Handle With Care

by Jodi Picoult

  In 1972, Nixon went to China. Eleven Israeli athletes were killed at the Munich Olympic games. A stamp cost eight cents. The Oakland As won the World Series, and M[?]A[?]S[?]H premiered on CBS.

  On January 22, 1973, nineteen days after I was born and living with the Gates family, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled on Roe v. Wade.

  Did my mother hear about that and curse her bad timing?

  A few weeks ago I had started scouring the records of Hillsborough County for marriage certificates from the summer of 1972. If my mother was seventeen, there must have been a parental consent form attached, too. Surely that would limit the numbers I had to wade through.

  I had blown Joe off for two consecutive weekends while I waded through over three thousand marriage certificate applications, and learned incredibly creepy things about my home state (like that a girl between thirteen and seventeen, and a boy between fourteen and seventeen, could marry with parental consent), and yet, I didn't find an application that looked like it might belong to my birth parents.

  The truth is, even before Joe dumped me, I had resigned myself to giving up my search.

  I went back to work after I left his office, and somehow phoned in a performance the rest of the day. That night, I came back to my house, opened a bottle of wine and a tub of Ben & Jerry's Coffee Heath Bar Crunch, and faced the truth: I had to decide if I really wanted to find my birth mother. Presumably, she had gone through significant moral contortions deciding whether or not to give me up; surely I owed her the same self-assessment in deciding whether or not to find her. Curiosity wasn't good enough; neither was a medical scare that had left me wondering about my origins. Once I had a name: then what? Knowing where I came from did not necessarily mean I was brave enough to hear why I had been given away. If I was going to do this, I was going to be opening the door for a relationship that would change both of our lives.

  I reached for the phone and dialed my mother. 'What are you doing?' I asked.

  'Trying to figure out how to TiVo The Colbert Report,' she said. 'What are you doing?'

  I glanced down at the melting ice cream, the half-empty bottle of wine. 'Embarking on a liquid diet,' I said. 'And you have to push the red button to get the right menu on the screen.'

  'Oh, there it is. Good. Your father gets cranky when I watch the show and he falls asleep.'

  'Can I ask you something?'

  'Sure.'

  'Am I passionate?'

  She laughed. 'Things must be really bad if you're asking me that.'

  'I don't mean romantically. I mean, you know, about life. Did I have hobbies when I was little? Did I collect Garbage Pail Kids cards or beg to be on a swim team?'

  'Honey, you were terrified of the water till you were twelve.'

  'Okay, maybe that wasn't the best example.' I pinched the bridge of my nose. 'Did I stick with things, even when they were hard? Or did I just give up?'

  'Why? Did something happen at work?'

  'No, not at work.' I hesitated. 'If you were me, would you look for your birth parents?'

  There was a bubble of silence. 'Wow. That's a pretty loaded question. And I thought we'd already had this discussion. I said that I'd support you--'

  'I know what you said. But doesn't it hurt you?' I asked bluntly.

  'I'm not going to lie, Marin. When you first started asking questions, it did. I guess a part of me felt like, if you loved me enough, you wouldn't need to find any other answers. But then you had the whole scare at the gynecologist's, and I realized this wasn't about me. It was about you.'

  'I don't want to hurt you.'

  'Don't worry about me,' she said. 'I'm old and tough.'

  That made me smile. 'You're not old, and you're a softy.' I drew in my breath. 'I just keep thinking, you know, this is a really big deal. You dig up the box, and maybe you find buried treasure, but maybe you find something rotting.'

  'Maybe the person you're afraid of hurting is yourself.'

  Leave it to my mother to hit the nail on the head. What if, for example, I turned out to be related to Jeffrey Dahmer or Jesse Helms? Wouldn't that be information I'd be better off not knowing?

  'She got rid of me over thirty years ago. What if I barge into her life and she doesn't want to see me?'

  There was a soft sigh on the other end of the phone. It was, I realized, the sound I associated most with growing up. I'd heard it running into my mother's arms when a kid had pushed me off the swing at the playground. I'd heard it during an embrace before my newly minted prom date and I drove off to the dance; I'd heard it when she stood at the threshold of my college dorm, trying not to cry as she left me on my own for the first time. In that sound was my whole childhood.

  'Marin,' my mother said simply, 'who wouldn't want you?'

  Honestly, I am not the kind of person who believes in ghosts and karma and reincarnation. And yet, the very next day I found myself calling in sick to work so that I could drive to Falmouth, Massachusetts, to talk to a psychic about my birth mother. I took another swig of my Dunkin' Donuts coffee and imagined what the meeting would be like; whether I would come out of it with information that would send me in the right direction for my adoption search, like the woman who'd recommended Meshinda Dows and her prophecies in the first place.

  The previous night I had joined ten adoption support groups online. I created a name for myself (Separ8tedatbirth@yahoo.com) and made lists from the websites in an empty Moleskine notebook.

  1. USE STATE REGISTRIES.

  2. REGISTER WITH ISRR - the Index of Search and Reunion Resources, the biggest registry there is.

  3. REGISTER WITH THE WORLD WIDE REGISTRY.

  4. TALK TO YOUR ADOPTIVE PARENTS . . . AND COUSINS, UNCLES, OLDER SIBLINGS . . .

  5. FIGURE OUT YOUR CONDUIT. In other words, who arranged the adoption? A church, a lawyer, a physician, an agency? They might be a source of information.

  6. FILE A WAIVER OF CONFIDENTIALITY, so if your birth mom comes looking for you, she knows that you want to be contacted.

  7. POST YOUR INFO REGULARLY. There are people who really do forward all over in the hope that your info gets to the right place!

  8. PLACE ADS IN THE PRIMARY NEWSPAPERS OF YOUR BIRTH CITY.

  9. ABOVE ALL ELSE, IGNORE ANY SEARCH COMPANY YOU SEE ON TV ADS OR TALK SHOWS! THEY ARE SCAMS!

  At two in the morning, I was still online in an adoption search chat room, reacting to horror stories from people who wanted to save me the trouble of making the same mistakes. There was RiggleBoy, who had contacted a 1-900 search number and given them his credit card information, only to be socked with a bill for $6500 at the end of one month. There was Joy4Eva, who'd found out that she was taken away from her birth family for neglect and abuse. AllieCapone688 gave me a list of three books that she used when she was getting started - which cost less than all she'd spent on private investigators. Only one woman had a happy ending: she'd gone to a psychic named Meshinda Dows, who had given her such accurate information that she found her birth mom in a week's time. Try it, FantaC suggested. What have you got to lose?

  Well, my self-respect, for one. But all the same, I found myself Googling Meshinda Dows. She had one of those websites that takes forever to load, because there was a music file attached - in this case, an eerie mix of chimes and humpback whale songs. Meshinda Dows, the home page read, Certified psychic counselor.

  Who certified psychic counselors? The U.S. Department of Snake Oil and Charlatans?

  Serving the Cape Cod community for 35 years.

  Which meant she was within driving distance from my home in Bankton.

  Let me be your bridge to the past.

  Before I could chicken out, I clicked on the email link and sent her a message explaining my search for my birth mom. Within thirty seconds of sending it, I got a reply: Marin, I think I can be of great help to you. Are you free tomorrow afternoon?

  I did not question why this woman was online at three in the morning. I didn't let myself wonder why a successful psychic w
ould have an opening so quickly. Instead, I agreed to the sixty-dollar consultation fee and printed out the driving directions she gave me.

  Five hours after I'd left my house that morning, I pulled into Meshinda Dows's driveway. She lived in a tiny house that was painted purple with red trim. She was easily in her sixties, but her hair was dyed jet black and reached her waist. 'You must be Marin,' she said.

  Wow, already she was one for one.

  She led me into a room that was divided from the foyer with a curtain made of silk scarves. Inside were two couches facing each other across a square white ottoman. On the ottoman were a feather, a fan, and a deck of cards. The shelves in the room were covered with Beanie Babies, each sealed in a small plastic bag with a heart-shaped tag protector. They looked like they were all suffocating.

  Meshinda sat down, and I followed suit. 'I take the money up front,' she said.

  'Oh.' I dug in my purse and pulled out three twenty-dollar bills, which she folded and stuck into her pocket.

  'Why don't we start with you telling me why you're here?'

  I blinked at her. 'Shouldn't you know that?'

  'Psychic gifts don't always work that way, hon,' she said. 'You're a little nervous, aren't you?'

  'I suppose.'

  'You shouldn't be. You're protected. You have spirits around you,' she said. She closed her eyes and squinted. 'Your . . . grandfather? He wants you to know he's breathing better now.'

  My jaw dropped open. My grandfather had died when I was thirteen, of complications from lung cancer. I had been terrified to visit him in the hospital and see him wasting away.

  'He knew something important about your birth mother,' Meshinda said.

  Well, that was convenient, since Grandpa couldn't confirm or deny that now.

  'She's thin and has dark hair,' the psychic continued. 'She was very young when it happened. I'm getting an accent . . .'

  'Southern?' I asked.

  'No, not Southern . . . I can't quite place it.' Meshinda looked at me. 'I'm also getting some names. Strange ones. Allagash . . . and Whitcomb . . . no, make that Whittier.'

  'Allagash Whittier is a law firm in Nashua,' I said.

  'I think they have information. It might have been a lawyer there who handled the adoption. I'd contact them. And Maisie. Someone named Maisie has some information, too.'

  Maisie was the name of the clerk of the Hillsborough County court who'd sent me my adoption decree. 'I'm sure she does,' I said. 'She's got the whole file.'

  'I'm talking about another Maisie. An aunt or a cousin . . . she adopted a baby from Africa.'

  'I don't have an aunt or a cousin named Maisie,' I said.

  'You do,' Meshinda insisted. 'You haven't met her yet.' She wrinkled up her face, as if she was sucking on a lemon. 'Your birth father is named Owen. He has something to do with the law.'

  I leaned forward, intrigued. Was that why I'd been attracted to the career?

  'He and your birth mom have had three more children.'

  Whether or not that was true, I felt a pang in my chest. How come those three got to stay, but I was given away? The old adage I'd been told over and over - that my birth parents loved me but couldn't take care of me - had never quite rung true. If they loved me so much, why had I been dispensable?

  Meshinda touched a hand to her head. 'That's it,' she said. 'Nothing else coming through.' She patted my knee. 'That lawyer,' she advised. 'That's the place to start.'

  On the way back home, I stopped off at McDonald's to eat something and sat outside at the human Habitrail playspace that was filled with toddlers and their caregivers. I called 411 and was connected to Allagash Whittier. By telling them I was an associate with Robert Ramirez, I was able to sweet-talk my way past the paralegals to a lawyer on staff. 'Marin,' the woman said, 'what can I do for you?'

  On the small bench where I sat, I curled a little closer into myself, to make the conversation more private. 'It's sort of a strange request,' I said. 'I'm trying to find some information about a client your firm may have had in the early seventies. It would have been a young woman, around sixteen or seventeen?'

  'That shouldn't be hard to find - we don't get too many of those. What's the last name?'

  I hesitated. 'I don't have a last name, exactly.'

  The line went silent. 'Was this an adoption case?'

  'Well. Yes. Mine.'

  The woman's voice was frosty. 'I'd suggest you try the courthouse,' she said, and she hung up.

  I clutched the cell phone between my hands and watched a little boy shriek his way down a curved purple slide. He was Asian, his mother was not. Was he adopted? One day, would he be sitting here like I was, facing a dead end?

  I dialed 411 again, and a moment later was connected to Maisie Donovan, the adoption search administrator for Hillsborough County. 'You probably don't remember me,' I said. 'A few months ago, you sent me my adoption decree . . .'

  'Name?'

  'Well, that's what I'm looking for . . .'

  'I meant your name,' Maisie said.

  'Marin Gates.' I swallowed. 'It's the craziest thing,' I said. 'I saw a psychic today. I mean, I'm not one of those nutcases who goes to psychics or anything . . . not that I have a problem with that if it's something, you know, you like to do every now and then . . . but anyway, I went to this woman's house and she told me that someone named Maisie had information about my birth mother.' I forced a laugh. 'She couldn't give me much more detail, but she got that part right, huh?'

  'Ms. Gates,' Maisie said flatly, 'what can I do for you?'

  I bowed my head toward the ground. 'I don't know where to go from here,' I admitted. 'I don't know what to do next.'

  'For fifty dollars, I can send you your nonidentifying information in a letter.'

  'What's that?'

  'Whatever's in your file that doesn't give away names, addresses, phone numbers, birth date--'

  'The unimportant stuff,' I said. 'Do you think I'll learn anything from it?'

  'Your adoption wasn't through an agency; it was a private one,' Maisie explained, 'so there wouldn't be much, I imagine. You'd probably find out that you're white.'

  I thought of the adoption decree she'd sent me. 'I'm about as sure of that as I am that I'm female.'

  'Well, for fifty dollars, I'm happy to confirm it.'

  'Yes,' I heard myself say. 'I'd like that.'

  After I wrote the address where I needed to send my check on the back of my hand, I hung up and watched the children bouncing around like molecules in a heated solution. It was hard for me to imagine ever having a child. It was impossible to imagine giving one up.

  'Mommy!' one little girl cried out from the top of a ladder. 'Are you watching?'

  Last night on the message boards, I had first seen the labels a-mom and b-mom. They weren't rankings, as I'd first thought - just shorthand for adoptive mom and birth mom. As it turned out, there was a huge controversy over the terminology. Some birth mothers felt the label made them sound like breeders, not mothers, and wanted to be called first mother or natural mother. But by that logic, my mom became the second mother, or the unnatural mother. Was it the act of giving birth that made you a mother? Did you lose that label when you relinquished your child? If people were measured by their deeds, on the one hand, I had a woman who had chosen to give me up; on the other, I had a woman who'd sat up with me at night when I was sick as a child, who'd cried with me over boyfriends, who'd clapped fiercely at my law school graduation. Which acts made you more of a mother?

  Both, I realized. Being a parent wasn't just about bearing a child. It was about bearing witness to its life.

  Suddenly, I found myself thinking of Charlotte O'Keefe.

  Piper

  T

  he patient was about thirty-five weeks into her pregnancy and had just moved to Bankton with her husband. I hadn't seen her for any routine obstetric visits, but she'd been slotted into my schedule during my lunch break because she was complaining of fever and other symptoms that s
eemed to me like red flags for infection. According to the nurse who'd done the initial history, the woman had no medical problems.

  I pushed open the door with a smile on my face, hoping to calm down what I was sure would be a panicking mother-to-be. 'I'm Dr Reece,' I said, shaking her hand and sitting down. 'Sounds like you haven't been feeling too well.'

  'I thought it was the flu, but it wouldn't go away . . .'

  'It's always a good idea to get something like that checked out when you're pregnant anyway,' I said. 'The pregnancy's been normal so far?'

  'A breeze.'

  'And how long have you been having symptoms?'

  'About a week now.'

  'Well, I'll give you a chance to change into a robe, and then we'll see what's going on.' I stepped outside and reread her chart while I waited a few moments for her to change.

  I loved my job. Most of the time when you were an obstetrician, you were present at one of the most joyous moments of a woman's life. Of course, there were incidents that were not quite as happy - I'd had my share of having to tell a pregnant woman that there'd been a fetal demise; I'd had surgeries where a placenta accreta led to DIC and the patient never regained consciousness. But I tried not to think about these; I liked to focus instead on the moment when that baby, slick and wriggling like a minnow in my hands, gasped its way into this world.

  I knocked. 'All set?'

  She was sitting on the examination table, her belly resting on her lap like an offering. 'Great,' I said, fitting my stethoscope to my ears. 'We'll start by listening to your chest.' I huffed on the metal disk - as an OB I was particularly sensitive to cold metal objects being placed anywhere on a person - and set it gently against the woman's back. Her lungs were perfectly clear; no rasping, no rattles. 'Sounds fine,' I said. 'Now let's check out your heart.'

  I slid aside the neckline of the gown to find a large median sternotomy scar - the vertical kind that goes straight down the chest. 'What's that from?'

  'Oh, that's just my heart transplant.'

  I raised my brows. 'I thought you told the nurse that you didn't have any medical problems.'

  'I don't,' the patient said, beaming. 'My new heart's working great.'

  Charlotte didn't start seeing me as a patient until she was trying to get pregnant. Before that, we were still just moms who made fun of our daughters' skating coaches behind their backs; we'd save seats for each other at school parent nights; occasionally we'd get together with our spouses for dinner at a nice restaurant. But one day, when the girls were playing up in Emma's room, Charlotte told me that she and Sean had been trying to get pregnant for a year, and nothing had happened.