The Window

by Jeanette Ingold

  "Actually, Karen," she said, talking to my mom, "this record of your adoption has never been sealed. Your mother left instructions to provide her name, should you ever request it."

  And then she wrote several lines on a paper, which she handed, folded, to Mom. "Of course," she added, "you must understand that this address is quite old."

  We were in the hall before Mom looked, her fingers trembling just a little bit, and a red spot on each cheek. I read with her, "Margaret G. McKenney," and an address in California.

  Mom dithered all the way home about whether she should write or call. Then, when we got home and telephoned Information, she learned there wasn't any listing for McKenney, not at the address Mom had.

  "It's a sign," Mom said. "I should write. The post office will forward a letter if she didn't move too long ago."

  Mom spent three more afternoons composing the perfect letter, finally settling on one that began, "Dear Mrs. McKenney, We have never met, but I am the daughter who..."

  And then she wouldn't mail it until she had good stationery to copy it on to. "I want her to like me," she said.

  "Mom, the kind of paper you write on won't make any difference."

  "Let's go buy some," she said.

  Outside, bits of dust hung in the air and a low afternoon sun glistened golden red behind them. We got into the car and Mom swung into traffic, just as a delivery truck turned a corner going too fast.

  When the truck slammed into us, my seat belt kept me from being thrown through the windshield, but my head still smashed into the dashboard.

  Mom had just been pulling her seat belt on when the accident happened, and she was hurled through the windshield and crushed against a utility pole.

  I become aware that Hannah is waiting for me to answer and I wonder how long I've been silent. I think back to what her question was.

  "There's not much to tell," I say. "A delivery truck hit us. Mom died in the hospital several days later, and you know what happened to me."

  I leave it at that. I've never really heard all the next part anyway, except that while I was starting to learn how to live without my sight, a child services worker was busy trying to figure out where to send me when I left rehab. She first tried to track down Margaret McKenney and learned she'd been dead a couple of years. Then she went to the adoption agency and from there backward to my uncles.

  Sometimes I imagine the woman calling. I wonder how she asked, "Want to take in a blind teenager?"

  But I suppose that's not fair. She must have worked hard to find me my family.

  After Hannah goes home, Emma asks, "Want to go to the grocery store?"

  When we're driving I say, "Aunt Emma, can I ask you another question?"

  "Certainly."

  "When you all found out about me ... When that child services woman asked if you wanted to help ... Did you and my uncles say yes right away, or did you have to talk it over?"

  "We said yes, of course. You're family, Mandy."

  "Without even talking it over?"

  Aunt Emma laughs.

  "I suppose we did spend an evening at the kitchen table. But the discussion started with your uncle Abe saying he'd make sure the stair railings were all safe. There was never any question what we wanted to do."

  "Just because I was family?"

  In a curious way I want her to say no. To tell me they wanted me for me, and not because they felt they had to take care of a relation.

  Which is stupid, because how could they have wanted me for me when we'd never met?

  But Aunt Emma must know what I'm thinking. She pats my leg. "Mandy," she says, "we'd want you if you didn't have a single drop of family blood."

  And suddenly I feel the most awful longing for my mom, and I feel so sorry for her. All those moves after all those things, from religion to good health ... Maybe if she'd somehow known to move here, she'd have found what she really wanted.

  I tell Aunt Emma, "I wish you'd taken my mother in."

  "But Mandy," says Aunt Emma, "we didn't even know your mother existed. We never knew Gwen had a baby."

  It makes me angry. "You could have known," I say. "Why didn't anybody go after Gwen?"

  But I'm the one who knows the answer to that question. Abe and Gabriel were too young when Gwen left, and their mother threw Gwen's letter away.

  One woman, and her meanness, spoiled Gwen's life and my mother's life.

  "She could have put the envelope back together if she'd tried harder," I say.

  "Who, Mandy?" asks Aunt Emma.

  But I shake my head. It's too complicated.

  Night comes. I open my window, pull the curtains around my shoulders, and call to Gwen.

  I want to talk to Gwen, alone and signing the adoption papers that would cut her off from the last person she had a blood tie to. I want to thank her for letting me know what happened, tell her that her granddaughter is going to be OK.

  A warm breeze wraps me in soft air, a breeze like the Chinook winds that blew the year Mom and I lived in Montana. I can't tell if I am wishing the words or hearing them, but a woman's voice says, "I'm glad, Mandy."

  The breeze stirs, slowly lifting the lace curtains from my shoulders. They drift in front of me, hang still on the sill.

  Chapter 16

  IT'S FIVE more days until Christmas and I still haven't figured out gifts for Aunt Emma and my uncles. I want to be able to give them things I've chosen, so they'll really be gifts from me, but I also want to be sure the gifts are just right. Hannah has asked a couple more times if I want her help shopping, but I've told her no, I have Christmas under control. I wish.

  At least I have presents for the girls at school. I take the wrapped boxes with me since it's the last day before vacation. We do our gift exchange at lunchtime.

  Charla goes first, handing me a case with three colors of lip gloss. "They're all in your color family, Mandy," she says. "Just remember, the darkest is on the left and the lightest on the right."

  I get a wood box with a croaking frog from Blakney, and Rosa has made ornaments for everyone. She tells me mine says, in gold glitter, ROSA AND MANDY, FRIENDS FOREVER.

  And they all say they like the writing paper I give them, which has a design worked around their first names. I did it on the computer with Ted's help, which was all right to take because he's an art student and I'm not, and I printed it on parchment-feeling paper that I bought specially.

  The only sad thing about our gift exchange is that Hannah is absent.

  I'm surprised she didn't call to tell me she wouldn't be in school because it's not like Hannah not to call. And she didn't say a thing yesterday about not feeling well.

  "A crummy time to get sick," I tell Ted as we walk to the resource room.

  He uh-huhs, like he's not exactly agreeing, or he's thinking something else altogether.

  The phone rings not long after class starts, and a moment later Ms. Z. says the principal wants to see me.

  "I'll walk Mandy over," Ted offers. "Mandy, you don't know which one the office door is, do you?" The way he asks it, I know he wants to go along.

  "No," I say, "I'm not sure."

  I have a sick feeling about the reason the principal has asked for me, a premonition, I guess, except ... Well, anyway, I'm right.

  "Mandy," he asks right off, "do you know where Hannah Welsh is?"

  "Isn't she home sick?" I ask, hoping mostly.

  "No, her father found she was gone this morning, and he's been looking and calling since." The principal's voice is stern. "Mandy, her father believes that if she's run off, she's probably gone to a friend."

  "No," I say with certainty. "If Hannah went to a friend, it would be to me. And I haven't seen her."

  Even as worried as I am, I'm also surprised at what I've said, at what I've realized. I am Hannah's best friend.

  Ted and I go back into the hall.

  "Ted," I say, keeping my voice low but turning so he can see my mouth. "Hannah's pretty upset about her folks getting a divo
rce."

  "I can imagine," he says. "My mother heard Hannah's mom just took off and left yesterday. For good. But that woman is such a ... Hannah will be better off without her."

  "No! That's not true." I say it so loud someone calls, "Keep it down. We're testing in here."

  "Sorry," I mumble to whoever it is.

  I know that Hannah was upset about her folks separating, but it would never have occurred to her that one of them might want to get away from her, too. I try to think how she'd take it. I remember the talk we had, how she'd imagined ways to run off.

  "Ted, we've got to find her before she disappears forever."

  "You know where she's gone?"

  "I think so."

  We take off right after school lets out, after first calling our folks.

  Nobody's home at Ted's house or mine, but we leave messages on the answering machines, so they won't worry.

  We drive the highway in silence, except once Ted says, "That woman," and I know he's thinking about Hannah's mother.

  I hear the traffic getting heavy as we get close to the city. I can feel Ted's concentration and guess he hasn't done a lot of this kind of driving. "There's a map in the glove compartment," he says.

  I unfold it so that it's ready for him to look at when he gets a chance. "Turn it over," he says. "You've got it wrong side up."

  "The bus station's got to be downtown," I shout. I don't want him trying to read my lips.

  "We're almost there now. I'm pulling into a gas station."

  And between the two of us, we get directions from a young-sounding guy who tries his hardest to act like he doesn't find anything unusual about us at all. "You're only a few blocks away," he says.

  The traffic has gotten terrible, cars and trucks all around us. Once Ted jams on the brakes so hard they squeal.

  There's no place to park near the depot, and I'm terrified we've arrived too late, that Hannah's already found a bus going someplace that sounds good, and that she's taken it.

  "Ted, let me out, please."

  He does, saying, "I'll come in as soon as I park."

  Then I'm on the sidewalk, and horns are telling Ted to move on. I can't hear what he's shouting about where the depot door is.

  Someone walks into my cane, knocking it clattering onto the pavement. It's put back into my hand, and a woman is saying, "Do you need help, Miss?"

  And because Hannah needs help, I say, "Yes, please. Would you take me inside?"

  We go through an entryway of rushing air into a station that's all echoing noise and smell, and the woman's suddenly eager not to get involved. She leaves me alone in the middle of hundreds of sounds and crowds of people.

  For a moment I feel helpless, wish I'd waited for Ted. What good did I think I could do by myself? Even if Hannah's here, she can hide in my blindness.

  A loudspeaker voice bounces off hard walls. "... to Amarillo, Albuquerque, Flagstaff, Phoenix, with connections to points south and west, now boarding in lane four."

  Amarillo. Albuquerque. Hannah would like even the words. Flagstaff, Phoenix, they'd both sound good, too, and a desert away.

  "Northbound passengers holding tickets to..."

  That's it, I think, the loudspeaker. Maybe I can get them to put on an announcement for Hannah, say, "Will passenger Hannah Welsh please check in at the counter?"

  But first I've got to find it myself.

  I walk forward until my cane runs into someone's foot. "Please," I say, "would you show me which way the ticket counters are?"

  Someone pushes from behind, and whoever I've asked doesn't answer.

  I bump into a child. Hear a slap, a woman saying, "Can't you see she's blind?"

  The noise is louder to my left, and I think that perhaps the counters are that way. I turn, run my cane out but not up, and bang my face into cold metal.

  The loudspeaker blares again, "Final call for passengers to Albuquerque, Flagstaff, Phoenix." Its twanging threat echoes through the depot.

  Is Hannah outside, waiting to board? Maybe already sitting on the bus?

  I have to get to the counter, get someone to look for her quickly.

  "Please," I say to whoever can hear. "Would someone please..."

  Kids start laughing, and a girl says, "She shouldn't be alone."

  I bump into another person, a woman who says, "The back of the line's over there." Her voice is bored and thinly hostile.

  "This is an emergency," I tell her. "Would you..."

  She doesn't let me finish. "Why do you people think you shouldn't have to wait in line like the rest of us?"

  The panic I've been fighting to hold in starts to well up.

  "Hannah," I call out, "Hannah?"

  The loudspeaker crackles, blares out, "First call for passengers to Oklahoma City, Tulsa, Springfield, St. Louis. Your bus is now ready for boarding in lane four."

  Lane four ... That means the Albuquerque bus has left. Please, please, don't let Hannah be on it.

  Whatever is inside me, despair and frustration, anger, raw screaming panic, it boils up and takes over. "HanNAH!" I shout as loudly as I can, loud, pulling every bit of air from my lungs, "HANNAHHHHHHHHH!" loud, and everyone, everything silences around me.

  Silences all for one brief stretching-out-to-forever moment, and I think every person in that depot is holding his breath. Then a titter sweeps around me, a relieved whisper that lets people get on with talking and waiting and saying good-bye to each other, a rising wave of sound that lets them pretend I'm not there.

  Chapter 17

  ALL I'VE DONE is make a fool of myself.

  Someone grabs my arm and I flinch. Who would grab so hard?

  Close by my face a voice demands, "What are you doing here?" A voice so angry, so harsh, I almost don't recognize it as Hannah's. "Why did you come?"

  "To get you, Hannah," I say. "Ted and I want to take you home."

  "I don't have a home." Hannah's words hit hot against my cheek, a tiny fleck of spittle wets my neck. "I don't need your help. Why don't you mind your own business and leave me alone?"

  "Why didn't you?" I'm suddenly as furious as she is. "You didn't have to come over, help the blind girl, just because I shouted."

  "What, I should have just left you?" she says. "I couldn't.".

  "Well, I couldn't either."

  Then the ridiculousness of it reaches us both, how we're mad at each other for doing the same thing. It doesn't make things right, but it's enough that we can talk.

  When Ted finds us we're sitting together on a bench, and I'm telling Hannah how afraid I was she'd caught that bus to Albuquerque.

  "It was full," she says. "But I'm going to take the next one, to there or anyplace else where I won't ever have to see Texas or my so-called family again."

  "How are you going to live?" Ted asks, like he's really curious. Like Hannah going off somewhere to live on her own is even an option.

  "Look, I'll be all right." Hannah's words are thick and I think her throat must ache with the strain of not crying. She blows her nose. I imagine her sitting up, straightening her spine. "I got a cash advance on my dad's charge card that I'll pay back. Enough to hold me until I find a job."

  "Doing what?" Ted asks. "Working in a fast-food place?"

  But they've both lost the point. "Hannah," I say, "you do have a home."

  "No. I'm not wanted."

  I'd like to tell her, "Of course you are," but I realize that if I'm not honest, she won't listen.

  So I say, "Hannah, you don't know if your mother wants you or not. Her going ... It might not have anything to do with you. I mean, she left your whole family."

  I think of Gwen's mother, tearing up Gwen's letter and then trying to piece the envelope back together.

  "Hannah, she may not even know herself what she wants, or who."

  "But she's my mother." Hannah makes it both a plea and a question, and I don't have an answer.

  So instead I say, "How about your father and brother? You know they want you."
r />   "They'll get along."

  Maybe, I think. And maybe not. Maybe her brother needs her as much as Abe needed Gwen. I'm trying to think how to explain that when I realize what it is that I really have to say.

  "Hannah, I want you to come back. You're my best friend."

  She waits, and I know I must say the rest of it. "And you're the first best friend I've ever had. I need you."

  There's this horrible long moment that she doesn't answer. I feel like I'm standing naked in the middle of a million staring strangers, all pointing and saying, "She's never had a friend."

  And then Hannah makes everything right. She says, "Best girl friend. Remember, Ted's the sensitive type."

  We drive away from the city, all three of us jammed in the front seat, me in the middle.

  I think, I'm the one who's holding us together.

  Ted's whistling "The Eyes of Texas," and I wonder what he hears in his head, and if he knows he is perfectly on key.

  Then, when we're almost home and Ted has shifted to Christmas music and is way down in the low notes of "We Three Kings," I get an idea.

  "Ted, can we stop by the mall?"

  "Never be able to park," he says, but he takes us there anyway, and after driving around for a while, we get a space.

  "Let's call your dad, Hannah," I say. "And then ... I need to buy presents. Especially for Aunt Emma. Will you help?"

  Christmas morning I wake to a springlike breeze coming in my window. I go over, lean out, listen to the voices of my uncles calling to each other and to the cattle they're feeding. Gabriel must see me, because he calls up, "Merry Christmas, Mandy."

  I pick up my mother's picture, imagine a face more soft than I used to see it, and with the beginnings of peace in her eyes.

  I run my finger down the airman's picture. Maybe his grin is for me, too.

  And then I'm washed and dressed and downstairs, and Aunt Emma and the uncles are squabbling about whether we do presents or have breakfast first.

  "May as well get ready to starve, Abe," Uncle Gabriel says. "Emma's no more patient than a kid."