Girls in Trouble: A Novel

by Caroline Leavitt

  “At least she’s thinking about her future,” Eva said to George, but a day later, she found books kicked under Anne’s bed. Books left in the backyard.

  In bed, at night, holding hands, they talked quietly about Anne, how she was doing in school, what she might become in her future. They had long since stopped talking about telling Anne she was adopted. What did it matter? Eva thought. The fact was that the people who raised and loved a child were the parents. The rest was just biology. People formed bonds in all sorts of ways. Husbands and wives. Friends. If you wanted to get scientific, well, couldn’t you say that everyone shared the same basic matter, the same cell matter and memory—wasn’t everyone family in one way or another?

  “She’ll be going to college before we know it,” Eva said. She knew what that meant. The thrill of being on your own. Boyfriends that turned serious, and then jobs in cities that might be clear across the country. Phone calls and visits rather than the day-to-day presence. Eva gripped the blanket. “I’m not ready to let her go,” she said.

  chapter

  thirteen

  Sara stood on the sidewalk, unable to move, the shiny heat blanketed around her. She couldn’t think anymore if this was the right thing to do, only that here she was and it was finally happening, and terrified or not, she would see it through. Eva and George’s house was big and white with a shady porch and a fancy oak door, a walkway made out of intricate mosaics, and everywhere she looked was something special. Exotic plants and a well-tended lawn, a small brass angel on the knocker and a rubber welcome mat cut to look like wrought iron. She licked her lips and tasted sugar from the tea she had had that morning. Everything seemed a rebuke to her, reminding her of what George and Eva could give her daughter, and what she couldn’t.

  Struggling to compose herself, Sara rang the bell. She heard footsteps and her bones turned to water. “Coming—” she heard and she knew that voice, she remembered how some days she’d call just to hear the loving way Eva would say “Sara,” as if her name were a kind of prayer, or a blessing.

  The door swung open and there Eva was, the gold hair still long, but now faded, the milky skin weathered from the sun, and Sara’s anger flared, making her glad Eva was on the other side of the door.

  “Yes?” Eva said quizzically. She smiled pleasantly, the way she would to a stranger, and then her gaze sharpened, she looked at Sara as if she were waking from a dream.

  “It’s Sara,” she said tightly, and then Eva started. Her hand rushed to her mouth.

  Sara heard George’s voice from the other room, his footsteps, and then there was George, and as soon as he saw Sara, he stepped back. “Sara?” He shook his head as if he couldn’t believe what he was seeing.

  “Can I come in?” Sara asked coldly, and Eva opened the door.

  As soon as she was inside the house, Sara anxiously looked for signs of her daughter. A Mother’s Day card on the mantel, schoolbooks on a table. George and Eva used to almost paper their walls with photographs back when Sara was a part of the family, but now the walls were clean. She braced one hand on the wall. “Let’s all sit,” George said.

  He led her into a spacious white living room, filled with green plants. Eva quickly sat on a floral couch, and then George sat beside her, taking her hand. Sara’s knees felt like jelly but she wanted to stand tall, she wanted to show them how much older she was now, stronger, that they couldn’t push her around anymore.

  “What are you doing here?” George blurted.

  “I could ask you the same thing.”

  George looked down at his hand that was holding Eva’s. “We live here now.”

  “You could have told me.” Sara fought to keep her voice even. “I went to your house and no one was there. No one even knew where you were. How could you do that to me? Just disappear like that?”

  Eva leaned forward. “We thought it would be better.”

  “Better? Better for whom?” Sara asked. “You stole my daughter.”

  Eva drew herself up. “You endangered her when you took her from us.”

  “Anne was mine to take! Maybe I didn’t go about it the right way but it wasn’t my fault. I was a kid, I didn’t know there was a right way. But I do now.”

  “Sara, you gave her up! You signed away your rights! You knew that!”

  Sara lifted her chin. “But Danny didn’t,” she said.

  “What? What are you talking about?” Eva said. “Those papers were signed.” Her eyes were wide, innocent, but Sara could see Eva’s hand gripping her leg.

  “I saw Danny,” Sara said. “And I found out that he didn’t even know there was a baby, that he didn’t sign any papers. That his name was forged. He would never have given up Anne! He would have fought to keep her—fought you! And without both our signatures, you’d never have gotten Anne, you’d never have been able to disappear.”

  “How does he know now what he would have done at sixteen?” Eva cried.

  “He knows. And so do you.”

  Eva looked as if she were having trouble breatthing. She met Sara’s eyes. “What does Danny want now?”

  Sara was quiet. She didn’t want to lie, but she couldn’t tell the truth, couldn’t risk giving them a reason not to let her see her daughter. “I’m the one who’s here now and what I want is to see Anne.”

  “And then what?” Eva leaned back into the couch as if she could no longer keep upright on her own.

  “Maybe that’s for Anne and me to figure out.”

  “Anne doesn’t know about you,” George said.

  “You never told her?”

  Eva jumped to her feet. “Anne’ll be home any second. Instead of springing this on her, can’t George and I discuss the best way to break this to her?”

  “Please,” George said, standing now, too. “Whatever mistakes we made in the past, think of Anne. Let’s work this out. Eva and I can arrange something.”

  “I used to be willing to do anything for you,” Sara said, voice cracking. “I used to imagine finding you and Eva again, convincing you to make things go back to the way they were, when we were all so happy. What did I know? I was a kid. But I’m not a kid anymore. And now the only one I care about is Anne.”

  “Then let us prepare her—” Eva said. “There’s no need to tell her every detail—”

  There was the sound of a key in the lock. Eva jumped up and grabbed Sara’s arm, the first time she had touched her, and Sara shook it loose. “Please,” Eva said. “Don’t say anything. I’m begging you.”

  Sara hesitated. If she didn’t tell Anne right away would they disappear again? If she didn’t tell her daughter would she ever have another chance? She looked at Eva’s beseeching face and something soft and small formed in the pit of her stomach. “You tell her this week or I will,” Sara said, and then the door opened, and there was Anne.

  Her daughter was nothing like how she had imagined her, but how could she be, when all these years the Anne Sara had clung to was as small as a minute, a pearly baby in her arms, smelling of powder and milk. This girl was grown and Sara thought she was beautiful, small-boned and thin, with a riot of short russet hair, dressed in baggy, drab clothes, and for a moment, Sara felt as if time had gone all out of whack, free-floating her someplace she might not belong. She looked at Anne again, at that delicate, lovely face, and then she started. Anne had been born with slate-colored eyes, and all this time, whenever she had been drawn to a girl, whenever she had wondered about her, she had been drawn to grey eyes. Fool that she was, she hadn’t thought about eyes changing color, because her daughter’s eyes were now the same startling green as Danny’s.

  “Is something wrong?” Anne asked. Her eyes flew to her own shirt, to her loose cotton pants.

  “You’re Anne,” Sara said. She held on to the edge of the end table so she wouldn’t spring across the room and embrace her daughter. Anne looked at her curiously, and then she looked from one parent to another before she glanced at Sara again.

  “Last time I looked,” Anne s
aid. She walked over and stuck out her hand for Sara to shake. “How do you do?” she said politely, and Sara glanced down and saw the raw, bitten nails. Sara took Anne’s hand and held it, and as soon as she did, she wanted to wrap her arms about her daughter and never let go.

  “Why is everyone looking at me like that?” Anne said.

  “This is an old friend of ours,” Eva blurted. “Sara Rothman.”

  Interest faded in Anne’s eyes, and it was more than Sara could bear. “More than a friend,” Sara said, and Anne’s glance darted her way again. Sara ached to move closer, to touch her daughter’s skin, to smell her hair. She had to force herself to look away. She dug in her purse and found a receipt for aspirin and started scribbling her hotel address on the back, her hand shaking so badly she could barely form the letters. Then she thrust the paper out to Anne. “This is where I’m staying.” Anne started to hand the paper to Eva, but Sara reached over and folded Anne’s hands over it. “You keep it,” she said.

  As soon as Sara stood outside, she wanted to rush back inside. She wanted to grab Anne and tell her who she was, what she had been through. Instead, she couldn’t move. Mosquitoes whined past her ears. The cab was gone. She didn’t have a cell phone to call another. There was nothing to do but start to walk and hope that it was toward something.

  “Why’d she give me this?” Anne said, slouching on the couch. She put the paper on the table next to her. “Aren’t we going out to eat?” She glanced up. “Why are you both looking like someone died?”

  “Anne,” Eva said, pacing. “Honey. This is very hard.”

  “What is?” Anne grabbed for a peanut from the bowl on the table.

  “Remember how you always asked where you got your hair?”

  “My great-aunt Ada’s to blame.”

  “No, honey. That’s not who you got it from.”

  Anne took another nut, a fat salted Brazil, and bit into it. She waited for her parents to argue with her that she was spoiling her appetite, but they were staring at her so hard, it suddenly made her anxious. The nut, sweet and salty both, split in her mouth. And then George leaned toward her and began to talk, and as soon as he did, Anne couldn’t move. He must have been speaking in a foreign language because none of the words made sense. Adopted. Birth mother. Losing touch. The nut felt lodged in her throat.

  “We should have told you years ago,” George said finally.

  “We love you,” Eva said. “We thought it wouldn’t make a difference.”

  Anne bolted to her feet. “Of course it makes a difference!” Anne cried.

  “No, no, honey—” Eva said.

  “Shut up, shut up, I don’t believe you!” She grabbed for a napkin and spit the nut out into it. “Why didn’t Sara keep me?”

  “Sara was a baby, herself. How could she have kept you?”

  “What about my real father?” She glared at George, who stepped closer to Eva.

  “He wasn’t around—” Eva said. “And even if he was, he was sixteen. What kind of life would you have had?”

  “I don’t know! My life?” Anne cried, mouth trembling. “Why is she here now, after all this time? Am I supposed to be grateful?”

  “She just wants to know you—”

  “I don’t want to know her! I don’t want anything to do with any of you!” Anne reached for the front door and Eva grabbed to close it, and then the glass shattered into thousands of little mirrors sparkling on the floor, and Anne leaped over them out onto the walk.

  Anne ran along the streets, panting. The wind was sharp, a razor skimming her skin. Her sneakers slapped on the pavement. Liars, she thought. Liars. She was furious. All those stupid made-for-TV movies about kids finding their birth mothers, about birth mothers finding them, everyone dissolving into tears of happiness as if they had finally been completed. “I didn’t grow under your heart, I grew in it.” What a bunch of treacly shit. All she knew was that she didn’t want her life with her parents, and she didn’t want a life with this woman, either. And she certainly didn’t want to meet some guy who said he was her father and expected her to love him.

  She ran harder and then she was crying, folding down onto her knees. Sara was her real mother and she didn’t know anything about her, whether to hate or love her or feel anything at all.

  Anne felt like one of those orphans in the stories she used to write, one of those lost girls, and the only difference was that the girls she wote about had money to travel, had freedom to do what they wanted, and here she was stuck in Florida.

  She got up, not bothering to brush her knees, and walked slowly back to the house. George and Eva were standing by the door, the glass still sprinkled around them, and as soon as her parents saw her, they straightened. “Don’t say anything to me,” Anne warned and George closed his lips. Anne averted her face so she wouldn’t have to see either one of them. Still, she felt them watching her, even after she entered the house.

  She went into her room and shut the door, and when she heard her parents talking, she clapped her hands over her ears. She grabbed up her journal and a pen and then dashed liar onto the page, flinging her pen and then her notebook to the floor.

  She stayed in her room, coming out only to use the bathroom. She heard a truck outside, trying to park. The voice of a workman putting in new glass. The TV turning on. She wouldn’t open the door when her parents knocked, wanting to tell her dinner was ready, that they were going to bed, and please would she come out and talk? “Honey?” George’s voice was smooth and slow as syrup.

  “Anne, please,” Eva said. “Honey, we need to talk about this.”

  She stayed silent. The knocking went away.

  She didn’t sleep. At three in the morning, she crept to the living room, but the piece of paper that had Sara’s address and number on it was gone. There was sparkling new glass in the front door. She went to the kitchen and took a chunk of cheddar cheese from the refrigerator and broke off some Italian bread and ate standing up by the door, the blue light spread over her like a blanket. She went back to her room and sat up, thinking. Her parents were two strangers and everything she had thought she knew about them was wrong. Who were they, then? And more importantly, if she didn’t know who they were anymore, then who was she?

  At five, she dressed in the quiet house and made her own lunch, and even though school wouldn’t start for another three hours, she went out the door. Let them wonder where she was. Let them wonder what she was going to do.

  At school, she moved in a daze. She couldn’t dare open her mouth to speak for fear of what might fly out. She was stumbling down the hall to her third-period math class when hands grabbed at the back of her shirt, making her jump.

  “Hey, hey, it’s me! What’s gotten into you?” Flor stood in front of her, frowning. “I was just trying to help. I mean, did you want your buttons all open like that?” Flor asked. “Let me fix you up before you give everyone a free show.” In gym class, she stood in the outfield while everyone around her played softball. She didn’t hear people shouting her name, until the ball flew out from center field and struck her in the face. “Are you all right?” A few girls crowded around her, but Anne brushed them away.

  And though she meant to go to her last-period history class, she found herself standing outside the front of the school, a strange new roaring in her ears, and then she started walking along the road.

  She had another mother. There was a whole other side to her she knew nothing about. The thought bounced around in her head. Another person who was somehow like her, who might instinctively understand.

  She came home, and as soon as she saw her mother, Anne walked toward her. Eva smiled hesitantly, acting as if nothing had happened, as if this were the most normal day in the world. “What a day today,” Eva said. “Three different kids threw up.”

  “I want Sara’s number. I want to go see her.”

  Eva’s smile faded. “Are you sure?”

  “I can’t find the paper she gave me.” Anne’s mouth tightened. “D
id you throw it out?”

  She saw her mother swallow hard, and then Eva went to the other room and came back with a piece of paper and slowly handed it to Anne. “You know,” she said slowly, “everyone has different versions of the past, of why they needed to do what they did—”

  Anne slipped the paper into her jeans. Abruptly, Eva stopped talking.

  “Do you want me to drive you?” Eva said finally. “I could go with you, if you want.”

  Anne shook her head. She didn’t want her parents having any part of this. She’d go see her mother and find out what she felt for herself.

  “You know how much we love you,” Eva said, but Anne was gone.

  Anne had to change buses twice to get to Sara’s hotel, a Howard Johnson’s, which was not in the greatest part of town. VACANCY, the red neon sign flashed. The desk clerk, a young, bored-looking guy with bad skin, was reading a racing form when Anne walked in. He didn’t look up, didn’t even blink when she went right to the elevator. / could be anyone, Anne thought, amazed.

  Sara’s room was on the second floor, down the hall to her right. Anne put her hand up to the door. She could still turn around, go back into the heat of the day. She could go home and walk in the house and have her mother’s eyes boring into her wondering what had happened and the only person who would know would be Anne.

  She raised her hand to knock on the door. She had an ink scribble on one hand and she quickly spit on one finger and rubbed at it until it was gone. She sucked in a breath and knocked and the door opened and there was Sara and this time Anne looked at her as if she were trying to find out something. There was Anne’s same red hair, but while Anne had clipped her hair short to control the curl, Sara’s length flaunted it. While Anne tried to tan, Sara’s pale skin was so striking Anne couldn’t stop looking at it. And then Sara smiled, the first time Anne had seen it, and the right corner of Sara’s mouth tilted up higher than the left, the same way Anne’s had ever since she was little. “Like a broken parentheses,” Flor used to tease her. Anne’s hand flew to her own mouth and she took a step back.