“Jil, this is Jake Aylford calling,” a man’s voice on the answering machine said. “I just got your wonderful letter and I very much want to speak with you and so does Faith, your mother.”
I gasped. Quickly, I hung up the phone, like it was hot. I stood up, and then sat down. I felt my entire body flush. I walked to the door, closed it, then sat down and called the machine again and listened to the rest of the message.
“I got your letter yesterday,” it went on, “because I moved to a village nearby from where you sent it so it had to be forwarded. I want to talk to you very badly. Your letter is absolutely splendid. It’s about noon. I don’t know where you are, maybe you’re working. I have to leave in about half an hour. Maybe you could call me tonight after 9:00 p.m.”
He told me his phone number and ended with a single word: “Call.”
I was shaking so badly I needed two hands to hang up the phone. Even two-handed, I missed the cradle and had to pick it up and put it down again. I stood up and started pacing the small space, trying to take deep breaths.
My letter was splendid, he said. Splendid! He wanted to talk to me, and so did my mother. My mother! This was too strange, too scary. I grabbed my coat. Running out onto Third Avenue, I started walking uptown, going nowhere. It was a freezing day, but I was sweating, and also shivering—hot and cold, terrified, but thrilled. His voice was deep and masculine, smoky, warm. He sounded smart. He sounded wonderful. He sounded splendid. And he wanted to talk to me; he wanted me. I realized how scared I’d been of being rejected, and how much I would have preferred finding nothing at all than finding someone who didn’t want me. Fragments of thoughts raced round my brain: He likes me, I like him, I like his voice, I like his words, he knows her, she wants me, she’s my mother. She’s my mother!
I speed-walked back to the office and called Lenny, but he wasn’t there. Janey was, and we talked for forty-five minutes, most of which consisted of me repeating the same things over and over, telling her what he said, how he sounded, how crazy it all seemed, how nervous, scared, excited, anxious, terrified, confused, exhilarated I felt. By the time I got off the phone I could at least sit still. I called the machine again to make sure John’s, I mean Jake’s message, was still there. This time there was a second message.
“Jil,” the woman’s voice said, “This is Bunny. You know me as Faith. I’ve spoken to Jake. I can’t tell you how thrilled I am, how happy I am to hear from you. I’ve tried to find you or to make myself available so you could find me. Jake is going to call you tonight and I would like very much to speak to you, too, but I’ll wait until he has called you. I’m very happy to hear from you and I will talk to you soon. Bye.”
I hung up the phone slowly. I had gone from frantic and shaking to a strange state of calm. Why am I so calm? I wondered if it was possible to short-circuit your brain with too much emotion.
Faith, I thought. Faith—it was perfect. All my life I’ve been looking for faith: faith in myself, religious faith, or faith in the people I love. At sixteen, I’d stopped believing in God. The idea seemed as believable as moon men or the Wizard of Oz. I’d been looking for something to have faith in ever since. And now I had found Faith.
I couldn’t sit still. I grabbed my coat again and walked blindly west on 42nd Street, past Lexington Avenue and the Chrysler Building, Grand Central Terminal, Madison Avenue, and over to Bryant Park, behind the Public Library where the whole search had started just a few months earlier. I sat down on a bench. The park was nearly empty; it was way too cold for bag-lunchers and newspaper-readers. I could see my breath clouding but I was warm, shivering not from the cold, but from sheer excess of adrenalin.
They had nice voices. They sounded like nice people. They didn’t sound like Jerry Springer loonies, but normal and decent, and smart. In my mind, he looked, of course, like Fred Astaire, or maybe Jason Robards, long, lean, beautifully weathered. Her voice was warm and deep, strong, clear. In my mind she looked like Bea Arthur, Maude Bea Arthur, not Golden Girls Bea Arthur, in a long tunic vest and wide-legged pants, short, shaggy graying hair, tall and straight and clear-eyed.
Beautiful Bryant Park, with its swath of smooth, trimmed grass, green even in winter, was spinning before my eyes. I walked back to my office and called Janey again and told her the latest development. I told her ten times. Then I called the machine and listened to both messages again, and again, and again. Finally I wrote them down, word for word, so I would always remember the first things my birth mother and birth father said to me. By the time I left work I realized I could not possibly charge the company for my hours in the office that day.
It was four long hours until 9 o’clock. Somehow I made it through, ate a few mouthfuls of dinner, spoke when spoken to. At 9 o’clock, I asked Lenny to keep the kids occupied, locked myself in the bedroom, took several deep breaths, and called the number.
He answered on the first ring.
23. BUNNY
FOUND
Nothing is so difficult
But that it may be found out by seeking.
TERENCE
HEAUTONTIMOROUMENOS
The message on my answering machine was brief.
“This is Jake. I’ve had an interesting letter from someone that I’d like to discuss with you. I’ll call back later.”
My husband had heard the message already; he’d come home while I was still out, but he listened again, and watched me as I heard it for the first time.
“Oh, my God!” I took a deep breath. “It’s The Baby!”
Yes,” he said, “I thought so, too.”
The Baby had written Jake a letter.
Except that she was no longer The Baby. She had been The Baby in my head for so long that it was hard to think of her in any other way. But the leap to reality wasn’t a huge one; it just needed to be taken. After all, babies don’t write letters.
Jake called back the next morning—a long wait. As I listened to him talk, I began to recognize his voice—the tone, the shadings, and the enthusiasms— though I hadn’t spoken to him in decades. He read me the letter he had received; it was a good letter, clearly, carefully, and thoughtfully written.
Jake and I both wanted to talk to her immediately. But somehow—after all those years, we agreed that Jake would call her first. She had written to him, so he would answer: I would talk to her after that. It didn’t take me long, after the conversation ended, to realize how foolish I had been—I wanted to talk to her NOW! I didn’t want to wait. I didn’t care who spoke first or second, as long as I could talk to her.
He had given me her phone number. I called, despite our agreement. She wasn’t home. But she was a voice—a real woman. I left a message on her answering machine, telling her who I was, that I wanted so very much to talk to her, and that I hoped she would call me.
But Jake spoke to her before I did. When I called him later to tell him that I had called her, even though we had agreed he would, and his line was busy, I knew he was talking to her.
When I finally got through to him, he said she sounded wonderful. He knew I’d like her. But, he said, she’s overwhelmed by everything, and she wants to wait before she talks to you; she’ll call you tomorrow morning.
More waiting!
That night Jake and I talked for a long time. He told me The Baby was forty-two years old, lived in New York City, and had two sons of her own.
The Baby was named Jil.
We talked a little about our lives now. He was married to his third wife; he and his second wife had a daughter, and he and his third wife had two children, a boy and a girl. He was working as a photographer; he had worked for a local newspaper for a while, and now did portraits.
Talking to Jake was surprisingly easy. I couldn’t still be angry at him for things that had happened over forty years ago. And he was so excited by what was happening. It was not only an adventure: It was also about remembering when he was young and full of hope. He talked a bit about his father, and his death, and wept for a mome
nt. In a way, I wanted to resist—I was no longer enchanted or charmed—and I certainly didn’t want to talk long enough that his wife would be jealous of me, or of his possible tie to Jil. My focus was Jil. I wanted to learn more about her; I wanted to hear her voice; I wanted to see her. I needed to keep all the threads straight and untangled. Everything was just beginning.
This is what I wrote in my journal that night: “I am so filled with excitement, joy, fear, happiness, desire to love, that I think I will burst. It’s like being complete again. Everything is surreal—sur-alive. Sur: beyond, above.”
One night, just a day or two later, after all that joy, I had a series of strange dreams. In the first, I was with two men who destroyed everything they saw, while I watched, helpless. In the next, I was trying to save some children in an elementary school while Jake sat nearby, ignoring me and flirting with a woman who had grapes in her hair. In the last dream, I unpacked a large suitcase, and then repacked some of the contents into a smaller bag, deciding to leave as soon as I was finished.
I knew the dreams had to do with being married to Jake. They were about not mattering while he turned in other directions. His charm and seductiveness was like a flashlight or a lighthouse beam, an illuminating glow when aimed at you, dark when it turned away. He didn’t turn it on and off deliberately. Watching him from the outside, it seemed as if other people didn’t exist any more when he wasn’t with them. He wasn’t deliberately cruel, but simply unaware. I listened to him remember those times that were so often terrible, remembering them with such pleasure and with a discernible glow. Yes, they were happy times, when we saw parts of Europe for the first time; but there were also times I felt alone, abandoned, unsure, and jealous. If he’d been gone, he’d come back outraged at the suggestion that he’d done anything wrong. And he always came back.
I’ve heard it said that women have affairs with men with whom they feel the way they did with their fathers, but marry men who remind them of their mothers. As a child, I felt I didn’t matter, that I was not heard. I had to shout in my clamor to be heard and seen. The feelings I had with Jake were familiar.
The joy of the phone calls about The Baby was tempered by all this: Was I ready to face it again? Had I truly moved beyond all that? I definitely hoped so. In my dream, I made the right decision; I had used a smaller suitcase, without all the old baggage.
Jake was one thing, from a past long gone, and Jil was something else entirely, apart from everything else in my world: the past, the present, my marriage, my children. Now more than a memory, she was a presence, a new reality waiting to be discovered. She was the living part of my promise: I will always love you.
It was hard to wait for her call. I couldn’t imagine what it was like for her, having spoken to Jake, and still waiting to call me. I was on the verge of tears, but I had no need or wish to cry. And I hadn’t even spoken to her yet!
Once she called, it was so easy to talk to her; I felt as though I had known her all along and the call went by in a blur. She had two children: Suddenly I’d become a grandmother! She seemed to be so much like me. We laughed at the same moments, and hesitated at the same things.
“It’s amazing,” I wrote in my journal, “how alike we are. Except I think she’s in much better shape than I was at her age—happier and more comfortable. If I’d been able to keep her, she would probably not sound like that. I like her very, very much—her humor, the way she thinks. I suppose there’s some recognition of myself in her; but there’s more than that. I am so happy that I think I could stand on the roof, lean forward, and fly away. I feel as if I’m held to earth by the lightest of strings. I feel frivolous and joyful. The earth stopped turning, and I am lighter than air!”
Later, I thought about whether she would be tangled up with Jake: Was it to be Jake and me and The Baby, after all these years? I hadn’t yet told her about Quint, who, after all, might be her father. For now, I thought that discovering Jake was enough—one step at a time.
We talked about meeting, and I said that however she wanted to do it was all right with me: separately, one of us at a time, or Jake and me together. Though it had to be her choice, I hoped to meet her alone, so we could have a chance to get to know each other. I wanted us to be a presence for each other. I wanted her to be there: friendly, if not a friend; daughterly, even if not exactly a daughter; sisterly, even if not a sister.
Would it be possible? Or was it incredibly presumptuous just to think about it? Was it too late for that kind of closeness? Most of all, I wanted her there—a part of my life. I wanted her not to disappear again.
There are no guides to reunions of birth mother and adopted child, no rules, no etiquette books, no hints about good behavior, no lists of what might be forbidden, no way of knowing what would be best. With each step Jil and I took in this uncharted territory, whether we’d thought about it ahead of time or it happened spontaneously, we created our own path and our own map, with its own set of directions. We knew where we had been, and we were learning about where to go: We proceeded carefully, and from the beginning, we did well.
“I’m standing at a point,” I wrote in my journal, “where my past and my future cross. I suppose we’re always there, at that intersection, the ongoing Now, but this is so precise, so conscious—right in the middle of the spot!”
Amazingly, and suddenly, Jil was no longer my biggest secret, but a presence I wanted to share. Before I even knew her, I wanted to tell everyone: The Baby found me!
Each time we spoke, I wrote the same thing: “She sounds wonderful. Spoke to her Saturday, and today is Tuesday, and it seems so long since we talked! Am I going to go on like this?”
I felt as if I were coming apart—but, even more, that I was coming together. On the phone, even before we met, I recognized her—her humor, the way she laughed. Even our pauses were similar.
This, then, was Jil: a love story. Recognizing that, I warned myself and made three rules:
1. Don’t fall in love with her. Love her. But don’t fall in love. Be steady.
2. Don’t expect her presence to fix anything else in my life that needs fixing.
3. Don’t abandon the rest of my life, the people I love, in the joy of knowing Jil.
So often it seems easier to write about sorrow than joy; words pour out of my pen as if they were tears.
But when I turn to my journal and read what I wrote in the weeks after Jil found me, I find joy, over and over.
“I feel complete—cured!—restored! and sane. Everything begins anew. This is The Baby! Joy—Jil. I’m filled with mystical joy, and I am very, very happy. I do feel complete—exactly that.”
Jil said she has freckles. I couldn’t remember whether or not Jake had freckles, but I knew that Quint did. I began to think about picking out photographs to give her when we met. And I wanted to give her something of mine, and something of my mother’s. Finally I chose a bracelet my mother had given me for my birthday the summer she died; it seemed to speak of both of us, and it represented a small piece of Jil’s heritage. I also decided to give her my old wedding ring, which was part of her story. I’d saved it all these years: the two silver bands, meeting over and over, in a chain, making small connected boxes that to us symbolized our two lives, strong, joined, but still independent. If only I’d been able to live that way!
Actually meeting Jil was the next step. I met her alone, in a restaurant on the Upper West Side where I’d gone many times for tomato soup and bread pudding. It seems an unlikely choice now, but it was the only place I could think of. It was crowded and noisy, but we were engrossed in each other. On the phone, we’d both admitted to often being late for appointments; we were both on time. There should have been background music—a fanfare, several chords. How did we recognize each other? I think we just did. I don’t remember the moment of recognition. (“How do you do? I’m your mother. And you are… The Baby?”)
My memory plays its customary tricks with an imprecise haziness of things I want never to forget.
Snapshots of unimportant moments emerge from my mind, clear and sharp: waiting for the train to Antioch in the old Penn Station; seeing two couples kissing the wrong partners at a party in the Village; carrying a glass of water to my father when I was about two years old, and falling, breaking the glass and cutting my wrist just below the thumb. I still have the scar, a small crescent moon. Then there is a clear memory of my father angry at my mother for giving me a glass to carry.
Though there are dozens of photographs in the uncatalogued, unpaged album in my mind, sometimes the other things, important things, weighty things, life-changing things, are blurs, if they exist at all. I know they happened, but I can’t see them, no matter how much I want to. I met Jil at a restaurant on the Upper West Side and we talked for hours, but I can’t remember the moment we met.
She had my smile, but I didn’t recognize the rest of her. Fair-skinned (like my mother), hazel eyes (like me); all of her was lovely. She was a beautiful baby, and she had become a beautiful woman.
We connected on so many levels. There were so many things she said that I simply understood. She said she loves movies, and she uses them as I do, to escape, in moments of unhappiness or crisis. At exactly the same time, we both said: “I adore Kevin Kline.” From the way we use food to the hand gestures we make, from loving being pregnant to liking the same musicals, we matched: Is everything genetic?
We talked for four hours. It was exhausting, wonderful, amazing, and beyond reality. I thought my eyes couldn’t see enough of her. I wanted to stare and stare and stare—until I knew who she is, who she was, and could remember all forty-two years of her, could finally know her, see into her. Imagine being on the other end of that! We showed each other our photographs. Her sons are beautiful.
I was left thinking, “Can all of this be true? Is this an elaborate hoax? Am I really awake? Will there be more or is this it?”
At first I thought that even if I never actually met her, I’d be happy just knowing she was well and happy. To some extent, that was still true. But it wasn’t enough; now that she was real, I wanted more of her. I didn’t want to make up for the lost years, but to explore what remained to us.
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