The Search Angel

by Tish Cohen

  Eleanor tightens the scarf around her neck. It’s cold this morning. How he’s sitting in here in nothing but a Meat Loaf T-shirt defies explanation. From the cab behind them, the driver honks. From the Pretty Baby window, Angus barks.

  “So, anyway.”

  “I used to use nothing but warm water. But then I heard there has to be at least some oil in your formulation.” He grabs the bottle and shrugs. “This one uses lavender oil. Supposed to keep things well conditioned.”

  Two businessmen stop in front of Death by Vinyl and peer inside. The cab honks again. The driver will leave and then she’s going to miss the second flight in two weeks. She calls out the window that he can take her suitcase, which sits on the sidewalk. With a roll of his eyes, he grabs it and puts it in the trunk. She speaks fast.

  “So, I’m going away today and, well, you seemed to take to Angus the other day at the cemetery. You know, the way he ate your muffin and then he wanted to wrestle. It’s rare for him these days. He’s … I don’t know. He’s been in a depression. Do you think you could watch him while I’m gone? It’s just for a few days and he can still sleep at my place.”

  Noel wipes down the top of the dashboard and frowns. “Look at that lint. I don’t think I should use a cotton cloth.”

  “Anyway. About Angus.”

  “Who’s Angus—your husband?”

  Eleanor stares at him, stunned. “My dog. Please. I have no one to help me and I have to board a plane in a couple of hours. He’s no trouble. If you could feed him and walk him, maybe let him hang with you while you …” She was going to say work, but there doesn’t seem to be much of that going on over there. “Fine-tune your speakers, I’d really appreciate it. My assistant, Ginny, can give you advice, and of course I’ll give you my cell.”

  “Maybe it’s a polyester cloth I should use.” He looks at her. “You think? What else is lint-free?”

  It’s ridiculous, but she has no choice. “I’ve got something you can try.” She jumps out of the car and races into the store, returning half a minute later with a box of baby wipes. She drops into the seat and hands it to him, out of breath. “These are lint-free. Guaranteed.”

  He pulls one out and wipes the dash, skeptical at first. Then he leans closer and grins. “Hey, I think these things work.”

  “Great. So about the dog.”

  “Can I keep them?”

  “Yes. Will you watch Angus?”

  “You’re leaving when?”

  “Six minutes ago.”

  He pauses to read the plastic package, worried. “They don’t give you very many. I’ll be out of these in a couple of weeks.”

  The driver is out of the car and yelling something in Spanish. “I’ll give you an entire carton when I return. It’ll last you a year.”

  “You’ll leave instructions?”

  “What?”

  “For the dog. I’ll do it if you leave detailed instructions. How much food. When he goes out. What he likes to do at night. That sort of thing.”

  Eleanor is so relieved she leans across the center console and gives Noel a hug. “Everything you need is inside my store. I’m home in three days.” With a wave goodbye, she jumps into the waiting cab.

  Chapter 16

  Topeka, Kansas. The Department for Children and Families is nothing much to look at. But sitting on a cement planter out front, staring at the salmon-colored bricks and no-nonsense sign, Eleanor is filled with ridiculous hope. Suddenly every woman shuffling through the revolving door could be her mother. At the very least, her mom spent enough time in the area to give birth. She likely walked along this very street.

  Eleanor watches for her own features to pass. Dark blue eyes. Blond hair. Charmingly crooked nose. Wide mouth that should smile more.

  For a moment it seems possible that Diane Keaton herself might stroll by. She’d read somewhere that Diane’s real surname is Hall, her nickname Annie. That Woody wrote the film specifically for her and that she wore her own clothes, despite the protestations of the wardrobe person on set. Eleanor taps her black and white oxford shoes together. She actually rolled up her jeans today to highlight her pretty lace socks. The polarity of the masculine and the feminine—it made her feel substantial somehow. Diane Keaton–ish, anyway.

  She downs the rest of her water, tosses the bottle into a recycling bin. The office doesn’t open until nine. She’s been sitting here since ten after eight. The way she sees it, any one of a number of things could happen on this trip. She could find out her birth mother is dead. Or terminally ill. Or that she’s impoverished or mentally unstable. Her mother could refuse to see Eleanor—an act that could be more hurtful than the adoption itself and one Eleanor isn’t sure she would survive. Her birth mother could be a felon. Worse than any of this, she may never find her mother at all.

  The plastic hospital bracelet. She holds it in one palm and stares out into the street. A woman with hair so sculpted and sprayed it resists the morning’s breeze strides past carrying four coffees in a cardboard tray. She steps off the curb and checks traffic. It isn’t her face, rosy and full-cheeked, that feels familiar; it’s something in the way she trots so lightly across the street. Eleanor gets up and follows her down the sidewalk, narrowly missing being flattened by a bicycle courier.

  The woman backs through the glass doors of an insurance company, holding it open for Eleanor, who tries not to stare as she smiles her thanks. The woman stabs the elevator button in a way that suggests she works here every day. Eleanor slows. She has no plan, other than to keep this person in sight for as long as possible. Though, really. What is she going to do—follow her up the elevator, into her office and to her desk?

  The woman stabs the button again with good-natured impatience. “Thing has been so slow lately.” She eyes Eleanor. “Do you work for Kravitz?”

  “No! I’m …” Eleanor pulls her purse closer. “I think I’m lost, actually. I haven’t been here, in Kansas, in a long time.”

  “Well. Welcome back.”

  Eleanor smiles. “I was born here. Well, not in Topeka. Kansas City. At the Women’s Hospital.” She rocks her body side to side hopefully. “Thirty-five years ago …”

  The woman wiggles one of the smaller coffee cups out of the tray and sips. “I used to live in KCK. Great city. Very cultural these days.”

  Lived in Kansas City. Eleanor’s heart thumps in her throat even though it’s nearly impossible that the first person she meets is her mother.

  Eleanor’s phone rings from inside her purse. “I’m back here to …” The ringing bounces against the marble walls, amplifying the sound. “Hang on, sorry.” She pulls out her phone, but not before the elevator pings and the doors swish open. “Hello?”

  A male voice. Noel’s. “Those baby wipes of yours are terrible on windows. Smudged them up bad. I had to Windex them twice and I’m still not sure they’re clear.”

  “I’m kind of busy here, Noel. Can I call you right back?”

  “And about your dog. I’ve fed him two bowls of kibble. I mean, enough to feed a moose, and he’s still begging for more. Is this normal?”

  The woman steps into the elevator with a polite nod goodbye. Eleanor holds up a finger. Into the phone she says, “What? No! Two bowls back to back?”

  “I don’t think he even swallowed. You should feed him more. His ribs are sticking out.”

  Inside the car, the woman hits a button and waits, staring at the numbers above the open doors.

  “I do feed him”—she lowers her voice and turns around—”I told you, he’s been depressed.”

  “He’s sure not depressed now. He found a tennis ball in the shop. I had to throw it for him all day. Does this dog not sleep?”

  All he does is sleep, she wants to say but doesn’t. “Listen, I can’t talk right now.”

  “You should’ve seen him in the park. He was the damned social director—greeting every dog and owner that passed by. He’s just so … happy.”

  “I promise you it’s not his normal
state—”

  The doors start to close. Eleanor drops the phone into her purse and lunges to stop them but it’s too late. The woman is gone.

  “Hello? Eleanor? Hello-o?” Noel’s voice comes to her garbled from where the phone has slipped between her wallet and tampon case. Eleanor pulls it out with a sigh. What does it matter anyway? The coiffed woman from KCK was not her mother.

  “Yes?”

  “Would you mind picking me up some of that BB’s Lawnside BBQ sauce? You can’t get that stuff up here and I’ve got this nice rack of beef ribs in the freezer.”

  Across the street, people are starting to enter the Department of Children and Families. She checks her watch: 9:03. “Noel? I’ve got to go.”

  As soon as she reaches the information desk, she thinks she should have called first. She has no desire to stand in front of this uniformed, gum-smacking twenty-two-year-old security guard and explain her predicament. I have no name. No real information about myself. But, hey, I do have a thirty-five-year-old plastic bracelet! Eventually, after a few wrong turns and a few confused department receptionists, Eleanor finds herself at the adoption records desk, staring at an employee pretending she’s not eating a sandwich.

  The woman, with sunken cheeks and cracked lips, wearing a name badge that reads Brenda, wraps what’s left of her cream cheese bagel in a napkin and tucks it under the counter. Her skin is so thin it clings to her tendons and ligaments, her bones. A few bottles of water could plump it up, bring her to life. She covers her mouth with her fingers while she finishes chewing.

  “Sorry. We’re short-staffed. I’m all by myself down here most days and I missed dinner last night.”

  “You have to eat.”

  Brenda swallows and waves at her face to expedite the process. “What can I do for you?”

  “I have a bit of a situation.” She waits, nervous, while Brenda reaches for a pen. The one thing she can’t take is pity. If, for one second, this woman looks at her with sorrow or embarrassment or concern, Eleanor will spin around and hop a cab back to the airport. “I was born here thirty-five years ago. And, well. My mother, she …”

  “You were adopted?”

  “Yes.”

  “All you need is twenty dollars and twenty minutes, luv. You got both?”

  No sorrow here. Eleanor is relieved. It’s business as usual. “Yes, sure.” She pulls out a twenty.

  “State of Kansas is totally open for adoption records. Lucky for you.” Brenda pushes the money into a cash machine. “Now. What have we got? Mother’s name? Your birth name?”

  Eleanor fumbles to pull the hospital bracelet from her purse. “Baby Girl Smith. August 10, 1975. Women’s Hospital. That’s all I really know.”

  Brenda examines the bracelet. “Hard to believe anyone starts out this small, isn’t it?”

  “I’m just hoping the adoption is on record here somehow. And I can get a bit more information. I really need to find her.”

  Brenda hands it back to her. “Women’s Hospital. Sadly, the name Smith doesn’t help us much. More often than not, it’s made up.” She pulls on a pair of glasses and motions toward the chairs in front of her desk. Eleanor sits. “August tenth, let’s see now …”

  “Nineteen seventy-five.” Eleanor refrains from mentioning that Woody and Diane were filming that year.

  “A Leo. Nice.” She punches the date into her computer. “Good, strong souls, Leos. I married one.” She looks up. “You married?”

  Eleanor slides her hands beneath her thighs. “I don’t really know what I am.”

  Brenda nods. No judgment, no pity. She returns to the computer screen. “Well, the good news is we’ve got your mother’s name. Or at least the name she gave.”

  “Wait, what’s her name?”

  “Ruth Smith. So we’ve got that as well as your date of birth. But there’s absolutely no adoption information from that hospital on that day.” She looks at Eleanor from over her papers. “It means the adoption didn’t take place here in Kansas state. The birth did, but not the adoption.”

  “I don’t understand. You’re saying she took me somewhere else? Packed me onto a plane and took me to someone?”

  “That’s certainly possible, but more likely the adoption took place close by.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “The hospital is just off State Line Road, which divides Kansas City into two states. The west side is Kansas. The east side is Missouri. You, my dear, were born on the Kansas side, but you were probably adopted on the other side of the street. In Missouri. A very common occurrence in Kansas City.” She places her cool, dry hand over Eleanor’s. “I’m sorry, luv.”

  “So, what, I go across State Line Road and find the Department of Children and Families in Missouri?”

  “I’m afraid it’s not that easy. Missouri isn’t like Kansas. Adoptions that take place in Missouri are sealed. They won’t give you any information about adoptions in Missouri.”

  “But this must happen all the time, the way the city is cut in half.”

  “Breaks my heart to have to disappoint people. I’m sorry. Kansas is only one of a handful of states with open records. Most allow access to non-identifying information only. She slides the paper across the counter to Eleanor. “But you do have a few things to go on. Her name: Ruth Smith. And this is your mother’s address, however temporary, the day you were born. And here’s your birth certificate. Don’t leave without this.”

  Eleanor stares down at the small white piece of paper the woman has placed on the counter. Baby Girl Smith. Across the front is stamped in red: VOID.

  “Voiding it is just a way to prevent fraud. Identity theft. You know.”

  Eleanor nods and slips her birth certificate into her purse. Void sounds about right.

  “Honey, there are people out there who can help you. They go beyond what the state can do. You know, go back to your public school, your church. They go through cemeteries and archived newspapers.”

  “Do you have them here?”

  Brenda shakes her head. “They’re private individuals. Call themselves search angels. They’re mostly volunteers, often women who gave up an infant of their own.”

  “How do I find one?”

  “Where’d you say you’re from?”

  “Boston.”

  Brenda consults a thick binder and scrawls a name on the back of her business card. She hands it to Eleanor. “Isabelle Santos. She used to live in Boston. I’m not sure if she’s still taking clients, but she’s one of the best.”

  Chapter 17

  Midday now and cold enough it could snow. The sun is so bright it stings her eyes, and the distant train whistle sounds like a kettle. Eleanor zips up her jacket, flips the collar up to keep out the chilly air. Beneath it, she’s layered a thick turtleneck over a blouse. She didn’t pack for the weather here. For some reason she expected it to be warmer than home.

  The building in front of her, 26 Reeson Road, the address from the records, is actually a large, charcoal-gray Victorian house with original slate roof tiles and a lovingly restored gingerbread porch. On one side, the roof rockets skyward in a fat turret, on the other, a chunky stone chimney.

  A backlit sign informs her that Lindquist, Stricker and Blair, Attorneys-at-Law, are based here now, and what once must have been a generous front lawn is now a parking lot filled with Volkswagens and Hyundais, as well as an assortment of expensive black sedans.

  Was her mother from a wealthy family? A house this size must have had servants. In Boston, this house would cost a fortune. It’s a grand old mansion.

  Her phone rings from her pocket. She pulls it out. “Hey, Noel.”

  “He’s gone through that entire bag of dog food. Do you have any more stashed away someplace? Because I don’t really have any way to haul back a bag of dog food from the pet store up on Commonwealth, if that’s where you get this Science Diet stuff. I’d have to take a cab.”

  That he has a perfectly nice car parked in front of her store is not
worth mentioning. “Angus has finished the entire fifteen-pound bag?”

  “If I were you, I’d take him off this high-energy formula. He’s active, sure, but if he eats this much every day, he’s going to balloon.”

  Of course it was good he was eating. It’s a huge relief that his depression is lifting. But at the same time, Eleanor can’t help but feel envious he didn’t start eating with her. “There’s another bag in the hall closet. But don’t overfeed him. Just follow the serving sizes I left in the instructions …”

  “I haven’t seen any of this depression you mentioned …”

  Eleanor hears shuffling on the sidewalk nearby. A rumpled man, well into his seventies, with a stain on his jacket and trousers nearly worn through in the thighs, traps a cigarette between his lips and pats his pockets.

  “Sorry, Noel. I have to run.” She slips the phone back into her pocket and approaches the man. “Excuse me. Do you live around here?”

  “You got a light?”

  “I don’t smoke.”

  “Damn wife hides my fire nowadays. Thinks she’s keeping me alive, but I tell you, this way I’d rather be dead.”

  Eleanor nods emphatically. As if she too is unable to enjoy life because of this shrewish woman.

  He motions toward the house. “You work with them lawyers?”

  “No. I was just admiring the building.”

  He nods, his unlit smoke threatening to fall onto the sidewalk, though she has little doubt he’d slide it back into his mouth if it did. “It’s a beauty. We all thought these dipshits’d tear the place down, but they did it up real nice.”

  “You’ve lived here a long time?”

  “Most of my life. Grew up over there in Lanark County but Louise was from the big city and wanted to keep it that way. So I did what a smart man does. Did what my wife said and moved up here.”

  “This house, do you remember it from, say, the late seventies? Was it a single-family residence?”