by Nicole Trope
‘The other day I was there and she told me that Vernon knows what I did.’
Jack is quiet for a moment. ‘Alice, love… isn’t Vernon in prison? And your mother… well, you know how far her Alzheimer’s has progressed. She doesn’t recognise you most of the time. I’m sure she’s said something random to you and you’ve connected it with some spam emails. Things are difficult… I know that.’
‘I really don’t think it’s just spam, Jack.’
‘Those kinds of emails get sent all the time. Our practice was sent one last year that accused us of all sorts of things. It accused us of malpractice and threatened to sue unless we paid them. I’m sure it’s rubbish, Alice… it has to be. Please don’t worry. We can try and trace where they’re coming from. Don’t let it distress you. We’ll get to the bottom of it, okay?’
‘Okay… okay,’ I mumble, wanting to believe him.
‘I’m so sorry, I have to go, a patient is coming in. I really have to go. Love you.’
He hangs up and the words I want to say die on my lips. ‘There are things you don’t know,’ I should have told him, ‘things I’ve done.’
But I couldn’t say the words, couldn’t admit the truth. Lilly died. Jack knows she died in a car accident. Everyone close to me except for my boys knows about the little sister I once had. What they don’t know, what I never want anyone to know, is my part in that. I poke my tongue into the space where my tooth used to be. Look what you did, I think. Look what you’ve done.
Jack wanted to know more about Lilly when I told him about her. But I never wanted to discuss her. ‘I just can’t,’ I told him.
Lilly was a child who slipped through the cracks of the social system, just like I did.
Someone should have helped us before I made such a drastic choice. The system should have saved us but no one ever asked, no one ever questioned my bruises or the way I shrank back from everyone who came near me, no one noticed. No one ever asked the questions that should have been asked. It was a different time but I still resent the fact that no one reached out to me. We moved soon after Lilly was born, and I’m not even sure my mother registered her birth. Few people knew when Lilly was born and even fewer realised she was gone.
I think about the possibility that Jack is right, that the emails are simply a scam of some sort and that my mother couldn’t possibly be sending them. He’s probably right. The message on my blog is just from some voyeur. I mentioned the stuffed frog when I wrote about my life on the blog and maybe whoever is sending the emails had a similar toy? I feel like I’m clutching at straws but who knows how far someone would go to simply torment me.
The woman has no connection to the emails.
As I get ready to go and pick the boys up from school, I resolve to seek some help. I shouldn’t be obsessing over this and I certainly shouldn’t be drinking like I did last night. Whatever happened, whatever I did in the past, is long gone and I have to believe that no one is coming back to make me pay.
And yet… and yet I cannot help but feel that this is exactly what I deserve. I was a child but I was old enough to know what I was doing even though I could never have predicted the terrible consequences. I close my eyes and see my sister’s little face. ‘I’m so sorry, Lilly,’ I whisper. Words I have said almost every day for more than thirty years. ‘I am so sorry.’
Twenty-Six
Molly
* * *
Molly hears the alarm and rolls over onto her side, reaching out for Peter, who pushes back against her. ‘I read those articles,’ he says. Molly groans. She wanted, needed, just to stay in that blissful moment between sleep and waking for a little while longer. Last night she had not even felt her husband get into bed. Her sleep had been heavy, almost suffocating and silent of dreams.
‘What are you going to do?’ asks Peter, turning over to face her.
‘I’m… I’m going to go over to my parents’ today and ask every question I have, and then I’m going to try and find my birth family. Yesterday I realised that I need to know who they were and why they abandoned me. What if there’s a genetic history of something awful that we need to know about? What if there’s a specific reason for all my miscarriages that could affect this baby?’
‘I understand you needing to know, Moll. I do, of course I do. But what if there are no records for you to follow? There’ll be some old police reports, that’s all.’
Molly slides out of bed and pulls on her dressing gown. ‘I have to try, Pete. I don’t know who I am. I can’t look at my sister and my parents and see where my chin or my eyes came from, and that kills me. I watch you and your father together, and whenever I ask him a question, he tilts his head a fraction, exactly like you do, and then he takes a breath before he answers and I know that’s because he’s thinking through what he’s going to say because it’s exactly the same thing you do. All the traits I have I’ve attributed to my mother or my father but the whole time I was wrong. I am nothing like them. I don’t come from them and that hurts. I feel so stupid for thinking that my sense of humour is just like my dad’s or that Lexie and I look so alike. I feel like every thought I’ve ever had about my family is tainted.’
‘I can’t even imagine how that feels, I really can’t. But I don’t want you to get hurt. I’m afraid of you suffering even more. And I don’t want you to stress yourself out over something that may have no conclusive answers, especially not now.’ Peter gets out of bed and walks over to her. He cups her face and lays a gentle kiss on her forehead. ‘We’re so close to everything we’ve always wanted. I want you to enjoy this, to be happy… not to be consumed by the past.’
Molly studies her husband. He’s not wearing his glasses and so looks younger, more vulnerable than he usually does. Logically she understands that he wants the best for her and the baby but he also needs to understand that logic has nothing to do with anything right now.
‘I will only get stressed if I have to pretend that I don’t have this information now. My parents have just dropped a bomb into the middle of my life and you can’t expect that there’ll be no fallout from that.’
* * *
Once Peter has gone to work, finally acquiescing, she showers and dresses, tying her hair back without even brushing it and ignoring how pale she looks in the mirror.
On impulse she sits down at the computer again and types in the headline from the first news article, as if it’s possible that today there will be something more. But, of course, there’s nothing.
She types ‘toddler’ and ‘1987’ into her search bar and scans the articles about a toddler rescued from a well in Texas and about a toddler kidnapped in Canada. She clicks through to the second page, and right at the bottom she finds an article about a toddler killed in a car accident.
* * *
Sydney Morning Herald
21 January 1987
Questions Asked After Toddler’s Death
Questions about child safety are being asked after a toddler was killed in a car accident on the Pacific Highway near Mount Colah last night. It is understood that the toddler was unrestrained in the back seat of the car when it veered off the road and into a pole. All three occupants, Deidre Olsen (18), Jason Burke (19) and an unidentified child, were killed.
‘We are concerned that parents are still not complying with rules for child restraint,’ Constable Symons from traffic control said. ‘Parents who do not restrain their children correctly risk their lives. It is possible that this child would have survived the accident if she had been in a properly fitted seat.’
The mother of the young woman, Deidre Olsen, said, ‘She was a wonderful girl, loved by everyone who knew her. She had only just started dating Jason. I didn’t know he had a child but it doesn’t surprise me. I knew that boy was trouble. I knew the way he drove was dangerous.’
Jason Burke’s parents refused to comment but are cooperating with police. The mother of the toddler has not come forward.
Molly notes the date on the article. She experi
ences a moment of profound gratitude that her life did not end the same way.
She grabs her coat from the rack near the door and leaves the apartment. She will ask her mother all her questions and see if there is anything more to know.
She shouldn’t really be out of bed at all but she needs to speak to her mother. Dr Bernstein’s nurse assured her, when she called early this morning, that if there had been no more bleeding it was fine for her to move around a little. ‘But don’t overdo it,’ she said sternly.
Her mother opens her front door as though she has been standing behind it, just waiting for Molly to push the bell.
‘Why didn’t you use your key?’ she asks.
Molly shrugs.
‘I’m baking, so come into the kitchen,’ her mother says with a sigh. Molly can see that her mother looks tired. Her normally immaculate make-up is haphazardly applied and there are dark circles under her eyes.
Molly sits on a barstool across from the kitchen counter where her mother is baking chocolate chip cookies.
‘Do you want some tea or something to eat? Are you feeling okay? Any nausea?’ asks her mother all at once.
‘I’m fine, Mum, I just need you to answer some questions I have.’
Anne nods, swiping at her face where tears have appeared.
‘Why are you crying?’ asks Molly, more stridently than she intends.
‘You called me Mum. I was worried, I thought… I don’t know.’
Molly looks at her and for a moment she glimpses a much younger, less sure woman. She gets up and goes around the counter, places her arms around her mother, who turns and sobs in her arms. ‘I’m so sorry,’ she says as she cries. ‘I was so afraid we’d lose you.’
‘Oh, Mum, how could you lose me? I’m yours.’
‘I’m all right,’ her mother finally says, breathing a sigh of relief. ‘Sorry, love, it’s been a long night. I didn’t know if you’d forgive us or if you’d ever want to see us again. I just didn’t know.’
‘You’re my parents, whatever happens, but you understand that I need to know more, right? I want to let it go, but I can’t. I feel like I have to know everything, for me and for whoever this is.’ She touches her hand to her stomach.
‘I understand,’ replies her mother, picking up her rolling pin and working the cookie dough again. Molly knows she needs to keep her hands busy. Some conversations are easier to have when you’re not looking directly at the person you’re talking to.
‘Can you explain to me how it happened? How I came to be with you and why you decided to become a foster parent?’
‘It feels so long ago now. Sometimes the memory is a bit fuzzy but not the feeling, not the overwhelming joy of holding you and having you with us.’ Her mother stops rolling out the dough and looks at her. Molly sees the shine of love in her eyes, and for a moment she is angry at herself for pushing this. Surely it should be enough to know how loved she is, to be able to look back at her childhood and know that she never felt anything except loved and protected and taken care of?
‘Whatever you can remember, Mum, please,’ begs Molly because in her heart it’s not enough.
Anne is silent for a few minutes, pressing out star shapes and placing them carefully on a baking tray. Molly chews her bottom lip, knowing that her mother is organising her thoughts.
‘The second school your father taught at was in a very disadvantaged suburb. There were a lot of housing commission flats and unemployment as well as people with drug and alcohol issues. Your father loved the school. He instituted a breakfast programme because he knew that a lot of kids came to school hungry. Once news spread, more and more children began attending, knowing that at least they would get one good meal a day.’
‘I bet you got involved with that,’ says Molly.
‘I did.’ Her mother smiles. ‘Your father and I had only been married for two years when he was posted to the school. I had been a secretary before that but couldn’t travel for an hour each way to get to my job so he encouraged me to look for something closer. When he started the programme, he asked me to help. Of course, I couldn’t resist getting involved. I used to work with some of the older girls in the school kitchen, baking muffins for the next day. I really enjoyed spending time with them. They had so little and came from such difficult situations at home but a tiny bit of praise about their baking made them beam like sunshine.’
Molly can see her mother as a young woman. The picture of her and her father on their wedding day stands on the mantelpiece in the living room. Her mother’s blond hair is a halo of artful curls with a comb attached to her veil and she wears a simple lace wedding dress. She is a beautiful woman who looks a little incongruous standing next to her husband, who is five years older but looks even older than that. Her father has always looked older than his age and his beard gave him the serious demeanour of a politician.
‘The more I worked with the girls,’ continues her mother, ‘the more I heard about their lives, and I began feeling that I wanted to do something to help; so many of them were responsible for their own lives at such young ages. A lot of them were in the foster system and they told some terrible stories of homes where they were abused or neglected – as they had been in their own homes – and of having to move over and over again because of the poor quality of care. It’s better now, I think, with more stringent guidelines for foster parents, but back then standards weren’t that great. I floated the idea of becoming a foster parent with your father. We were trying for a baby of… for a baby.’ Her mother stops abruptly and blushes.
‘For a baby of your own, Mum, I get it,’ says Molly. ‘You don’t have to start watching your words around me.’
Her mother nods. ‘We were trying for a baby but month after month, nothing was happening. I wasn’t concerned because I knew my own mother had taken a year to fall pregnant with me, but I did know that either way I wanted to foster a child who needed our help.’
‘I bet Dad agreed.’
‘He did. I thought it would be a long process but it wasn’t that strict in those days, which is probably why a lot of children landed up in unsuitable homes. Your dad and I got approved almost immediately. We were the ideal couple, I suppose – we were young and he was a teacher and I would be able to be a stay-at-home mother. You were the first child they brought to us, and the way things worked out the last one as well. They weren’t even sure exactly how old you were but estimated you were close to two years old. We had no idea what you’d been through before you came to us and I knew I needed to be prepared for some difficult patches.’
Molly thinks about a picture her parents have of her at what she has always been told is two years old. It must have been one of the very first photographs they took of her. In it she is sitting on a swing in a park, and she knows that every time she has looked at the image, she has wondered what the child in the swing has to look so concerned about. It all makes sense now. She swallows as she tries to imagine what it would have been like for her to find herself first alone on a road and then with a strange new family. It is no wonder that the child on the swing looks watchful, wary, and that she has no smile for the camera.
‘And were there difficult patches?’ she asks, wondering about the possibility of broken nights and tantrums. She would have been so confused about her life.
Her mother stops making star shapes and turns, sliding the first baking tray into the oven. ‘Funnily enough there weren’t,’ she says as she begins to fill another tray. ‘I always felt as though you understood on some deeper level that we were trying to help you.’
‘Do you know why I was given to you?’
‘No idea, really. Luck of the draw, I suppose, and I have always considered the day you arrived to be the luckiest day of my life.’ Her mother looks up at her, a small smile playing on her lips at the memory. ‘I told them I would be happy with a child of any age but you were the one they brought. I had seen the appeals on television and read the newspaper reports and felt so sorry for the little
girl who’d just been abandoned, but I never dreamed they would bring you to us.’
‘And… what was I like?’ asks Molly nervously.
‘You were the quietest child I had ever met. So quiet that we worried about you.’ Her mother slides the next tray into the oven. ‘It’s such a long time ago. They gave us so little information. They knew nothing themselves, of course. It seems impossible that your parents just left you on a road and disappeared but it’s what happened.’
‘They didn’t want me,’ says Molly, and the enormity of that statement washes over her, lodges in her heart. They didn’t want her. Who were these people? Why did they even decide to have a child at all? Had they wanted a boy and been unhappy with a girl? Had she been a difficult baby? What kind of a mother does what her biological mother did? She wants to try and understand it. Perhaps it was postnatal depression or a violent partner or perhaps she was very young and had no money, but no matter how much she tries to explain it to herself she cannot. No reason would be good enough. And she worries that this obvious lack of a mothering instinct present in her mother may be present in her. What if she has this baby and it doesn’t sleep? Will she also want to simply get rid of her own child?
Her mother looks at her, her eyes brimming with sympathy. ‘Maybe they couldn’t look after you. Maybe they were addicts or very young. We don’t know but I do know that from the moment our social worker handed you over to me, I loved and adored you.’
‘Maybe I could contact the social worker, maybe she would know more about where I came from?’ she says, hope flaring inside her.
‘Oh, darling, Sarah was in her late fifties when we fostered you. She died about five years ago. We kept in touch, sent her pictures and that sort of thing.’
‘And yet you never told me any of this?’ says Molly. ‘How could you have just kept it from me?’ Suddenly she is angry again.
