The Secrets She Keeps

by Jolie Moore

  Guilt made my heart thud. “It’s not about you guys. I love you and am glad that you took me in,” I said. My paltry reassurance sounded awkward and distant, even to my own ears.

  My dad’s bark of a laugh was unusually harsh. “You weren’t a kitten we rescued from under the porch, Lucas.”

  “Why did you adopt?” I asked for the first time. The story I’d been spoon-fed about them wanting a child to love and me needing parents wasn’t enough anymore. It hadn’t been enough for years, but I’d never had the guts to probe further. I pushed away my resistance and readied myself for the answer.

  “Your mom and I were together for five years and she hadn’t gotten pregnant,” he explained. “Not for lack of trying.”

  I turned off the part of my brain that knew my parents had sex. The single biggest upside of being adopted is that I didn’t even have to acknowledge they’d done it the one time it would have taken to produce me.

  “In the late seventies, it wasn’t like now with all the doctors and specialists and tests. Time and again, they told us to go home and try harder. Your mom had her heart set on a family of her own.” My father didn’t need to say any more about that. My mother’s own mom had died when she was six. Joyce had been raised by her aunt and uncle, almost, but not quite belonging to her adopted family.

  “When she started talking about adoption, it seemed like the perfect solution. We registered with an agency, and waited.”

  “How long did you wait?” I asked. Why had I waited so long to ask these questions?

  “Not as long as we thought. We didn’t care about gender, background or disability. So when they called and said there was a baby about to become available in Hawaii, we borrowed money from my parents and flew out there. A week later, we went to the hospital and picked you up.”

  The line was quiet. I had already heard some parts of the story. Like how they thought I was perfect. How they counted my fingers and toes. How they worried because they hadn’t brought any cold weather clothes. How I’d cried for much of the return trip on three airplanes, with two layovers, one in Los Angeles, the other in Chicago.

  But now that I was older, had seen babies born during my obstetrics rotation, I wondered if I’d cried because I was suddenly alone. Because their voices were different than the ones I’d heard for nine months. Because I’d been without the mother who’d been my lifelong companion up until then. Of course, I didn’t share a single word of those thoughts. Instead I went for the pragmatic, the practical. I asked for the one thing my father could give me with the least effort.

  “So I was born in Hawaii, right?” I wanted to confirm what I’d already pieced together on my own.

  “Yes.” Dad sighed. “A hospital on Kauai to be exact.”

  “Do you know which hospital?” I rushed on. I didn’t want my father connecting the dots about the true purpose of my trip there in March.

  “Veteran’s Memorial.”

  “Did you meet my…birth parents?” I got my hopes up during the long moment of silence. Maybe finding them would be as easy as asking my father for their names.

  “No. We didn’t want to know. As far as we were concerned, you were ours the moment they handed you over.”

  I didn’t push. I didn’t have a right to. I switched gears, ready to fill in another gap in my knowledge. “In what state was I adopted?” I was hoping it was New Hampshire. From what I’d read in the book Nida Vara had given me, it was one of the states that was making it easier to link adoptees to their birth parents.

  “Vermont.”

  My heart sank. “I thought you were living in New Hampshire back then.”

  “We were. But when we got serious about adopting, we bought that first house on Elm Street.”

  “Can you send me what information you have?” I asked.

  My father was nothing if not orderly. Writing books about the Depression and the New Deal, he had to keep his research and notes organized. From my adolescent exploration in my dad’s office, I’d found a stack of Playboy magazines, and a fire proof lockbox. Sneaking a couple of the former had been easy. I’d never figured out how to open the latter. The keys to my past probably laid in there next to passports and insurance records. “Dad?” I spoke into the faint static after getting no response.

  “What do you have?”

  “I don’t even have my birth certificate.” Because if I did, maybe I’d have known what state to start in.

  “Didn’t you get a passport?” my dad deflected.

  “Mom got it for my junior year abroad. I never renewed it.”

  “Do you really have to do this? Your mother couldn’t love you more if you were from her womb.”

  This kind of guilt trip should have worked, like it had when I was fifteen and asked questions, or even at twenty five when I was leaving medical school with more questions than answers about my own history. But I was thirty-five and no longer an easily distracted child.

  “I need to do this, Dad. I’d appreciate your help, but if I have to I’ll do it without.”

  The silence was longer this time. “I love Joyce, dearly,” my dad said. “I’ll think about this and let you know.”

  “I love you too, Dad,” I said but didn’t know if my dad had heard it before I was greeted by the unbroken monotonous sound of the dial tone.

  For two weeks my phone was silent. I didn’t hear a single thing from my mother, my father, or my siblings. I couldn’t remember having ever gone that long without seeing, touching, or at least talking to them.

  My phone messages and e-mails went unanswered. On this, yet another solitary Saturday, I sat in my office, trying to battle the feeling of abandonment that threatened to engulf me. My nuclear family had closed ranks based on blood and genetics. Two things they’d always told me didn’t matter—suddenly did.

  Turning on the computer, I got down to the business of reconstructing my life story, from the beginning. Two hours later, I’d started the ball rolling. I’d requested a copy of my birth certificate from Vermont’s Vital Records department. In a week, I’d have that.

  Next, I waded through the morass that was Vermont Adoption law. And for one single moment, I wished I’d gone to law school instead of medical school. Although truthfully, being a lawyer seemed like being in permanent health insurance hell.

  From my research, the bottom line was that I’d been born too early for the big swing toward adoptees getting information. It was all about open adoption now, keeping in touch, sending pictures, sharing genetic information. Laws weren’t likely to change for people of my generation.

  Without help from my parents, I was at square one. So I dutifully put in my request to ask some faceless state employee the name of the agency that had handled my adoption. Every scrap of information was going to be a fight.

  Having made at least a start and finding the truth, I looked at the clock. I’d long missed the Sierra Club’s weekend hike. I could probably track down some of the guys and join them for a drink, but I didn’t want to watch them rehash details of a day I hadn’t shared. Stories about bobcat and coyote sightings weren’t the same if you hadn’t been there.

  I briefly considered having a look at internet porn, but there was too much out there that could scar me for life. I hadn’t figured out a way to filter the clinically misogynistic crap from a good looking rack and butt. I missed the days when peek-a-boo Playboy was all I could get my hands on.

  I shut off the laptop, not even making an attempt to find release. The frustration I was feeling wasn’t only sexual. Slamming the door to my office, I paced the rest of the apartment. Thanks to my long working hours and my once-a-week housekeeper, the apartment was spotless. The refrigerator was empty, but I’d stock it after a visit to the farmer’s market in the morning. I wandered the living room and lifted the remote. My television wasn’t the biggest I’d ever seen. But even with forty inches there wasn’t much to watch. I put it down the channel changing wand. Sports or reality television wasn’t going to cut it.
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  I needed a friend. One who could understand. So I called the only one like that I had on this coast.

  Nari answered on the first ring.

  “It’s Lucas,” I said.

  “Is there some kind of work emergency?” she practically yelled into the phone. I could barely hear her over the techno music thumping in the background. Had she found the only nightclub that operated in the middle of the day? She’d said something about being celibate for nine months, but maybe she was on the prowl again.

  Maybe I shouldn’t have cribbed her cell number from the emergency call list. “No, nothing like that.”

  There was a long bass-filled interlude before she answered. “Oh, okay. Hold on a second.” Muffled talking was followed by the sound of a cash register. Then the hum of cars starting overtook the earlier sounds of commerce. “What’s up?” she asked.

  “Did I catch you at a bad time?” I asked, sounding lame even to my own ears.

  “I was just returning some stuff to Abercrombie.”

  Before third guessing myself, I spoke. “Want to share an early dinner? I was thinking—”

  “Sure, where should I meet you?”

  I was silent a long second. I’d never expected her to agree so readily. “My place downtown. I thought we’d walk.”

  “Okay. Give me your address. I’ll see you around six?”

  I was over the moon. It was hell on the adoption side of things. But maybe, just maybe I was finally getting somewhere with Nari after all. I dropped the phone haphazardly and took myself to the shower, singing all the way.

  Chapter 9

  Nari

  Following the directions Lucas texted me, I inched my Range Rover into the tiny visitors’ parking spot. As the elevator creakily ticked off first one floor then the next, I considered turning around and getting myself the hell out of there.

  Lucas probably thought we had a date, and all I wanted to do was probe him further on the adoption issue. I no longer thought I could dissuade him from trying to find his own birth mother, but maybe I could somehow clue him in on the possible hurt he could cause someone. Giving up a child for adoption wasn’t like some cable movie with a teen mom in pursuit of college and a teary-eyed good-bye to the baby. It was hard and messy, and impossible to forget.

  Smoothing out my halter top, I pushed my sunglasses onto the top of my head and surveyed the long corridor of nearly identical wood doors. Peering at the door of the corner apartment, I finally saw “4G” inscribed on a narrow brass plate. I knocked and waited.

  “Glad you came,” Lucas boomed, opening the door wide. His dress shirt was unbuttoned, blue tank stretched across his broad chest, his feet bare.

  I swung the large faced oversized men’s watch toward me. “Am I too early?”

  “Nope, right on time,” he said, gesturing welcomingly.

  I stepped into the entranceway cautiously. “Can I—” I waved a hand toward the upholstered wood chair.

  “Sure. Make yourself at home. Are you hungry?”

  “Very. I haven’t eaten anything. Had a very busy day.”

  Lucas sat opposite me on a carbon copy of my chair. Neither of them looked like they’d ever been occupied by a human.

  Making no move to button his shirt, he leaned forward expectantly. I tried to ignore the tingle in fingers that were itching to slide under his tank and touch his chest again. I wondered if the hair there was as soft as I remembered. Then I banished the thought.

  Uncomfortable in my own skin, in the silence, I searched for something to say. “Nice place. How’d you end up downtown?”

  “Had a week to look before I moved out here.”

  “Is shopping hard? Seems like a food desert out here.”

  “I end up going to Hollywood a lot. That’s not too bad. The commute to work, though, sucks. New York was much easier to navigate.”

  I searched my memory. “You were at Brooklyn Hospital, right?”

  “Yep. Did my residency. Stayed on. Biked in the summer. Walked in the winter.”

  “Sounds ideal. Why move to California?”

  “Seemed like a good idea,” he said. Then changing the subject abruptly, he asked, “What did you do today?”

  “Shopping.”

  He clasped his hands between his knees. His pants hugged his muscular legs all too well. Making an effort, I looked into his eyes. Meeting them, my heart skipped a beat. I’d been wrong about the brown. Hazel. They were definitely hazel. Everything chafed, my clothes, the chair, my skin.

  Lucas looked as uncomfortable as I felt in the silence. He said, “The places around here are mostly craft beers and high end sandwiches. Or I was thinking we could order in Chinese?” He paused, looking at me. “Do you eat Chinese?”

  “The food yes, the people no.”

  He smiled. His full lips hid perfect teeth. God, I’d slept with him and hadn’t even noticed how good looking he was, even if oversized blonds weren’t my type. “Is that a yes, then?” he asked, looking uncomfortable under my scrutiny.

  “Sure. I’ll have Chow Fun or any kind of noodles, really.”

  While he went away to the kitchen to tackle the menu and ordering, I decided to investigate the rest of the apartment, to uncover more about the man I’d had inside me—twice. It was pretty much what I expected once I got past the entertainment-focused living room. I peeked into one bedroom. It had a bed, a dresser, and not much else. The room smelled faintly of cologne, soap or something that reminded me of being horizontal with Lucas. Hazy memories of his hands on my breasts, breath in my hair, tickled at the edges of my mind. Thank God I hadn’t been sober. When my heart beat faster, I quickly backed out of the room. I poked my head in the other. It was an office. As a man, he didn’t need the kind of storage space I did.

  I backtracked to take a second look. Most of the books on the narrow floor-to-ceiling bookshelf were many I had. He’d saved some of the textbooks from medical school. An old copy of the Physician’s Desk Reference joined them. He’d probably moved to the PDR online like most of our younger colleagues.

  Alongside novels with dragon and troll covers, there were a few dust jacket covered volumes on FDR and labor unions. He liked history? I looked at the authors. All were the same, Matthew Tucker. Pulling one down, I read the inscription: for Lucas, Brooke, and Christian.

  “Those are my dad’s books.”

  I startled at the sound of his voice. Heat radiated from his body, enveloping me in a citrusy scent. I tamped down the strong urge to lean back against him. “Oh, sorry. I was—”

  “It’s okay.” His voice soothed me. “They’re just books. My dad’s a professor at Dartmouth.”

  “Where you went to school,” I said more to myself. Maybe he didn’t have some great love of New Hampshire. He’d probably done seven years in Hanover because it was free or nearly. “Your brother and sister go?”

  “Yup,” he said. His “Go Big Green” was halfhearted.

  I looked at his chest and the strong column of his throat, and wanted to ask him to button his shirt, maybe back up just a little before I made a fool of myself. But there was a loud knock at the door before I had to say anything.

  “Must be dinner,” I said superfluously. I needed to say something to push past the closing of my throat. Push him back.

  He disappeared and I stopped to take a deep breath. I’d never noticed a guy’s smell before, or yearned to touch him, not in years anyway. Certainly not while sober. I refocused and went out to the dining area with determination not to get waylaid by hormones. That’s all it was. I was a woman of childbearing age. He was a man with healthy sperm. It was fate, biology, evolution, pheromones even, that pulled me toward him, nothing more.

  “Wine?” he asked.

  “Just water for me.” I perched on the corner of one of the barstools opposite the cook top and accepted a large glass of ice water. Sober Nari was a celibate Nari.

  Lucas took plates and utensils to the dining room table. If we’d stuck to eating at the counte
r it would have been easier. The lighting, ambience, and dining room table were starting to make it feel like a date. I didn’t date. Fucked yes, dated, no.

  Reluctantly I made my way over to the table and accepted a seat opposite his. Remembering my manners, I opened the containers and doled out servings of the steaming sweet and spicy chicken and rice for him. Noodles for myself.

  He sat and tried to wrap his oversized hands around the chopsticks. He dropped one, picked it up, dropped the other.

  Oh God. I couldn’t watch an hour of this. I stood and walked toward the kitchen. “Where are the forks?”

  “I can do this.” His face was set with determination. I imagined he didn’t give up on much in his life. But this, he should probably let go.

  “No need to try on my account.”

  Frowning slightly, he pointed me toward a drawer. I pulled out a full place setting and brought it to him.

  “I wanted to impress you,” he said, blushing.

  I swallowed all the snarky and cutting remarks that came to mind. Nice wasn’t something you should crush like a bug under the heel of a spiky shoe.

  “Why do you want to look for your birth mom?” I asked, finally getting to the point of my visit.

  Lucas ate a few bites, his eyes focused somewhere in the middle distance. “Do you know your origin story?”

  “You mean like where I was born?”

  “Not just that. But how your parents met, how they fell in love, where you were conceived, their wedding, all that jazz.”

  “Some of it. My parents are a little conservative so I don’t know all the details, but the big picture, sure.”

  “In addition to their medical history, that’s what I really want to know.”

  “But don’t you have that from…the Tuckers?”

  “Matthew and Joyce.”

  “Your mom and dad? They had to have met, fell in love, had a reason for adopting. I mean half the female patients I break the news to about pregnancy are less than thrilled. Your parents went out of their way to add you to their life. That has to be worth two origin stories.”