In Search of Eden (37 page)

There were more hymns and prayers, and finally Pastor Hector got up and preached a sermon, but she barely heard any of it. And finally, it was over.

People stood milling about. She would have loved to have ducked out, but there were ten people between her and the far aisle, and Joseph was on the other side. Eden was deep in discussion with her grandmother. That left her and Joseph.

He turned toward her. “How are you this morning?” he asked.

She felt a sense of relief, maybe because of the tension, and
she was afraid for a minute that she might burst into hysterical laughter. She smiled instead. “Fine, thank you. And you?”

“Very well.” He cleared his throat. “It's another beautiful day,” he observed, glancing at the sun streaming in the windows.

“Yes. It looks like it will be.” She smiled. He nodded. They seemed to have run out of weather conversation. Thankfully, they were saved again by Eden. “Miranda, can you come for dinner?”

“Oh no, Eden, thank you.”

“It was my idea,” Ruth said, leaning over to speak to her. “Please come. It will make the day more special for me. We're going home to change, and then we're going out to the campground. Hector is coming and a few other friends. We're going to barbeque and play softball. Please join us.”

It sounded like fun. And suddenly going back to the little apartment to sit by herself and wonder about her baby all day did not. She glanced toward Joseph. He lifted his head from his feet to meet her eyes. “Come,” he said. “I would like it if you did.” And for no good reason she blushed. Eden grinned delightedly.

“Well,” Miranda said. “Yes, then. Thank you.”

They filed out, and she was very aware that Joseph was behind her. At the door a young boy was standing with a box full of carnations. “For the mothers,” he said. Ruth took one and thanked him profusely. Eden passed. And then it was her turn. “Are you a mother?” the boy asked her, and it was her imagination, she knew, but for a beat it seemed as if the whole world stopped to hear her answer.

“I don't have any children,” she murmured, and whether it was technically the truth or not, she knew she didn't deserve a flower.

chapter
38

T
he weather was trying to do its part to make up for her gloomy trip into West Virginia. Miranda went with Eden, Joseph, and Ruth back to Ruth's house and helped them pack up lunch. Ruth changed into jeans, a short-sleeved chambray blouse, and tennis shoes. Miranda could picture her running a camp full of screaming kids. Joseph came in, now dressed in jeans and an Abingdon Police baseball team T-shirt. He carried a canvas sack full of balls and gloves and bats. Eden was now wearing denim shorts.

“They're better for grass stains,” Ruth pointed out.

Grady showed up at some point and was introduced to Joseph. Grady seemed intimidated, but Miranda could understand that. Joseph could be an intimidating figure.

“Unbend a little,” Ruth chided her son. “He's shy.”

Joseph gave her a longsuffering look.

Miranda watched. She felt lucky just to be here, but if she spoke out of turn, they might suddenly look at her and realize they had made a mistake to invite her.

“Eden,” Ruth said. “Do you want to call your mom now?”

“No. I'll call her later. When we get home.” The little face closed.

Ruth nodded. “Did you bring some extra clothes or swim trunks, Grady?” Ruth asked.

“Yes, ma'am,” he said.

“I'm sorry your father couldn't come.”

“Yes, ma'am. He had to work.”

Miranda wondered what had happened to Grady's mother and realized again that she was not alone in her sorrow or in the brokenness of her family.

Finally the food was packed into Ruth's car, and baseball equipment, towels, swimsuits, and Flick were loaded in the back of Joseph's truck. Miranda rode with Ruth. Joseph took the children. Ruth drove expertly through town and down winding roads, then turned onto the little dirt road, now familiar to Miranda. Ruth's expression grew sentimental as she pulled the car to a stop in the graveled lot at the top of the hill. Joseph and the children pulled in behind them. Grady and Eden erupted out of the truck and went running down to the lake with Flick leading the way, a blur of black and white. Joseph unloaded the truck, but Ruth just sat still and looked out at the cabins and lake.

Miranda waited quietly. She tried to imagine what it would feel like to have a place where you felt you belonged and then to lose it. After a moment Ruth turned her face to Miranda's and gave her a smile. “We'd better get out. The hordes will be here soon, and they'll be hungry.”

Pastor Hector arrived. Ruth's friend Vi and her husband, Henry, the sheriff, arrived and another friend of theirs named Carol Jean. Miranda liked the two women immediately. Father Leonard, the Catholic priest, arrived with five youngsters—foster children from the group home he ran, Ruth explained, and Miranda's pulse began racing. A group home for foster children. Why, any one of them could be her child. She tried to assimilate the fact that this could be the answer to her quest. That she had just come here and her child had been delivered to her. On Mother's Day. But a foster home?

She wondered if her mother could have been so cold. To not
even try to place her child with an adoptive family but send him or her off to a group home. Would she have done that? Could she have been so cruel? Or perhaps the adoption had fallen through, unbeknownst to her mother?

She became aware that Ruth and Vi and Carol Jean were staring at her.

“How long has the group home been here?” she asked, her voice unsteady.

The three women frowned and tried to think. “Oh, it's been twenty or thirty years, I think,” Ruth answered. “New crops of children all the time, of course.”

“New crops?”

“Yes,” Carol Jean answered. “Some get placed for adoption. Some grow up and leave. Some move to other facilities when they hit teen years.”

“Do they go to the public school?”

“I believe they take them over to St. Anne's School in Bristol.” Ruth gave Miranda a curious look. Vi did, as well.

Miranda barely noticed. Her mind was frozen, and she was almost mute. She stared at the children and tried to make out their faces. What if her child had somehow ended up there?

“Excuse me for a moment,” she said to the women and walked down to the water to get a closer look.

She stood close but not among them. She looked them over. There were three boys and two girls. One boy was tall and gangly, an adolescent, African-American, and obviously older than eleven. One was very small and thin and was a possibility, though he looked too young. The other was about the right age, and she searched him to see if he looked familiar in any way. Nondescript brown hair, average face. She saw nothing that made her think he might be hers. She scrutinized the girls. One was seven or eight, obviously too young. The other looked the right age, but both were African-American. She stared at the small boy and the average one. One of them could be hers.

Eden came over, obviously happy. “Want to come swimming, Miranda?”

I don't care about swimming,
she wanted to say.
Go find out that boy's birthday for me,
she wanted to demand,
and that one's, also.
Of course, she said nothing of the kind. “Maybe later,” she smiled. “I'd better get back and help.” And with one last look at the children, she climbed back up the hill.

She forced herself to calm down. She made a plan. She would find out the two boys' birth dates. She would look for a way, and the way would present itself. But even if she had to resort to walking up to them and asking, she would not leave here until she had done it. Having decided, she felt a little better, and she knew she must come back to the here and now.

Other cars arrived, and soon there were more women and men and everywhere children. She remembered that Ruth had vaguely referred to “a few friends” and smiled. Ruth seemed to collect people the same way others collected stamps or coins.

“The lodge is open if anyone needs a bathroom or kitchen supplies or a fridge,” Ruth hollered. Hector, Henry, Joseph, and Father Leonard went inside and then emerged after a few minutes, carrying out long tables, which Ruth and Miranda covered with white sheets. Then they began setting out the food.

There were salads of all kinds and cut-up fruit, chips, squeeze bottles of condiments, and plates with pickles and lettuce and tomatoes. There were baked beans and creamed corn, mounds of fried chicken and pimiento-and-cheese sandwiches. There were coolers full of soda and ice and jars full of iced tea. The dessert table was filled with cakes and pies and fruit cobblers, some decadent-looking dessert bars with coconut and chocolate, and someone had a hand-cranked ice cream freezer going under the trees.

Joseph had appeared with an oil drum barbeque grill as big as Ruth's car, which he fired up immediately. He and Henry began mixing up barbeque sauce from an assortment of bottles. Soon
there were hot dogs, hamburgers, and chicken sizzling on the grill.

The children laughed and screeched down by the water. Miranda smiled at the sound of splashing and the sight of the bare arms and legs. The men laughed and joked and drank sodas and grilled the food. The women bustled and worked and smiled and talked, and there were two babies, plump and drooly, and over it all, the sound of laughter and the warm sun on her head. She helped and then just watched, drinking it in like something her soul had thirsted for, and suddenly she remembered a plaque in the dining hall. What had it said? She had memorized it that day and could say it by heart.
Whoever drinks the water I give him will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.

She engaged in conversation with several of the women, wishing she had better answers to give their kind questions. She realized she was a woman without a history. She had never stayed put long enough to make one. Hers was a patched-together life, and she wondered if it would always be this way.

They prayed. They ate. And ate some more. The children screamed and splashed and ran around. Looking puffy and comical in their orange life vests, they took paddle boats out onto the lake. Joseph organized a softball game. Miranda got two hits and then struck out on Father Leonard's fastball.

She rested after the game and chatted with the priest as they watched the children play. He was probably in his late sixties with a shock of unruly white hair and dark eyebrows. Her pulse sped up again as she realized this was her chance.

“How old are most of the children in your home, Father?” she asked.

“They range from eight to fourteen right now,” he said.

Not the answer she wanted. “The two younger boys,” she said. “They're awfully cute.”

“Um-hmm.” A noncommittal answer.

“How old are they?” she asked.

He gave her a curious stare. “Mark is eleven. Joshua is nine.”

She nodded and they sat in silence. She debated whether or not she should ask another question. “Do you have any foster children whose parents gave them up for adoption?” she finally asked.

“All of them,” he answered, giving her a blank look.

“No, I mean, has there ever been a child who had an adopted family lined up, and then for some reason it fell through?”

He frowned. “Why do you ask?”

“Just curious,” she said, trying for a shrug.

“Yes,” he said. “There's one.” He nodded toward the mob. “Something was wrong with him, and the adoptive parents backed out. They wanted a perfect child,” he said.

“What was the matter?”

“A genetic defect,” he said. “A blood disorder. He bounced around a few times and finally landed with us. He's been here six years now.”

“Wouldn't he be returned to the birth parent in a case like that?”

Father Leonard gave her a searching look. “They're not merchandise, you know. They're children. They're nonreturnable.”

She felt shamed and stung by his rebuke, but she could hardly bear the thought of her child suffering apart from her, unwanted and tossed aside. Not once but twice. Three times. “Which boy was it?” she asked.

“Are you shopping, Miss DeSpain?” His tone was incredulous.

She turned to face him, unwilling to back down. He gazed back, meeting her eyes, face still as stone. Obviously, he was not going to talk.

“Is he all right now?” she finally asked quietly.

Father Leonard paused, then nodded, a little more kindly. “He's all right.”

She gave a quick return nod, and an awkward pause stretched out, which she feared would be followed by questions. “I'd better
go see if I can help clean up,” she said. The day didn't look pleasant and bright any longer. The sooner she was out of here the better. Perhaps she would walk home by herself.

“Look, I'm sorry I spoke sharply,” Father Leonard said. “It's a tender subject for me.”

“It's a tender subject for me, too,” she said, her voice tight, then turned away and stood quickly. She was afraid she would cry.

Joseph appeared and stood between them, looking from one to the other. “Am I interrupting something?” he asked.

“No,” Miranda said, “I was just going to help clean up.”

“And I was going to go back for another burger,” Father Leonard said, rising. “Fine job, my boy.” The priest moved off toward the food. She turned to follow.

“Wait,” Joseph said, and he caught her wrist gently.

She stopped and faced him. She was surprised, for he looked a little vulnerable, an expression she hadn't seen on him.

“Would you like to take a walk up the trail?” he asked.

She hesitated, wondering if it was an ambush. He seemed to read her thoughts.

“No agenda or ulterior motive,” he said, making an X over his chest. “Other than a few minutes of what I hope will be pleasant conversation on a beautiful day.”