Blue Jeans and Coffee Beans (12 page)

“What were you working on?”

“It’s business, checking out houses.”

“Oh.”

“Is there a problem?”

“Kind of.”

Eva takes a quick breath. “Well am I going to have to pull it out of you?”

“Who were you looking at houses for?”

“What’s with the questions, Taylor?”

“Mrs. Curtis? The one who signed papers when the baby was three days old?”

“What?”

“Or Denise Gorman.”

Eva turns quickly to the screen. Taylor had read it over her shoulder. She saw the desperation, the scraps of identity clung to, the years of wondering.

“The teacher. It said she’s still searching and hasn’t stopped crying in twenty years.”

Eva turns to her daughter. “I don’t like it when you sneak up on me like that.”

“Well you said—”

“Never mind what I said.” She jabs her finger toward the door. “Get out of here.”

“But Mom—”

“Now!” Eva yells.

Taylor’s eyes fill with tears before she turns and runs upstairs to her room. A few moments later, Eva hears the thumping of her stereo, the volume cranked to the limit. She looks back at the computer and finds the Birthparents Searching screen, scanning for any new entries posted since she last checked. None fit her criteria. Her identity. None say that every February 11, their hearts break once again. None say their beautiful girl has auburn hair. None say how special the name Eva is. Or that she has her mother’s wide smile. Or her father’s eyes. They give no clues, no names to whisper when she studies her reflection.

She glances up at the ceiling, getting madder with each thumping intrusion into her quiet search. She finally pushes back her chair and marches up the stairs, finding Taylor sitting on the bed, arms wrapped around her knees, the stereo suddenly off.

“You know how I feel about playing music that loud,” Eva tells her.

“I turned it off, so leave me alone.” Taylor turns her head away.

Eva holds out her open hand. They don’t speak as she stands there, her outstretched arm not moving.

“What?” Taylor finally asks.

“Your cell.”

“Why?”

“You lost the privilege, playing music like that just to get me mad. Give it to me.”

Taylor slaps her cell phone into her mother’s hand and without looking back, Eva returns to her office and closes the door. The house is quiet enough to hear Taylor rushing down the stairs in her flip-flops, through the kitchen and out the side door, slamming it behind her. Eva looks at the computer screen and shifts a vase of faux marigolds beside it. She and her daughter both need a little time to settle down.

She stops seconds later, in the middle of typing in the next site address. Taylor was dressed to go out. Eva pictures her standing behind her. She wore khaki shorts, a new green tank top, beaded flip-flops, and had slung her straw butterfly purse over her shoulder. A seashell necklace looped around her neck. “Damn it,” she says, dropping her face into her hands. “I forgot about the movies.”

Maris closes up her front door and sees Taylor walking from a block away. Her sandals flip briskly, her gaze glued to the road ahead of her. “Hey you,” Maris says, but she walks past without noticing. “Taylor?” Maris calls after her. She checks her locked doorknob with a quick jiggle before catching up.

“Oh, Maris,” Taylor says. “I didn’t even see you.”

“I know. You’re a million miles away.”

“I wish I
lived
a million miles away. From my mother.”

“Your mom? What happened?”

“We got in a fight.”

“About what?”

“She said she would drive me and Alison to the movies but instead she’s cruising through all that adoption crap on the computer.
Oh my heart breaks. Oh where is my baby? Still searching, searching, searching.
I can’t stand it when she gets into that weepy stuff. Then it makes
her
all weepy.”

“Are you sure that’s what she was doing?” Maris remembers how Matt didn’t like Eva searching out her parents online. So this is why.

“I saw her. I read the sob stories.”

“Maybe she was almost done?”

Taylor shakes her head. “When she starts, she sits in there for hours. She keeps pulling a gross tissue out of her pocket, sitting alone and staring into space. I mean, what about Dad? And Grandma and Grandpa? And me? She has us, but she acts like if she doesn’t have the people who gave her away then everything sucks.”

“Taylor. I think she’s curious about her other parents,” Maris explains. “Like she’s just wondering if they loved her at all or if they didn’t care. I mean, you know your mom loves you. But imagine if you didn’t know? I’m sure she doesn’t mean to ignore you like that.”

“But she promised to take us to the movies. The beach will be too hot and crowded today.”

“When does the movie start?”

“In an hour.”

“Well I was just on my way to see her.”

“Huh. Good luck.”

“Listen, let me talk to her. Here’s my key. Go get Alison and wait on my front porch, okay?”

“Why? I don’t even feel like going now.”

“Let’s just see what I can do. If she can’t drive you, I’ll give you a ride there.”

Taylor looks over her shoulder as though gauging the day. Beach versus movie. Bright, oppressive heat versus dark air conditioning. She fidgets with her seashell necklace. “Okay,” she finally agrees with a long breath.

“Good. I’ll talk to your mom.”

“Can you come with us? It would be more fun.”

“Oh, Tay. I’m leaving in a few days and I have so much to do. A ride I can manage, okay? Maybe an ice cream later on?”

Taylor nods easily. “Cool. That works for me.”

Maris knocks at Eva’s door. Her SUV is parked in the shade near the garage, so she’s definitely home. When Eva doesn’t answer, Maris walks inside, leaning against the doorjamb to Eva’s office, amazed that she doesn’t even sense her standing there. The computer screen scrolls through adoption listings until she taps lightly on the door.

“Taylor,” Eva says with annoyance. “What now?”

Maris raises an eyebrow. “We really need to talk,” she says.

Eva spins around in her chair. “Maris? I didn’t hear you come in.”

“I know. I knocked, though. Twice. The door was unlocked.”

Eva checks her watch. “I better log off. I didn’t realize how much time has passed.”

“So I’ve heard.”

“What?” She puts her hair behind her ears, pushing it back twice.

“From what Taylor tells me, once you start with that,” she hitches her chin to the computer screen, “she loses you for hours. Sometimes it’s days before you’re yourself again.”

“When did you talk to Taylor?”

“Just now. Outside.”

“She’s so moody lately. It must be hormones. Let me sign out here,” Eva says, turning back to the screen.

“Wait.” Maris reaches down and covers the mouse with her hand. She glances at the online messages. “Maybe Matt is right.”

“Matt?”

“You said he doesn’t like it when you do this.” Maris pulls a wooden chair up to the desk and reads the screen. “It changes you.”

The sky is bluer, the grass is greener, now that I’ve found you. The world is sweet, my days are heaven on earth.
Maris glances at Eva before reading the next story, the next reunion.
I’ve been crying for twenty-one years. Now that I’ve found you, they’re tears of joy.

She looks at Eva again, longer this time.

“Taylor’s being ridiculous,” Eva insists. “She gets me so mad lately. Like, I had to punish her and take away her cell phone. Do you know how long it’s been since she’s made me that mad?”

“Yup. I’ll bet it hasn’t happened at all since the last time you were searching for your birth parents.”

“What? You think
this
makes me mad?”

“Well it’s not Taylor. You know it isn’t. So don’t put it on her.”

Eva looks at her, then at the screen again. Maris sees that she really can’t stop. Her need to know the truth about her parents shows in the way she cannot tear her eyes away.

Eva scrolls down through the success stories. “Sometimes I’ll read the same screen over three times, just to be sure I didn’t miss something, some clue, or reference to my appearance. I analyze every circumstance to see if it fits with what I know.” She looks back at Maris. “And you’re right. Each time I reread a line, I get madder and madder.”

“Why though?”

“Because no one cares enough to wonder, I guess. To validate to me what they did.”

“You spoiled brat. You know what you need?”

“No. But I have a feeling you’re going to tell me.”

“You need your ass kicked, seriously. You keep saying no one cares. No one cares. Well Matt and Taylor couldn’t care more. And if I’m not mistaken, when you were placed with Theresa and Ned, that became their job. To care and want you. And they’ve never
ever
stopped.”

“No they haven’t. But there’s still some emptiness there, they all talk about it online. Empty spots, empty hearts. And it seems so great when they fill it. I want that too.”

“But you only see the happy stories. You don’t see the reunions that go bad. You know, the ones that need a therapist or third-party to moderate. Those happen, too, Eva. Don’t kid yourself. So why don’t you let
your
beautiful family fill your emptiness? You’ll feel even more empty if you keep snapping at Taylor like you did today. One day, she might keep on walking.”

Eva glances at her watch and stands. “Taylor.”

“She’s at my place with Alison. I told her I’d drive them to the movies.”

“We’ll both go.” Eva grabs her daughter’s cell and half runs into the kitchen. She finds her keys and picks up her handbag. Maris watches from the porch. “Come on. We’ll get them to the movies and then work on this redecorating.” She motions to her living room. The furniture is pushed into the center of the room, all the pictures have been removed from the walls and rolls of new wallpaper line the baseboard molding.

Maris shakes her head. “You go fix things with Taylor. Your very real birth daughter who you have in your life every single day.”

“I don’t think she even had lunch yet.” Eva checks her watch again. “If I hurry, we can stop for a quick bite on the way.”

“Go,” Maris says, motioning her to the door.

Eva first stops and gives Maris a hug. “Thank you.”

“For what?”

“For the kick in the ass I needed.” She hurries outside into the bright sunlight and rushes to her car.

.

Chapter Ten

E
very morning now, Kyle sits alone at the kitchen table before the sun rises. A ceiling fan paddles the still air, the curtains hang limp at the open window. He’s never felt like this before, this scared. No way can he tell Lauren about his boardwalk jaunt. His marriage is screwed up enough as it is. His hair, drying after a shower, clings to his head; a cup of coffee cools in front of him.

That night winds its way through everything he does. Jerry will be showing him the delivery schedules and he pictures falling off in the other direction. Jerry discusses menu preparation in the heat and Kyle rubs the bruise beneath his shirt sleeve. Jerry explains estimating food requirements, anticipating the amount of perishable food needed on hand, and Kyle hears Jason telling him off. His days start before dawn and last until evening and he hardly stops thinking of how close he came to dying. The sensation of Jason’s iron grip on his arm stays.

After a second shower Wednesday morning, he combs out his damp hair, dresses in a t-shirt and black pants for work and finds his shoes near the nightstand. Lauren is still asleep, the sheet twisted around her legs. He sits on the edge of the mattress and watches her. Finally, he touches her shoulder. “Hey,” he says.

She opens her eyes and looks at him sitting near her. For a moment, he is certain their life hasn’t come back to her. They are in that window of time before she has to get ready for work, dress the kids, make breakfast and think whatever it is she thinks lately. He had only told her that he’d gotten drunk the other night. But for this moment, in the dim bedroom, with the air conditioner humming and sunshine outlining the blinds, that life isn’t there yet.

“Don’t you have to get up now?” Kyle asks. “It’s almost six-thirty.”

Lauren turns her head to see the alarm clock. Her blonde hair fans out behind her neck and he wants to touch it, to stroke her face and stop the time on that clock right there. His eyes close for a long second and it feels hard to breathe.

“Kyle?”

He opens his eyes. Her voice still sounds sleepy, her bare legs are still twisted in the sheet. It is all he can do to not climb onto the bed and wrap his arms around her, to imagine her murmurs, to slip her nightshirt off her shoulders and make love by the low morning light. To imagine how things used to be.

She raises her hand and touches his arm. “What happened?”

His whole life abridges beneath her fingers on his skin. He glances at the purple bruise she touched and sees the evidence of Jason’s strength. “I don’t know. I must have bumped into something.”

“Oh. Looks horrible.” She sweeps the sheet off her legs and lifts her robe from the end of the bed. “I’m taking a shower. I guess I’ll see you tonight.”

She walks out of the bedroom leaving behind only a possibility still hanging on in their lives. For a second, he had thought it possible her touch could move up his arm and say something else. It still could stop on his shoulder and pull him close. It could wish him good luck at the diner. Anything. Instead he has Jason’s grip. He stands then, straightens the sheet, smoothes the wrinkles and makes the bed before leaving for work. Jerry expects him by seven. He bought a spiral notebook and pen to take notes this week. Twenty-five years of experience drives Jerry. Kyle takes down every word of it, as though his life depends on it.

Just after breakfast, Lauren stands in front of the mirror and slips on her seersucker blazer. Even in the heat of summer, she still needs a jacket in the air-conditioned office.

“Come on, kids. Your backpacks ready?” Her shoulders hitch the blazer into place and she turns half way around, studying her reflection. Tan skinnies, tapered at the ankles, black cami and the jacket define her closet in one word. Functional. Her hands reach behind her neck and clasp on a sterling silver necklace. A sparse wardrobe works, being basic enough to cover temporary assignments where no one would notice how little she actually has. She brushes her long-overdue-for-a-cut hair off her face and spritzes it with hairspray. It falls in a wave just to her shoulders.

“Let’s go, Grandma’s waiting!” Lauren calls out as she leans close to her reflection. The kids are thumping around in their bedrooms. She puts on foundation, blush and light lipstick.

“Hurry, hurry!” Hailey scoots past her door, lifting a backpack. “Get your stuff into the car.” The kids know the routine. So does her mother, babysitting for her. Everybody pitches in, keeping them going. Lauren will miss this if they ever move south. They will be alone.

“The money will help,” she told Kyle when he argued that he’d be working full-time all week learning to manage the diner, so she didn’t need to temp. “A little to pay down the credit card, a little for at the beach. Ice cream money,” she answered. Most to pay off the new washing machine. There is no getting ahead, just catching up.

“Stenil Insurance, please hold. Stenil Insurance, may I help you?” Monotonous, but a distraction, at the very least, from her thoughts. It keeps her marriage in limbo, and therefore alive. The job is tolerable except for that phone. Everything she does there, all her office tasks, are interrupted by the telephone. When it rings, which seems to be whenever she steps away from her desk, she knows what a dog on a leash feels like, doing an about-face all day.
Come Lauren. Heel.
And she sits back down and puts paper clips in the drawer, straightens a pile of folders, stacks pens neatly in their cup and aligns the damn phone with the edge of the desk, all while taking a message.

The office is two blocks from the diner, but Lauren packs a bag lunch and walks to The Green every day at twelve o’clock. She knows it would mean the world to Kyle if she stopped in, just once. If she took a stool at the end of the counter and ordered a grilled cheese sandwich. It would mean they had something to work for. Hope is as close as a sandwich.

Today Lauren sits on the shaded bench beneath the old maple tree. Cars drive past behind her, and a town employee pulls down the red, white and blue holiday streamers from a bandstand to her left. She finishes her juice and packs her wrappings into her brown lunch bag when she hears footsteps, and Kyle’s arm reaches around her with a double scoop chocolate ice cream cone. She looks up at his face first, because, well, it is either that or let a memory wash over her, and those aren’t helping her much lately.

“Shouldn’t you be working?” she asks, taking the cone. “It’s your busy time.”

“Hey, I’m the boss,” he asserts with feigned seriousness. “Jerry’s got everything under control,” he adds then. “I told him I needed to run an errand.”

“Oh.” She licks the melting ice cream around and around before it dribbles down the side of the cone. “When’s he leaving?”

“Today’s his last day. But he’ll be home for a couple of days, if I need him.”

“That’s good.”

“How’s Stenil?”

“Boring. What a long week.” She wants to take the kids swimming, not sit at that desk all afternoon. It is Wednesday now, and she still needs to stop the newspaper delivery for their vacation. And buy sunscreen. She bites into her cone.

“You look nice today,” Kyle says.

“Thanks.” His words make her feel funny. Modest even. A piece of summer slips between them then, traffic sounds, people’s voices, birdsong. Summer becomes palpable in their silence.

“Well. I’ve got to get back,” Kyle says. He leans forward, elbows on his knees, nervous hands fidgeting in front of him.

“Okay.” Lauren studies his back, taut beneath his shirt.

“I just wanted to see you, that’s all.” His head turns back to look at her and she is glad she wore her sunglasses. Sometimes her eyes feel so sad. After a moment, he stands and touches her shoulder. “Take care.”

If he looked back, he would have seen her turn on the bench, imagining him pulling the thick white apron over his head, flinching when it touches that massive bruise on his arm, firing up four griddles, his hands reaching for spatulas and orders and food and dishes. When she reaches for her handbag, she notices his notebook on the bench. She opens it in her lap, reading his notes on planning menus for two weeks, who not to buy tomatoes from, keeping the meals light if the heat wave continues. And there are coffee things, too, things he’d like to try. Lattes and cappuccinos. Coffee flavors, and an outlined menu of pastries. She looks back up, but Kyle is gone from sight and in his place comes the memory she resisted before, of Neil coming up behind her with an ice cream cone, one day on the beach, not too long before he died.

“Is this ethical?”

“Yes,” Eva says. “Well, no. But it is, kind of.” They walk along a tended, flower-lined stone path to an imposing shingled two-story cottage perched on a rocky outcropping facing Long Island Sound. Eva punches her code into the lockbox on the front door. “I mean, I told the owners I have a client I wanted to show their home to. And I do.” She turns to Maris behind her. “You’re my client. Right? I did rent you a cottage.”

“But I’m not looking to
buy
a cottage. Though this charmer could definitely tempt me.” Two white Adirondack chairs sit on a grassy side yard facing the sea.

“The furniture alone could sell me. It’s just what I want in my redecorating.” Eva unlocks the door and they go inside. “Come on, you have to see this.”

“It feels a little like we’re breaking in though. Snooping around illegally.”

“Hey, it’s not like we’re Bonnie and Clyde. I did list the house for sale. So we’re kind of window shopping, admiring the goods. They’ll never know the difference.”

“Wow!” Maris says as they turn into a dining room anchored with a large painted table, around which white wicker chairs are set. The built-in hutches are painted the same sea-green as the table, which has a huge vase of hydrangeas filling its center. A stained glass chandelier hangs from the ceiling.

“Now we’re talking,” Eva says.

“Oh yeah. Casual beach chic. This stuff is top shelf, Eva.”

They move into the living room, walking past the blue and white striped upholstery on the chairs and sofa. Lace table runners line the coffee and end tables, topped with huge shallow bowls filled with perfect seashells. Knotty pine paneling lines the wall with the stone fireplace, and tall French doors finish the far A-frame wall looking out at the blue waters for as far as the eye can see.

“I like the way they bring lace into the look. With that view, it makes me think of sea breezes. Pretty lace curtains and things like that,” Maris says. They walk through the kitchen with its mix of old and new. Granite countertops and beadboard walls. Stainless steel appliances and painted glass-front cabinets. She turns around in time to see Eva lifting her cell phone at the room. “You’re taking pictures?”

“Just getting ideas. I want to show this to Matt. Do you think I can pull off something like this in my decorating?”

“Actually,” Maris says as she looks into the bedrooms at the whitewashed picture frames and lighthouse lamps, “a lot of clients will be coming into your home office to make their summer vacation rentals. Or to buy summer homes. So the office has to be business, but you can give it a cottage flair.”

“Exactly,” Eva agrees. She opens a dresser drawer and takes a quick look, then lifts the top of a jewelry armoire beside it. The earrings inside are a jumbled mess.