Replacement Child (29 page)

1980

O
N
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EW
Y
EAR
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Day, Linda and her live-in boyfriend, Tom, had argued, and he took off with her house and car keys. He had recently moved in with her and her girls: five-year-old Debbie and six-year-old Cheryl. On the phone from Florida, she told me he was drinking again, and she was nearly hysterical as she recounted the scene—frantic about what to do. Stranded in the house with her daughters, she said she had no one else to call for help.

My parents lived only ten miles from her, but she called me, 1,350 miles away in Connecticut.

I didn’t really know what I would do when I got there, but I quickly found a nonstop flight. When I arrived, my sister was still in her bathrobe, her makeup smeared from wearing it through the night. The red-brown scars on her neck stood out in relief against her too-white makeup. Her eyes dripped black around red edges. Tears had cut paths down both cheeks. I felt a familiar ache at seeing her. It was the same ache that kept me away for long periods of time over the years.

Debbie and Cheryl seemed dazed-mute in front of the TV until they recognized me at the door.

“Aunt Judy, Aunt Judy!” they greeted me in unison. “Mommy, Aunt Judy is here!”

Linda needed only a few seconds to update me on the situation before I knew what I had to do. I loaded my two nieces quickly into my red compact rental car.

“Mommy’s not feeling too well,” I told them. “You guys can visit with Grandma and Grandpa while I go get her some medicine.” I turned on the radio, and we sang along for the drive to my parents’ condo. Then, I went looking for Tom at his favorite haunt by the beach.

Benny’s on the Beach was a weathered white wood protrusion on the pier, jutting out over the ocean. The small restaurant had an outside bar, sporting blue-and-white painted picnic tables. It opened for drinks at noon. Along one side of the building was a patio of white plastic tables, chairs, and scum-green umbrellas hawking Heineken and Coors Light. Smells of coffee, smoke, and bacon mixed with the salty air.

Tom was hunkered inside with a cigarette and a cup of coffee. I watched him sweep back his oily black hair with his fingers, rub his black-and-white beard stubble. He wore a wrinkled once-white T-shirt under his denim jacket. The blue of his jeans was dulled by brown shadow. He actually waved when he saw me.

He reminded me of another boyfriend Linda had in high school. When she brought home Vinny one night, my father had a visceral reaction to him. He recoiled when they shook hands. I heard a lot about it through my parents’ bedroom wall.

“How old is he, anyway?” my father started. “He looks thirty!”

We didn’t know where Linda had met him, but my parents suspected it had something to do with the late nights out with her new girlfriend, and that they may have been using fake IDs to go to bars.

My father also had an inkling that Vinny was an alcoholic, and he set a trap for him. He told Linda to invite him over for dinner one evening. Then, he carefully left out his best Chivas Regal scotch. Vinny didn’t stop drinking until he passed out on our couch. We never saw him again.

Even looking this disheveled, Tom acted like he owned the place and called all the waitresses “sweetheart” and “honey.” I watched as they winced and rolled their eyes.

“How much to leave my daughter alone?” my father would have offered.

I had only one thing to say to him: “Give me my sister’s keys and then go away.”

Tom flashed crooked, stained teeth and exhaled smoke in my face.

“You think you know her, but she’s different now. She’s not the sweet innocent big sister she makes herself out to be.”

I already knew that just by looking at him. He embodied everything that made me fearful for my sister.

Linda once told me, “I can see the good in anyone.”

It sounded like a positive thing at the time. Now, I wasn’t so sure.

Even sitting here, at this awful juncture, I tried to find the good in this man. There must be moments, I told myself, that he
gave her some measure of comfort, happiness, pleasure. Moments she deserved. This softened me toward him, at least enough to stop me from strangling him right there in Benny’s.

Tom continued to try to talk me out of loving my sister.

“She lies to you all the time. About money. About who she takes up with at the bar. Hell, she lied to you for me when I needed some cash.”

He returned her trust with total betrayal. He didn’t understand that my love for my sister did not depend on her actions or choices. That nothing would change it. To me, she was still the vulnerable little girl with the scars who was looking for acceptance in any way she could get it, and I forgave her anything in its pursuit. I knew she could be taken advantage of by creeps like Tom, and I still wanted to protect her if I could.

I listened and nodded for an hour and a half. Finally, he gave up the keys.

JANUARY 25, 1952

I
N HER MIND
, my mother moved a leg, an arm, but when she tried to move them, they felt as if they were cemented to the mattress. An ache began in her chest and rested heavily in her arms, radiating out to her fingertips. She could not lift her head.

Her doctor said she was not physically injured other than the minor burns on her hands, but that her feelings were common.

“Mothers who lose a young child often describe that kind of ache,” the doctor explained to her. “Some say it’s an ache to hold the child that has been lost.”

I don’t want to wake up,
she thought.

But she still had one daughter that needed her. So she mustered her energy and tried on a hopeful attitude to face her little girl.

Walking into Linda’s room, my mother took a deep breath. A scent, a foreign odor, settled in her nostrils. Antiseptic, pungent—undertones of burnt flesh.

The smell told her more than any doctor’s words.

Linda was awake after a night and day of lurking in and out of consciousness.
She must be in considerable pain,
my mother thought.

A nurse began to change the bedding, and Linda surprised her by shouting in the Hungarian accent she had picked up from her Grandma Schlesinger:

“I don’t vant nobody to touch me!”

Seeing my mother, the nurse nodded and left.

Propped up in the bed, Linda lifted herself toward my mother.

“Mommy!”

“I’m here, sweetheart. You’re okay. You’re going to be okay. I love you.”

Looking for a spot on Linda’s body where she might make physical contact, my mother found none. Not a space to hold, to comfort her baby.

“I’m here,” she repeated—her voice her only offering.

She studied Linda’s body, noting the placement of each bandage, each scorched piece of skin, as Linda also searched my mother’s face for answers.
What happened to me—why does it hurt so much—what will happen now?

In one heroic lurch, Linda pulled herself up to be closer to her, and my mother gasped, automatically reached out, but held herself in check.

Linda’s left ear had dropped away and lay like a crisp piece of bacon on her pillow.

1980

F
ARMLAND
,
CORN
,
AND
cows surrounded the tiny airstrip lined with small planes. Steven and I lined up with the rest of the first-time jumpers on the field as the skydiving coach explained how we would be trained over the next four hours.

I looked over at Steven and smiled. I had coerced him into this escapade. Our marriage was also hovering in the ethers, searching for some solid ground. He had returned home, and we were giving it another try. When I mentioned that I had met some skydivers recently and thought I’d like to try it, we planned to do it together as a kind of launch to our new life. The plan had ignited new excitement between us. It seemed like we were back in our element, embarking on the kind of adventure that first brought us together. I held out some hope for the day, and for us.

Our training consisted of climbing twelve steps to the raised platform and then jumping, bending, and rolling. Jump, bend, roll; jump, bend, roll; over and over and over and over.

“Don’t keep your knees locked; you need to stay loose, or you’ll break your legs!” my trainer yelled on my first practice jump.

By the time we boarded the plane, I’d taken around twenty practice jumps, but I locked my knees on nineteen of them. I was nervous about jumping from three thousand feet.

Part of our training was to pack our own parachutes, so we clamored into the packing room and took our places around a rough wooden table that extended the length of the room. One of the trainers took me aside. He had watched me take my fateful practice falls and had taken a liking to me. He didn’t want to see me break apart on impact, he said, and he handed me an extra-large chute.

“Listen,” he whispered. “For your height and weight, you should land like a butterfly.”

I saw Steven watching our interchange suspiciously, but I nodded him an okay.

Then, we were taxiing down the runway in the white Cessna 182, packed in with two other new jumpers, all thinking of the moment we would reach altitude and jump. The wind was still. The proximity of danger, the possibility of death, the fear and adrenaline had its usual effect on me—an inexplicable high. And it suddenly reminded me of my parents. I hadn’t told them about my jumping from an airplane. I didn’t want them to worry or to try to talk me out of it.

If abject fear had a face, I saw it reflected in each one of my parachute-laden companions. We had just enough time to question our sanity and say a short prayer during our ascent. Soon, two jumpers had disappeared into the blue, their shouts fading as they fell away from us. A quiet hollow between jumps. Steven
looked calm just before he stepped off into the sky. I had a sinking feeling I might never see him again.

“Judy, you’re up—stand over here in the door. One, two—GO!” Shove—
Wham
—out.

A static line opened my chute automatically after three seconds—a detail that has probably saved thousands of lives for first-time jumpers. Mine for sure. I never considered pulling my chute once I was floating in the sky.

You’re supposed to immediately look up at your parachute to be sure it has deployed properly. If it is twisted or has a hole in it, you need to quickly pull your reserve. This too, we practiced for four hours.

I never looked up.

The euphoria of floating in air was so complete, all I could think was
How beautiful, how silent, how awesome; look at all the little houses.
A frozen frame of blue and white held me between the earth and sky.

The radio strapped to my belly startled me when it started yelping.

“Judy, Judy, come in, Judy. Are you there, Judy? Please reply, Judy. You’re doing fine—pull your right cord a little bit. Now the left a little. You’re doing good—coming right into the target area.”

As the ground zoomed up to meet me, I thought,
Don’t lock your goddamn knees.

I landed softly, thanks to that extra-large chute, and was endorphined out of my mind by the thrill. About thirty yards away I
saw a group of people huddled around someone. I unhooked my chute and ran over to see that Steven was still on the ground. He hadn’t landed well, and his six-foot frame didn’t help. Something in my stomach lurched. If he was hurt, it was my fault, my idea to do this crazy thing. After about a minute he was able to get up with my help—to the applause of the crowd.