Origin

by Diana Abu-Jaber

  “That doesn’t sound so bad,” I muse. “A retreat.”

  She rolls her eyes. “St. Rose’s was famous for taking in nutcases. There were all sorts of angry, scary ladies running my school. And there’s just too much—I don’t know—isolation, I guess, for it to be good for you—you’re too shut up inside yourself. That’s one thing I know I want. I want to be out, I want to be alive while I’m alive.” She gestures toward the windows.

  For nearly an hour, I try to move on to the next case files. That’s what you have to do, of course: you finish one case and you move on to the next. Usually a big batch of cases: classify the prints, arrange them in order, print the newly booked subjects. But my focus keeps scattering and I keep trying to ignore a rising sense of anxiety. It hurts to swallow and I have an odd, errant headache somewhere behind my right eye, the taste of an old penny in my mouth. I feel annoyed and defensive, angry at myself. I try to tell myself that I’ve done my job; I’ve ID’d the cause of death.

  I sigh heavily, and stare at some unfinished filing from the night before: the officer’s report on the latest crib poisoning. I page through the folder. There are photographs: the house—tiny and contained, an inward-falling shadow; the rooms look ruined, near-destitution, one window in the kitchen has a blanket duct-taped over it.

  And there are the shots of the deceased baby. So tiny. Her name was Odile Wilson. A vibration seems to rise from the paper. I pass my fingers over it. A mother stands somewhere just outside the camera range. Shuddering and weeping. I can’t look directly at the body. So I look in glimpses. The blur of face, small ovoid body, wrapped up. They’ll be checking her blood for heavy metals.

  I imagine the mother bending over the small form. The report says there’s no husband. Two other children, eight and twelve. They have three old dogs. In the photo, the baby is wrapped in a red blanket.

  Then a shadow is there, over the photographs. “So, you hear the latest?” Margo is standing over me with a clipboard.

  My fingers creep back from the images. It’s hard to see the expression on her face, the office lights are so bright behind her. She doesn’t move. “Frank and Alyce want to promote you. Alyce might be going up for division leader and you’ll be team leader.”

  My jaw tightens: this is nothing I want.

  She shrugs and turns away, fingering a gold hoop in her ear. “I don’t care. I know the two of you’re against me. Y’all’re on each other’s sides.” Sylvie looks up, blinking.

  I stare at her. “I’m not on any sides.”

  “It’s like the Civil War around here,” she says, settling at her desk. “Masters and slaves all over again.”

  I don’t respond, but a memory comes to me: while waiting for the elevator outside the office, I’d heard Margo’s voice coming through the ladies’ room wall. She was gossiping with Loni, a Haitian-American woman who works in Toxicology, saying, “And it’s funny, you know. Because here, Lena, with all her big ‘skills,’ doesn’t even know what color she is. She looks a mix to me—like she might have a black mommy, but she might be Puerto Rican, or maybe just a year-round suntan in Syracuse. Who knows, right?”

  “Jesus, Margo—” Sylvie holds up one hand. “Lena just figured out this really important case, didn’t she?”

  Margo sits back at her desk and faces Sylvie. “What you getting all indignant for? I’m not saying nothing. At least Lena has some talent.”

  “Oh thanks, that’s really nice,” Sylvie says.

  Margo looks over her shoulder at me; now I can see she’s frowning, as if she can’t quite place me. She picks up a sheath of papers and shuffles them fiercely, and then, her back to both of us, blurts, “I may not be team leader, but at least I know who I am!”

  I BARELY NOTICE the day’s passage: the sun blocked in behind clouds so it hardly seems to have risen at all. When I look at the windows, I can only see hints of the outdoors, dashed with reflections of the Lab.

  I’m crouched over the gray crib, as I have been for hours, twirling my thick dusting brush, fingers aching from holding them bunched together. The case is closed, but I’ve started dusting it yet again anyway. Retracing steps. I’m covering every inch of it. I look between the slats on the legs, underneath the bottom of the crib, moving by nearly imperceptible degrees. Earlier, I’d gone over the crib for spores, fibers, dirt, pollen. I’d placed a few iodine crystals into a fuming pipe, heated it with a lighter, and blew the iodine vapors onto a removable railing, hoping it might’ve absorbed some skin oils. Even considering that fingerprints are fragile, destroyed by the most delicate handling, the old wood seemed almost entirely untouched.

  Frank comes in that afternoon; he’s standing there, just watching. I assume he’s going to reprimand me for wasting time. Several minutes go by while I lift what might be a partial palm print from an inner corner. Finally, without turning, I say, “Hey Frank, I don’t want to be a team leader.”

  There’s a pause and he says, “Oh, I know that.”

  “Make Margo the team leader.”

  “Margo.” He snorts.

  I glance at him. “There something I can help you with?”

  “Carole was asking about you the other night, wondering how you were doing.”

  “Tell her fine,” I say, peeling away the lifting tape. “I’m fine.”

  “We’d like you to come to dinner,” he says. He clears his throat.

  I straighten up to look at him. He says, “’Round seven tonight? I can stop by and pick you up. It’ll be like old times.”

  Old times. I’d like to ask, Why old times all of a sudden? I rub the bridge of my nose. “I’ll take the bus,” I say. “I like the bus.”

  CHAPTER 19

  MY LIFE IS FULL OF SURROGATE PARENTS, OTHER PEOPLE’S CHILDREN. Even when I tried to be married, my husband wasn’t mine. It’s all makeshift. As far as I can tell, blood relations are empty promises anyway. Nothing can betray you like your own family. But people say nuclear family as if it’s an entity written on the cellular level. As if it’s more than protein and DNA.

  On the other hand, the only problem with not having a biological mother is that it makes everyone a potential candidate. For a time, Carole and Frank worked at being my parents. When Frank first hired me, his children, Gina and Laura, were still in high school, and I wasn’t much older. When the kids went off to college, Carole had me over for dinner regularly.

  For several years, I went to their house once a week, sometimes more. Carole fussed over me; she’d smooth my hair down with the flat of her palms, lick a thumb and push a strand back into place. She looked at me in the way older women sometimes do: tenderly and possessively. It annoyed Alyce when I came to work wearing a mustard-colored cardigan that Carole had made for me. “For heaven’s sakes,” she muttered. “Doesn’t she have enough children?”

  Then there was the Haverstraw case. They gave me a raise; a number of the detectives began bringing files to me in the Lab. The fingerprint division of the FBI called and offered me a job. And they called Frank to tell him they wanted me. Carole looked at me differently, as if she’d seen something that I’d deliberately concealed about myself.

  Occasionally, Carole shows up at the office: she brings Frank his lunch in a brown paper bag, while Alyce hides out in the office, glowering at her desk. But I haven’t been to their house in years. When I appear at their door that evening, Carole embraces me gently, as if we were both in mourning for someone, and says in her mild way, “Well, let me get a look at you, Lena! My goodness me.” Then she looks past me into the whirling snow and says, “I’m so angry that Frank didn’t drive you!”

  “I wouldn’t let him, Carole. The bus is fine.”

  “You’ve got to learn how to drive. Maybe Frank could teach you.”

  I stamp the snow off my boots and step in. “I don’t believe in cars.”

  “Well,
I don’t believe in them either, and I still drive the darn things around.” She holds me at arm’s length in the entryway, studying me. I glance into the living room—I can just make out Frank’s profile. And in the chair facing his, the familiar shape of a leg passing over a knee. “Oh—Charlie’s here?” I feel a burst of annoyance.

  She tucks her short whisk of hair behind one ear. “Well, apparently so,” she says, tersely.

  I enter the living room and the men’s legs uncross and move to standing. Charlie’s wearing a charcoal-colored pullover sweater that I’d given him years ago. His temples are turning silver and there’s an incipient fan of lines at the outer corners of his eyes. He smiles a soft, closemouthed smile—granting me absolution. Frank rises from the other end of the couch. I pick up the sour, wheaty smell of beer. Swany, their greyhound, stands and slinks over, nudging her head under my hand.

  “So there you are,” Charlie says magnificently. “Woman of the hour—the great crime fighter herself!”

  I’d much prefer it if Charlie weren’t here. I consider backing out, but Carole blocks the door behind me, as if she’d read my mind.

  “We’re glad you’re here,” Frank says. He clasps me in a loose hug.

  Charlie hangs back. His face guarded, eyes red-rimmed, an overwide smile. “We were about to give up on you.”

  “I’ve been pretty busy all day,” I say, my parka only halfway down my arms. “I was going over the Wilson crib one more time, before they release it from Evidence.”

  Charlie rolls his eyes. “Oh boy, next thing you’ll be turning into some pansy-ass detective.”

  “That doesn’t sound so bad to me,” I snap.

  Frank makes a whittled-down noise in his throat. He slips the parka from my arms, sidestepping us, and goes to the entry closet. Carole says, “I’ll check on dinner.”

  Charlie bunches his lips and looks away from me. Charlie says there are two ways of doing things—the cop way and the idiot way. He and the other patrolmen routinely mock the detectives for being “sensitive.” Charlie says that cops are the ones “on the ground.” But when Charlie’s out of uniform, things are murkier for him. He’s not supposed to handcuff people or demand their credentials just for being “idiots.” He scowls in the gloomy light.

  Charlie stays reserved as we sit down to dinner. There are steaks for the men and spinach casserole for me and Carole. Frank and Charlie sit next to each other and as they talk, Charlie starts to relax. He and Frank eat heaping mouthfuls and discuss the Orangemen’s latest upset, the state of the Carrier Dome, the condition of the team this year. Frank sits back in his chair. Three framed studio portraits of their grandchildren beam back at them from the sideboard.

  Charlie’s voice gets ragged with laughing and drinking, and his neck and ears turn red. He looks over at me and says, “Lena, when are you going to start eating real food, hunh?” He gives Frank a nudge. Frank smiles thinly and Charlie says, “Lena always thinks her food is looking at her.” He waggles his index fingers at me, pretending to wave a couple of eyes on stalks.

  I blurt out, “Charlie, you’re just mad because you think there’s something between me and Keller Duseky. I barely know Keller. I just ran into him once or twice.”

  I notice Carole’s hand go motionless on her fork. The light at the centers of Charlie’s pupils is like mica. But he laughs again, loudly. “Hey, whatever you say, kid.”

  At the head of the table, Carole’s gaze flits between our faces, the plates and silverware. She reaches across the table to gather the emptied serving dishes. I stand quickly. “Let me help,” I say. She doesn’t try to protest or say, No, sit, for which I am grateful. Frank and Charlie sit back and let me slide the scraped-clean plates out from under them. I follow Carole into the kitchen, lower the stack of plates into the sink, and turn on a column of water. I tilt the dishes under the stream, then pass them to Carole, who turns each dish carefully and fits them into the dishwasher.

  I feel release here, bent over water and dishes, tension evaporating into the soft lights of their kitchen, a condensation of steam and moonlight in the window over the sink, the cotton eyelet curtains glowing.

  “So it’s pretty busy at work?” Carole says, her voice so low at first it blurs into the refrigerator’s hum.

  “Well, you know,” I say, smiling at her. “There’s always a backlog. About a million DNA samples still have to be tested, and I can’t even think about all the prints.”

  She looks up at me slyly, over one shoulder, as she slips a plate into the lower rack. “I hear a little this and that around the clerks’ office.”

  “Oh, yeah?” I swirl water in a glass, hand it over to her, pick up a plate, scrape it off. “Like what?”

  She turns back to the dishwasher, arranges the glasses in fussy alignment. “Something about baby cribs. And that you solved the case.” She looks at me.

  I notice, just behind the curtains, a gilt-framed photo propped in the kitchen windowsill. One of their grandkids in a graduation cap and gown. She’s smiling for the camera, but her face is vaguely ironic. I can’t remember this girl’s name—it’s something fanciful—Selene? Sybil? I have the feeling, looking at this girl, that she would’ve chosen a plainer, sturdier name for herself—Ann, perhaps.

  “Oh,” I say slowly. “Did Frank—”

  “Oh no no no,” she says, still loading dishes. “Frank would never—he’s impossible to get anything out of—not that I haven’t tried and tried. No, you know how these city government people are—what’s inside stays inside. But you know—I do have a few connections of my own,” she says. I examine her profile as she works, the receding chin, the spray of gray hair across her forehead, and the same ironic, resolute expression as her granddaughter’s. She puts her dish on the counter. “So is it true, Lena? We heard that the babies were killed by some sort of allergic reaction or something.” Her fingers creep up her sternum.

  “Well, I’m not so sure that’s the whole story,” I murmur. Then I notice her staring, touching her throat, and it occurs to me that this is why I’ve been invited to dinner—so she could ask this. Disappointment flares in me. I feel duped. “I’m sorry, Carole, but I really shouldn’t—” I say, and she stops me, holding up one hand, “Of course you shouldn’t,” she says. “And I shouldn’t ask. I’ll wait for the press conference with the rest of them,” and in that instant, I start to forgive her.

  Carole uncovers a hooded cake dish on the kitchen table: chocolate angel food cake—the dessert that she used to make for me—not every time—it’s too much work, she’d explained, endless separation of yolk from white, the delicate inversion of cake cooling upside down. The base is ringed with sections of orange. “It’s supposed to be strawberries,” she murmurs. “Just try getting those in Syracuse this time of year.” A white line of vanilla glaze floats above the dark cake. I gaze at it with deep pleasure.

  Carole brings it to the table holding it up high. I carry the coffee cups, saucers, spoons. Frank and Charlie trail off from their conversation. Swany, who is lying supine on the living room carpet, lifts her head to watch us. The living room window is filled with pewter-colored snow. It is a sweet, still moment.

  Frank lifts his hands as if he’d whipped up the cake himself. “Will ya look at that.”

  My glance grazes up from the cake to take in Charlie, who is gazing at me. “Hey, Lenny,” he says softly.

  Premonition runs through me. Instantly I want to find my coat and go. But Carole is putting out coffee, fitting cups to saucers. She places a hand on my shoulder. I take a breath and try to ignore Charlie’s look.

  But Charlie leans forward. He lifts his coffee cup and says, “You see, Lena? How good this is? This is family. This is what the whole family thing is about.”

  Carole and Frank look both pleased and uneasy. But then Charlie extends his cup, so Frank fumbles to lift his and clink with Ch
arlie. Carole says, “Woopsie,” but doesn’t move to lift her cup.

  Charlie doesn’t appear to notice, though. He’s preoccupied with slipping the cup back into its little recessed spot on the saucer and I realize that his hands are trembling. Then he grabs the corner of the table that separates the two of us. He slides forward and I instinctively rock forward, hands out, to catch him.

  But I’ve misunderstood: he is going, lopsidedly, to his knee. He takes my hand—my shoulders are rigid—and says, “Lena, I want to do this thing right this time. I want to re-ask you to marry me. Here, in front of everybody. Even though you’re already my wife, and always will be, no matter who says what. I want you to take me back officially. Give me another chance to fix things up, show you what a different guy I’ve become. I know I’ve been a bastard. I know it a hundred times over.”

  “Charlie—” I try to break in, but Charlie squeezes my hand, talking faster. “I was bad—I was worse than bad! A lousy, god-awful husband. I know I hurt you, and I wanna make it up to you. Listen—just listen to me. We need a fresh start. Which is why I suggested this little get-together in the first place.”

  Carole has become fascinated with cutting the cake into perfect fractals.

  I lower my head, woozy. I would’ve given anything to hear this a year ago. But every inch of my skin, every bit of me, seems to be in a state of nervous contraction. I’m hyperfocused on the movement of Charlie’s lips, and even feel slightly revulsed at the thought of having once kissed them. I never would have imagined I could’ve stopped loving Charlie.

  “I wanted to remind you of this—of what it feels like to be in a family, Lena. We could have this again, live in a nice home, make decent lives. Doesn’t this feel good to you? All together like this? Eating our dinner and talking? Doesn’t this feel like it’s supposed to?”