I shrug. “Kyle’s not being moved to Texas tomorrow. He needs another surgery.”
“For what?”
I slump down on the other end of the couch, not wanting to talk about it. “His arm. There’s lots of shrapnel that’s moving too close to the nerves and arteries.”
“When will he fly to Texas?”
I shake my head, sighing. “A few days.” We’re both quiet and I know I’ve put a damper on her good news. If she has good news, that is. I’m hoping I can act thrilled for her when she tells me. “Well! Do you know the name of your sibling?”
She nods, the piece of paper quivering in her hand. She hands it to me and I strain to hear her. “I hoped it was you.”
I stare at the names on the adoption document. Birth mother: Ramona McCreary. Adoptive father and mother: Phillip and Miriam Branch. I am shaking and can’t breathe enough to find my voice. Ever since I was a teenager my parents told me I could find the woman who gave me up for adoption, but I never wanted to; I genuinely never wanted to. As far as I was concerned I had my parents. “I…” I look at Melissa and she’s as shaken as I am. Her pale, perplexed face makes me laugh out loud and I fall back into the couch cushions. “You look like I feel!”
She watches me laugh, and her baffled look makes me laugh harder. “This is how you respond?” She picks up one of the throw pillows and whacks me with it several times. “And I thought I was the one who got the socially backward gene. Obviously, it was you!”
I howl louder with a sense of relief and excitement and look at Melissa, my eyes filling. It’s one thing to get a package in the mail that you didn’t expect or to hear the voice of an old high school friend on the phone who happens to be in town and wants to catch up over coffee. Those are nice, make-your-day surprises. Getting a sister you never knew existed is a bolt from the blue bombshell. It’s a voice from the wings telling you to take your mark because the next act is going to be a doozy. Somewhere along the way I went from barely tolerating Melissa to missing her when she wasn’t around. Maybe that’s how it is for sisters. I throw my arms around her; it’s the first time I’ve hugged her, and I laugh again because I’m hugging my sister.
I’m not sure if we’re laughing or crying, but we stay tangled together until I sniff so loud that she pulls away, holding her ear. The weight of what has happened fills my living room, and we stare at the names on the paper that were typed by some unnamed secretary thirty-seven years ago. Did she know then, as she pecked each letter on her typewriter that lives would collide someday? Did Ramona ever think about it? Probably not, given what I know about her. “Why did you say you hoped it was me? Did you know I was adopted?”
Melissa nods. “Gloria told me the first day I met her and your mom. Yesterday when I heard Jodi’s voice mail I immediately hoped that they found my sister and that she was you. It was a stupid, crazy thing to hope for because the chances of that happening were zero.”
“Or one hundred percent!”
* * *
Melissa and I run to Mom’s door and burst through without knocking. I called Dad and told him to go to her house right away, and Mom called Gloria. All I said was that I had news for them.
Mom and Dad never met the woman who gave birth to me, never even caught a glimpse of her; that’s the story they always told me. They took me home the day I was born, and when the time was right they told me I was adopted. I know Mom worried that somehow I’d be scarred, left with this big birth mother wound in my heart, but it never worked that way with me. Ramona was a woman who carried me to delivery and “handed me over,” so to speak, to my parents. She wasn’t my mom.
Mom is handing Dad a cup of coffee when Melissa and I stampede into her kitchen. “Sit down!” I say. “You have to sit down.”
Gloria moves to a chair. “Lord have mercy. The last time I heard that, the doctor told me I was pregnant again!”
Mom, Dad, and Gloria are sitting at the table looking at us, their faces wondering and open and beautiful with age. “Kyle needs another surgery and won’t be flying to Texas tomorrow, which means I won’t be flying to Texas, either.”
Mom looks confused. “And you’re excited about this?”
“I can’t even tell you how angry and disappointed and sad I am about this.”
Gloria crosses her arms. “In Georgia we always had a different way of expressing those emotions.”
“I know!” I say, my voice lifting like fireworks. “I am sooo disappointed!” The looks on their faces make Melissa and me laugh out loud, and Mom shakes her head. “You always told me to find the woman who gave birth to me, right?”
Mom nods. “And now you’re going to?”
“I don’t have to. Her oldest daughter found me.”
The three of them sit for a moment, letting it sink in. Mom’s hands attack each side of her face and she lets out a little squeak, her eyes shifting from me to Melissa. We’re both grinning like cats and she rises, dazed, to her feet. “Melissa…”
Gloria’s hands flap in front of her. “Are you kidding us?”
Melissa shakes her head and Dad pounds the table. Melissa lays the adoption document on the table, and Gloria, Mom, and Dad read it out loud, their voices mounting together as each name is read. “Where are those Action News people when you need them?” Gloria asks, hugging Melissa.
Mom holds the document and studies it closer. “So you have the same mother, but do they know…”
“We don’t have the same mother, Miriam,” Melissa says. “My mother was Ramona, and Gretchen’s gestational carrier was Ramona. She had a different mother. A good mother.” Mom purses her lips together and puts a hand on the side of her face. “I never knew the man involved in my entry, and given the fact that Gretchen and I are two years apart and Ramona never stayed with a man for longer than a week … the odds are low the same man was involved. That would be out of character for Ramona.”
Mom looks dazed and seems to be taking this harder than I imagined.
“Marshall hasn’t left for the store yet,” Gloria says. “Would you come tell him, Melissa?”
“I told my supervisor that I’d be at work after I left the law office. Now look where I am!”
Gloria puts her hand on Melissa’s elbow. “This is the perfect excuse for your supervisor. Tell him you were at the owner’s house!”
There are some things I know about Gloria, and one is that there’s no way she’d ever leave a good party unless there was an urgent need, like she was about to throw up or saw that her best friend was about to throw up. I know she saw Mom’s face, and because she knows Mom so well she wanted to give her room. The door closes behind them, and I sit down at the table, tapping it so Mom and Dad will sit back down, too. “So, what do you think, Mom?”
She holds the paper and shakes her head. Miriam Lloyd-Davies is stumped and stupefied. “I…” Her voice is searching for the words. “I … just never imagined such a thing happ—” She puts her hand on her head and looks at Dad.
“It’s unbelievable,” he says. “You have a sister! The kids have a new aunt! Kyle has a sister-in-law, and the way I see it, we have another daughter!”
Mom doesn’t react and I get out of my chair, squatting down next to her. I haven’t had much time to think about what has just happened, but in a fleeting moment I realize I stood at the graveside of the woman who gave birth to me, a woman who I would most likely never want to invite over for dinner or even chat with in line at the grocery. I’m sad that Ramona never appreciated Melissa or the trees and sky, the bright, hollow beak of a toucan or a patch of wildflowers. I’m sad that her life is over before she ever lived it. “You know, sometimes you just have to point out the obvious.” Mom looks at me and waits. “No doubt about it. I got the better end of that deal.”
* * *
I finally get through to Kyle’s dad, and he gives the phone to Kyle. “Hi, Gretch.” I laugh out loud, crying, so excited to hear his voice and to tell him what has happened. His voice sounds stronger, but the w
ords still take longer to come out. We’ll talk about his surgery coming up in two hours and whether I should come to Germany or wait until he flies to Texas. I know we’ll get to all that, but I’m about to pop. “Are you laughing or crying?” he asks.
“Both!” I yell into the phone. “Something amazing has happened!”
“Really? On a scale of one to ten, how amazing is it?”
“A thousand and twenty!”
Fifteen
Small deeds done are better than great deeds planned.
—PETER MARSHALL
MELISSA
I picked up Mrs. Schweiger yesterday afternoon and took a bag of jalapeño chips to Josh in the hospital. Mr. Schweiger answered the door looking bald and much shorter than I remembered. His eyes nearly disappeared when he smiled and latched on to me with the strength of someone years younger. They were always so good together, these two with their fine German stock and sensible ways.
Before we left for the hospital I relived Jodi’s voice mail for them about finding my sibling, and they sat on the edge of their chairs as if I was the most interesting storyteller they’d ever heard. When I told them my sibling turned out to be the woman next door to me, Mrs. Schweiger threw her hands in the air and yelled something in German. “It was destiny!” she says, holding both my hands. “I told you it was destiny!” Her eyes are watery as she looks at me. “You could have gone your whole life and never known your sister, but your mother wanted you to know that.”
“Not really. If we hadn’t found the note in her apartment I would have never known.”
She pats my hand too hard. “You don’t know that. She wrote the note. She wanted you to know. She was trying to do the right thing for you.” She is nodding, waiting for me to believe. Although she and my mother said very little to each other the three years we lived next to them and Mrs. Schweiger would have no reason to defend her, I know that she saw something in Ramona that only another mother can see.
“I know,” I say, believing her.
* * *
I don’t have to be at Wilson’s until ten this morning and decide to do some laundry when I hear voices outside. I move the blinds and see Phillip and Miriam standing in the yard, so I open the door, folding my arms against the cold. Miriam is wearing a long camel-colored coat with black leather gloves and a furry hat, and Phillip wears a red-and-black-checked coat with a Pittsburgh Steelers hat. “Morning!” I yell, waving.
Phillip gestures for me to come closer. “Melissa! Come decide for us.” I reach for my coat out of the closet and close the door. Five shrubs sit in black plastic tubs near the front of the condo. “I was trying to plant these this morning, but Miriam dropped in to boss me around and tells me I have them all wrong.”
“I did not say that Phillip. I said if that’s how you want to order them, then fine, but I wouldn’t do it that way.”
“I apologize. My translation was way off,” he says, looking at her. “Melissa? What will look good? Those three are heather laurels and these two are azaleas. I thought the azaleas would be a good background for the laurels.”
Miriam is shaking her head, and the way the fur on her hat moves around it looks like something alive is on her head. “You don’t put a flowering shrub behind a big green thing, Phillip. You put the green and then the shorter flower bush in front of it.”
“Azalea,” he says.
“Whatever! You don’t put the thing of beauty behind a wall of green.”
Phillip looks at me for help. “She’s right,” I say, sheepish.
Miriam gives Phillip a smug eye roll. “When you told me you were going to do this I just knew that I must come here to see that this is done properly.”
“Where’s Gretchen?” I ask.
“She dropped the kids off at school and was going to two different dental offices that are looking for hygienists,” Phillip says. “One is thirty minutes away. I told her to eat lunch out and enjoy the day. I’m hoping I can get this done while she’s gone.”
Miriam marches to the door. “I’m going to find some proper clothes. I’m sure Gretchen has several grubby things I can wear.”
Phillip is digging out the old shrubbery, which is so small and dead that it can practically be pulled up rather than dug, while I prepare the empty holes for the new plants when Miriam opens the front door. Even in Gretchen’s “grubby” clothes she looks like a million bucks. “Besides his poor design judgment, Phillip has always had a green thumb. We had yard of the year one year. When was that, Phillip?”
“In ’72,” he says. “Miriam picked out all the plants and flowers. She’s always had an eye for beauty. Beauty attracts beauty, though.”
Gretchen would laugh watching Miriam’s face turn flame red. I keep my head down as I help pull out another dead shrub so they won’t see me grinning.
“People slowed down just to see our yard,” Miriam says, pouring some bagged soil and fertilizer into a hole.
“Half the time they were slowing down to look at Miriam,” Phillip says, serious as a news report.
Miriam laughs and reaches for some peat moss. “Oh, Phillip, really!”
“I can see that, Miriam,” I say, loosening a heather laurel from the plastic container.
She laughs again and Phillip leans on his shovel. “People are still slowing down to look at her. Just look there.”
Miriam and I turn behind us to see the mailman in his car. “The mail carrier!” Miriam says. “Do be quiet, Phillip.”
“Look at him! He can’t take his eyes off you.”
Miriam laughs harder than I’ve ever seen her, and she uses her trowel to swipe at Phillip’s leg. If I didn’t know better, I would say they’re getting along. I would say they’re teasing each other, flirting even!
By the time I leave for Wilson’s, Phillip and Miriam are heading inside Gretchen’s for a coffee break, and something tells me the shrub planting might take them all day.
* * *
For the first time in years I look forward to going to work. The streets and storefronts seem to have their own energy. They’re pulsing or buzzing or ringing out some melody that I’ve never been able to hear before, and thoughts rush through my mind. Ramona. Gretchen. Josh. Mrs. Schweiger. Layton and Associates. “We pass everything off as coincidence,” Mrs. Schweiger had said. I stop at the square and look at the gazebo and the three decorated fir trees. Why would anyone take such effort to make those trees beautiful? Why would anyone go to so much trouble? Something in my chest catches and I swear I hear a finger snap from heaven.
* * *
Before I clock out at Wilson’s, Jodi calls from the law office and says the computers are down. Since that’s the bulk of my work there, she tells me to take the day off, which I’m happy to oblige! I race home and smile at the sight. Phillip and Miriam are in my yard planting what looks like the last of some new shrubs. For the first time since I’ve known her, Miriam looks worn and ruffled. I get out of the car, grinning. “What are you two doing?”
“One condo couldn’t look that good and this one look horrible,” Phillip says. “So we went and bought some matching shrubs.”
“But I…”
Phillip puts his arm around my shoulder. “Just so you know. This is my gift to our newest family member.”
“I never know what to say,” I say, frustrated with myself. “This is so great!” I hug them both and stand looking at them. “Will you both help me with something?” Honest to goodness, I’ve never had a brainstorm before. Seriously, I haven’t. But this is a good one and it’s bigger than me.
Sixteen
Out of difficulties grow miracles.
—JEAN DE LA BRUYÈRE
GRETCHEN
I never thought I’d see the day that my parents were actually working side by side together again, but Melissa swore to me that they planted the shrubs together Tuesday, and on Wednesday Mom and Dad came for the kids and me and we went shopping for a Christmas tree after school. The kids stayed up too late decorating it, but I
didn’t mind. I found myself standing back and watching Mom and Dad with Ethan and Emma. Dad’s always had the ability to be so silly with children, and Mom would laugh out loud at his lousy jokes and poor impersonations. When the tree was decorated we took pictures in front of it: just the kids, the kids with Mom, the kids with Dad, the kids with Mom and Dad, the kids with me, and me with Melissa. It felt so strange to pose for a picture with her because in a way it felt as if we’d always done it.
* * *
Kyle called on Thursday and said that doctors still hadn’t told him when they’d move him to Texas. His surgery was successful on Monday, so I couldn’t figure out why they just didn’t move him. I wanted to come to Germany but Kyle wouldn’t hear of it. “You’ll just get here and they’ll transfer me. Just wait until they decide to move me and then come to Texas.” Although my parents are here and I have the kids and Melissa, this faraway feeling is getting worse as Christmas gets closer.
The kids got out of school for Christmas break on Friday, and since then they’ve managed to tear through our house and Mom’s like crazy people. Tonight is the chamber orchestra concert and benefit for Glory’s Place. Gloria has been in the newspaper and on the local radio station soliciting anyone and everyone to help Bake a Difference for Glory’s Place. Melissa even baked in her own oven! She brought over a chocolate cake yesterday and was beaming as she set it on the table. “That actually looks good enough to eat,” I said.
I haven’t seen much of her in the past few days because of her work schedule, but we’ve spent time in the evening trying to find similar toes or hands, ears or kneecaps, but have come up with few resemblances. She’s tall and I’m short. Her face is angular and mine is round. Her fingers are long with soft fingernails and mine are short with hard fingernails. Dark hair sits on her head and blond strands cover mine. She is abrupt and I am deliberate, but hopefully I’ll teach her how to be more measured and she’ll teach me how to speak freely.
The Christmas Note Page 11