Empty Arms: A Novel (16 page)

I climb out of my car and head for the payphone. I dial Melody’s number and smile when she answers on the first ring.

“Hi,” I say. “What are you doing for dinner?”

I
T ONLY TAKES TWO HOURS
for me to get to Hartford. I park in one of the garages and follow Melody’s directions to Marino’s, which is tucked away on the ground floor of a tall, gray building. The restaurant is crowded, as I expected on a Saturday night. I look over shoulders and around heads until I spot Melody waving to me from the end of the bar. Her long blonde hair cascades down her back, and as I get closer I see that she’s wearing mascara and lipstick. She’s a far cry from the frazzled mother I ran into at the Wildflower Café and looks a lot more like the person I remember.

She pulls me into a hug. “I can’t believe you’re here. I never thought I’d see you again.”

I can’t believe it either. She is the closest thing I’ve ever had to a sister.

I hang my coat and purse on the back of the bar stool. “What are you drinking?” I ask, eyeing her wine glass.

“Chardonnay.”

I signal to the bartender to make it two. He’s shaking someone’s martini, and after he pours it he makes his way down to us. In one smooth motion he flips over a wine glass and fills it with pale golden liquid.

I lift my glass and raise a toast. “To old friends.”

“Cheers to that,” she says, touching her glass to mine.

I take a slow sip and my stormy mood begins to recede.

“So, what on earth brings you to my neck of the woods?” she asks.

“It’s a long story.”

“Tim’s watching the kids, so I’ve got all night.” She leans in and even though it’s been twenty-three years, I can still see traces of my best friend beneath the surface, and it puts me at ease.

“I went home to Angel Falls for a friend’s memorial service, but I never made it to the service because I ended up getting into a fight with my mother and I left. I didn’t feel like driving all the way back to Lowville, so I decided to call you.”

“Still fighting with your mother?” she smirks. “I guess some things never change.”

I never imagined my relationship with my mother from an outsider’s perspective, but I can see why Melody would say that. Mom never came to visit me at The Home and the only time she ever called was on Sundays to tell me who had missed church. During our brief conversations, she always managed to make me feel worse than I already was. “Angela made honor roll again, her parents must be so proud.” One time I tried to tell her how uncomfortable the pelvic exams made me, to which she replied, “It’s a little late for modesty, Catharine.”

Melody was lucky. Her mom came to visit every weekend and always brought her a little gift from home, like a photograph of her black lab, Midnight, a plate of homemade chocolate chip cookies, or a stuffed animal from her bed. The gifts were nothing elaborate, but each one let her know that she was loved and missed. My mom, who was a nurse, wouldn’t even answer the questions I fretted over, like could the baby hear my voice? Why did I always have the hiccups? Was it normal to crave brownies for breakfast? My mom never even asked how I was feeling. It was as if not talking about it made it not real. And when I tried to ask her if it was normal for milk to leak from my breasts or for it to burn when I poop, she hollered at me for being so vulgar and complained that she had no idea how she ended up with a daughter who didn’t have one iota of social grace.

“So, what were you two fighting about this time?” Melody asks so comfortably it’s like we’re back in our old room.

“Remember James?”

“The guy who never wrote back? Oh yeah, I remember you telling me about him.”

It’s nice to talk to someone who actually knows about this part of my life. “Well, it turns out he never got any of my letters.”

“How is that possible?”

“My mother stole them out of the mailbox before the mailman came.”

Her eyes are wide with shock. “So James doesn’t know about the baby?”

“Nope. And it turns out he did write to me, but my mother stole those letters too. I found them in her attic.”

“What do they say?”

“Apparently, he did love me. He was hurt that I never wrote. He said that I broke his heart.”

“Have you thought about finding him?”

I pull my wallet out of my purse and dig out the yellow square of paper with his phone number and address. I set it between us on the bar.

“Have you called him?”

I shake my head.

“Why not?”

I shrug. “What would I even say? Hi, James, remember me, the girl who never wrote? Guess what, we have a daughter, but I don’t know anything about her because I gave her up for adoption.”

“You had a daughter?” Melody’s voice melts around the word.

I nod. “I call her Emily. What about you?”

“I had a little boy. Teddy.”

“After your dad.”

She smiles sadly. “You remember.”

“Of course I remember. I’ve spent the last twenty-three years wondering what happened to you after Nurse Templeton took you to the hospital.”

“That was the worst night of my life. They put me in a room by myself and nobody would stop and answer any of my questions. I begged them to call my mom, or Jake, but they told me I couldn’t have visitors. I was terrified, of course, but all the pain and fear disappeared the moment I saw Teddy. I couldn’t wait to take him home and begin our life together.” Her eyes glisten and she reaches for a bar napkin. “I was so naive.” She dabs at her eyes and then crumbles the napkin into a ball. “At first, the case worker suggested I give Teddy up for adoption. She made it seem like it was my choice. When I refused, she told me that if I didn’t give him up, my parents would owe over $11,000 for my stay at The Home and my hospital expenses. My parents didn’t have that kind of money. They didn’t even have enough to feed one extra mouth. The case worker knew that, and she used it against me. She told me that there was a doctor and his wife who couldn’t have children and wanted to adopt Teddy. She said people like that could give him all the things I couldn’t.”

“Like a good education, a nice home with a big yard and a swing set, and maybe even a puppy?”

“Yes, that’s exactly what she said. How did you know?”

“That’s what they told me when I had Emily. All of it, even the puppy.”

“You gave up Emily too?”

I nod and swallow my rage. “I had no other choice.” My right hand automatically reaches up my left sleeve and picks at the newly formed scabs. “At first, they suggested that I consider adoption. Like you, they made me feel like it was my choice. When I told them it was out of the question, the case worker gave me a piece of paper and told me to write down all the things that adoptive parents would be able to give Emily. She pointed out that, unlike me, they’d be college educated and gainfully employed, so the basics, like food, clothing, and diapers would be easy. I knew I could find a way to provide those things too, but she made me write them down anyway. Then she went on to bigger things: a private school education, a nice home with a big yard and a swing set, plenty of toys, nice vacations, and maybe even a puppy.”

“Damn puppies,” Melody scowls.

“Then she told me to turn the paper over and write down everything that I had to offer Emily.” I pause, remembering how hopeless I felt when I realized how much money it would take just to buy food, clothes, and diapers. Forget about private school tuitions and vacations. And the only way I’d be able to give her a puppy is if I found a stray. “So you know what I wrote?”

Melody looks at me with forlorn eyes.

“Love.”

Her eyes glisten and a sad smile tugs at her lips. “What did she say to that?”

“She laughed. She said that love isn’t going to keep a baby warm on a cold night or buy medicine when she’s sick.”

The familiarity of my story makes her shoulders sag and pulls at the corners of her eyes.

“Even though I knew what she was telling me had some truth to it, I didn’t want to hear it. I wanted to be with Emily, and I told her I’d find a way to give her everything she needed. That was when she threatened me with the big medical bill.”

“They pulled that on you too?”

I nod. “I told her I didn’t care, that I’d get a job and pay it off myself. When she realized I wasn’t going to back down, she called my mother. Even though my pregnancy embarrassed her, I thought she’d at least care about what I wanted. But my mom was so ashamed of Emily that she actually helped the orderlies hold me down so the nurse could take her away. When they gave me the adoption papers to sign, I refused to hold the pen. Mom shoved the pen between my fingers and squeezed my hand closed with hers. She forced my signature onto that line.” One of the scabs rips free and a spring of blood trickles beneath my fingers. “Shit,” I turn away from Melody and pull up the sleeve of my sweater dress, hoping to prevent the blood from getting on the wool. I grab a bar napkin and dab at the wound.

“Cate? Are you all right?” she peers around my shoulder.

I pull down my sleeve but her hand stops me. “Your arm,” she says, horrified by the scars and scabs.

I yank at my sleeve, covering the hideousness. “It’s nothing.”

“That’s not nothing, Cate. Picking is self-harm.”

“I’m not picking.” I spit the word back at her. “It just … itches. I think it’s an allergy or dermatitis or something. This wool isn’t helping.”

“Look.” She holds out her right hand. “See this?” Her first three knuckles are covered in calluses and scars. “Those are from my teeth.”

“Your teeth?”

She nods solemnly. “I made myself throw up for almost twenty years because I thought that everything I ate hurt my stomach. I switched to lactose-free milk, gluten-free bread, a vegetarian diet. Finally, Tim made me start seeing a therapist, who figured out that my stomach problems had nothing to with food. It was guilt.”

“Guilt?”

“For abandoning Teddy. For lying to Tim.”

I pull up my sleeve and look at my arm. There are at least a dozen scabs, but several spots are still fleshy pink. A few have healed shiny and white and one is still bleeding. As I look at the wounds, I forget it’s my own arm I’m looking at and not that of a meth addict.

“My therapist told me that self-destructive behaviors, like bulimia and picking, are symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder,” she says.

Daddy used that term whenever he would talk about the guys on the force that had served in Vietnam, the ones who would jump out of their skins whenever a truck backfired. “But we haven’t fought in a war or witnessed a violent crime.”

“No, but what we’ve been through is just as damaging.”

I pull down my sleeve and shake my head. “I don’t have PTSD.”

“Do you have nightmares?”

My lips tighten.

“Do ever see, smell, or hear something that triggers a flashback?”

Emily’s baby blanket, the smell of the nursery babies, “For Emily, Whenever I May Find Her”; they all take me back to her—I count on them to.

When I don’t answer her questions, she puts her hand on my unwounded arm. “Me too.”

“Yeah, but at least you’ve managed to move on. You’ve got four beautiful children. Paul and I have been trying to get pregnant for five years. It turns out I’m infertile.”

“How can you be infertile? You already had a baby?”

I shrug. “They tested me, they tested Paul; they can’t pin down the problem. They call it ‘unexplained infertility.’”

Noticing our near-empty glasses, the bartender approaches and offers refills. We nod eagerly, watching with desperation as he pours the liquid.

“I’d give anything to have another baby,” I admit, swallowing a big gulp of wine.

Melody’s shoulders fall. “Nothing fills the void. Not a husband, not a house, not a job, not even four children.”

I don’t want to believe what she’s telling me, but I can’t ignore the agony in her eyes.

“I lied to you the other day,” she says. “We weren’t passing through Lowville on our way home from Syracuse.”

“I figured.”

“We were coming from Watertown, just north of Lowville.”

“What’s up there?”

“Teddy’s adoptive parents.”

“How do you know that?” The big red DENIED on Joanna Galen’s information request jumps to mind. Was Melody one of the lucky few that broke through the impenetrable consent process and got hold of her son’s birth certificate?

“I hired a detective.”

“Did you meet Teddy?”

She nods. “We had lunch. My brother, Vince, drove up from Syracuse and took the kids to see Barney and Friends at the Watertown Theater while I sneaked off to meet him.”

“What was he like?”

“Well, his adoptive parents named him Bryan, which was hard for me to get used to after of thinking of him as Teddy for so long. He looks like”—she smiles—“a six-foot version of my four year-old son, Timmy. He has shaggy blonde hair and my blue eyes. His nose is broad and his lips are thin, like Jake’s.” As she describes him, I wonder if Emily looks like me. “He’s a senior at Syracuse University, but he was home in Watertown for spring break. He’ll be graduating in May with a degree in mechanical engineering.”

“He’s smart.”

She smiles. “Jake was really good at math.”

“That’s wonderful that his adoptive parents were okay with you meeting him.” I wonder how Emily’s adoptive parents would react.

A guilty look sneaks across her face. “They don’t technically know.”

“Melody!”

“I know.” She frowns. “But he’s twenty-three. Legally, he’s an adult.” She shakes her head. “Not that it matters. He only wanted to meet me to spite his parents.”

“Why would you think that?”

“Because I’ve been asking to meet him for months, but he always said that he didn’t think his parents would approve. Then, all of a sudden he decided he wanted to meet me. Tim was at a sales conference, so I packed up the kids and told him I was taking them to see my brother. During my lunch with Bryan, he seemed … agitated. When I asked him if something was wrong, he told me he was mad because all of his friends were going to Cancun for spring break and he was stuck at home because his parents wouldn’t give him the money to go.” She frowns. “Then he asked me if I would’ve given him the money if I was his mom.”