If Only

by Jennifer Gilmore

  I go to the bench and I do what I thought I might do soon but haven’t done yet.

  Which is take out the letter.

  The one I haven’t read yet.

  I put it back in my jean jacket pocket and look out at the water, sparkling, sun catching water like knives turning in the light. I know reading this will change me, but I don’t know how.

  I take it out again and hope the change will be for good. I trace my fingertips over my mothers’ names distorted by the bulk of the small item inside. But it is Bridget’s handwriting, my first mom shaping the letters that makes the words that are my parents.

  It’s too much so I just tear it open, screw eighteen, and also? Screw letter openers. Inside: a feather. It’s got downy fuzzy bits and then this sort of deep indigo blue in the silkier parts. It’s bent a little on its long stem.

  I twirl it in my fingers as I read the letter.

  July 31, 2016

  Dear You,

  You. You are eighteen. Or maybe you’re twenty-one. Or thirty-five. Maybe you’re an old lady. What matters is you’re reading this now. As I write it’s about to be a new year. You must have so many questions. This letter doesn’t have all the answers. But there are some things I would like you to know.

  I want to tell you the story of you. I’ll start by saying your birth father and I were in love, if you were wondering. Well, I loved him more, I see that now, but we loved each other and I want you to know that. He was a good guy, just a boy at the time. We had already broken up when I found out about you—you!—but he was there for me and he was there when you were born.

  So were your mothers, as I’m sure they’ve told you. So was my mother. And my best friend. I hope you have a best friend like I had. She was there for me and she was a beautiful person. People grow apart. You probably know that by now, and we did. I left her behind, too, but I do really miss her.

  You were born on a day I went for a walk in the woods. I did that a lot, but on the day you were born I found this beautiful nest that had fallen. One perfect blue robin’s egg was inside. And next to the nest was a pile of feathers. Some bloody. And all these cracked blue eggs, too. I was so pregnant and hormonal and it upset me that I couldn’t find the mother and that these eggs were all smashed. I found one of her long tail feathers. Well, I thought it was hers—but of course I know now the females don’t have color. This could belong to the male that caused all the problems—but I didn’t think of that then. I kept it while I was in labor with you. I kept thinking of the one blue egg. I kept thinking of you and the nest and me next to it trying to save you.

  I’ve enclosed that feather. I kept it for all these years and I want you to have it so that you can have something to hold that has everything to do with how you came into this world.

  I cannot lie to you now. I tried to keep you. I couldn’t bear to be apart from you. Having you was the most important thing that I have ever done. It was amazing and awful and so painful and we had already been together for so many months! I had talked to you and sang to you and cried to you. And so when I met you I could not bear to leave you. Or place you with the parents I had worked so hard to choose for you.

  I want you to know I took you home with me. I sort of ran away with you. And it was not because I was coerced or you were bad or cried too much or anything like this that I decided to go with my original adoption plan. You were perfect and beautiful and you were like a gift I didn’t believe I deserved. Being with you made me realize that I could not be with you.

  But I had to be with you to know that.

  It’s funny—I had no choice at all in my life and also I had all the choices. I could have placed you with any of the families I spoke to. People in finance. Rich New York City folks. Artists. A dancer. Some jerks in real estate in my town. You could be anyone now. It was like I was making you and I was also making you. That kind of choice was too much.

  All the lives you could have led.

  And then there was the choice of me.

  Which didn’t seem like a good option for you. I was sixteen. I wanted the best for you because I loved you—I love you—so much. I wanted to choose parents who were me but one thousand times better. Your moms were that. They are wonderful people who I know have helped make you into a wonderful woman.

  I know now that adoption is always the story of someone breaking someone else’s heart. But whose heart? It changes. I took you home and I broke your moms’ hearts. I gave you back to them and my heart broke and broke. Did I break your heart, too? Or did I give you something bigger and better than I could have ever offered you?

  I couldn’t stick around to know.

  I left my town after that. I went west. I did some bad stuff to just not be me. I went to Seattle. I bartended. I ended up in Wyoming and there I started learning a lot about nature, which I have always felt small in. In a good way. I started spending my life outside because every time I went inside I couldn’t breathe. I felt like I had wings and they were flapping against some windowpane. I worked on a ranch. I worked for the Park Service. And eventually I became a guide—people would have me lead their kids up mountains. Rich kids.

  But it was always kids. I didn’t get along so well with grown-ups.

  That first time I reached a summit? It was like how I felt when I had you. Only I got to do it for me.

  I am leaving nature now. I have my reasons. One day I hope to tell you them.

  Here’s the rest of the story. When I called your moms and they came to get you? They came to our house. They were breathless for you. And I was not there when my mother handed you over. But what I heard was this: your silence. The moment they entered the house you stopped crying. It made me know you chose them, too.

  Maybe it meant nothing, maybe it meant everything. I watched you go, out the door, into their car, silently.

  I thought of all I would be now, and all that you would be.

  I watched you drive away. If only, I thought, if only.

  I have never known how to finish that sentence.

  Until now. I am writing to tell you what I know now. The soul is every part of us. Our present, our past, our future. I saw my soul on those summits, at the horizon, in the branches of the trees. It’s not just the now that we are living for. We are living for the past and because of it we are living for the future, too. Our dreams. That is also what is to come. All the things we might have been and who we might be. I thought I could control those things and I could not. I was sixteen and I let you go.

  That is who we are. All the if onlys.

  I can’t get that song my friend’s mother used to listen to all the time out of my head: You’re sad and you’re sorry but you’re not ashamed, little green. Have a happy ending.

  Did you? I hope I gave you a happy ending.

  All of my love. And a feather. My feather.

  Your first mom

  When I’m done I look up at the river. It still flows. The sun is still shining. I’m still sitting on this bench. But it’s all different. I can’t say why or how but the whole world is different.

  I draw the feather across my wrist. The slightest tickle. It makes me sad. I read the last part several more times. Am I living for the past or for the future? How do we ever know? In some ways it feels the same to me.

  I look at the date and realize she wrote this to me only eight months ago. She was probably in this city by then. I look out at the river now and think of my moms waiting for me. How they waited for me sixteen years ago. I’m sad for Bridget, who does not, today, feel like my mother. But tomorrow she might feel more like my mother than anyone. If I go find her.

  Is this a happy ending?

  The wind whips my hair a little and I feel it knocking at my letter, like it wants to skip it along the sidewalk and then carry it into the air, high into a tree, where it will be tangled there in the bare branches. But I hold on tight; I fold it up into a tiny square and put it in my jacket pocket. I grip the feather securely, too. I brush it across my forehead, alon
g the insides of my wrists. I think of the smashed eggs, the torn, bloody feathers.

  I think of a nest. I think of one blue egg, cushioned inside, safe from harm.

  The one that was saved.

  The Girls

  October 25, 2000

  New York State

  Five days later, after leaving the hospital and the Holiday Inn that was no holiday at all, Andrea is pulling baguettes out of the oven when the flip phone on the kitchen counter rings. Andrea jumps at it—no one calls the cell. Only her mother and Joanne have the number. And Bridget.

  She goes to it, more with curiosity than with anything else.

  “Hello?” Bridget’s wobbly voice. There is the sound of a baby crying in the background.

  “Hello,” Andrea says, breathing. She is scared to move. If she moves, she is certain the whole world will explode. She can’t even wave down Joanne, who she can see outside in her canvas gardening gloves and those silly orange plastic clogs, bent over, pulling the tomato stakes down for winter.

  “I have your baby,” Bridget says.

  “Bridget.” Andrea pauses. “She’s your baby.”

  “I don’t know anymore,” she says. “I don’t know. But I think she is yours.”

  Andrea tries to catch her breath.

  “Please,” Bridget says. “Just come.”

  When they bring the baby home the following night, she is already six days old. They cannot think about the first five days of her life, and, least of all, this day, the sixth one. The day they took her away. It had been too much. The sadness of it was too much.

  There were two ways of looking at it, really. Either today is the day everyone’s heart broke or it is the day that they all chose each other.

  And this is how Joanne and Andrea choose to see it. This is the day they all chose each other, a beginning of the mending of all the hearts. Bridget will be a part of their family. They will share everything. Andrea imagines baking bread each week and bringing warm loaves, along with Ivy, of course, they have kept her name, the perfect name, and a handful of Joanne’s roses, for visits in town. Maybe they will show Bridget how to garden. Maybe Bridget can stay with them. Overnight. They will keep a guest room open for her, always, and they will finally build that terrace outside and cook big dinners. Maybe, this way, no one will be hurting. Ivy will know everything from day one. Well, day six.

  Ivy sleeps in their bed tonight, even though it is cautioned against. Andrea knows she won’t be sleeping; there is no way she will crush the baby. As she watches her sleep, her daughter, a word she can think but doesn’t yet feel to be true, is curled up like a potato bug, that hand flung out of its swaddle in some sign of victory, that is what she chooses to believe. They chose each other. All of them. This is what she tells Joanne, on the other side of the baby, perched, a mirror image of Andrea, staring at this beautiful infant between them.

  We are all in this together, they are thinking. Our family is big and bright and here we are on this wonderful planet together, all of us together, all of us a part of this beautiful world.

  Ivy

  2017

  Harlem

  PS 30 is also called the Hernandez/Hughes School, in case anyone you know is looking for it. I look on my phone how to get there but it’s complicated and I decide to take another taxi.

  I go back to Milton and he hails one down for me, slaps the back of the trunk like it’s some girl’s bum, as we pull out of York Avenue and circle back. I don’t feel like talking, which is weird for me in a taxi, like it’s hard for me when I’m getting a haircut. I always feel like I have to chat. To make everyone feel okay.

  “Visiting?” the driver asks.

  I nod and look out the window.

  I don’t know what I feel. I am nervous and sad and excited and I know I should have let her know I was coming. For her and also for me. I also know I will not turn back now.

  “What are you doing up in Harlem?” the driver asks me.

  “I’m looking for someone,” I say.

  He chuckles. “Okay, Detective,” he tells me, and I let myself smile. “East Harlem is full of someones, I’ll tell you that.”

  The city changes. Doorman buildings and wide, empty streets but for ladies walking teeny dogs by the river changes to tons of people hanging out on the street, on stoops, in front of stores. Lots of stands sell candy and some fruit, different kinds of Spanish food. Even the dogs are different: bigger, for one. Lots of pits, who get a bad rap because really they are the sweetest dogs around.

  The taxi pulls up in front of the school, which is as big as a city block, just massive. I pay him, watch him drive away, look at a sign that says: Education Opens the Door to WHO you can Be.

  I text Patrick and Claire. Here, I write.

  Right away Patrick texts back, there he is, swoooop, dimpled chin, some zits around the hairline. Boy smile. You okay?

  Nothing yet, I text.

  Did you meet her?

  Nope, I say. Heading in now.

  Lemme know, B. Love you.

  Me 2, I write.

  I love that there were no emojis to pass between us. A feat, I think.

  I gather myself up and go to the door, but it’s locked.

  Phone buzzes.

  Claire writes, Hey! Good luck. P and I are hanging and we miss you. Who knew the Met was so hard to find. We’re rambling!

  Fun! I write and I love thinking of them wandering around together.

  Be strong! she writes.

  I smile. OK.

  And then I can’t stop myself: smiley face, kiss, prayer hands, heart, city, city, city, heart.

  Love you, she texts back. She attaches a picture, a photo of the drawing she made of me. Ivy, Searching. Just so you know, a new text comes in. We have our Crossroads cover. Here it was, all along.

  And then: muscle, hands praying, kiss

  The next door is locked—and by locked I mean, does not budge—and then the next and the next but finally I find a side entrance that’s open. A security guard stops me.

  “Yes?” he asks.

  “I’m looking for someone,” I say.

  He chuckles, a deep, comforting laugh. “Honey, this is a school, for little kids. You can’t just walk in here and look for someone.”

  “Can I go to the office, then?”

  “You may,” he says, and he guides me through a bunch of hallways—really old-feeling ones—and to an administrative office. He sort of pushes me inside and walks away, back to his post I guess.

  I look at the three people at the three different metal desks. All women. I try to decide who the nicest one will be and I settle on the one I believe to be the oldest, who also has cropped hair and massive earrings, shaped like suns. She has on red glasses and she peers over them at me when I go to her desk.

  “Yes?” she says.

  I take a deep breath. “Okay,” I say. “Here is the story,” I begin.

  I tell her about my birth mother. And my mothers. And that she’s here and I should have told her but I didn’t. And that I just want to see her.

  “I came all this way,” I say. My hands are in my jacket pockets and I’m rocking back and forth on my toes. “I just want to see her. And then I’ll go.”

  “I’m Nadia,” the woman says. She takes off her glasses with one hand and then she holds out the other hand to shake mine.

  “Ivy,” I say. Her hands are strong and comforting.

  She stands up and walks slowly to the front of her desk, which is piled high with papers. All kinds of papers and all kinds of piles. I think of Mo’s description of her own messy desk: it means I’m in process, Mo says. Mo.

  “Well, she is here, I will tell you that,” says Nadia, leaning on her desk. “She’s a student teacher.”

  “I see,” I say.

  “I don’t know what the policy on this even is, but I do see your urgency. I have adoption in my family, too,” she says. “But that’s a different story.” She crosses her arms.

  “Okay,” I say
. I have no idea what Nadia is about to say to me.

  “I’ll just say that she is on the third floor. She teaches science. To fifth graders.”

  I am listening but my ears feel blocked.

  She is waiting for me to move, I can tell, but I just stand there. I can’t move.

  “Okay, then,” Nadia says, and then she walks toward the door and I, relieved, follow her out, and to the stairs, but I don’t have any idea where we are going. There is this insane ringing in my ears. It’s like I’m on a plane and I can’t adjust to the pressure no matter how much I chew the gum Mom has handed me for that moment when we rise into the sky.

  We pass all kinds of classrooms and through the little windows at the tops of the doors I can see kids are singing with all their hearts and watching movies and painting crowns and teachers are writing on boards and leaning on their desks and pointing to maps and everyone seems kind of happy. Well, they all seem like they belong. The walls are this hideous pale yellow, and pretty dirty, but there are also whiteboards with maps and letters and kids’ drawings and directions and all kinds of lovely stuff.

  Then Nadia stops. She takes my elbow and leads me to the door. And then she stands back. And then, and then and then. I look inside.

  The first thing I see is all the children. Maybe twenty of them, each holding his or her face up to a rolled-up tube of paper. They look at her through their paper rolls as if they are looking through telescopes. She is behind a desk holding her own cylinder, and she says, “Now take your rolls and imagine they are bird bones. Bird bones are hollow, just like this.” She places a finger inside the tube.

  I stand there, watching her. I don’t think about Nadia, standing next to me because there she is. She has: white skin, like mine, super white. And dark hair, which is shiny, like mine is. Hers is cut short, with a streak of blond at the front. She has eyes that are widely set apart, like mine, and hers are that same gray-blue I have been looking at in the mirror for all these years. She is wearing a long feather earring in one ear and the other ear is bare. And her nose. I imagine tracing it with my finger, but instead, without meaning to, I feel myself touch my finger to my own nose.