by Julie Cohen
‘He’s got us.’ Hardly able to believe it was true, she raised the baby and kissed him on his forehead. He smelled of baby powder and milk and when she lowered him he squirmed, screwed up his little face, and began to cry.
‘It’s nearly time for his feed,’ said the nurse. ‘I’ll go get it.’
Emily put the baby on to her shoulder and rocked her body back and forth, patting his bottom. His crying settled to a grizzle.
‘You’re a natural,’ said Honeywell.
‘He knows,’ said Robbie. ‘He knows who his mommy is.’
His voice was awed. Emily caught his eye and she almost burst into tears again.
The nurse returned with a bottle and a square of muslin and Emily sat in one of the chairs, cradling the baby in the crook of her left elbow. She touched the nipple to the baby’s lips and he immediately began to suck.
‘See, he’s a good feeder now,’ said the nurse. ‘It took a little while. Sometimes it does. Put the bottle farther in; that’s it.’
‘What’s his name?’
‘He doesn’t have an official name,’ said Honeywell. ‘You’ll decide that yourselves.’
‘You’ve got to have called him something, though.’ She tore her gaze away from the baby to look at the nurse.
‘We call him Adam,’ the nurse said. ‘We go through the alphabet, and we were back to A again.’
Again. How many children came here nameless?
‘I like Adam,’ said Robbie. ‘What do you think, Emily?’
‘I think that names are important,’ said Emily. ‘And if he’s heard himself called Adam for the past five weeks, then we should keep on calling him Adam. And I like that name, too.’
‘Perfect,’ said Honeywell heartily. ‘Well, I’ll go and make out the paperwork and leave you two alone with your son.’ Emily heard the door swing, and then it was just the three of them in the room.
‘Your son,’ repeated Robbie softly, and he sat on the chair beside Emily. He put his arm around her; he held out his finger to the baby. Adam curled his tiny hand around Robbie’s finger and Emily saw the awe on the face of the man who she loved.
‘He’s our son,’ she said.
Chapter Nineteen
Robbie had one photograph of William, the one in his wallet. The edges were soft and the print was scratched. William James Brandon, forever four years old, squinting at the camera and smiling a gap-toothed, crooked smile. His teeth would have come in by now, his hair grown and cut dozens of times. Every time Robbie looked at the photograph he was reminded that William, unseen, was becoming different from the person captured in it.
He bought a Polaroid camera. Each photograph, pulled out and shaken in air, developed instantly. The clothes had no time to date, the sunny weather had no time to fade. Each moment was experienced and almost immediately captured, magically appearing in a square of gloss, framed in white.
He captured Emily bending over baby Adam so that her loose hair formed a veil around his face: Madonna and child. Emily, sleepless and feeding Adam in their bed at 3.30 a.m., half-lit by the bedside lamp. Adam in a high chair: his first taste of mashed banana. His first taste of mashed avocado. His first taste of ice cream, his eyes wide in shock.
Adam crawling across the coarse grass of their lawn. Adam dwarfed by a stuffed Mickey Mouse that Robbie won for him shooting ducks at a carnival. Adam and Emily both asleep on the sofa mid-afternoon, the electric fan trained on their flushed faces. Adam had his hand on Emily’s cheek.
Emily took the photographs too: Robbie giving Adam a ride on his shoulders as the little boy shrieked with delight. Adam sitting beside Robbie at the helm of a borrowed boat, his life preserver nearly as large as he was. Adam walking towards his father’s outstretched hands. Robbie pulling Adam in a red Philadelphia Flyer wagon, up and down the street in front of their house, up and down, up and down, over and over and over again until he was soaked in sweat and still laughing.
On weekends and holidays, neighbourhood barbecues and picnics with their colleagues or boat trips with Robbie’s friends, they asked other people to take their pictures. The three of them sat or stood together, their arms around each other, shading their eyes against the sun or smiling in the shade. Adam had blue eyes like Emily’s. He liked to hold Robbie’s hand. He had a laugh that could stop your world.
The laughter wasn’t in the photographs, of course. But Robbie could hear it when he looked at them.
Chapter Twenty
September 1977
Miami, Florida
He was building a swing in the yard when Emily came home from work. He heard her car pull up in front and he yelled cheerfully, ‘We’re in the back!’
Emily came around the side and instantly he could tell there was something wrong. He put down his tools. Adam, who had been digging under the hibiscus, got to his feet and toddled over to Emily. ‘Mummy!’ he gurgled, holding out tiny hands caked with soil.
She bent and picked him up. His hands made black marks on her white blouse. ‘You need a bath, little man,’ she said, and caught Robbie’s eye over Adam’s blond head.
‘What is it?’ he asked.
‘Have you seen the news today? Or heard it on the radio?’
‘No. Why?’
‘Newspaper in my briefcase. Wait till I’m done?’ She handed him her leather case, and nuzzled Adam’s cheek. ‘Let’s get you clean, sweetheart.’
Robbie took her briefcase into the kitchen while Emily carried Adam into the bathroom. He could hear his toddler-babble: only a few words were comprehensible as yet, but ‘Mummy’ was clear, and ‘Daddy’. He smiled, washed his hands at the sink, and poured a couple of glasses of lemonade. He got out the cookies for Adam to have as a snack when he was finished with his bath.
Usually bath time was drawn out with games and splashing and bubbles. This time Emily was finished within fifteen minutes. Adam was in his pyjamas, his damp hair sticking up in spikes, his eyes sleepy. Robbie leaned over and kissed his sweet-smelling cheek on their way through the kitchen, and then Emily settled him in front of Sesame Street with his cookies.
Then she returned to the kitchen and got The Miami Herald out of her briefcase. She sat down beside him at the table and she passed it over to him. It was folded over; the headline was on the bottom half of the page.
LAWYER STOLE CHILDREN TO ORDER
The photograph was of Elliott Honeywell. It was a professional headshot, the kind you would use in an advertisement: he looked slick and prosperous with his pressed handkerchief and styled hair.
Horror gripped him, iron-cold. ‘What is this?’ he asked through numb lips.
‘One of my antenatal patients mentioned it. She’d heard it on the radio and she was nearly hysterical, thinking that it could happen to her, that her baby could be stolen. So I bought a paper. I tried ringing you, but you didn’t answer.’
‘We’ve been outside all afternoon.’
He glanced towards the living room, where there was the distinct sound of Bert, Ernie and a rubber duck.
‘Read it,’ she said quietly.
He did, but he could only take in some of the words. Wealthy couples. Paid adoptions. False death certificates. Co-conspirators.
He looked up from the paper, the article only half-read. ‘They told the mothers that their babies were dead?’
‘But not always,’ she said. ‘Not always. It says that some of them were orphans. It says he did legitimate adoptions as well.’
‘But some of them were stolen. He stole babies and gave them to someone else.’
‘It says he paid some of the mothers. Young mothers, unmarried ones. He had – he had doctors helping him. Nurses. Social workers. Do you think that one who recommended us . . .?’
He scanned. ‘There aren’t any names besides his.’
‘But the police will be following up.’
/> They stared at each other.
‘What are we going to do?’ she whispered.
He couldn’t answer.
‘I know mothers whose babies have died,’ she said. ‘I know how – Robbie, it’s awful. You can’t . . . the heartbreak. I see it again and again. Imagine it hadn’t really happened. Imagine that baby was growing up with another couple, and you didn’t know it.’
‘Imagine the baby was happy,’ he said. ‘And the parents were happy.’
‘Robbie—’
‘And the baby maybe had a better life because of it.’
‘That’s not for someone else to decide. How could a doctor even do that? Or a nurse? How could they? For money? What?’
‘He said he wanted to help families,’ Robbie said softly. ‘He wanted to help families get together. He helped us with ours.’
‘Robbie, you don’t think that . . . ’
In the other room, the Cookie Monster began to sing about cookies starting with C. Adam laughed.
Emily had fallen asleep, somehow. It had been a twelve-hour shift for her, with another day on call before that, but Robbie didn’t think he would have been able to sleep after this news. He remembered long nights sailing the Atlantic when it was his shift to stay awake at the helm. He’d liked that feeling of being the only person awake for miles, the other crew asleep below him. It was up to him to keep everyone safe.
His wife slept in her bed and his son slept in his. He got up and went to the kitchen and opened the back door so he could hear the cicadas humming to each other. They stayed under the ground for years: seven years, or fourteen, some for longer; some for an entire human lifetime. And when it was their time they came up to sing and mate with each other then they died.
He remembered a night like this, years before, with a different wife and child. How he’d been thirsty and gone to the fridge for another beer and there had been none left. So he’d gone out and changed everything forever.
He was thirsty now. It came on him: the thirst. Out of the blue, sometimes. He could be happy, doing something else, driving his car or doing the shopping or working on a boat, and he’d want a drink. Or at least, he’d want a drink more than he always wanted a drink. Which was to say, he’d want a drink very badly.
Just one, his mind would tell him. The dark, shadowy corner of his mind where the secrets lived. Remember the bite in the back of your throat? Remember the warmth spreading through your veins? Wouldn’t it feel good? Just to have one?
When you felt that bite in your throat, everything else was taken out of your hands. You only had to make one decision: whether to have another drink or not. And that was an easy decision.
Everything became very easy after that first drink.
Robbie poured himself a glass of water. He added a handful of ice cubes. Very cold water helped. It wasn’t the right kind of bite, but it bit. He went outside again, closing the screen door behind him, and sat on the back step, listening to the cicadas singing and looking at the black outline frame of the swing he’d started building. He drank the water when it was cold enough to make his teeth ache.
He was the only one awake. He was the one making sure that everyone was safe.
They had gone through it and gone through it. They had read the article and analysed every word. They had thought of every possibility, every permutation.
Adam had fallen asleep in front of The Electric Company and Robbie had carried him upstairs to his crib. He’d laid him down and tucked him in and Emily had stood behind him, her hand on his shoulder.
And now he was outside in the back yard again in the middle of the night again, thirsty and on the verge of a change that would mean losing another child. And, if that happened, quite possibly losing Emily as well.
He knew if that happened, that he would only have one decision to make. One easy decision, over and over and over.
He drained his glass. The bite of cold wasn’t enough to reduce the thirst.
The screen door banged and Emily joined him on the step. In her white nightgown, her hair floating loose, she looked like a ghost.
‘Do you want a refill?’ she asked him. He nodded, and in a few minutes she came back with glasses for both of them, both clinking with fresh ice. She sat beside him.
‘I thought you were asleep,’ he said.
‘I had a nightmare.’ She leaned against him and he put his arm around her. ‘I’m frightened.’
‘So am I.’
‘And thirsty?’
He knew he didn’t have to answer; if she asked, she knew. She put her hand in the small of his back.
‘I keep thinking about that family photograph he showed us,’ she said, after a little while. ‘Remember how we were so surprised that his middle child was adopted? Because she looked just like the other two? And he said that family resemblance was down to environment rather than genetics.’
He squeezed her tighter and took a drink. The ice bite was different from the bourbon bite.
‘I keep thinking,’ she said again. ‘What if he stole that child because she looked like the one he already had? Told the birth mother she was dead, and took her away? What if that child’s mother wanted her?’
‘But what good would it be for that little girl to know that?’ he asked. ‘How old is she now – eleven or twelve? After all her life with one family, suddenly to find out that she belonged to someone else and that the people she thought were her parents were never supposed to be her parents at all? That they’d stolen her? And the mother – she would have come to terms with losing her baby, after all these years. Suddenly the past would come back. I don’t . . . I don’t know how the truth could do any good.’
‘But it’s the truth,’ Emily said.
‘Sometimes the truth doesn’t do anyone any good.’
‘Does that mean that you can ignore it?’
‘We have,’ he said, very quietly, the words coming from the dark, shadowy corner of his mind.
She didn’t have to answer that, just as he hadn’t had to answer her question about his thirst. They both knew the answer.
‘They’ve asked people to come forward,’ she said, eventually. ‘Anyone who knows anything.’
‘What would happen?’ he asked her. ‘If we came forward, and told the police about how we got Adam? Either they’d find out that the adoption was illegal, that he was taken under false pretences. In which case, we might lose him. Or, if he really was given up by his mother for adoption, like Honeywell told us, they’d find out why we went to Honeywell in the first place. In which case, we might also lose him.’
‘But we acted in good faith.’
‘It could be in the papers. We’d be in the papers. All your patients, all your colleagues, all our neighbours. Everyone we know, will know what we did. They might ask why we did it.’
In the light from the house and the streetlight beyond their fence, her face was pale with terror.
‘I can’t just think about us, Robbie. I don’t want that to happen – I can’t bear to think about it – but it’s not just about us. If it happened, we could leave. We could start new somewhere else.’
‘And Adam – what would happen to him? Would he go into foster care? Would his real mother even want him, or be able to take him? What if he ended up back in that orphanage?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘We’re his parents, Emily. We’re the only parents he knows.’
‘Yes. We are. But I can’t stop thinking about that mother, Robbie. His mother. How much she might miss him.’
‘She doesn’t know him. We do.’
She pulled away from him and put her face in her hands. ‘I want to think that you’re right,’ she said, muffled by her palms. ‘I want to know that we’re making the right decision by keeping quiet. I want to know that we haven’t done anything so terrible. Because I was that moth
er, Robbie. And you were that father. I was that mother who never had her child, and you are that father whose child was taken away from him.’
The glass of water in his hands, the biteless and powerless water. He wound back his arm and threw it as hard as he could. It disappeared into the darkness and he heard it shatter on the fence. Heard the water and broken glass and ice falling to the ground.
‘I’m not going to lose another child,’ he said. ‘I’m not going to lose him.’
And as soon as he said it, he knew this was the only possible decision. All the permutations and possibilities had to be gone through, but this was the decision he was going to make all along. It was the decision he’d made as soon as the infant Adam had wrapped his hand around Robbie’s finger; just like the decision he’d made the first time he had caught sight of the woman who’d then been known as Emily Greaves.
Emily raised her head and looked at him. She was crying; he could see the shine of tears. He took her hand and traced his thumb over the ring she wore on the fourth finger of her left hand. Two hands, male and female, clasped together.
‘I don’t want to lose him,’ she said. ‘I love him. He’s our son.’
‘Then we won’t lose him,’ he said.
‘But what if they find out? Who knows? That social worker – what if they trace back to her, and she gives our names? Our names would be on file with Honeywell, too, wouldn’t they? They might be looking for us right now. Or what if someone around here figures it out for themselves? We haven’t made any secret of the fact that we adopted Adam. We never told anyone how, but what if people start asking questions?’
‘We’d just have to . . .’ He took a deep breath. ‘I borrowed the money we needed from Luís. He might . . . he could figure it out. If he sees the news, and puts two and two together.’
‘We would have to leave,’ said Emily. ‘We’d have to move somewhere else, somewhere far away, the three of us. Somewhere that no one would know that Adam is adopted, where there would be no reason to connect us with any of this. But Robbie, if we did that – would William be able to find you?’
