My voice couldn’t be found. It was somewhere stuck in the restricted up and down motion of my chest.
“Ms. Parker, I understand this is upsetting for you.”
“Yes,” I whispered, and then he continued in his fixed professional manner. “Her adoptive parents realize that you might be paramount for her survival. I know this is difficult for you. It’s difficult for everyone involved.”
There had been no one else to contact. I had told them that day that there was no father, that he had died, because he had, at least to me.
“The parents are here with me now, and they’d like to speak with you. You can understand, Ms. Parker, they are desperate to save their daughter’s life. I know there are provisions regarding your anonymity and laws protecting your privacy. We can discuss that later. Until now, they’ve been very respectful of your rights.”
The forms I had signed long, long ago did not prepare nor protect me from this type of call. “What will I need to do?” I asked.
“Just talk to them.”
Nothing was making any sense. “My husband doesn’t know about her.” I wasn’t sure if I voluntarily spoke it aloud or if it jumped from my mouth.
“Ms. Parker, I understand the delicate nature of this matter. Protecting your privacy is of the utmost concern to all of us. The parents would never have contacted you if it weren’t a life-threatening situation. You must know that and do what you think is best.”
I’d already lost enough. I said her name out loud, Michelle.
CHAPTER 23
“What do you mean you’re leaving?” Marty asked, the thought occurring to him that maybe the charade we called a marriage had busted wide open.
“I’m going to New York for some work. My mother will stay here with Ari. It’s important.”
“Last time I checked, wasn’t I your boss?”
“It’s a consulting gig.”
“And it’s so important you need to leave your family again?”
The reference to San Francisco released a slew of hurt I thought I had buried with other human emotions. “I have to start somewhere; sitting in this house is killing me.”
“Are you ready to travel, physically ready?”
“The doctors say it’s fine, as long as I’m emotionally up to it.”
He sized me up and down, my own personal barometer.
“Are you sure you’re not just running away from something?”
I said, “You mean you?”
“If that’s the first thing that comes to your mind.”
“It’s not always about you, Marty. This is something I need to do for me.”
“Why so cryptic?”
I turned to him, thinking back to the four mysterious nights we never discussed. “Can’t you just leave it alone? Can’t you just give me the space to figure things out?”
He was angry. “My wife tells me she’s leaving for New York, and I can’t ask questions? When did our life together become solely about you? When did you decide that I shouldn’t be included in major decisions?”
“Since when is a business trip a major decision?”
“Since I had no idea you were even going back to work.”
I had thought of telling him about the phone call, but was afraid our weakened relationship didn’t have the emotional muscle to withstand more damage. He would understand my wanting to go to New York, yes, but the dishonesty of what I’ve withheld all these years, never. And to part with this information now was too hard for me. At sixteen, I held onto it because it was all I had left. At almost twenty-nine, I wanted to keep it in my heart, where it had lived for so many years, untouched, a chapter in my life that was mine alone, a song in my soul that belonged to memory. I could not, not now, give that up.
The plane ride to New York was nerve-racking, marked by a ruthless turbulence that bobbed the plane up and down in a hysterical frenzy. The man next to me appeared not to notice while my fingernails dug into the armrest that divided us.
“Don’t worry, it’s just a little turbulence,” he said to me.
“I don’t really like to fly,” I replied, unsettled by the movements.
“This plane isn’t going down,” he assured me, although the captain had already asked the flight attendants to return to their seats and resume beverage service after the pocket of wicked air was behind us.
I said, “How can you be so sure?”
“Planes don’t go down because of turbulence. It’s nothing more than a bump in the road, like when you’re driving your car down a potholed street.”
“Well, it feels like a lot more than a bump in the road.”
“It’s an analogy,” he said. “If it brings you any consolation, and at the risk of being cliché, lightning doesn’t strike twice. My mother died in a plane crash. God wouldn’t do that to my family again.”
In a prophetic way of looking at fate, I drew some comfort from this, and for the first time in minutes, I permitted myself the freedom to relax between the diving motion of the plane’s insulated walls. Until a thought occurred to me and I said, “I’m sorry to hear that, really, that’s awful. I’m surprised you’d get on a plane.”
“I told you, lightning doesn’t strike twice.”
“Don’t you think the reason lightning won’t strike twice is that the same place isn’t there anymore? The plane your mother was on is gone.” The insensitivity of my comment was glaring.
“Lady, I was just trying to make you feel better,” he said, clearly perturbed and turning to the book he was reading to signal the end of our conversation.
After twenty more minutes of terrifying dips and bumps, the pilot came on and told us we would be making our initial descent into Kennedy Airport and landing in about thirty minutes.
With the receding miles of air space, the plane decided to calm its queasy stomach. The skies were full and gray, like the way they look before a snowfall. I had read that the weather in the city was freezing, and I wasn’t looking forward to the chill. The magazine I had planned on reading was still strewn on my lap with Darva Conger and Rick Rockwell on the cover. Did anybody really care about their sham of a marriage, or was what bothered me that it reminded me too much of my own?
I counted the years in my head. She would be approximately twelve now.
Did she have his eyes? His smile? She was an enigma to me, this child, having passed in and out of my life like the coupling that had brought her to me.
You hear stories about kids who try drugs for the first time, only to find that the first, innocent taste would be the last. These poor souls had grappled all their lives with the idea of experimentation, patiently waiting, only to find that their one experience would cost them everything. That’s what happened to me that fateful summer night. We live in a world defined by instant gratification. The consequences of my actions never crossed my mind.
After having read Forever one hundred and sixteen times, being able to recite the back cover in my sleep, and resisting the gnawing desire to feel what Katherine had felt for Michael, I gave myself to Jonas Levy. It was as pure and sweet and perplexing as page eighty-five with one added component: I got pregnant. Where was that chapter in Judy’s book?
Jonas never knew he had a child.
I found out I was pregnant after he’d gone back to Boston, and by then, I didn’t want him to know. The last thing I needed was for him to think I was trapping him. Remember, he was practically engaged to another girl. As for me, I was as equally unprepared for a child. I was sixteen, in high school, with little to no understanding of how children operated. Besides, I had hoped that one day I could do it in the order that has always been of tradition: meet the man, get married, enjoy a few good years, and then have a baby. On the other hand, there was absolutely no possible way that I would have aborted Jonas’s baby. With two diametrically opposed scenarios tugging at me, I did what I thought was best. Mind you, this was a time of great strife and sadness for me. If my decisions were faulty, they were on account of the heavy
load of grief I was lugging around with me. As much as I wanted to let go of that boy and that life, this child was all I had left of him. I could not destroy that too.
Jonas and I kissed Tuesday night on that mountaintop, but that’s not all we did. He took me in, all of me, devouring my mouth, exploring my lips with his tongue, probing deeper and deeper until I did, at some point, tell him to slow down.
Jonas was unnerved by this. What he wanted from me, I could feel in my fingers and toes. He didn’t slow down nor did he stop the rush that was exploding inside me. I couldn’t think of right or wrong. He might not have been mine to kiss, but when our lips found each other, there were no two people who belonged together more than we did.
“Jonas, stop. Look at me,” I said, pulling back, not too much, needing to stay close. “What do you want?” I asked.
“I can’t tell you that,” he said.
“Yes, you can. Just say it.”
He was shaking. His hands were reaching for me.
“Tell me,” I said.
“I don’t want to stop.”
“Then don’t…”
“But…”
“No buts,” I said, stepping closer, until he had no choice but to take me into his arms. And that’s when I permitted myself to give into everything I’d fought so hard to keep under control: Jonas’s arms around me, Jonas’s lips kissing my hair, then my face, Jonas touching places I’d saved just for him, places that when he finally explored would let him know how badly I’d always wanted him. And it wasn’t like I was the only one who couldn’t hide what they were feeling. He was holding me so close, I could feel every inch of him against me. Now that I could finally have him, I wasn’t about to have him stop.
We were standing there up against that car when he helped me into the back. Facing each other, he didn’t kiss me this time. He just took his two hands and lifted my top off over my head. My first reaction was to hide myself from him, but I couldn’t because he was already starting to unbutton my jeans. And it wasn’t like the movies. They didn’t just peel off me and drop to the floor. We were sitting, so I had to lie back while he attempted, gracefully, to pull them down. All the while, I was holding up my underpants to afford myself some small token of decency. It was intimate and personal and awkward, but I loved his hands running down my legs. I loved how they were warm and somewhat sweaty.
There I was in the back of his car, no bra, with an inch of fabric separating us. He touched my shoulders, tracing their shape, and then he touched my breasts, cupping them in his hand. I watched him, knowing exactly what he was doing, memorizing every detail.
“No one’s ever looked at me the way you do,” he said, his finger tracing my nipple. “Your eyes…they’re hard to turn away from.”
“Is that bad?” I asked.
“No, it’s not bad,” he said, pulling me near to him, straddling my legs around him.
He lifted his shirt and then took off his jeans. He’d done this before. He did it a lot better than I ever could. He leaned into me, my legs holding tightly around him, and he kissed me, this time his hands touching me, tugging at my panties until they slipped off in one single motion. That’s when his fingers found me, slipping inside smooth and gentle. I was as embarrassed as I was turned on.
He lay me down beside him, kneeling before me, watching me there in the darkness.
“Is this the way you thought it would be?” I asked.
“Better,” he said, tenderly touching my body, stroking my arm, my belly. “You were wrong about us not being good together.”
I nodded, reaching for him to come closer, sure that if my mouth opened, an overflow of words would tumble out.
He resisted me, saying, “I just want to look at you a little longer, Jess. You look so pretty in this light, your body…”
And when he leaned toward me, his grip was more powerful, his kisses more hurried. Finding my breast, he kissed my nipple, touching, tasting, teasing it with his tongue. My back arched at his touch, and my fingers reached for his head, tugging at his hair. He found the wetness again, lightly teasing, until I couldn’t stand it any more, so I reached for his hand, guiding him, urging him to probe deeper inside, begging him not to stop. But he enjoyed teasing me, he always had. I could barely compose the noises that were escaping my mouth, wanting to feel more of him inside of me, but he’d only continued to tease, lightly touching and then stealing himself away. I remember thinking I needed something, but it’s not like I even knew what it was. I only knew that there was an ache where his fingers were, a throbbing that wanted more. This was what Katherine and Michael had wanted too. I reached for him, Ralph or whatever his name happened to be, and I felt the soft, smooth skin under my palm, knowing the effect I had on him by the way he writhed beneath my touch. I was just a girl, but I knew the tremendous power I held in my hand. I could make it so he would never forget this night, that he would be left with a want for me so insatiable, one night would never be enough.
I guess we both were left with something we would never forget.
It wasn’t long before he was on top of me, and we were staring into each other’s eyes. The wetness between my legs was now against his leg. I could feel him coming closer.
“What do you want, Jess?”
I could have rattled off a list of things, but only one thing came out of my mouth and it was, “You.”
He didn’t blink. He just entered me as Phil Collins sang “This Must Be Love” on the radio, and I knew I’d never forget what it felt like to have Jonas Levy inside me or what Phil meant when he said words can only say so much. I tried to turn my face so he wouldn’t see me wincing from the pain, but his hand reached for me, forcing me to stare him in the eyes.
“Look at me, Jess,” he breathed. “I want to remember your face right now. I want to close my eyes at night and see you there on my pillow wanting me like this, what you look like with me inside of you.”
“You’ve always been inside of me,” I said, taking his fingers in my own, pulling him closer.
“I don’t want to hurt you,” he whispered, but it was too late, so I ignored him and the pain between my legs, because there was something else stirring inside of me that didn’t hurt at all. A tear found its way down my cheek. My legs held him tighter.
His mouth bit at mine just as his body seemed to shudder. I think I felt the waves that passed through him emanate from his body into mine. And just as he finished, my body seemed to ignite with something I’d felt before, a quivering that was building with each second. I heard myself cry out his name in the darkness, only now, for the first time, he was right there with me.
The pilot came on the loudspeaker. “Flight attendants, please prepare for arrival.” I gazed out the window, New York coming into view, the triumphant buildings in the skyline. I fastened my seatbelt tighter around my tummy and remembered the pregnancy.
Unlike the recent two, it was an easy one. The first couple of months, I was queasy and highly emotional, but I never threw up, not once. If I looked tired or sad, it was attributed to my broken heart, and the bump was conveniently concealed beneath my clothes. No one knew about my secret.
I was a walking contradiction. Inside of me, life was blooming, a new start, the beginning of endless possibility, and on the outside, the shell that cocooned the life was hardened, lifeless. I went to school each day, an under-functioning teenager, with an over-functioning belly. My height, fortunately, hid the secret well, and I dared not disclose my news with anyone until my mother found me sobbing in my room one afternoon. She knew, had suspected, like most devoted mothers would, and held me close in her arms while I cried. She was understandably broken up about this, but she resisted discipline and became my fiercest ally. Wasn’t the pregnancy punishment enough? She was the one who found me the trusted doctor. She was the one who explained my options. She was the one that eventually located the right adoption agency.
She never once asked me to say his name. She never asked how long we’d been having
sex or any other detail. She wouldn’t have humiliated me like that, and after that first day of initial disappointment, she never let me see the dissatisfaction in her eyes. I was no longer alone. She assured me that we would be handling this matter together, as a family.
“Mom,” I said to her one afternoon, wanting to tell her I was sorry for the distress I’d caused her, but we were so attuned to one another, she cut me off before I could begin. “Don’t you dare apologize to me, young lady. With what you’re dealing with right now, I’d say you’ve learned a great lesson. I won’t shame either one of us with this conversation.”
I’d never known my mother to love me this way before. Even her flitting didn’t get on my nerves anymore. “You’re my child,” she said, “and I’ll do whatever it takes to protect you.”
“Thank you,” I mumbled.
“Don’t thank me, either,” she said, “just use protection next time.”
I almost laughed, but I didn’t dare. My mother had overcome great adversity in her life. Her strength overshadowed any sign of weakness. Not even her child having a child could make her come undone.
A day did not go by without my thinking of that little girl and how beautiful she looked when they took her away from me, all wrapped up in that pink blanket. I had grieved for her long after I had grieved for her father, and yet they were so undeniably connected to one another, I’d be forever connected to him. That is why I had such a difficult time for so long and why I couldn’t trust again, open my heart, for fear of losing all the people that I cared about. That was why a memory could take me back to him at any given moment—on her birthday, when I’d hear a song on the radio, when I’d breathe.
I stared out the window of the plane, relieved to see the ground below us. I asked myself why this was happening. Was this more punishment for my thoughts, or did it mean something else? The extent of the atmosphere made me believe that perhaps there really was a higher being who orchestrated our every move.
What We Leave Behind Page 20