Year of the Monsoon

by Caren J. Werlinger

  “Are you sure surprising her is a good idea?” Jo had asked. “Isn’t she going to be busy with her conference?”

  “She’s been there since Wednesday, and if I know her, she’s probably been eating every meal alone in her room.” What Leisa couldn’t tell her aunt was that they hadn’t spoken since their argument Tuesday night.

  Traffic began to move.

  “Come on,” she urged, watching the speedometer needle creep up to forty.

  The past three days had been hell. She’d barely slept. She and Nan had never slept apart out of anger, but even worse, she’d gotten up early Wednesday morning and left for work without seeing Nan off. Now she couldn’t shake the guilt she felt. They’d never gone this long without speaking, but “I don’t even know what to say to her at this point,” she would have said because she was afraid to imagine whatever it was Nan hadn’t been ready to tell her.

  Finally, on Thursday, unable to stand it any longer, she’d gone to Maddie. “I need to speak with you if you have a minute.”

  “Sure,” Maddie said. “Come on in.”

  Leisa closed the door and sat, clamping her hands between her knees to control her fidgeting.

  “I’m sorry to bring personal things to work,” she began.

  Maddie leaned forward. “What is it?”

  “I don’t know exactly,” Leisa admitted. “Nan… something is wrong and she can’t tell me what it is. I thought maybe you might know what’s going on.”

  Maddie frowned. “What makes you think something’s wrong?”

  Leisa shrugged. “Everything. She’s been distant for months. She was working like seventy hours a week until Mom died. But even when she was home more, she wasn’t there with me.”

  She blinked back the tears she could feel stinging her eyes. “We had an argument the night before she left. She said there was something she needed to tell me when she got back, but…” The tears spilled over. “I’m really scared,” she said as she swiped her sleeve across her eyes.

  “Hey,” Maddie said, getting up and coming around her desk to sit next to Leisa. She laid her large hand gently on Leisa’s shoulder.

  “You’re her oldest friend,” Leisa said, sniffing. “Do you have any idea what’s bothering her?”

  Maddie shook her head. “I honestly don’t. I’ve talked to her about working so much, but she hasn’t said anything about any other problems.”

  “Why didn’t Nan tell her years ago? When they first met?” Lyn asked incredulously when they finally knew the whole story. “And why didn’t you tell me?”

  “It wasn’t my story to tell,” Maddie mused. “I’m not really sure why Nan didn’t tell her. I think it had a lot to do with the garbage Leisa’s old girlfriend had pulled on her. Nan was afraid Leisa would walk if she told her the truth.”

  Lyn shook her head sadly. “And now Leisa may walk because she didn’t.”

  By six-thirty, Leisa was getting off I-64 at Williamsburg. Nan was staying in the hotel where the conference was being held. Scanning the hotel signs cropping up amidst all the pancake houses offering cheap breakfasts, she spied the one she sought. She pulled into the parking lot and found Nan’s Mini. She parked next to it and entered the hotel lobby, her heart pounding. She tried Nan’s cell phone, but, as she expected, got her voice mail immediately. Leisa walked over to the registration desk.

  “May I help you?” asked the young woman behind the desk.

  “Yes, could you tell me what room Dr. Nan Mathison is in, please?”

  The young woman stared at Leisa through smudged glasses, which she repeatedly pushed back up the bridge of her nose, only to have them slide down again. “I’m sorry, but we’re not allowed to give out that information.”

  “No, you don’t understand,” Leisa explained. “I’m her partner.”

  She waited for this revelation to change the desk clerk’s mind about giving her the room number. After several seconds and three more pushes of the glasses, the clerk said, “So, she should have given you her room number.”

  Trying not to lose her patience, Leisa said, “She would have, but her cell phone is turned off for the conference. Perhaps you could call her room and tell her I’m here,” she suggested with exaggerated politeness.

  The clerk blinked a couple of times. “I could do that.” She started to reach for the telephone and stopped. “What’s your name, please?”

  “Leisa.”

  The clerk scanned a computer monitor and punched some buttons on the telephone. After several seconds, she hung up. “I’m sorry, but she’s not answering her room phone.” She pointed to the far end of the lobby. “You could wait for her at the bar if you want.”

  On her way to the bar, Leisa passed a couple of people sitting in chairs in the lobby. She quickly scanned the hotel’s dining room as she went by, looking for any sign of Nan and seeing none. There were several people seated at the bar. She chose a small table set back in an alcove from which she could see the lobby and the entrance to the dining room. Her waiter had just brought her a Sam Adams when she saw Nan step out of the elevator across from the registration desk. Leisa was just standing to go to her when she saw Nan stop to greet one of the men Leisa had passed in the lobby. Nan shook hands with him as he gestured toward the bar.

  “Damn.” Leisa looked around quickly. The man was no doubt one of the other conference attendees, but she didn’t want to be introduced and have to sit politely while he and Nan talked about whatever. Not with the tension between her and Nan right now. There was no way out of the bar without walking by them, but her table was next to the restrooms. Quickly, she got up and ducked into the women’s room.

  She took her time, and when she was ready to exit, she opened the door slowly to make sure she wasn’t going to run smack into Nan. She couldn’t see them anywhere. As she slid back into her seat, she heard Nan’s voice coming from an adjacent booth.

  “…how you located me, Mr. Chisholm,” she was saying.

  “It wasn’t easy, Dr. Mathison,” he replied. “It took some serious digging, and calling in a few favors from people with access to the records.”

  “That sounds –” Nan stopped as their drinks were brought. She waited until the server left. “That sounds illegal.”

  “Well,” he said placatingly, “not so much illegal as unorthodox. It’s why the family hired me.”

  “What do they want?” Nan asked. Even from where she sat, Leisa could hear the chill in Nan’s voice and wondered why Mr. Chisholm wasn’t backing up as fast as he could.

  “To meet you. Or more precisely, Todd wants to meet you,” he said.

  “I told you over the phone, that is not going to happen.”

  “I remember. But I think once you know the circumstances you may change your mind.”

  “I doubt it,” Nan said firmly.

  There were a few seconds of silence, and Leisa held her breath, afraid maybe they were getting up from the booth.

  “I brought a photo of Todd,” Mr. Chisholm said. Leisa imagined he must have been offering it to Nan because a few seconds later he asked, “Don’t you even want to see what he looks like? I knew as soon as I saw you that I had found the right person.”

  Nan said nothing.

  “He has leukemia, Dr. Mathison. It’s stage IV, terminal, the doctors say. His dying wish is to meet his birth mother.”

  Chapter 9

  FUNNY HOW LIFE CAN change – one wrong word, one bad decision – and nothing is ever the same. This is opposed, Nan would ponder over the days and weeks that followed, to the big things – the planned things – that change life. It seemed unfair in a way that accidents, things that happen in a split second, can have the same impact as things that take time and planning. Like having a baby. Nine months for that life to develop, after only five minutes of drunken sex with someone she couldn’t even remember at some party in college. Nine months to agonize about what to do. An abortion was never really an option. Not for Nan. It wasn’t the baby’s fault. Keeping the
child was never an option, either. As it was, the birth would occur just in time for her to begin grad school as planned.

  Maddie was the only person who knew. Not her family, no other friends. And after the adoption was arranged and the newborn baby had been taken away, they had never spoken of it again. But Maddie knew. Nan could see in Maddie’s eyes when friends brought babies to gatherings that she alone understood why Nan had to leave the room. How could she hold someone else’s infant when she hadn’t even held her own? Hadn’t even asked to see him?

  “What kind of person could do that?”

  Nan had asked herself that question more times than she could count, but it was Leisa who asked it aloud when Nan finally got to the house.

  It had taken several seconds in the hotel bar for Nan to realize that the person who got up from the table behind them so abruptly that she knocked her chair over was Leisa. It had taken another few seconds to realize that Leisa had just overheard their entire conversation.

  Nan leapt from her booth, leaving Bill Chisholm sitting there as she ran full-tilt through the lobby and out into the parking lot just in time to see Leisa’s Sentra squeal away. It took another half hour to extricate herself from Mr. Chisholm’s attempts to set up a meeting, pack her things and check out of the hotel. Leisa wouldn’t answer her cell phone. That drive home was the longest four hours of Nan’s life.

  When she pulled up behind the Nissan, the house was dark. She let herself in the front door and set her suitcase and briefcase down. She could make out the shadow that was Leisa in one of the chairs flanking the fireplace. She was sitting with her knees hugged to her chest. The only sound was the ticking of the mantel clock.

  Nan left the lights off, taking the adjacent chair, and saying nothing for several minutes. At last, she quietly said, “That wasn’t how I wanted you to find out.”

  “No, I can’t imagine it was.” The calm of Leisa’s voice frightened Nan more than any crying or shouting would have done. “I suppose this is what you wanted to explain to me when you got home?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’m listening.”

  Nan took a shaky breath. She could feel herself shivering uncontrollably. “My senior year of college. There was a party at the end of fall semester. I was feeling sorry for myself because my girlfriend had just broken up with me to be with someone else. I got very drunk. He was someone I barely knew. It would sound better to say he was someone I at least cared about, but… it was a fuck in the crudest sense of that word. I don’t remember much. I think he passed out afterward. I never spoke to him again.”

  Nan waited, but Leisa said nothing.

  “Maddie was the only one I told. I didn’t want to have an abortion and I didn’t want to raise a baby by myself. She was with me at the hospital. The adoption was already arranged. They took it – the baby – away immediately.”

  “You never even looked at him?” Leisa asked. The appalled tone of her voice stung Nan who said nothing.

  “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  It was Leisa asking now, but it could have been Maddie or Lyn or Nan asking herself that question a million times over the years.

  “I was afraid,” Nan whispered. “You were hurt so badly by Sarah, and so distrustful of any woman who had been with a man. And…” she paused. “I was so ashamed of that entire episode of my life.”

  She leaned her elbows on her knees, pressing the heels of her hands against her eyes. “I told myself at first that I would tell you if it looked like things might get serious between us. And then, when you told me about Sarah, I told myself I’d tell you when that hurt was less. And the longer I waited, the harder it got. Eventually, it felt like a bad dream, something I would never have to tell you about. But, a few months ago, that man, Bill Chisholm, started e-mailing me. He’d tracked me down.” She sighed. “You heard the rest.”

  She sat with her head resting on her hands for a long time.

  Finally, she heard Leisa’s voice, still eerily calm, say, “I don’t understand how you could lie to me for our entire relationship. What kind of person could do that?”

  Nan stiffened, knowing what was coming. Her heart was beating so hard, she could hear the blood thundering in her ears, and she felt as if she couldn’t breathe.

  “I don’t know you,” Leisa said quietly. “If you could lie and hide something like this, what else might you have been lying about? I don’t trust you anymore.”

  Nan could feel hot tears squeezing out of her eyes, still pressed against her hands.

  “I think we need some time apart,” Leisa continued. “I’m going to move into Mom’s house until we can figure this out.”

  “Didn’t you try to stop her?” Maddie asked.

  “How could I?” Nan responded dejectedly. “Everything she said was true. And I don’t know how to make it right.”

  She looked over at Maddie, sitting in the same chair Leisa had sat in. “How is she?”

  Maddie shrugged. “About as you’d expect. She’s angry with me, also. She sees me as part of the deception.”

  She looked at Nan, noting the dark circles under her red-rimmed eyes. “I’m worried about both of you, but you I can keep an eye on. Does Leisa have anyone else to confide in?”

  Nan thought. “She’s close to Jo Ann and Bruce, but I don’t know that she could talk to them about this. Would Lyn try talking to her?”

  “She already offered,” Maddie said. “But she wanted me to tell you that if Leisa does agree to talk to her, she’s going to keep Leisa’s confidence. We’re not allowed to ask.”

  Nan nodded as her eyes filled with tears again. “She must feel so alone.”

  A steady rain fell Saturday morning as Leisa sat cross-legged on the couch in her mother’s family room, addressing an envelope. A New York State Adoptee Registration form lay beside her, already filled out and notarized. Adoption records in New York were still sealed, but the woman on the phone had explained that if both the adoptee and a biological parent or sibling registered, then the state would put them in touch with one another. She stared at the form.

  She flipped open her adoption folder and pulled out the handwritten note yet again. Never had she struggled like this. Usually, she made decisions quickly and without second-guessing herself. This was a dilemma she had discussed with no one.

  “I know you wanted me to ask questions,” she said aloud to a photo of her parents on the fireplace mantel. “But knowing about her feels different from meeting her. Would you be okay with this?” She glanced at the note. “You know, the other problem with meeting her is that right now, I can imagine her any way I want. If we meet, then I’m stuck with the reality of whoever she is.”

  Bronwyn raised her head from where she was curled up in her bed near the fireplace. Nan had suggested that Leisa take Bron since her work hours were more predictable. Leisa was secretly glad to have Bronwyn with her. She’d never lived in this house alone.

  Leisa stared at the mantel, lined with family photos. Next to the photo of Rose and Daniel was one of her, Nan and Bronwyn that they had given to Rose last Christmas. As she looked at it, a shadow fell over her face. She folded the form and stuffed it into the envelope, sealing it before she could change her mind. She unfolded her legs and went to put the letter out in the mailbox for the Saturday mail pick-up.

  “Oh, hi,” she said in surprise as she opened the door to find her aunt standing on the front porch shaking off her wet umbrella. Leisa put her letter in the mailbox and said, “Come on in.” She held the door open and, before Jo Ann could ask, added, “And no, I don’t want to talk about it.”

  Jo Ann gave her that look, the one she used to get from her mother whenever she was being a smartass.

  “Well, that’s good to know,” said Jo, “but that’s not why I’m here. I came to see if you needed any more help going through the house.” She bent over to pet Bronwyn who was dancing on her hind legs trying to get someone’s attention.

  Leisa narrowed her eyes suspiciously, t
hinking Jo could have called for that, but she didn’t voice that thought.

  “No, actually. Now that I’m staying here… for a while, I need the linens and kitchen things.” Leisa led the way into the kitchen. “Want anything to eat or drink?”

  “A cup of tea would be lovely. It may be March, but it’s still cold out there, especially with the rain.”

  Leisa filled the kettle and put it on to boil. “Is Bruce in his workshop?”

  “Yes,” Jo answered as she sat at the kitchen table, one Bruce had made many years ago, and picked up the paper. “He’ll probably be there all weekend, working on my hutch. He blames it on me, but if I didn’t give him projects, he would drive me nuts.”

  Leisa smiled. It was true. She couldn’t ever remember seeing Bruce sitting around doing nothing.

  Within a few minutes, Leisa and Jo Ann were both cradling hot cups of tea in their hands as they read the paper.

  “You do know,” Jo Ann mused as she appeared to frown through her bifocals at something on the page, “that this is not the way to solve anything.”

  “Mmmm.” Leisa also pretended to read the paper. All her life, any potential arguments or conflicts had been handled in this type of non-discussion. No one ever shouted or cursed. She had never seen her parents express anger toward her or one another. This was actually how she came out to them.

  “So,” Rose had said at the breakfast table as she picked up a section of the newspaper during Leisa’s Christmas break her sophomore year of college, “how was your semester?”

  “Oh, you know,” Leisa answered noncommittally as she flipped through the sports section. “Grades were okay.”

  Daniel spoke up from behind the business pages. “Not really.”

  Leisa’s only tell was a reddening of her face. “Oh?”

  “Mmmm,” Rose responded. “Funny. Your grades got here yesterday.”

  “They did?” Leisa stared at basketball scores.

  “Mmm hmm.” Daniel turned the page. “Anything going on?”

  Leisa shook a crease out of her pages. “Well, I met someone.”