by Nicole Baart
The cake was perfectly moist and gooey with chocolate fudge, but I barely tasted it. Instead of enjoying it, I continued to watch Janice watch Simon and allowed myself to become ever more morose, feeling guilty because it was my grandmother’s birthday party.
After Grandma had opened her presents—the birdhouse from Simon and me and a pretty deep-dish pie plate with frilled edges from Janice—I got up to clear the table. My legs were heavy, and I wished that there were something I could do to erase the disquiet that hung around Janice like an almost tangible mist. I felt like we were finally doing okay; we were finally getting somewhere. And now she was going to talk herself into more feelings of failure, of inadequacy.
I couldn’t let her topple everything we had been working so hard to create. I would have a talk with her later, I decided. Sit her down and try to undo some of the lies she had told herself. I would even listen to all she had to say to me about adoption, about letting go. If nothing else, I owed her the chance to get it off her chest, to have the conversation with me that she should have had with herself years ago. Though it made a sob catch in my throat just to think of it, I wondered if, given the chance, Janice would be able to convince me.
But before I had the opportunity to give my plan any more thought, Janice opened her mouth and changed our world. “Simon, honey, come here a sec.” She scooted back from the table and pushed her knees apart, welcoming Simon when he came to stand by her by pulling him in between her legs and closing them tight. “Gotcha!” she said quietly, hugging him fervently for a moment.
“Mom.” Simon wiggled against her grasp, but Janice did not let go.
“I have a surprise for you, Simon,” she said, refusing to look at either Grandma or me.
I was standing behind Grandma, holding a stack of dirty plates that I quickly put on the countertop. My hands were shaking.
“But it’s Grandma’s birthday,” Simon said, eyeing his mother warily. His nose was only inches from hers.
“I said a surprise, not a present,” Janice clarified. There was a little smile on her face, but I was sure that her eyes were wet in the dimly reflected light of the kitchen.
Simon shrugged. Waited.
Janice took a deep breath and tightened her arms. “Do you know why we came here, Simon?”
“So that we’d have a place to stay,” Simon answered simply.
I was surprised that he could answer the question without any clarification. At first I didn’t even know what Janice was asking. It was hard for me to believe that Simon could even remember a time without us or why he and Janice had journeyed to Mason over five months ago. I had a very hard time picturing my life without him.
“You’re right. But why did we come to Grandma Nellie and Julia’s house?”
All at once I knew what she was going to do, and Grandma must have realized it too because she collapsed a little in front of me. I saw her shoulders wither, and a tiny exhalation deflated her enough to cause me to put my hands along the sides of her arms, holding her together, holding her up.
“They’re our friends,” Simon explained.
Janice nodded. “Yes, they are. But you know what? They’re more than that too.”
I didn’t know what Simon was capable of grasping at the age of five, but his eyes darted to mine and then sought out Grandma’s, and there was something sparkling and enchanted in them. Whatever Janice was going to say, he believed that it was a wonderful secret, something sweet and unexpected and delightfully mysterious. It was all a magnificent game.
Still refusing to look at me, Janice said the thing that I had been longing to admit since the day she and Simon showed up on our doorstep. “You know how you’ve always wanted a little sister, Simon? Well, you don’t have a little sister, but you do have a big sister. Julia is your big sister, sweetheart.”
The punch line was a bit confusing for Simon, and although I could tell he wanted to laugh, to celebrate, he didn’t quite get it. His eyebrows furrowed together in uncertainty. “But you’re my mommy,” he said.
“I’m Julia’s mommy too,” Janice replied slowly, as if measuring her words would make them easier to digest.
“But.…” Simon’s head turned from his mother to me, trying to connect the dots and apparently failing.
Janice tried again. “A long time ago, I lived here in Mason, and I had a beautiful baby girl. I named her Julia. And then I …” She trailed off, struggling to find the right words to cover all that had happened and then condense them into a format suited for an almost-kindergartner. I didn’t envy her in her task. “Then I had to go away for a while and … and find you.” Janice cupped Simon’s face in her hands. “But now you’re home, and I can tell you that Julia is your sister.”
Her words were nowhere near sufficient. They didn’t begin to scratch the surface of the truth, of all the things that would need to be revealed to my younger brother. But for now, for this night of birthday cake and surprises, Janice had said enough. It was a beginning, and finally Simon knew that I was his sister.
He was studying me with his great, dark eyes, the color of damp earth under an overturned rock, half-hidden behind his perpetually crooked glasses. I studied him back. And then, as though seeing me for the very first time, Simon’s face sparked to life and he waved at me from between his mother’s arms. “Hey, Julia! Did you know that you’re my sister?”
I nodded mutely, beaming at him in contradiction to the sick feeling crawling around in my stomach, loving him, even as I began to understand what Janice had just done. “You’re home,” she had said. Not “We’re home.”
Letting Go
JANICE LEFT THE FOLLOWING DAY.
She packed a very small bag and left her favorite shirt hanging on Grandma’s clothesline, flapping softly in the wind as if waving good-bye. I knew that it was her way of assuring us that she would come back, that this little trip was indeed nothing more than an opportunity to “tie up a few loose ends.” But I also knew that Janice’s doubts and inadequacies ran deep, and she hadn’t yet figured out that running away was no solution at all.
It was funny. I had wanted this from day one. I had looked forward with an almost desperate anticipation to the day that her car would pull out of our dusty driveway. But when Janice actually threw her soft-sided suitcase in the back of her car, I felt like I had been sucker punched. Out of the blue. Completely unexpected. Unfair. This wasn’t the way things were supposed to end again, and although Janice assured us she wouldn’t be longer than a week, something about her departure felt very, very permanent.
She was leaving so much behind.
She left Simon behind.
Grandma and I never had a chance to say no because Janice never formally asked us if we would take care of him. We were thunderstruck. We were utterly speechless. Not that we could have forced ourselves to deny Simon anyway, but it would have at least given us an opportunity to dissuade her. As it turned out, when Janice walked into the kitchen the morning after Grandma’s party with a suitcase in her hands and a wary smile running a thin line across her mouth, Grandma and I could barely muster enough energy to move past our shock and part our lips to say good-bye.
We all followed her out the door after she chased down a fresh muffin with a cup of coffee so hot it made her wince as she gulped it.
“I have to make a quick trip,” she said, forcing cheerfulness as she wrenched open the car door. “I’ll be back in no time.”
“What about your job?” Grandma asked, dismay making her reach out to touch the hood as if her fingers could stop the vehicle from backing away.
“Oh yeah,” Janice said, smacking her forehead with her palm. “Can you call the office and tell them I’ll be out of town for a few days? That would be so great.”
“What about Simon?” I asked, ruffling his hair absently as he stood beside me, apparently unconcerned with his mother’s departure.
“I’m going to stay here with you,” he said, looking up at me. “My sister.”
; I tried to smile at him but my lips would not comply.
“I’ll be back soon,” Janice repeated. “It just doesn’t make sense for me to lug Simon along when he’d rather stay here with you anyway. Right, buddy?”
“Right,” Simon agreed, giving her two thumbs-up. It was obvious that they had already spoken about Janice’s little plan, and Simon was completely on board. However, he was also oblivious to the way Janice’s eyes darted frantically away from his, the way her hands trembled so that her car keys filled the air with a quiet jangling sound. He knew what she wanted him to know, nothing more.
Janice took a shallow, shaky breath. “Well,” she said, shrugging awkwardly and then patting her sides with her arms straight and stiff. “Guess this is it.…”
We all stood stock-still, unable to move, or maybe unwilling, because it would mean that this moment would actually have to move forward. Maybe, if we stayed like this, if we just breathed in and out and didn’t say a word, we could linger long enough for Janice to change her mind.
But Janice wasn’t about to let that happen. She walked toward the car.
“Are you sure you have to—?” Grandma started.
Janice interrupted. “You’re acting like this is a big deal. I’ll be back in a few days.” The reassurance was for Simon, but Janice didn’t look at him or at Grandma and me while she said it.
“See you soon!” Simon chirped, slipping from my side to give his mom a bear hug. “Have a safe trip!”
“I will,” she said thickly, pressing her face into his hair. “See you soon.”
Grandma moved forward when Simon ran off to chase one of the barn cats, and she caught Janice’s arm in a grip that left the skin peeking out white between her fingers. She whispered something to Janice that sounded like “You are stronger than this.”
“No, I’m not,” Janice replied just loud enough for me to hear. Then she said clearly, with a confidence that I couldn’t quite believe, “Thank you so much for your hospitality, Nellie. When … when I come back, we’ll have to work out something more … permanent.”
I watched my grandma nod almost imperceptibly; then she enveloped Janice in a hug so tender it made my heart twist. “Come back, Janice.”
Janice gave a hollow little laugh and pulled away. “I will.”
Grandma backed away because there was nothing else she could do.
When I stepped forward, I wasn’t sure what I intended to do. There were no words forming on my tongue. There was no argument that I longed to convey. I was only aware of a need to touch my mother, to let her know in some small way that she had not entirely failed. I could sense an echo of grace somewhere just out of earshot; I wanted Janice to hear it.
I had hated her so much. I had resented her for leaving, blamed her for so many things that were broken and wrong, held her accountable to a list of crimes that could bury the world beneath an immovable mountain of guilt. And while I may have even been justified in my assessment of her utter lack of worth as a mother, while the world around me might agree with my childish accusations, I found that I didn’t feel that way anymore. Something was different. As I stood on the driveway and surveyed the woman who called herself my mother, I didn’t burn with anger or wish her ill. I didn’t feel vindicated in her hasty departure.
Somehow I regretted it.
It didn’t feel right.
Janice blinked furiously as I approached her, as if she knew that each tear would be counted as evidence that her little trip was more than a weeklong adventure. “Julia, I—”
I stopped her. “I didn’t get to say anything the last time you left. I won’t let that happen again.”
She looked horrorstruck, as if I had pulled a knife on her and was edging ever closer.
“No, no,” I tried to clarify quickly. I put my hands out in front of me in supplication, in surrender. “I’m not mad. I just … actually … I think I forgive you.” The statement surprised me, but even as I probed it carefully, wondering what darkened corner of my soul it had come from, I knew that it was true.
Her face blanched. “No, you don’t,” she whispered. “You shouldn’t.”
“I think it started to happen when you told me that Ben has been calling you,” I said, almost more to myself than her. I played back my feelings, retreated to the day on the beach when Janice told us about Simon and the reaching ache of his chosen name. Something had changed then. Something had begun to make sense. Janice was like me in some ways, and I had realized it that day. We were both waiting for something, straining our ears to hear that echo of something more. That thing that would make us whole. She thought it was Ben or maybe that she would hear it if she could only escape the guilt of all of her missteps.
Janice was shaking her head at me.
“I didn’t exactly understand it then,” I continued. “I still don’t, but I was so illogically jealous when I heard that you were talking with him again. I thought that you’d go back to him. And …” I paused, testing what I was going to say before I let it pass my lips, wondering if it was really true. It was. “And I didn’t want you to leave.”
A part of me wanted to close the last few feet of space between us, to wrap my arms around Janice so she would know I meant what I said. But I didn’t quite dare. “I think we could be okay,” I murmured instead.
“We are okay,” Janice said, making her voice bright, though she looked ready to crumble at my feet. “I just have to go away for a little while.”
“You don’t have to go,” I coaxed, though I knew my words fell on deaf ears. Janice couldn’t hear the indistinct whisper of grace: the breeze through the fields, the birds above us, unaware of our four little points of life, but singing, singing, singing.
Janice was nodding and nodding, bobbing her head as if she would never stop. “Yes, I do. I have to go.”
I didn’t know what else to say. I didn’t know what compulsion burned in her soul, making her believe that she needed Ben or didn’t deserve us. Maybe she thought that this was her penance, the debt she owed for making so many mistakes—mistakes that left her unwilling or unable to forgive herself. But though I wanted to tell her what to do, I suddenly knew that I couldn’t change her mind. There was nothing I could do or say to force her to accept that she was looking in all the wrong places.
I put my arms out for her then, and Janice bowed into my embrace, curled awkwardly around the tummy that held her grandchild. It was a clumsy hug, inelegant, graceless, not at all the tender reunion that I had secretly hoped it would be one day.
Janice gave my cheek a fast kiss and patted my belly. “We’ll see you soon,” she said resolutely, and I believed her less because she looked me straight in the eye. “You give that baby a good name.”
“I will,” I promised.
But something in the finality of what Janice said had given her a little shock. “I mean, I’ll be back soon. I’ll meet the baby soon.”
“It’s a boy,” I told her. I wanted her to know.
The smile that sprang to Janice’s lips was real, if only for a moment. Then she visibly gathered herself, gave her keys a hearty jingle, and turned determinedly toward the car.
I whispered so that only she could hear, “You can come back.”
Janice didn’t turn around.
She was in the car, sunglasses resolutely hiding her eyes and one arm slung over the seat so she could turn her head to back out of the driveway, when I remembered. I didn’t even notice that I had taken a step back, a step away from her, until the tiny black pearl around my neck thumped lightly against my chest. I had put it on for supper the night we were supposed to patch things up, and though I had raised my hands many times to remove it, I never did. The pearl hid in the hollow between my collarbones and became a part of the landscape of my skin. But it was a token that Janice had offered before everything changed; it was for a different life, a different ending. I had to give it back.
I took a few jogging steps toward her car, unclasping the chain with fumbling finge
rs as I went. “Janice!” I called. “Janice, wait!”
Her eyes were impossible to read behind the windshield and the opaque glasses, but her lips were slack and wary, a limp banner beneath a breathless sky. I could tell that Janice didn’t want to stop; she didn’t want to wait another second lest she lose her nerve and find herself unable to follow through with the plan she had so haphazardly thrown together. But she stepped on her brakes anyway. She waited for me.
“Here,” I said, holding out the necklace so that it dangled from my hand like some wilted flower, its petals plucked and scattered. Janice’s window was closed; I didn’t say any more. What else was there to say?
The window slowly hummed down, and Janice replied above the lowering glass, “Keep it. I gave it to you.”
“It was never meant for me,” I heard myself mutter. I thrust it at her again. The pearl swung over the now-hidden glass, back and forth, back and forth, a pendulum between my world and hers. “Ben will wonder where it is.”
“Ben?” Janice sounded surprised. “Julia, I didn’t get that necklace from Ben. I got it from your father. He gave it to me when you were born.”
Suddenly the arc of the necklace seemed precarious. I put my other hand beneath it and caught it in my palm, a cool slither of tangled chain that rested like a still pool in my hand. “Dad?” I whispered. “Dad gave it to you?”
Janice curled her lips together, and I could see her eyebrows bow above the plastic, tortoiseshell rim of her sunglasses. “It was never meant for me.”
I backed away, the pearl a perfect seed trapped beneath my fingers. It was the catalyst for a shiver that trembled like a rush of water over my skin. I closed my eyes and shook my head to clear it. I said, “Thank you.”
Janice didn’t say, You’re welcome.
We watched her go, Simon cradling a kitten that had disappeared over a month ago and was now nearly wild from lack of human contact. “Ouch!” he yelped when the cat scratched him and leaped away. But he was already chasing her down, and Grandma smiled sadly in spite of herself, taking a step toward me and pulling my head onto her shoulder.
