The year She Fell

by Rasley, Alicia

  The annex had been built in the 70’s, and was still furnished with the original putty-colored steel counter and desk. The sunlight filtered in through dusty windows, and glanced off a long row of file cabinets in the back. It was a quiet place, an end place. The door didn’t slam and the phone didn’t ring.

  The county clerk had just one assistant, Mrs. Latham, who’d worked at the grade school when I was there. When she narrowed her eyes at me and then smiled, I almost turned and left. She knew my mother. But then, everyone in town knew my mother.

  I steeled myself and followed the boy to the desk, and waited while he asked her to check her files. “April 15, 1991. Name is Brian Warrick,” he announced, and I realized that was the first time he had mentioned his name.

  “That your birth name?” Mrs. Latham said.

  “No. Just my adoptive name. Does that cause a problem?”

  She shrugged. “Well, if there’s a birth certificate issued in that name, no.”

  His was a futile quest, I thought, watching his shoulders slump as Mrs. Latham scanned her records. If he wanted his original birth certificate, he needed his birth name. He should have figured that out earlier—but maybe he was hoping there was some mix-up, the original and the reissued certificates filed together, something like that. Mistakes were hardly unknown in small-town record-keeping.

  Mrs. Latham looked up from the file cabinet and shook her head. “Sorry. I’ve looked through the April 15, 1991, certificates. None with the name of Brian.”

  “Maybe some of the others? Can I see?”

  “No, you can only see your own. But—” her old face softened. “There were three boys born that day in the county. And I know them all. I worked at the grade school when they were there. So—sorry.”

  He must be used to failure, for it took him only a moment to recover. “Go ahead,” he whispered.

  “What?”

  “Get yours.” His eyes were alight now. “That way at least I can see a West Virginia certificate, see?”

  I’d been drawn in this far. And I’d never been drawn in before. Never. But for just a moment, I felt sinful again. And besides, I at least knew my birthname. I gave Mrs. Latham my birthdate. “Can you check Terri Price?”

  She regarded me levelly. “That’s not your name.”

  I raised my chin and stared directly at her. “It was. When I was born. Please check it.”

  Brian was standing behind me, and for just a second, I felt his fist punching lightly against my shoulder. Approval. It was almost enough to make me stop worrying that she’d call my mother. Not that I was afraid of Mother’s anger—but it would upset her, to know I’d been here.

  But it was done. And for an instant there, when I saw Mrs. Latham pull a page out of the folder, I thought maybe it would be worth it.

  She handed it over, with a sharp comment. “Nothing under Price. Just the one for Theresa Wakefield.”

  I hardly glanced at it. But Brian took it from me, studying the form with an air of professional interest.

  “That’ll be $5,” Mrs. Latham said.

  I paid the fee and followed Brian out the door, wondering how long it would take for Mrs. Latham to get up her courage to call Mother. They weren’t of the same social status, and Mother was inclined to freeze out, in her polite way, anyone she considered to be encroaching.

  Brian was going on ahead down the sidewalk, still studying my birth certificate. I said, “Hey! That’s mine!” and followed him.

  He looked back. “Oh, sorry. But can we sit down for a minute so I can look at this?”

  I shouldn’t have gone with him. It was folly, to start looking back so far in my life, remembering those early days, that other family. Not now, after two decades of forgetting. I had to think of the future, not the past, of what I was going to do about the convent and my vows. The prioress, in her indirect way, had been saying she didn’t really believe in my vocation . . . and wouldn’t she know? And didn’t I know?

  “Your mother,” Brian was saying. We found our way to the little strip of park over the river, and without looking up from the birth certificate, he dropped down onto a bench. The park was secluded from the downtown business district by a stand of oak trees, and I relaxed a little beside him. Not that it ought to matter if people saw. But they’d come to the wrong conclusion. Every conclusion, in fact, was likely to be the wrong one.

  It was just nice to be with someone who called me Miss and not Sister. Who didn’t regard me with that earnest surface-level piety and ask me to pray for him.

  Maybe I didn’t have a vocation, if it bothered me that others asked me to pray for them.

  “See,” Brian went on, “it’s got your adoptive mother’s name here as mother. And the date of issue is years after the date of birth. That’s how you know it’s an adoption.”

  “I always knew that.”

  “Yeah, but if you didn’t. That’s one way of telling. I read that. It might take six months for an adoption to be approved, so the new birth certificate is always going to show a discrepancy.”

  I gave in to curiosity and gazed over his shoulder at the piece of paper that retroactively made me Theresa Wakefield. “It doesn’t say much, huh?”

  “Weird how there’s just a line where the father’s name should go. I mean, only the original birth certificate, if the father is unknown, it says unknown. That what it says—” He stopped and rustled the paper, and then finished, “That’s what it says if, you know, the mother didn’t know who the father was.”

  “There was no adoptive father. Mr. Wakefield died the year before Mother adopted me.”

  He looked up from the certificate, a frown making a line between his eyes. “That’s different. She waited until after he died to adopt? And the court didn’t object?”

  I took it wrong. I meant to take it wrong. I don’t know why. “What? You think a single woman can’t raise a child? My mother is very competent. And she had plenty of money for another child. And it was a private adoption anyway.”

  Brian nodded. “Well, private adoptions are different. But the judge still has to approve it.” He glanced back towards downtown. “But I guess in a town named after your family, the judge will probably approve, right?”

  Something in the way he said it annoyed me. It was too insinuating. “Look, there was nothing weird about it. My—my birthfather wasn’t well. And they were going to have to move, I guess, for his health. And they already had two boys, and not much money. And my birthmother was the housekeeper, so she knew the family, and—”

  I realized, as I outlined it, that he was listening politely, but every fiber in him was protesting. “What?” I said abruptly. “What do you think is wrong with that?”

  He looked down at the acorn-strewn grass and chewed on his lip. Finally he answered, “It just sounds strange. Okay, your family was poor, and your father was sick, and they were going to move. But why give you up? They didn’t give up your brothers, did they?”

  “Nobody wanted them.”

  I heard myself saying that, and heard it all in my quick reply—the guilt and the anger and the triumph. No one had ever said that to me. Certainly Mother would never have said, I didn’t want your brothers. But that had to be it. No one would want half-grown boys. Boys wouldn’t be quiet and accepting. They’d be loud and demanding. They wouldn’t go docilely to a new family. They wouldn’t pack up all their questions along with their few possessions and hide them away in a trunk in the attic. They’d rebel.

  “But Mrs. Wakefield wanted you.”

  “It’s not so strange,” I said defensively. “My mo—my birthmother was the family housekeeper. I was in the house a lot while she worked. I played there everyday, before I started school. I used to play with the youngest daughter.” Now that was paradoxical, that Laura and I had once been playmates, though she was much older. “And the oldest one, Cathy, used to take me pony riding sometimes. She was ranked nationally as an equestrienne for awhile.”

  “So Mrs. Wakefield already
had two daughters.”

  “Three.”

  “Oh, that’s right. Three. But to take on another, after being widowed.” He looked back down at the birth certificate. “Wow. That takes some real sense of charity, I think.”

  “It wasn’t charity. She wanted me.” It was the only answer that made sense, even if it didn’t make much sense. She wanted me, although she had a daughter who was an athletic star, another who was an academic star, and a third who became a TV star. I tried to explain. “Laura, the youngest, and Mother always fought. And she didn’t do well after her father died. So I think maybe I was . . . kind of a distraction. Someone for Laura to play with. Someone for Mother to concentrate on. You know.”

  He shook his head. “I don’t know, really. My adoption was pretty standard. My parents thought they couldn’t have kids. So they went to some adoption agency, I guess—they won’t tell me anything. And got me. And then next thing you know, she was pregnant, and they had another son, a real son. He’s just fourteen months younger.”

  “I’m seven years younger than Laura, almost,” I found myself confiding. “And ten years younger than Ellen. And fourteen or fifteen years younger than Cathy. They were almost grownup, Ellen and Cathy, when I came. And Laura wasn’t happy I joined the family. She got dethroned as the baby, I guess the psychologists would say.”

  “Maybe that’s why she became a Hollywood star,” he said. “To get attention back.”

  I glanced over at him. “How do you know about Laura?”

  He grimaced. “Oh, that lady who sent me over to you. She made sure to tell me how you were the sister of the famous Laura Wakefield.”

  “The adopted sister, I’m sure she said,” I said, a bit sourly. “Everyone’s got long memories here.”

  He smiled sadly. “I just wish someone remembered me. My birth. My parents. Something. At least you know everything about your birth family. I don’t know much of anything.” He folded up the birth certificate and handed it back. “So what happened to them? The Prices?”

  “I don’t know.” He was still regarding me quizzically, so I added what I’d never told anyone. “I tried to find them once, when I was about ten. But I couldn’t. They’d left the county, I guess. I don’t even know if my parents are still alive.”

  “Wow.” He paused, and finally said, “It’s easier now, if you have a name. And you do. You just put it into the Internet search engines, and up comes a whole list of people. Addresses too. If you want some help—”

  “No.” I said that too quickly, and rose, brushing off my skirt. “No. Thanks.”

  “Okay. It’s just I’ve done a whole lot of research, and it hasn’t gotten me very far, but maybe it can help you out.”

  I hesitated there, not sure what I wanted, what I would do. Was this what I was escaping? My lost past?

  Finally I said, “Okay, well, maybe sometime. Now I have to go.”

  But he stopped me with a hand on my arm. “Here’s my cell phone number. I’ll be around for a couple days. You know, checking out nearby counties, and hospitals. Maybe someone will talk to me.” He shrugged. “Call me if you want a quick course in finding out who you are. Hasn’t worked for me yet, but you have more information.”

  I shoved his number into my pocket, nodded my farewell, and watched him leave on his own quest.

  Back home, I stood for a while in the empty foyer, looking at the elaborate staircase banister. I closed my eyes and I could see my mother, my first mother, sitting on the steps and polishing each of the dozens of mahogany posts. I used to sit there on the preacher’s bench near the front door and color with my crayons and watch her.

  She stopped working here as soon as I was adopted, I assumed because they moved. But I didn’t know . . . I knew so little.

  There was a trunk Mother kept of my childhood belongings —I looked around to make sure I wasn’t being observed. Then I opened the door that led up into the attic and climbed the steep dusty stairs.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  I was a nurse and should have known better. But I couldn’t see Mother as anything but indomitable. I kept telling Ellen that those little lapses, well, they happen to healthy older people too. But a near-car accident was enough to wake me up to the truth: Mother wasn’t fine, and by the end of the week, it became clear that those little lapses were probably the effect of some mini-stroke.

  It wasn’t till we got her safely ensconced in the hospital Friday that I was able to relax. Not that I have some mystical belief in the power of modern medicine. But with medication, they could stave off a real stroke. We’d caught it soon enough, and from now on, it was just a matter of prevention.

  I was ready to collapse in bed when we got home that night from the hospital. But somehow I ended up sitting on the floor with my sisters, drinking wine and eating pizza and popcorn, and listening with half an ear to Laura’s insinuating questions about Ellen’s marriage— I couldn’t help feeling a little too pleased that my sisters weren’t quite as considerate of each other as they pretended. But I started listening, really listening, when Laura confessed that she really, really wanted to have a baby. Only she didn’t have a man to sire it.

  “Why not adopt?” Ellen asked.

  Laura looked disconcerted. “Because—”

  “Because you don’t think you could love the baby enough?” I asked.

  “No!” Laura shot a sharp glance at me. She didn’t like any suggestion that she might not be good at loving, I gathered. “No. Because . . . because I don’t think it’s fair. All those actresses, they go out and buy babies so they don’t have to ruin their figures being pregnant, or get stretch marks on their breasts from getting engorged with milk. Okay, they don’t do it illegally, I don’t think anyway.” She was gaining speed here. I realized she must have considered adopting a baby at some point and rejected the idea, because she had the arguments already marshaled. “But they’ve got enough money to get the attorneys and promise the birthmother a year in luxury, and promise that the baby will get Porthault linens and ski vacations to Gstaad and a Ferrari on their 16th birthday. And the girls, they think somehow inside them that it means they’ll get that too, be compensated for being poor. Only once the baby is born, they’re packed off with a thank-you gift. A Kate Spade purse, maybe. And a Harry Winston bracelet with the birthstone of the baby they gave away.”

  Surprised at her vehemence, Ellen said, “But at least the child gets a good life.”

  “Who knows? Maybe the child starts thinking, when he gets older, that he’s just one more accessory. An expensive prop to a chic life. I don’t know. And anyway—” and she gulped down another half-glass of wine —“I’m not saying the girls are extortionists or anything. But I’d be scared for years, waiting for them to call. They’re usually very young and they had those months or so of being taken care of. And they miss their baby. And their boyfriend, the one who wouldn’t marry them or help them take care of the baby, is maybe still around. And they open People magazine and there’s a picture of the baby, their baby, with the new rich mom. And maybe it’s just him, or maybe it’s both of them, but they’d have to be pretty strong to resist the temptation to call up and make a few demands. It happens. I’ve seen it.”

  Ellen said, “Well, I can understand that. But maybe an open adoption—”

  “Same problem, really. Anyway, every baby that gets taken by some Hollywood actress who doesn’t want stretch marks doesn’t go to some infertile couple. And all things considered, well, I don’t think it’s fair on a cosmic level that a woman capable of having a baby would take one away from a family that can’t.”

  “So adopt a child that others don’t want,” I said coolly. “An older child.”

  “I don’t want—no. That wouldn’t work.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because she’d already have belonged to someone else. She wouldn’t really be mine.” Laura must have seen the warning look on Ellen’s face just as those last words came out, because she clamped her mouth shut
and stared at me. I concentrated on projecting that otherworldly calm prized in the convent.

  Laura now looked embarrassed. Or perhaps that was just an act. “I’m sorry. You know what I meant.”

  “Yes, I do. I agree.” I didn’t bother to look at her. I didn’t care what she thought. “An older child would never really belong to you. Too alien.”

  “I’m glad Mother didn’t feel that way,” Ellen said firmly. “She accepted you as her own.”

  “Of course she did,” Laura agreed in that warm tone of hers, that implied all sorts of innuendo.

  I couldn’t help but speculate about what the innuendo was—probably that I was again a replacement, something to fill the gap after Laura’s dad died, something to compensate for Laura’s refusal to be a good daughter or Cathy’s departure after college. But what plagued Laura—why I was chosen by Mother—was no longer the primary issue for me. I wanted to know why Mother even got the chance.

  I said abruptly, “Do you remember when I first came here? Before—before I came to live here?”

  “Sort of,” Laura said. “A little.”

  “Why do you ask?” Ellen looked worried. We’d never spoken of this, of my earlier life. I had my reasons—maybe Ellen did too. It can’t have been easy to explain to her friends why she was suddenly sisters with the housekeeper’s daughter.

  “I don’t know. Just this talk about adoption. And birth parents. Not too many kids knew their birthparents personally. But I did. For six years.”

  This was, perhaps, the longest speech I’d given to them since I arrived. I wasn’t used to talking anymore; all those long days of silence in the cloister had stolen what little fluency I once had. But maybe the wine had loosened my tongue enough to embolden me—or maybe I thought my sisters would remember what I couldn’t.

  Laura said suddenly, “When your mother worked here, you’d come over sometime, because you were too little to be in school. You liked Barbies.”

  I drew in a breath and then let it go slowly. “Yes. You had a dozen or so, didn’t you?”