The Search Angel

by Tish Cohen

  “Why did you give her away, Nana?”

  Robbie’s question hangs in the air between them. From the yard, the porch swing creaks. A small plane buzzes overhead. Leaves blow across the porch at their feet. No one moves, speaks. If Eleanor had any strength in her legs, she’d run.

  “Our flight was delayed due to good weather,” Isabelle says quickly. “The pilots, who showed up with suntans, were likely off on a beach somewhere drinking mojitos.”

  Robbie runs back into the house, chanting, “Mosquito juice, mosquito juice!”

  And the tension has passed.

  “Never a dull moment around here.” Ruth squeezes Eleanor’s arm in hers and winks. “Come. Everyone is dying to meet you. We’re a big family.”

  I’m from a big family, she’ll tell people. She’ll tell Jonathan. And you should see them. They’re straight out of the movies.

  Inside, the hallway is empty but jovial voices come from the back of the house—a man telling a story, a woman shrieking in laughter. It’s a lively home.

  Her life at the Prues’ didn’t sound like this. Marion and Thomas were good and kind, but old enough to be her grandparents. Saturday afternoons like this one were filled with the scratch of Eleanor’s pencil as she did homework on the dining room table, or the soft scrape of Thomas turning a page in his book.

  Ruth stops. “I want a moment with you. Just you. Before the others invade. We never had this at the hospital. They whisked you away before I could even see you.” Her strong hands squeeze her daughter’s as she studies Eleanor’s face. “You’re like a more feminine version of your sisters.”

  Clearly Eleanor did not inherit her infertility from Ruth. “I have sisters?”

  A bald man, tall and wide-shouldered, nicely weathered, in jeans and a buffalo-plaid shirt, heads down the hall with a side-to-side swagger. His hand reaches for hers from miles away. “This must be our girl.”

  Eleanor looks at Ruth, who nods. “This is Richard. My husband. And your father.” Eleanor’s face is mashed into Richard’s flannel sleeve.

  “I married your mom not two years after you were born.” He steps back but leaves an arm draped over her shoulder. “Because of you, I’ve always thought. Pulled my whole life together, princess. Went back to high school. Started working on an engineering degree, later opened up the business. A real wake-up call, you were.”

  “He did good, your old dad,” Ruth says.

  He would have been such a wonderful father. Strong and energetic. Young enough to run alongside her bike as she learned how to ride. As it was, she taught herself. Eleanor looks around. This would have been her life.

  “That’s great,” she hears herself say.

  “You want to hear great,” says Ruth. “The twins—your sisters, full sisters—were born two years after you. Ronnie and Roxie are thirty-three.”

  Ronnie, Roxie, Ruth, Richard, Robbie. The entire family with the Rs. Ruth continues. “Identical twins—you should know that it runs in the family in case you ever … wait.” She stops, her face brightening. “Thirty-five, you must have kids of your own?”

  Eleanor shakes her head. “No, Well, yes. Hopefully …”

  The clomping of footsteps from what appears to be an open kitchen and family room drowns out Eleanor’s voice. The twins, clearly, with their long blond hair and bangs, matching peach-toned lipstick, and wide, denimed hips, rush forward with toothy grins. They’re shorter, but share the lower-half smiles with Ruth and Eleanor, and something else around the eyebrows—a definitive slope toward the nose—that Eleanor has. No sexy arch there. More of a hasty slash, and much darker than their hair.

  “Lordy, lordy,” says the one with the slightly longer face. “Mom told us—we had no idea. Holy crap, this is wild. We have a big sister. Ronnie has been lording her six-minutes-older status over me all my life.” Her grin is genuine and could not get any wider. “I’m Rox. So completely incredible to meet you.” A quick hug.

  “I’m Ronnie. And you’re a total bitch for usurping me …” Another hug and everyone bursts into soft laughter. “Robbie’s mine. You’ll meet my husband later.”

  “And how come you got the long legs?” Rox says. “So not fair.”

  Isabelle stands by the front door. She watches Eleanor’s face with a controlled urgency, acknowledging the fact that her parents going on without her, marrying each other after giving her up, going on to have more kids—all of whom are her full siblings—is something to get upset about, yes. But Eleanor was not to freak out.

  “And you’re all together still. I never pictured that.” Eleanor forces a smile. “It’s amazing.”

  With a slow blink, Isabelle nods her approval.

  Eleanor’s throat is nearly closed tight with envy. With hurt. These girls weren’t left behind. They grew up cherished, wanted. Why didn’t Ruth come looking for Eleanor if the whole gang was intact? Even just for visitation?

  “Honey, you’re shaking,” says Ruth, taking her hands. “You want a drink to calm your nerves?”

  Eleanor nods.

  Ruth leads Isabelle and Eleanor back into a massive great room with huge pine beams overhead and a floor-to-ceiling stone fireplace. The fridge is covered in photographs and Robbie’s crayon drawings of bullets hitting army men and exploding rocket ships and roaring T. rexes. On the marble island are plates of tiny spring rolls and dips and veggies and miniature pita, homemade cookies and iced brownies dusted with icing sugar. In the oven, a turkey sizzles.

  It smells like a home.

  “Why don’t you ladies get comfortable, and I’ll get you both a glass of wine,” says Richard. “You okay with white?” When they both nod, he opens the fridge and fills two glasses from a box.

  Eleanor accepts hers, wanders over to where a wooden train set is arranged on the rug by the fire, and watches Robbie push a yellow engine through a covered bridge. “Grandpa, will you play with me?”

  Richard calls out from where he’s checking the roast. “In a sec, big man. Just let Grandpa check the dinner.”

  “I want somebody to play with me now.”

  Ronnie and Roxie drape themselves over the same stuffed armchair as if they’re still tangled in the womb. Ruth drops onto the sofa and pats the seat beside her. “Come, Eleanor. Sit with me. We have decades of catching up to do. Tell me what’s going on in your life.”

  Eleanor sits. Behind her mother are framed family photos that could very well be on Eleanor’s windowsill at home. An arty black and white of the entire family in a studio. A color shot of all of the Rs frolicking in the surf, everyone dressed in rolled-up jeans and white T-shirts, skin the color of summer and blond hair blowing in the wind. Grinning and feeling the ocean lap at their toes. A picture of the entire clan at the base of a Christmas tree. In every shot, the family appears as joyous as if they were faking it in a stock photo. Only, this family is real.

  She should have been in these shots. Christmas after Christmas, thirty-four times over, they didn’t reach out to her. Did Ruth or Richard ever, while wrapping presents for the twins, wonder about Eleanor? What she was doing Christmas morning?

  She looks at Ruth. “Did you tell Rox and Ronnie about me?”

  “Of course! You see them sitting here, don’t you?”

  “No, I mean when they were young. Did they grow up knowing?”

  “Oh goodness, no. I guess I worried I’d scar them or who knows what. Or worried what they’d think of me.” She looks at the twins, who smile back. “I didn’t tell them until just after your phone call.”

  “It’s fine, Mom,” says Ronnie. “We’re glad we know now is all.”

  “So, Eleanor. Spill,” says Roxie, leaning over her sister’s legs as if they’re her own. “We want to hear all about your life.”

  Ruth smiles up at Isabelle, who cradles her wineglass at the entry to the hall. “Won’t you come sit, Isabelle? We owe so much of our joy to you.”

  Isabelle shakes her head, her eyes a bit glassy. “Thank you, but if you would you kindly direct
me to the powder room?” Ruth sends her down the hall and to the left, then all eyes turn to Eleanor, who gulps from her glass.

  “Actually, I’m about to adopt a baby girl. All by myself.”

  As the room fills up with oohs and aahs and pats of approval, Ruth touches Eleanor’s wedding band. “But there’s someone in your life?”

  “That is a bit of a story …”

  Isabelle has been gone too long. Once her story has been told, and Robbie has commandeered everyone’s attention with his train set, Eleanor wanders into the kitchen to refill her glass from the box on the island. Once sure no one is watching, she hoists the carton onto her hip and slips down the hall to rap on the bathroom door.

  “Isabelle? Are you okay?”

  From inside: “Eleanor Sweet, if there is one thing I forbid my clients to do, it’s harass the search angel when they should be bonding with their newfound birth families. Now get back to that perfect family of yours.”

  Eleanor rattles the knob. “Let me in.”

  “I will do no such thing.”

  “How’s your wineglass?”

  “Aside from being thoroughly horrified at having been filled with wine from a cardboard casket, it is empty. Thank you for asking.”

  “Then unlock the door. I’ve brought you a refill.”

  Isabelle opens the door. Eleanor pushes her way in and locks up behind her. “Don’t just stand there. Help me with this box.”

  Isabelle supports the carton while Eleanor positions the spout over the glass and presses the button. Chardonnay splashes into the glass. “You have got to be the rudest birth daughter I’ve encountered. In here saucing up the search angel when you should be out there sharing your lifetime of anguish with those who deserted you.”

  “Your eyes are red. Have you been crying?”

  “I haven’t been able to produce tears in twenty-seven years. What you are seeing is evidence of a poor air-filtration system in that pterodactyl we rode in on the back of.”

  “Is it your son? That’s why you’re hiding?”

  “Is nothing in my life sacred? I suppose you’ll want my white blood count next.”

  “I just think there’s more that you’re not telling me.”

  Isabelle sits on the closed lid of the toilet and swirls the wine in her glass, staring down at it. Laughter explodes from the other room. “His new family named him Walter William Runion. Walt.”

  “When was the last time you saw him?”

  She sighs deeply, looks up at the ceiling. “June twenty-fifth of this year. He came out of the house wearing a Dallas Cowboys sweatshirt and a pair of navy shorts to mow the lawn. His two little boys banged on the living room window and gave him the thumbs-up. The whole process took forty minutes and I am proud to say he was meticulous in his detailed edging where grass meets walkway.” Her eyes drift out to a sparrow perched on the sill. “No one could ever call that man anything less than meticulous.”

  “Where were you when he was mowing the lawn?”

  “In the car. Watching through the window. And if you’d like to pry further, why don’t you ask me how many times I’ve seen him that were not through some sort of glass.”

  Eleanor says nothing.

  “Once. The moment they pulled him out of me and whisked him out of the room.”

  The thought of Ruth caring enough to watch her from afar gives Eleanor a thrill. She longed for it all her life. “He has no idea?”

  Isabelle shakes her head.

  “It’s not too late, Isabelle. I can’t tell you what this contact means to me. And if she’d been the one to initiate …” Eleanor pauses to release a breath. “You could do it for your son. You could call him. I’d even come with you to see him if you want support. It’s not too late.”

  Isabelle’s hand shakes enough that the wine quivers in the glass. When she speaks, her voice is sharper than intended. “Don’t tell me what I can or cannot do, Eleanor Sweet. One found family does not make you an expert. I cannot approach Ethan now or ever.”

  “Sure you can—”

  “Ethan is dead.”

  As Eleanor stands frozen, struggling to process this, Isabelle tops up her glass and breezes out the door. Eleanor follows her into the great room to set the wine box on the island while Isabelle arranges herself beside little Robbie in front of the fire.

  “Now. Let’s establish the rules straight away.” Isabelle plasters a smile on her face. “I get to be the red engine or I throw a tantrum. Are we clear?”

  Robbie beams and, with his socked foot, pushes the red engine toward her.

  Chapter 36

  Isabelle stands in the cramped entryway of their hotel room and stares accusingly at the light switch. “It’s the single most deadly source of aerobic bacteria in a hotel room after the TV remote. Streptococcus. Staphylococcus. And, the worst offender imaginable, fecal coliform.”

  Eleanor watches from the foot of one of the beds. “How bad could the TV remote be?”

  “What”—Isabelle’s head snaps around—“do you think people reach for immediately following sex?”

  She refused to speak a word about Ethan in the cab ride from Ruth and Richard’s place. Every time Eleanor tried to talk, Isabelle pointed out the window at an old church or a tree that hadn’t yet dropped its leaves and commented on the pretty view.

  “There was a study,” Isabelle says now. “All measurements were taken in colony-forming units of bacteria per cubic centimeter squared. CFUs. TV remotes, bathroom sinks, door handles, all the usual suspects were highlighted. The telephone had twenty-one CFUs. TV remotes had seventy. The main light switch? Almost 125 CFUs. And if you’d care to know the fecal bacteria count …?”

  “I don’t care to know. Not in the slightest.”

  “Over 115. And just so you can compare, guess what level hospitals aim for?”

  “Do you think room service would send up a bowl of cereal? Or do I have to order more than that?”

  “Five or less.” Isabelle is already elbow deep in her suitcase, digging through perfectly folded dress shirts and jeans. She holds up a flat red package of antibacterial hand wipes. “Your immune system will thank me for bringing these.”

  “Isabelle, forget the light switch.”

  It’s too late; she’s already detailing the brass switch plate, as well as the wall surface surrounding it.

  “Can we talk? Please? It’s not healthy, to avoid discussing it.”

  Isabelle scrubs harder, then pulls out another wipe and decontaminates doorknobs, sink handles, the towel racks, phone, and, finally, the grandfather of CFU offenders, the TV remote. As she scrubs, the television turns on, then off again. Then on. To the children’s movies available, then to the porn selections—complete with assurances that movie titles will not appear on their hotel bill.

  Eleanor sits on her bed and watches Isabelle use a corner of the cloth to clean between the tiny rubber buttons. “This isn’t about hotel bacteria,” she says. But Isabelle just scrubs harder and the TV turns to the local news. The volume vanishes for a moment, then grows increasingly louder to the point that the ghostly weatherman is shouting that temperatures will fall to almost forty degrees overnight. “Isabelle. Talk to me.”

  She stops. Turns off the TV. Tosses the remote onto the foot of her bed. “I was better off in my town house on Battersea Road. That’s all I have to say.”

  Down the hall, children’s voices shriek as they thunder along the carpeted corridor, then bang on a door nearby. A man’s voice, teasing, “I’m gonna get you!” makes them shriek with delight. The voices grow quiet and a door thumps shut.

  “This day is not about me, Eleanor Sweet. And I forbid you to make it so.”

  “Isabelle …”

  “You’ve waited a lifetime to meet your mother. How do you feel after this afternoon? That’s what we should discuss.”

  Ruth was fantastic. Eleanor had explained to her, to all of them, the situation with Sylvie. Adopting her without Jonathan. Ruth squeezed Eleano
r’s knee and actually volunteered to drive the four hours into Boston to be there for the home visit. Insisted she be appointed as Eleanor’s support system—and not just for Nancy’s approval. For real. Said she’d be there for Eleanor and Sylvie no matter what. No matter when.

  If the home meeting goes well this week, everything will be in place.

  “How did he die?”

  Isabelle reaches for a fresh wipe and turns to the bedside lamp. Starts to scrub the switch and stops. Her elbows drop to her sides. “It was a heart attack.” She sits back on the bed and draws her knees to her chest. “No one saw it coming; he was in good shape and had much to look forward to, and all the silly things people tell themselves to feel better. Heart trouble doesn’t run in my family. No idea about his father’s. I’d love to be dramatic and say I’d just decided to come out of the shadows and introduce myself and then it happened, but I’d decided no such thing.”

  “When did it happen?”

  “July fourteenth. Ethan played hockey with a bunch of friends once a week. Finished the game and collapsed getting into the car. One of his teammates ran back to the arena for the defibrillator, while another called 911. It was too late for either.”

  “Oh God, I’m so sorry.”

  “I read it in the paper like a perfect stranger. Even after his death, I was too cowardly to approach his family.” Isabelle stares at her toes. “That was it for me. I couldn’t continue to bring other people together after failing so colossally with my own son. So I stopped searching. Then I found myself making excuses not to leave the house. It might rain. It might snow. Days passed where I didn’t step outside. Eventually I decided it made more sense to have whatever I needed sent to the house.”

  “So you actually stopped going out.”

  “What gave me the right? If Ethan wasn’t going to have a life, neither was I.”

  Eleanor is silent a moment, allowing this to sink in. Isabelle had become a recluse. Yet she had left the house to help her. “Can I ask you something?”

  Isabelle huffs her indignance. “Nothing seems to have stopped you yet!”