The year She Fell

by Rasley, Alicia

  “I guess.” He glanced quickly at me, then away. “I figured that when I saw your original birth certificate, how long it took to register the birth. I thought, well, maybe they’d tried to give you away then, but not gone through with it.”

  Mitch hadn’t said anything like that, but maybe he wouldn’t remember. Maybe they wouldn’t have told him. Or maybe— maybe he was right, and there’d been another mother, another birth certificate, that his parents hadn’t made me either.

  Brian was regarding me sympathetically now. “It’s hard, huh? I thought—I guess I thought finding out the answer was what I wanted.” He looked bleakly down at the town. Everyone was driving home from work now, and Main Street had what passed for a traffic jam in Wakefield. “But I wanted more than that really. I wanted . . . I don’t know. Birthparents who welcomed me.”

  “And you found that your birthmother was dead.”

  “Yeah.” He raised his head, and I saw in his eyes a hurt that I understood. “When did she die?”

  I had to count back, through all the intervening years. “Sixteen years ago? No. Seventeen.”

  “I was just a baby.”

  “Yes.”

  “How?” he whispered, and I remembered asking these questions of Mitch just yesterday. When. How. Why didn’t I know.

  “It was a climbing accident. Cathy was a mountain-climber. She was rappelling one afternoon off a rock face just east of here, and her harness malfunctioned. Or she had it buckled wrong. She liked to rappel the rocks around here. And jump off bridges.”

  He frowned, puzzling over this. “She sounds crazy.”

  I almost smiled. “Well, she was, a little. She liked to take risks.” With men too, apparently. I didn’t understand it.

  “What about him?”

  “Tom?” I thought of my brother-in-law. I hardly knew him, even after so many years. “I guess he liked to take risks too. He’s always going off to war zones.”

  “Yeah. I know. I read about him on the web.” He stopped, as if he suddenly remembered he’d used me, too, to get information about Tom. “He probably hates me now.”

  “You should have thought of that before.”

  “I should apologize, huh?” He scuffed his ugly army boot against the bottom step. “Not that it’ll matter. It won’t get me anywhere.”

  I said grimly, “You don’t apologize because it’ll get you somewhere. You apologize because you’re sorry for what you did.”

  “I totally screwed it up, didn’t I?” And then he rubbed his face with a fist, and I realized he was crying.

  I sighed. We were supposed to be peacemakers, those of us who had dedicated our lives to the Church. We were supposed to help heal rifts. But I’d always been better at healing bodies. Finally I stood up. At least he was taking my mind off those graves back in Paulsen. “Look. Go get some sleep. Tomorrow morning, I’ll take you to see Tom.”

  The next morning, Brian apologized, and Tom accepted it, or at least didn’t reject it. He was cool and annoyed, but controlled. It could have been worse. Ellen, at least, went out of her way to be nice to Brian, taking him home from the motel in her car and getting out the photo albums and spreading them over the coffee table. She was very polite but distracted as she turned the pages and pointed out yet another photo of Cathy on horseback, Cathy in climbing gear, Cathy graduating from Loudon.

  Brian looked up at me just once, his face stricken. Quietly I bent and from the table took the envelope containing Cathy’s medical records. Out in the hall, I went over the charts one more time, puzzling.

  It was easier to translate the medical jargon than to remember how complicated my life had become.

  I wasn’t used to this, not since I’d left all the anguish of the clinic in Romania. I wanted to retreat to the quiet sanctuary of the cloister— but Mother Prioress would just tell me I was escaping, and she would be right.

  I heard the front door open, and, glad to get away from the tension, I dropped the file on the chair beside me and rose. Mother was at the front door, halfway into the house, staring at her overnight bag. “Mother?” I said, and slowly she looked up at me.

  “I forgot my laptop,” she said in a wondering tone. “I can’t believe it.”

  “It’s all right, Mother.” I almost told her it wasn’t the worst thing that was going to happen today. But I couldn’t bring myself to reach out to her. She’d withheld so much knowledge from me, and now it turned out that she’d kept Brian’s letter from Ellen. So many secrets . . . and some of them were mine.

  Ellen heard us and came out into the hall. In a tight voice, she said, “Mother, perhaps you can join us. There’s someone we’d like you to meet.” She took Mother firmly by the arm and drew her into the parlor.

  I stood by the door, longing for escape, feeling sorry for Brian. Whatever he had done, he didn’t deserve to be trapped in there with my mother when she was feeling defensive. His . . . grandmother.

  Ellen was at the desk, rummaging through the lower drawer. I could see the bitterness on her face as she pulled out a folder. “I found this. It’s got Brian’s letter to me in it. Opened. You knew about him. And you didn’t tell me.”

  Mother wasn’t ready for this. She had the expression of someone who had just awakened— blank and startled. My sympathy was stirred, and I had to grip the doorframe to keep from going to her.

  Ellen, usually so calm, was shaking as she tried to hand the folder to Mother. “Tell me why you thought I shouldn’t know.”

  Mother took the folder but didn’t open it. She held it to her chest and murmured, “I was just trying to protect you.”

  “It didn’t work.” Ellen gestured to Brian, who was sitting abashed on the window seat. “He felt ignored. And so he decided to go to extremes. He abducted Tom. Do you understand? Mother?”

  Mother slowly turned her gaze on Brian. He looked down, and I couldn’t see much trace of the confident boy who instructed me in the investigation of adoption. I wondered how long he had been without a good night’s sleep.

  Laura slipped past me into the parlor, hardly sparing me a glance. This was her moment, I knew. She’d always hated our mother, always distrusted her, and now she finally had reason. And so she joined with Ellen, the two of them talking in low, angry voices, accusing Mother of lies and deception and secrets. Always secrets, more secrets.

  Brian was sitting there, his back stiff against the window. Tears were running down his face. Through the glass, I saw Tom getting out of his black Jeep. He took one glance over at the window, and then away from Brian.

  I felt disconnected and disoriented. Brian had lied to me, of course, but I should be his friend—he needed one now. He came here expecting to find a family. Maybe that was foolish, but I understood. And what he found was anger and dismissal. And the one he’d come for, his mother, had been dead most of his life.

  I should reach out to him. But Mother was talking, justifying herself. She would have contacted Brian eventually, told him the truth. She just had to get a few things straight before then.

  Ellen left then. She must have seen Tom’s car. Automatically I stood aside to let her by. Mother turned too, as if she was going to follow. But I didn’t let her even start across the room towards me. “Mother. Wait. I want to know too. Why am I here? Why did you adopt me?”

  She looked at me finally, her brow furrowed. “You know why, dear. I’ve told you. Your father was ill. Your mother needed help.”

  “But she’s not my mother,” I said, and the truth of this shivered through me. “She didn’t give birth to me. I know that now. So she gave me up. Now tell me why. Why did you take me?”

  Mother reached out a hand to me, but I didn’t take it. “Come, dear, this isn’t the time to worry about something so deep in the past.”

  “You can stop lying, Mother,” Laura broke in. “I know why you hid that letter from Brian. And I know why you waited until Daddy died to adopt Theresa.”

  I hardly had time to realize what Laura was saying—that
she knew where I came from, why I was here. She’d never said anything to me, but now—

  Mother was shaking her head in that placating way. “Laura, you’re just trying to stir things up. Theresa is with us because we love her.”

  “It’s because you’re hers, Theresa.” Laura was looking directly at me now. “She went away one spring and had you. She couldn’t keep you because Daddy would know she’d been cheating on him. But once he died, she took you back. She gave you up and then she took you back.”

  “No,” I whispered. And yet—

  Mother’s eyes were blazing as she stared at Laura. “You—you’re wrong. You—” She swallowed, once, twice, convulsively, putting her hand back and finding the arm of a chair. She balanced against it and took a deep breath. “Don’t say anymore, Laura.”

  Her face went very pale, and before I could react, Brian jumped up from his seat and took a few long strides to her side, and he was there to catch her when she fell.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  Later, at the hospital, I found my way to a quiet place down the corridor from Mother’s room—an inner staircase, smelling of metal and cigarettes—and dialed the number I’d already memorized. And Mitch answered, his voice distracted but strong, and some part of me marveled at the thought of him standing over his medieval art, talking on a cell phone.

  All in a rush, I presented him with the supposition. Perhaps I’d been the product of an affair between his father and my mother—Mother, I meant—and his mother agreed to raise me. And then, when Mr. Wakefield was dead, Mother took me back.

  I heard something drop to the floor. His knife, perhaps.

  “Mrs. Wakefield?” Mitch’s astonishment was answer enough. “Uh, no.” After a pause, he said, “Do you remember my dad? He was, you know, rough. He was a coal miner. His fingernails were always black. And when he shook his head, coal dust came out of his hair. She’d never have—” he stopped again, then resumed. “Anyway, he was all union. He wouldn’t mingle with management.”

  “I believe you,” I said. I couldn’t imagine it either. It was an answer, but it couldn’t be the right answer. “I am just trying to make sense of it, and—”

  “Why don’t you ask her?”

  Simple. Direct. Impossible. “She’s in the hospital. Her condition is a little precarious now. I can’t upset her, just because I want to know.”

  He was silent for a moment. A man accustomed to silence, up there in his solitary world. His own cloister. Finally he said, “Look, I’d like to help you. But I can’t come down there. I — I’m tired of that world down there, and all the troubles. I just—”

  “Want to be left alone,” I finished. “Yes. I know. I understand.” I did, actually. It was another escape, his mountain refuge, but who was I to begrudge him an escape? “Thanks,” I said, and hung up. I dropped down on the cold ridged metal step and thought of Mother in that room, hooked up to the telemetry, her condition too fragile to risk. I’d have to find out the truth myself.

  When I finally tracked Laura down in the hospital cafeteria, it was late enough that it was almost full dark. Laura was sitting in a booth under a dark window, drinking coffee and staring at some baseball game on the television monitor. As I watched, the cashier came over with an order pad and a pen, and Laura smiled and signed her autograph. Even so late, she looked good. She was never as beautiful as I remembered Cathy being, but she was casually elegant, her hair tousled just so, her skin aglow in the harsh light.

  I got a coke and sat down across from her. She raised her cup in some kind of welcome. “How’s Mother doing?”

  Laura had been banished early on, because her presence made Mother more agitated.

  “She’s asleep. They’ve decided it wasn’t a full-fledged stroke, but she’s got to be kept quiet.”

  “So no more questions, huh?”

  I fiddled with my straw and didn’t look at her. “What you said really upset her.”

  “Yes. I’m sorry. It must have upset you too.”

  “I want to know why you said it. Where you got that idea.”

  Laura rose. “Can we walk somewhere? Hospitals make me nervous.”

  So silently we walked out the emergency room door, past the little courtyard where patients snuck off to smoke, and through the floodlit parking lot. The river was two blocks away, and we headed for that. It wasn’t till we were on the sidewalk overlooking the 10th Street bridge that Laura answered me.

  “I always suspected it. It was so weird, the way she always showed such interest in you.” She started down the block away the bridge, and I had to walk fast to catch up. “Maybe you don’t remember, but when you were little and your mother would bring you to the house, Mother would walk you down to the Dairy Queen for an ice cream.”

  “I don’t remember,” I said softly.

  “Well, I do, because it annoyed me that she did that for you, and never for me. She didn’t like me, I know—it’s not like she wanted to spend time with me—but she was hardly the warm generous type.”

  I had to protest. “She’s always been generous and warm to me.”

  “Exactly,” Laura said. She put her hand gingerly on the metal railing that bordered the riverbank. The sidewalk was rutted here, strewn with gravel, and she was picking her way carefully in her expensive high-heeled sandals. “She isn’t that way by nature. And yet, with you, even when you were with the Prices, she would get all . . . fluffy.”

  “You noticed,” I said, trying to sound skeptical.

  “Well, of course. She was my mother, and if she was going to buy anyone ice cream, it should have been me. So I noticed. And I also noticed that when Daddy came home, she’d send you back to your mother, whatever room she was cleaning. Mother didn’t want him to see you, or see you with her.”

  I took a breath of the cool evening air. It hurt in my throat, and hurt in my chest. “But there was more. You said she went away the year when I was born. But how could you remember that? You were just a little girl.”

  “I remember because Ellen and I got to be alone with Daddy for months, and that was wonderful. We had so much fun.” She glanced apologetically at me. “I’m sorry. This can’t be easy to hear.”

  “No. It’s all right. I want to know.” I considered what she had said. “You said she was away for months. What did she say she was doing?”

  “Oh, it was when she and Cathy were doing the equestrienne thing. She was going to horse shows, supposedly, driving from one city to another, being a judge. But she dropped Cathy at a horse school in Virginia, to polish her skills.”

  “But if it was only few months—”

  “They left here before school ended. Cathy missed a whole grading period. But she made it up at the Virginia school.”

  “You think Cathy knew.”

  “No. I don’t know. I can’t believe she did. But Mom was using her as an alibi, I think. They weren’t even together that spring.”

  “Was my—Mrs. Price cleaning the house all that time?”

  Laura frowned. “Yes, I think so. The house was cleaned, anyway, and I think I’d remember if we had a new housekeeper while Mother was gone. And,” she added, “I would have noticed if the housekeeper were pregnant.”

  I’d already accepted Mitch’s assertion that his mother had not borne me. But the rest was hard to accept. “You think Mother concealed her pregnancy for months, and then went away and had me and—and what? Gave me to the housekeeper?”

  Letting go of the railing, Laura stopped under a streetlamp and reached into her purse. She brought out a little foil square and ripped it open, and pulled out a wet-wipe and fastidiously washed her hands. “I don’t know. I think they must have worked it out ahead of time, and she delivered the baby— I mean you— and met your parents somewhere and handed you over.”

  “But—” I took another deep breath. “But why would they take me?” Before she could answer, I said, “Mitch—my . . . their elder son—told me he always thought they were paid to give me up. But maybe th
ey were paid to take me.”

  Laura dropped the foil and the wet-wipe into the litter can hanging on the railing. She didn’t reject what I had suggested. She didn’t even react. That probably meant she agreed. Finally she said, “I didn’t figure this out till a lot later—till Daddy died and the first thing she did was adopt you. I mean, it couldn’t have been two months after his funeral that you came to live with us. And all she would say was that your parents needed help, and so she adopted you to help them.”

  “You hated me. I remember that.”

  She shrugged. “I lost my father and my position in the family, all at the same time. It wasn’t your fault, but I guess I took it out on you.” She gazed over at the bulk of the hospital, gray in the twilight. “We should probably get back. Ellen’s going to worry if she can’t find us. And maybe she’ll remember more for you. She’s four years older.” Her mouth twisted in an ironic smile. “And she’s a lot more objective about Mother than I am. Maybe she’ll have a different perspective.”

  The street was deserted except for a couple of parked cars. We crossed it and walked back to the hospital. Ellen was sitting in the waiting area outside of Intensive Care, making notes in a journal. She closed it as we came in. “I’m trying to write a sermon for when I get back to work. But my thoughts keep scattering.” She gestured towards the closed door to the unit. “They said we should go home for the night. She’s sleeping.”

  We were just entering the main lobby when a man rose from one of the waiting room chairs and came towards us. It was the college president, Dr. Urich, in casual clothes as if he’d come off the golf course. “I just heard,” he said. “How is your mother?”

  It was a small town, and bad news about an important citizen traveled fast. Ellen said politely, “She’s sleeping. But she’s doing better.”

  Laura said, “Don’t worry. She’s not in real danger.”

  And I heard myself chiming in, “Yes, don’t worry. She’ll live long enough to sign that new will for you.”