But as the summer wears on, I become visibly with child. Bruce, Renee, and I went to the adoption agency first thing at the beginning of June, and by July there’s a couple out there waiting to take custody of my baby after it’s born. I don’t know anything about them, not their names or where they live, or even what they do for a living. And I’m never going to know. I will deliver my baby. I will sign a sheet of paper. And this will all be over. Even if my child wants to find me someday, he or she will have a difficult time; the records are kept permanently sealed.
I’ve never been so scared. I don’t admit it to anyone, not even Renee. But this is my baby. I can feel it kicking inside me every day, doing somersaults in my belly. I feel an undeniable connection to it. And, in less than a few months, I will give it to strangers. I tell myself over and over again that he or she will have a better life without me, and that I’m making the right choice. But when I’m in bed at night, lying on my side because the baby has become too heavy to bear on my back, I often hold my belly and cry. Not because I don’t think I’m making the right decision, but because it doesn’t seem like there’s any decision that will be good enough to make everyone happy. I’m seventeen, and I’m deciding the future for another, helpless life. I don’t feel like I have the right, but I certainly don’t have a choice anymore.
Then there are the nightmares. Without any of Dr. Miller’s pills, they’re in full swing. But they’re a little bit different now: I hear lullabies sometimes—one in particular. It’s the oddest thing. It’s the lullaby that I sang to Del, on that first night outside my dorm. Daisy, Daisy, give me an answer, do …
The song doesn’t bring me any comfort; it only makes the nightmares worse. Because I’ll never sing to my own child. I’ll never lay eyes on him or her; I’ll never know what my child ends up doing with his or her life or even if he or she is okay. I don’t know why, but I’m certain this is how things have to be. I want things to be over. I want my life back. More than anything, though, the more I think about it, I feel certain that I want to forget about Del, to rid myself of every reminder of him and all his lies. And this is one big reminder.
Sometimes it feels vulgar. I’m only seventeen years old, and my body has been surrendered to forces that only grown women should deal with.
So that’s how I spend the summer in between my junior and senior year of high school: hanging out with Renee and Bruce Graham, going to doctors’ appointments, and watching myself grow, surprisingly slowly.
When Renee is home, we talk about what school will be like in the fall. We talk about how surreal it is that we’re managing to pull this off together; how sometimes it feels like we were meant to become friends, how we were drawn to each other despite our differences. And of course, we talk about Del.
“I just feel so betrayed,” I tell her one afternoon in the apartment. I’m sitting on the sofa, hands on my eight-and-a-half-month full belly. Renee is in the teepee with Wags, trying to force-feed him a pill for canine arthritis.
“Because of the cocaine?” she asks. “Wags, sit. Oh, you stupid dog. Sorry, Emily. Bruce has never given me chores, so I really feel like I should do this a hundred percent.” Wags spits out the pill, walks in a tight circle around the inside of the teepee, and gives Renee a smug dog-look.
“Yes, because of the cocaine. But it’s other things, too. It’s, like, once I saw how he reacted to my being pregnant, and after everything fell apart and he got kicked out, I felt so furious with him.”
“For leaving you behind,” she says. “Wags, come.”
“Yes. He gave me such a convincing argument about how he wanted to be a family and stand by me, and then he goes and gets himself expelled … Renee?”
“Hmm?”
“Did you ever think—you know, he almost led my dad straight to his stash—did you ever think that maybe—”
“He got kicked out on purpose?” she asks. “Well, yeah. It kind of makes sense, don’t you think? He probably freaked out. He’s run away from places before, hasn’t he?” I’ve told her all about his life preadoption.
“Yes,” I admit. “I just can’t believe he’d do something like that to me. He’s supposed to love me.”
She looks at me. “Obviously, he’s got some major issues of his own going on.”
Of course, Renee is right. The person who Del seems to care about most, I realize, is himself.
“So you never want to see him again,” she finishes. “Wags, you dumb dog, come here!”
“Yes.” I nod. “I never want to see him again.”
But this is a lie. In fact, I think it’s the only lie I’ve ever told Renee. It isn’t that I think she’d be upset; I’m actually pretty sure she’d understand my feelings. It’s more like I’m trying to convince myself that I never want to see him again, and I feel like, if that’s what I tell Renee, then it will become the truth.
And then, near the end of July, it happens. I go into labor. Renee and Bruce (is he ever actually working?—he even has a drink in the limo) drive me to the hospital, where I’m rushed to a private room and met almost immediately by the adoption agent I’ve been working with all summer.
They give me a Pitocin IV drip, which is a medicine to speed the labor along. The adoption agent, whose name is Claire, tells me she’s notified the family who will adopt my baby. She tells me they’re here, in the hospital, already. Every time I see someone passing in the hall, I wonder if it’s them. But I’ll never know.
When I start to feel serious pain, an anesthesiologist puts a very thin needle in my spine—it’s called an epidural—that makes me numb from the chest down.
I don’t want to talk much about what happens next. There is pain despite every effort to avoid pain. There is a mess unlike anything I could have anticipated. And there’s that cry—the first sound I hear after what feels like an eternity of pushing—the scream that makes me squeeze my eyes shut before I have a chance to see him or her, the odd sensation of the doctor cutting the umbilical cord that connects me to my child. And, of course, once they’ve ushered the baby from the room to clean it off, I open my eyes a crack, roll my head to the right, and see Bruce Graham sitting in a crisp suit, drink in hand, hair perfectly styled.
“Well, well,” he says, grinning at me. “That certainly was an adventure like I’ve never seen before.”
I’m so exhausted that I can barely keep my eyes open. The only thing I can think to say is, “You obviously own a blow-dryer, don’t you?”
They send me home a day later. From the nursery down the hall, I could hear the babies crying sometimes, and once in a while I’d wonder which one was mine before I’d realize that none of them belonged to me. All it took was a signature.
And then things are back to normal. Sort of. Almost. There’s a hollow feeling inside me, the feeling like I’ve lost a part of myself. I find myself thinking more and more of Del, wondering where he is and if he’s okay, thinking that maybe I can steal his file when I get back to campus, if my dad even bothered to keep it. He probably burned it the moment Del left.
Two days before we’re supposed to go back to school, Renee drops her bombshell.
We’re sitting in Bruce’s apartment, all three of us drinking vodka and soda like it’s no big deal. Bruce and Renee are both smoking cigarettes. More than anything, even though he’s been generous and accommodating and all that good stuff, Bruce seems grateful to have his apartment back, instead of constantly having to remember that he’s around a pregnant woman who can’t be exposed to smoke. He’s been so nice to me, I don’t want to tell him how much it bothers me.
“Let me tell you something, Emily,” he says, giving me a wink as he talks, exhaling gracefully into the air. “I know this has been a difficult summer, but you did the right thing. You did the best thing possible under the circumstances.”
“Lying to almost everyone I know was the best thing possible?”
He doesn’t blink. “Yes. Sometimes it’s necessary to lie. Imagine the mess you would have bee
n in if you’d told everyone the truth. Trust me. This is right for all parties involved.”
“Bruce,” Renee says, “I should tell her now.”
I give her a hesitant look. I’m not sure how much more drama I can handle. “Tell me what?”
Renee and Bruce exchange one of their private glances that I’ve become so used to over the summer.
“Okay,” Bruce says. “So tell her.”
“Emily, I’m not coming back to Stonybrook.”
I don’t want to believe what she’s saying. I can’t imagine life without Renee now. I’ve barely even talked to my other friends all summer, except for some awkward conversations and vague e-mails with Stephanie, and I know that she’s beyond irritated that I decided to spend my vacation with Renee instead of coming to visit her in Colorado.
“Why not?” I demand.
“It’s, um, I got in trouble. I got kicked out. Your dad waited until a few weeks ago to tell me.”
My father. This is no accident. It took everything I had, plus a huge donation and personal phone call from Bruce, to convince my parents to let me stay the summer with Renee. They don’t like her. And lately, ironically enough, her mother has been in the news again for another trip to rehab and another broken marriage. At least Stephanie will believe me about that.
“What for? How can they kick you out when you haven’t been on campus in three months?”
Renee glances at Bruce again. He nods, urging her to continue. It’s not even six p.m. and he’s already in a tux.
She puts her head down. She won’t look at me. “I’m so sorry, Emily. Hillary found Madeline’s file. I hid it under our dresser, and one day she went to move it, and … there it was. She took it to your dad right away.”
“They’re kicking you out for that? After all the money Bruce donated? There wasn’t even anything interesting in it! And you didn’t steal it. I gave it to you!”
“Emily, that’s not exactly true.”
“What do you mean?”
“I don’t think it’s because he thought I took Madeline’s folder. I think it has more to do with you. See, a couple of days after you and Del stole those folders, Del kind of approached me privately.”
I raise my eyebrows. “He did, did he?”
“Did you know he stole your file that night, too?”
I shake my head. “I knew he stole some other files to make it look less obvious that we were after Madeline’s. But I didn’t know he took mine.” I pause. “Why would he do that?”
“He did more than that,” Renee says. “He gave it to me. He showed me something in particular. It was something he said you had a right to know. See, Emily, there was a note in your folder that didn’t make a lot of sense.”
“In my folder?” It would never even occur to me to look at my folder. How could there be anything in it that I don’t already know? And why would Del take it? Wouldn’t it make it all the more obvious that I was involved with the theft somehow?
“Something that didn’t make sense,” I repeat. “Okay. What was it? Do you still have it?”
“Yes. I saved the paper.” Renee reaches into the back pocket of her jeans. She pulls out a paper that’s been folded half a dozen times and is worn at the creases. She’s obviously been carrying it around all summer.
I stare at it. It’s just a basic demographic sheet with your usual info: name, address, age, all that good stuff. “There’s nothing weird here,” I say, confused.
“Look at the bottom.” Renee swallows. “Look at the emergency contacts.”
First there’s my mom and dad, obviously. It seems absurd that they would even have a page like this for me. After my mom and dad, there’s Dr. Miller’s personal cell and office numbers. My grandparents on both sides are dead. I don’t have any aunts or uncles or cousins that I know of. For my entire life, it’s just been me and my parents.
But right there, in my father’s handwriting at the very bottom of the page, there’s an asterisk. Beside it, he’s written:
ICE: SANDY GRAY. MARYLAND?
I close my eyes and see fire. It’s suddenly hard to breathe. I’ve never seen the name before in my life until this moment. So why the fire? Why now? And why do I feel like I’ve been punched in the gut?
Bruce and Renee look at me, waiting for me to respond.
“Who the hell is Sandy Gray? And what does ICE mean?”
“ICE means ‘in case of emergency,’ ” Renee says. “And I don’t know who Sandy Gray is, Emily … but I think you need to find out.”
chapter fourteen
At the beginning of my senior year, I find myself back in the quad with Stephanie, Franny, and Grace. Things are so different now: Del is gone, Renee is gone, and I’ve just had a baby that almost nobody knows about. But when I’m alone with my roommates, I can almost convince myself that everything is the same as it’s always been.
Over the summer, I’ve only kept in touch with Steph, and even that’s been on and off. It’s normal for kids at Stonybrook to take a kind of hiatus from each other over summer breaks; everyone goes home, back to their other friends and their family and alternate lives, and we come back in the fall and pick up where we left off.
My tummy is flat again, thanks to a trainer who came highly recommended from Bruce Graham. “I don’t use him,” Bruce had said, “because I enjoy my bearlike physique.” He was holding a tumbler of scotch and wearing a red silk bathrobe and slippers when he told me this. It was something like two in the afternoon. “But I’ve heard he can really whip a person into shape.”
My trainer’s name was Colby. I never learned his last name. We worked out five days a week for an hour and a half, all on Bruce’s dime. Most of the workouts left me in tears. Sometimes I was so sore that Renee had to help me sit on the toilet and do other, basic things, like pulling a shirt over my head. But by the end of the summer, I’m in the best shape of my life. I almost have a six-pack.
Everything’s the same; everything is different. I am still having nightmares. I feel an emptiness in my body, the absence of all the experiences with my child that I will never know—even though I don’t exactly want to know them—and the absence of Del making me feel hollowed somehow, so much so that I ache inside. I don’t know why I think about him so much. I’m so angry with him for everything he did to me, and all the lies he told me, that I’ve convinced myself I don’t want to see him again. Maybe it’s because we left things so unfinished. Maybe it’s because, deep down, there is a part of me that still cares for him, and worries that he’s okay, wherever he is. How can I not? He used to mean everything to me, and then, all of a sudden, he was gone.
But it’s Renee I miss more than anyone. She is the only person now who truly knows me, who shares all of my secrets. I realize it’s possible that, for the rest of my life, she will be the only one. It’s a lot to deal with alone, without her: there’s the secret that seems to still be breathing inside me, the nightmares that come fast and frequent, and this new mystery that only Renee and I (and Bruce, and Del) know about: who is Sandy Gray, and why was her name in my file?
I know I should just ask my parents, but I have my doubts about whether or not they’ll tell me the truth. So I go to the second-best source: Dr. Miller.
“Have you been taking your medication all summer?” she asks during our first session together.
“Yes,” I lie.
“And are you still having the nightmares?”
“Yep.” I’m sitting on the sofa in her office, staring at her across the desk. The mood in the room is palpably tense as I wait for the right moment to ask her. I realize I’m almost glaring. All these secrets and lies, they start to get to you after a while. My whole body is a lie now, my whole life lived with a secret embedded somewhere within my past, where there was a Sandy Gray who meant something. Maybe she still does.
Since I’m a senior, I’ll only be spending one more year under Dr. Miller’s psychiatric care, and then it’s off to college, where I suppose there will be a ment
al health center on campus, or something like that. Are all psychiatrists like her, I wonder? Surely some of them are actually helpful.
“Well,” she muses, leaning back in her chair, “let’s talk about your summer. What did you do?”
Oh, the usual teenage high jinks. Hid out in a celebrity’s penthouse while I carried a baby to term. Gave it up for adoption in the middle of the summer. Managed to hide the pregnancy from everyone, even my parents. Nothing new.
Now seems as good a time as any to change the subject.
“Dr. Miller,” I say, “you know how Renee got kicked out for stealing those files?”
She nods. “She’s lucky your parents didn’t press charges. That’s breaking and entering, you know. It’s larceny. She was fortunate that all she got was expelled.”
“She didn’t really steal them,” I say.
Dr. Miller blinks coolly at me. “Then who did?”
“Del.”
“Ah, but Madeline’s file was in Renee’s room, wasn’t it? She was involved somehow.” Dr. Miller pauses. “You know, there were no signs of a break-in at your parents’ house. They wouldn’t even have known the file was missing if Hillary hadn’t found it.” She narrows her eyes. “Emily? Do you know more about this than you’re telling me?”
I ignore her. “Anyway,” I continue, “Del took my file, too. Did you know that?”
Dr. Miller tries to act nonchalant, but I can tell she’s thrilled to be getting the information. “I had an idea of something like that, yes.” She sure pays close attention to all of the teenage happenings around here, doesn’t she?
“He gave my file to Renee. He said there was something I had a right to know about. And a few weeks ago, she showed me what it was.”
Where the Truth Lies Page 16
