The Lost Child of Philomena Lee (Original Edition)

by Sixsmith, Martin

  The emergency room of the George Washington Hospital was busy. Mike, still half asleep, walked in from the gloom of a deserted 23rd Street to the garishly lit foyer as if in a dream. It was 4 May and the radio on the nurses’ desk was relaying the latest projections in the DC Democratic primary. Jimmy Carter seemed to be shading it from Morris Udall, Mike registered subliminally (he had a mild preference for Carter) as a hand tapped him on the shoulder.

  ‘Mike Hess?’

  ‘That’s my name. Don’t wear it out.’

  ‘Mark O’Connor,’ the man said shakily. Mike thought he looked more of a boy than a man. ‘We spoke.’

  ‘Yeah. I know who you are. David told me about you. What happened?’

  ‘I don’t know if you . . . got everything I said on the phone. There was a fire.’

  ‘And how . . .’ Mike rubbed his eyes and coughed harshly. ‘How is he?’

  ‘Well, they’re saying close to 80-per-cent burns. But I saw him just yesterday and he seemed so . . .’

  Suddenly, unexpectedly, Mark broke into desperate, hitching sobs.

  ‘I just . . . I just . . . I think he’s not going to make it. I know he’s not – 80-per-cent burns – 80-per-cent—’

  He collapsed into Mike’s arms, gasping for breath. Mike squinted at him and saw he was in shock. He himself was feeling little or nothing at all – if anything terribly calm. He was taking things in yet at the same time was outside everything, in a private world where grief had no foothold.

  ‘OK, Mark, take it easy. I think you need to sit down and drink a coffee. Wait here; I’ll get you one.’

  He walked over to the nurses’ station.

  ‘David Carlin?’ he asked the tired-looking nurse. ‘Burns. Came in this morning. I’m family.’

  She was a middle-aged black woman who looked like she’d seen it all, but the mention of David’s name made her start.

  ‘Yes, sir. Mr Carlin is in surgery right now. We ’re – we’re doing what we can for him. We have the best surgeons in the District . . .’

  Her voice trailed off and her eyes dropped to the desk in front of her.

  Mike nodded. ‘Thanks. Mind if I get some coffee from your pot back there?’

  He gestured to the coffee pot on the hot plate behind her and she got up to fetch it.

  By the time Mike sat down next to Mark, he had collected his thoughts.

  ‘OK, Mark. Here you go. Drink this. And then run me through what happened, will you? Take it nice and slow; start at the beginning.’

  Mark took a sip of the coffee.

  ‘Actually, I don’t know what happened,’ he said weakly. ‘I was asleep and the fire bell starts going. We all thought it’s most likely the usual false alarm, but there was smoke . . . I live down the corridor from David – I could see it was coming from his room. But the . . . the door was locked and the handle was real hot, way too hot to touch.’ He shuddered and screwed up his eyes. ‘The fire department was there in ten minutes and they told us to go wait on the sidewalk. They . . . they came down with a gurney. I couldn’t see his face, but I knew it was David.’

  Mike and Mark sat in the waiting room as day broke. Patients were being walked or wheeled through the swing doors to the rooms beyond, but no one came to tell them about David. They went to fetch muffins from the McDonald’s at 19th and M. They sat and waited. When they enquired, they were told Mr Carlin was still in surgery. They smiled nervously at each other and said nothing. Mark felt terrible – he hadn’t slept and the horror of what had happened kept sweeping over him – but the guy beside him was acting so calm, so confident, so together; it was hard to believe it was his lover who was hovering between life and death. He didn’t admit it, but Mark was a little in awe – Mike was five years older than he was, a law student and an RA. He was dreamy too, with his dark eyes and thick black hair.

  Late in the morning a doctor came to say David was out of surgery. Things had gone as well as could be expected and he was being moved to intensive care. Mike asked if he was conscious and the doctor said he had been, but now he was heavily sedated. Mike asked if he was going to make it, and the doctor said if they were believers, they should pray.

  Outside on Washington Circle they were surprised to see life had continued in their absence. The sun was warming the sidewalks and office workers were appearing with sandwiches and bottles of Coke. The cherry blossom was gone, but the grass was scattered with tulips and George Washington on bronze horseback was offering shade to students in shirtsleeves who sat and lit cigarettes.

  Mark looked at his watch. ‘I missed my class. It was Jung and the meaning of dreams.’

  Mike murmured something inaudible.

  ‘I’ve got nowhere to go, you know. They said we can’t go back in the building till the fire department has it all checked out.’

  Mike nodded as if he had been expecting this. ‘I guess you better come home with me then.’ And they strolled in silence through the University Yard to Thurston. In Mike’s room Mark asked, ‘Do you smoke?’ and Mike said he didn’t. Neither of them went to class that day. In the evening they went back to the hospital and were told no one could see David. An old couple was sitting in the waiting room: he was thin and bald; she had grey hair and her hands were shaking as she tried to unwrap a packet of Oreos.

  Mike guessed immediately they were David’s parents.

  The cookies fell on the floor and he hastened to pick them up for her. She looked up at him as he handed her the broken pieces. There was so much gratitude in her eyes that he winced.

  ‘Mrs Carlin? Mr Carlin? I’m Michael Hess. I was David’s resident assistant and I came to see how he’s doing.’

  The woman took his hand in hers and squeezed it with the desperation of a mother’s grief. The man coughed and said, ‘Pleased to meet you, sir. They told us he’s sleeping now. I think that might be a good sign.’ He hesitated, wiped the back of his hand across his eyes and added quietly, ‘We love him so much, you know. So much . . .’

  David lived for another five days.

  Mark had stayed on at Thurston. He could see that for Mike life was suspended; it was as if he were holding his breath. When the nurse told them the news of David’s death, Mike had seemed relieved at first and then went quiet. In the evening he stood up and put on his jacket.

  ‘I think I need to go for a walk,’ he said, almost to himself. ‘On my own.’

  Mark nodded then, impulsively, gave him a hug.

  It was forty-eight hours later when Mike reappeared, and Mark was almost hysterical. Mike had no idea where he’d been, and all he wanted was sleep.

  ‘But Mike, where were you? I wanted to call the police but I . . . I didn’t know if you . . . I’ve been so worried about you, Mike.’

  But Mike’s mind was a blank, and before Mark could say any more he collapsed on the floor.

  ‘Jesus,’ Mark muttered, smelling the alcohol and vomit on Mike’s clothes. He tried to lift him into bed, but he was deadweight. He undressed him and washed him as best he could, then rolled him onto a blanket and covered him with a quilt. He sat with him for the day and a half that he slept and fed him pieces of cornbread in boiled milk when he woke. Mike’s face and body were white; he shivered constantly; his limbs were stiff and his legs were convulsed by spasms. Little by little Mark nursed him back to life, brought him food from the Georgetown market, fielded calls from the university administration, intercepted students coming to wish him a good vacation. But Mike was oppressed by nightmares and slept badly; Mark struggled to boost his spirits.

  After a week, Mike asked him, ‘What the hell is wrong with me? You’re the psychologist; can’t you tell me?’

  Mark laughed and said his undergraduate major hardly qualified him to psychoanalyse anyone. But Mike was serious.

  ‘It’s my fault,’ he said. ‘You know that, don’t you? He did it because I treated him bad. And the terrible thing is I knew what I was doing. I loved him – he was my happiness, but I destroyed it. Why would I do t
hat, Mark? Why would anyone do that?’

  Mark shrugged his shoulders and looked away. David had told him about Mike’s self-destructive impulses, his love of excess, and he had read about the orphan’s internalized dread of rejection, the consequent difficulty with relationships and the urge to provoke the rejection he feels is inevitable.

  Mike lay back and closed his eyes; Mark could almost feel him concentrating. When he began to talk, he told Mark everything: about the losses he had suffered in the past and how he blamed himself for all of them; about Charlotte, Loras and the mother who abandoned him; about how he had spent his own life rejecting and failing the people he loved; and about the tremendous guilt he felt. The only way out, he thought, might be to go back to where it all began: to find his birth mother, understand what happened all those years ago. Maybe that way he could halt the cycle of pain.

  ‘Because until I do that, it just seems this thing . . . this tragedy . . . will happen over and over and over . . .’

  Mark hesitated, then took Mike in his arms and rocked him back and forth like a baby.

  TEN

  1976

  In the middle of May a letter arrived offering Mike a vacation job. It was from the National Institute of Municipal Law Officers on Connecticut Avenue. Mike barely remembered writing them and had only the sketchiest idea what they did, but Mark was enthusiastic – he wanted Mike to accept right away, fearing a summer with nothing to fill his time would leave him prey to destructive thoughts.

  Before he left for Boston and summer with his family, Mark made Mike promise he would at least go see the NIMLO people and asked him where he would be living next year. Mike said he hadn’t thought about it: his RA post at Thurston was for two years only, so he would have to find somewhere else. Mark said he had rooms lined up in a house on E Street down in South-East DC just below Capitol Hill, and Mike was welcome to come live with him. When Mike said, ‘Sure; that sounds good’ Mark was ecstatic.

  Left behind in DC, Mike took Mark’s advice. He accepted the NIMLO job and began work at the start of June. The organization’s headquarters were in a tall brown 1960s building at the corner of Connecticut and K, and Mike turned up on his first day still unsure what he would be doing there. In a large open-plan office men in shirtsleeves were labouring over desks weighed down with files and legal tomes, tapping at typewriters, shuffling piles of papers and communicating in undertones. It was a Dickensian scene and Mike’s heart sank. At either end of the big office were identical glass cubicles with nameplates on the doors. One of them eventually opened to disgorge a smartly dressed lawyer who introduced himself as Bill and apologized that the president could not be here in person.

  Mike laughed. ‘Well, I guess Gerry Ford’s just too busy preparing for the election right now.’

  But the lawyer did not smile.

  ‘I meant our president, Mr Hess. You have no doubt heard of Charles S. Crane . . .’

  Mike was about to say he hadn’t, but was not given the chance.

  ‘Mr Crane has been president of NIMLO since he founded the organization forty years ago. He led the US Bar Association for many years; he served as Richard Nixon’s special ambassador to the UNHCR and he acted for the White House in the Watergate hearings. The two of them are personal friends, you know, ever since they were at Duke Law School.’

  Mike adopted an expression that he hoped would suggest he was impressed, but he was thinking what a dreary Republican cabal the whole thing sounded, and he was amazed anyone should still think it a good idea to boast of connections with disgraced old Tricky Dicky.

  ‘I see,’ he said. ‘And what sort of work does NIMLO do, exactly?’

  The lawyer opened a file and passed him a small booklet. Mike glanced at an airbrushed photo of a distinguished-looking Charles Septimus Crane; the text proclaimed that NIMLO was ‘a non-profit, professional organization that has been an advocate and legal resource for local government attorneys since 1935, providing its members with information about, and solutions to, the profusion of legal issues facing local governments today’.

  Mike looked up.

  ‘So you give litigation advice to city and state governments. Can you tell me why Mr Crane picked me to come work here?’

  The lawyer smiled.

  ‘Oh, a number of reasons, I should think. He’s a GW graduate himself, an admirer of the Catholic Church, of course. He’s been looking at your record and he liked what he saw. Your specialization in redistricting, for example . . .’

  Mike thought it sounded like something out of Great Expectations with Mr Crane as some mysterious long-lost benefactor, but Bill was droning on.

  ‘You no doubt know that Mr Crane fought the landmark Baker versus Carr case that made Tennessee redraw its electoral boundaries back in ’62. That’s what produced the Supreme Court ruling on one man, one vote that’s allowed the current challenges to states gerrymandering . . .’

  Mike said he had, of course, heard of Baker versus Carr and that he would very much look forward to meeting Mr Crane.

  ‘In the meantime,’ Bill was saying, ‘I will leave you in the hands of our capable legal secretary, Ms Kavanagh. If you need anything else, I will be in my office.’ And with that he scurried back into his cubicle.

  Susan Kavanagh shook Mike’s hand warmly.

  ‘I see you’ve met Bill Crane – Bill the boss’s son,’ she said with a broad smile. ‘I wouldn’t let him worry you – it’s his pa who calls the shots round here.’

  Mike worked hard at NIMLO and the summer seemed to fly by. He worked on the smallest of small cases – little towns in the Midwest wanting legal advice on planning disputes, wanting to know if they could plant a tree in a public square or build on the site of a former cemetery – but he liked the feeling of doing some real legal work at last, and he liked Susan Kavanagh.

  Susan was from New York, fourth-generation Irish Catholic and just a couple of years older than Mike, but she had already been married and separated and had a young daughter to look after. Smart, witty and good fun, she was exactly what he needed that summer. However much he was feeling sorry for himself, he could not help smiling when she was around; when she sensed he was lapsing into his sullen, gloomy mode she would cheer him up with a joke or a droll observation about one of their work colleagues. She had studied English at university but retrained as a lawyer’s assistant after her husband left her, and saw the legal world with a sardonic, outsider’s eye.

  Bill Crane was the target of many of their shared jokes. Smug and self-regarding, he was heavily built and walked like a football player. According to office gossip, he had no friends. Susan produced a piece of paper he had dropped on the floor with a handwritten list of words he had evidently been trying to teach himself like catalyst, symbiosis, prurient and disingenuous. Bill was in his late twenties and had himself graduated from GW Law School just three years earlier.

  ‘You better watch out,’ Susan warned Mike with a smile. ‘You’re a GW lawyer yourself, younger than him, brighter than him and much better-looking. I think he’s a bit jealous of you.’

  Mike laughed and took an exaggerated bow. ‘Then I shall have to challenge him to a duel,’ he said, wielding an imaginary rapier in the air just as Bill emerged from his glass cubicle to enquire what was going on.

  Over drinks in the Old Ebbitt Grill that evening, Susan and Mike guffawed at the look of incomprehension on Bill’s face when Mike had told him he was practising for his fencing class. ‘Honestly, Susan, that guy makes me feel like a naughty schoolboy. I don’t know how you stay sane in that place. There’s was no way I’m coming to work full time for a bunch of old fogeys like NIMLO – they’d drive me nuts!’

  That summer saw the culmination of an unusually hard-fought season of presidential primaries. The incumbent president Gerald Ford snatched the Republican nomination after a lengthy battle with the conservative Ronald Reagan, but the Democratic race was wide open. Jimmy Carter was the front runner, hotly pursued by Governor Jerry Brown of Ca
lifornia, the wheelchair-bound maverick George Wallace and the liberal Morris Udall of Arizona. As the only avowed Democrats in the NIMLO office, Mike and Susan had been following the contest with growing excitement, attracting mockery from fellow workers who laughed at their naivety and denounced them as dangerous commies.

  To wards the end of Mike’s period at NIMLO a senior member of Morris Udall’s campaign team was murdered in Washington. Ron Pettine was a thirty-year-old practising Catholic who had no criminal connections. First reports hinted at a political motive – ever since Watergate, Americans were ready to believe that politics was rife with crime and conspiracies – but it emerged that Pettine had been found naked and battered to death by the Iwo Jima Memorial at the entrance to Arlington National Cemetery. His face was unrecognizable and he had been identified only by his ring. Shortly afterwards three young men were arrested who confessed they had ‘gone looking for a faggot’ to beat up and had found Pettine soliciting for gay sex. Horrified, Mike thought back to the times he himself had walked the lonely paths around the memorial. Reading the media accounts of the murder left him disturbed and depressed, and he began increasingly to rethink his own plans for a career in politics.

  On the day he left NIMLO to return to student life, Mike bought flowers from the florist in Foggy Bottom and gave them to Susan Kavanagh with a sweetly worded note thanking her for helping him through a difficult time in his life. She was unsure if that was the only meaning the flowers conveyed and she hoped they might mean more, but there was something unfathomable about Mike Hess and she didn’t want to risk offending him by being too upfront about her feelings for him.

  ‘You will promise to keep in touch, won’t you?’ she said, but quickly added, ‘You should keep your options open: you’ll be qualified in eight months and you never know when you might need a job.’

  ELEVEN