Sins of Innocence

by Jean Stone

  Jess nodded, and tears filled her eyes. This woman had been so good to her—to all the girls.

  Miss Taylor undid a small hook and opened the door. “Come in, Jess, come in.” She stood for a moment, then held out her arms. Jess slid into them, and the woman hugged her tightly. It was still there: the scent of familiarity, the scent of what had once been home. Jess began to cry.

  “Miss Taylor, it’s so good to see you,” she said through her tears.

  “And, my word, I never thought I’d see you again—any of you,” the old woman whimpered, as she gently patted Jess’s back, comforting her as she had done so many times, so long ago, filling Jess with caring, filling her with love. Yes, Jess thought. Yes, this is right. The time has come.

  She pulled slowly away from the woman’s embrace and looked into the faded eyes, now outlined with tears.

  “It’s me,” she said quietly. “It really is. And you look wonderful, Miss Taylor.”

  “Oh, go on with you,” the woman said, and waved a hand away. “But you, my dear,” she said, as she scrutinized Jess with a smile. “You have turned into a lovely young woman.”

  “Young?” Jess laughed. “Miss Taylor, I turned forty-one last month!”

  “That’s young.” She smiled again and touched Jess on the cheek, then turned to her sister. “Loretta, fix us some tea, will you? I have a feeling Miss Bates has come here for a talk.”

  Miss Taylor led Jess through a small, dark living room that was cluttered with newspapers and worn, overstuffed furniture and had a slight odor of must and old cigarettes.

  “I’m sorry to drop in on you like this.…” Jess began, but Miss Taylor waved her hand once again.

  “No matter. Of course, you’ll have to excuse the mess.” They stepped out onto a lovely porch, and the woman called back to her sister, “Loretta, we’ll take our tea on the piazza.”

  Miss Taylor motioned for Jess to sit on a wood-slatted chair. The woman removed a stack of magazines from a similar chair facing her, and sat down. From the pocket of her housedress she withdrew a partly crumpled pack of nonfilter cigarettes.

  “Doctor says it’s time I quit these things. Doctors. What do they know? I’ll be seventy-three next year, and I say the only thing that’ll kill me is if I quit smoking.”

  With a shaking hand Miss Taylor struck a match and lit a cigarette.

  “So tell me, dear,” she continued, as she exhaled a long stream of blue smoke. “How are you? Are you married? Do you have children? Do you ever hear from the others?”

  Jess laughed, then quickly gave Miss Taylor a summary of her life for the past twenty-five years.

  “What about your … was it your father?”

  Jess smiled. “He passed away ten years ago.”

  The old woman nodded. “You became close again?”

  “On his terms.”

  She shook her head. “Never seemed fair to me. A young girl loses her mother, then ends up in trouble.…”

  Jess folded her hands in her lap and twisted her emerald ring. Talking about her mother or her father was not what she wanted. It would only depress her; it would only take away from what she had to do.

  “It’s fine, Miss Taylor, really. I have a wonderful family now.” She smiled, but her stomach churned as a thought of Charles flitted quickly through her mind.

  Loretta arrived with the tea, which she set on an old wrought-iron table, next to a faded African violet.

  “Thank you,” Miss Taylor said to her sister. “Now”—she winked at Jess—“if you don’t mind, I think we’d like to be alone.”

  “I’ll just take me a stroll around the block,” Loretta grumbled and disappeared.

  “My sister!” The woman laughed. “She was kind enough to let me move in with her when they closed Larchwood, but—” she clucked her tongue— “believe me, there are days …”

  “It’s a nice cozy place you have here,” Jess said, as she sipped her tea. “Very Cape Cod …”

  Miss Taylor nodded. “But we both know you didn’t come here just to see the kind of place I’m living in. What’s on your mind, dear?”

  Jess set her cup down on the rickety table, remembering that Miss Taylor always had a way of getting to the heart of the matter. She took a slow breath. “It’s my baby,” she said. “I’ve decided I want to find my baby.”

  The woman nodded again and let Jess continue.

  “And the others. I’d like to find the others—Susan, P.J., and Ginny. I want to talk to them about doing this too. I thought maybe together we could have some kind of reunion—meet our children together for the first time.”

  Miss Taylor’s eyebrows raised. “All of you? Together?”

  Jess smiled. “Miss Taylor, we went through so much together. We were all there for each other—well, at the end anyway. It just seems fitting that we should all be together to help support one another.”

  “If the others want this.”

  Jess looked out the window. A gull was perched on the lawn, pecking through remnant clam shells. “Yes,” she said. “Of course.” She turned her gaze back to the woman. “Would it be difficult? Legally?”

  Miss Taylor snuffed out her cigarette, stirred a teaspoon of sugar into her china cup, then clicked her still-long fingernails against the rim. “There’s been much publicity lately about adoptees and birth parents finding one another,” she said, with distance in her voice.

  Jess realized the woman had not answered her question about the legalities involved. She wondered why, but instead of asking again, said, “It’s not because of the publicity. Although, yes, you’re right. It seems to be ‘the thing to do’ these days.”

  Miss Taylor took a slow slip and peered at Jess with a warning look. “Won’t this bring up other matters you’d just as soon let lie?”

  Jess set her cup on the table and twisted the ring on her finger again. “Miss Taylor, I’ll see to it that nothing that comes out of this will hurt anyone. And that includes you.”

  “But what about your family? Your friends? Does everyone you care about know everything?”

  Jess dropped her gaze to the woven mat on the gray-painted floor. “No. No one knows everything. Maybe it’s time. Life is different today.”

  The woman sighed. “Different. Oh my, yes. That it is.”

  They sat for a moment in silence. Jess thought about Maura. Was it better that the world was different? Perhaps. Perhaps not. But the truth was that it was different, and just as 1968 had its own set of what seemed today to be archaic values, society still ruled. Only now society said it was okay for an unwed girl to keep her baby.

  “Will you help me?” Jess asked.

  “Does it matter that I don’t think this is a good idea?”

  “Why not?”

  The woman leaned forward. “Jess, you and the others, well, you’ve already been hurt once. I don’t want you to be hurt again.”

  “Life is full of hurts, Miss Taylor.” For some reason a picture of her mother came into Jess’s mind: fragile, quiet, gentle.

  “So why encourage more? And what about the children? Have you given any thought to how this could upset their lives? They have rights, you know. So do their adoptive parents.”

  Jess rubbed the back of her neck, trying to relieve an aching stiffness. “I would give them a choice. They wouldn’t have to come.”

  The old woman reached out and patted Jess’s knee. “Please, dear, try to understand, these things don’t usually work out the way you see them on Oprah.”

  Jess stood up abruptly. “I didn’t come here to be patronized, Miss Taylor. I came here because I need your help.” She walked to the window. The gull had been joined by others—he must have found good pickings. “I want to find my baby for many, many reasons. Maybe she wants to find her mother too. There is that possibility, you know. And maybe the others want to find their children too.” She turned on her heel and faced the woman. “And don’t talk to me about ‘rights.’ What about my rights? And what about Susan’s, P.J.�
�s, and Ginny’s rights? Did we give them all away when we were forced to sign those papers?”

  The woman shook her head. “No one forced you to do anything.”

  Jess laughed. “I can’t believe you of all people are saying that. You know none of us had any choice!”

  Miss Taylor rubbed her eyes. “I don’t want to see anyone hurt.”

  “Neither do I. I want to see some of us happy. Some of us, some of our children.” She walked back to the chair and sat down. “Oh, Miss Taylor, I know this probably won’t have a happily-ever-after ending for all of us, but won’t it be worth it if even just one of us is reunited with her child? If just one of us can finally come to terms with the past?”

  “Assuming the others feel the same way.”

  Jess stiffened her spine. “I think they will.”

  “Even Ginny?”

  Jess shrugged. “Maybe we never gave Ginny enough credit for having feelings. I think it’s worth a try. To give everyone the choice.” She emphasized the word by closing her eyes, then added, “The choice they never had.”

  Miss Taylor clicked her fingernails together. “It seems to me as though you’re taking away their choice once again.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “If you feel you want to find your child, fine. That’s your decision. But forcing it on the others …”

  “They don’t have to come.”

  “What if they don’t want to, but what if their children do? Is that fair?”

  Jess stared at the African violet, limp and dying. “I only want to make the option available to everyone. Who knows?” she said with a shrug she didn’t really mean. “Maybe no one will show up. Not the girls, not the babies.”

  “How do you plan to do this?” Miss Taylor asked.

  Jess felt a wave of relief pass through her. Maybe there was hope. Maybe Miss Taylor would go along with her after all. She sat back down in the wood-slatted chair and leaned forward. “I thought I’d start by picking a date. Then I’ll contact each of the girls and tell them when.”

  Miss Taylor nodded. “I can probably help you out with their addresses.”

  God, Jess thought, she is going to help. She really is. “Then the hard part,” she said quickly. “Doing the search for the children. The records, I assume, are sealed.”

  The woman took another cigarette from her pack. “Nothing I can say will make you change your mind?”

  Jess pictured Maura, frightened yet determined. Determined to do the one thing Jess had never been allowed. “No,” she answered.

  Miss Taylor tucked the cigarette between her old lips, staining the white paper with now-faded red dye. She struck a match and held it to the tip, slowly igniting the end as she sucked in the smoke. She plucked the cigarette between her yellow-stained fingers and sighed. “It seems there’s no such thing as ‘sealed’ records any longer. Besides, that doesn’t apply to Larchwood, anyway.”

  Jess felt her stomach roll again. “What do you mean?”

  “We were governed by the state, but the adoptions were considered ‘private.’ The home was privately owned, and privately run—by me. It was part of what made Larchwood so attractive to our wealthy clientele.” She inhaled another drag, then coughed. “I kept the names and addresses of the adoptive parents. I felt it was the least I could do—for my girls.”

  Jess studied the old woman and thought about how few caring people there were left in the world. She reached over and touched Miss Taylor’s hand. “When can we start?”

  CHAPTER 2

  Wednesday, September 15

  Susan

  It wasn’t on the side of the Atlantic, but Susan’s parents’ Palm Beach house overlooked the Inter-coastal. Instead of waves and sand, the view was one of million-dollar yachts cruising by: young, tanned bikini-clad ladies stretched across the bow; white-haired, firm-bodied gentlemen poised with crystal glasses on the deck.

  “What a life,” Freida Levin barked as she pointed toward the water. “Oy, to be that young and do nothing but lie around in the sun.”

  “You couldn’t have sat still that long when you were that age,” her husband commented as he pruned a yellow hibiscus.

  “Ah,” Freida said, tilting the green plastic brim of her sun hat. “But our Susan here …”

  “What is it now, Mother?” Susan turned on the chaise and looked at her mother. Incredible. Seventy-five years old and she was still trying to manipulate Susan’s life. You’d think she’d have given up on that years ago.

  “Don’t be flip with me young lady,” Freida warned.

  Susan rolled back and closed her eyes to the sun. Thank God she’d be going back to Vermont tomorrow.

  “Can I help it if I only want the best for you? That’s all I ever wanted, isn’t that right, Joseph?”

  Susan’s father clipped another blossom and grunted in reply.

  “And what happened? You left that wonderful man you married.…”

  “Mother, that was eons ago.”

  “Eons, schmeons. You left him for what? Now he’s got a family who appreciates him. And you. What have you got? You’re an underpaid college professor in a no-name town.”

  “I like my job, Mother. And I have Mark.”

  “Mark! Sixteen years old and even he doesn’t understand his mother. And what’s going to become of him? Hidden away in, of all places, Vermont?”

  Susan stopped herself from saying, “Vermont is a nice place, Mother.” Sometimes she grew so tired of hearing her mother go on and on. Sometimes? Most times. She shifted her weight again, and adjusted the elastic around the bottom of her bathing suit. It left red puckery grooves in the flesh of her thighs—forty-six-year-old thighs that had, she knew, spread beyond the point where she should be wearing something as revealing as a bathing suit.

  “Mark will be okay,” Susan said. She turned from her mother and plucked this week’s copy of The Palm Beach Review from the wrought-iron table. The Review. Scandal sheet of the rich. Every inch and every pica scrutinized by Freida Levin with a reverence usually reserved for the Torah.

  Susan opened the tabloid to a photo of Ted Kennedy and his vibrant young wife. She thought of Jack Kennedy, of Bobby. Would Ted’s tumultuous life have been different if they had survived?

  Beside Susan, Freida sighed audibly. “When was the last time you saw Leah Levin?”

  Susan knew her mother always tried to bring her grandmother into the conversation when she wanted to attack Susan’s conscience. As usual, it worked.

  “I took Mark to see her over the Fourth of July.”

  “That’s two months ago.”

  “Mother, a boy hardly wants to spend time hanging around a nursing home.”

  “Retirement home. Not nursing home. Besides, she’s your grandmother. You could find time to go alone.”

  Her mother was right. Her grandmother—“Bubby,” as Susan still called her—deserved more from her granddaughter. “She’s in New York, Mother. I live in Vermont. It’s a five-hour drive.”

  “Your only remaining grandparent. It seems the least you could do for an old lady all alone. I’ve tried to get her to come down to live in Florida. Haven’t I tried, Joseph?”

  Susan’s father mopped his brow, nodded, and disappeared around the corner of the house with his pruning shears.

  Even poor Bubby can’t seem to please Mother, Susan thought. “Her arthritis is bad,” she defended her grandmother. “Plus she hates the heat, you know that. And she has friends in New York.”

  “She’d feel like she had family, too, if you’d visit her more often.”

  Susan wanted to scream. She looked back at the picture of Kennedy. Families, she groaned to herself.

  Freida looked at her watch. “It’s almost time for lunch,” she said flatly.

  “Did somebody say ‘lunch’?”

  “There’s my boy,” Freida said, and patted the side of her chaise. “Come sit by Grandma and tell me what you’ve been doing all morning.”

  Susan watched her son
bound across the patio. He was already taller than Susan’s five-eleven height. Thankfully he hadn’t inherited his father’s short stature. And as yet, Mark hadn’t shown any proclivity toward the “fat” genes that she and Lawrence both seemed to have.

  “Dad called,” Mark said as he plopped next to Freida. “He’s been in Lauderdale on business. He’s going back to New York late tonight for Rosh Hashanah, but he wants to take me out for dinner, okay, Mom?”

  Susan started to protest, when Freida jumped in. “Out? Not a chance. If your father is in town, he’ll have dinner with all of us tonight. Here. Tell him we’re having challah and roast chicken and noodle kugel. Our New Year’s feast one day early—seeing as how your mother insists on leaving on the holiday.”

  “Mother …”

  Freida turned to her daughter and pointed a finger. “It’s bad enough you refuse to follow your traditions, but in my house, we do as I say. Now, Lawrence Brosky may be your ex-husband, but he is always welcome here. He is my grandson’s father, so we’ll celebrate together the way we should. As a family.”

  She turned back to Mark and ruffled his hair. “Go call him back and tell him seven o’clock.”

  Mark scurried away. Susan’s father returned to the patio, set down his shears, and wiped his hands. “Lawrence is coming for dinner?”

  “Won’t it be nice to see him? We haven’t seen him in a month. Or is it two?”

  Susan picked at a sliver that had become embedded beneath a chewed fingernail. She couldn’t remember the last time she, Lawrence, and their son were together in the same room for more than a few “hello-and-good-bye” minutes—was it at Mark’s bar mitzvah? But the sight of Lawrence made Susan sick. He seemed to be getting shorter, fatter, and balder as time passed. She hated the way Mark admired him. She hated the way her mother fluttered over him. And she hated the way her father talked to him about the business in such a respectful, proud way. Face it, Susan said to herself, being around Lawrence makes you miserable. “I would have appreciated it if you’d consulted with me first,” she said.

  “You’re the one who divorced Lawrence. Not us. And he’s done a fine job with your father’s business. You think we could have retired down here if it hadn’t been for Lawrence?”