“Broken?” he said. “Meaning the people who adopted him gave him back to the state? Can you really do that?”
“So I hear.”
“What, did they keep the receipt or something? No wonder the kid was a wreck.”
No wonder, she thought.
In the Vital Records office, the mustached clerk who’d asked her out for a drink on her last visit recognized Lydia the moment she walked in. He’d added a rubber octopus and a pink Power Ranger to the collection of small toys lining the top of his monitor, but otherwise he appeared the same, down to the coagulated tray of mac ’n’ cheese sitting next to his keyboard like a prop. He sized up Raj, who sat, legs crossed, thumbing through a cooking magazine.
“I know what I want this time,” Lydia said as she approached him.
“I know what I want, too,” the clerk said.
“Joseph Molina. His birth records and anything you have on his foster care. Once I have those details, I’m hoping to get his foster father’s death certificate, if possible—is that possible?”
“Okay, let’s back up,” he said, rattling his head. “You did say foster care, but I think you mean his adoption certificate?”
“Both, I guess.”
The clerk rubbed his mustache.
“Foster care records are kept with Human Services. Unless the foster family formally adopted him, in which case we should have a record of that. Should. Should.”
“He kept his foster parents’ last name,” she said. “Molina.”
“So it’s worth a shot,” he said, and rested his fingers on the counter in front of her. “But I have to tell you, the adoption stuff gets complicated. Both requests require applications and documentation, and I can tell you now, they are highly unlikely to waive any of the paperwork. Not when adoption records are involved. Sensitive stuff, you know.”
“I’d still like to try.”
The clerk leaned down next to his desk and began to pull out the catalog of forms she’d need to fill out to get the request started.
“Just one date,” he said as he handed the pile over. “Let me take you to my high school reunion. All you have to do is that, whatever you’re doing right now. Just show up and stand next to me and do that.”
“What, feel uncomfortable?” she said. “I’m flattered, but no. Unless my boyfriend can come, too.”
The clerk smiled. “Just promise me you won’t hold it against me if none of this works out,” he said. “We have to be really careful with the mutual consent laws.”
“The what-whats?”
“Oh boy,” he said. “Let me see if our adoption liaison is free. Irene. She can explain all of it and lull you to sleep in the meantime.”
And explain she did. Lydia sat in her office down a tiled hallway, next to a crusty old drinking fountain, and listened as Irene—a big, compassionate woman in a loose flower blouse and polyester pants—explained in exhausting detail the state’s adoption laws, the required documentation, the court filings that are part of the final steps. When it was Lydia’s turn to speak, she told Irene all about Joey’s suicide, and Joey’s bequeathal, and her desire to trace his foster family, and—making her case here—that she wanted access to his records largely so that she could let Mrs. Molina know that her child had killed himself. Irene nodded along and seemed moved by Lydia’s story, even somewhat alarmed.
“You don’t have much of a chance,” she said, “legally speaking. But I can help you fill out the application and see if there’s anything we can do on this end to get you closer. If your application is approved, we’ll pass you up the chain.”
“There’s a chain?” Lydia said. “You mean this isn’t the end?”
“You’ll have to file an affidavit with the court and a judge will determine whether Joseph’s records can be unsealed. And it has to be by mutual consent.”
Mutual consent, she explained, of both the birth parent and the adopted child—or, in this case, the deceased child’s representative.
“If a child who was given up for adoption wants to find his birth parents,” she said, “they file a records request with me. If the birth parent also files with me, we can open the records and share their contact information. Otherwise the request sits under lock and key, often without ever seeing the light of day again. Most of the time, this is a one-way ticket into a locked drawer. Both parent and child have to want this, for obvious reasons. Otherwise, you can imagine the disruption.”
Lydia stared blankly at Irene, scratching her upper lip.
“Broken adoptions make it all more complicated,” Irene added, “but if that’s what is happening here then it will be in his records.”
“Which I can’t see.”
“Which no one can see.”
“And that’s why you’re here?” Lydia said.
“That’s why I’m here,” Irene said, then she explained that her job was to make sure the legal bases were covered and to facilitate the process with both parties.
“And if one of the parties was in prison?” Lydia said.
“There are ways,” Irene said. “With an agreeable warden and good behavior, there are ways.”
She couldn’t be sure, but the way that Irene just scraped at her mascara with her pinkie nail, not to mention her lack of surprise at the question, left Lydia sensing a tell.
There are ways.
She immediately imagined her father, at the bottom of the prison pay scale, miserable in his misbuttoned corrections uniform, passing documents through the bars to a young felon named Joey. The two of them occupied such remarkably different sectors of her mind that she felt herself wince. They made no sense together, yet there they were—if they were.
“But you can’t tell me if Joey Molina ever sat in this chair?” Lydia said, watching for Irene’s twitch.
“I can’t tell you that,” Irene said, straight-faced.
If this was a game that she played, Lydia respected how delicately she played it.
For the first time Lydia noticed the industrial-sized box of Kleenex on the corner of Irene’s desk, and it occurred to her that this was a room full of tears, both happy and sad. Irene handed Lydia a clipboard and an eight-page application, and as Lydia attempted to fill it out, she felt pained by the blanks she was leaving behind. Over and over she found herself checking the box that said Other, then explaining in tiny tight scribbles why she, of all people, should be allowed to access Joey’s adoption records despite her lack of documentation. She felt self-conscious about writing down her job history and all the places she’d hidden before returning to Denver six years ago, and felt even more self-conscious when she came to a spot in the application that asked for the names and addresses of references who had known her for more than five years. Irene tapped away at her keyboard with long painted nails. Lydia tapped her pen on the application. Finally, she leaned over and looked down the hall, where she could see Raj with his legs stretched out, audibly yawning, reading in his waiting room chair. She wrote down Raj’s name and number as her primary reference, and put David second.
“Please don’t get your hopes up,” Irene said as she skimmed the application a few minutes later. “I will tell you that it helps your case, pardon me, that Joseph is passed away. Opens up a few possibilities. Otherwise I’d probably discourage you from even applying.”
Lydia went to speak but faltered when she noticed on the corner of the desk, surrounded by Irene’s collection of tiny ceramic chickens, a glass goblet brimming with chocolates. Little spheres wrapped in shiny blue foil.
“Help yourself,” Irene said, nodding toward the treats.
Lydia quietly declined. She didn’t mention that she hadn’t had a bite of chocolate since smelling the melted knot of it in Joey’s jeans as he hanged, nor that those blue foil wrappers looked weirdly familiar.
“People sit in that chair for all kinds of reasons,” Irene said. “But in all cases what they’re really hoping for is a ticket to time travel. Usually it’s a worthwhile trip in the end, but
sometimes the journey is far harsher than they could ever imagine. Sitting there, where you are, is an enormous step in a lot of people’s lives. The chocolate helps, is all.”
Irene slid the application back to Lydia.
“Use your current name,” she added in a low voice, “but also your former name.”
Lydia felt her face growing hot.
“I’m sorry,” Irene continued. “Both names need to be on there for this to be considered. I’m just trying to help.”
“How did you—?”
Irene placed her ringless hand atop Lydia’s fist, like a starfish swathing a mollusk.
“You have that kind of a face, even after twenty years. I’m very sorry about what happened to you. I’ll do everything I can to help, Lydia.”
Lydia snatched up the pen and scrawled Lydia Gladwell under “Former Legal Names,” then passed the application back across the desk.
“Like I said,” Irene said, “don’t get your hopes up, but I’ll do what I can. Lord knows you deserve it. You were a very brave little girl.”
As Lydia stepped out in the hallway, feeling raw and anxious, Raj came down the hall to meet her.
“What happened? Lydia, you look kind of . . . not well. Like somebody died.”
“I think,” she said, “that Joey was here. In that office. Right around when he died.”
“Whoa. Did she tell you that?”
“Chocolate did.”
Raj looked at her with concern, then held her forearm. As he guided her past the counter, the clerk sat up straight and stared at Lydia as if she were a statue, something he might prop in his garden.
“Oh, and guess what?” she said to Raj. “You are now officially my Primary Reference!”
“Oh baby,” Raj said loudly, throwing his arm around her shoulder. “You’re goddamned right I am!”
The clerk grumbled to himself as they left.
Three hours later, Lydia and Raj were stepping into Lydia’s apartment, warmed by the beers and bowls of noodles they’d consumed in a Colfax hole on the walk home. David was working late, wrapping up a conference in Fort Collins, so he wasn’t expected for a few more hours—or was it tomorrow? Lydia couldn’t remember. She could, however, remember that he and Raj had yet to meet.
Raj was sidled up to the coffee table, grinding his knees into the carpet, and losing his sixth game of Uno when the phone rang. As soon as Lydia heard it, she sensed that it had been ringing all day, echoing through her empty apartment. She walked to the kitchen and answered.
“That you? Christ, you’re tough to track down.”
“Who is this?” she said, cupping her mouth with her palm. “Is this—Dad?”
“It’s real good to hear you, little girl.”
Little girl. Lydia slammed down the phone.
“Was it David?” Raj asked, looking up. When she didn’t answer he went back to shuffling the cards.
Lydia ran to the bathroom and splashed cold water across her face.
little girl little girl little girl
First thing tomorrow, she promised her dripping reflection, she would call the phone company and change her number, and if her father found her again after that she’d consider moving into a new apartment altogether. She planted her hands on the sink’s edge and felt her fear transform into anger, and without drying off her face or thinking through the consequences, she stormed out of the bathroom and dialed her teenage phone number. Raj looked up from the table but didn’t say a word.
“Thank you, sweetheart. I know that’s a hard call to make.”
That’s how her father answered the phone, a sweet greeting that derailed her intentions—please stop calling me!—and left her, after an eternity of silence, spinning in the tracks of small talk. She and David still had a corded phone and she stretched it into the bathroom, closed the door, and sat on the toilet. She thought she’d immediately question her father about the birthday photo and Moberg’s suspicions, but he didn’t give her the chance.
“I hear there’s a new library,” he said quickly, as if he were going through a list of topics he’d scribbled on his palm. “And a new ballpark under way, and a real home team that’s not the Denver Bears.”
“Tell me why you’re calling,” she said.
Her father’s response took time. She could hear Raj shuffling and reshuffling his child’s game somewhere far away.
“I have a hundred reasons for calling,” her father said, “but if I had to pick one it comes down to being proud of you.”
“Proud?”
“I mainly wanted to tell you that.”
“You don’t even know me.”
“I know enough.”
“I’m a bookseller, Dad.”
“Well, you’re not a prison guard is more how I see it.”
Lydia felt her eyes close. Felt the roof lift. She slid to the bathroom floor.
Not a prison guard.
During Lydia’s childhood, being a librarian had been as intrinsic to his identity as being a father, so his choice to leave the library behind and become a prison guard was, as she’d framed it in a thousand teenage fights, a selling of his soul. His transformation had been alarming: it began with the drastic shift in his appearance—the mustache and sunglasses and uniform—and amplified over time until there was little difference between the man he was at work and the man he was at home. Beginning in middle school, whenever Lydia swept the cabin floors, he’d taken to sitting at the kitchen table, sipping his coffee and scrutinizing every swish of the broom as if they were on a cell block. On the rare occasions when she got in trouble at school—always for minor offenses, like missing the school bus or forgetting to do her algebra homework—he would remove her bedroom door from its hinges as a punishment and once even tried to take away all of her extraneous reading material. Around that same time, with the exception of the occasional back-pat hug that felt more like a playground clapping game than a paternal embrace, he simply stopped showing any affection for her at all. But maybe even worse than anything was the oppressive silence that had finally swallowed their home. After they left Denver, he just hardly ever spoke anymore about anything.
Even as an adolescent, Lydia knew that those were trying times for her father, and she knew she didn’t have the answers to the vexing questions that life had thrown at him. Far from it! But then not having answers had always been the point: the point of her childhood, the product of her hours in the library, the sum of his philosophy when she was a little girl. You leave yourself open to answers, he’d always taught her. You keep turning pages, you finish chapters, you find the next book. You seek and you seek and you seek, and no matter how tough things become, you never settle. But in becoming a prison guard Tomas had settled as dust settles, as lost hair settles. He’d settled like the bones of the dead.
And so while Lydia had always half-expected this phone call, in all of her fantasies she’d never expected this: Tomas’s terse acknowledgment that his choices had defiled their trajectory as a family. She had a hard time knowing what to say.
“Can you tell me one thing?” he said, breaking the silence. “We used to talk, so why not anymore? What is it I did that’s bugging you so much?”
She could feel years of accusations leaning forward on her tongue, waiting to be unleashed, but at the moment only one felt truly urgent.
“Detective Moberg thinks you were involved with the murders.”
Her dad was silent for a minute before saying, “You saw him?”
“I went to his cabin.”
“You believe him?”
“I don’t know.”
“Doesn’t surprise me he’d think that. He’s always had it in for me. Apparently still does.”
She waited for him to continue, but he didn’t, and his refusal seemed so stubborn and suspicious that she found herself slipping into a different line of questioning. “How well did you know Joey?”
“Who’s that?” he said.
“Joey Molina. He was one of your priso
ners.”
Her father paused on his end long enough for doubt to swell through her.
“Joey was your prisoner,” she said, “in Rio Vista.”
“Wait—are you talking about Joey the Bookworm?”
“Joey Molina.”
“That sounds right,” he said. “Just a kid? Skinny, black hair, caused some kind of a car accident? Sure, I know Joey. Question is, why do you know him?”
“From the bookstore.”
“Huh. I guess that makes sense. The kid is just a phenomenal reader.”
“He’s dead.”
Silence.
“He hanged himself,” she added.
“Joey?” he said, barely able to get the words out. “He’s dead?”
“He died with a photo of me sticking out of his pocket.”
“A photo of you?” Tomas said.
“From my tenth birthday.”
“A photo of you. No, he didn’t. Tell me he didn’t—”
“He did,” she said.
Silence.
“A birthday photo,” he said, “and you’re blowing out the candles?”
“Why’d you give him a photo of me, Dad?”
“Oh, Jesus. Lydia? Did he do something to you? Did he find you?”
“Why, Dad?”
“I don’t understand what’s going on here,” he finally said. “Let me think. Let me think.”
Lydia could hear Raj out beyond her bathroom door, shuffling cards.
“So you didn’t hire Joey to keep tabs on me?” she said.
“I worry about you like you can’t even imagine,” her father said, “but I wouldn’t do that, not in a million years. Is everything there okay? Tell me he didn’t hurt you, Lydia. Please, just—”
“I’m fine.”
Her dad sounded so concerned, so honest, it was hard for Lydia not to believe him.
“Sweetheart? I really don’t see why Joey would have tracked you down. I talked about you a lot, so maybe he wanted to meet you.”
“So you did give him a photo of me?”
“I showed him some pictures at my desk in the prison, but I don’t know. Maybe he took one. I guess I knew it was missing, I must have, but I didn’t ever really pursue what that meant.”
Midnight at the Bright Ideas Bookstore Page 17
