by Mary Hogan
New nonidentifying background information has surfaced regarding the medical history of the above-referenced adoptee.
That sentence had tumbled through Lee’s mind ever since the letter arrived from Social Services.
Limited genetic information . . . after eighteenth birthday.
Over and over, like a balled-up sheet in the dryer, phrases from the letter spun through her consciousness.
Background information . . . above-referenced adoptee.
Though the official envelope had been addressed to her parents and mailed to the house where they used to live, the letter was meant for her—the adoptee. Handwritten in the space below their zip code was Lee’s previous name. No last name. No identifying background information. Just the original name her birth mother had given her: Elizabeth.
Valerie knocked softly on the bathroom door.
“Mrs. Adell needs me for a luncheon up at the house tomorrow,” she said, her forehead pressed up to the jamb. “But I should be free by, say, two thirty or three. Is that too late to join you?”
Lee’s shoulders drooped. A sarcastic retort popped into her head: What’s the rush to drive downtown in endless L.A. traffic to a government office that closes at four thirty? Reaching for the knob, she curled her long fingers around it. Rotating her slim wrist, she opened the door.
“You don’t have to come with me, Mom. I’m okay on my own.”
A cloud passed over Valerie’s eyes. “You don’t want me there?”
“It’s not that.”
“I mean, if you’d rather not have your mother by your side . . .”
Lee frowned. Why did she test her?
“You know you’ll always be my mom no matter what, right?”
“Right.”
“And I love you. No matter what.”
“Right.”
In her mother’s expression, Lee read her mind: I can’t bear another loss. She understood the feeling. If you didn’t cling to people, she now knew, they could slither away in the night. You could end up living in a moldy pool house with your sunny mother.
Lee reached out to encircle her mother’s upper body. She felt the doughy softness of Valerie’s upper arm, the padded ridge of her scapula. Curling into her, she rested her cheek on her mother’s cushioned shoulder. The maternal pillow on which she’d leaned and cried and slept from the first day Valerie claimed her as her own. She inhaled the clean, uncomplicated scent of the only mother she’d ever known. Valerie Parker was the woman who applied Neosporin with a Q-tip so gently Lee barely felt it on her bloody scrapes; she jostled her tenderly when the alarm clock was beeping and young Lee was still floating atop a vast, warm ocean, buoyant, tucked into a blanket of stars. Not the slightest bit afraid of the gilled beings swimming beneath her. When she was sick, Valerie would press her forehead against her daughter’s sweaty forehead to gauge her fever. She froze grapes to feed her when her throat was her sore. Every night she carefully folded back the top edge of her blanket and smoothed it over Lee’s chest, whispering, “What fantastical journey will you take tonight?” She was there day in and day out, not just once on the day Lee was born.
“Tomorrow. Two thirty. I’ll wait for you in the car,” Lee said.
Tears rose in Valerie’s light green eyes. She said, “We’ll have an adventure.”
Lee kissed her mother’s cheek. She stretched to her full height. On her way back to the living room—such as it was—she noticed that her mother’s bed was already neatly made even though Mrs. Adell rarely checked before noon. Valerie’s “bedroom” was really a dressing room in the back of the pool house; her bed was so skinny it was more like a padded cot. Their bathroom consisted of a toilet and completely impractical pedestal sink. There was nowhere to put anything. They stored their toothbrushes in a mug on top of the toilet tank, which, Lee was pretty sure, was completely unsanitary. Don’t toothbrushes need to be kept at least six feet away from free-floating germs? Didn’t she read that in a dental pamphlet?
The shower was outside, surrounded by a brown picket fence. If they were anywhere but North Beverly Park, it would be woefully backwoods. While they didn’t have to cart empty moonshine jugs down to the creek, last week a baby skunk waddled out of the mountain brush while Lee was outside showering. When she screamed, it sprayed a lawn chair by the pool. How many skunk families lived in that hill?
It’s fun to shower outside when you don’t have to do it every day, even in the rain. Or worse, beneath the blaring Southern Californian sun. No lie, that shower sunburned Lee’s shoulders. Plus, she felt more naked outdoors, forever worried that the mailman would pop his head over the shower’s fencing with a certified letter flapping in his hand.
Seriously, Lee still couldn’t believe they lived this way. Who could even imagine such a setup? Lately, it felt as if life itself was a sandbag on her shoulders. The events of the past year—and her current situation—were more than any eighteen-year-old should have be to bear.
As the clock ticked past eight fifteen, Lee walked over to the glass wall overlooking the pool, opened the door, and stepped outside.
“Aren’t you too late for a shower?” Val asked, behind her.
Feeling the prickle of sweat beneath her cotton cami, Lee briefly pretended not to hear her. Then she nodded and replied, “I need two minutes of fresh air.”
Tilting her head back, she let her eyelids fall shut. She faced the deliciously forbidden fire of the sun. Unscreened rays, she knew, could burn in less than fifteen minutes. Still, she expanded her chest and filled her lungs. For a fleeting moment, she felt free. Her heartbreaks slipped to a far corner of her mind. In twenty-four hours, Lee Parker would be reborn. When government offices reopened after the holiday, she would finally be allowed to meet the girl who had been living inside her for eighteen years: her biological self.
CHAPTER 3
Photo courtesy of the National Railroad Museum
SOUTH FORK, PENNSYLVANIA
Memorial Day
May 30, 1889
The whistle shrills as the train begins its approach to South Fork Station: a weathered wood structure barely suitable for a lady. Unlike the summer arrival I am accustomed to, an odd quiet settles on the air despite the bustle of passengers onto the train at Altoona destined for the misty Memorial Day parade in Johnstown.
“We’re here.” Little Henry leaps up.
“Sit still, my precious.” Mother settles her son down. I watch as her beautiful fingers flit about the front buttons of his velveteen Fauntleroy jacket. She fluffs his lacy collar and calms the flyaway strands of his hair. She plucks lint. Mother’s spidery fingers are ideal for playing the piano. As are mine. We both excel at it. Last year, we entertained our holiday guests with a rousing duet of the most difficult “Mephisto Waltz.” Mr. Liszt himself would have been delighted.
Obediently, Henry doesn’t move. As I secure my hat with its pearl-tipped pin, I feel for my little brother. Surely his outfit suffocates as much as mine, yet he endures without complaint. As does Mother. Once she finishes her fussing, she slides her hands into her gloves, raises her chin, and sits as formidably as the Osterling bell tower. In silence, she waits for the train to stop completely. She lets her rigid spine speak for her. Observe how a lady displays discomfort. Not once have I seen Mother betray the expectations her fortunate union to Father thrust upon her.
“ ’Tis I who married well,” he often says, embarrassing her. Implicit in the loving sentiment is the very real fact that Vera Sinclair married above her class. Her father—my grandfather, Silas—was a custom tailor near Pittsburgh’s East End. Silas Sinclair was known well in the social circles of North Point Breeze and Upper St. Clair. Rare was the dining table that wasn’t populated by men feeling the comfortable containment of a Silas Sinclair waistcoat. Though it was Grandfather’s stunning daughter that kept Father returning for fittings long after his wardrobe was full.
“The moment I set eyes upon your mother, I could see no other,” Father frequently sang in
his baritone pitch.
Impeccably dressed Vera Sinclair had her pick of several suitors. Yet Dr. Haberlin was the most desirable choice. Grandfather said so often. While Father wasn’t the wealthiest of Mother’s admirers, he occupied an unimpeachable spot on the outskirts of society: a trusted physician whose loyalty was unquestioned. A man who could be counted on to keep secrets.
Amid the screech of the braking shoes against the locomotive’s wheels, I gaze at my mother and see the woman I will become. Still a beauty, she has nonetheless aged beyond awe. Unlike my own kaleidoscope of inky hues, Mother’s obsidian hair reflects fewer highlights. Faint creases fan out from the outer edges of her blue-green eyes and her hands are lined with delicate tributaries. Strict use of parasols and hats has preserved the paleness of her skin. The only cosmetic she ever uses is beet juice on her cheeks and lips and only sparingly on special occasions.
“Father told me not to play on the dock,” Henry says, bobbing up and down on the seat, “but how else can I see the jumping fish?”
“They don’t jump until summer,” I say.
Mother and I exchange smiles. In summer—when all of Pittsburgh society relaxes in our exclusive mountain paradise—the caretaker stocks the lake with so many bass they can’t help but leap over one another. They are so plentiful they often clog the spillway. The placid surface of our lake roils like bathwater forgotten on the stove.
Ah, summer. Glorious summer at the South Fork Fishing and Hunting Club. My heart flutters at the thought of it. Weeks of fun and leisure. Croquet is my specialty, but water sports are my favorite. The way a line of sailboats slices the surface of Lake Conemaugh is as beautiful a sight as any I’ve ever seen. And when Mother allows me to race in a regatta, well, the thrill of heeling right up to the tipping point is unlike any excitement I’ve experienced in Pittsburgh.
Plus, last summer, in a clearing between the clubhouse and the South Fork Dam, James Tottinger from Great Britain first made himself known to me. And I to him.
“Do fish get cold, ’Lizb . . . Elizabeth?”
“No.” I tug at the wrists of my gloves.
“Why not?” Henry’s baby-blue eyes blink at me.
“Henry, please,” I say.
“Fish don’t get cold because it is not in their nature,” Mother calmly explains. “Biology is destiny, my darling. We all must be whom we are meant to be.”
A quizzical look flashes into my eyes. Then a tiny grin curls the corners of my lips. Henry jumps up the moment the train stops moving. Mother and I wait for the porter’s escort. I position my shoulders as befitting a girl of my breeding. Like Mother, I, too, am a beauty. And following in the Haberlin tradition, I shall marry above my station, as well. Only I plan to follow my mother’s advice: I will be who I am, not who everyone expects me to be.
CHAPTER 4
SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
Memorial Day
Present
Lee was low on gas. Lately, the old Toyota seemed to be gulping fuel into its innards only to spew it out the tailpipe in gusts of white. Thankfully, the Encino branch of Bed Bath & Beyond was downhill almost all the way. She shifted into neutral and rode the brake.
“Do you feel different now that you’re officially eighteen?” Valerie had asked before Lee left the pool house that morning. Lee was crouched behind the couch, folding her pajama pants and unfolding the tan khakis and blue uniform shirt she kept in a neat stack there. Next to the stashed sheets and pillow. Out of sight, as Mrs. Adell required. Valerie’s face was so openly hopeful, Lee didn’t have the heart to tell her the truth. Of course she felt different. How could she not? The speed of life’s unraveling had left her dizzy. She had envisioned rising on her eighteenth birthday in her own bed, in her own home.
“Good morning, Mom and Dad,” she would say as soon as full consciousness took hold. It would be a rare day when everything went right.
“Scott!” Her older brother would surprise her by coming home for the weekend. The family would be together in a TV sort of way. Valerie would hum a Sunday-morning tune while she scrambled eggs at the stove. Gil, Lee’s father, would snatch a rippled piece of bacon from the greasy paper towel on the plate by the retro toaster. Valerie would playfully bump him with her hip. Scott would ruffle Lee’s hair and call her “sis.” Their twelve-year age difference would seem quirky instead of cryptic. Freshly ground coffee would suffuse the sunny kitchen with the irresistible smell of possibility.
After a loud and laughing breakfast, Lee would clear the dishes and wipe down the table and promise to be home in time for the Memorial Day picnic. Then she’d meet Shelby in Balboa Park, where they’d spread two towels on the grass by the lake and get started on their summer tans. Together, Lee and Shelby would fantasize about the fall semester when they would both rise from a dorm bed. Lee at Columbia. Shelby at Stanford.
“My roommate will be perpetually hungover,” Shelby would muse.
“She’ll stir yogurt and granola into a rinsed-out coffee mug,” Lee would add. “And eat only half of it.”
“Her hair will be sexily jostled.”
“Unlike my morning fright wig!”
“I will kick ass in linguistics.” Shelby planned to be a speech therapist.
“I will . . . do something amazing!” Lee was undecided. The only thing she knew for sure was that her future would shine as brightly as the lighthouse at Cabrillo Beach.
Even her most dire imaginings never pictured the current scenario: working at Bed Bath & Beyond and living in a cramped pool house with her mother, now a live-in maid. Her father gone, moved into a rusty trailer in Topanga Canyon, and her brother burrowed into a yurt somewhere in the Idaho woods. And Shelby—the best friend, who knew everything there was to know about Lee—in Malawi, spending her last summer before college building houses for the poor. Before, Lee never appreciated how heavy separations could feel.
“I feel extremely mature,” she told her mom. Not entirely a lie.
In the sweltering car on the way into the Valley, Lee slowly rolled downhill with the windows open and the air conditioner off to save gas. She reached her hand up to the dashboard to practice the keys to the right of middle C. Just because she no longer had a piano didn’t mean music wasn’t in her head. This morning it was Giovanni Marradi. The high notes of his compositions soothed her like raindrops on a windowpane. Shelby used to call Marradi the Walmart Franz Liszt, but Lee didn’t care. His music moved her. After school, she used to sit at their clinky old Baldwin and play Marradi’s “Just for You” over and over until her fingers knew it by heart. Now she no longer had a piano or a dad or a proper living room. But her hands still knew the notes.
Elizabeth.
Inserting itself into the melody in her head was her birth name. As it did from time to time. She’d always known it. Her parents never hid the fact that she arrived with a label. And one with so many variants! Liz, Liza, Lizzy, Eliza, Beth, Betty.
“My child will be called Lee,” Valerie had decreed. “A baby shouldn’t have to cart around a name larger than she is. Lee is perfect. One foot in her original name, the other in her new life.”
That was that. Lee had always been Lee Parker, daughter of Gil and Val, sister of Scott. The most wanted baby in the world. After a few years, she rarely thought about her beginnings at all. Well, hardly ever.
Then the letter arrived. Pushed through the mail slot in the door of the house in the Valley where she used to live. When her family was still intact and her future was unbroken. The letter sat on the floor with the water bill and bank statement and a tool catalog that her dad would tuck under his arm on the way to the bathroom. When Lee spotted the envelope, her breath caught in her windpipe. Its return address—California Department of Social Services—could only mean it had something to do with her. Why would they make contact after all these years?
“New nonidentifying information . . .” That’s what she read that day, and reread a million times for months afterward. A national database had tracked her
down. Limited genetic information, she was told, was recently discovered and would be made available after her eighteenth birthday. Since hers was a closed adoption, her history had been left blank. The only information Lee and her parents were ever given was that Lee’s birth mother had drowned when Lee was a baby. Period. End of story. As if Lee’s wondering would stop there, too.
It didn’t. Of course not. As any adoptee knew.
Now, in one more day, her history would open up. A tiny crack. Still. It was something. A squiggle on her blank slate. Limited though it might be, knowledge was there for the taking. “If the adoptee so desires,” the letter had stated. “Some do and some do not.”
Lee did. Of course she did.
Birth kids never got it. That simmering. Like white noise, tiny bubbles were forever agitating her brain, fizzing about, not making too much of a fuss until one day, out of the clear blue, they enlarge and multiply and swim madly for the surface. All at once curiosity roils.
Who am I?
Innate belonging—the aura that genetic children feel so naturally they don’t feel it at all—had remained a fingernail sliver away. Casual comments at the dinner table: Scott, you are as impulsive as your father pinched at Lee’s chest. Not hard. No bruising. Just there.
Am I as impulsive as my father? As sensitive as my mother? The spitting image of my aunt? Had anyone ever wondered what became of me?
Lee hungered to know not just about her birth mother, but about her biological mother’s mother, and her mother, too. Her entire lineage. More than one generation is lost when you lack genetic parentage. A whole ancestry disappears like hot breath on a cold window. Dad? Granddad? Great-grandfather? Had any male ever been more than sperm? Who gave Lee brown eyes that were so dark they looked black? Which ancestor wired her to be restless? A worrier? Had she, oh please, inherited resilience?
As Ventura Boulevard came into view, Lee shifted into drive and returned her piano hand to the steering wheel. “Green, green, green,” she chirped, channeling Valerie by sending positive traffic vibes to the multilaned intersection. Just before she got there, the light turned red.
