If Only

by Jennifer Gilmore

  “So don’t work at the pool,” she says. “But work somewhere.”

  I am not getting the support that the agency says I need. I mean, where is the understanding here? There is just this pissed-offness. “Really? Did you just say that?” I want to scream more at her. But what can I say? I need my mother.

  She turns to me. “A job will help, Bridget,” she says. “Keep busy.”

  I need to be inside. Something inside and hidden where no one can see me.

  “A family,” she says.

  “Aren’t we a family?” I ask.

  She stiffens. “We are already a family. The baby needs parents,” my mother says. I see her, like, break a little bit. “I can help you,” she says. “Look through those pamphlets.”

  “They’re profiles,” I say.

  “Do you need help?” She scratches her ear. It’s such a random gesture. “Choosing the right ones, I mean.”

  I shake my head. “That’s okay,” I say. I can’t really bear to search for her mother with my mother. It’s too sad.

  What I need is to decide.

  “I’m here,” she says.

  I hear her go downstairs and I look back. Here I am in this mirror. A mess. I face myself. I am a girl who just met these people who are not going to take my baby. Who are they saving? Who am I saving. What does that even mean anymore?

  They have to know, I think. That I won’t be calling. But if I do, then what else will they send me? What will the next wrapped-up box be?

  I go to the kitchen and call Dahlia to meet.

  “Not the reservoir,” I say to Dahlia. “Everyone will be there today.”

  “How about the creek?” No one goes to the creek in the day. The creek is something to hop for the woods at night. Which is why I like it now.

  I’m there first. I take off my boots and socks and stand in the water. It’s warm but this creek is always so cold. Used to be crayfish in here but not anymore. Everything in this town is dead or dying. Imagine, imagine, I am thinking here: maybe I could have been a person who does not care about saving anyone. I try not to think about the pastor and my mother with her hands on her hips. I just want this to be me, choosing; I want it to be a secret I can keep.

  Dahlia appears, suddenly and softly beside me. She kneels down and takes off her Converse. I think for a minute what we look like. Two girls in cold water, holding up the ends of our dresses. But we have all this other stuff inside us.

  This place, this little ribbon of cold, clean water, it’s like a secret before the woods. I wonder now why I never spent any time here, just jumped over hoping to get to wherever I was going.

  Then.

  I got my hands in my pockets and I feel the pen, run my thumb and finger along it, smooth to sharp. Be Brave. Dahlia runs her hands—her green nails are dots like fish in the spring—in the cool water. I lean down, too. Place my hands on chilled rocks, the cold, cold water, let the bottom of my dress skim the surface. You can hear Butterpeak Falls from here, the sound of rain but no rain at all.

  “My mother says I need to get a job,” I say. “Like you, I guess.”

  Dahlia works scooping ice cream in town. It’s made her hands practically arthritic but she can’t stand ice cream now, which seems like a good thing to me. She nods.

  I look into the spring sun, that bright, clear, just-warm-enough sun, and I am looking for the answer. When I was little I dreamed on this water, made my wishes here at this creek. Always saw my own reflection, cracked by coins and buttons. Cracked open. Rippled. It’s a little like that now.

  “If only,” I say, but it’s like Dahlia has stopped listening.

  Or maybe I have. It’s me. There is my blue sky above. I hardly ever look up. I pull at the hair on my arms. I’m here.

  “Tell me about Mr. and Mrs. Phoenix, Arizona.”

  I am thinking of a boy who would give up his heart. Now my dreams and wishes have to be something different.

  When I get home my mother will say again how that was so freaking fabulous about the juicer, don’t you think, Bridge? She will say you are being good and bright and hopeful and you are having faith you are laying yourself at the altar like you need to. The answer, she will say, it is surely written there.

  I think for a second about getting on some bus to anywhere and just going somewhere now, near the ocean maybe. Or a big city. Either place, you can disappear there.

  I feel my pen. Be Brave.

  Dahlia puts her arm around me and I lean into her.

  Phoenix, Arizona. All the cactuses and coyotes and setting suns. It’s just so far away.

  If Only

  Arizona

  “I’m coming!” I call out to my grandmother but I have no intention of going toward the house. She gets scared of the bats but I like to come watch them and the white moths feed off the cactuses, sucking out the nectar just as the flowers start to open at twilight. Night in my mother’s garden doesn’t scare me.

  I think our cactus garden is my favorite place. My mother planted most of these before I was born, before they met me as they like to say, and before, as my father says, anything mattered to them. The sky, now, it’s like a velvet painting here, all pinks and oranges and red, almost cheesy, totally unreal, and the cactus flowers—the organ pipe and senita (yes, I know their names, all of them) —are just opening. They’re ten feet high and they line the walk that leads out of our garden and out onto the street. Also: prickly pear and beavertail cacti, the fishhook barrel I stepped on once when I was a toddler. That is one of my first memories: stepping on a cactus.

  The smell: like vanilla and the wind and the moon.

  The second memory is blowing out the candles on my third birthday cake, my mother leaning in behind me.

  My mother is surely here in this garden if she is anywhere.

  “Sage! Now!” I hear my grandmother calling me.

  I linger out here tonight. Maybe I am calling ghosts. We all know it’s the anniversary, but no one says it. Five years is a long time. I have been without a mother twice.

  Two times I’ve been left behind.

  But what I’m thinking about is driving out of town with Raven. It was just last month and it was dark, 10:00 p.m., but not so late that it was strange to be out, and we were driving toward the preserve. Even though I can’t remember the reason why we were heading out there now, the night is unforgettable to me. The clock on R’s dash glowed 10:13. The street was empty but the streetlights were shining and all the saguaros along the side of the road and the buttes rising up from the valley were silhouetted against the sky. R was saying she needed to get home, which made me look at the clock again. Now it said 11:07 but we hadn’t been riding for more than ten minutes. We hadn’t done a near hour’s worth of distance, that much I know.

  The streetlights began to shut off, one by one, just as we passed them, as if it was our car that switched them off. Then, behind us, a trail of darkness. The lights on the dash started flashing and then flickered out. Our cells powered down. The temperature dropped inside of the car and it was like we were sailing beneath moonlight only.

  We didn’t say anything, just held our breath, waiting for something to happen. What would it be? It was just silence, like we were the only ones here on earth for one moment and then the streetlights clicked on one by one, the lights on the dash began to flash. The clock reset: 10:14. Only one minute had passed and yet we had covered far more ground than one minute would allow.

  Raven stopped the car and we got out and looked up at the stars. We sat on the warm hood of the ticking car and just watched the sky like we’d done on any kind of night here. Night watching. One star shot through the night. But it seems to be there is always a shooting star if you get far enough out of town. Or perhaps it was a night of meteor showers, as shooting stars aren’t really stars at all.

  All my mothers, I thought then. Watching.

  “Coming, Amma,” I call back to my grandmother now. My grandmother who lost a daughter when I lost a mother.

>   I love being in my mother’s garden, feel her hand in it, all the things she grew for my brother and me. I have often wondered about this hand, the one I’ve been dealt, the one where all the moms get taken.

  So was it a ghost? That’s what I asked Raven then on the hood of that car, lying back, watching our particular square of sky on our particular planet, and later, when we got home, and, still, now, we are trying to understand it.

  We weren’t scared. We aren’t scared. This is our world.

  Is this a ghost story?

  I jump when I feel Amma’s warm hand on my shoulder. “It’s getting dark,” she says.

  I turn around and the house glows behind me. All the warm rooms I have looked out of and watched the sun slam down from in this moonlike world.

  But I am carrying this with me now. The story of the dark road, the messed-up clock, the cold interior. The story of my first mom and then the next. All the streetlights flashing dark then light again.

  I let my grandmother take me by the hand, lead me inside for dinner. Her hand is dry and powdery and thick with calluses.

  If this is not a ghost story, I don’t know what is.

  Ivy

  2017

  This is what we do: Every morning we go down to the chicken coop and get the eggs. Picking eggs is my favorite. Took me a while to get used to the smell but the warmth in there, and then the warm eggs, I just love it. There are goats, too. Mo makes cheese for all our neighbors, who live miles away. Mom is a city person turned country and Mo is country but from the south. Sometimes it’s a thing between them. How Mom grew up and how my grandmother comes out to see us with leather boots from Bergdorf’s, soft as a baby’s cheek, and little pastel-colored cakes from Bouchon, smoked salmon and gravlax and onion bagels from Russ & Daughters, just like my grandfather loved, I’m told.

  But that’s another story. I bring it up now just because of dinner: pork carnitas. Flour tortillas, the tomatillo salsa Mom canned last summer. We’re on the deck, which is pretty, really dark wood, Mo actually sanded it herself with no help from Mom as she tells pretty much anyone new to the deck, and it’s late enough spring that the trees are all full and green and swaying but the deranged bugs haven’t started biting yet. We’re on the lake. From May through October it’s pretty wonderful here. Our dogs, two rescues—Court and Spark, and I never call them adopted—are all seated, waiting to gobble up whatever gets dropped.

  Winter? The lake effect is no joke is all I can say.

  Claire just starts in. “So,” she says. “Hi, so.” It’s more to push me to talk than anything else I think.

  Mo and Mom look at each other. They each have a beer in their hand, perfectly chilled as far as I can tell, and they’re relaxed and easy. Dinner is a nice time in my house. I’ve got no complaints about dinner here.

  I cut in. “So I’m sixteen,” I begin. So much for just coming up in random convo. Thanks, Claire.

  Mom and Mo look at each other. “Are you two getting married?” Mo says. Then she busts out laughing.

  “Maybe,” I say, momentarily offended, like they’re the only ones with some claim to gayness. “Anyway, no.” I just cut it off. “Listen. Really. So sixteen is big because, well, that’s when my birth mom had me, right? That was her age, I mean.”

  They both go serious. Full on. I can tell it’s like Parenting 101: time to pay attention. Let’s be present. Hup, two. “Yes,” Mom says, softening. “Absolutely. That was when she had you. I know birthdays can feel like happy days and they can also feel like sad days because—”

  “Mom! Mom.”

  “Yes, sorry. Please, honey, continue.”

  “Well, what happened to her? Do you know?” I ask. It’s not the first time or second or third, but being sixteen makes it feel different.

  “I don’t know.” Mom shakes her head. “I’ve told you that, honey, many times. I’m sorry.”

  Mo shifts in her seat. “We don’t,” she says, and I can’t tell if the emphasis is on the “we” or the “don’t.”

  “We lost her just before your first birthday.” Mom looks down.

  “Lost her?”

  “Lost track,” says Mo. “Mom meant lost track.”

  “It was terrible. We had thought she would be in our lives. Part of our family. I mean, of course, she still is. She grew you in her tummy and—”

  “Mom! God, I know the story, okay?”

  “All right,” my mother says. “I just want to emphasize how important she was to us.”

  “Is,” corrects Mo.

  “Nothing else, then?” I turn to Mo, who is more reasonable on these issues. “Like no other girl things?” I’m thinking of the dollhouse. “Like dolls, for the dollhouse, maybe?” I say it.

  There is silence.

  “No more girl things,” Mo says. “We filled the dollhouse, Ivy. We bought all the furniture.”

  “You did?”

  They nod.

  “I didn’t know that.” I look at Claire and she looks down at her plate.

  This stops me. I have always thought that my birth mother had filled it up. But it makes sense, doesn’t it? She gives the house and they make it a home.

  “I do wonder about her all the time,” Mom says. “Every day, I think. She gave us you. We loved her. We love her. We had thought you would know her and when she didn’t show up for our scheduled meeting—you were, like, eleven months—we kept trying her. But it was as if she had vanished. Like that.” Mom snaps her fingers. “I mean, she had not shown up a lot. We didn’t see much of her that first year, but she always came around eventually.”

  “Vanished?” Claire asks.

  Mo nods. “Yes, Claire,” she says, and I sense a tiny bit of annoyance on her part. I wonder if she wishes Claire were not here. “She really did. And then we thought, well, this is hard for her now. We had all been so on board for this open adoption. Not everyone knew about open adoption. Not like now, where they’re all that way. But here was a lot of trust there. We were very worried about her. I’d read about all that. How there can be, umm, well, regrets. It’s very hard that first year. It gets easier, I’ve read. I’m not saying that’s true for everyone, but it can get a lot easier. To manage. But now I think, you think it’s going to get easier and you wait for it, and what if it doesn’t? What if it gets harder?”

  “Am I the ‘it’?” I ask.

  “I mean, well, parting with you. That is what I mean by ‘it.’”

  I feel that in my heart, I think. This notion of regret. What if I was living the wrong life? Like I was meant to be with her. I want to be here, though, too. Could you be both places? Like, live two lives at the same time? I consider this. Being split. And yet, I am already split.

  “Like she went into a void and never came out.”

  Mom says, “We had been very close. I mean, we had spent time together. And spoken on the phone. We’d emailed.”

  For a moment I picture my moms with this girl, like, buying her clothes and maybe taking her to nice dinners. Is that how it works? I picture them watching her and listening to her, treating her body like it was golden, sort of like they do me. I am gold and glass and all things special and fragile and delicate. But that can be hard, too. On me. The delicate one. To be so strangely handled. To never ever be ignored or taken for granted or mistreated. That is a lot of focus I gotta tell you. A lot.

  Mo laughs a little bitterly. “I think we were hurt. Like she’d rejected us.”

  “But it was just me she rejected,” I say.

  “That’s not what I meant though I get why you might think that. Really, I think it must have been so hard. Ivy, I know this is difficult to hear, but I can’t imagine losing you. I’m sure it hurts her. Still. Wherever she is.”

  Claire sits back and only then do I notice how the four of us are all on the edges of our seats, leaning into each other, like so eager to get our thoughts out.

  “Wherever she is,” Claire says. “Where is she?”

  I watch Mo and Mom look at e
ach other. Just a glance and then they both take a quick swig off their beer bottles. I could ignore it but I don’t. Why should I? Sixteen.

  “What?” I say.

  “What what?” laughs Mo.

  Another brief exchange between my parents. Nothing makes me feel more like an alien and when I feel that way I wonder: Is it because I’m adopted? Does everyone feel that away about their parents? Most everything that happens that makes me feel odd or mad or outside, makes me think this. Or is it because I have no siblings? Or that my parents are gay? How do you know, though? How do you know what the thing is that your weird feelings come from?

  My life exists because of a swish of that butterfly’s wing. Patrick’s book, a theory of chaos. Where was the swish of the flight? How far away? And what was changed? Was there a storm because of it or was the storm averted? Was it a tsunami? Have I saved the world? Or destroyed it.

  It could have been anything. I could be anywhere. I could be anyone. Am I the best me possible? Of course not. I could be big city or rich as hell or one of six siblings in the woods somewhere, homeschooled, or—or with her. That is the life I can’t imagine. The only one I can’t see. The her of it.

  But I don’t say anything like this. The thoughts are constant and then they’re just . . . gone. Butterfly wings. A dragon’s tail. A firefly blinking in the night. Anything really.

  “I thought we had no secrets in our family,” is what I actually say. “I thought secrets were, like, the devil. Like Mo’s family secrets almost killed her, like, Mom, you keeping being gay from Gram . . .”

  “I get it,” Mo says.

  “Well, I feel like there is still a secret,” I say. “Somewhere in here.” My hands stir at the air above the table.

  Mom traces her thumb along the table’s rough iron. The paint is chipping a bit, just in a kind of rustic farm-like, lived-in way. She looks up at me now, kind of dramatically. Mo nods her head at her as if to say, it’s okay, go ahead.

  And so she does.

  “We do have a letter,” Mom says. She looks at Mo.

  Mo guzzles her beer. Claire’s hands sprout out of her too-big sweater, ready for mad flight. I inadvertently slam my hands on the table.