Reunion: A Novel

by Lauraine Snelling

  They left the office at four. “So how does it feel to be a working woman?”

  “Tired. I don’t usually spend that much time in front of a screen with a keyboard. I have my laptop, but we used a PC in the lab at school.”

  “Make sure you get up and move around, do some stretches, especially your neck and shoulders.”

  “I did. Moving to the copy machine and back. Thanks for the ride.”

  Keira watched her stride up the walk, then continued home. She’d not said a word to Bjorn since breakfast. Why didn’t she feel victorious for that, rather than down in the dumps? She hated fighting.

  The bags of pictures she’d set out for Leah were gone so she knew she’d been there. The box where she’d been tossing letters waited for her on the floor. At least she’d been so busy at work she’d not had time to think about this, other than stewing over Bjorn’s reaction. It wasn’t like her to not let the anger go by now, but this was really important. To her anyway. She wasn’t who she thought she was. None of her dad’s relatives were really her relatives, not by blood. She paused. That was it. Who she was. She no longer knew who she was. Half of her genes were unknown. If she wasn’t a Sorenson, who was she? Everyone had that innate need to know who they were.

  She knew she was her mother’s daughter and that side of the family history, but she wasn’t part of Kenneth’s, and his whole family’s, history—his relatives, the ones who were still around and alive and cared about family reunions. There hadn’t been a Jenson family reunion ever, at least not that she could remember. But then all of them but Helga had already left this earth. Of course she must have cousins somewhere, but they’d not kept in touch.

  She sank into her chair and forced her mind to gather these thoughts together, then wrote them down so the next time Bjorn made a comment about her obsessiveness, she could give him some concrete answers.

  What difference does this really make? Bjorn’s question kept fueling her anger. She gritted her teeth and returned to the kitchen to start the dumplings. She checked the cupboard and then the pantry. No biscuit mix.

  Well, jellybeans. That had been her favorite swear word ever since Paul had said it one time when he was little. Where had he come up with jellybeans for an expletive? They never knew, but it had worked for her ever since. Jellybeans, jellybeans, jellybeans! Okay, she’d go to the store and buy mix or get out the recipe book and make them from scratch or—no dumplings.

  But Bjorn really liked dumplings with his stew.

  Who cared what Bjorn wanted right now?

  Grow up, Keira Sorenson Johnston. Using her full name when yelling at herself was a mark of desperation. Woman, you are fifty years old. If you haven’t grown up by now, will you ever? But he’s the one who started this. Right, and so you will finish it? Get real, you know this isn’t bothering him at all, but here you are yelling and swearing at yourself.

  Winning a battle when you were the one on both sides was really a no-win situation.

  Jerking out the cooking oil, flour, baking powder, and salt, she set them on the counter and retrieved the egg and milk from the refrigerator. Her mind jerked to a standstill. Could she still include the Sorenson in her name? Of course she could. Even if she wasn’t a Sorenson by blood, adoption and legalities counted. Heaving a sigh of frustration, she flipped through recipe books until she found one with a dumpling recipe in it. The page looked well used, as it had the waffle recipe on it too. She glared at the instructions and started measuring. This was crazy. All over a name. She could feel an inner smile tug at her mouth. What was she, some kind of crazy woman? Thank God she’d gone ahead with the dumplings. Lord, why can’t I stay mad at him? Or at the situation? Or life in general? Other people can stay mad. Did she hear a heavenly chuckle as the verse her mother used to say floated through her mind, “Do not let the sun go down on your anger.” Father, forgive me for being so stubborn. Keira dropped spoonfuls of dough into the Crock-Pot and set the lid back in place. At least the kitchen smelled good.

  She started to head for the stack of memorabilia but turned back. What sounded good for dessert? They hadn’t had gingerbread for a long time. With that in the oven, the timer set, and the kitchen in order again, she picked up the box of letters and pulled the craft table closer. She could start by sorting them, but according to year or according to family member?

  By the time the timer went off, she had piles of letters clear back to 1958, the year her mother graduated from high school. She’d just taken the gingerbread out of the oven when Bjorn came in the back door.

  “Sure smells good in here,” he said, sniffing the air.

  She set the cake pan on the wire rack on the counter and turned to smile at him.

  He held up a hand, traffic-cop style. “Before you say anything, I have to say something.”

  She could feel her eyebrows rise. Now what?

  “I’m sorry for this morning. I do think this is important, but only because it is important to you.”

  Keira swallowed her tears, tears that leaped to her eyes. She knew how hard it was for him to admit he’d made a mistake. “Thank you. Apology accepted.” She stepped into the circle of his arms and kissed him. “Me too.”

  He rested his cheek against her hair. “What’s for supper?”

  “Stew with dumplings.” She smiled into his shoulder. Thank you, God, for this man. And thank you that I went ahead and made the dumplings. “How was your day?”

  “You should know, you were there.”

  “Not really. I was too busy being mad and trying to keep up with the to-do pile and coaching Kirsten to hear or see what was happening.”

  “Marcus called another meeting tonight. They’re talking about sending another truckload this weekend if we can get the word out and have it filled by then.”

  Keira lifted the lid on the Crock-Pot. “Looks done.”

  He went to the cupboard and took out the plates. “Good, I’m hungry. I didn’t stop for dinner.”

  She knew that but didn’t comment, instead lifting the crock from the outside and setting it on the table on a trivet while he put out the silverware. “What would you like to drink?” All the mundane things of their life together, and so much to be thankful for. “Will you go again?”

  “I don’t know. We’ll see if anyone else volunteers.”

  After he left for the meeting, Keira returned to her stacks of letters. Amazing how much more she could concentrate when she wasn’t focusing on being mad. When her phone rang, she answered with a smile.

  “You sound happy,” Leah said.

  “I am. I’m going through the letters.”

  “You want some company?”

  “Sure. I’ll put the tea water on.”

  A bit later, with both of them settled with mugs of tea and a plate of small pieces of gingerbread to dip in applesauce between them, Keira smiled.

  “So how did Kirsten like her first day on the job?”

  “She’s exhausted. Said she’s more tired than after a game of volleyball.”

  “I wasn’t a slave driver, you know.”

  “No, she said it was the sitting and concentrating to not make mistakes.” Leah sipped her tea. “I got through most of the pictures, chose the ones to put in the book. I did find one that was interesting.” Leah handed her a photo. “I didn’t recognize him. On the back it says, ‘Arthur, 1906.’ I thought maybe.”

  “Arthur was my mother’s cousin. I think he must have been born in 1906, but he died before I was born, I think he was killed in action during World War II. You should definitely add this to the memory book. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a photo of him before.” Keira reached for a piece of gingerbread and dunked it in the applesauce, cupping her other hand under it as a safeguard.

  Leah took the photo back. “I will. And we’ll keep looking. There have to be answers somewhere.”

  “Kirsten, I’m glad you finally answered. I have to talk with you.”

  But I don’t want to talk with you. Kirsten glared at
her cell phone and put it back to her ear. “All you want to do is yell at me. Everyone is yelling at me. This isn’t just my fault, you know.”

  A silence before his voice came back. “Kirsten, when have I ever really yelled at you?” When only a sniff answered his question, he continued. “I know it is not all your fault and I want to make this right.”

  “Well, two wrongs don’t make a right.”

  “You’re not making any sense.”

  “I don’t have to make sense. I’m pregnant, remember? You can go about your life just fine but I will get bigger and bigger and everyone will know.” She sucked in a breath. She was screaming into the phone. Screaming was never appropriate in this house.

  The pause stretched. She pictured the look of puzzlement he always wore when he was trying to figure her out. His voice was gentle. “Kirsten, we have to talk this over, face to face.”

  The gentleness irritated her again. “I’m sorry. I’m really tired, José, and I’m going to bed.” She hung up and turned her phone off. Hearing the house phone ring, she knew it had to be him. She should have told him not to call, not that it did any good. She crawled under the purple quilt her grandmother had made her. Grandma, what should I do? How I wish you were here so I could talk with you. She heard a knock on her door, and her mother put her head in.

  “It’s José.”

  “I know, I just talked to him.”

  “I see.” Leah heaved a sigh and backed out, shutting the door behind her.

  Kirsten sat up and thumped the pillows into a mound behind her. At least at work she’d not had to think about this for hours at a time. José had called there too. At lunch her aunt Keira had told her about their policy of no cell phone calls at work. She’d felt like crawling under the seat. She’d never call José when he was on lifeguard duty. So why didn’t he give her the same courtesy?

  She didn’t want to talk to him until she knew what she should do. If she had the abortion, she could just tell him she’d miscarried. That all was well now, they could go on the missions trip, work all summer, and go to school in the fall, just like they’d planned. To have it all over with. She laid a hand on her abdomen. Was there really someone growing inside of her? Or was it just an it, a nonviable cluster of cells? Those words kept ringing in her head. Mrs. Nimitz had been so gentle, so sure, so caring. “We can make this easier for you.”

  Sure, easy. But if this was truly a baby growing in her, that baby would never see the sun, play in the sprinkler, ride a bike. She waited, chewing her lower lip. If only she could turn back the calendar and relive that night, but relive it responsibly, not through a haze of desire. They had known better, but all of a sudden, all sense of right and wrong flew out the window. She’d never felt so out of control in her entire life. Like a steamroller, it started slow and took off when they didn’t stop. Why did they have such strong emotions that they couldn’t control? Another one of those things that just wasn’t fair.

  Puffing out a breath, she got up and went to the closet where she had saved some of the antiabortion information. Sorting through the box, she found what she wanted and took the booklets and papers back to her bed. The one she wanted was at the bottom of the box. Turning on another lamp, she clicked on her phone to the calendar and started counting the days since March twenty-seventh. Fifty-four to sixty days was the spread on the page. The black-and-white picture showed a head, a body, the beginning of legs and arms, and the lungs and heart showed plain as her eyes could see. She could almost see the heart beating. She tried to blink away the tears. Flipping back to the beginning, she looked at all the pictures, and the progression was so plain. She reached for a tissue and blew her nose, mopped her eyes, and rolled her lips together, anything to stop the tears.

  How could anyone say this was not a baby, a real person growing inside of her? Of course it could not live yet outside the womb, so the argument had to be that. The other side would say these pictures were made up, not real. The picture became seared on her mind. The shape, the heart—was it already beating? The first tears burned, but those that followed drowned the burning and ran rivers down her face. She turned back to the picture but she didn’t need to. Would she live with this always? A tissue didn’t begin to stem the flow, so she grabbed a handful and sobbed into them. “God, forgive me, please, for even thinking of an abortion. I can’t quit crying. I am so sorry.”

  A while later, Kirsten made her way downstairs, heading to the kitchen for something to eat. She could hear her parents talking in her mother’s lair and paused to listen. They were talking about her and the situation.

  “Marcus, you don’t need to tell them right now. Give us some time. I could take her to another state, or at least far from here to have it done. No one need know.” She looked up in time to see Kirsten standing in the doorway, her mouth and eyes wide open.

  “I asked you for advice, to tell me what to do. You sound like the woman at the pregnancy center. You think I should murder this baby too?” Kirsten turned and stomped her way up the stairs, before either her mother or father could reply.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Her mother stuck her head in the door. “Are you all right?”

  The tears gushed. “No, Mom.” The word became a wail. Kirsten rose up on her knees and reached out to her mother. Safe in her mother’s arms, the torrent continued, the sobs shaking her entire body, even to the bed.

  “I can’t have an abortion. You didn’t mean that, did you? What I heard, I mean.” Sobs and hiccups punctuated her words. “I looked at the pictures again. I can’t have an abortion!”

  “No, of course you can’t. God forgive me, us, for even thinking such a thing. All will be well.” While the sobs continued, the worst of the storm had passed. “Easy, sweetheart, cry it out. Let it all go. We’ll make it through.” The words ran together in a gentle, maternal murmur that eventually penetrated the onslaught. Kirsten lay in her mother’s embrace, feeling safe and above all, surrounded by love. Love so deep and high and wide that it had to include the Father’s love, soaking through her mother’s hands and arms.

  When a silence, other than an errant sob, filled the room, Leah asked, “What happened?”

  Kirsten, barely able to see out of her swollen eyes, felt around for the thin book, found it under her seat, and handed it to her mother. “That page.”

  Leah held the page under the circle of light from the lamp. She reached for tissues, handed one to Kirsten, and used the other. “I see.”

  “I had forgotten.”

  “From when we fought so hard?”

  “I wonder how many of these booklets I handed out.” And yet, after all the knowledge, I fell into the trap after all. They all warned us. We thought we could handle it, and now I have to grow up and deal with it. “There is no easy way out.”

  “No, not really. Those who go through an abortion learn the ramifications of it years later. I’ve talked with some who say the guilt is probably worse for burying it all those years. Especially now, when things like this are available. Lord, please forgive us for even thinking of such a thing.”

  A gentle silence, broken only by the cat’s purring, comforted the room.

  “Mom, I almost went ahead with it. I went to the clinic and Mrs. Nimitz, the lady I talked to, was so nice and gentle and reassuring. She said they were trying to make things easier for girls like me.” She looked down at her body, where she could not see any change yet. She heaved a deep sigh and blew it all out. Blinking rapidly, she continued. “So now I have seven months to decide what to do about the baby, right?” She scrunched her eyes closed, her jaw clenched. “Seven months to decide for three lives.”

  “Right.”

  “I need to figure out what day the baby will be born.”

  “You can say the day but this baby will come when it is good and ready. All three of you were two weeks late. For some reason, that was the pattern. Nowadays the doctors don’t always let a mother go that long.”

  “What do they do?”
/>   “They induce the baby. There are medications that cause that to happen.”

  Kirsten slid down with her head on her mother’s lap, Leah stroking her hair. “Will Daddy ever forgive me?”

  “Yes.”

  “When?” Kirsten watched her mother shrug and look down at her hands. Sitting up, she crossed her legs and propped her elbows on her knees. “Have you talked a lot about this?”

  “Not a lot.” Leah gazed at the upper wall, at least that’s what she appeared to be studying, but Kirsten was pretty sure she wasn’t seeing much of anything.

  Leah turned with one knee up on the bed, swinging her other leg. “So we go on from here.” She, too, sniffed back tears, switching into nurse mode. “Your job now is going to be to take care of that precious life inside of you, to do things that are best for him or her, whether you feel like it or not. You have a lot of growing up to do.”

  Kirsten felt herself stiffen. “I’ve always thought I was pretty grown up.”

  “In many ways you are, but now you absolutely have to consider this someone else. And what about José?”

  Kirsten studied her ragged cuticle. “I don’t want to see him.”

  “Too bad. You two are in this together. This baby is his too.”

  “And he thinks getting married will solve everything.” The words gushed out. “It won’t.”

  “I know that. Getting married would solve a problem for the baby, and marriages between couples younger than you have survived and even been very happy, but that, sad to say, is not the norm. Most die of divorce sooner rather than later.” The silence stretched. “Curt and Gwen are only a year or two older than the two of you and they seem to be happy.”

  “How could it happen to me from one time, but not for them yet?”