The Orphans of Race Point: A Novel

by Patry Francis

  “What if my mother turned out to be alive?” I blurt out in the middle of our silence. “Have you ever thought of that?”

  “At the beginning, I thought of every possibility that might have exonerated Gus,” Hallie admits after she wipes a dollop of sour cream from her lip. “But it’s not possible. No one could have sustained that much blood loss and survived.” She reaches out and seizes my hand. “I’m sorry, Mila. Have you hoped—”

  I pull away, not about to be distracted by cheap comfort—not yet. Then I plant my empty beer bottle in the sand. “I’ve seen her, Hallie.”

  Hallie lets her hand drop and looks at me in an oddly unsurprised way, waiting for me to continue.

  “She used to come back sometimes, and watch me outside my school.”

  “Did you ever speak to her?” Hallie says. She pauses to light a cigarette. Then she passes me one—something she never does.

  I light one of her Marlboros, which I hate, and suck hard like it will save my life—or at least obscure the taste of my guilt.

  “Speak to her? Well, no. I followed her once, though.”

  “And?”

  “She got away.”

  “When was this? Recently?”

  “The last time it happened, I was thirteen.”

  “So you saw a woman who reminded you of your mother a few times when you were younger, but she never spoke to you?”

  “I know what you’re thinking—that it was just the wishful thinking of a lonely kid. I used to think so, too. But if you could have seen the way she looked at me—” Then, I reach into my backpack, pull out the envelope postmarked from California, and remove the card inside. “Read it,” I say. “Then tell me you still don’t believe me.”

  Hallie studies the envelope in the weakening light, and turns the card over a couple of times, looking for something, anything to validate my claim. “You really think your mother sent this?”

  “Well, did you read it?”

  “Honey, it’s a drugstore card with no signature. Anyone could have sent it to you. And, unfortunately, people can be very cruel. Especially kids.”

  “From California? I don’t know a single person in the whole state.”

  “Maybe not, but I’m sure you know people who’ve traveled there. I’m sorry, Mila, but this looks like a particularly mean hoax to me.” Apologetically, Hallie hands my card back to me.

  “But I wrote back. Lots of times,” I say, sounding pathetic in the face of all that blood. The blood that saturated the mattress, rug, floorboards. My mother’s blood.

  “Did you include a return address?” she whispers.

  “Well, no. I mean, I would have, but if it came back and the Bug saw it—”

  “You’re a smart girl, Mila,” Hallie interrupts gently. “You could have gotten yourself a post-office box in town. That is, if you really believed there was a possibility your mother would write back.”

  I put my cigarette out in the sand, and then wrap it in the deli paper from my dinner. Finally, I turn to look at Hallie. “I didn’t have to prove it to myself, okay?”

  “Why not?”

  “Because I knew she was there. I feel her reading my letters. I feel her opening the envelope nervously. She’s shaking so much she almost tears the letter inside. And she’s crying, too. She soaks my letters with her tears. The ink blurs when I tell her how much I hate her for what she did.”

  But when I touch my face, I realize I’m the one who’s crying. Big splashy tears for a mother who doesn’t even know me. A mother no one believes in but me. And before I even know how it happened, Hallie is holding me. Holding me and rocking me and stroking my hair. I’m sorry, she whispers, as if it’s her fault for destroying my fantasy. Or maybe just because she can’t rewrite the story of my childhood. I’m so, so sorry.

  It’s dark by the time we get off the beach, so I put my bike on Hallie’s rack and ride home with her. After my crying jag on the beach we didn’t say much as we ambled down the coast. Somehow it felt all right to just walk and let the waves do the talking. But in the car, the silence loses its sweetness, and Hallie rushes to fill it.

  “Julia and I are planning to drive up to Harry’s in Hyannis tomorrow night. There’s a blues band playing she wants to hear.”

  “A blues band? Julia?” ( Julia rarely listens to anything but classical music, and she never goes to bars.)

  “Yeah, she met the bass player somewhere last week. Guy named Spencer. She won’t admit it, of course, but I think she’s interested.”

  “Hmm . . . A musician might be just what Jules needs. A counterbalance to all the science in her life.” It feels funny to be talking about ordinary things after my great confession. For years I imagined telling someone my secret. I thought it would be Armageddon. Even on this night, I went to the beach fortified with beer in preparation for a lot of angry drama. But now that I’ve finally done it, Hallie is smiling and talking about the prospect of Julia finding a boyfriend.

  In a way, I wish she was right: that the whole thing was nothing more than the delusions of a lonely child. Then I wouldn’t be partly responsible for every minute, and hour, and year that Gus Silva has spent in prison while I held dead mom’s secret in my heart.

  I don’t care how badly my mother was hurt in that hotel room: I know she survived. And the reason I didn’t get a post-office box wasn’t because I thought she wouldn’t write back. It was because I was afraid that she would.

  But I now know that no one, not even Hallie, will believe me if I don’t get more proof. So the next afternoon, after overhearing a particularly intense phone conversation between Hallie and Gus, I finally get the courage to call the post office in Weatherwood, California. When the clerk answers, I speak as calmly as I can, asking if anyone had come in to pick up the mail addressed to Ava Cilento. I know it’s a long shot. That’s why I’m so taken aback when the guy says, “Sure does. Miss Cilento’s a regular here. Stops in every week to see if there’s something for her.” His voice has a raspy sound that makes me think he’s really old, but he still perks up the way men do when they talk about a beautiful woman.

  At that point, my hand actually goes limp, and the phone just slips out of it. From the floor, I hear the voice on the other end. “Hello? You still there?”

  “Yes!” I practically scream as I retrieve the phone. Then I modify my voice. “Um, would you mind giving me your name? Just in case I need to ask you a couple of questions later.”

  “It’s Wally,” the guy says, sounding like he already regrets telling me that much. “And I won’t be answering any more questions. Not now. Not later.” The dial tone blares as sure and strong as I imagine my mother’s heartbeat to be when she approaches the post office week after week, looking for my letters.

  Wally. I write the name in all caps followed by exactly sixteen exclamation marks.

  That night Julia makes a spinach frittata and a beet salad with goat cheese for dinner. It’s one of my favorite meals, but I’m too distracted by those exclamation marks to feel hungry. I don’t talk much, either. I can feel Hallie’s worried eyes settling on me when she thinks I’m not looking, so I get up and scrape my plate into the sink, hoping no one will notice how little I ate.

  “Julia and I were planning to go to Hyannis tonight, remember?” Hallie says as she helps me clear the table. “But if you want to talk, I can . . .”

  “I’m fine,” I answer, a beat too quickly. “Really. You guys go and have a good time. I have something to do, anyway.”

  She still looks dubious, so before she can ask me exactly what I need to do, I give her a huge hug. “You’re sure?” she asks.

  “Absolutely.”

  I clean the kitchen to perfection while they’re getting ready, and when they leave, I go up to my room, sit up really straight in my chair, and write my very last letter ever to my mother.

  Chapter 37

  dear ava,

  do u want to know my dearest & most secret wish? the one thing i’ve never confided to anyo
ne—not even ethan? i wish that hallie & gus were my real parents—mine & julia’s, too. we would be the silva family, not the family of orphans we are now.

  you will never know how happy hallie, julia, and i are when we’re all together. if hallie’s not working, the house is always filled with company, a mishmash of friends that includes matt, the priest from st. peter’s, a sweet old drunk called hugo who does odd jobs for us, the gay couple next door, and some of hallie’s doctor friends from boston. it sounds like an odd group, but everyone fits together. that’s what being a family is, dead mom—something u wd never understand.

  sometimes at night, i dream that hallie & gus are tangled together in sleep in the next room, “mom & dad.” i dream so hard that when i wake up i almost believe it’s true. reality has sharp edges after those dreams. then, slowly, i remember everything. the sounds i heard when u & the bug fought. yr empty room. yr face when i saw you outside my school.

  and finally i see gus staring at me from behind glass. he’s not my father, not hallie’s husband, & what’s worse, he’s living a life that doesn’t even belong to him anymore. there’s no way to soften the edges of that dream, ava, but there is a way to end it.

  the only thing i can do to restore this house and myself is to go to the police & tell them what i know. to choose my new family over u. it’s a choice my heart finds surprisingly easy to make. consider this your last chance to come back and do the right thing. and if not, well . . .

  goodbye, my mother.

  mila

  At the end of the letter, I break with tradition and add my address and my telephone number. I look at the bold 2 on the calendar at the post office when I mail it and mentally give her two weeks. If she doesn’t respond by August 16th, I’ll go to the lawyer who defended Gus and present my case. Lunes Oliveira is so hot you could go blind looking at him, and he’s funny, too. Sometimes he shows up at the Tamale with one of his glamorous girlfriends on Friday nights, or with his kids on Saturdays after soccer, and he comes to Hallie’s parties. The way he looks at her is almost embarrassing, but she doesn’t seem to notice.

  Anyway, if he doesn’t believe me, then I’ll take my tattered birthday card, my collection of visions, suspicions, and concrete details to someone who will. The Ptown Police maybe. Or if I really want to get serious, I’ll go to my father. No doubt the Bug will have half a dozen of the country’s best private eyes on dead mom’s ass before I finish my presentation.

  The days drag at first, and then they speed up insanely. Each hour, each moment, practically screaming in my ear: It’s not going to happen, you little fool. From the day I posted the letter, I’ve dreamed that Ava is calling my name in a low voice outside my window, and every night I’ve gotten up and looked into the street. But each night it’s more empty. More desolate. More hopeless. Just like the streets where I have looked for her all my life.

  In the final three days, my dreams abruptly change. Now I dream of blood soaking the sheets and carpets in my room and spilling down the stairs.

  When I wake up on the morning of the sixeenth, I taste the question I don’t want to ask. What have I got to counter all that blood? An unsigned birthday card? The words of some postal clerk in a town called Weatherwood? My irrational belief in Ava’s toughness? Sometimes I mistrust myself so much I wonder if I invented Wally, imagined the words he said, just as I imagined the woman who watched me in the playground.

  How can I go to Lunes? I already know he’s never going to believe me. And neither are the hardheaded guys at the Provincetown Police Department. The only one who might take my story seriously is the Bug, and he’s half-mad. In spite of my threats to Ava and the tough talk to my own mirror, I can’t go to him. If Hallie’s right, and I’m just a lost, delusional kid who misses her mom more than she’s willing to admit, the Bug will never forgive me for raising his hopes. And if I’m right? If he actually finds her after all this time and grief? Well, let’s just say I wouldn’t want to witness the outcome.

  When the phone finally rings, I’ve just about given up hope. Instead, I’m thinking about Ethan, who hasn’t spoken to me for three days after one of our dumb arguments. As usual, it was my fault.

  “E? I don’t know why I was such a jerk, but really . . .” I begin, and then I go on some more before I realize that the person on the other end isn’t saying anything.

  Could be anyone, right? Wrong number. Bad connection on someone’s cell phone. Telemarketer on another line. Even Ethan, too pissed to speak. But somehow I know it’s not any of those things. The caller ID identifies it only as BLOCKED CALL.

  “Ava?” I whisper to the ghost on the other end of the line. “Is that you?”

  There are no words in response, but a sharp intake of breath answers my question.

  “Listen, if you have something to say, please . . . say it.”

  A noise—some kind of fractured sob, maybe—interrupts me, shaking me more than I want to admit.

  “Okay, that does it. I’m hanging up,” I say, practically yelling into the phone.

  But before I can, the strangled sound morphs into a word. A name. A fierce cry in a room that has been dark for over a decade. Meeee-laa!

  Who ever knew those two short syllables could stretch to contain so much longing. Who ever knew that my name could snuff out years of dread, and a private wish, not to mention all the secret fears I’ve harbored about my own sanity.

  Now it’s my turn to fall silent.

  “Mila? Are you still there?”she whispers.

  “Who—who is this?” I say, as my voice shrinks and breaks.

  “This is not how I dreamed this would happen. You don’t know how many times I’ve wanted to speak to you. I’ve hungered—but always, it was too dangerous.” There is little trace of the accent I remember somewhere deep inside.

  Though I want to reply, I am so stunned that I can’t speak a coherent word. Can’t even make out the meaning of what she’s saying. All I can hear is its texture: layers and layers of grief.

  “I don’t blame you for trying to help the priest,” she says in the vacuum. “But before you do, you need to hear me out.”

  “Why?” I say, a surge of anger reactivating my vocal chords.

  “I’ve always loved you, Mila. Never for one moment in all these years have I stopped loving you.”

  I snort into the phone, though there are tears flowing down my cheeks. “Even my father loves me better than you do,” I say, bringing out the sharpest knife in my carving set.

  There is a pause, and something enters her voice. Exasperation? Guilt? I’m not sure.

  “I never wanted to leave you with him. Please, give me a chance to explain,” she says. “I’m here on the Cape. Give me one hour; that’s all I ask. I just want you to see me as I am. Your mother. Not a picture on the wall or a story you heard when you were little.”

  “That was your choice, not mine.”

  “One hour.”

  “The last person who trusted you ended up in prison for life.”

  “You’re my daughter, Mila. Do you think I would do anything to hurt you?”

  “Do you really want an honest answer to that question?”

  “Please, Mila. I’ve risked everything—my freedom, my marriage, even my personal safety to see you. I’m asking for one hour in return.”

  “Your marriage?” I pick that one word from her entreaty like a shard of glass. All these years, I pictured her alone. A lonely phantom who hung around playgrounds and school buses, haunting her old life.

  “I’m in Wellfleet,” she says, ever the master of evasion. “Do you have transportation?”

  “Answer the question.”

  She sighs into the phone. “Yes, Mila, I’m remarried. When I met your father, I was very young and new to this country. I made a mistake we all have paid for—you more than anyone—”

  But I don’t want to hear it. “So have you and Señor Right given me brothers and sisters?”

  Again she hesitates.

  “I
asked you if I have any brothers and sisters.”

  Even before she answers, I hear the truth in her breath, her heavy sigh. “My son is nine. Maybe some time—”

  “What’s his name?”

  “We can talk about all of that when I see you. If you don’t have a car, you can call a taxi. I will pay.”

  “Tell me my brother’s name. Or are you afraid I’ll put the Cilento curse on him?”

  “I named him for my grandfather in Slovakia. Alexander. Sasha, we call him.”

  I taste the name in my mouth. Sasha. It slips over my tongue like something exotic and bitter. Another child named for the family she left behind.

  “If you come, I’ll show you some pictures of him.”

  “Pictures of the child who was good enough to keep?” Immediately, I regret the whiney sound of the words. “Listen, there’s a restaurant called the Purple Oyster on Main Street in Wellfleet. I’ll meet you there in twenty minutes.”

  “That’s too public. Come here and we can order in if you’re hungry. I’m staying at the Sandbar Motel on Route 6, right next to—”

  “I’ll be at the Purple Oyster in twenty minutes, and I’ll wait ten more. If you don’t come, this will be the last time we speak.” Then I do it. I slam the phone down! After all these years sitting in her room, staring in her mirror, handling her things, and nurturing my own private dream that she might be alive, I have probably blown my only chance of actually seeing her. Shouldn’t lightning strike right about now?

  But no, I look around at the snapshots Hallie has hung on a wall in the kitchen, photos of her many friends in Provincetown, including a shot of herself with Gus on the beach, and I feel a surge of strength. By the time I climb into the old Beemer, I’m feeling relaxed. In charge. I will get there before the twenty-minute deadline, and when Ava arrives (as suddenly, I absolutely know she will) I will be sitting at a table facing the door. Will she recognize me with the blond hair that denies her plain brown genes?