The Jodi Picoult Collection #4

by Jodi Picoult

  The previous night I had joined ten adoption support groups online. I created a name for myself (Separ8tedatbirth@yahoo.com) and made lists from the websites in an empty Moleskine notebook.

  1. USE STATE REGISTRIES.

  2. REGISTER WITH ISRR—the Index of Search and Reunion Resources, the biggest registry there is.

  3. REGISTER WITH THE WORLD WIDE REGISTRY.

  4. TALK TO YOUR ADOPTIVE PARENTS . . . AND COUSINS, UNCLES, OLDER SIBLINGS . . .

  5. FIGURE OUT YOUR CONDUIT. In other words, who arranged the adoption? A church, a lawyer, a physician, an agency? They might be a source of information.

  6. FILE A WAIVER OF CONFIDENTIALITY, so if your birth mom comes looking for you, she knows that you want to be contacted.

  7. POST YOUR INFO REGULARLY. There are people who really do forward all over in the hope that your info gets to the right place!

  8. PLACE ADS IN THE PRIMARY NEWSPAPERS OF YOUR BIRTH CITY.

  9. ABOVE ALL ELSE, IGNORE ANY SEARCH COMPANY YOU SEE ON TV ADS OR TALK SHOWS! THEY ARE SCAMS!

  At two in the morning, I was still online in an adoption search chat room, reacting to horror stories from people who wanted to save me the trouble of making the same mistakes. There was RiggleBoy, who had contacted a 1-900 search number and given them his credit card information, only to be socked with a bill for $6500 at the end of one month. There was Joy4Eva, who’d found out that she was taken away from her birth family for neglect and abuse. AllieCapone688 gave me a list of three books that she used when she was getting started—which cost less than all she’d spent on private investigators. Only one woman had a happy ending: she’d gone to a psychic named Meshinda Dows, who had given her such accurate information that she found her birth mom in a week’s time. Try it, FantaC suggested. What have you got to lose?

  Well, my self-respect, for one. But all the same, I found myself Googling Meshinda Dows. She had one of those websites that takes forever to load, because there was a music file attached—in this case, an eerie mix of chimes and humpback whale songs. Meshinda Dows, the home page read, Certified psychic counselor.

  Who certified psychic counselors? The U.S. Department of Snake Oil and Charlatans?

  Serving the Cape Cod community for 35 years.

  Which meant she was within driving distance from my home in Bankton.

  Let me be your bridge to the past.

  Before I could chicken out, I clicked on the email link and sent her a message explaining my search for my birth mom. Within thirty seconds of sending it, I got a reply:

  Marin, I think I can be of great help to you. Are you free tomorrow afternoon?

  I did not question why this woman was online at three in the morning. I didn’t let myself wonder why a successful psychic would have an opening so quickly. Instead, I agreed to the sixty-dollar consultation fee and printed out the driving directions she gave me.

  Five hours after I’d left my house that morning, I pulled into Meshinda Dows’s driveway. She lived in a tiny house that was painted purple with red trim. She was easily in her sixties, but her hair was dyed jet black and reached her waist. “You must be Marin,” she said.

  Wow, already she was one for one.

  She led me into a room that was divided from the foyer with a curtain made of silk scarves. Inside were two couches facing each other across a square white ottoman. On the ottoman were a feather, a fan, and a deck of cards. The shelves in the room were covered with Beanie Babies, each sealed in a small plastic bag with a heart-shaped tag protector. They looked like they were all suffocating.

  Meshinda sat down, and I followed suit. “I take the money up front,” she said.

  “Oh.” I dug in my purse and pulled out three twenty-dollar bills, which she folded and stuck into her pocket.

  “Why don’t we start with you telling me why you’re here?”

  I blinked at her. “Shouldn’t you know that?”

  “Psychic gifts don’t always work that way, hon,” she said. “You’re a little nervous, aren’t you?”

  “I suppose.”

  “You shouldn’t be. You’re protected. You have spirits around you,” she said. She closed her eyes and squinted. “Your . . . grandfather? He wants you to know he’s breathing better now.”

  My jaw dropped open. My grandfather had died when I was thirteen, of complications from lung cancer. I had been terrified to visit him in the hospital and see him wasting away.

  “He knew something important about your birth mother,” Meshinda said.

  Well, that was convenient, since Grandpa couldn’t confirm or deny that now.

  “She’s thin and has dark hair,” the psychic continued. “She was very young when it happened. I’m getting an accent . . .”

  “Southern?” I asked.

  “No, not Southern . . . I can’t quite place it.” Meshinda looked at me. “I’m also getting some names. Strange ones. Allagash . . . and Whitcomb . . . no, make that Whittier.”

  “Allagash Whittier is a law firm in Nashua,” I said.

  “I think they have information. It might have been a lawyer there who handled the adoption. I’d contact them. And Maisie. Someone named Maisie has some information, too.”

  Maisie was the name of the clerk of the Hillsborough County court who’d sent me my adoption decree. “I’m sure she does,” I said. “She’s got the whole file.”

  “I’m talking about another Maisie. An aunt or a cousin . . . she adopted a baby from Africa.”

  “I don’t have an aunt or a cousin named Maisie,” I said.

  “You do,” Meshinda insisted. “You haven’t met her yet.” She wrinkled up her face, as if she was sucking on a lemon. “Your birth father is named Owen. He has something to do with the law.”

  I leaned forward, intrigued. Was that why I’d been attracted to the career?

  “He and your birth mom have had three more children.”

  Whether or not that was true, I felt a pang in my chest. How come those three got to stay, but I was given away? The old adage I’d been told over and over—that my birth parents loved me but couldn’t take care of me—had never quite rung true. If they loved me so much, why had I been dispensable?

  Meshinda touched a hand to her head. “That’s it,” she said. “Nothing else coming through.” She patted my knee. “That lawyer,” she advised. “That’s the place to start.”

  • • •

  On the way back home, I stopped off at McDonald’s to eat something and sat outside at the human Habitrail playspace that was filled with toddlers and their caregivers. I called 411 and was connected to Allagash Whittier. By telling them I was an associate with Robert Ramirez, I was able to sweet-talk my way past the paralegals to a lawyer on staff. “Marin,” the woman said, “what can I do for you?”

  On the small bench where I sat, I curled a little closer into myself, to make the conversation more private. “It’s sort of a strange request,” I said. “I’m trying to find some information about a client your firm may have had in the early seventies. It would have been a young woman, around sixteen or seventeen?”

  “That shouldn’t be hard to find—we don’t get too many of those. What’s the last name?”

  I hesitated. “I don’t have a last name, exactly.”

  The line went silent. “Was this an adoption case?”

  “Well. Yes. Mine.”

  The woman’s voice was frosty. “I’d suggest you try the courthouse,” she said, and she hung up.

  I clutched the cell phone between my hands and watched a little boy shriek his way down a curved purple slide. He was Asian, his mother was not. Was he adopted? One day, would he be sitting here like I was, facing a dead end?

  I dialed 411 again, and a moment later was connected to Maisie Donovan, the adoption search administrator for Hillsborough County. “You probably don’t remember me,” I said. “A few months ago, you sent me my adoption decree . . .”

  “Name?”

  “Well, that’s what I’m looking f
or . . .”

  “I meant your name,” Maisie said.

  “Marin Gates.” I swallowed. “It’s the craziest thing,” I said. “I saw a psychic today. I mean, I’m not one of those nutcases who goes to psychics or anything . . . not that I have a problem with that if it’s something, you know, you like to do every now and then . . . but anyway, I went to this woman’s house and she told me that someone named Maisie had information about my birth mother.” I forced a laugh. “She couldn’t give me much more detail, but she got that part right, huh?”

  “Ms. Gates,” Maisie said flatly, “what can I do for you?”

  I bowed my head toward the ground. “I don’t know where to go from here,” I admitted. “I don’t know what to do next.”

  “For fifty dollars, I can send you your nonidentifying information in a letter.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Whatever’s in your file that doesn’t give away names, addresses, phone numbers, birth date—”

  “The unimportant stuff,” I said. “Do you think I’ll learn anything from it?”

  “Your adoption wasn’t through an agency; it was a private one,” Maisie explained, “so there wouldn’t be much, I imagine. You’d probably find out that you’re white.”

  I thought of the adoption decree she’d sent me. “I’m about as sure of that as I am that I’m female.”

  “Well, for fifty dollars, I’m happy to confirm it.”

  “Yes,” I heard myself say. “I’d like that.”

  After I wrote the address where I needed to send my check on the back of my hand, I hung up and watched the children bouncing around like molecules in a heated solution. It was hard for me to imagine ever having a child. It was impossible to imagine giving one up.

  “Mommy!” one little girl cried out from the top of a ladder. “Are you watching?”

  Last night on the message boards, I had first seen the labels a-mom and b-mom. They weren’t rankings, as I’d first thought—just shorthand for adoptive mom and birth mom. As it turned out, there was a huge controversy over the terminology. Some birth mothers felt the label made them sound like breeders, not mothers, and wanted to be called first mother or natural mother. But by that logic, my mom became the second mother, or the unnatural mother. Was it the act of giving birth that made you a mother? Did you lose that label when you relinquished your child? If people were measured by their deeds, on the one hand, I had a woman who had chosen to give me up; on the other, I had a woman who’d sat up with me at night when I was sick as a child, who’d cried with me over boyfriends, who’d clapped fiercely at my law school graduation. Which acts made you more of a mother?

  Both, I realized. Being a parent wasn’t just about bearing a child. It was about bearing witness to its life.

  Suddenly, I found myself thinking of Charlotte O’Keefe.

  Piper

  The patient was about thirty-five weeks into her pregnancy and had just moved to Bankton with her husband. I hadn’t seen her for any routine obstetric visits, but she’d been slotted into my schedule during my lunch break because she was complaining of fever and other symptoms that seemed to me like red flags for infection. According to the nurse who’d done the initial history, the woman had no medical problems.

  I pushed open the door with a smile on my face, hoping to calm down what I was sure would be a panicking mother-to-be. “I’m Dr. Reece,” I said, shaking her hand and sitting down. “Sounds like you haven’t been feeling too well.”

  “I thought it was the flu, but it wouldn’t go away . . .”

  “It’s always a good idea to get something like that checked out when you’re pregnant anyway,” I said. “The pregnancy’s been normal so far?”

  “A breeze.”

  “And how long have you been having symptoms?”

  “About a week now.”

  “Well, I’ll give you a chance to change into a robe, and then we’ll see what’s going on.” I stepped outside and reread her chart while I waited a few moments for her to change.

  I loved my job. Most of the time when you were an obstetrician, you were present at one of the most joyous moments of a woman’s life. Of course, there were incidents that were not quite as happy—I’d had my share of having to tell a pregnant woman that there’d been a fetal demise; I’d had surgeries where a placenta accreta led to DIC and the patient never regained consciousness. But I tried not to think about these; I liked to focus instead on the moment when that baby, slick and wriggling like a minnow in my hands, gasped its way into this world.

  I knocked. “All set?”

  She was sitting on the examination table, her belly resting on her lap like an offering. “Great,” I said, fitting my stethoscope to my ears. “We’ll start by listening to your chest.” I huffed on the metal disk—as an OB I was particularly sensitive to cold metal objects being placed anywhere on a person—and set it gently against the woman’s back. Her lungs were perfectly clear; no rasping, no rattles. “Sounds fine,” I said. “Now let’s check out your heart.”

  I slid aside the neckline of the gown to find a large median sternotomy scar—the vertical kind that goes straight down the chest. “What’s that from?”

  “Oh, that’s just my heart transplant.”

  I raised my brows. “I thought you told the nurse that you didn’t have any medical problems.”

  “I don’t,” the patient said, beaming. “My new heart’s working great.”

  • • •

  Charlotte didn’t start seeing me as a patient until she was trying to get pregnant. Before that, we were still just moms who made fun of our daughters’ skating coaches behind their backs; we’d save seats for each other at school parent nights; occasionally we’d get together with our spouses for dinner at a nice restaurant. But one day, when the girls were playing up in Emma’s room, Charlotte told me that she and Sean had been trying to get pregnant for a year, and nothing had happened.

  “I’ve done it all,” she confided. “Ovulation predictors, special diets, Moon Boots—you name it.”

  “Have you seen a doctor?” I asked.

  “Well,” she said. “I was thinking about seeing you.”

  I didn’t take on patients I knew personally. No matter what anyone said, you couldn’t be an objective physician if it was someone you loved lying on your operating table. You could argue that the stakes for an OB were always high—and there’s no question I gave 100 percent every time I walked into a delivery—but the stakes were just that tiny bit higher if the patient was personally connected to you. If you failed, you were not just failing your patient. You were failing your friend.

  “I don’t think that’s the greatest idea, Charlotte,” I said. “It’s a tough line to cross.”

  “You mean the whole you’ve-got-your-hand-up-my-cervix-now-so-how-can-you-look-me-in-the-eye-when-we-go-shopping part?”

  I grinned. “Not that. Seen one uterus, seen them all,” I said. “It’s just that a physician should be able to keep her distance, instead of being personally involved.”

  “But that’s exactly why you’re perfect for me,” Charlotte argued. “Another doctor would try to help us conceive but wouldn’t really give a damn. I want someone who cares beyond the point of professional responsibility. I want someone who wants me to have a baby as much as I want to.”

  Put that way, how could I deny her? I called Charlotte every morning so that we could dissect the letters to the editor in the local paper. She was the first one I ran to when I was fuming at Rob and needed to vent. I knew what shampoo she used, which side of her car the gas tank was on, how she took her coffee. She was, simply, my best friend. “Okay,” I said.

  A smile exploded on her face. “Do we start now?”

  I burst out laughing. “No, Charlotte, I’m not going to do a pelvic exam on my living room floor while the girls are playing upstairs.”

  Instead, I had her come to the office the following day. As it turned out, there was no medical reason that she and Sean were ha
ving trouble getting pregnant. We talked about how eggs decline in quality after women hit their thirties, which meant it might take longer to happen—but could still happen. I got her started on folic acid and on tracking her basal body temperature. I told Sean (in what had to have been his favorite conversation with me to date) that they should have sex more often. For six months, I tracked Charlotte’s menstrual calendar in my own appointment book; I’d call on the twenty-eighth day and ask if she’d started her period—and for six months, she had. “Maybe we should talk about fertility drugs,” I suggested, and the next month, just before her appointment with a specialist, Charlotte got pregnant the old-fashioned way.

  Considering how long it took, the pregnancy itself was uneventful. Charlotte’s blood tests and urine cultures always came back clean; her blood pressure was never elevated. She was nauseated round the clock, and she’d call me after throwing up at midnight to ask why the hell it was called morning sickness.

  At her eleventh week of pregnancy, we heard the heartbeat for the first time. At the fifteenth, I did a quad screen on her blood to check for neural defects and Down syndrome. Two days later, when her results came in, I drove to her house during my lunch break. “What’s wrong?” she asked, when she saw me standing at the door.

  “Your test results. We have to talk.”

  I explained that the quad screen wasn’t foolproof, that the test was designed specifically to have a 5 percent screen positive rate, which means that 5 percent of all women who took the test were going to be told that they had a higher than average risk of having a Down syndrome baby. “Based on your age alone, your risk is one in two hundred and seventy of having a baby with Down,” I said. “But the blood test came back saying that, actually, your risk is higher than average—it’s one in one hundred and fifty.”

  Charlotte folded her arms across her chest.

  “You’ve got a few options,” I said. “You’re scheduled for an ultrasound in three weeks anyway. We can take a look during that ultrasound and see if anything is a red flag. If it does show something, we can send you for a level two ultrasound. If not, we can reduce your odds again to one in two hundred and fifty, which is nearly average, and assume the test was a false reading. But just remember—the ultrasound isn’t one hundred percent peace of mind. If you want absolute answers, you’ll have to have amniocentesis.”