If Only

by Jennifer Gilmore

2017

  It’s Mom who takes me to the closet. It’s where she used to hide all the Christmas and Hanukkah gifts. (Mom is Christmas, Mo is Hanukkah. So it’s latkes and noodle kugels and menorah lights and then it’s trees and wreaths and mistletoe and hand-knit stockings.) The closet is where she put all the stuff from her grandparents that she didn’t want to lose but had no place for. Like silver shoehorns and letter openers and bracelets dangling with golden charms. Also, the summer clothes in winter. The winter clothes in summer. So it smells like things that don’t belong in the real world anymore. And it sounds like tissue paper and plastic crinkling whenever you step inside.

  The day after I get home from Ithaca, after I lie in bed with Mom like I haven’t done for years, and Mo makes popovers downstairs, huffing and puffing like she’s preparing the most complicated of meals for the most ungrateful of eaters, Mom says, “I’m going to show you everything.”

  Downstairs there is the clatter of Mo getting down the glass ramekins that, far as I can tell, are used only for this purpose. Popovers. I wonder which hens have provided the eggs this time—random thought but I think about it often—and Mom opens one of the old wooden bureau drawers.

  I don’t know what I expect to see there. Like a drawer heavy with stuff. Dolls, maybe, I have no idea why, like maybe she played with dolls?, and framed photos, maybe, a sheaf of letters tied with ribbons, boxes of acorns and pinecones and pressed flowers and leaves, roses maybe, still smelling like roses, too, all stuff from where my first mom grew up.

  Mom rustles some tissue paper and what there is is none of those things. What there is is a scrapbook. It’s small. Like one of those ones that seem to be like the babies of big albums and just features the stars of those massive adult books. Mom hands it to me.

  I take it in two hands like it’s a crown or a bowl of hot soup.

  I look at Mom now because she is saying that’s it but I don’t think that’s it.

  Mom nods toward it.

  “That’s it?” I ask finally. I look down at the leather-bound book.

  Mom closes her eyes and sighs. She swallows, miserably. “Yes, it is. There are two more letters in there.”

  I’m astonished. My parents have been all about honesty and truth, like, my whole life. They would say absurdly annoying things like “you die if you lie” and “the truth will always set you free.” And then there is the issue of the previous letter, as if this was not problem enough. I start to tell her a louder version of this when she pre-empts me.

  “Before you get self-righteous and angry, which I understand you must be, let me tell you something. One of the letters is to us. It is not to you. It is not meant for you. It is to Joanne and me, and I just wasn’t sure it really was for you to see. I will explain when I tell you after we received that one—about two years ago—another one came following it.”

  “Following it?” It’s like she’s giving some kind of formal lecture.

  “Yes, Ivy, okay, like recently, okay? Several months ago. And it said ‘Please don’t open until Ivy is eighteen.’ And so we didn’t. We tried to respect that. So there is a letter, to us, which is opened, and there is a letter, to you, for when you turn eighteen, which you are not, not yet anyway, and it is sealed.”

  I feel like I’m going to pass out. How can I argue with such waterproof logic? I try to imagine it. “So you just didn’t give them to me,” I say lamely, still voicing my protest. I remember marching for something or other on the commons in Ithaca, high on Mo’s shoulders when I was a little girl.

  I wish I could explain how miserable my mother looks as she tries to backpedal here. “I have tried to never say the things to you that my mother has said to me. Remember my father died when I was so young. He was this wonderful open person, at least that’s how I remember it, but my mother? She was hard. I have tried to never say the things that drove me crazy or didn’t seem real, or didn’t feel like they were coming from the right place. I have worked very hard to be the kind of mother to you that I would have wanted. And maybe that’s selfish. Maybe that’s not the kind of mother you wanted, you want, I know you are not me, Ivy, but in any case, that’s been my intent. Always. To be better. To be good. To be good for you and protect you when you need protecting and to let you go when you need to be freed. It’s hard to know sometimes which is which. Like, when to lock the doors tight and when to throw them open.”

  I am looking at my mother. My beautiful mother. Who has lines around her eyes now, delicate and fine as a spider’s silk threads. Along her mouth, too. Sometimes her lipstick bleeds into the lines and it makes me a little sad, mostly because I don’t think she realizes it.

  “But I need to tell you there are some things you just can’t understand until you’re older. How complicated this is.” Mom swallows. No lipstick today. “Can we get out of this closet, please?” she asks.

  “Ha,” I laugh. “You there in the closet, gay lady.”

  “Hardly,” she says grimly. “That is one thing I am sure of.”

  In any case I nod and duck my head and move out of the tiny threshold. We go back into my moms’ room and I sit on the edge of their bed. I hold the album. I’m shaking so much it’s practically vibrating on my lap. Mom sits down next to me but she doesn’t try to touch me or anything, thank God.

  She can’t look at me. “I just want to explain something. How do I know what will hurt you and what will help you?” She looks at me now, and tears are streaming down her face. “I want you to find her, to meet her. And I want you to have everything you want. I’m not worried or jealous. I want her to meet you. And see what an amazing daughter she has! But I don’t know what the best thing is for you all the time. The letter for us? I don’t know, it was hard to read for us, and while I didn’t throw it away, I thought I’d give it to you eventually, but I just didn’t feel I needed to do it now. Mo, too. I don’t just mean I, I’m just speaking for me now, but we’re in agreement. Not always, but on this, we are in agreement.”

  I want to read the letter but I can tell I need to listen to my mother.

  “And the second letter, it said ‘Don’t open’ and we didn’t. And we didn’t because this is a girl who gave us the most important thing in the history of the world as far as your mom and I are concerned and that gift cost her. I know it has cost her a lot. She thought placing her child for adoption was the best thing for you and the best thing for her, but I’m not sure it was the best thing for her and I’m not sure, frankly, if I want to know everything because I’m scared.”

  Mom is crying hard now. The only time I ever saw her cry this hard was when an old friend of hers from growing up had died. Gram had known her mother and called to tell her the news. My mother had cried like this, like the way she is crying now.

  “And you,” she says. “I am sure it has cost you, too. There are all kinds of loss. I know this, every day. And I want to protect you,” she says.

  I am thinking about what I’ve lost. A whole family. My whole family. It is overwhelming to think about and I imagine it: her meeting my birth dad. My only dad. Where was it?

  Mom is still talking. “But I want to protect her, too, and I guess I want to protect me and Mo, too. I just don’t want anyone else to be hurting! Ivy”—she looks at me with this fierce kind of intensity I thought was saved for, like, female soldiers, old-school warriors maybe—“before you was nothing. After you was everything. So what if it was the opposite for her? How could it not have been the opposite for her? I don’t want you or me to have to know all that.”

  She takes a big intake of breath and lets it out and it’s some jagged stuff, that breathing. Mo calls up from downstairs. “Hello?” she says. “Syrup or honey or butter?”

  Mom ignores her and Mo doesn’t pursue it. I think of a girl my age pregnant with me. But I can’t because it’s so out of my realm. Even if I start having sex with Patrick in earnest, which I might, I mean, it will happen, won’t it? It’s just ludicrous because I can’t imagine that leading to, well, me. I
guess she hadn’t realized that either.

  I open the mini scrapbook. There are things like hospital bracelets and, yes, pressed flowers. Medical papers with my weight and my height. And lists of all the times I took a poop and how much I ate. There is the photo I have, of all of us in the hospital. All girls. Girl army.

  But who is the third girl? I guess it was the first mom.

  The letters are in the back. I flip the pages over in one go and pull them out.

  “You let me go to Ithaca and you knew she wasn’t even there?”

  Mom shakes her head. “No. When you read it you’ll see. I had no idea what she was doing. She easily could have gone back home.”

  One envelope is carefully opened, as one can only do with a proper letter knife that of course Mom has, and I can see a slip of writing paper peeking up from inside. The other is a plain white envelope. It’s addressed to my mothers and there is no return address. On the back, across the seal, it says For Ivy, when she turns 18. I can see it will be hard to open. It’s like looking in someone’s diary, isn’t it? I think. It’s this mad violation that I am even holding it.

  But I am. Holding it. I put it aside and slip the letter out of the envelope that has been opened. Shaking, I unfold it.

  January 19, 2014

  Dear Andrea and Joanne,

  I know that I broke my promise to you. I’m not sure if you care or not. Maybe you’re relieved that I left, I can’t say because even though I gave you my child I don’t really know you very well. That came out wrong. I know you are great parents. I just don’t know if me leaving your lives is something that feels good or bad for you. How could that be? That I don’t know more. But I do know I broke my promise to be there and to see my daughter grow up. I know she is your daughter. I am not confused or coming for her or anything like that but she is also still a little bit mine, too.

  I will start with thank you. For raising my beautiful child. For being the parents I couldn’t be. For showing up and, even when I couldn’t make up my mind, for sticking with me. It’s a thank-you for all you did for me before the birth—for the talks we had and for the cash and the nice clothes, and even for the offer of school, which I never did take you up on, did I? I made some dumb decisions, let me tell you.

  I feel like you guys were a little bit like my mothers, too, so thank you for that. Also I want to tell you that I was always so glad you were two women. I didn’t know how to say it. Because I was still very churchgoing at that time, I mean, it is how I grew up, it’s why we’re all here, isn’t it? And so people were surprised I placed Ivy with you. First they were “surprised” I got pregnant, but then they were “surprised” that it was you two I decided on. But I just knew it when I saw your faces in that profile. And I have always been so glad, so deep-down happy, that it is women who are raising her. For too many reasons to go into here, now. Just a feeling I have.

  I gave up my daughter because it was best for her but it was best for me, too. I thought I would have my whole life back and it would be like this had never really happened. Like I could erase it and start over, be better even, but I was not better. I did things I regret to make myself feel better and so I was not better or second chanced or anything like that. I ran away from what happened and so I had to run away from you both. I thought you would be so disappointed and I couldn’t bear it. And I could not face my child.

  I left everyone and I think you all would have cared the most. No one knew where I was. But now I am working to be someone for myself and for her and, yes, even for you both, and even for other kids, kids like I was and kids not like me at all. I’ve got my life back now, so I can tell you I was in a dark place but there is light now. That’s the song, right? There is a crack in everything / that’s how the light gets in. I wasn’t really one to listen to that kind of music, but I worked on a ranch with someone who loved that singer and she played him day in and day out as we brushed those horses, and fed them, washed them down. The horses loved him, too.

  Here now is the light. I don’t know if you are still at this address, but if you are, I hope this reaches you. I hope you too are in the light. All the love and light.

  Your friend,

  Bridget

  I look up and Mom is literally staring at my face, as if I am the letter and she is trying to read me. I don’t know what I am about to do. It turns out that is me turning to my mother and crying. Sobbing, really; I throw myself against her. I don’t even know why I’m crying. I feel bad for this person but I also know she’s not my mother. She is my mother but she isn’t. She was first. And there were all her people, too. Who are they?

  I will say this: there is always a part of me that feels unwanted. It’s just the way it is, no one can argue it away or scrub it off me. I don’t know if this letter does anything to undo that, but it makes me think other things about it. Like how it might not have had much to do with me. Which is another conversation.

  “Remember that she did the most wonderful thing,” Mom says. “A very selfless thing and I’m sorry you have to know that she paid the price.”

  I do sort of wish I hadn’t read it. I don’t know why yet. I need to, as Mo says, process it. I am scared shitless of the other letter, though, I can tell you that. Maybe I will wait, like it says, until I am a legal adult. Will I be different then?

  “So I have been doing some research,” Mom says. “When we got the letter we tried to find her and we couldn’t. I do remember her saying she wanted to go back to school. And she always told us she wanted to go to New York City, which was the big city for her, for all of us, but I mean, that would be the city she would choose, I think. I can’t say. But we can try to find her that way, on our own. And if not, we can hire someone to find her.”

  Mo stands at the door, huffing. “My popovers are falling,” she says. “Did no one hear my cries? They are deflating.”

  I look up at her. She has flour on her nose and on her shoulder. Egg or melted butter plastered to her face. I can’t help myself; I start to laugh. Mom laughs, too, and just as the two of us start laughing, Mo’s face sort of turns because I can tell she’s figured out what we’re doing.

  She pushes up her glasses with her ring finger. Now they have flour on them, too. “Thanks for letting me know you were having a moment,” Mo says. “I mean, thanks for including me.”

  Mom is still laughing but she stops. Like sobs, laughter fades. “It was impulsive, I’m sorry.”

  I can tell there is, like, a pointed look being thrown in Mo’s direction. Because it is nearly literally received by Mo, who nods.

  “But we talked about it, right?” Mom says brightly to Mo while looking at me.

  “Absolutely. Same page here! Let’s go eat,” she says. She goes to put her hand on the small of Mom’s back, but then she stops. I think she realizes there will be flour. Or maybe she’s upset at her.

  Either way, we go downstairs and it all smells like cinnamon and sugar and butter and like my home and Mo turns on her folk music. I still feel the hiccupping sadness of that letter, of not being able to have read it earlier, of reading it now, of not being wanted, ever, and being so wanted, always, and Nanci Griffith, Mo’s fave, sings: For who knows where the time goes? Oh, who knows where the time goes? And I can tell both my parents are feeling her, jagged and deep. Everyone is messed up today, all our hearts, what can I say. We listen, don’t talk much. What do you say when it’s just everything? I love them. But there are all kinds of questions. I down three popovers and then go upstairs to finally start to try to answer them.

  Ivy

  2017

  I hadn’t even known the questions.

  Lansing, New York. Spring, summer.

  You. You were sixteen. You were crying all the time. Right? Did I ever hear you laughing? You were wearing baggy clothes, you must have. Did people look at you and smile or did they look away? Did you talk to me? Sing to me? What did you sing? Or did you pretend I didn’t exist? What kind of music did I hear you listening to while you ignore
d me? Who were the voices around me? Your friends? Your parents? We were growing together then. We had to be.

  There was a time when I was growing, before I was me. I have forgotten these were questions. The beforeness. It has always been: what do you look like, sound like, what do you do, who are you? I forgot the questions about what we were in that time when we were together. When we were one.

  Then: autumn and there I arrive with the changing leaves, a burst of all kinds of violent colors, changing. I am a problem that needs solving. I have been solved. There was a solution. Was there a solution?

  They took me away. You gave me away.

  Everyone loses their memories then.

  A boy and a girl, my parents, fell in love. How does that work? He came with flowers? She wrote him letters? How do you fall in love? Or fall into love. How do you fall out of it? Because before I was with her they were together. Who were they?

  Before before. These are questions, too.

  I take out the letter for when I’m eighteen. It’s got something else inside, like an old-fashioned prize from an old-fashioned cereal box. But I can’t open it. Not yet. Instead, I go online. Again. I have done this before. Many times. We Connect People, the site says as it always has. You need to be over eighteen is another thing it always says.

  For the purpose of this search, which best describes you? Scroll down.

  This time I choose it: I am the adoptive mother. I click.

  Enter a personal message. We would advise you not to share contact information such as your email or phone number until you verify a match! it says.

  I am wondering if you are on here, Bridget. We have been looking for you. Ivy would like to meet you one day. I am wondering where you are now. We are sending love.

  That is what my mother sounds like, I can hear her voice like I can hear my own even if the sound of it is different. And then I press return and wonder where my mother’s voice goes.

  Because I have not indicated any contact information, I have to check the site directly to see if there is a response. I’m not sure how it works. If she’s on there, is she checking it, too? Or has she given her information up? Have they let her know that I—or my mom, this “Andrea”—has contacted her?