Miss Fortune

by Lauren Weedman

  I love her probation stories and I’m listening, but I’m also struggling to get Leo latched on to breastfeed.

  Diane notices this, stops for a second, gives me a “You’re a natural” thumbs-up, and keeps talking.

  “So, his cellmate offered to help him kill his stepmother and his grandmother. Now, my murderer at least has some motivation for killing them because they were his family. But the other guy, now, he’s just pure evil.”

  She lets out a huge exhausted sigh. “Ahhhh! Oh man, I need a baked good.” She grabs her strawberry-shaped purse and heads out the front door.

  “I’ll be right back, honey. And this time I mean it.”

  • • •

  True to her word, Diane’s been putting her special helping skill to use and doing a lot of laundry. I have to grip on to my pants when she passes by me: “I’m still wearing these . . . they’re not dirty.”

  David has confessed that he thinks that Diane is more worried about her baked goods and getting to bed early than helping us. Maybe after three babies and four grandkids, babies can’t compete with turtle brownies. No, she’s had four babies. I’m always forgetting to include myself.

  Diane’s three little “ones she kept” from another marriage didn’t know anything about me. They were six, nine, and eleven. To break it to them, Diane took them out to Chuck E. Cheese’s and told them they were celebrating and that she had a big surprise for them. At the end of the night, she had a cake and balloons brought out. “Okay, guess what we’re celebrating!” Before they could start throwing out ideas, she made the big announcement: “You have an older sister! And she’s coming to visit! On Wednesday at four P.M.!” They had no idea how this was possible; they just thought, “Cake . . . balloons . . . good,” and they celebrated.

  On the day we met, they ran up the driveway after their bus dropped them off like they were being chased. They were pushing each other out of the way, dropping their school papers as they ran. And then, when they got to the door, they all just stopped and stared at me. Saying nothing. They surrounded me and looked at my toes for an hour. They marveled at the skills I’d picked up during my nineteen-year adventure away from them—“She’s going to brush her teeth! Mom, get in here. You got to see this.”

  My birth father, Rob, had a harder time with my adoption and felt a lot more shame around the whole thing. After Diane got pregnant, he was kicked off his high school baseball team and sent back to the hills of West Virginia, where he could get away with that sort of thing. When Rob broke the news to his kids, who, like Diane’s, were little and had no idea about me, he sat them down in their bedroom and shut the door. “A long time ago, I made a mistake,” he said. “Well, that mistake is back. She’ll be here next Thursday.” For years after we first met, I’d sit on the couch and wave to them. “Hi, I’m the mistake.”

  Diane’s positive PR campaign has played a large part in why I’ve felt a part of her family from the very beginning. They are the only humans I’ve been around where I don’t feel a separate “me,” just a clump of “us.”

  Having Diane around gets me thinking about family. I realize that I’ve been telling this dreary little story to myself for all these years about how I’ve never really had my own family. I’ve been a visitor in all sorts of families but never felt like I had my own. Now that Leo is born, I see how untrue that is. All of those families are his families. And they were mine, too. Are mine. How amazing to go from “I have no family” to “Wake the fuck up—you have five! Six if you count the gay boys.” I don’t care if she never vacuums another napkin; I’m so grateful she’s here.

  • • •

  It’s four A.M. Leo and I are the only ones awake. Oh my god, there’s a baby in my arms. How do any babies survive for more than a week? They’re so frail and helpless. Look at him. I need to shove him back in so he’s safe in my belly again. Or buy him a shell. Leo’s squirms are familiar to me; he moves the same way in my arms as he did in my stomach. How on earth did my mother jump right into taking care of an eight-day-old newborn she’d just met? I can’t imagine. I’ve asked her what those first few days were like and she told me, “Oh, fine. You ate and slept and went to the bathroom. Like a baby.” This was the same sort of midwestern pragmatic answer she used when I asked her why after having two daughters of her own already she’d chosen to adopt me: “Well, I had so many girl clothes . . .” Apparently Goodwill didn’t do home pickups at that time and it was just as easy for her to adopt a baby.

  I’m sure my mom wasn’t up in the middle of the night, like I am, feeling terrible that she’d invited a sweet tiny baby to an awkward party with shitty parking where everyone’s parting gift is some form of cancer.

  The next morning, Diane goes to pick up twelve-dollar scones for everybody at our local coffee shop, which, after two days in town, she refers to as her coffee shop. She shows up three hours later with a bag of dried-out scones and a giant green leaf that she claims to have found on the sidewalk but later confesses to ripping off a tree in our neighbor’s yard. She says it looks like the kind of leaf you could put a baby on and float him down a river. “Not that I ever thought of that before,” she cracks, and then says she wants to take a picture of Leo lying on the leaf.

  Normally, I love her abandonment jokes, but I’m still queasy from last night. I don’t want to tell David about it because I don’t want him to lose his mind in the nothingness and the terror since he still gets so much joy from online Scrabble. Diane, on the other hand, has been through a lot in her life. Divorce, death, and murdering murderers—she can handle it.

  As Diane rummages through our toxic cleaning agents to find something to clean the leaf off, I share with her all the graphic images of reality that I, thanks to being a new mother, now understand—the cycle of suffering, John F. Kennedy Jr.’s plane going down, and the end of time as we know it.

  Diane thinks she remembers that Danza, my half sister, had something like this happen to her after her first baby was born. “You should ask her. I’m just not as deep as you guys. Parenting wasn’t that heavy for me. Maybe because I had no idea what the hell I was doing.”

  I reminded Diane about the reunion story as evidence of how untrue that is.

  Diane smiles and gives me a little loving squirt with the Windex she’s holding in her hand. “That’s sweet, honey, but I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “It’s really my favorite story.”

  “What is?”

  “How you took Danza, Justin, and Kenneth to Chuck E. Cheese’s. There were balloons tied to all their chairs and a big cake comes out. You were like, ‘Okay, guess what we’re celebrating! You have a big sister and she’s back! She’ll be here on Wednesday!’ If you had done things any differently it would have changed everything. It’s all about the spin you put on things.”

  Diane is scowling. It’s the scowl she has on her face when she’s thinking. Or hungry.

  “I hate to tell you this, but that never happened. I’m not sure where you got that from. Listen, what’s going to stress you out more: if I lay him on a dirty leaf or one covered in Windex?”

  I’ve told that story since the day I met Diane. It’s how I describe the essence of who she is to people. She’s just forgotten.

  “No way have I made up that entire story. Where would I have gotten that from?”

  “I don’t know, sweetie, but it’s a wonderful story, so I think you should keep telling it.”

  “Is any of it true?”

  “I don’t think so. I think what I did was just tell the kids that I’d gotten pregnant in high school and that I’d given up the baby for adoption and now that baby was nineteen and she found us and was coming to visit. See, your story is better.” Diane walks over and takes Leo out of my arms. “Okay, race fans; let’s go put this baby on a leaf.”

  • • •

  Two years later, Leo and I are in Bloomingt
on, Indiana, visiting family while David is away working for the summer, trying to make big money as a salmon fisherman in Alaska. We’re staying with my half sister, Danza, who was named for the great Tony Danza, not because Diane was particularly fond of his Who’s the Boss? work, but because she just liked how it sounded. “Or maybe I was a big fan of his. I can’t remember. Who cares? Just be glad you don’t have a brother named Fonzie.”

  All of Diane’s kids live in the Bloomington area, and when there’s a big event, like our visit, Diane shoves her third husband into their little sports car and drives the hour from their house to see the family.

  Since (one of the twelve of my avid followers) Diane’s trip right after Leo was born, she’s been an avid follower of my baby blog, Wigs on a Baby. Once in a while we’ll talk on the phone for a quick check-in. I still had this feeling that I’d been blinded by who I needed her to be and had no idea who she really was.

  All the things that I’d loved about her suddenly seemed suspect. For instance, over the years I’ve watched Diane chat up people who most of society would run from. You could wheel up a headless torso on a gurney and Diane would chat away with it like they were old school buddies. Adults with severe cerebral palsy who can communicate only by blinking can chat for hours with Diane simply because she isn’t scared of humanity in all its forms. I’ve always loved this about her, but it leaves me with a “well, she likes everybody” insecurity. In fact, if she was due for a coffee and a baked good, she might not have been able to determine who was standing in front of her, much less cared. We were making plans for my upcoming visit over the phone and I tried to share this fear with her. Her response was “What are you, adopted or something?” That was it.

  People talk about genetics versus nurturing, but within six weeks of being Leo’s mother I realized that what makes a mother is being there. The hours alone with him in the middle of the night. Feeding him. Loving him. Feeling that old “you and me against the world” Helen Reddy bond. The hell of knowing I will worry about his safety for the rest of his life. That is a mother.

  All these years I’ve had an ongoing “it’s a hard-knock life in the orphanage” shtick about how my mother didn’t get me. How Sharon didn’t understand who I really was. “I can’t laugh without her screaming ‘Seizure!’ at me and shoving a stick in my mouth.” I’d tell my friends that the picnic table in our backyard was “the adopted table,” where my family had requested I take all my meals.

  Now that I’m a mother, it makes perfect sense how my mother worried that a note in my adoption file had fallen out that had warned, “At age twelve her arms will fall off due to a rare West Virginia genetic mutation,” and she’d never know for sure if there was something seriously wrong with me. Leo’s my biological son, I knew my medical history, and I still worried after he was born that he was blind in one eye and had half a kidney.

  Right after Diane arrives at Danza’s she announces that her cat, Tiny Tim, is sick.

  “We’re putting him to sleep before I go to England. It would cost a lot of money to keep him alive, and I don’t want to be worried about him on my trip, so I’m just gonna get rid of him and get a new one when I get back. Kind of like I did with you.”

  A dry smile is on my face and I give her a “good one” slow nod. Diane once told me that the reason she was able to hand me over after I was born was because they drugged her up. “It’s what they did back then so girls could go through with it. I’ve had haircuts that were more stressful.”

  What if all those adoption extremists are right and I’ll never be able to attach to another human being? If my dad put his arm around me in front of other people—or in private, for that matter—I thought he was just trying to hold me still so someone could punch me in the stomach. Not that he’d ever done anything like that, but sometimes physical contact with people made me fear the worst. When the Snuggle fabric softener commercial came on, the giggly baby voice of Snuggle Bear was too vulnerable and needy and it would make me punch the couch pillows. That may not have been specific to an abandonment issue. The sound of that bear’s voice made most non–mentally ill people want to blame everything that was wrong in their lives on him.

  I’d hoped all of my misgivings about Diane had more to do with hormones than with Diane herself, but if anything she’s gone from “casual I don’t give a shit” land to “aggressive I don’t give a shit” land.

  I don’t hate her; I just see her more clearly now that I’ve been a mother for two years.

  Danza and Diane are upstairs plugging in curling irons, getting ready to go to a Paul Simon concert. It’s one P.M. Danza feels horrible that the only person who isn’t going is “the adopted one.” The whole clan is going and they don’t have a ticket for me. When I made my plans to visit, Danza had asked me if she should buy me one, and I’d said I’d rather save my money for wine and online gambling. I’d imagined that I’d use the free night to visit with one of my brothers or cousins in the area whom I don’t always get time with, but it turned out that everyone in the family was going. I’m wandering around Danza’s big house enjoying her homemaking skills, making mental notes on how to best organize batteries and ribbons, trying to fight back a little of the “which one of these is not like the other” feelings. I stop in the kitchen to make a cup of coffee and hear the familiar sound of Diane’s husband, Randy, snapping photos of me.

  Randy is a photographer for an Indiana paper and has the photojournalist’s gift of not being at all affected by people not wanting their picture taken. He instructs me to “get that coffee mug like you were just doing. That was pretty funny. You have a funny way of doing it,” and stands an inch away from me snapping my picture.

  During my visits, Randy will always take the opportunity to ask me a series of questions about Hollywood. Things he assumes I must know about, like, “Is Lindsay Lohan starting to regret doing some of that stupid stuff she’s done?” Or, “Why does Pamela Anderson like looking like that?” It can be endearing, how he thinks there are twenty people in Hollywood and I know all of them, but then, in the next breath, he’ll ask me, “Lauren, can you understand anything those black people are saying on The Wire? CAN YOU, Lauren?”

  “Hey, Lauren, how do you deal with paparazzi always chasing you and taking your picture without you knowing it? That’s gotta be tough.”

  “I hate to break it to you, Randy; nobody wants my picture but you.”

  This kills him and he collapses into laughter and then pops right up and starts to take more photos.

  Right as I’m thinking how wonderful it would be to be upstairs with Diane and Danza getting ready for the concert, Randy offers me his ticket.

  “Come on, Lauren. How many times will you get to sit by your foster mom at a Paul Simon concert? I mean, come on.”

  The whole family has tried to explain to Randy that Diane is not my foster mom or half mom or stepmother; she is my birth mom. Randy married Diane only ten years ago and has a hard time keeping it all straight. In the end, I just tell him that Diane is my Guatemalan plumber.

  “Listen, I don’t care about Paul Simon and honestly I don’t want to go,” he says. “I’d rather stay here and read and watch some basketball.”

  “Are you sure, Randy?” I ask his camera lens. He puts it down so I can see his face.

  “Oh yeah, it’s the chance of a lifetime—see Paul Simon with your stepmom, come on.”

  I run upstairs to announce the good news.

  “Randy just gave me his ticket! I’m going!”

  “He did what?”

  “He gave me his ticket . . .”

  Danza looks like she’s going to cry and yells to Diane, who is lying down in the next room.

  “Why is he doing that, Mom? He’s the one who said it was his dream to go, and I got it all arranged and— Mom, Randy gave Lauren his ticket!”

  “He did what?”

  It turns out that t
he Paul Simon ticket was Randy’s birthday present. The family chipped in and bought the ticket and were going to take him to dinner beforehand. The entire evening was to be his birthday celebration.

  “He offered it to me . . . I swear.” This is the sentence I have to repeat all night long every time a new family member or close family friend joins up with us. It’s like I stole a birthday present from a sweet, confused man. I’m an entitled selfish monster . . . who’s been a lifelong fan of Paul Simon and is going to his concert!

  • • •

  Diane and I sit down in our seats. We are in the last row of the concert hall. The very last row. We turn around and there’s a wall behind us.

  Paul is pretty great. He looks exactly the same as he did when he was banging Garfunkel, I mean playing with Garfunkel, but with white hair, like he’d gone to makeup and told them, “Make me look like an old-man version of Paul Simon.”

  He plays the first few notes of “Kodachrome” and Diane is up on her feet, dancing. The entire theater is seated politely. Nobody is moving, much less dancing. “All right, this is cool! We can do whatever we want!” Diane says and waves her hand in the air and shouts out a woooo.

  She’s the only one in the entire place besides Paul’s band who is standing. Even the ushers are sitting on the steps. I try to make her sit down and she turns around and asks the wall if we’re blocking its view and keeps going. “We’re in the back row so who gives a shit!”

  Diane starts dancing with her arms above her head, swinging her hips like the child of the sixties she is. She gets worn out before the song is over and sits back down, grabs my head, brings my ear to her mouth, and yells over the music, “Man, how much am I wishing I’d worn a bra right now.”

  Paul, I call him, now that we’ve spent a couple of hours together, is playing what he claims is going to be the last song of the night, “Mother and Child Reunion.”

  “On this strange and mournful day . . . Is only a motion away.”