Lava Falls

by Lucy Jane Bledsoe

  But John was strangely silent. And when he did speak, his voice was uncharacteristically tinny. He said, “We turned him over to the police in Rawlins. Of course.”

  “They have no record of that.”

  John warmed up a bit. “That doesn’t surprise me. Rawlins, after all.”

  Ray fumbled with the cartons of Chinese food and poured green tea into three white ceramic cups. “Please,” he said, gesturing for Francine to sit. “Help yourself.” She did, and for a few minutes, they ate in silence. The fork trembled in Francine’s hand as she lifted bites to her mouth. She was hungry. The thought of their son’s mother being hungry upset John. He tried to put the feeling aside. She’d made her choices. When she took a sip of the green tea, she made a little face. Ray wished they’d bought some Coke or at least made iced tea.

  When she finished half her plate, Francine set down her fork and studied John’s face. Then she turned her scrutiny onto Ray. He actually squirmed a bit as she seemed to search for a handle on his soul.

  She stood up and pushed back her chair. She got her jacket out of the closet and put it on. She took a long last look around at their artwork and colorful walls and plush rugs and cushy couches. She sighed in the exact same way Akasha sighed when he felt defeated. It always made John want to crush his son to his chest and promise him that abandonment was in his past, that there was nothing in his future that wasn’t possible. He couldn’t help noticing that Francine was young enough to be his daughter. He also couldn’t help noting her vulnerability. And resourcefulness. He swallowed back the softening, though. Out of necessity.

  Ray stood, too. He said, “Francine, wait.”

  Every cell in her body seemed to pause. She waited.

  Ray said, “Oh, shit.”

  John said, “I’ll make drinks. Do you drink, Francine?”

  “No,” she said, “But under the circumstances . . .”

  They laughed together for the first time. John poured short shots of scotch. It wouldn’t do to get loopy.

  “Maybe if you were willing to listen,” Francine said.

  “Of course,” Ray said. “Of course we’re willing to listen.”

  They settled on the couches. She touched her lips to the scotch and made the same face she’d made at the green tea. She set the tumbler down and explained. When she was fifteen years old, she got involved with her high school principal. She was doing very well academically and he offered to help. He took her to a special college prep class on Saturdays. Her parents were happy she was getting the extra attention, and since she had a boyfriend, it didn’t occur to them that the man was anything but decent with their daughter. And the truth was, he didn’t force himself on her. She would have said, if anyone had asked, that she was in love. He wasn’t that old. He was funny. He was gentle. He taught her about sex. He promised her college. When she got pregnant, she protected him and told her parents that her boyfriend was the father. Francine dropped the boyfriend, and thankfully her parents weren’t interested in confronting him about the pregnancy. The principal tried to convince her to get an abortion, but she knew her parents would forbid that, and anyway, she wanted the baby. She was elated, and not surprised—their relationship seemed that real to her—when the principal said they would get married. They would go somewhere far away, maybe Los Angeles. He said he was conducting a nationwide search for a new job. In the meantime, he continued pressing for an abortion. They couldn’t get married yet, he argued, and if she had the baby, they would take it away from her. Still she refused, and so he convinced her to run away. It would keep both her and the baby safe, he said. He paid for the room in Laramie and visited on weekends. When the baby was born, he came right away. She was touched because he’d bought a car seat and baby clothes. As they drove down the highway, the baby in her arms, she let herself believe they were going to Los Angeles right then. At five o’clock in the morning, he pulled off the highway and into the town of Rawlins. Francine didn’t think to ask what he was doing. Holding and nursing her baby was a kind of bliss she’d never known before. Even thoughts were intrusions. He pulled up to the bus stop and said that he was going to set up the new car seat so that they could strap in the baby. He said it wasn’t safe for her to hold the infant in her arms. She kissed her baby, snookered his neck, talked to him while the child’s father wrestled with the car seat. When she turned and saw him put it on the bus stop bench, she assumed it was for some assembly purpose. When he took the baby from her, she handed him over willingly, wanting him to have every measure of safety. Then, realizing that she was very hungry, she reached for an orange and peeled it. A few moments later, as she was about to turn to check on their progress, the principal threw himself into the driver’s seat. His agitation, and the way he accelerated into the quiet Sunday morning, startled her. She asked what he was doing. As he sped onto the freeway, she turned and saw the empty backseat. Her disbelief paralyzed her. She doubted her vision, not him. She begged him to tell her what was happening. He began talking in cool, measured sentences that he’d obviously rehearsed.

  “Where is my son?” Francine asked now, her face rigid with calcified sorrow. “Where is he?”

  No, was all Ray could think. No, no, no.

  Anyone who, John chanted silently to himself.

  “I’ve never touched an orange since,” Francine said, took a gulp of the scotch, and finished her story. The baby’s father drove too fast for her to jump out of the car, although she’d wished a million times that that’s what she had done. He told her it was the very best thing for the baby, that no one would let her keep him, that some nice couple would adopt him and that he’d have everything he needed, much more than she could ever give him, including a measure of dignity. He asked her what she thought she—a black teenage girl, those were his words—could ever give a child?

  He drove them back to the room in Laramie and stayed with her for twenty-four hours. He held her while she cried. He talked and talked and talked. He wove long stories about the baby’s life and how good it would be.

  She knew now that he was only protecting himself. It worked. He was still principal at the Cheyenne high school, and she hadn’t seen him since, nor had she ever exposed him. She got a job in Laramie and eventually reconciled with her family, telling them that she’d given the baby up for adoption. A smothering shame kept her from ever returning to the bus stop.

  “Now I’m ashamed of my shame,” she finished quietly. “If I had gone back to Rawlins then, even a week later, maybe I would have found my son sooner.”

  She knew they had Akasha.

  “We love him,” Ray said softly.

  Her face crumpled and the sobs loosened.

  “He’s our whole life,” John said.

  They waited while she cried, and when she could finally lift her face out of her hands, she said, “I don’t know what’s making me cry harder. Knowing that I’ll see him again soon. Or that he’s been safe all this while.” And she cried some more.

  Ray nodded at John, who picked up the phone. Getting Mindy to agree to bring Akasha home was next to impossible. She refused. Ray watched John open and close his eyes as he endured Mindy’s storm of words. They were loud enough that he heard some of them. “Never again . . . you don’t know women . . . I won’t.” But John used his most lawyerly voice to tell her that if she didn’t show up in half an hour with Akasha, she could consider herself fired.

  Francine washed and dried her face. She arranged herself on the couch to look relaxed. She wanted to be as beautiful as possible for her son. While they waited, Ray and John told her the highlights of Akasha’s nine years, and she listened with intense concentration.

  Thirty minutes later, Mindy unlocked the front door and brought in the boy. She stood pressed behind him with her arm held down across his shoulder and stomach. She glowered at Francine.

  Francine didn’t lunge at Akasha. Nor did she cry out or claim him in any way. She controlled her demeanor, sitting with her legs crossed, hands in her lap. O
nly her eyes touched his face. He looked back.

  “Come in,” John said. “Mindy. Akasha. Sit down.”

  They did.

  “This is Francine Wynne.”

  Akasha shrugged, and everyone but Mindy laughed.

  “She’s a new friend of ours.”

  “Hi.” Confused by the emotion thickening the air, Akasha raised a hand and gave a little wave, and then glanced at his dads.

  “It’s very nice to meet you,” Francine said, trying not to frighten the boy with her wonderment.

  “Can I use the computer?” Akasha asked.

  “Sure,” Ray said. “Go on. You’re free to go, too, Mindy.”

  Akasha ran off to John and Ray’s room, but Mindy stayed put.

  “Actually,” John said. “We need to talk to Francine—”

  Ray put a hand on John’s knee. “Mindy can stay.”

  John nodded, a feeling of doom ballooning inside him. Everyone, even Mindy, seemed to have more power in this situation than he did.

  “I want,” Francine whispered, “the very best for my son.”

  Ray wished he’d heeded John’s warnings. Francine’s intelligence hadn’t been a surprise. After all, she was Akasha’s mother. Her ferocity, too, could be expected, from a biological point of view. But the grace in her conduct was downright threatening. Ray cleared his throat, preparing to take control of the situation.

  Francine said, “You’re going to think I’m bribing you.”

  Mindy narrowed her eyes.

  “You might not believe I want what is best for him.” She paused and said, “Akasha,” holding the name in her mouth.

  “You actually don’t have any rights here.” John took the offensive. “No court would back you. Ever.”

  John’s attempt to shame her away from Akasha made Ray uneasy. But the tactic was necessary. He nodded hard in agreement.

  “Two gay guys?” Francine said, folding her arms. “Huh.”

  Her threat shocked them for a moment, but then Ray actually smiled. He realized he was glad that she could no longer be shamed. Not only for her, but for Akasha.

  But John charged forward. “Two gay guys with good jobs who have given him everything. Don’t even try—”

  “I’m his birth mom.”

  “Oh, right. Anyone who—”

  Ray put a hand on John’s arm. “Let’s listen.”

  “I got my GED while waitressing in Laramie. That took me two years. I’ve been working as an aide in the hospital since then. I want to go to nursing school,” she said. “Tuition and an apartment until I’m through. Full visitation rights with Akasha. Once I have my nursing license, nothing more financially. I’m willing to put this all in writing.”

  “You’re willing?” John was incredulous.

  Mindy made her hissing sound—Sss, sss—the one she used to veto words, behaviors, ideas.

  “He lives with us,” Ray said. “That’s not negotiable.”

  John swung around and looked at him like he was crazy, like he was bargaining with a terrorist.

  Francine’s tears flowed freely again. “I only had him for a few hours. But I’ve lived with my son for nine years, too. I love him. I love Akasha.”

  John said, “But hey, if you can profit off him, all the better, right?”

  Mindy stood up as if she were going to drag Francine out of the apartment herself. Ray grabbed her wrist and pulled her back onto the couch.

  Francine repeated, “I want him to have the best.”

  Ray nodded, getting it. “Including the best mother.”

  John shook his head, refusing to buy in. “You gotta be kidding,” he said to his partner. “No. The answer is no.”

  “Why don’t you think about it,” Francine said, standing up. “I want to be in my son’s life. And not as some girl who made a very big mistake, a high school dropout who cleans toilets for a living. I want to be someone he can be proud of. And I know I can be.” She took a deep breath. “I’ll be in town through the weekend.” She looked at John. “On my own dime. Please keep your credit card in your wallet.”

  John tried to smirk, but couldn’t. Ray tried to think of a way to give her some money, but that would be like trying to put out a burning building by spitting on it.

  She was just a girl herself, from Wyoming, of all places, and yet she sounded commanding as she said, “I’d like to say goodnight to him.”

  Akasha was asleep on John and Ray’s bed. He looked exposed and helpless sprawled on the king-size mattress. His hands were loose, open cups. His lips were slightly parted, as if he’d fallen asleep midsentence. Francine took a couple of steps toward him, reached out to touch him, and then changed her mind. She didn’t say another word as she gathered her pink parka and let herself out.

  Ray and John fought for two days straight. Ray struggled to overcome his fear of losing Akasha and took the position that it would be good for him to have his mother in his life. He wasn’t sure he trusted Francine, but he had to admit that her story changed everything. Working with her just seemed smarter than working against her, even though her proposal would cost tens of thousands of dollars and who knew how much in emotional currency. John argued that he’d had no more advantages than she’d had, probably fewer. When he was fifteen, he knew what was at stake when he had sex with someone, and he also knew exactly how hard he would have to work to get himself to where he is today. She’d made her choices a long time ago, and she’d have to live with the consequences.

  John didn’t think of himself as hardhearted. But he couldn’t bear the risk. They didn’t know Francine. They didn’t know what she’d do if they let her into their lives. Shutting her out, completely, was the only safe option. Akasha sat in the balance.

  As the week progressed and they didn’t hear from her, both men became uneasy. Ray was curious, and John was suspicious, but they agreed they needed to talk with her. Away from the house and excluding Akasha. She didn’t answer the messages they left at the Larchmont. When they stopped by the hotel, they learned that she’d checked out. Francine had left their lives as suddenly as she’d come.

  For the next couple of years, they nervously awaited letters from lawyers, or worse, some bureaucratic seizure of Akasha from their home. Both Ray and John felt a twist in their gut when they thought of Francine. Neither knew if they’d done right or wrong. They didn’t even know what their choices had been.

  John had the first sighting, three years later, when Akasha was twelve. A winter storm canceled school, and all the neighbor kids were sliding on pieces of cardboard down stairways packed with snow. Akasha smacked his head on the iron railing surrounding the trunk of an elm. His blood soaked the white snow. Mindy raced him to the hospital. Ray was in Baltimore with the quartet, but John left work and got there as they were stitching him up.

  Francine sat in the hospital waiting area. At first, John assumed it had to be an uncanny resemblance. But when she raised her eyes and met his, the defiance was unmistakable. Claiming her right to be there for Akasha’s medical emergency. John was astonished. He felt leveled, outdone. Like before, his first impulse was to call the police. And say what? That his son’s mother was stalking them? Clearly she’d witnessed the accident and made her way to the hospital. Clearly she was watching their family. How often? From where?

  John ignored her. And he didn’t tell Ray. Maybe that made her bolder, because he saw her again, just a few months later. He arrived late to a school concert in which Akasha was playing the piano. She stood in the very back of the auditorium, holding her coat tight around her body. If she saw him, she pretended she didn’t. He didn’t tell Ray about that time, either.

  Nor did Ray tell John about the times he’d sighted Francine walking down their street, then once in their neighborhood grocery. She frightened both men, but like a ghost, she seemed less harmful if unacknowledged. The last time they saw her was at Akasha’s high school graduation. Of course they were together this time, but each still pretended he didn’t know the woman wh
o looked exactly like their son.

  Akasha attended John’s alma mater and graduated with honors and a degree in art history. He won a Fulbright to study post–Cultural Revolution Chinese art and went off to Beijing for two years. Ray and John couldn’t have been more proud.

  In Beijing, Akasha fell in love with another Fulbright scholar, Megan, and when they returned to the States, both got into graduate programs in New England. The fathers thought they married rather young, but they were twenty-five, and anyway, Megan was pregnant. When their daughter, Zoey, was born, Ray and John went up to stay for a week. That’s when Akasha announced his intention to find his biological parents. Both fathers strongly advised against this. When he was twenty-one, they had told Akasha about the bus stop bench, the Cheyenne principal, and a bare minimum about Francine’s visit years earlier. They did not mention the stalking. In theory, they believed he should have as much information about his life as possible, but they didn’t want him getting hurt. At least that’s the excuse they gave themselves.

  That night, whispering in bed in Akasha and Megan’s guest room, John said that he couldn’t stand the idea of the principal experiencing some sort of redemption based on how well Akasha had turned out, that this man might take their son’s beautiful character and outstanding accomplishments as proof of his right action. In the morning, over coffee at the kitchen table, he told Akasha that he forbade him from going to Cheyenne. Akasha got up and pulled John’s head against his chest, saying, “It’s okay, Dad. Everything turned out all right, didn’t it?” Megan put a hand on Ray’s shoulder and squeezed gently. They were grandparents now, old men who apparently needed comforting. Ray reached for his granddaughter and Megan handed her over. This, he thought, is what an abundance of love will do for you. Such forgiveness. In moments like this, he could practically see the walls behind which he and John had lived.

  Akasha didn’t call ahead. Megan and Zoey traveled with him to Cheyenne, but they stayed in the motel while he went out to the house, which he’d found easily using an online people-search site. The principal’s wife opened the door. Thinking quickly, not wanting to drop a bomb in the middle of their lives, Akasha said that he was a former student. The man who came to the door was balding but robust looking. He came across as the kind of person who thought physical fitness equated moral fitness. He had a readymade public smile, probably from years of being a principal in a smallish town, but it wilted as he recognized Akasha. His mouth puckered. The veins in his neck bulged. Loudly, so that his wife could hear, he said, “Hey, how’s it going? Glad you stopped by.” And he shut the door in Akasha’s face.