at me either. It’s like we both know in our bones there is nothing to say. I go up to my room and Dahl follows behind and I see her pile of creek stones. She’s built them like a stone wall around my little ceramic bowl of fake jewel rings I’ve been collecting out of the machine by the pizza place since I was a kid. I pick up a white stone, hold it in my palm, try to move on again.

  If Only

  New York City

  We come out of school and dang if I just don’t want to hang in the park today, water fountain finally got turned on again, watch the freaks, listen to music, spring in the city, big grand arch beneath all that blue. Scaffolding is down! The girls with split ends and their acoustic guitars, flowing dresses, they tilt their heads together, open their mouths wide and go, The answer, my friend, is blowing in the wind, the answer is blowing in the wind.

  Earnest as all get-out, I love it.

  Two years and maybe I won’t be here anymore. Maybe I’ll go to some little college campus somewhere, a bubble crawling with ivy, where my father teaches maybe, but for now, I want to be right here on the ledge of this fountain, feet dangling in the water, here in the middle of everything.

  Andre might bring his boom box. He’s got one old-style, stuck with stickers, all . . . old. Turns it on: nineties hip-hop (East Coast, baby), grunge, bright bright pop, all kinds to bug the folk singers. Earnest as all get-out Where-Have-All-the-Flowers-Gone folk singers, I love them.

  Me, I like the dog park. Teeny dog section separated so they don’t get eaten by the bigs and means. Dogs are magic. Magic dogs. Ours has been dead just two years and even to say her name—Matilde—can make me cry. Dog sister. That is who she was.

  Today is blue, blue sky, robin’s egg or 9/11-style depending on your mood, right? Aight? I’ll say 9/11. I’m in my striped cropped shirt, my high-waisted jeans, my flowered button-down, and I feel kind of blooming, like I’m all, I’m the girl of my own dreams.

  Tina? Not so much. She’s reading a cat vampire book and her black hair and black boots and she’s perched on the back of the bench not talking so much.

  Thinking also how I don’t need to be in Brooklyn until six, when my mom gets back. She always wants to stop in and meet me at school downtown on the way home but today I can just be alone on the F and no one is going to murder me; it’s not the eighties. I couldn’t ride the train until I had to get to school. Great school. Education opens doors as my parents always say. (Picture the subway doors opening here.) But doors to what? She used to say, sell the silver, the paintings (Daddy’s aren’t worth much anyway), sell it all for your education. Give you everything. But then we got zoned for somewhere good. Or we stayed zoned for it.

  This whole city. Best city in the world as all the good songs go.

  So: Andre and Jonathan and Avi and me, all my boys, my gay boys (except Jonathan) and also my grump-ass Tina, it’s all easy and lying around. And all I’m thinking is stupid jams like croquet makes me uncomfortable, how all summer my cousins and I played it at their visit house in Hudson, just stupid.

  I say it out loud. “I hate croquet.”

&nbs
p; “I feel like that about Ping-Pong,” Jonathan says.

  “Random,” says Avi.

  “H’oh! Look at that cop. He’s ticketing the piano guy!”

  “No way,” Andre says. He’s got the box. “That is so rough; that is so unjust. Ticketing an artist like that.” He presses play on the old piece of crap: Wreckin’ shop when I drop these lyrics that’ll make you call the cops, goes LL.

  Please shut up, Andre, I am thinking. I am sick of the artist rant. My father with the artist this, the artist that. I get it. He was an artist. His drawings are pretty amazing, though. When they got me he made me into everything. Drawings, silk screens, strange cubed paintings. It feels like he was waiting there with all his inks and charcoals and acrylics, just waiting for me to fill in this space he needed to make.

  He makes art still. But mostly he teaches. Just north of the city.

  For a while, it was the same song: Let’s leave Brooklyn. Let’s leave NY. Let’s go where there’s space for us to be. There’s no artist class anymore. They said that until I was ten. Since I was three.

  Then they got divorced.

  They, like, missed the time to leave here.

  I’m super glad. About the city. I am all in, city. I am all in, hang out with my friends in the best city in the world. I’m all in, look out across the water and see the buildings—morning, night, dawn, do you know how good the city looks, glittering, for always? Wherever I go next I am going to try to remember. How I used to live across from Oz.

  Jonathan says, “I love my Ping-Pong table.”

  Freakin’ Jonathan. Clueless Jonathan. No, take it back, won-the-jackpot Jonathan. Ping-Pong table in his Chelsea basement. Dad’s in finance. Jackpot. Except his dad’s in finance.

  “Of course you do,” I say.

  “Best Bar Mitzvah prezzie I got.”

  Everyone looks at him and laughs, even Tina, because it’s never not funny that Jonathan with his big huge Afro, his super-cool Africana shirts, all seventies-style, is Jewish. He’s about seventeen feet taller than his super-tiny Jewish mother. That’s why we’re friends. Adopted, both of us. Me, at birth, Jonathan when he was one. Me, white as a daisy. Blue-gray eyes. I stripped my hair white blond—that went over well—but now it’s dark as anything at the roots. What if I had ended up with them? With little teeny Ruth Seegar and cigar-chewing Dan Schwartz? Coulda been.