If Only

by Jennifer Gilmore

  “How long have you been sitting there?”

  “Please,” she says. “Bridget, please.”

  I hand her sunnydaisyjuneeverythingbeautifulinagarden. I sob. I feel like I will be sobbing like this for the rest of my days. I will be broken forever. “She’s sick or something.” I hiccup. “I don’t know!”

  My mother places my baby on her shoulder, tummy down, and lightly rubs her back. She’s only wearing a diaper. I have nothing, no cute little onesies printed with flowers or monkeys or ladybugs to dress her in. No crib, no cradle. No Moses basket. But me. She has me. Her crying fades a little. Now it’s a whimper.

  “She’s cold.” My mother laughs. “And that’s gas,” she says. She holds her out in front of her for the first time. “It would be nice,” she says to the girl. Mine. About to not be mine. “It would be nice because I love you I love you.” Her face goes close to the baby’s face. Her granddaughter’s face.

  I can’t watch it. No one told me. Who would have told me?

  My mother looks over my beauty to me. “Bridget, we have to do the right thing. For everyone. For this little girl.” She gasped. “I didn’t know this would be so hard.”

  “You didn’t?” I say. “Didn’t you have me?”

  My mother walks down the hall now. And I know I have to surrender. I will answer the prayers of this family. I will. I will. They have been waiting. And who am I but one person? There are two parents. A big love. A house, a garden, trips to Europe, animals in cages, a piano. How, at my absolute best, can I be all that?

  “Wait!” I scream. I follow her out. I take her sweet finger in mine. I kiss her nose.

  There’s my daughter’s face looking over my mother’s shoulder.

  I want her with everything inside me. For one moment she stops crying and, suddenly, I am me, now, me again, only exactly who that was. But I’m so different now. I am all these things inside now. I could have been a mother. I could be a mother. Everything feels like a choice. I am going to be everything now. Watch me. Watch me eat and drink and dance and kick and scream and scream. Watch me watch me watch me you won’t see anything real. I am a secret, your secret, watch me forget your name.

  I realize, now, for the first time, it is over. It is done. The thing growing in me that was all mine, only mine, the thing I sometimes woke to think of like a present I could unwrap and who mostly I woke weeping when I remembered it, it’s gone now. She’s gone. This is the story of a baby that never was, a story that has been erased from the story of our family. I know what I am doing. It’s not a decision, really, it’s just the way I do a lot of things now.

  I will be something. I will be anyone.

  I let her go.

  Part 2

  Ivy

  2017

  “I don’t think you should go,” Mo says. She stands, and it feels like she’s blocking my way.

  We’re on the deck; it’s where everything happens around here, least when it’s not wintertime. And here we are in spring. Spring break. Woo-hoo. Partay.

  “Are you, like, blocking me, Mo?” I ask. “It’s an hour away.”

  She withdraws. Sometimes she tries so hard to be bigger, she doesn’t realize. Sometimes I know she has to. That’s how she got listened to. But not today. No, sir, not right now.

  “No, Ivy,” she says, “I’m not blocking you; I’m just talking to you. And it’s not the distance. There’s a lot of psychic distance, too.” She sits down and I watch her grab both of the arms of the wrought iron chair. She looks older to me suddenly. Weary. It makes me sad. Mo is fifty-seven.

  “Psychic distance?”

  I forgot to mention: Mo is a social worker.

  “Because we had a plan,” I continue. “You said I could go during break and here it is. Break. Spring.” I point up to the blue sky. “Would you rather I head to Puerto Vallarta like the cheerleaders this year?” I fiddle with the locket, run it back and forth over its chain. It’s cold around my neck. Zzz is the sound.

  Mom watches me. I know she sees it. “Honey, no, stop, what Momo means is that we don’t want you to go alone. It’s a lot. The trip at your age is a lot, and with Patrick, and I’m just not that comfortable.” She looks over at Mo.

  “Well, maybe you should have thought of that when you were reading my mail.”

  “In 2012,” Mo says, rising.

  “And anyway, I’m going with Patrick and—”

  Mo just ignores this and continues. “And Claire. That’s for sure, you are not going alone with Patrick. But yes, maybe we should have thought about it while we were waiting at your ballet lessons and while we were throwing huge croquet parties on the lawn here? Or when your mom was sewing your Halloween costumes? Remember when you wanted to be a perfect Disney princess and even though I was against it because Disney is totally fascist your mom did it and then you decided, the day before, mind you, that you were too old for princesses and you wanted to be a carrot. Remember that? How Mom went out and bought all the crap you needed for your . . . carrotness . . . and she was up all night sewing for you. Maybe I should have thought of it then.”

  “You done?” I say.

  “Yes,” Mo says, gripping the arms of her chair. “I am.”

  Mom takes a deep breath. It’s a sigh and a breath and it also seems kind of elderly.

  “Last I checked that’s what parents did. But I guess you’re saying it’s so unusual you know because I’m not really your kid.”

  There. I said it. I have never said it before but I am saying it now even though there is no part of me that is feeling it. I am saying it to cause as much damage as I can in proportion to what I want. I want to go.

  Mom looks like she’s been punched in the belly and Mo looks pissed as hell. She’s getting all big and bulky again, and Mom lays a hand on her shoulder. “Okay,” Mom says calmly. “That’s enough. We will not dignify this with a response, Ivy. You can just sit with what you’ve said for as long as you like.”

  I sit. I look up at the sky. I look around me, and far beyond to the chicken coop. I think of the newest chicken, some kind of Polish breed I think; I named her Wilbur and I think she’s beautiful. I am looking everywhere but I am not thinking about it.

  Everyone is silent.

  I feel awful. And I know I should say so, but I want to hurt them. I want them to be angry at me. I think that will make it easier for me to go looking for her. Without them.

  Mo interrupts the silence, surprise, surprise. “We don’t think you should go because you’re sixteen years old and it could be excavating something very painful. That’s what I meant, Ivy. Darling. I think you know how we feel about our family and about being your parents.”

  “But it’s different,” Mom says quietly. “It would be wrong to say that we don’t think about the gift of you. You are ours one hundred percent, and if I could have had biological children with Mo I would have wanted to give birth to you. If you must know it is the one thing. I wish I could have had you, YOU, so we wouldn’t be having this conversation. That is the only thing.”

  I look up at the sky. Blue blue blue.

  “But we are,” Mom continues, “and I didn’t give birth to you and the young girl who had you—who was just your age—is out there. And you deserve to find her. And she deserves to see you, the amazing young woman that you have become.”

  I swallow. My throat is closing up. My moms. My family. I want no other way of being in the world. I want to be little again and in between them in bed on Sunday, Mo’s popovers in the oven, reading Charlotte’s Web, just the three of us, all of us the third girl, our toes all touching, before Charlotte dies, before I knew there was something else I had to do. Before before before. Remember that? Before everything. “I love you,” I say, and I start sobbing. Sob-bing.

  They both run over because, you know what? They will always think I hung the moon. That is the life I ended up with. It’s complicated and it’s so, so simple. But it’s beautiful. They hug and hug me.

  In these kinds of moments?
It is only a story about being found.

  They both stand up. Mom is shaking her head and wiping her hair out of her face—she has a witchy streak of white that is pretty dang cool—and she says, “Beauty.”

  “Just give me the address,” I say.

  They both nod their heads.

  “Okay, then,” Mo says. She hands over a slip of paper. “Here’s where she used to live. This is where we met her.”

  It’s an address in Ithaca, New York, not an hour from here.

  “Is this where you met me?”

  They both shake their heads but no one says anything. Mom’s gaze kind of shifts off to the woods. Mo puts her hand on her leg.

  Imagine, I’m thinking. Sixteen years and still that can make them go sad and silent and scared.

  “That was a long time ago,” Mom says. “And that’s everything we have. I think when someone says don’t look for me you might want to think about that.”

  “That was five years ago,” I say softly.

  Mo brushes her hands together. “There you have it.”

  Mom is still looking off the terrace, toward some horizon. I can tell they’re sort of traumatized about this, but in a different way than I am. Because I am a little excited, too.

  “I’m going,” I say.

  They both stay seated. No one gets up and tries to stop me or anything. It’s not a movie here on our deck; it’s just our lives.

  “Okay,” Mom says.

  “Got it,” says Mo.

  Mom says, “I just want to be clear on something. We’re not scared for us, Ivy. We’re your parents. We know that with everything we are and we know you know that. We’re not scared for us. Honey, we’re scared for you.”

  “Duly noted,” I say as I head back into the house to get my bag, the screen door—that sound of the past—slamming three times behind me.

  Joanne and Andrea

  1996

  Ithaca, New York

  “Get up!” Andrea says, looking around. “We’re in a restaurant!”

  “I won’t,” Joanne says. “Not until you say you will. Need I remind you this floor is hard!”

  Andrea looks down at her plate. Beside her a fire blazes as it had the first night they’d come here, just a year ago tonight. A ring lays sweetly on the white ceramic surface where there was once a chocolate molten lava cake. A simple gold band. She looks back up at Joanne, her wide green eyes staring up at her, filled with hope. “If only,” Andrea whispers. “If only.”

  Joanne shakes her head. “Forget that.” Her blond hair is cropped short and Andrea can see all the studs along her earlobe, catching the firelight.

  Andrea places her hand at Joanne’s cheek. “Get up. Please.” She glances out the window. The snow outside, gathering in heaps.

  Joanne leans on her leg and pushes herself up. She dusts herself off and sits back at the table, across from her love. The love of her whole life. She leans toward Andrea and her eyes glisten in the light. She leans her chin into her hands.

  Andrea looks at Joanne’s tapered fingers, her broad, cut nails. Those hands. She picks up the ring.

  “But if we could,” Joanne says.

  Andrea dunks her napkin in her water glass and cleans the band of all the chocolate sauce and cake. She goes to put it on her finger but Joanne reaches across the table and stops her.

  Andrea looks up, startled. Perhaps she made her wait too long.

  Joanne takes Andrea’s left hand gently in hers and slides the gold band on her fourth finger. “My forever love,” Joanne says. Her hands are dry and calloused from gardening.

  Andrea looks hard at Joanne. They had come here, to this exact table, on their second date just one year ago. Snow outside and they’d drunk too much wine and had to walk home to Joanne’s, twenty minutes down the road. That night there was a rising moon that had followed them all the way home. It had lit the way for them.

  Andrea covers Joanne’s hand with hers. “I do,” she says.

  Joanne is crying now. “One day,” she says.

  “One day soon,” says Andrea, and they both turn to watch the fire crackling beside them.

  Ivy

  2017

  Waze says Ithaca is an hour from our town. I’ve got rock in pocket. Intention I feel inventive, I hear Chrissie Hynde boom. Gonna make you, make you, make you notice . . .

  So. Here we are, Claire holding up her phone, which, in Boy Band voice is telling Patrick, Left, now right, now stay straight. Claire looks between the seats at me.

  “She is straight!” she responds.

  “Right on,” I say. “But it is a continuum.” I look over at Patrick’s worried face and laugh.

  “We’re taking the back roads,” she says. “Punch it!”

  “There are no back roads,” I say. “I mean it’s all back roads. Here we are on Country Road 12. It’s called country road. Have you ever even thought about that?” Our house hovers above it, above the lake. And behind us is all forest, right past our barn. Like I said, May to October, it’s dreamy. Winter? The forest is like a fairy tale gone wicked in the winter, unless it’s snowing. So are the city streets called City Street 12? I never saw it. We don’t drive in the city. Gram shoots out her hand and, boom, taxi.

  “Let’s do Thirteen,” says Patrick. “Straight shot.”

  Claire shrugs.

  I fiddle with the radio. I will become yours and you will become mine, Sara Bareilles sings.

  Patrick groans and moves to change it.

  “Stop!” Claire and I both say it, together. We sway, me in the front, her in the back. We snap our fingers like it’s old-school girl bands. Doop doop. Wop.

  I choose you. I choose. You, yeah.

  Patrick moves his hand from the dial and even though he’s not looking at me, just by the lilt of his head I can tell he’s rolling his eyes again. Want to say: careful or your eyes might stick that way, but it’s not even funny as a joke I don’t believe in. I don’t know if he’s smiling, but I do know that suddenly it hits me.

  What if I find her?

  I might find her.

  I am not thinking: I might not find her because what would be the point of that?

  Maybe this will be easy; maybe she’ll just be there. Maybe that’s where she’s always been, as if she’s been sitting in some chair waiting for me to arrive. I take the letter out of my bag, just to make sure I have not left it or dropped it or accidentally thrown it away, as if it will be proof of something. See? I will hold it out to her. I’m yours. It’s like a valentine. Unfortunately I spend pretty much half my time checking to make sure I have stuff—phone in particular, obviously—and thinking I lost stuff. Here I go: oh my God, where is it, you guys?, I can’t find it, the letter!, fuck, we have to go back, you guys!, oh, right, here it is, the letter is here. I pat my bag. Hanging with my gnomies, it says, one of Mo’s gardening totes.

  Here it is, thank you, Goddess.

  From the back, Boy Band tells Patrick to get off the highway.

  “Here!” Claire screams, head between the front seats, when he doesn’t go to exit.

  “Why didn’t you tell me?” Patrick swerves off. “I, like, zone out with that app. It’s ridiculous.”

  “Dude! I’m telling you now.”

  Patrick slides me a look. What does his look say? It’s a lot of things: like Hello, love, and also, Seriously?, and I wish we were alone. It’s also angry, and mostly it’s a look that says, I know you, person freaking out over a letter somewhere in the bottom of your bag, from a ghost.

  I catch his eye, and then I look away.

  “You alive?” Claire asks me.

  I break into a smile. “I’m alive,” I say.

  I lean back.

  “Here I am.”

  Claire starts yelling directions and then we’re headed in and out of little neighborhoods. There are—pretty shockingly—three Eagle Lanes, so, though it turns out we want 3476 Eagle Pass, we turn into a lot of them. Even with GPS it’s amazing how many driveways you can turn
around in. Like, what did people do before? Were they just always . . . lost?

  It’s so hard to tell about things in towns like this, all our upstate towns. The address is north of Ithaca proper, and we continue on the highway. In a way, everything looks awful. Buildings are crumbling along the highways and huge factories are empty, their windows shot through. What if she has been here? Like the whole time? So close to me.

  As we pull off, there are rusted things piled up in people’s yards and roof beams are rotting. And also there is green grass and the trees are coming in with leaves. There is all kinds of space just out of town, too. You can’t tell where bad stuff happens or where the rich people live. It’s just all . . . here. And finally, at the end of a long dirt road, Eagle Pass, we’re at a house. It says 347. There is a dark outline where the 6 must have once been. It’s just a shadow now.

  I can tell rich people do not live here. It’s not that kind of long road. Let me rephrase: there are blue tarps instead of windows and the steps up to the front door are rotting through. There are some old busted-up cars outside. It’s what Mom would call a ranch-style house, as in a rectangle, boring. There are some lawn chairs outside, too, that look like they never got taken in for the winter. But it’s this kind of glorious sunny day and there is a load of green here and it’s spring and I swear birds are singing when we step out of the car and shield our eyes from the sun.

  I’m thinking: my moms were here once. Was this old Chevy out there then? I’m thinking, were there regular windows? What had my moms thought walking in? Or maybe, I think, this was beautiful wood back then.

  Obviously the people here are in trouble, I don’t mean to be unkind, but it is freaking me out because what if she’s here?

  I can see curtains on one of the windows that still has a glass pane, one that faces out onto the front yard. The curtains are faded yellow, but it could be pretty faded, like washed in lavender a lot and hung in the sun, printed with some kind of flower, I can’t say, or scary horrible faded, like been there too long, never washed, unloved. This is what I’m saying. What are we stepping into? Lavender faded flowers or a documentary from social studies?