Finding Colin Firth: A Novel (2 page)

Cora Crane, piano teacher with the patience of a saint, with the dark curls, bright blue eyes, and a smile for everyone, was her mother. Keith Crane, handsome construction worker who sang her an Irish song before bed every single night of her childhood until he’d died when she was nine, was her father. The Cranes had been wonderful, doting parents who’d made Bea feel loved every day of her life. If someone else had given birth to Bea, that didn’t change anything.

But someone else had given birth to her. Who?

A hollow pressure started building in Bea’s chest.

“Bea!” Her boss, Crazy Barbara, came charging outside, glaring at Bea. “What the hell are you doing? It’s still lunch rush! Manny said you went out at least twenty minutes ago.”

“I just got some very strange news,” Bea said, her head spinning. “I need a few minutes.”

“Well, unless someone died, you need to head back to work—now.” Barbara started muttering under her breath. “Taking an extended break in the middle of lunch rush. Who does she think she is?”

“Actually,” Bea said, barely able to think straight. There was no way she’d be able to get through the craze of orders. “I need to go home, Barbara. I just learned some weird news, and—”

“You either get back to work or you’re fired. I’m sick to death of all these excuses—all day long, someone has a headache, someone’s grandmother’s sick. Do your job or I’ll find someone who actually earns their paycheck.”

Bea had been working at Crazy Burger for three years, full-time since last summer, and was the best cook in the kitchen and the fastest. But nothing ever was good enough for Crazy Barbara. “You know what? I quit.” She took off her apron, handed it to a for-once-speechless Barbara, and went back inside to collect her bag from her locker.

She shoved the letter in her bag and walked the half mile home in a daze, tripping over someone’s backpack the minute she walked through the front door of her apartment in the four-story brick building. God, she hated living here this summer with strangers. She headed down the narrow hall, stepping on a pair of boxer-briefs, then unlocked her door and locked it behind her. She dropped her bag on the floor of her room and sat down
on her bed, hugging her mother’s old cross-stitched pillow to her chest. She didn’t move for hours.

“Wow, Bea, your entire life has been a lie.”

Slice of pizza en route to her mouth, Bea stared at Tommy Wonkowksi, star running back for the Beardsley College famed football team. A half hour ago, she’d been lying on her bed, staring at the ceiling, grappling with yesterday’s bombshell, when her phone had rung: Tommy, at Poe’s Pizzeria, asking if he’d gotten the time wrong for their date. She’d forced herself up and out the two blocks to the restaurant; she hadn’t eaten since she’d gotten her mother’s letter, hadn’t left her room. But now, as she sat across from Tommy, she wished she’d canceled. With her universe tilted, she needed comforting and familiar, and Tommy Wonkowski was anything but. She wasn’t even sure why she’d said yes to this first date, but it wasn’t every day a hot jock asked Bea out. When they’d met last week at the university’s Writing Center, where she had a part-time tutoring job (Bea had been helping him write a final paper for the freshman English class he was now bothering to take as a senior in summer session), she had been charmed by his good looks, his very differentness from her, and the fact that he towered over her. Bea was five feet ten, and Tommy made her feel kind of dainty for once.

“I wouldn’t go that far,” she said, wishing she’d never told him about the letter. But they’d run out of things to say to each other by the time the waitress had set down their large pizza, and she’d blurted out what was consuming her every waking thought
as she’d shaken Parmesan cheese on a slice.
Guess what I just found out yesterday? Turns out I was adopted
.

But yes, it did sort of feel like her whole life had been a kind of lie. Friends, strangers—Bea herself—marveling over the years at how utterly different she was from both Cora and Keith Crane. They were dark-haired; Bea was blond. Her mother’s eyes were startling blue, and her father’s were hazel, yet Bea’s were driftwood brown. Her parents were average height; she was an Amazon. She wasn’t musical like her mother, nor mathematical like her father. They were both quiet introverts and she could talk and talk and talk. More than once, Bea could remember strangers, friends, looking at her and saying, “Where on earth did you come from?”

And her father responding, “Oh, my father is quite tall, almost six-two,” and pictures of the late grandfather she’d never met reflecting that. Or her mother casually tossing off, “My mother—God rest her soul—had Bea’s brown eyes, even though I have blue like my father’s.” And that was true too. She’d seen pictures of her maternal grandmother, who died when she was very young. Brown eyes, like Bea’s.

It was as though I had given birth to you, and I suppose I wanted to believe it myself. So your father and I made it so.

“Holy crap, you must hate your mother now,” Tommy said around a mouthful of pizza. “I mean, she lied to you your whole life about something so . . . what’s the word?”

“Fundamental,” Bea said through gritted teeth. How dare you suggest I’d ever hate my mother, you oversize blockhead, she wanted to shout. But once again, the image of Cora Crane, dying in that hospice bed, her hand holding Bea’s with the last of her strength, was all she could think of. Her sweet
mother. “I don’t hate her at all. I never could, ever.” Though if Bea let herself go there, as she couldn’t help but do in the past twenty-four hours, she’d feel a strange anger that would build in her head and start her heart pounding, then give way to confusion that made her head spin and her heart just plain hurt. A fundamental truth
had
been withheld. But she couldn’t be mad at her mother; she couldn’t bear that. Her mother was gone. “She explained herself in the letter. And if you knew my mother—”

“Adopted mother.”

She glared at him. “Actually, it’s adoptive. But no, she’s my mother. Just my mother. That she adopted me doesn’t change that, Tommy.”

He picked up a second slice and bit into it, gooey mozzarella cheese extending. “It kind of does, Bea. I mean, someone else gave birth to you.”

Bea sat back, defeated. Someone else
had
given birth to her. Someone she hadn’t known existed a day ago. Someone she couldn’t even conjure up. There was no face, no hair color, no name. Last night, as her eyes were finally drifting closed at three o’clock, she imagined her birth mother to look exactly like herself, just . . . older. But how old? Had her birth mother been a teenager? A very poor older woman who couldn’t feed an additional mouth?

On October 12, twenty-two years ago, someone had given birth to Bea and then had given her up for adoption. Why? What was her story? Who was she?

“Yes, Tommy, someone else gave birth to me,” she told him, her appetite gone again. “But that just makes that person my birth mother.”

“Just? There’s no just about a birth mother.” He chuckled
and dug into his third slice of pizza, looking out the window at the busy Boston street as though Bea was proving to be the one who needed tutoring. He turned back to her. “Like, what if you’re married and have a kid, and that kid is dying of some kind of horrible disease, and your blood and your husband’s blood aren’t a match. Your birth mother could save your kid’s life. Man, that’s epic. I mean, think about it.”

But Bea didn’t want to. Her parents were Cora and Keith Crane, la, la, la, hands over her ears. Still, the more she sat there, listening to Tommy Wonkowski tell her how she should feel about all this, the more she realized he was right about a lot of it.

For a week, Bea walked around Boston with the strange truth knocking around in her head. A week ago, she’d been one thing: the daughter of Cora and Keith Crane. End of story. Now she was something else. Adopted. She’d started as someone else’s story. Ended someone’s story, maybe. What was that story? She couldn’t stop thinking about her birth parents. Who they were. Where she came from. What they looked like. And yes, Tommy Wonkowski, what their medical histories were.

She sat at her desk, her favorite novels, books of essays, a memoir about a teacher’s first year, and her laptop making her feel stronger, more like herself. She stared at the manila envelope, lying right next to
To Kill a Mockingbird,
on which she’d written her senior thesis. She was supposed to be an English teacher by now, middle school or high school, teaching teenagers how to write strong essays, how to think critically about novels, why they should love the English language. But when
her mother died last summer, Bea found herself floundering for months. She hadn’t gotten a single interview for a teaching job at any of the private schools she’d applied to, and the publics all wanted her to be enrolled in a master’s program for teacher education, which would mean more loans. A year later, here she was, not teaching, and still living with students. The only thing different was that she wasn’t who she thought she was.

Bea stared at the photo of herself and her mother at her college graduation, willing herself to remember that she was still the same Bea Crane she was last week. Same memories, same mind, same heart, same soul, same dreams.

But she felt different in her bones, in her cells, as though they were buzzing with the electricity of the truth. She had been adopted. Another woman, another man, had brought her into this world.

Why did that have to change anything? Why did it matter so much? Why couldn’t she just accept the truth and move on from it?

Because you’re here alone, for one
. Her two good girlfriends had left Boston upon graduation for first jobs. Her best friends from high school were scattered across the country and in Europe; everyone was off on their summer plans, except for Bea, who had nowhere to go, no home.

She felt caged and absolutely free at the same time. So this week she’d stalked around Boston, thinking of her parents with one breath, and this nameless, faceless birth mother with the next. Then she’d come back to her room and stare at the manila envelope until she’d open it and read the adoption papers again, which told her nothing.

Maybe if she did know something, just something to make this tenuous grasp on the words
birth mother
feel more . . . concrete.

“Damn it,” she said, grabbing the envelope and sliding out the papers. Before she could stop herself, she picked up her cell phone and punched in the telephone number on the first page.

“Helping Hands Adoption Agency, may I help you?”

Bea sucked in a breath and explained the situation and that she just wanted to know if there were names. Most likely there would not be. Bea had done some reading and learned that most adoptions were closed, as hers had been according to the paperwork, but that sometimes birth mothers left their names and contact information in the adoption files. There were also registries birth parents and adoptees could sign up for. Bea would not be signing up for anything.

“Ah. Let me look in your file,” the woman said. “Hold just a minute.”

Bea held her breath. Make this difficult, Bea thought. No names. She wasn’t ready for a name.

Why had she called? When the woman came back, Bea would tell her thank you for checking but she’d changed her mind, she wasn’t ready to know anything about her birth parents.

“Bingo,” the woman said. “Your birth mother called to update the file at her last address change just over a year ago. Her name is Veronica Russo and she lives in Boothbay Harbor, Maine.”

Bea couldn’t breathe.

“Do you need a minute?” the woman was saying. “I’ll give you a minute, no worries.” She did indeed wait a minute, and
Bea’s head was close to bursting when the woman said, “Honey, do you have a pen?”

Bea said she did. She picked up the silver Waterman that her mother had given her as a graduation present. She mechanically wrote down the address and telephone number the woman gave her. Home and cell.

“She even included her employment address and phone number,” the woman continued. “The Best Little Diner in Boothbay.”