The Eves

by Grace Sammon

  “Jessica, I just saw the email. They wrote to me. They asked to stay with me. I did not invite this. I will tell them, of course, that they can stay here, but only if it is OK with you. I must also say, this arrangement has to be alright with you. It is your chance to finally fix this.”

  “Jesper wrote this morning,” I tell her, as I try to gather my thoughts and calm my hurt feelings. “He can’t meet until at least October, but he’d like to Skype or some-such before that.”

  “Jessica, do not avoid the topic. This is immense.”

  “It is immense, Sonia. Do the kids not see how much an email like that hurts me, or do they know exactly?” I hear my voice getting out of control. “Do they delight in knowing they have the power over all this, deciding to stop all communication for three years, suddenly choosing to spend their time with James, and now they are sending texts and emails as if it was yesterday when they cut me from their lives? They haven’t seen you in such a long time? They’re eager to see Erica? They want to set up a goddamn meeting with me someplace. They don’t want to come to the house? They are staying with you for a week? Exactly how long have you been keeping in touch with them?”

  “Jessica, stop it. They are not mothers. They are not parents. They do not understand the hurts that are written on our hearts with just a single word. You know this. This is not new. They will know this someday, but this is not that day.

  “Staying with me and Erica makes it easy for them. We are safe to them. You would want that. You are a dangerous emotional place for them to be, at least right now.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean? I’m their mother. You are not even a real aunt,” I practically shriek into the phone, far more unkindly than I would ever want to sound.

  I must have startled Roy because he comes into the room carrying Gabler. I point to my computer screen and his eyes grow wide as I mouth that I am on the phone with Sonia.

  “Jessica, do not ask me this thing.” My silence tells her that I will sit and wait until she tells me. “It means that they think this is all your fault. Ryn’s email to me said, wait, I will read it to you.

  Hi Aunt Sonia, I know it’s been a long time. We hope it’s OK to write. It just got too hard and too crazy to know what to do three years ago. We’re sorry. Everything is still all screwed up with mom. I don’t know what she’s been doing with sending the cards and gifts recently. We guess she’s sorry for cutting us off three years ago, but WTF! She stopped coming to see us, stopped communication. What does she want from us now? Does she have any idea how hard it was for us to lose dad and her at the same time? Does she have any idea how hard it was to have to make her insignificant in our lives after how close we were? In any event, we are going to come to DC next week, can we stay with you and Erica? Please. We’ll be there about a week. We’ve missed you. Hugs to Erica, she must be huge!

  “Jessica, Jessica, are you there?” I hand Roy the phone as I vomit into the waste basket.

  Fault? I cut them off? I cut them off? I could no more cut out my heart. They thought I was the one who caused this? They needed to make me insignificant?

  Altar boys in fresh black cassocks with their crisply ironed white surplices, high-polished shoes, and butched-up hair appear before me, bending and swaying from side to side, pounding their chests in supplication, uttering the words from the Catholic Latin mass: “Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa”—these swarm before me just before I pass out.

  “Through my fault” – I am sorry. “Through my fault” – I am sorry. “Through my most grievous fault” – I am so very sorry.

  dog days of summer

  T

  he next week of waiting to see them was difficult. The entire time I felt as if I’d been hit by a train. I doubted I’d actually had a heart attack, but the aftermath from my discussion with Sonia left me feeling that way. I can’t seem to go for any runs, even walking seems an effort. I feel like I’m made of glass and might break with every step.

  Knowing that the kids think that this has all been my fault is bad enough. I am devastatingly crushed. The realization that the one thing I had worked hardest for their entire lives, that they were safe and happy, I had also unwittingly, single-handedly, destroyed. My children were not happy. They did not feel safe with me. How could I have, in any way, shape, or form, made it possible for them to think I would want them out of my life? I hurt my children. It doesn’t even seem melodramatic for me to feel that I hurt my children in a way, far worse it seems, than in any Greek tragedy. Hurt the two people I love the most on this earth.

  Even a week later, I can’t wrap my head around it. This all happened because I wasn’t clear about the intent of my actions. Because I didn’t tell them at the time of the trial, or to this day, about their dad’s drug abuse, the illegalities, the wire fraud, or, most importantly, that he was ready to throw them under the bus.

  When the kids come to town and we finally meet, it is even worse than I could have expected. I have things planned to say but the sheer sight of them brings me to tears. The opportunity to hug them, even as briefly as they allow, is a tonic. I open with an apology, an apology for everything. I start right out with saying I didn’t know they thought I had cut them off. I thought they were the ones who were done with me. Even with the apology I can tell that this mea culpa raises their suspicions, puts them on guard, and feels like I am accusing them.

  Sonia is right. They are not yet parents. They can’t know how I can read them. I know them. I have studied them since they grew under my heart. Ryn loved to stretch inside of me, pushing her heels under my ribs. As an infant she had the most dramatic and sweet stretches. I miss seeing those still when she wakes or prepares for a run. Adam was quiet as he grew inside me. He had a rhythm. I knew when he was awake as he quietly stirred, rolling gently from side-to-side in my womb. He’s quiet still, thoughtful, watchful, and gentle with everyone but me these days. I know them, but apparently not well enough to not misstep as I watch them grow tense within moments of our meeting.

  I try to explain, with further mea culpas, citing chapter and verse from their own words on the night of the accident, they were “denouncing me as the mother they knew,” telling me that they “didn’t want anything to do with me,” that they were the ones who asked me to leave them at the hospital.’ What was I to think? I accepted all this rather than have them know James was willing to see their work destroyed.

  They retorted, in their own version of the truth, with equally heartfelt tears. I had “written them off just because they supported their dad.” I listened with silenced responses as they ticked off their litany for how this happened. They thought I had gone crazy, “suddenly turning on their dad” (because I didn’t want them to be implicated in the case). I left town “abandoning” them that first Christmas (because not once in eight months had they communicated with me). I wrote to them saying that I had “changed my will” making Sonia my executor and power of attorney (because I thought I was a burden to them). I’m not sure I heard all they said. As they were talking, I kept trying to figure out how to fix it. Seeing them in so much pain was worse than any pain I had suffered. Never was there a clearer moment, one more true than this. I could understand the sentiment of wanting to take the pain your children suffer and bring it on yourself.

  We left clumsily. What had happened between us three years ago, and in the interim, was far too big to say all this was simply a misunderstanding, a miscommunication. Did I really think we could pick up where we left off? How could both of our versions of the story be so clearly true to each of us and ring so hollow for the other? How could they not even recognize their part in how this happened, or recognize my pain, or take any responsibility for it? There were no apologies from them.

  It should have been obvious to me before. It is suddenly so clear. One of the things I absolutely assumed about the three of us was unconditional love between us. I realize that a big part of what I have been missing is that unconditional love
from them. I miss the absolute comfort and ease of being able to pick up the phone, to not watch every word, to hug or touch an arm or shoulder, to brush back a piece of hair from their faces, to simply be together. They still have my unconditional love, at any price. It’s not even a choice, it just the truth.

  I asked if I could see them again before they left town. They said they’d let me know. I felt my heart constrict at their words but managed a weak, “great,” in response.

  With the semester behind me, and an upcoming sabbatical to finish my dissertation, I’m free from university responsibilities. The next few days, and then the summer, crawl by in a series of vignettes.

  Before she leaves town, Ryn texts and says she and Erica are going for a run at the zoo. She asks if I want to meet her up by Nancy the elephant, saying we could sit and talk for a bit. She remembers! We love Nancy. We would always take extra time to watch her. When we’d hear the lions at night we used to strain to hear if we could ever hear Nancy trumpet. We didn’t. This is a good omen. She’s chosen this spot!

  We meet and try to act normal. I ask her the type of questions a mother asks—is she happy, how’s work, who is the boy in the Christmas pictures her dad sent. I get guarded answers and her surprise that her dad sends me the pictures. I ask if she wants to come by the house with Erica after their run. She replies simply, “No, I’m good. Thanks. Hug Gabler for me.” With the briefest of hugs, she’s gone with a call over her shoulder that she’ll call.

  A day or so later Adam texts and asks if I can meet him at the butterfly house in Wheaton Regional Park. My heart leaps that he’s chosen this place, a special, magical place that for a few months each summer is filled with butterflies that sweep and alight in the enclosed botanical garden. It’s a place Adam particularly loved as a small boy and as a poetic teen. He remembers, and my heart sings!

  When we meet in the parking lot, I ask if it’s alright for me to take his arm. He says neither yes nor no, so I slide my hand into the crook of his arm and feel his arm stiffen, although he doesn’t pull away.

  He stops our stroll through the gardens and asks if we can sit on one of the benches. I try to reconcile the image I have of seven-year-old Adam leaping across the stones in the koi pond and the decidedly sullen young man at my side. He tells me this is all fucked up. He tells me that he’s glad he saw me but that he needs time to “recover from being my son” before he sees me again.

  I don’t remember what else was said, if anything else was said. When we part in the parking lot, I tell him I love him, that I can wait, that I am sorry, that I want him to be OK. I remember an awkward hug and the sight of his car pulling away, but all I hear are his last words to me. He needs to “recover from being my son.”

  Throughout the summer there are occasional texts or emails cautiously crafted. Now it is the gaps I see, not the whole. I keep sending little gifts and cards. At Summer Solstice I send them each a card marking the longest day of the year, one we used to celebrate with late night fun and firefly catching. I make several offers to have them come this way again, knowing they must be here for business from time to time. I tell them I will meet them in a city of their choice. I tell them they would love The Grange. I don’t tell them I’m sorry anymore, but I am. I don’t tell them about Jesper.

  Jesper writes regularly. I am grateful. I am so interested in his work. He reminds me of Erica, capturing experiences through his documentarian work. I realize I envision him as a small boy showing me his art work that I will want to hang on the refrigerator, trying to reconcile that with the fact that he is just a handful of years older than Sonia, a grown and quite capable man.

  In one of our exchanges he expresses frustration at what he is filming, the art of indigenous peoples. He asks if I had ever visited Froger Park and the sculptures when I visited Norway. I hadn’t. He sends me a link to the appropriate website. I “tour” the vast acreage and the hundreds of sculptures. I ask him which ones he likes, and he says all of them, but he especially likes the woman dancing with wild hair and wild abandon. I tell him that I love the ones of the old women, especially those on the central piece at the monolith. It is fun to have these easy, ready exchanges with him.

  Sonia and Erica have now left to spend the summer in Argentina, something they do every few years. I know Sonia was right about safety and the reasons my kids stayed at her house. Still, I was jealous of the time she had with them and the ease of it. She tells me she had many stern talks with them, trying to get them to see things my way. She and I had many silent runs before she left. Time and distance serve a purpose. If I’m honest, I am glad they are away.

  Sydney and Gene come up to the Hobart house on several occasions for doctors’ checks and for weekends in DC with Roy and me. We give them what I consider my special nighttime tour of Washington. I give them the history I know, and make up some along the way, telling them it is hearsay. We go to all the monuments, including the relatively new one with Martin Luther King walking out of a huge block of granite. DC hosts free outside summer concerts on almost any given night and we partake in them. The two of them are beautiful together. This now goes well beyond their collective looks. They have a synchronicity between them that is electric. When they spend the night with us, I pull out the trundle from under Adam’s bed like I have done when the kids had sleepovers or when my mother stayed with us. After a while they tell me it’s not necessary. They are quite comfortable in a single bed. They profess their love easily. This makes me feel pressured to answer Roy’s frequent “I love you” with more than I ever do.

  Gene loves his new job with the Calvert Police. Sydney worries about his safety. He worries about, but never mentions, that the cancer is lurking. They are coupled, and this is a very good thing.

  I spend more time at The Grange and do some half-hearted attempts at writing. Elizabeth is my ever-present sidekick in the quiet alcove, reading her Italian newspapers, Wall Street Journals, and legal journals as I attempt to write. She seems to have an urgency for me to focus, to write, to hone my thinking. When I am thinking of giving it all up, she gives me what Tia and I now call “the two chairs lecture.” She tells me I cannot-a sit-a in two chairs, I must choose the life I want.

  Elizabeth is there for my sidebar comments, the questioning of a spelling of a word, or for thinking through of an idea. On occasions, she sends Pavarotti out with me as I stroll the cliffs in thought, knowing I must come back to her and continue.

  I’m not convinced any of the writing I am doing is very good. My head and heart are with my children. Surprisingly, the Mother’s Day article I have written does get picked up by the AP and circulated to many papers. Jesper lets me know he has seen it and has shared it with his mother who thinks even more about wanting to live in a place like The Eves.

  After I met with the kids, I respond to Jasper’s emails sending him a link to Erica’s photos. I also told him about Roy, not wanting him to think the man in the photos was his birth father. I told him that his birth dad was indeed an American. I told him I took the only option open to me for the baby I carried. In the telling, I think I made it clear that his father never knew why I chose to go to Norway—to guarantee my child’s safety. Jesper will understand that his birth father has no knowledge he exists. I told him that he has two siblings. Full siblings that came many, many years after he was born with no knowledge, at least yet, that they had an older brother. In asking him to respect that they didn’t know, I used the trite expression, saying “It’s complicated.” I know that I can’t, and shouldn’t, try to control this.

  Deirdre has taken to setting up her spinning wheel in the barn in anticipation of the next harvest. She thinks the students will like to see and learn about a program she wants to do for them. She wants to call it “From Sheep to Sweater.” She’s funny. Funny and smart and most days pretty focused. Throughout the summer, to the rhythm of the pedal of her spinning wheel, with her excellent instruction, and under the watchful eye of the patient Oliver, I learn
to knit, knowing that my children’s handprints hang just above me.

  Margaret Mary asks me to bring my quilt squares and I carry them to her for the umpteenth time. This time we lay them out. They are muslin squares started when Ryn was just in Brownies with the promise that we would someday make a quilt. They are crewel work embroidered with designs, some by Ryn, some by me. There are frogs and paintbrushes and the things a child likes. Margaret Mary deftly arranges and rearranges them telling me I need more squares. She asks me to think of Ryn today and make squares that represent her now. I’ll have to ask Sonia. She’s the one who knows my daughter best right now.

  Margaret Mary and I pick out background fabric that will connect the squares and a marvelously rich indigo patterned backing. She explains that she likes to leave a message or a saying on the back of the quilts she makes and asks if I can think of something. It’s simple, I tell her immediately, “A promise kept.” From that point on I work on additional squares for Ryn and start some for Adam. It won’t have the same significance, but I like to keep it even between them. Especially now. The sad truth of the matter is that even if things had not gone so horribly wrong between us, in the three years that transpired, things would have shifted between us anyway. They’ve turned from children, to young adults, to the adults I don’t know today. Making the new squares is painful guess work. Yet, each stitch is pulled with love. I can feel, with each tug of the needle, my desperate attempt to mend things.

  When I am feeling very brave, I ask Margaret Mary to tell me about adoption from her point of view. I tell her about Jesper and the conflict I feel—the hope of getting to know a new son, the fear that he too needs to recover from me due to “abandoning” him at birth. We talk about her multi-hued family and how ridiculous she felt at times creating this family history about her Irish parents being the “grandparents” of all these kids, or that she was now the grandmother and great-grandmother of the next generation of equally multi-hued babes. She comforts me by saying that her kids seem happy straddling two worlds. For some the wondering about the missed opportunities, or the sense of loss, is harder, Mary Margaret assures me, each knows that they came to her for a reason. In a myriad of ways, she comforts me throughout the summer as we assemble Ryn’s quilt. She tells me, “Jessica, you need to forgive yourself for so many things in this life. I am not telling you not to examine your life and your actions. What I am telling you is that if you live a life where you are kinder than you need to be and keep a solid compass, you will be the best person you can be on any given day.” I smile at the near verbatim echoing of my mother’s own words.