by Jean Stone
“So?”
“So what?” She exhaled.
“So you must have trucked over here tonight for a reason. I’d like to think it was because of your passion to see me, but somehow I think it must be something else.” He smiled again, that warm, generous smile.
“Well, I did miss you,” Susan lied. Or was it a lie? She honestly didn’t know.
Bert took a sip of his drink. “Yeah, yeah. But what else. What’s bothering you?”
“Is that what you think?” Susan asked. Her head spun again, and she could have sworn she felt her heart skip a beat. She handed Bert the joint. She’d had enough. “You think I only want to see you to talk about my problems?”
“There could be worse reasons.”
Susan leaned back and toyed with her glass. It was a thick water glass, the kind the local bank had offered for ninety-nine cents with a twenty-five-dollar deposit, hardly the Waterford she’d been drinking out of last night at her parents’. But it felt more real to her, more honest.
“Okay, you win. There is something. When I got home tonight, there was a message on my answering machine that was pretty upsetting.”
“Don’t tell me. Gardiner called. Now he wants you to go out with him. He’s trying to get at me from every angle.”
Susan laughed. “Gardiner’s married.”
“That wouldn’t stop a man like him.”
“No, I suppose not. But, no”—she shook her head—“it wasn’t Gardiner.”
Bert was quiet, waiting for her to continue.
She reached over and plucked the joint from his fingers. One more hit, she thought. One more hit will make this easier. “It was an old friend. Not a friend really. Just someone I knew a long time ago.”
“Old flame?”
“No. A woman.” She was aware of Bert’s captain’s clock ticking on the mantel. She took another drag, held in the smoke, then slowly released it. “Someone I knew in the sixties,” she said.
Bert whistled. “Wow. A blast from the past.”
She moved a magazine and put her glass on the end table. “She was someone I never thought I’d hear from again.” The joint burned hot now, nearly at its end. She took a quick last drag, then stubbed it out. She dropped her face into her hands. Why was this so difficult to tell Bert? God, this was the 1990s. “I don’t know about you, but there’s a part of my life I’d rather not remember.”
“And she was there?”
“Yes.”
“Did it have to do with Vietnam? The protests?”
Susan put her hands down. “Good guess. But wrong.”
“We all did some pretty stupid things in the sixties, Susan.”
She nodded and brushed the hair from her face. “I had a baby, Bert. I gave it up for adoption.”
He whistled again, but this time the sound was softer, more like a heavy rush of air. “Well,” he said, “that’s pretty heavy.”
“I was in a home for unwed mothers. The woman who called was one of the girls who was there with me. I thought we’d said good-bye twenty-five years ago.”
“What’d she say?”
Susan laughed. “That’s the weird part. She said she’d like to drive up and see me. That she wanted to talk to me. Then my stupid answering machine cut off the rest of the message. I don’t know if she left a phone number, or said when she’d arrive, or anything. I don’t even know what the hell she wants.”
“Were you friends?”
“No. She’s a few years younger than I am. At the time it seemed we were a generation apart.”
“She gave up a baby too?”
“Yes.”
“Then there’s a bond there.”
“I guess.” She drained her glass.
“Maybe she’s going through some sort of midlife crisis and wants to flesh out her past.”
“But why me, Bert? She hardly knew me.”
“Who knows? What are you going to do?”
“There’s nothing I can do. I have no way of getting in touch with her to tell her not to come.”
He crossed his legs and stared into his glass. “Does Mark know about this baby you had?”
“No. Why?”
“Maybe it would be a good idea if you told him. He’s old enough to understand.”
“Mark and I aren’t exactly getting along these days.”
Bert looked up at her.
“Long story. But, of course, it has to do with Lawrence.” She reached across the couch and tried to straighten Bert’s papers. “No. I don’t think now’s a good time to get into it with him.”
“Now might be your only time, Susan.”
“What do you mean?”
“Think about it. There’s a chance this woman has some news about your—what was your baby, a boy, girl?”
“Boy.”
“Who is now what, twenty-five?”
“Almost.”
“Maybe this woman knows something about him. It’s possible, isn’t it?”
Susan stared at him. That was, of course, what she’d feared, but she’d pushed that thought from her mind. No. It wasn’t possible. It couldn’t be possible. “Then again,” Susan needed to say, “maybe I’ll never hear from her again.”
He drained his glass. “Maybe not. But I think you need to be prepared.”
She tried to put it out of her mind. But the next morning, instead of working on the syllabus for World Lit II, Susan found herself doing busy, out-of-character things: cleaning out cabinets, scrubbing the sink, throwing away expired coupons that had been sitting in one of her many junk drawers for the past year. Mark had gone to school, and Susan was glad to have that much less tension in the house.
She was standing at the oak kitchen table, folding clothes, when there was a knock at the back door. Without looking, Susan knew who it would be. She took a deep breath and held it a moment, then calmly finished folding the towel she held. She put it on top of the neat stack and slowly walked to the door.
Jess was there, on the other side of the glass, peeking through the ball-fringed café curtains. Age had only made Jess look more delicate, in an elfinlike way. Susan bet to herself that when she saw the rest of the woman, her body would be even slighter than it had been twenty-five years before.
She opened the door.
“Susan,” Jess said.
“Jess.”
They stood assessing one another, Susan conscious of her size as she loomed over the woman by a good eight inches.
“It’s been a long time,” Jess said. “I’m glad I found you.”
Susan looked past Jess at the silver Jaguar in the driveway, parked behind Susan’s old Volvo. There was no one in the car. Jess had come alone. She brushed the hair back from her face. “What do you want, Jess?”
Jess shifted the leather bag on her shoulder. “Could I come in?”
Susan stepped back from the doorway. “Sure. Of course. Have a seat.”
Jess walked into the kitchen. She stepped around an overflowing wastebasket and sat at the table. “I see I’ve come on laundry day.”
Susan laughed. “Trying to get caught up around here. Classes start Monday.”
“You’re teaching.”
“English. Literature mostly.”
“You always liked books.”
Susan moved the laundry piles to the counter. “I don’t drink coffee. Would you like some herb tea?”
“Tea sounds fine.”
Susan filled the kettle, grateful to have something to do. What the hell does this woman want with me? She took out two mugs and a tin of French-vanilla tea. “It will just be a minute,” she said.
“Are you alone?” Jess asked.
Susan stood at the sink, looking out the window. “Alone now? Or ‘alone’ as in life in general?”
“Excuse me?”
Susan sighed. “I have a sixteen-year-old son, Mark. He’s not here right now. He’s in school. I have no husband. We divorced twelve years ago.”
“So there’s no one in the house bu
t you?”
Susan twisted around and looked squarely at Jess. “And you,” she said. The teakettle began to whistle.
Susan turned her back to Jess, poured the hot water into the mugs, and dipped in the bags.
“I’m glad,” Jess said. “There’s something I’d like to talk to you about.”
Susan lifted the bags up and down in the water. Steep, dammit, she wanted to say out loud. Steep, so I can sit down, let this woman have her say, and get her the hell out of my house.
“I’ll bet you were surprised to get my message.”
Truly an understatement. “Yes,” Susan answered. She glanced sideways at Jess. The woman was twisting the ring on her finger. God, Susan remembered, she did that when she was—how old?—fifteen, sixteen, something like that. Susan had once felt old enough emotionally to be Jess’s mother. Looking at the nervous woman, she did again. She lifted the bags out of the mugs. Good enough, she thought, looking into the half-brewed liquid. “Sugar?” she asked.
“No, thanks.”
Susan scooped the mugs off the counter and placed them on the table. She sat across the table from Jess. As far away as she could get.
“I’ve decided to find my baby,” Jess said.
Susan picked up a spoon and stirred in a hefty teaspoon of sugar from the bowl. She didn’t usually take sugar either, but she needed to keep her hands busy. Besides, if she tried to drink from the mug now, she’d probably drop it.
“What’s that got to do with me?”
Jess took a sip, then quickly put down the mug. It’s probably still too hot, Susan thought. She probably burned the Estée Lauder right off her lips.
“I …” the woman stammered, not looking Susan in the eye, “I was wondering if you’ve ever had the same feelings.”
The knot that had found its way into Susan’s stomach increased in size.
“I have a son,” Susan said.
Jess looked into her mug. “So do I. In fact, I have two sons and a daughter. And”—she picked up the mug to try again—“a husband.”
Susan pushed back her hair. My baby, she thought. David’s baby. She closed her eyes, trying to envision what he would look like today. He’d be a man. Older even than David had been when …
How could she tell Jess that 1968 had been the biggest regret of her life? How could she tell this woman she no longer knew that she felt the decisions she’d made then had led her in a direction that had no definition, no purpose? Mark was the only reason Susan carried on in whatever type of normalcy she could call this existence. But years ago Susan had accepted one important thing: She couldn’t go back.
“Why do you want to do this?”
Jess looked across the table at Susan. “Because it’s time,” she said.
Susan hesitated before asking the next question. “What do you want from me?”
Jess set down her mug and began twisting the ring again. “Haven’t you ever wondered? About your baby?”
Only a million times. Only every night when I go to bed. Only every day as I’ve watched Mark grow and blossom. Only every time I see a boy who is the same age.
“What are you suggesting?”
“I’m planning a reunion. With our children. I’ve seen Miss Taylor, and she’s agreed to help. She knows where they all are.”
“All of them?”
“Yours. Mine. P.J.’s and Ginny’s. I’m going to contact everyone, even the kids. Whoever shows up, shows up. Whoever doesn’t, doesn’t. It’s a chance we’ll all be taking, but we’ll be doing it together. Together. The way we got through it in the first place.”
The words hit Susan like a rapid fire of a BB gun at a carnival. She stood and walked across the room. She straightened the stack of laundry. “I think you’re out of your mind,” she said.
“We decided on October sixteenth. That’s a Saturday. At Larchwood.”
“Larchwood? God. Is that place still standing?”
“It really was a beautiful old house, Susan. Actually, it’s a halfway house for drug addicts now.”
“Great. And will they be part of your reunion?”
“Of course not. They’ve agreed to make themselves scarce for the afternoon. The plan is, we women will meet at two o’clock. Our children can come at three.”
“If they want to,” Susan said.
“If they want to,” Jess echoed.
Susan moved to the sink. She looked at the window-sill. On it sat a plaster sign Mark had made for her many Mother’s Days ago. I LOVE YOU, MOM, it read, in childlike printing, decorated with out-of-balance pink and yellow flower petals.
“I’m not interested,” Susan said, surprised that her usually deep voice sounded even deeper.
“I’m not asking you to decide now,” Jess said. “Only to think about it. Saturday, October sixteenth. Two o’clock. At Larchwood Hall.”
“You can’t talk me into it.”
“I won’t try to. I only know it’s time I put my own past to rest, and I thought all of you might feel the same way.”
Susan laughed. “Even Ginny?”
There was silence a moment. “Well,” Jess said, “she should be given the chance too.”
“I think you’re out of your mind,” Susan repeated, but this time it came out sounding softer.
Behind her Susan heard the wood chair scrape the linoleum. She turned as Jess stood up. “Maybe I am,” she said, “but, nonetheless, I’m going through with this. I’d love it if you were a part of it. And unless I’m mistaken, so would your son.”
Susan raised her eyebrows.
“Your other son,” Jess concluded. “Your older son.”
“I’d like some time to think about this.”
“You have it,” Jess said. “You have a month.”
“And if I don’t show up?”
Jess reached over and touched Susan’s arm. “Listen,” she said, “I’m doing this as much for our children as for us. I think they have a right to know their birth mothers, don’t you?”
CHAPTER 3
Friday, September 17
P.J.
P.J. Davies gathered up the layouts for the new Joubert Jeans TV spot and stuffed them into the job envelope.
“Kill it and bill it!” She laughed and brushed the heavy auburn hair from her perfectly contoured face. She tossed the job envelope into the file. It caught on the edge and fell to the floor. She looked down at the mess and started to laugh again. Life was so perfect. Last night she’d worked until midnight, scribbling out her one remaining idea for a storyboard. Today the Joubert people had not only agreed to the $300,000 in production costs, but also to the $4.5 million placement budget. And P.J. felt sure she’d finally clinched a partnership.
She scooped up the color markers and dropped them into the carousel beside her drawing board, then walked to the window and gazed out at the Manhattan skyline. From the forty-eighth floor, the spectacular view never ceased to energize her. She was forty-five years old, though most people judged her to be ten years younger. And today she felt younger, much younger. Because now she was, at last, among the best.
She took a deep breath, aware that she was smiling. It hadn’t been all that difficult. When P.J. had first come to Manhattan twenty years earlier, jobs for art directors were plentiful—plentiful when you could toss back your thick hair, bat your emerald eyes, and know just when to part your full lips into a winning smile. And the body, oh, yes, the body was ever-important. Five feet six with long, firm legs, God-given generous breasts, and not a pinch of fat to be found. She had looked the part, and she had played the game. Now she was ready for the final payoff: a full partnership in one of the most prestigious ad agencies on Madison Avenue.
“Yes!” she shouted at the skyline. “The city is mine!”
The door to her office swung open. Bob Jaffee looked in. “Is the new executive up for lunch?” He closed the door behind him and stepped inside.
P.J. snapped around. “What did you call me?”
Bob smiled. “I thin
k you’ve got it.”
She strutted toward him, adrenaline racing. “Did they say anything?”
“Nope. But they smiled at each other and nodded.”
P.J. threw her arms around him. “Oh, Bob! Do you think so?” Though she knew what his answer would be, it never hurt to make a man feel superior. It was a ploy that had been working for two decades: the ultimate bluff that had catapulted her career upward.
Bob kissed her neck, chuckling softly. “I know they’ve gone for lunch together. And I know the only time they do that is when there’s important agency business to discuss.”
She pulled back and looked into his blue eyes—bluer, she knew, from his contact lenses. “But why aren’t you with them?”
He dropped his hands from her back and began to stroke her hips. “I think they consider it a conflict of interest.”
She checked to be sure the vertical blinds at the glass wall facing the outer office were closed. No sense in having the secretarial pool witness their foreplay. “But you’re a partner too!” She pouted.
“A prejudiced one.” He took a handful of her hair and kissed it.
They had been lovers for three years. Bob had been divorced six years; P.J. had never married. They shared their lives with no strings, no hassles, just as wonderful, lustful, caring lovers. And with each accomplishment in P.J.’s career, their relationship seemed to intensify.
She pulled back from him a little, relishing the pride in his eyes, the pride that was for her whenever she’d performed well. “When do you think they’ll decide?”
Bob broke away and scratched at the hair on his neatly combed, graying temple. “My, my, aren’t you the impatient one?”
“Bob!” P.J. responded to his teasing. “Tell me!”
He crossed her office and stood by the bookcase. He ran a finger over one of her Clios. There were seven of them from last year alone. “My guess is they’ll decide today. But I don’t think they’ll tell you until Monday.”
P.J. moaned, then walked to stand behind him. She slipped her hands into the front pockets of his gray silk pants and playfully massaged his groin. “But when do you think they’ll tell you? They do need your approval, don’t they?” she cooed.
