World Gone Missing

by Doyle, Laurie Ann;

  “Of course I am. You just have to examine it very, very closely.”

  He smiled, looking unconvinced, and hugged me.

  I painted the wall saffron yellow, a color Zach and I liked much better. Then I kept painting, filled with an intense energy. Using the oil-pastels my mother had left, I drew a woman, filled in a chalk-white face and a cap of dark curls. I gave her a swinging black cane. Not my mother. A mime. Her mouth was long and thin and vermillion-colored. I’d forgotten how much I loved vermillion. Streaks of ochre and ebony appeared in the background. I looked at the painting and decided I could do better. I pulled out an old sketch and replaced the mime with an immense, burnt-umber German Shepherd. I set him playing with a stubby-legged red dachshund, both of them crouched down like What’s next?, their dog lips grinning. I felt wonderful. But after a day or so, that painting didn’t look right, either. I bought new oils, my own set, splattered the wall with thick strings of titanium white, ultramarine deep, and cadmium yellow, using my body freely, Jackson Pollock style. Still I wasn’t satisfied. As soon the oil dried, I repainted everything a smooth saffron, right back where I’d started from.

  Huge sighs filled the apartment, hers or mine I wasn’t sure.

  I stopped painting and took on more dogs, becoming an expert five-leash walker, someone who people either grinned big at or shied away from, depending on their canine affinities. I tacked up notices on the bulletin boards in dog parks and advertised in the SF Weekly. Calls poured in—Nonie’s owner had posted glowing Yelp reviews—and ended up with more work than I could handle. What little my mother had left was gone, and I needed the money. But did I really want to be a professional dog walker? I quit dog walking and joined Zach at Sports Basement. The shift supervisor was a tall, grim man who docked my pay the first day for being five minutes late.

  

  Early one Saturday night, Zach and I were relaxing on the couch after a long week. The popcorn was freshly popped and still warm. The opening credits of Room 237 were scrolling down the screen. A dog started barking outside, a high, chihuahua yipping. I looked out the window and saw only my own face hanging in the dark. There came a push of cool air. When I looked back around at the room, my mother sat in our gray-flowered chair—the chair that had once been hers—her feet propped up on the matching ottoman. The smell of formaldehyde was strong.

  My mother lit an Extra Long. She was wearing a short, white tennis dress and socks with pink pompoms that showed over the backs of her Nikes. She’d never played tennis as far as I knew. Her tanned calves sported muscles as big as softballs and her shoulders looked huge. They seemed to grow broader as I stared. This scared me.

  “Mom,” I said, acting as if nothing were wrong. “You’ve got to stop showing up out of the blue. I told you, I have a life.”

  My mother scooched back in the chair as if she wasn’t going anywhere. “Emma, I’ve tried, but nothing’s working. Now I’m going to do this.” She placed the cigarette between her index finger and thumb and slowly buried its tip in her thigh without the slightest wince of pain. When her hand lifted away, the smooth flesh was cratered a bloodless cerulean blue. She calmly twisted the cigarette in another spot. Iridescent vermillion appeared. Other marks came: rose, mars orange, and cinnabar. The brilliant wells of color had the effect of a bizarre painting.

  I was horrified, but transfixed. “Mom,” I said. “Why are you doing this? Why?”

  “What was that, sweetie?” Zach said. “Did you say something?”

  “You see her, don’t you? Please say yes.”

  Zach shook his head. “But I know you do. It’s all right, Emma. I believe you.”

  My mother smiled. “See. He’s worried, too.”

  “No, I’m fine,” I told them both. “Really.”

  The next morning I got the Hoover out and vacuumed every square inch of our apartment.

  Like Family

  “Are you the mother?” the nurse asks, checking Nicky’s chart. Not his mother, but the mother. As if I was a cow and Nicky a calf. As if she didn’t have a clue. Last week, it was the lady at the frozen yogurt place, before that, the man behind us at Safeway. Everybody wants to know. Am I Nicky’s real mother?

  We couldn’t look less alike. Nicky is hair’s black and thick, his coloring what people call olive. My skin’s the kind of bright white you can almost see through, blue veins showing at my temples and neck. My hair is a curly red filling up with gray. Nicky’s fingers are beautiful and long—fingers that could never have sprouted from the O’Connor family tree. We’ve got thick things with wide nails. Drew Walsh, my ex, has them, too. We’ve been separated a couple of years, though nobody’s in a big hurry for a divorce.

  Nicky leans his ten-year-old body now away from the nurse and me, acting like he’s not listening in a way that tells me he is. I know the question bothers him, too. So driving home from the doctor’s office, I tell him. Again.

  “Nicky, your mother, the one who lives in New York, she wanted the best for you. She was all alone, working two jobs. She had nothing a baby needs. No time, no savings, no help.” In the rear view mirror I see him staring out the window.

  “Nicky,” I say a little louder, “your other mother couldn’t raise you. That’s why she found me on the day you were born in Highland Hospital and asked me to be your mother.”

  He keeps staring.

  The boy deserves a story. Like every other kid in the world, he needs to hear about the day he was born, how he made his way from one body to the next, his own. He should know he didn’t just appear one day in the white bassinet, or magically walk out somehow of Goodnight Moon. That he has a mother. Okay, two mothers. I try not to make a big deal about it. One works in an Allstate office in Oakland and lives with him on 31st Street. The other? The other, I say, moved back to upstate New York near where she grew up.

  These aren’t lies. They’re just stories.

  When Nicky was little, I’d be reading and find myself looking up. He’d be standing in the corner of the living room, eyelashes dark against his face. I put my book down and he’d come squeeze into the easy chair next to me.

  “Hi,” he’d say, as if it was the brightest word in the world. Nicky doesn’t talk much. But sometimes he used to surprise me, tell me that Mrs. Blake read them Nate the Great today, and who happens to be the new four-square champion in the whole second grade: him.

  But lately he stays on the far side of room in those Nikes and spiked up hair. He’s taller than both Drew and I were at ten and a half, and thin. This Nicky doesn’t say a word. Still, his eyes are full of questions, questions he doesn’t ask. So I make stuff up. Maybe he’s hungry. Or worried. Or both? I fix him his favorite snack—what I hope is still his favorite—ants on a log: raisins crawling up a stick of celery filled with peanut butter. He puts himself in front of the TV. Nicky would watch TV all day if I let him—Happy Endings, Modern Family, as if they’re giving him clues to the world.

  This much I do know. The day after Nicky was born, his other mother walked out of the hospital “for a quick cigarette,” and never came back. The nurses found a note next to the baby. One word, in black pen. Sorry— The handwriting was neat, the letters even and lined up. I wonder what she meant. Sorry for him? Me? Her own self?

  The hospital social worker called us that same afternoon. We’d been on the county list for almost three years. Drew was forty-seven by that time, me, forty-two, and soon we’d be too old to qualify as parents. Our house sits right across from Highland Hospital: 1401 East 31st. The yellow one with white roses out front. We crossed the street and fifteen minutes later I was a mother.

  The nurses buried me in stuff: blankets, bottles, booties. A case of formula yet to expire. They wouldn’t tell us her name, but they did offer the note they’d found on the bed. And his newborn cap, of course. I took everything, overwhelmed.

  Now I pull into our narrow driveway and Nicky jumps out
and runs to the front door. He’s in such a hurry these days, that boy. Ready to grow up. When Nicky’s umbilical cord fell off, I saved it. His newborn hat, the pink and blue knit he was wearing that first day—I kept that too. I saved everything. The chewed-on sippy cups and milk-stained undershirts. His first and best teddy bear still leaking stuffing. He used to like these things, the history I made for him. Yesterday, I brought out everything again.

  “Mom,” Nicky sighed. “I’ve seen all that.”

  

  Maybe I should have left it alone. If Nicky isn’t asking, why should I? That’s what Cecilia at the office said. At lunch she told me I was just looking for trouble. But I’ve decided to move ahead. It wasn’t just the funny look the nurse gave me the other day, all the questions strangers have been asking. It’s all that, plus. Plus what? Nicky’s different now. I don’t want to lose him.

  His birth certificate, the one they sent months and months after he was born, isn’t real. Lists me and Drew as the parents, like there had been never anybody else. If I’m wondering about her, Nicky has got to be, too.

  When he was three, he climbed up under my T-shirt. He didn’t say anything, just stuck his head in, stretching the white cotton way out.

  “What are you doing?” I asked.

  “I want to get born out of you,” he said from underneath.

  I tried not to laugh. My flesh. My flab. I felt sad and happy at the same time. Happy he wanted this. Sad it’d never happened. Everything I feel is complicated.

  The woman whose body gave me his—I want to meet her, is all. Maybe that will help me understand my son better. Besides, someday Nicky’s going to want the truth, or need the truth for something medical. There are tons of agencies on the internet that will do the searching for you. For a price, of course, but most, not very much. The one I picked sent the results incredibly fast, so fast I was sure it was a scam. But everything matches up. Gender, date, location.

  Nicky’s mother’s not in New York, I discovered. She lives near Clear Lake, just a couple of hours north of here. In a town called Nice, on El Camino Drive. Her name is Lynetta. Lynetta N. Desilva.

  This Saturday, I decide, I’m driving up.

  

  Drew shows up at six on Wednesday, pretending that he hasn’t the foggiest it’s close to dinnertime. I don’t throw him out. There’s plenty of rosemary chicken and creamer potatoes and French cut green beans to go around. I set a plate at his old spot at the table.

  Drew doesn’t come around much, but he does help out. Watches Nicky when I have to work late, takes him to ball games sometimes. Gives us money, but never enough. He’s the closest thing to a father Nicky’s got.

  I lay down another fork, knife, and spoon at the kitchen table. When Nicky was a baby, Drew and I took him to Clear Lake. We stayed in a Linger Longer cottage so small you met yourself coming and going. The lake was a soupy green and lined with trailer parks. I remember a blue and silver trailer, a single-wide with wood piled under its broken steps, a dog chained in the front yard, barking. We drove by. Drew and I drove by everything then.

  Nicky picks at his food, like always. When I offer him berry cobbler, he shakes his head no. Nods when I ask if he’s okay. Well, I can’t make whatever’s inside him come out. Nicky will talk when he’s ready. I let him be excused.

  As I’m pouring the coffee, Drew starts up again. Yesterday he said I was crazy to try to find Nicky’s mother.

  “Casey,” he says. “Don’t tell me you’re still thinking of going up there.”

  “I am. That boy’s so quiet these days. It’s like I don’t know him. I’m sure he was listening the other day at the doctor’s office. Not just the question about my being his mother. But how I couldn’t update the family history because he doesn’t have one. I didn’t mean it like that. Like he’s got no family.”

  “Could be worse,” Drew says. “My dad never came home from the war.”

  “It’s not the same. You have photos, memories your mother’s told you.”

  “Casey, you may not like what you find. Why stir things up?”

  “I’m not stirring anything up. I’m driving to Clear Lake, is all. Whatever happens happens. ”

  I’ve never told Drew about the blankness I feel under my ribs. For years, I tried to coax a baby from my body. Drew had swimmers all over the place. Me, they gave pills, shots, tests every morning to pull the darkness out. Suddenly Nicky showed up. Carrying him out of the hospital, I burst into tears. The nurses followed me down the hall. “Is everything all right?” they said. “Can we help?” I told them I was crying from happiness, but that was only part true. I was in shock.

  I look at Drew. Maybe I’m not going just for Nicky’s sake, but mine, too. That woman’s the reason I have a son. Her body gave me what my own couldn’t. It binds us together.

  “Casey, you got your beautiful boy,” Drew goes on. “What more could you want?”

  I don’t let the words faithful husband fly out of my mouth. He’s been living with that woman over on Lakeshore for almost six months now. Maybe she’ll want a baby of her own.

  “Lynetta gave us that beautiful boy,” I tell him. “That makes her like family. I just want to meet her. At least be able to call up a face.”

  He frowns and tilts his chair back. “Nobody in my family would walk out and leave a little baby like that.”

  “Right. You were real good at sticking around.”

  “Give me a break, would you, Casey? For once in your sweet life.”

  “Well, I’m going.”

  Drew’s on his feet now, ready to leave, when I see Nicky standing in the shadow of the kitchen door, listening.

  Damn! The last thing I wanted was for him to find out like this. I was going to tell him. As soon as I knew something about her for sure.

  “Nicky—” I reach my hand out.

  He walks past me and sits at the table, his shoulders hiked up to his ears. I go to smooth the hair down, but stop myself. I’m too old for that, he’d tell me. And those shoulders look skitterish.

  “You hear anything you want to talk about?” I ask.

  “Don’t go there, Casey,” Drew says.

  “Did my mother really walk out and leave me?”

  “Nicky—” And the same dumb thing comes out. “She wanted the best for you.” I take in a breath. “Nobody knows what happened. Not even the doctors and nurses.”

  Nicky starts rolling a ball back and forth on the table, the one with the green eyeball floating inside it.

  

  After Drew moved out, the house felt too big. Silence fell down and coated everything white. Table legs, spoons, the television. All blank white. Then Nicky would wake up from his nap and the house was too small. The press-me-again Old McDonald and Little Lamb songs, the graham-cracker goo on the supposedly washable tablecloth, the socks whose mates had gone missing. I’d have to leave, take Nicky to the mall. Shop it out. Inside, I’d find myself scanning the crowd. Is that his other mother? That woman in cinnamon-colored slacks? Her hair is dark enough. Or the one with the long thin hands? Nicky smiled and waved at just about everybody.

  The stories got born then. Well, not really stories. Pictures floating into my brain. I see chewed fingernails, black polish. The rest fills in like a dream. A girl walks back and forth in a room on the ninth floor at Highland Hospital. Maternity. She touches a wall, presses her long fingers into it. Leans her head forward. Her black hair’s so short it sticks up from her head. Her clothes—black high tops, blue jeans tied together with a long piece of string, a man’s extra-large white shirt—lie crumpled in the corner. Her belly’s so big it pulls her across the room. There’s shame in that body, the way she keeps her elbows close. Maybe she thought California would be easier. Laid back.

  Nicky’s mother sneaks a cigarette in the cramped hospital bathroom, flicks the butt in the bloody toilet w
ater, but it won’t flush down. Now the pain is bone crushing.

  Finally, the nurse comes in. “You have to stop all this screaming,” she warns. “I know it hurts, but you’re upsetting the others.” They give her something, then something else, and something else, and Nicky slowly burns his way down. When he’s half out, he pushes his arms out wide, now there are no fleshy walls to hold him. His fingers spread. He cries. And cries. She hates how he cries.

  

  “You okay?” I ask Nicky.

  He rolls the green eyeball away. “Yeah.”

  “Would you like to come up with me and meet her?”

  “Don’t ask him that,” Drew says. “How’s a ten-year-old boy supposed to answer that?”

  The eyeball travels back and forth another time before Nicky speaks. “No.”

  “You sure?”

  He nods.

  “What do you think about my going?”

  Nicky’s dark eyes finally find mine. For a moment I see a boy who wants to be like every other kid. Watch TV, drink cocoa, have a family that no one questions. Maybe I should call the whole thing off.

  “I like it,” he says, his voice lifting a little.

  

  Crossing the Carquinez Bridge, I can’t stop looking at the bay. Today the gray water is perfectly still, not a boat, not a wave. Is this what Lynetta sees when she drives by? In Vallejo, I pull off 101 and stop at VIP Florist. It was Drew’s idea. When Nicky said he’d liked my going, Drew got so he didn’t want me to fail.

  “Call her,” he said. “At least give the woman some warning.”

  “You don’t know me,” I said when I phoned, “but I’m the one who—” Then came a hard click.

  The second time, it was worse. I’d hardly said the word Highland and she cut me off, her voice ugly in my ear.

  “Don’t call here again. Ever.”

  That voice is all up in my body now. It buzzed in my head all night, rolling me over and over in the sheets. The woman probably won’t even open the door.

  But this morning I realized I couldn’t call it off. What would I tell Nicky? That his mother, the one who takes care of him every day, was too scared? Wouldn’t even give it a try?