Missing Pieces of My Forever-Heart (9 page)

It was Friday. I had to email Jame where and when I would give him five minutes of my time on Saturday.  I debated all day.  Even though I was now living close to where we had grown up, I didn’t want to go anywhere that would evoke any memories whatsoever.

Jame,

I can see you for a short time tomorrow.  Meet me at the Lighthouse in Atlantic Highlands.  I’ll be in the parking lot. My car is a gold, Sebring convertible with a black top.  I’ll be there at noon.

Cath

Tossing and turning all night, I got up early again and drank a pot of strong coffee.  I knew I would need my strength, but it was hard to force down even a piece of toast.

I debated what to wear and then mentally kicked myself for even caring.  I didn’t put much make-up on because I was not out to impress Jame Patterson.

I got out of my car at the lighthouse parking lot and saw he was already there.  He walked over to me.

“Hey Cath.  Thank you so much for coming.”

I started walking along the trail. “We can sit at the rest area table a little ways up the trail.  It’ll be more private there for what we have to talk about.”

We walked in silence.  I remembered how long his strides were and how I would have to skip and jump to keep up with him.  Oh, how I did NOT want to remember those things.

Reaching the table I sat down and motioned for him to sit across from me.  We looked at each other over the worn out picnic table.

“You look good, Cath.” Jame smiled a tired smile.

“Yeah, the circles under your eyes are no match for mine.”

He gave a little laugh and then silence fell.

Jame took a deep breath and began.  “I feel like I should say I’m sorry to you a thousand times for all the pain and heartache I caused you.  And I don’t want to cause you any more now but…”

“But what? You selfishly want to find him, disrupt his life like you’ve done to mine, and everything will be peachy-keen?”

“No, not at all.  I already registered on national birth parents websites.  I just am afraid he’ll never look for me, for us.”

“You have some nerve! You registered and are hoping he’s looking for you?  What arrogance! Except for donating some sperm, you gave him NOTHING and now you want something from him?  Selfish as always, aren’t you, Jame?”

“No, Cath, that’s not it at all.  Are you willing to hear me out or is this a waste of our time?”

I backed off from my anger a little.  I had agreed to meet. I should listen.

“Go ahead.”

“Not sure what you know about my life after college…“

“I didn’t care, Jame. I still don’t.”

“Touché. I coached some in junior college and then put my business degree to some use by taking a job with the Celtics’ front office.  Lived in Boston.  Married the wrong woman and got divorced two years later.  Not pretty.”

I followed a heart carved into the wooden table with my finger as I waited in silence.

“Still have that nervous habit, huh Cath?  You always were tracing something.” He grinned a little.

My traitorous heart gave a little blip. Was it because he remembered the trivial thing that I used to do or was it because that grin always made me smile. Ugh, stop doing that, heart!

“Anyway, a buddy of mine was starting up a new management consulting business in DC and I moved there to work with his group.  Let me tell you, DC is for the sharks and I hated it there.  I moved back to New York and took a job there. I got married again and we tried to have kids but she had a heart condition and couldn’t carry to term.  She wanted kids so bad. Darlene had a heart attack at 39-years-old and changed into a person who didn’t see any joy in life.  She wanted to move back to Pennsylvania to be near her parents. She hated the city and I couldn’t make her happy about anything anymore.  She left and we got divorced. After that, I started to really feel the emptiness that’s been in my life since I left for Texas.”

“What am I supposed to do about your emptiness, Jame?  I’m sorry you had a semi-hard life.  I’ve had a tough one too.  That’s life.  We pick ourselves up and carry on.”

“I know. I know, Cath.  But you have two kids in your life.  I have none.  I never thought I’d ever want any because of what happened to us but now I’m regretting everything so much more.”

Here was my chance to get a little closure. “What exactly do you regret, Jame?”

“So much, Cath, so much with you.  What I did, caving in to my father, getting on that plane to Texas and leaving you pregnant.  I regret that every day of my life.”

Oh, it felt so good to finally hear that.   But he could have tried to contact me.

“So why did I never hear from you again?  Not when I was away, not after I had the baby, not ever.”

“I sent you letters, Cath.  I mailed them to your parents’ house because that’s the only address I knew.”

“You sent me letters?  I never got them.” All I could figure is that my parents were trying to protect me at the time.  My Mom was gone now.  My Dad had remarried and started a new life in Arizona. I would never know what happened.

“And I called Maddie lots of times. She just hung up on me. But she did tell me it was a boy.”

“Maddie didn’t know where I went. No one did.  My parents wanted to keep it a secret.”

“Where did you go?  I wondered about that like crazy.”

“I’m not getting into the whole story.  So why do you need to see me?  What information do you think I can give you?”

“I’d like to know where and when he was born, do you know his name, and what adoption agency you used.”

“Why? What would you do with that information if you had it?”

“I don’t know.  But I have no other children.  He’s my only one. Hopefully I’d be closer to finding him.  He’s what, 26-years-old now?  God, I don’t even know his birthday. Maybe he’s old enough to decide he wants to know us.”

“He was 26 on January 1
^st
.  I had him in Tallahassee, Florida.  I used the county adoption agency.  His adoptive parents named him Michael.”

Then I saw something I had never seen before in my life.  Jame Patterson had tears in his eyes that were spilling over.

“Oh God. Oh God, Cath.  Just like that?”

“What do you mean- just like that?”

“You knew all this.”

“Yeah, Jame, I was there, remember?”

“How do you know that they named him Michael?”

The photos in the white box in my attic burned my conscience then.

“I just know.”

“OK, OK. This is great.  This is wonderful.  Thank you so much, Cath.  Thank you.”

“And what are you going to do with this information, Jame?”

“I’m not sure.  Have a lawyer look into it or a private investigator.”

“What? How dare you intrude on his life! He isn’t searching for you or me.  He has a life.  Leave it alone, Jame.”

“I can’t, Cath.”

“Why the hell not?”

“I have cancer.”

His revelation stunned me.  I lost my breath, choking and gulping it in.

“What? Cancer? Oh, Jame? Oh, God.”  I started to cry.

“Wait! Wait! No, no, no.”  Jame ran over to my side of the table and gathered me in his arms. The years of pain and disillusionment and sadness erupted in a torrent of tears that I just couldn’t stop.  Jame held me tight and murmured, “Please, Cath. Please, Cath. Please, Cath, don’t cry.”

I cried for the 18-year-olds that we were, for our parents who did the best they could for their children, and I cried especially for our son, that innocent little boy that I, we, gave away because we didn’t know how much that action would affect our lives forever. 

The years melted away as Jame cried with me, wiping away my tears with his fingers, sitting forehead-to-forehead as we did many years ago.

“No, no. Cath.  I’m not that sick.  I’m in the beginning stages of melanoma cancer, but there’s all this protocol for it now so I’m pretty sure I’m going to be fine.”

“Yeah?”

He laughed and smoothed my hair behind my ears like he used to do. “Yeah, Cath, I‘ll be all right. But hearing ‘cancer’ made me stop dead in my tracks. It really cranked up my imagination about maybe my only son wanted to meet me and I could finally connect with him and get to know him.  I realize this might never happen, but I just got this fire in me to find out all I could, which wasn’t much, and I knew you’d be the key to unlock that door for me.  Michael, huh?”

“Yes, Michael.”  I stood up.  “I think you need to come home with me, Jame.  I have something to show you.”

Chapter 26

The dusty white box sat on my kitchen table between us.

Jame sat there cradling the steaming cup of coffee in his long graceful hands.  His basketball player hands and ones I held so many times so many years ago. A niggling feeling of worry crept around my heart as I sat awash in too many memories. Maybe I shouldn’t have brought him here.  

He should at least see the photos.  But then he’ll get even more focused on finding Michael.  But he has cancer and this is his only child.  But he never was a father in any sense of the word. Back and forth like a ping-pong ball, my thoughts ricocheted around my mind.

I took a drink of coffee wishing it was something stronger and opened the box.  Jame watched me quizzically, not sure what this was about.

“I’m not doing this because I feel that you deserve this.  You walked out on me and our baby and left us to fend for ourselves.  It was the goodness and the money of my family, especially my cousins that got me through all this.”

He nodded his head gravely.  “And I will never be able to make up for that.  I was a selfish kid, high on himself and believing his own hype about how he was God’s gift to basketball.”

“Yeah, well you did pretty well there at Rice, I heard. I don’t know that personally.  It hurt too much to watch you on TV.”

“Yeah, but I also broke every promise I made to you.”

Come on Cath.  Keep it together.  He’s finally saying the things you wanted to hear from him. “Yes you did. And that was unforgivable.”

“I don’t expect forgiveness.  Hell, I don’t deserve forgiveness.  I just appreciate you talking to me and helping me find our son.”

“I’m NOT helping you find our son. “

“My lawyer advised me to put my name on all the websites like the National Adoption Registry and a bunch of others.  Some are probably bogus but I didn’t care.  I’ve been on all their websites for weeks now.  Maybe a contact will come out of that.”

“Yes, but you said something about hiring a private investigator or a lawyer to track him down.  Please don’t do that.”

“I don’t want to make you another promise I can’t keep, Cath.  Not to be morbid but what if my cancer gets really serious?  I want to be able to at least see him, even if it’s from a distance and he never knows me.  Just to lay my eyes on him…would be a miracle to me. I want to see you in him and I want to see me in him.  Just once.  If anything more comes out of that, then my happiness would be off the charts.”

Jame gestured to the box. ”My curiosity is killing me.  What’s in here?” 

Taking a deep breath, I ripped off the tape and lifted the lid.

“Michael’s stuff is in here.”

Jame almost jumped out of his chair. “What? You’ve been in touch with him?”    

“No.  No, I didn’t know it at the time, but my cousin worked out something through the adoption agency that his parents would send a photo every year around his birthday.  His mom was very nice.  She sent more than just photos. “

I braced myself as I always did when I looked into Michael’s box.  A pile of 15 photos, a clear plastic sleeve with a lock of his baby hair, a kindergarten drawing, and newspaper articles of his middle school and high school volleyball games.

Jame sat in silence, studying each item as I spread them out on the table in front of him.  His face was unreadable until…he burst out laughing when he saw the newspaper articles.

“Ha! He plays volleyball? That’s too funny! I love it!  Look at his face, Cath.  Am I imagining it or does he look like a little like me?”