What You Wish For

by Janet Dawson

  “You go on business trips,” Lindsey said, as Gretchen moved to Annabel’s bed.

  “All the time,” he said. “Conventions, trade shows, and trips overseas. Before I took over as CEO and Claire became the head of marketing, we traveled a lot, visiting growers and brokers. Tea in India, cocoa in Africa, and coffee all over the map.”

  “Growers like the Aragóns,” Lindsey said. “Annabel’s relations in El Salvador.”

  Hal nodded. “We’d always go to their estate. On these trips we’d visit the plantations to look at crops and processing plants. Going out to the countryside got scary in El Salvador back in the Eighties, during the civil war. Fortunately that’s over. Humberto’s dead now. Severino runs the estate. He’s gone into politics, too. Cristina and her husband live in San Salvador. Roberto has a cattle ranch. I haven’t done much traveling lately. I’d rather stay home with my family and leave the traveling to Claire. I don’t think I’ve been to El Salvador since ’eighty-nine, the year George died.”

  The same year Claire saw Nat in the orphanage, Lindsey thought, and facilitated his adoption. Now she wondered if Hal had accompanied Claire on that trip.

  “Here are my girls.” Hal smiled as the two Norwood daughters appeared in the hallway. Sharon flung her arms around her father, while Tess hung back, her doubts about Hal visible to Lindsey’s eyes.

  Lindsey examined the two young women, gauging differences and similarities, looking for clues. Both had dark brown hair and blue eyes, as did Hal and Annabel. Lindsey saw echoes of Hal in Sharon’s face. Tess looked more like Annabel, with her oval face and small, sculpted features. Maybe she also looked like the man who was her biological father, Lindsey thought. But who?

  Tess walked to the bed, leaned over and kissed her mother’s forehead, then said hello to Gretchen. Then she drew Lindsey out to the hallway. “Have you given any more thought to my request?” Tess asked, her voice low.

  Pandora’s Box, Lindsey thought. Curious things had spilled out the night before. “Strange as it sounds, I’d like to talk it over with your mother first.”

  “I talk to her all the time,” Tess said. “I even asked her who my father was. She didn’t answer. I don’t know if it was because she doesn’t want to, or because of the aphasia. When she gets stressed, it’s hard to understand her. Go ahead and ask her, if it makes you feel better. But I hope you’ll help me.”

  The elevator door opened and Nina stepped out. Lindsey wasn’t sure her daughter even owned a skirt these days, but Nina had dressed up for her meeting with Claire, wearing navy blue slacks, an ivory shirt, and a tweed blazer she’d borrowed from her mother. Despite the purple streak in her hair she wouldn’t look out of place in the Financial District. Nina smiled as she greeted her mother. “I got the job. Claire wants me to start next week, after you and I come back from Ashland, so I’ll learn the ropes before her assistant goes on maternity leave.”

  “That’s good news.” Lindsey was glad to hear the cheerful note in her daughter’s voice.

  “Terrific,” Tess said. “My roommate’s leaving earlier than planned, end of April.”

  “I won’t see a paycheck until the first of May,” Nina said. “It’ll be a short one at that.”

  Lindsey sighed, mostly for effect. “I imagine the First National Bank of Mom can help with rent, just to get you started.”

  “Thanks, Mom,” Nina said with a grin.

  “If it’s really what you want to do.” Lindsey added a few notes of motherly caution. “You haven’t even looked at the flat yet. And this job is temporary. Claire’s assistant will be back from maternity leave in four months.”

  “So come Labor Day I’ll look for another job,” Nina said. “But this gives me four months to tune up my résumé and make some contacts. I’ve been a tech writer and a project manager, but if an admin assistant job gets my toe in the door, that’s okay. Besides, Claire says if she likes my work she’ll keep her eyes peeled for a more permanent slot at Dunlin.”

  “I’m sure she will,” Gretchen said from the doorway. “Claire will find something. She’s on top of everything.”

  Lindsey visualized Claire as puppeteer, pulling the strings. She liked to be in charge, in control. Most of the time she was subtle about it. You didn’t know Claire was running the show until she reminded you by tugging on the cords.

  “Want to look at the flat tomorrow?” Tess asked. “Meet me at my office, we’ll go to Noe Valley and I can show you the place. Then we’ll have dinner.”

  “Tomorrow works,” Nina said. “Where’s your office?”

  The elevator door opened again, and Rebecca Megarris walked toward them. Annabel’s aunt was in her eighties, her white hair lacquered into submission. On this April evening she wore a mauve linen suit with a matching hat. She removed her gloves and tucked them into her handbag as she greeted Tess. “How is your mother, dear?”

  “Improving every day,” Tess said.

  Mrs. Megarris sniffed. “I’ll be the judge of that. Where’s Claire? We’re having dinner tonight. I must say, she’s so busy at work I hardly see her.”

  “I saw her earlier this afternoon,” Nina said. “She had another meeting afterwards. I imagine she’s on her way.”

  “Nina? I thought you were in Texas. I can’t keep up with you young people. So many changes.” Mrs. Megarris walked into Annabel’s room and gave her niece a critical once-over. “She looks the same. I’ll have to speak to the doctor.”

  That was just like Mrs. Megarris, the grande dame, sure her words to the doctor would immediately improve Annabel’s condition, like words to a sales clerk would improve the service. How Annabel joked about her bossy aunt, with her pretensions and imperious ways. Even now, Annabel regarded her aunt with amusement and exasperation. That’s the old Annabel, Lindsey thought, the one I want to see again. What if this is all a colossal joke? What if everything is all right and Annabel is really just fine, having a vacation from all of us, laughing inside at all our concerns, alarms and diversions?

  Mrs. Megarris returned to the corridor a few minutes later, chatting with Hal. Lindsey and Gretchen stayed with Annabel. Gretchen did most of the talking. Lindsey didn’t say much, chiming in at the appropriate times, as the others moved in and out of the room. Visiting Annabel wasn’t so much about seeing the patient as it was gathering at a village square, a time for the people in Annabel’s life to check in with one another.

  When Claire arrived, she kissed her mother and said, “Sorry I’m late. Business meeting. Getting my ducks in a row before the board meeting next week.” Her short blond hair looked tousled, her face flushed, and her eyes were bright with some sort of excitement. She stepped into Annabel’s room, waved at her cousin, then took Hal’s arm. “I’ve been trying to catch a moment with you all day. I have the perfect candidate for Caldwell’s position on the board.”

  Hal shook his head. “This isn’t the time or place to talk business. Right now I’m taking my girls to dinner.” He put his arms around Sharon and Tess. Sharon leaned into his embrace, but Tess held back, emotions warring on her face.

  Annoyance flickered over Claire’s face. Then she smiled. “Of course. Tomorrow at the office. Mother and I have dinner plans, too. We should be going.” She and Mrs. Megarris walked toward the elevator.

  “We should go,” Gretchen told Lindsey. “Riding back with us, Nina?”

  “Sure. But I need to find the rest room.”

  “Me, too,” Tess said. “It’s down this way.”

  “Let me say good-bye to Annabel.” Lindsey left Gretchen in the hallway, talking with Hal and Sharon. Back in Annabel’s room she sat down in the chair next to the bed.

  “Lindsey,” Annabel said. “Alone at last.”

  “Yes, it was a bit crowded in here.”

  “I appreciate the company. Hope to go home soon.”

  “I must talk with you,” Lindsey said. “I’ll be quick about it, before we get interrupted. Tess knows Hal isn’t her father. She asked me to help her find ou
t who her father is.”

  “I know. She told me.”

  “That’s the kind of conversation a daughter should have with her mother.”

  “You haven’t.”

  “No, I haven’t,” Lindsey admitted. “Maybe now I will. How can I answer Tess’s questions if I don’t do the same for my own daughter?”

  “Too hard for me to explain right now.” Annabel slurred her words as she spoke. Maybe she was tired. Or, as Tess had said earlier, stress made the aphasia worse.

  Lindsey took Annabel’s hand. “Yesterday Tess brought me a box of your things. Clues, she said, to help me find out about her father. I told her I wasn’t going to open it but last night I knocked over the box and things came tumbling out. Like Pandora’s Box. I didn’t mean to invade your privacy. But I couldn’t stop myself from looking. There were all sorts of things you saved because they were important to you. Old address books and datebooks. Letters. A picture of you and an Asian woman, taken back when you were a little girl. A silver pineapple and a piece of crystal. I don’t know why you kept those, but they must have some meaning for you.”

  Annabel squeezed Lindsey’s hand, surprisingly strong. “Go ahead and look. Doesn’t matter now. Please do me a favor.”

  “I’ll do anything for you, you know that.”

  “Lily.” Then Annabel said, almost as an afterthought, “Shoe.”

  “Shoe?” Lindsey glanced down at her own footwear. Then she got it. “Lily. The Asian woman in the picture. Her last name is Shu?”

  “Yes. Call Lily. She doesn’t know about the stroke, or where I am.”

  “Of course I’ll call her,” Lindsey said. “Her number’s in the address books?” Annabel nodded. “How do you spell her last name?”

  But before Annabel could answer, Tess and Nina returned from the rest room, and an orderly arrived with Annabel’s dinner.

  17

  On Tuesday, as she had every week for two months, Lindsey met Flor Cooper in a panadería on Fruitvale Avenue. They found a table in the corner, sipped coffee and nibbled on pastries as Flor did needlework. Music came from a CD player behind the counter, corridos, traditional Mexican ballads. A woman sang in Spanish, her alto voice counterpoint to a simple melody plucked on the strings of a guitar, a sad little waltz in three-quarter time. The song was called “La Llorona,” the weeping woman, and it told the story of a woman who wandered and wailed, mourning the loss of her children.

  Flor finished stitching a petal on the pillowcase she was embroidering, then carefully folded the fabric over the hoop. She put the needlework into the tote bag at her feet and pulled out the ­photograph taken in front of the church in the now-dead village of San Blas, showing Flor, her first husband, and Efraín, the child who’d been taken from her. She pointed at the boy. “You see how much he looks like his father. When I saw Efraín at the Farmers Market, I saw Atenacio at the same age. He was such a strong, handsome boy. Mi corazón, mi precioso.”

  But Efraín Guzmán was now Nat Segal, the adopted son of Doug and Gretchen Segal. Lindsey found it difficult to acknowledge the fact. No good deed, she thought, goes unpunished. Why did I agree to go to the Farmers Market with Flor? But it was too late now to take back what she’d seen with her own eyes.

  “Now that I have found Efraín,” Flor said, “after all these years, my son will return to me. But this will be difficult. He believes his real mother and father are dead. He has been adopted. He was near the high school and he wore a T-shirt that said Berkeley High, so he probably goes to school there. I must find out what name he has now, and where he lives. But if I go to the school, I’m sure they won’t tell me what I need to know. Privacy is a good thing, but in this case I need to get around it. Please, do you have ideas? What should I do?”

  “I don’t know,” Lindsey said.

  Flor looked at her curiously, as though she could see the struggle going on inside Lindsey’s head. “Then I will go to the Farmers Market again on Saturday. If Efraín is there, I will follow him home and find out where he lives and what his name is now.”

  Lindsey shook her head. “You should wait.”

  “Wait? Why? I’ve waited so long. I can’t wait any longer. I never gave up hoping I would find Efraín, and now I have. I want my son. I want to hold him in my arms.”

  “But he doesn’t know you’re his mother,” Lindsey said. “As you say, he was adopted. He has different parents now. He may not remember you, or what happened in the village.”

  Flor conceded this with a nod. “That’s possible. He was very young. Perhaps the mind blocks out terrible things seen by children, like his father’s murder. For his sake, I hope so. What is the best way to approach this?”

  “I’m going to Ashland on Thursday,” Lindsey said. “To the ­Oregon Shakespeare Festival. Merle Sefton, the reporter, teaches at the university up there. I will talk with her about San Blas and the story she wrote. I’ll be back on Monday. I’ll meet you here on Tuesday.”

  “How will this help?” Flor asked. “The reporter wrote what Prudencia and I told her. She knows nothing of the children who were taken from the village. This boy is my son, Efraín. A mother knows. I’ve read about this DNA testing. That would prove I’m his mother.”

  “It would,” Lindsey said. “But you need the boy’s cooperation, and that of his adoptive parents, to get a sample to test. Please, give me some time to think. My trip to Ashland was already planned. It was just by chance I found out the reporter is there. Perhaps she ­remembers some detail that’s important.”

  Flor sighed. “Very well. I’ll wait until you return. Tuesday morning, then. Right here.”

  Lindsey had bought herself a little time, but not much. She had to tell Gretchen and Doug about Nat, about Flor’s claim on their adopted son. But how? And then what? Various scenarios disturbed her sleep that night, and she could settle on none of them.

  * * *

  Lindsey sat at the kitchen table on Wednesday morning, drinking coffee and reading the San Francisco Chronicle, a column on the front page of the business section about the Dunlin Corporation. The company’s first-quarter earnings were down and there was a pending vacancy on the board of directors. The numbers meant little to Lindsey, but the name Caldwell did. He was a director, retiring in June, and his replacement would be chosen at next week’s board meeting. Caldwell was the name Claire mentioned Monday evening. She’d told Hal she had a candidate for Caldwell’s board position.

  There usually wasn’t much turnover on the Dunlin board, but this was the second vacancy this year. The first had occurred when a longtime board member had died, the result of a traffic accident. Now Caldwell’s position was available. Of the seven directors, four—Annabel, Hal, Claire, and Mrs. Megarris—were related by blood or marriage. The other three directors were company executives—­Tybalt the general counsel, Caldwell, and Max Brinker. Four votes out of seven. It wouldn’t take much to control that board. Perhaps Hal had someone else in mind, or Brinker had a candidate waiting in the wings.

  The business columnist had frank opinions about Dunlin’s current state of affairs. The coffee bars—the pet project of Dunlin marketing chief Claire Megarris, daughter of company co-founder Lawrence Megarris—were bleeding red ink, losing money hand over fist. Why was the company, with its history in imports and wholesale, involved in this misguided retail enterprise?

  The columnist summarized the company’s history, adding that Dunlin Corporation’s fortunes had slipped since George Dunlin died in 1989, leaving his son-in-law and hand-picked successor Hal Norwood in charge. Things had changed since then—globalization, the market for the commodities the company imported. An unsubstantiated rumor said the board was considering the sale of its San Francisco real estate holdings. The area around the old waterfront warehouse had changed over the past few years, especially after construction of the Giants’ ballpark, with real estate developers turning old industrial buildings into high-priced lofts. If Dunlin sold the warehouse and the Financial District building a
nd moved all its operations to the more modern Port of Oakland, the company would gain much-needed cash, but remove the firm from San Francisco’s tax base.

  The Dunlin board was set in its ways and slow to change, the columnist added, and higher management had lately been prone to some internal bickering. If it was to survive, the company needed new blood, both on the board and in the upper levels of its chain of command.

  Internal bickering, Lindsey thought. Discord among those in higher management. Claire always complained about Max Brinker, calling him a dinosaur, a rigid old sexist who resisted change and fought her every suggestion, wanting to run the company just the way Uncle George had. According to Claire, she was the one with the new ideas, the advocate for modernization and progress. But the company’s money-losing coffee bars, an effort to move into the retail market, had been Claire’s idea. Maybe the stakes were a lot higher than just a seat on the Dunlin board.

  A power struggle? Was the person elected to replace the director who had died allied with Claire or Brinker? Lindsey pictured Hal in the middle, making peace, making compromises. Annabel, temporarily incapacitated due to her stroke, couldn’t participate. But Hal probably held Annabel’s proxy. Indefinitely? Or did that proxy have an expiration date, through some mechanism providing a third ­vacancy?

  On Monday evening, Hal said he was distracted and worried about his wife. He could count on Claire, Gretchen had said, to watch his back. But what if Claire wasn’t just watching Hal’s back? What if Claire was looking for a spot to drive the knife home?

  Claire always pointed out that her father started the firm and brought in George Dunlin later. Based on that history, she had as much right to run the company as Hal did. The official, public version was that Lawrence Megarris died of a heart attack. But Lindsey knew Megarris was an alcoholic whose descent into the bottle cost him his company and his life.

  Nina shuffled into the kitchen, green silk robe cinched around her waist, purple-streaked hair rumpled. She moved like a heat-seeking missile toward the coffeepot and filled a mug, leaning against the counter as she took her first sip. She took a scone from a sack on the counter, heated it in the microwave, and sat down at the table, slathering it with butter and jam.