The Lost Child of Philomena Lee (Original Edition)

by Sixsmith, Martin

  1976

  As soon as Mark O’Connor returned from his summer in Boston, Mike moved in with him. Mark had found a large apartment in a neighbourhood the rental agent described somewhat hopefully as ‘transitional’. It stood between the Capitol and the Marine Corps Barracks, and it was the area’s reputation as a little less than salubrious which allowed a couple of students to afford the amount of space they now occupied. The sprawling apartment occupied the entire floor above a store; it had high ceilings, very little furniture, and was perfect for parties.

  After the drama of his relationship with David Carlin, Mike had settled gratefully into his new life with Mark. It wasn’t that Mark was boring – he certainly wasn’t – but he had a grounded sense of serenity about him. He was intelligent and at ease with himself: being gay was not a source of torment, but a source of joy. And he was very, very beautiful.

  When Jimmy Carter won the Democratic nomination, Mike rejoiced: he admired Carter and told Mark it was high time to kick out the Republicans and erase the last traces of Nixonian corruption. He also hoped a Democrat in the White House might temper Washington’s innate homophobia. That said, he continued to keep his sexuality if not a secret, then at least something he did not advertise outside his own immediate circle.

  At Christmas 1976 Mike and Mark gave a spectacular party in their apartment. It was not exclusively gay – straight friends, men and women, students from the law school and from Mark’s undergraduate class were invited and came in large numbers. Some of them knew about Mike and Mark, while others took at face value the formula that they were just buddies sharing an apartment. At the start of the evening they toasted Jimmy Carter’s election as president the previous month and drank to 1977 – America’s bicentennial – being a better year.

  Susan Kavanagh came along with her friend Karen, a bubbly brunette who worked as a paralegal for a DC law firm. When Karen caught sight of Mike, she grabbed Susan’s arm.

  ‘That’s Mike? Oh sweet Lord, he should be in the movies! How come you didn’t tell me what a dreamboat he is? There’s something wrong with you, Susan Kavanagh – I’m genuinely worried!’

  Mike was amused and flattered by Karen’s interest in him. She spent the evening darting to and fro between his improvised DJ booth and the drinks table, much to Susan’s embarrassment, and Mark watched from a corner with a wry smile. Around midnight Mike stopped the turntables, loaded a cartridge into the eight-track and came to join the party. Karen, who had been enjoying the champagne, pounced on him and dragged him onto the dance floor.

  ‘Your friend’s crazy!’ Mike hissed into Susan’s ear. ‘But I like her style.’

  By three in the morning the last guests were trickling out and Susan was helping Mike clear away some of the glasses that littered the room. ‘I’m going to have a little trouble getting Karen to leave,’ she warned him, nodding at her friend, who was sprawled seductively on the couch. ‘She thinks she’s going to get lucky tonight.’

  Mike smiled, wondering if Susan had guessed the truth about him. He had been waiting for the right time to slip it into the conversation, but she got there before him.

  ‘You know, sweetheart,’ she said, stroking his hair, ‘you sure do have a lot of Broadway posters on your walls . . . and the decor in here is suspiciously tasteful. Now I don’t want to leap to conclusions but’ – she looked round at Mark, who was chatting to a group of people by the door – ‘I do think you two make a lovely couple.’

  Mike looked at her, feeling happy and sad at the same time.

  ‘Thank you,’ he replied softly.

  An hour later Karen was fast asleep on the sofa and Susan was drinking coffee with Mike and Mark, who were sitting on cushions with their arms around each other.

  ‘She’s dreaming about you, Mike . . .’ Susan pointed at Karen’s peaceful face. ‘I think she’s in love!’

  ‘You know what? He has that effect on women.’ Mark laughed. ‘I don’t know whether to be jealous or flattered!’

  Susan sighed theatrically. ‘Actually, Karen’s not the only one. Ever since I first met him, he’s been sweetening my dreams too. You’re a lucky man, Mark O’Connor.’

  Christmas ’76 was the first of many gatherings at the apartment on Capitol Hill. Mike loved entertaining and there were frequent dinners and parties, with endless trains of people arriving for the evening and often staying for days. He was a good cook, and the pair of them gained a reputation as accomplished chefs whose dinners were not to be missed. It was a happy time in their relationship – they were not just lovers, they were also friends. Mark introduced his sister Ellen, who had recently married and lived in Washington, and she and Mike became close. They would go out together to the zoo up in Woodley Park, shop at Woodies and Lord & Taylor in Chevy Chase and meet up for lunch at the restaurants in Bethesda. When Ellen’s marriage fell apart, it was Mike she turned to for support and understanding.

  But Mark noticed that Mike had problems dealing with his own family. He talked frequently and adoringly about his sister Mary and her lovely young son; now and again he spoke fondly of Marge, but he was scathing about his adoptive father and the years he had spent trying to live up to his expectations. He was bitter about Doc’s refusal to help with his law school tuition and he resented the homophobia his father did little to disguise. Listening to Mike’s calls home, Mark could tell the relationship was a difficult one – they didn’t argue and yell on the phone, but the conversation was strained and combative. As if to compensate, Mike spoke a lot about his origins in Ireland and about the birth mother he was determined to find. He was keen for people to know he was adopted – partly, Mark suspected, to distance himself from Doc.

  Mark’s own grandparents had come from Ireland to work as servants in the upmarket Beacon Hill district of Boston, but Mark considered himself American and had little interest in tracing his ancestry. For him, Mike’s obsession with Ireland, his determination to find out the full story of his background, was charming and a little odd. But he saw how much it meant to Mike and encouraged him.

  ‘Well, why don’t you go back there?’ he asked. ‘What’s stopping you?’

  ‘Oh,’ Mike said vaguely, ‘there’s a whole lot of stuff. It would cost a lot, for one thing, and I don’t want to risk upsetting Marge.’

  Mark frowned. ‘So what . . . You’re going to live your life complaining the whole time about how you can’t go to Ireland and how it’s breaking your heart? You keep saying that going back there would answer your questions about yourself, so why not? Marge will understand; she sounds like a sympathetic woman.’

  The following night Mike returned from his show at WRGW brandishing a record he had been sent to play on air.

  ‘Mark, Mark!’ he shouted. ‘This is the weirdest thing. And after that conversation we just had . . . It’s so amazing!’ He put the record on the stereo. ‘Listen to this – they’re an Irish band. An Irish band.’

  Mark listened as a haunting female voice intoned a lilting melody.

  Do you love an apple, do you love a pear?

  Do you love a laddie with curly brown hair?

  He stood at the corner, a fag in his mouth,

  Two hands in his pockets, he whistled me out.

  He works at the pier, for nine bob a week,

  Come Saturday night he comes rolling home drunk.

  And still, I love him, I can’t deny him,

  I’ll be with him wherever he goes.

  ‘Well?’ cried Mike. ‘What do you think?’

  ‘It’s beautiful,’ Mark said. ‘But I still don’t get it – what’s the amazing coincidence?’ Mike sat beside him, flushed with excitement.

  ‘Well, we were talking about me going back to Roscrea, right? How it would – what did you say? – “make me complete”. And all day I’ve been trying to remember things about that place – the place I grew up in. Then I get to WRGW and this album by a group called the Bothy Band – who I’d never heard of – is lying on my desk. But as soon as I pla
yed it I thought I’ve heard this song before. But that seemed so crazy, because the album only just came out. So I asked Rick Moock about it, and he says it’s an old Irish song they revived from somewhere.’ He paused. ‘You know what, Mark? I think I must have heard it over there when I was a baby. I think they must have sung it to me, and it got stuck in my brain. Now it’s like . . . like a message coming to me from that other world I came from.’ He smiled at Mark, his eyes glistening. ‘And you know the strangest thing? There are moments when I can almost picture the woman who sang it to me . . . I can almost see her face.’

  Mark took his hand. Mike’s eyes had filled with tears and he suddenly looked uncertain, as if he wanted to tell Mark something but was afraid he’d get laughed at.

  ‘It’s OK, Mike,’ he whispered. ‘What is it?’

  ‘Maybe you’ll say I’m being stupid, but it feels like my mother is . . . sending me a message; like she’s trying to contact me, as if she can tell what I’m thinking all the way over here and I can tell what she’s thinking even though we’re parted by all those years and all these miles . . .’ He hesitated for a moment, then came out with it. ‘What I think is that my mother is looking for me, Mark. I think she’s searching for me right now. And I think she’s sending a message for me to do the same. Do you think that’s crazy? Do you think those sorts of things can ever happen?’

  Mark smiled, but it wasn’t a mocking smile.

  ‘Sure I do, Mike. I think if you love someone long enough and hard enough you can always get through to them. And there’s nothing stronger than a mother’s love. You hear so many stories of mothers and children communicating – mothers who can hear their children cry even when they’re miles apart. I’d say you’ve got to go over there and find out if she is looking for you. Think how desperate she must be.’

  Mike breathed a sigh of relief and happiness.

  ‘What else is there to say? Off I go to Ireland!’ He wiped his tears and hugged Mark. ‘Thank you, sweetheart. You’re so good to me.’

  TWELVE

  1977

  As well as his legal work Mike continued to do shifts at the Kennedy Center, and Mark got a job there too, working evenings in the cloakroom. Between them they got to see all the new theatre productions, including the big event of the 1976/7 season, the musical Annie. The first time they saw it they loved it so much that they went back, and Mike ended up seeing it six times. Mark figured the story was something Mike was never going to resist: eleven-year-old redheaded little Annie, growing up in an orphanage where she is bullied and threatened but never gives up her dream of finding her parents and eventually discovers happiness through the intervention of President and Mrs Roosevelt. Mike bought the show’s full-size publicity poster and hung it in the kitchen of their apartment.

  From his two jobs Mike had amassed enough savings for the summer trip to Ireland and Mark could see he was excited and anxious. To wards the end of the school year, Mike announced that he had been offered a full-time post at the National Institute of Municipal Law Officers to begin in September and was thinking of accepting.

  Mark was surprised. ‘I thought you hated the place, Mike. You’re always saying how boring and petty it is.’

  Mike bristled. ‘The point is they came and asked me. They want me and I think that’s important, even if you don’t.’

  Mark shrank at the vehemence in Mike’s voice and made a mental note not to underestimate his need for external validation. For the next few days Mike was gloomy and quiet. On Friday afternoon he packed an overnight bag and left a note for Mark saying he was going away for the weekend, but he didn’t say where.

  At the end of the school year Mike picked up his Juris Doctor law degree. There was no magna cum laude this time: he knew he hadn’t put his soul into the work and was just thankful he had done enough to qualify. Doc and Marge flew up from Florida to attend his graduation at the end of May and afterwards they joined the crowd of smiling parents in the shade of the plane trees on University Yard. It was a hot day. Mike was wearing his heavy academic gown and they were all hungry, so they rushed through the obligatory photo session. Mike held up his degree certificate for the camera and smiled while Mark snapped him with his parents. The photos showed that Mike had put on quite a bit of weight, but Doc was looking older and thinner, and slightly bent where before he had been straight and erect. Marge had a fixed smile on her face, clung tight to Mike’s arm and hid herself behind him a little as the photos were taken. Almost as an afterthought, Doc offered to take one of Michael Jnr with his ‘buddy and roommate’, who stood a respectable distance from his lover and smiled sheepishly.

  In the evening they went out for a celebratory meal at the Bistro Français in Georgetown. Doc and Mike split the check between them.

  Mary had not been able to come to Washington for Mike’s graduation and he missed her. The day after, as soon as Doc and Marge had left, he picked up the phone and called her in Florida. She thought he sounded excited and soon discovered why.

  ‘Is that you, Sis?’ he shouted into the phone. ‘It’s me. Listen. I’ve had an amazing idea. I’m going to go to Ireland in August and I would really like for you to come with me. You don’t have to worry about paying for plane tickets or anything, because I’m going to get them, and I have to get a hire car and a hotel room anyway, so that will be the same whether you’re there or not . . . Say you’ll come, Sis, won’t you? It’ll be so fantastic to go back, don’t you think?’

  Mary said she would have to think about it. She would need to make arrangements for little Nathan, who was coming up to five now, and she’d need to fix some leave from her own job, but Mike was insistent and Mary didn’t take too much persuading. She called him back the following day in a panic to say she didn’t have a passport, but Mike reassured her that applications were processed within eight weeks and she would get it in plenty of time.

  In early August they met up at Kennedy Airport in New York. On board the Pan Am 747 Mike asked his sister if she could remember anything about the last time they had flown across the Atlantic and she shrugged. ‘Not a thing. How strange is that?’

  ‘Not that strange, I guess, if you haven’t been trying,’ Mike said. ‘I’ve been thinking about it a lot just recently. I think there was a nice man who looked after us for part of it. I remember being absolutely terrified when we took off and landed, and I felt sick as a dog the whole time.’

  ‘Well, that’s great.’ Mary laughed. ‘You’ve really made me feel good about flying now. But you know, one thing I do remember – and it’s maybe only from looking at the photos – you had some toy airplane thing that you carried all the way from Ireland right to Chicago. Do you remember that?’

  ‘Yeah, of course,’ said Mike. ‘I think Stevie trashed it in one of his fits of brotherly love.’

  Mary laughed, but Mike seemed pensive.

  ‘I’ve always wondered where that plane came from – who bought it for me, I mean. Do you think maybe it was my mother when she heard we were going on an airplane to America?’

  ‘I dunno, Mikey,’ Mary said dubiously. ‘How could she have bought it for you if she gave you up at birth?’

  ‘Yeah. I guess,’ Mike replied. ‘I just thought maybe she enquired about me and found out I was going to America . . .’

  His voice trailed off and they sat awhile in silence.

  ‘Do you ever wonder what we would have been if we’d stayed in Ireland instead of coming to the US?’ Mike asked finally, and Mary nodded.

  ‘Yeah, sure I do. I would have ended up panhandling on the streets of Dublin, I guess, and you’d probably be in the IRA!’

  They both laughed.

  ‘It’s true, though, isn’t it, Sis?’ Mike persisted. ‘You’ve got to say Ireland is our home. It’s where we come from, and even though we’re US citizens and everything, when people ask “Where were you born?” that’s really where your home is.’

  Mary said she felt the same way.

  ‘If you’re adopted and
you know you’re from a special place and there’s probably other people related to you, you kind of want to say, “OK, I’m a part of this place first and this is where I belong.” But you know another thing I’ve been wondering, Mikey? How come Marge and Doc ever went to Ireland to adopt in the first place?’

  Mike shrugged. ‘I guess they couldn’t do it in America. They had three healthy sons so they would be at the back of the line for adopting in the US.’

  ‘And what are we hoping to find out now, Mikey? It’s not like we’re going to run into our moms just like that, just on the street one day. And it doesn’t look like the nuns want to help us – they never answered your letters, did they?’

  ‘Well,’ said Mike, ‘it’s like they say: if you never try, then you’ll never find out. And what if our moms are looking for us too? That would make them easier to find, right?’

  ‘But Mikey, even if they were, I’m not sure how they’d ever find us – we’re both Hesses now, and you don’t even have your same first name any more.’

  Mike frowned. ‘I guess the only way would be if the nuns kept records of who they sent where and who got new names. And then it would need the nuns to give all that information to our moms. Or maybe they’ll give us the information so we can go find them.’

  They had decided to spend a couple of days in Dublin before heading for Roscrea. They wandered through the city, drank pints of Guinness in quiet pubs and chatted to the locals, who were friendly and interested in their Irish heritage. But they were impatient to get to Sean Ross Abbey. On their third morning in Ireland they collected the rental car, got lost in the Dublin traffic and took nearly three hours to complete the seventy-mile journey. It was lunchtime by the time they reached Roscrea and pulled up outside Grants Hotel on Castle Street. It was an eighteenth-century coaching inn and the door from the street led straight into a low, gloomy room with worn leather sofas, an open fireplace and an unstaffed long wooden counter. From an adjoining room they could hear the rumble of a television set broadcasting some kind of sporting event, so Mike left Mary with the bags and went to investigate. In the saloon bar a trio of middle-aged men were staring intently at a black and white TV showing burly fellows with long sticks running up and down, periodically launching a kind of puck in apparently random trajectories. Mike coughed, and one of the men stood up reluctantly to introduce himself as the owner.