Sister Mine

by Tawni O'Dell

  “Before we head on over to Eatn’Park, you have to be straight with me about what’s going on,” I tell Pamela once we’re outside. “You said something about this woman stealing your child. I need to know what you mean by that.”

  She avoids my eyes and intently watches the marquee where a workman stands at the top of a ladder dismantling the words: CONGRATULATIONS, NICOLE AND BRAD.

  “The child isn’t born yet,” she says without looking at me. “She’s carrying our child. My husband’s and mine.”

  “You mean the baby’s not hers?” I say with a little too much surprise and intimacy in my voice.

  “Excuse me?” she says.

  “What I meant to say was…do you mean she’s a surrogate mother?”

  “No,” she sighs and reaches into her purse for her sunglasses.

  Once she has them on and I can’t read her eyes, she looks at me while she talks.

  “She’s the mother, but it’s our child. We paid for it.”

  “What do you mean you paid for it?”

  “An adoption,” she says, irritation beginning to rise in her voice. “It’s all perfectly legal. Everything is being handled through an attorney.”

  “Gerald Kozlowski?” I ask without thinking.

  She studies me and answers slowly, “No, I don’t know any Gerald Kozlowski. What would make you think you know the lawyer handling our adoption?”

  “Nothing, really,” I reply quickly, trying to cover up another error. “It’s just that I happen to know a lawyer in New York who handles adoptions, and I thought maybe he was handling yours. You know what they say: It’s a small world.”

  “It’s not that small. Do you have any idea how many lawyers there are in New York handling adoptions?”

  “Not off the top of my head.”

  The sun ducks behind the clouds again and I pull my sweater tighter around me. The trees are bare, the grass is brown, and the few cars driving past still wear spatters of mud and a white coating of road salt left over from the recent icy winter.

  We begin walking toward Pamela’s SUV.

  “So how did you end up here?” I urge her to continue.

  “A couple of days ago, Jamie simply disappeared,” she confides in me. “I was frantic. The baby is due any day now. I had no idea where to look for her. Then I received a call from her telling me that she’s beginning to have second thoughts about the adoption. She said she decided to take a trip and visit an old friend who lives in the country and think things over.

  “I begged her to come back. I reminded her of everything we’ve done for her so far, how we’ve paid for her medical insurance, her apartment, food, clothing, entertainment, anything to keep her happy and healthy. And this is above and beyond the very substantial fee we’re paying for the child.”

  “Wow,” I state flatly, letting the reality of Shannon’s situation sink in. “That’s a pretty sweet arrangement. So you basically pay for her life while she sits around and grows a baby for you?”

  “That is a very harsh way of putting it, and I don’t appreciate what you’re implying,” Pamela snaps at me.

  I didn’t realize I was implying anything, but the more I think about it I guess I was. My gut tells me there’s something sickening in all this, but at the same time I can’t help but admire Shannon’s resourcefulness.

  “I thought you said you had a legal agreement with her? Doesn’t that prevent her from being able to skip out on you?”

  “The adoption isn’t final until after the baby is born and she signs the papers.”

  “She can back out until the very end?”

  “In theory, she shouldn’t be able to, but for the time being the biological mother always wins in these cases. You can see why we have to stay in her good graces.”

  “It sounds to me like she’s been using you.”

  “Oh, no. It’s been worth every cent to be with her throughout the entire pregnancy and to be able to keep an eye on her lifestyle. If you adopt a child who’s already born, you have no idea what kind of problems can develop down the road, since you don’t know anything about the mother: if she did drugs during her pregnancy, or if she drank, or if she had some type of disease. Jamie’s been tested for everything under the sun and given a clean bill of health. Not to mention that she’s an attractive girl. The baby should be attractive.”

  “How can you know that? What about the father?” I ask her. “What if she slept with an ugly guy? Or a really stupid one?”

  She stares at me coldly. Even without being able to see her eyes, I can tell she’s appalled that I would ask such a question.

  “I’m sorry.” I hold up my hands in surrender. “I was just curious. No offense.”

  A flatbed truck rumbles into the lumberyard across the road from the hotel. Next to the yard is the Mattress Warehouse advertising a half-off sale on waterbeds, and beside it is the triangular A-frame shell of one of the original Arby’s restaurants in the area, rising out of the empty parking lot like a small, dirty, orange pyramid that houses the silent cash registers of a dead economy instead of the opulent riches of a dead king. It went out of business about fifteen years ago. The booths can still be seen behind the filthy glass along with a menu behind the front counter promising a roast beef sandwich, medium drink, and fries for a dollar-fifty.

  “So maybe she wasn’t using you before, but what about now? It sounds like she’s blackmailing you.”

  She doesn’t comment.

  “What’s the plan for today?” I ask, changing the subject.

  “I finally convinced Jamie over the phone to tell me where she is and to let me come and talk to her in person,” Pamela explains.

  “That’s what you’re about to do right now?”

  “Yes.”

  “And you want me along because you think she could harm you in some way?”

  “I really don’t know what to think anymore. I thought I knew this girl. I thought I could trust her. And then she does something like this.”

  We arrive at her car. She opens her purse and begins searching for her keys.

  “Maybe she’s just having cold feet like she told you. Maybe she just needs a little assurance and everything will be fine,” I suggest, still wanting to think the best of my sister. “It’s not easy having a baby by yourself, even if someone is paying your expenses for you. She’s the one who still has to go through the pregnancy and the birth and then part with her child. And on top of all that, it’s her first baby. She’s probably scared.”

  Pamela pulls the keys from her purse and releases the automatic locks with the press of a button and a muted beep.

  She opens the driver’s side door.

  “Should we take one car?”

  “Yeah, I think that would be best.”

  I settle into the creamy leather luxury of her front seat and wait for the car’s engine to begin to purr.

  She holds the key in front of her as if she’s contemplating its purpose, then she turns her head to face me.

  “How did you know it’s her first baby?”

  “I guess I just assumed,” I tell her, mentally kicking myself for allowing yet another slipup.

  She lowers the hand holding the key and lets it rest against her thigh. She takes off her sunglasses with her other hand and fixes me with a searching stare.

  She has pretty blue eyes, but they’ve been clouded by discontent and doubt like a clear stream that’s been muddied by too many feet seeking relief on a hot day.

  She’s my age. We’re both forty-something white American women. To some, we would be considered peers, equals. We seem the same. To others, we couldn’t be more different. We represent the ever-deepening divide between the haves and have-nots. We have nothing in common.

  “Do you have any children?” she asks me.

  “I have a son.”

  She drops her eyes from mine as she pauses to consider my answer.

  We’re different. She has money; I don’t. I’m a mother; she’s not. But we’re b
oth thinking the same thing right now: She’s lucky, but I’m blessed.

  “I assumed that this was Jamie’s first baby, too,” she goes on, returning to our previous topic, “especially since she told us she had never had a baby before. Then when she disappeared I called her doctor’s office to see if they had heard from her. I talked to one of the nurses who always sees Jamie. I explained my concern that she might go into labor and that she would end up in a strange hospital with a strange doctor and no friends around her.

  “The nurse laughed and said I shouldn’t worry. She said she was sure Jamie would know what to do and would be fine during the delivery no matter where it took place, since this wasn’t her first baby. I was stunned. I asked her point-blank: ‘Are you certain she’s had a baby before?’ And the nurse said that she’d guess from the internal exams that she’s probably had several.”

  She looks at me again.

  I hope I’m keeping the shock off my face.

  “Jamie lied to me. Why would she lie to me? Because she wants to portray herself differently than she really is. Why would she want to do that? Because she doesn’t want me to know what she’s capable of doing.”

  Her voice drops to an angry whisper.

  “Now is when the blackmail begins.”

  She slips her glasses back on and starts the engine.

  “Do you carry a gun?” she asks me.

  Chapter Ten

  ONCE WE ESTABLISH that my role is not to protect Pamela Jameson from Jamie Ruddock but to act as a potential persuasive force if Jamie decides not to agree to Pamela’s latest offer, I’m able to convince Pamela that I don’t need to be present in the restaurant.

  I ask her to show me the photo again of Shannon a.k.a. Jamie, and I tell her that the girl looks vaguely familiar to me. Maybe she is originally from this area. Considering that I was a police officer in this town for over ten years, I don’t want to run the risk that she might recognize me and get nervous or suspicious.

  I also explain that if I sit within plain view of the two of them, Pamela might subconsciously find herself glancing in my direction and ruin the whole setup.

  I tell her we’ll keep in touch with our cell phones by using them like walkie-talkies. I have her call me, then leave the line open and lay her phone on the very top of the contents of her purse. I tell her to make sure she leaves her purse unzipped so I’ll be able to hear what they’re saying.

  There’s no way I’m going to miss hearing a single word of this conversation.

  Pamela heads to the ladies’ room first. I don’t particularly feel the need to hear her take a piss, so I take a little stroll around the parking lot while I wait for her to meet up with Shannon.

  I spot Shannon’s car. It’s parked around the corner from the entrance. I don’t know why she chose to park it there since there are plenty of spots near the door for the time being. In another hour the place will be packed with the after-church crowd.

  I checked out her car last night after Kozlowski told me at Jolly’s that as far as he knew, Shannon had never lived in New Mexico.

  The car had a New Mexico license plate but the glove compartment was completely empty—no registration or proof of insurance or owner’s manual—and the rest of the interior was suspiciously clean.

  Today it has a New York license plate and a Hertz rental brochure sitting on the dashboard. Pamela told me that Jamie doesn’t own a car.

  I peer in the side windows more closely and notice the dirty corner of a yellow license plate peeking out from under one of the rear floor mats.

  She must have switched plates this morning. There’s no doubt in my mind anymore that she came here from New York, where she’s known as Jamie Ruddock to Pamela Jameson and Shannon Penrose to Gerald Kozlowski. The New Mexico story is a ruse for me.

  I wonder where she got the plate. Probably stole it off some poor tourist’s car back in New York City.

  I’m reserving my opinion about what’s going on between her and Pamela and her and Kozlowski until I know more, but I already know I don’t like thinking my sister is a liar and a common thief.

  I return to Pamela’s SUV and crawl in the backseat, where I keep hidden while I watch the parking lot from the rear window.

  This is what I used to do during my six years on Capitol Hill: stand guard; watch and wait; somehow remain intently alert while being bored out of my skull; stay in the same position for hours but be able to spring into action at the first sign of danger; show no fatigue or frustration or fear. It wasn’t all that different from life in my father’s house.

  I suppose I was feeling a certain amount of burnout when I decided to leave D.C., even though this wasn’t the main reason I quit my job. But it was true that I was getting sick of babysitting politicians and dealing with their rude staffers and constantly being accosted by tourists who ranged from the slightly confused to the incredibly ignorant. I didn’t mind the foreigners who sometimes confused the Capitol Building with the White House, but the Americans who approached me on the Mall, laden with giant Slurpees and foot-long chili dogs and demanding to know where the hell Mount Rushmore was, really got on my nerves.

  Some nights when I’d get home after working a twelve-hour shift for the sixth straight day in a row, after I’d send the babysitter home, remove the twenty pounds of hardware I carried around on my body all day long, yank off my boots, peel off my hot, heavy uniform, check on my son, and eat some cereal for dinner while trying not to doze off into the bowl, I’d go to my room and stand naked in front of the eight-dollar Wal-Mart mirror I had nailed to the inside of my bedroom door, in the hopes of recognizing myself after a day of being separated from myself. I’d be overcome with a level of exhaustion that went far beyond the physical demands of my job and raising a child on my own. I was only in my twenties but sometimes I feared I was already tired of living.

  I didn’t understand the feeling. Clay and I had carved out a nice life for ourselves, certainly a better life than I had ever envisioned having when I was growing up in Jolly Mount.

  I had a demanding, potentially deadly, often tedious job, but it was a job that commanded respect and I made good money.

  I liked the men and the few women I worked with. I slipped easily and instantly into the confines of cop camaraderie. It was no different than the dynamics I’d witnessed my whole life among the Jolly Mount miners: the blind devotion and dependence on one another and the unspoken acceptance that no one outside the job will ever fully understand you, including spouses and children. Sitting in an Irish cop bar after one of my shifts, I finally began to understand why my dad needed to sit in Jolly’s every night after his shift in Beverly. The difference between us was that I wanted to go home and be with my kid.

  Clay and I lived in a sprawling redbrick apartment complex about thirty miles outside D.C. that was shaped like a comb that’s lost most of its teeth. There were over 500 units, only 300 parking spaces, and no elevators. We had a two-bedroom place on the third floor. It was small but the utilities were free, and we had a tiny balcony we both loved even though it looked out over a highway lined with cut-rate motels and car dealerships. We were able to fit two chairs and a small table on it, and we ate dinner there whenever the weather and my schedule allowed it.

  Overall, I was satisfied that I had everything under control. I could look at life’s ledger and check off all the big concerns: Job. Home. Child. Friends. Love life.

  It was the little things that started to get to me. The traffic. The pointless frantic urban pace. The way the nights were never dark and silence was never quiet. The way people wore their rudeness like a crown.

  I hated the fact that Clay couldn’t get on his bike and ride for miles, that he would never know the childhood independence of journeying alone on a country road and the freedom of cresting a hill and flying down the other side with the wind bringing tears to his eyes. He didn’t even own a bike. There was nowhere to ride it where he wouldn’t be run over or robbed.

  Sometimes when I l
ook back at that time in my life, I wonder if I sabotaged myself, if I was looking for a way to get Clay and me out of there without having to make the decision by myself. Is that why I chose to have an affair with the self-destructive teenaged son of a foreign diplomat, knowing it would have to end in scandal and that I’d be asked to leave my job at the very least?

  I was assigned to protect him and his family during one of his father’s visits. I got pulled for diplomatic duty a lot because I was a woman, I was easy on the eye, and I was personable. I got along well with the wives, I knew how to entertain the kids, and the men liked to look at me and fantasize that I might have to shield them from an assassin’s bullet by throwing myself on top of them as my shirt flew open and my breasts popped out of a black lace push-up bra.

  He was nineteen but he explained to me the first time we met that he had been considered a man in his country since the age of thirteen when he made love to his first woman and killed his first lion on a hunting trip to Kenya with his father.

  I told him he sounded a lot like the boys I knew back home, only they killed deer not jungle cats and their first romantic conquests were girls, not women.

  He was fascinated by the way I talked about home. He knew America was very big, and that it had many different types of terrain and all sizes of communities ranging from one-dog towns (he meant one-horse towns; I never corrected him) to some of the world’s largest cities, but he had always believed that all Americans were the same at their core no matter what their skin color, religion, gender, or class, and that we considered the entire country our home. Wasn’t Washington, D.C., my home? Didn’t I live here? Couldn’t I live anywhere in America and still be at home?

  I had never really stopped to think about it before he asked me, but once I did I had to admit to him and to myself that there was only one place I considered home, and right now I wasn’t living in it.