Jim Greer put down his coffee mug. “A mustache. Are you playing the heavy again?”
“Right. It’s a dealers’ convention, and the show helps introduce a new line of electronic appliances. My character is sort of a Simon Legree who wants to enslave people to old-fashioned appliances.”
They had loaded their brunch plates at the dining room sideboard and had settled here in the living room to eat: Nick and Maggie, Jim and Ellen, and Nick’s friend and agent George. The agent, bright-eyed and knobby-nosed, was already halfway through his plateful. “Mays goon oo,” he mumbled.
“What?” asked Jim.
George swallowed and repeated, “Pay’s good too. It’s legit, the producer’s good, and you get paid a lot. What more could an actor want?”
Jim and Nick grinned at each other. “Shakespeare!” they chorused.
“Chekhov!” added Nick.
“Hellman!”
“O’Neill!”
“Mmpf-mmpf!” George waved his hand for silence while he swallowed. “Let me rephrase the question. What more could an actor reasonably ask for?”
“Shucks. Got me there,” Jim said. “And it’s over soon. You get back Thursday, Nick?”
“Right. Fly out tomorrow, set up Monday, shows Tuesday and Wednesday, fly back Thursday. Not a bad gig.”
“Except for the chicken pox,” said Ellen. She nudged Maggie, who had been silently munching her muffin.
“Oh, we’ll survive.” Maggie, not as far away as Nick had feared, smiled at her friend. “Alison had it last year, right? It’s obviously not the end of the world.”
“Well, Jim had to take three days off to watch her because the au pair had that weekend off,” Ellen said. “And Alison was grouchy as a horned toad.”
“So was Sarah,” admitted Maggie. “But we have to get these diseases out of the way sometime. And I can reshuffle my work until Nick gets back. See, I have a very understanding boss.”
“Boy, I wish I worked for myself!” said Ellen fervently. She was a rising star at a respected Manhattan law firm. “What about your downstairs neighbor? Julia? Didn’t she give you a hand when Sarah was sick?”
“Julia’s on tour,” said Nick proudly. “She’s doing a workshop on children’s books at the University of Washington. Also visiting family that lives in Seattle.”
“She claims she’s in the jet set now,” Maggie added.
George had taken his empty plate back to the dining room for a refill. Nick, his nerves tuned to sounds from above, heard the steps on the stairs. He flashed a glance at Maggie. She too had tensed, but with a microscopic shrug at him she lounged back in the chair and returned her attention to Ellen.
George’s voice was jolly and appreciative. “Well, what have we here?” The approaching footsteps paused as he continued, “You are a vision, ma’am. Will you marry me?”
“Sure, if you’ll get me some coffee,” said Ginny’s bright young voice. As unabashed as her mother.
“An offer I can’t refuse!” They came into view through the arch: George holding her elbow, Ginny back in her own laundered clothes, the long straight hair gleaming. George’s gnomelike face was beaming at her. “I’m George,” he said. “And you must be related to our beauteous blue-eyed Maggie. Her little sister?”
“No,” said Ginny cheerfully. “Her little bastard.”
George dropped her elbow, speechless. Nick couldn’t quite muffle his chuckle, and George turned to him in mute inquiry. Nick nodded in confirmation. Ginny darted a glance at Maggie and started pouring her own mug of coffee.
Maggie had bounced up and was going to Ginny. “Ginny, meet George,” she said, laughter in her voice. “Our favorite aging juvenile.”
George rallied a little. “Dear me, you’ve got your own coffee. Let me serve your plate. What do you want?”
Ginny surveyed the sideboard: plates of sliced meats, hot sausages, a bowl of fresh fruit, muffins, croissants. “Everything,” she declared.
“Fine! You’re related to our Maggie, all right.” George busied himself filling her plate.
Maggie caught the girl’s free hand and drew her to the living room. She announced, “Hey, everybody, this is my daughter. Ginny Marshall. Ginny, meet Ellen Winfield and Jim Greer.”
“Pleased to meet you,” said Ginny. Nick watched her inspect them—their faces, their jeans, their running shoes. Probably comparing them to her parents’ friends. He wondered how they measured up.
“Come sit down,” said Maggie. “George will bring your food.” She led her to one of the shabby comfortable chairs by the fireplace, then sat on the end of the sofa near her.
They were all looking at the girl uncertainly. With dignity, Ginny said to Jim, “I met another Greer upstairs. Alison.”
“Yes, our daughter,” said Jim. “Ellen’s and mine.”
“Was she behaving herself?” asked Ellen.
“Oh, yes,” Ginny said. “She and Sarah were full of social graces. Commented with admiration on how grown-up I was.”
“It is the striking thing about you.” Maggie, shameless, sounded amused.
“Voilà!” said George, arriving with a heaped plate. He leaned over the back of the chair to hand it to Ginny, then rejoined Nick at the other end of the sofa.
George began to talk about the producer of the industrial show, but half of Nick’s attention remained on the girl sitting at the other side of the mantel. She seemed content to listen quietly and eat the plateful of food, those astonishing eyes busy, filing everything. From time to time Nick felt himself observed. Finally Maggie leaned over and asked her quietly, “Want any more?”
“No, thanks. I’m fine. It’s very good. Especially the sausage.”
“Thanks. It’s homemade.” Maggie hesitated, looking at Ginny, before she added, “A Picaud recipe.”
“Oh.” A spasm of pain in Ginny’s eyes.
Ellen must have been listening too. She leaned suddenly toward Maggie and exclaimed, “Alain!”
“Yes,” said Maggie evenly.
“You never said a thing to me about this, Maggie!” Ellen was clearly flabbergasted.
“Ellen, I had no right to say anything. Still don’t. The records are sealed.”
Ellen looked sharply at Ginny. “How old are you?”
“Sixteen.” The word was accompanied by a suspicious glare.
“Adopted?”
“What if I am?”
“Do your adoptive parents know you’re here?”
Ginny’s lips tightened. Maggie put a hand on Ellen’s arm and said, “Cool it, Ellen. Some things are more important than the law.”
“Not when you’re in court,” said Ellen tartly.
“I followed the rules. She found me.”
“Well, that may help a little. But if the parents find out—” Ellen’s hazel eyes, troubled, shifted to Ginny. “Oh, hell, you’re right, Maggie. I wouldn’t have resisted either.”
“With this one you wouldn’t have had much choice,” said Maggie. She turned to Ginny, whose hands were clenched beside her plate. “Ellen’s an attorney, Ginny. She thinks she’s giving good advice, and—”
“All for my own good, right?” Nick recognized the blaze of fury veiled behind Ginny’s crisp words. “The goddamn best interests of the goddamn child! Well, Ms. Esquire, do you know how long your law will consider me a child? How many years your law gets to tell me what my best interests are?” She thumped her empty plate onto the end table and ran from the room. They heard her rapid steps all the way to the third floor.
Maggie was on her feet too. Ellen said, “God, Maggie, I’m sorry!”
“Not your fault. You were honest. If only we could have had a little more honesty, a little earlier. Damn agency!” Maggie took a step toward the stairs.
Nick said uneasily, “Shouldn’t you let her settle down a little?”
“She’ll be thinking I asked Ellen here as a lawyer,” Maggie said. “I’ve got to explain.” She hurried out.
“So who the hell is th
is kid?” George demanded. “Nick, your wife is barely out of the cradle herself!”
“Yeah, precocious, isn’t she?” snapped Nick, and George shut up.
“God!” Ellen was still frowning in the direction Maggie had disappeared. “What a hell of a thing! The kid’s right, you know. I never thought of it that way. Sealing the records to keep her away from her biological mother is supposed to be in the best interests of the child. Maybe for a while it is. But the records are never unsealed. She’ll never be of age in the eyes of the law. Never be able to find out legally about her own background.”
“Isn’t it to protect the mother too?” asked Jim.
Ellen snorted. “You know Maggie. She sure as hell doesn’t want protecting. I’m surprised she stayed quiet this long. God, sometimes it really hits home what a clumsy instrument the law can be!”
Ginny threw herself onto her mat. Best interest of the child. What a laugh. What a goddamn laugh.
She’d awakened slowly that morning, to one of those eerie moments of complete disorientation, floating nowhere, no meaning available to her groping mind. She’d seen her backpack, floating with her in the void. A cat’s litter box. A window, gray light on maple leaves. Oh. Everything had shifted into place, like a kaleidoscope falling into a new pattern. A pattern of kinship and confusion.
She dimly remembered dreams of running, trying to catch people who grew wings and flew away as she reached for them. Her fingers had been the fingers of a birth-strangled babe.
Her own clothes, washed and dried, had been next to her backpack. And a brown bag with a note:Ginny—Some friends are coming for brunch Saturday. You’re welcome to join us if you want. If not, that’s fine too. There’s an orange and a bagel in the brown bag for you, but the real food is downstairs.
She had puzzled over the note, trying to decipher whether it was secretly urging her to come down or to stay away. It was impossible to tell. She was of two minds herself, curious about what kind of friends her surprising new mother might have, but not eager to suffer any more shocks to her shattered sense of self. In the end it had been the scent of coffee that had led her downstairs. Straight into the trap.
There was a knock on the door at the foot of the stairs. Maggie called, “May I come up?”
“It’s your own damn house, isn’t it?”
She came upstairs slowly. Ginny sat up on the mat and turned to face her.
“God, Ginny, this is hard.”
“Well, you don’t have to call in the lawyers again, you know! I’ll go quietly. You don’t have to sign any more papers, just say the word.”
“Not my decision.”
“Oh, you’re going to force me to stay this time?”
Maggie pushed her fingers back through her dark curls. “Ginny, I’ll try to answer your questions. You may not like the answers, but they’ll be honest. But you’ll have to ask the questions straight. If you really want to know.”
If you really want to know. God, it was all she wanted. To know. To understand. And she couldn’t say the words. She rubbed her forehead with her fist and finally asked instead, “Ms. Esquire is a friend of yours?”
“I’ve known Ellen since college. We were roommates. She’s a wonderful woman, much more sensible than I am. Last week I invited them for brunch today. She happens to be a lawyer now.”
“Coincidence. I see.” Ginny leaned back against the wall next to the window and closed her eyes. She sensed Maggie’s light tread crossing the room, stopping not far in front of her. Without opening her eyes Ginny said, “Shouldn’t you be with your honored guests?”
“They’re friends, they’ll understand. And no doubt Ellen is right now impressing on them all how important it is not to breathe a word of your existence to anyone until you’re at least twenty-one.”
“Goody for her.” Ginny shifted a little on the mat, eyes still closed. She suddenly wanted very much to leave, to return to the warm familiarity of Mom and Dad. She needed time to think, to absorb the self-inflicted blow of this mother, this family. She said, “Don’t you want me to go away?”
“Only if you want to go.”
“God!” Ginny opened her eyes. Maggie was sitting cross-legged on the floor a few feet in front of her, leaning back against the frame of the parallel bars. Ginny said, “You don’t make things easy for me.”
“I think too many decisions have been made for you by other people already. Including me. Especially me. It’s time for you to control your own life. You’re adult, intelligent.”
“Oh, yeah, sure, I’m just about perfect. Because you say so. You!”
Maggie shrugged. “Well, I believe it.”
Ginny leaned forward. “But there’s got to be something wrong! Because—” She rammed her fist into her own mouth, stopping the words. Maggie’s hand moved toward her instinctively, then checked. Strong bones in that hand; but graceful in motion. Ginny pulled out her fist and stared at her damp knuckles a moment. Her own bones suddenly had a location in the universe: halfway between Ryan and Picaud. She said roughly, “Listen, how come I’m always asking the questions? Don’t you want to know anything about your dear little goddamn Alice?” When she glanced up she was surprised to see tears standing in the other blue eyes.
“Sure,” said Maggie steadily. “Is it my turn?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, I admit I’m curious about how the hell you found me.”
“You thought you were safe, huh?”
“Safe! I left you every clue I legally could! Damn it, Ginny, be fair!” Maggie pulled out a tissue and swiped angrily at her nose.
Ginny stared down at her knuckles again. “I don’t know what fair is,” she said.
“Okay, I understand. But just accept for a minute that, whether you like it or not, I love you. I’m delighted you’re here. I’ve wanted to be with you all your life.”
“Oh, Jesus! How can you say that? How?” Ginny squeezed her eyes closed again, shutting her out, shutting out her lies.
There was no answer for a minute. Then Maggie said, “Okay, then, don’t accept it. But you still haven’t answered my question, and you said it was my turn.”
Ignore the festering boil. Back off, talk about other things. “Okay,” said Ginny. “Well, begin at the beginning. The fake beginning. Mom and Dad always said I was adopted. They said I was special, I was chosen.”
“Yes.”
“And they gave me some line about how you loved me so much, you let them have me, because they could love me so much. Nifty logic.”
“It’s hard to explain to a child.”
“It’s hard to explain, period. Right? Because if you’re chosen—” Oh, crap, she was poking at the sore again. Couldn’t stay away from it.
Maggie said thoughtfully, “If you’re chosen, you can also be rejected. And if someone loves you so much they give you away, you can never trust anyone else who loves you.”
Ginny flinched as the words jabbed into the heart of her pain. But she struggled back to a fighting stance and said, “Right-oh. Bang on the button.”
“Okay, go on,” said Maggie brusquely. “You knew you were adopted. That somewhere in the great world there was another mother. A dancer, or a murderer, or a princess, or a prostitute.”
“And what I drew was a fucking statistician!”
Their nerves were too raw for much control. Their eyes met, Ginny’s mouth twitched, and suddenly they both exploded into laughter. Maggie gasped, “What a blood-curdling discovery!”
“Hey, gimme a chance!” cried Ginny hysterically. “Maybe in a few years I’ll curdle your blood too. I’ll be a—a podiatrist! Or maybe even a notary public!”
Maggie had collapsed against the bars, laughing helplessly.
“Order, order!” commanded Ginny, gulping back her giggles as best she could. “The tale proceeds! Now of course when I learned all this, I started reading about adoption. I mean, Mom is a dear, but she got so nervous when she talked about it, I quit asking.” Maggie nodded, attentive ag
ain. Ginny went on, “And Mom didn’t know much anyway. There was more in the library. I learned about agencies, and homes for unwed mothers, and all that stuff. And I learned that there were real records somewhere. Not like my so-called birth certificate at home.”
“Right.”
“But there were also books that other adopted people had written, about how hard it was to find the information.”
“You read Fisher? And Lifton?” asked Maggie eagerly.
“All those dudes. And it was clear that nobody tells us adopted so-called children anything, not if they can help it. A few people found out a little bit if they got a judge or a doctor to ask for them. But they were of legal age, and they didn’t find out very much. It took them years and years. And if they did find anything, it was because they tricked someone into making a mistake.”
“Right.”
“So I knew Ms. Esquire’s law was no help to me. And then, Thursday afternoon, I broke into Dad’s strongbox.”
“You broke in?”
“Oh, well, he didn’t make any big secret of the combination. I remembered it from watching him one day. Just lucky. Anyway, down there amongst all the insurance papers was one that said McKinley Agency. And Mom had written ‘Farnham’ on it.”
“I see.” Maggie was leaning forward now, following the account eagerly, fascinated by each step.
“So I went to the library and looked in the Manhattan phone book. The agency was still there. Fantastic good luck again.”
“Right.”
“And I got some money, and off we went on the five-thirty bus, Kakiy and I, to the big city to seek our fortune. We were waiting at the agency door when they opened Friday.”
“Mm-hmm.” Maggie leaned back against the bars, eyes fixed on Ginny. “And when you stepped into the McKinley Agency, they said, ‘Oh, you sweet child, we’re overcome by your cleverness! Here’s everything you want to know!’”
“You’ve been there too,” Ginny deduced.
“Often.”
“Yeah, they were just as stuffy and cagey as the books said. Farnham wasn’t there, but a Mrs. Elkin was. They made me wait a long time. Finally she said she had a moment. So I went into her office and explained to her that I was developing a horrible digestive disease, and I had to know if there was a history of malabsorption or anything. She asked how old I was. I said twenty-two.”
Bad Blood (Maggie Ryan Book 8) Page 9
