The Secrets She Keeps

by Jolie Moore

  Relief surged through me. No tragedy here. “So he’s alive?”

  “And kickin’. Have no doubt about that. He’s too ornery to die. He went back to Georgia, though. Left me out here with Joshua trees and desert sun.”

  “Did you have other children?” My hands itched in anticipation of holding a photo or shaking a hand of another kid who looked like me.

  “Just one.” Alice stood and plucked a picture from the shelf next to the television. She passed the golden frame into my hands. It was a formal portrait of a little family. Alice, Joe and an adolescent who looked like a mix of them stood formally in front of one of those marbled gray backgrounds so familiar in family pictures. Something clenched in my gut. Joe was big, square, and nothing like me. I’d never fit in with the Tuckers, but I wouldn’t have fit in with the McGees either. Maybe it was all a trick of the imagination—family resemblance and belonging. I racked my head about the odd genetic combinations and recessive genes that could have produced me.

  Harder than asking my patients about drug use or sexually transmitted diseases, I worked on a way to ask the single question I needed answered. I swallowed then pushed it out. “Why did you give me up?”

  Silent tears coursed down Alice’s cheeks. She coughed, swallowed twice before she spoke. “We were eighteen and not yet married when I got pregnant. I went to the priest at Joe’s church and he recommended I see a Sister at a child services agency. She helped me make an adoption plan.”

  “But you got married anyway?” But hadn’t kept me.

  “Giving you away was the stupidest thing I ever did. It was so overwhelming. Joe was about to get moved from Oahu to Cuba. There was a bunch of political trouble in Central America. The nuns told me that we were too young. That even if we married, Joe might be killed. And I only had a few days to decide. At least that’s what I thought.” She shook her head. Regret was etched into lines on her nut brown face. “Joe and I got married right after. I curse that woman, Sister Paula Mary.” Alice mimed spitting on someone’s grave. Then her face crumpled.

  I let her cry, but made no attempt to hold or comfort her. I had my own issues of abandonment to process. It was the best and worst of what I could have expected. My parents had loved each other and stayed together. They’d had another child. Alice and Joe just hadn’t kept me.

  “If you were on Oahu, why did you give birth on Kauai?” I asked, trying to unravel the first knot in the story.

  Her head lifted from her hands, Alice’s brown eyes held mine steady. “I didn’t give birth on Kauai.”

  My heart sped up, nearly pounding out of my chest. Quickly I assessed myself. Not at risk for a heart attack, I didn’t think. I said, “But my parents picked me up from Veteran’s hospital in Kauai. My redacted birth certificate says I was born on April seventeenth of nineteen seventy-nine in Kauai.” I lifted my messenger bag from the floor and pulled from it the Photostat copy Nida Vara had given me.

  Alice reached for the smudged copy, scrutinizing it closely. “Oh holy mother of God…this isn’t…you aren’t…my baby.” She took a few hiccoughing breaths. “I had a baby on the same day, but he was six pounds, five ounces. You were eight and a half pounds.” She looked at me from sad, reddened eyes. “Someone gave you the wrong information. I’m so very sorry.”

  “No, I’m sorry,” I said standing suddenly, upsetting the coffee table. Tea spilled everywhere. Alice ran to the kitchen returning seconds later with a roll of paper towel. I took it from her, unwinding a large wad and swabbing at the speckled carpet.

  “I don’t think it will stain,” she said bundling the sodden mess in her arms and disappearing out back.

  “I’m sorry,” I said “This…I don’t know what to say.” What I wanted to say was that I was relieved that she hadn’t given birth to me. There was still someone out there who looked like me. Who shared my DNA. I sat back on the couch staring at the dark, wet patch on the carpet. Tried not to feel sorry for myself. This had been, in many respects, too easy. I’d have to go back to the drawing board…do all this…a second time. Maybe Nari was right. Maybe this was something I best leave alone.

  Alice’s choked voice intruded into my thoughts. “Tell me about you. Do you like your job? Are you married? Have kids yet?”

  I was so far from a kids, wife, and family that it felt like another planet. I answered, “I enjoy my job. Seeing different people every day and trying to figure out how you can help them is certainly interesting.” It was my stock answer. My brain was too crowded to come up with anything new and original. Not now.

  “But no girl…in your life…or boy?” Her words were diplomatic, her open face accepting.

  Nari. “Girl, woman. Maybe, I don’t know.” I stammered out.

  “Why not? Do you love her? Take it from me, you do not want to have a life full of regret. I’m living proof, that’s not a good idea.”

  “She’s a widow. I’m not sure she’s over her husband.” Nari would kill me slowly if she knew I was spilling her secrets. She’d never sworn me to secrecy, but she was so very private and interior.

  “How long dead?”

  “Ten, eleven years or thereabouts,” I said.

  “Maybe she needs to find someone worth replacing that memory for.” I didn’t know if I could be that person. Not if sleeping with me sober made her run like a gazelle from a hungry lion.

  “How are you going to find your son?” I asked her. I couldn’t fix what was going on in my world, but I was well trained in fixing others.

  “I’ll call that place. The Hope Agency?” When I nodded confirmation, she continued. “Tell them they got it all wrong. Maybe someone mixed up my Jared’s information with yours? Some of the private agencies took files when the Catholic charities got out of the adoption business. It’s a start, at least” she said hopefully. “The agency we were with had everything buttoned up like they were housing a map of the nuclear stockpile. I may have to figure a way of going at it sideways. I thought with these agencies certified and everything, mistakes like this couldn’t happen. Who knows? Maybe my Jared was meant to go with your family, and you his.”

  That hurt, bad. The idea that my parents could have been anyone. That there was no cosmic rhyme or reason to adoption placement except maybe happenstance. The idea that Matthew and Joyce could have been mine on a whim or mistake churned my gut, burning a hole in my intestines. “I should go,” I said. If I stayed any longer, I’d work myself into an ulcer. “It’s a long drive.”

  I stood. Alice walked me to the door. On the threshold, as I was about to turn, she grasped my upper arm. “I hope you find what you’re looking for.”

  Doubly resolved, I knew that I wouldn’t stop until I found the people who’d made me. “Same for you.”

  Chapter 13

  Nari

  Lucas was holding a small vial of liquid and a padded envelope when I passed his office early Monday morning. I hadn’t had the guts to call him over the weekend, though I’d fingered the phone a million times.

  What would I have said anyway? “Thanks for the sex and lending an ear to the story of my husband’s death. I like you, but don’t like you like that. Couldn’t ever like you like that. It’s not you, it’s me.” Or one of another million bad clichés.

  I’d have scurried away when we made brief eye contact, although I wasn’t a scurrier. But he lifted a hand to beckon me in.

  “Do you need me to call in a nurse to help you with lab work?” I asked, looking at the paraphernalia on his desk.

  “It’s not for a patient.”

  Oh God. I practically admitted that I’d probably slept with at least twenty different men. Mortification overtook me. He probably thought I was a Petri dish of disease. “Are you testing for HIV?” I laid my hand on the knob, already backing out. “I’ve always used a condom,” I said, ready to turn and head to my own office where I could stew in mortification—alone. Wait, that was physically impossible. “I mean the men. The men used condoms.” Except for Andrew, but that didn�
�t count. Not at this late date.

  Composed, he thrust the type-filled page toward me. “Nope. DNA.”

  With shaking legs, I walked toward the desk, looking down at written instructions. “It’s a basic cheek swab. I can call in one of the nurse practitioners—”

  “Can you do it?”

  “My clinical skills were never my strong suit.” I’d injured enough patients with errant needles to last a lifetime.

  “Please. I don’t want this to be another item of office gossip.”

  I wondered if he knew how much speculation there already was surrounding the fact that he was a healthy, attractive, single male. “Hand me some gloves,” I said, regaining some composure. A cheek swab wasn’t a scalpel. This I could do.

  He pushed a box of latex gloves across the desk. I snapped on a pair. Unscrewing the cap, I took out the damp swab. “I can’t do this gently.”

  “I know,” he smiled ruefully. “It’s going to cause some discomfort.”

  I scraped first with one swab, sealed it in solution, then did the other cheek. I snapped off my gloves and tossed them in the red hazmat bin. I backed away from him to a zone of safety. “All done.”

  “I’m trying to find the origin of my genetic make-up,” he said.

  “I understand,” I said, sounding like an automaton, all bedside manner gone.

  “I drove to San Bernardino to meet my birth mom on Sunday.”

  Feeling like I’d been kicked in the gut, I fell hard into one Lucas’ chairs. “What happened?” Maybe he’d assuage my fears that your only living child coming out of the woodwork wouldn’t be the worst thing that could ever happen.

  “It was a mistake. She wasn’t the right person.”

  “How…. Oh my God. I’m so sorry. That had to be hell.”

  “It was,” he said matter-of-factly.

  The anguish on his face shot straight to my heart. This was why, I wanted to say with a wagging finger, digging up the past was always a bad idea. Why couldn’t adoptive children leave good enough alone?

  Why did so many advocacy groups and cheesy talk shows push for reunions? But having seen all those crying people in online videos and on cable, I tried to extend him a tiny bit of sympathy. “Did you call anyone? Were you alone last night?”

  Exasperation joined anguish on his face. They must not learn to hide their emotions up there in Vermont. He’d be hash for a savvy woman.

  “Who would I call, Nari? For most of my life, my parents and brother and sister were my confidants. We all lived together and shared almost everything. Since I’ve been out here, since I decided to look for my natural family, it’s been a little strained, to put it mildly. My parents are hurt. My siblings are mad at me for hurting my parents, their parents.”

  “You could have called me,” I blurted out. “We’re friends, right?”

  A large hand dusted with fine blond curls came to his forehead, smoothing away the worry lines. “Are we? Or are we people who have sex that you’re ashamed of?”

  “It’s not…I explained—”

  “I like you and want to be friends with you, more than friends. But you can only get naked with me if you’re drunk. And if you’re sober you run away in a guilt-induced panic.”

  “That’s not fair,” I said fiercely, lowering my voice to a whisper.

  He didn’t use the same volume control. “Isn’t it? Would you go out on a date with me, in the light of day, to a restaurant, to the movies, for a walk on the promenade?”

  “It’s not you,” I said again. Why was he deliberately misunderstanding this? I looked out his small window at the red taillights of the stop and go traffic along Sawtelle Boulevard. “I don’t date.”

  “You have a very active sex life for someone who doesn’t date.”

  The cruel accuracy of his remark felt like a bullet between the eyes. “I have to call in some prescriptions,” I said, fleeing his office and the truth.

  The absolute last person I wanted to ask for advice was my best friend. Despite our fifteen years of friendship, the favors had always flowed one way. Daisy fucked up, I helped out.

  I credited myself with single-handedly saving Daisy from having to go home after college, unemployed tail between her legs, resigned to working for one of her father’s Wall Street friends. Years later, I’d done it again—found my best friend a legitimate job and a path out of the adult entertainment industry.

  I was the smarter, prettier, thinner, more together one.

  But there was one thing Daisy knew more about than me, and probably every other person on the planet—men and sex. So here I was, fending off men in a Korean pub on West Third Street. Because fresh ahn-joo in K-Town would make my friend materialize faster than a Starfleet officer.

  I looked around the bar, trying to figure out the exact word for a person obsessed with Korean culture. I’d been trying to pin down the right adjective for Daisy for the last decade. There were Anglophiles for people who pretended warm beer and minted peas were gourmet fare. Francophiles who swore the only good coffee and wine could be found in Paris. Daisy was that about Korea. She watched more Korean dramas and ate more Korean food than I could ever consume in a single lifetime. And now my best friend was putting up with a lot of asshole behavior from her new boyfriend, probably because he was half-Korean.

  “I’m waiting for a friend,” I said to the bold Korean guy who’d tried to buy my drink. He had to be at least forty. He was either married or his recently divorced self hadn’t tanned over the pale line encircling his ring finger.

  “I heard they have awesome honghap tang.” That was Daisy’s entrance line as she pulled up a chair under the paper lantern casting weak light on the hewn wood table. Of course she’d know the specialty of the house. My friend had a near encyclopedic memory of restaurants in the area between Vermont, Kenmore, Third Street and Seventh.

  I didn’t ask how Daisy had heard of some obscure Korean pub I had picked for its missing signage and accompanying lack of patronage. “So you want mussel soup and what else?” I bribed.

  “Yangnyeom, and pajeon if they have it.”

  I raised my hand for the waitress and fired off an order for the soup, spicy Korean fried chicken and the seafood, green onion, and egg pancake. “Soju or makgeolli?”

  “Makgeolli of course. Do they serve it the traditional way?”

  I didn’t ask the waitress that. Ordered the fermented alcohol and watched the woman skitter off. I was done with my Korean for the day.

  “I can’t believe you called me about coming here. I usually have to twist your arm to get you to K-Town.”

  That was true. Eating food my mom could make for a tenth of the price and twice as good was not my idea of great dining. Sitting in a bar and not drinking wasn’t any fun either, so I got right to it. “I slept with Lucas Tucker.”

  I could see the gears turning in Daisy’s head. Nari had a sex life. Nari had a sex life after Andrew. Nari was talking about her sex life. I waited one beat, two. Right on cue, Daisy executed a double take. Forget her comedian boyfriend, she should be the one working on a sit-com.

  “That’s the doctor, right? The one you mentioned setting me up with.”

  “The very one.”

  With that revelation, she couldn’t get the questions out fast enough. “Are you guys dating?” Without telling me, was implied. “Or was it a one night stand?”

  “I slept with him three times.”

  “Oh my God. Nari! I can’t believe it!” Nor could anyone else in the bar from their startled looks at her uncontrolled volume.

  “Daisy. I’m not interested in all of Los Angeles knowing my business,” I said as cool and calm as one of the pickled cucumbers on the table.

  Her whisper-shout was conspiratorial. “It’s just that you’ve never, you know talked about sex before. All these years, it was like you were growing your hymen back or something.”

  “That’s physiologically impossible,” I said without a hint of the humor I knew was expected.


  “It was just a joke, Nari,” Daisy said. She took a long pause to inhale half the food on the table. The girl would die of a kimchi overdose if she ever went to Korea.

  I took a sip of the green tea I’d ordered, and a bite of the pajeon. Ugh. Not half bad, but not half good either. But I wasn’t here for the food. “What should I do?”

  “About Lucas?” Daisy asked. I wanted to shake her. I wasn’t asking about investing in stocks, real estate, or how to succeed in the adult entertainment business. I’d kept a single minded focus during the conversation. Maybe the bar with its attendant alcohol hadn’t been such a good idea. Kimchi was like catnip for Daisy. In five minutes her eyes would be rolling back in her head and she’d be swaying to the barely audible music, praising the Korean food gods. I needed answers now before I lost my friend to a food coma.

  “Yes, about Lucas.”

  “What do you want to do about Lucas?” she asked, waggling her brows suggestively. Was it me or was Daisy being particularly juvenile today? I’d slept with a guy. Big deal. It wasn’t like we were thirteen or even twenty-three.

  “I need to know how to handle him.”

  “Sounds like you already have a handle on him,” she said. At my less-than-amused face, Daisy backpedaled. “Look, I’m sorry. I just don’t know how to talk to you about this. Do you like him?” She paused. “Ugh. I feel like I’m on one of those awful kids’ shows asking if you, ‘like him, like him.’” She put down her chopsticks and cleared her throat. “Do you envision yourself pursuing a future relationship with him beyond sex?”

  Well, now. Daisy wasn’t joking anymore. She’d gotten to the crux of the issue pretty quickly. “I’m not sure,” I said. I needed her help to figure that out. Not that I’d ask outright like that.

  “But you’ve slept with him more than once?” Now that she was paying attention, her questions had the precision of a surgeon’s scalpel.

  “The first time was in Hawaii. I was drunk.”