Blue Jeans and Coffee Beans

by DeMaio, Joanne

  In the dim candlelight of The Sand Bar, stories unfold around her. Some are sad, some sweet. After all these years designing, she has become a good judge of situations and body language, always having an eye on how fashion fits people’s lives. And Scott’s body language gives her an indication of her future trends when he sits back defensively. He’ll resist change. Her hands, usually designing with graphite pencils, or ink, or paint, reach for his hands across the table as she tries to design their future. Her spoken words become the sketch lines of her life. Their weight varies, with bold lines of her time at the beach leading to the delicate lines of the 8mm home movie, because bold to delicate invites the viewer to follow along, to move with the sketch.

  If a garment has lots of detail, Maris keeps her sketched poses simple to accentuate only the garment’s features. Her future is intricately detailed, with an engagement waiting for her, while a lost sibling draws her eye, and a family home needs to be sold, all at the same time that a design career keeps moving, regardless. So she keeps her present word sketch simple, outlined with the dusty carton she found in her father’s house and shaded with the few mementoes inside it. An empty gift box from an Italian jeweler colors it gold; a tiny baby blanket softens it; an 8mm film deepens it with the Christening scene in her long-ago home.

  She sketches the story simply, leaving out evening walks beneath the sea’s stars that leave her feeling more connected than ever to her mother. Leaving out the best design work she’s ever done that happens while sitting on a cottage front porch, the salt air influencing her vision. Leaving out beach friends and their casually poignant history here. Simple, simple. She sketches only what matters most, wanting to find the future trend of her days so that she can foresee what her life might come to look like.

  Scott takes in her designs, then brushes them off as though long ago and far away are not part of the future. “You’ve lived your life so far unaware of any secrets, any mysteries, all while building a significant career,” he says, pausing to sip his drink. “And we’ve been happy. Until now, it seems. Until you found this past of yours. But when only today mattered, there were no problems. So I don’t get why you won’t let it go.”

  And so her lines get bolder. The past influences everything she does, especially her fashion designs, she insists. Her denim specialty connects her completely to her summers spent at this very beach, and to her mother’s love of the shoreline, to the breeziness of the whole beach essence that has long been a part of her life.

  As she speaks, she employs one of her trademark design techniques, leaving off lines in the sketch. It is an effective way to engage the viewer in the process, having them fill in the lines with their own vision. Engaging Scott in his own take on the possibility of a long lost sibling lets him be a part of the process, a part of her future.

  But sitting in the dark bar, a glass of wine in front of her, a glass of Scotch in front of him, she can never move her future past a preliminary sketch. He won’t help her choose the fabric of a future design, won’t put together a prototype of chance, won’t allow her to try on the possibility of different lifestyles. Retro doesn’t work for him.

  So though Saybrooks’ next fall line of denim design sketches spill from every nook and cranny in her little rented cottage, capturing all the time she’s spent at Stony Point, drawing on the love of her mother, and her mother’s love of the beach, tying it all together with a constellation of stars that began with one 14 karat gold star from a faraway aunt, that is the extent of her designing. On paper only. No graphite penciled words, no watercolor nor gel pen phrases, no blank white future, no varying emotional lines and no home movie shapes hinting at a silhouette of family history, could come together in a sketch of what would happen in her life even tomorrow, never mind a year from now.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Maris wants her life back.

  Last night, Scott stood in the doorway of her front porch, looking out into the darkness. Sea air cooled the cottage. Crickets chirped. Maris sat on the porch. She had lit a small hurricane lamp and jumped when he finally spoke.

  “I’m going to leave.” Neither of them moved. “You have unfinished business here that’s between you and your past and I’m not going to stand in your way, Maris. Just fix it, and then we’ll talk, okay? I’ll get a room at the airport and call you tomorrow. Find your answers so that you don’t have a reason to stay away from me.”

  He walked out of the cottage and she sat without moving for an hour afterward, trying to understand who was right. Did a baby born thirty years ago matter now? Or had she caused the most important man in her life to walk away, evading commitment once again?

  She looks up at the sky over The Green in Addison now. Maybe today is the day she’ll find everything out. Wisps of white clouds streak across that blue sky while she stands in front of this converted colonial home, shaded by an old maple tree. Somewhere, a jet rises to that same sky and carries Scott on a flight back to O’Hare at this very moment, the moment before pushing open the door to her father’s attorney’s office.

  The reception area is hushed, with thick carpeting, with taupe and burgundy window treatments and wallpaper, with framed artwork reassuring the eye of the importance, of the seriousness, of your business. An antique mahogany chest of drawers sits against a side wall.

  The receptionist looks up from her computer screen. “May I help you?” she asks.

  “Yes.” Maris approaches the half wall surrounding the workstation. “I need to see Attorney Riley. I don’t have an appointment, but I can wait. It’s about my father’s estate. Louis Carrington.”

  “I’m sorry, but Tom is on vacation and won’t be back for two weeks. Is there something I can help you with?”

  “Vacation?” She looks away with a long breath. “Can he be reached? Or could I get a message to him? If I could just talk to him on the phone.”

  “I can have the covering attorney get in touch with you.”

  Maris has gotten to the point where her life hinges on minutes. Scott wants her back today, she knows it, sometime in the next one thousand four hundred and forty minutes. Her job at Saybrooks will be held open for only so long, a few weeks’ worth, maybe a month of minutes. And the clock ticks down on a job offer from a Manhattan design house. Then there is the minute of 8mm film.

  But there are other minutes, too. You can stay with us as long as you need to. Eternal minutes. I’ll keep your secrets. Pinky swear. She thinks of the overnight bag she packed earlier, preparing to fly to Chicago today with her answers, and then she remembers the brief minute spilling with possibility. Considering staying on, are you? How have the minutes of her life spun out of control with summer kisses and walks on the beach and hands touching over a glass of wine, a cup of coffee, a conch shell?

  Maris reaches into her shoulder bag for one of her business cards. It will take only minutes to scan birth and death certificates of her family. A few minutes of the attorney’s time will set her life straight. She jots down her Stony Point and cell numbers. “Please, if Attorney Riley checks in, will you have him call me?” Her hand shakes as she gives over the card. “I’ll be staying on here for a while longer before getting back to Chicago.”

  “Ms. Carrington,” the receptionist says. “As a rule, Attorney Riley does not check in while he vacations with his family. The best I can do is schedule an appointment for his first day back. He likes to leave that day open to catch up, but I’m sure he’ll understand.”

  How will she get through the next two weeks waiting for answers? We’ll drown your sorrows in seafood. Scott wants her back now, forcing the question of her family to take on a life of its own. Let’s see if we can find Shadow. Maris glances up from the appointment card. Dance with me? “Thank you,” she says as she turns to leave and head back to Stony Point. Chicago can’t hold a candle to this place.

  Wearing their bathing suits, Eva and Taylor move out thigh-deep into Long Island Sound and walk across the width of the roped-off swimming area. Their
fingers dip into the salt water and occasionally Eva dribbles a stream of cool water over her shoulders. Some mornings their talks are light, or spent laughing as they dodge a random crab or jellyfish. Schools of minnows pass them by, then reverse direction and approach again, as though listening in on their voices.

  Taylor has been acting vulnerable and clingy lately, not to mention crying out for Eva’s attention with the spray painting incident. It seems to Eva that maybe her daughter is worrying, afraid that Eva will love her less if she finds more family.

  “But I thought you weren’t going to do that anymore,” Taylor says in the water, their bare feet skimming the sandbar as they walk and talk about Eva’s online search for her birth mother.

  Eva wonders if Taylor knows, if she can sense from another room in their beach home, if she tips her head up from a magazine article or song on the radio, her gaze vague, when Eva grows too quiet for too long in her office. “I limit myself and only check my own search page every now and then. Like once a day.”

  “So you log on to see, and if there’s no email, you log off?”

  “Usually. Sometimes I search a little and find a few birth parents curious about the child they gave up.”

  “Just in case they’re your parents?” Taylor asks, sweeping her fingertips through the sea as they walk.

  Eva nods. “And it would be nice to not have to wonder anymore. So when Grandma and Grandpa come over for lunch today, I’m going to ask them more about the adoption.”

  “You don’t think they’ll get mad?”

  “No, honey. They understand my curiosity.”

  “Huh.” Taylor pulls her sun visor down lower. “We should probably get going then. Maybe today’s the day you’ll find everything out.”

  “Let’s walk one more lap,” Eva says. “And hang out with the fishes.”

  Taylor points to a shadow in the water. “Uh-oh. Crab alert.” Eva jumps and they evade the shadow with quick, high steps.

  “False alarm! It’s only seaweed,” Eva says, laughing with relief.

  Eva sets out cloth placemats. The antique mahogany table looks more beautiful with each ray of sun that reaches in the window, with each bouquet of flowers spilling from her wide crystal vase.

  “Can I help?” Theresa asks from the kitchen doorway.

  “Set the plates for me?” Eva puts the flat pan of bacon beside the stove as the oven heats. “Where’s Dad?”

  “On the porch, reading the paper with Taylor.” She sets the dishes in place while Eva shreds the head of iceberg lettuce.

  “Would you slice the tomatoes, Mom? The knife’s in the drawer.”

  Theresa rinses a few tomatoes and picks a sharp knife from the silverware drawer before sitting with it all at the table. “Jason’s doing a great job redesigning the front of the house.”

  “He is. Once the wallpaper’s up, I can finish decorating my office. Hopefully Maris won’t leave too soon, she has some really good ideas.” Eva puts the shredded lettuce in a shallow bowl edged in gold and sets it on the table before taking a seat across from Theresa. She watches her slice and neatly stack tomato slices in an angular pattern around the dish.

  “Mom.”

  Theresa keeps slicing. She wears navy shorts and a shortsleeve cotton top. A gold necklace hangs around her neck and she has on small diamond stud earrings. Her hands look younger than their years with her nails nicely manicured. Eva is aware of every small detail about Theresa as she watches her closely for a reaction.

  “Matt and I were in the attic bringing down these old chairs and we found the wall mirror there. The pretty one, with etched scrollwork on the corners?”

  Theresa wipes the knife edge on a paper napkin and sets it on the edge of the dish. “Mirror?”

  “Come on, Mom. How many mirrors do you suppose you left behind in the attic when you moved? And how many cherry mantle clocks, which I also found. And picture frames?”

  “Okay, okay. So I think it’s safe to say that those things are from your other family. They gave it all to us so you’d have a sense of belonging, of a history with them, too. But we always thought that, growing up, you’d be more comfortable without reminders of your adoption. After all, we were your family now. That’s why we put it all away in the attic.”

  “But how did you even get this stuff? You must have known the family then?” Eva pulls her chair in closer, wanting to sit close, to hear every word of this.

  “Oh, I see what this lunch is about,” Theresa says. “You want to talk about your adoption, maybe get some answers now.” She moves the tomato plate over to the side.

  “So? Is there something wrong with that?”

  “Well no. But it would’ve been nice if I’d known ahead of time.”

  “How do you think I feel then? It would be nice if I knew, too. Because let’s face it, I’m not a kid anymore and you can take everything out of the attic now, so to speak.”

  “It’s more complicated than you’d think, Eva.”

  Eva takes a long breath. “Listen. You know that necklace Maris has?”

  “With the star on it?”

  “Yes, and her name is inscribed on the back in a beautiful cursive. She wears it all the time.”

  “Yes. Yes, I’ve seen it. It’s very striking.”

  “It’s from her mother’s sister, who lived in Italy. She had it made special for her. The star is to remind Maris how her mother loved walking along the beach, watching the stars over the sea. The aunt hoped Maris would think of her mother when she wore the necklace, and of her aunt too, across the ocean. They’d all be connected that way.” She pauses, touching her neck where a pendant might hang, “I’d love to have a connection like that, too.”

  “Don’t you have it with me? I mean, we all know you’re adopted, but don’t you feel more than just that?”

  “Knowing I’m adopted is a fact. It defines me, and it leaves me with lots of questions and feelings.”

  “That’s true.” Theresa stands then and walks to the sink, turning back and staring at Eva. “Adoption does define you. It makes you my daughter.”

  Eva stands too and puts the bacon in the oven, then sets a plate of cold sliced cantaloupe on the table. “While the bacon’s cooking, I want to show you something.” She leads Theresa to her office and clicks to the adoption registry on her computer. “This is what adoption makes me. It makes me crazy. I’m on this site all the time, looking, looking, looking, and I can’t take it anymore.” She wheels back her chair and lets her mother see the screen.

  Date of Birth: 2-11-1981

  Springfield, Massachusetts or Hartford, Connecticut

  I was nearly one year old at adoption. Adopted family relocated from Mystic Connecticut to Stony Point Connecticut. I have auburn hair. Eva is searching. Date posted 7-4-2013.

  “That’s you?”

  “Yes. Who else would it be?”

  “But how does this work?”

  “If someone sees this and recognizes some fact that identifies me, or them, they’ll send me an email. Which would be an initial contact. It could be a parent, a sibling, anyone.”

  “Eva,” Theresa says. “You shouldn’t get your hopes up like this.”

  Eva turns and looks at her through tears. “You don’t get it, do you? This is me. This takes over my life.” She stands then and points for her mother to sit in the chair, then leans over her and changes screens to parents searching.

  Date of Birth: 3-3-1981

  Worcester, Massachusetts

  Catholic Charities. Birthname Baby Girl Tyler.

  I signed papers when you were two days old and the tears have never really stopped. Birthmother Audrey Tyler is still searching. Date posted 3-3-2013.

  “Look at that one, Mom. Look, really look,” Eva says, crying now.

  Date of Birth: 8-4-1981

  Springfield, Massachusetts

  Baby Girl Chappel. Birthmother Susan Chappel.

  Date posted 11-18-2010.

  “It’s the only posting and she
has nothing. Nothing! No baby name, no memory, no evidence, no tears. Just a date?” She kneels beside Theresa. “She’s had this posted for years. What if it’s me she’s searching for?”

  “Oh, Eva,” Theresa says, starting to stand.

  “No!” Eva blocks her from standing. “No, Mom. This is my world. You have to stop pretending that this emptiness I feel doesn’t exist. This is what I live. This. Wondering if I should respond to that poor woman.”

  “No,” Theresa answers, reaching for Eva and tucking a strand of hair behind her ear. “No, you shouldn’t, dear. That’s not your mother.”

  “But how do you know for sure?”

  “Well, I just do. I adopted you. And I was about to tell you everything. The whole story of your first family. I swear I was, years ago, right when you graduated high school. But then you came to me one rainy day and told me you were pregnant and that took over our lives. I just couldn’t burden you with the rest when you were dealing with a baby so young.”

  Eva reaches over and logs off the site. “Well it’s time now. I can’t go on wondering and dealing with this awful obsession anymore. Please, Mom.”

  “Okay, of course.” The oven timer sounds and they go back to the kitchen. “Just let me get a few things ready, okay Eva? There’s more to the story than you’d think, and I have to talk to Dad, too. I want to do it right, I want you to be okay with it all. We’ll take you all out to dinner somewhere nice, I promise. And I’ll tell you your story.”

  “But not today?” Eva asks.

  Theresa shakes her head no. “Soon, I promise. We’ll tell you about the mirror today, and the mantle clock you found. About how when you were a baby, before you came with us, those things were special to you and your birth mother. How she’d sing Bom Bom Bom along with the clock chiming, and you’d mimic her too, as a baby, whenever you heard the chime. And, well.” She takes the paper towel Eva holds out to her and presses it against her eyes. “We’ll start today, okay? With a few stories?”