The Comfort of Lies (5 page)

Leaning her head against the cloudy bus window, Tia tried to imagine Honor’s life at that moment. Her child’s parents—Dr. Caroline and software king Peter—were probably driving from work to their bright white house, which was bordered by stately evergreens. Tia saw the home each year in the photos. She imagined a well-paid nanny, earning far more than she did, reading to Honor, whose glossy, dark hair would spread over the nanny’s shirt as she leaned into her. Or maybe Caroline was already home, and Honor sat tight and close against her mother.

Did they talk about Tia? Caroline and Peter seemed the types who’d tell the truth and have a library of the you’re-so-special-that-we-chose-you books, which Tia couldn’t resist reading in the library.

The bus passed the Harvest Co-op, where she’d shopped since moving from South Boston to Jamaica Plain. The small store soothed Tia, unlike the frozen tundra of a supermarket where she always ended up buying too much produce: vegetables so doomed for the trash that she might as well toss the broccoli in the supermarket garbage can as she left.

Her longtime friend Robin kept reminding her that she needed something besides her old people and Fianna’s Bar in Southie. Robin nagged Tia to visit her in San Francisco. She said
yes, yes, yes
every time Robin asked, but both knew the real answer would be
no.
One of the many Tia-secrets Robin knew was that she’d never been on a plane. Imagining flying felt like diving in space, and Tia’s stomach turned at the idea.

Robin and Tia grew up next door to each other. The commonality of both loving and having escaped South Boston gave their present closeness additional fuel. The difference was that Tia couldn’t stay away and Robin, once she’d come out of the closet, couldn’t bear to go back.

Southie’s overwhelming traits made for the yin and yang of the neighborhood. Growing up, it seemed as though all her friend’s parents had seven children, two of whom died tragically—either from drugs or suicide—and yet this same neighborhood that bred secrets and gangsters specialized in loyalty and taking care of one another. Tia would never find anyplace where she could count on her neighbors as she did in Southie. If she’d kept Honor, the girl would already have twenty honorary aunties and uncles. No one in Southie would understand how she could give up her daughter.

In JP they’d sympathize with her choice, but Tia hadn’t decided if that were a good or bad thing.

An aged couple crept up the bus stairs one painful step at a time, the woman leaning on a walker. A heavy middle-aged woman spread over the designated handicapped bench closed her eyes against the man and woman.

Tia stood and touched the elderly woman’s shoulders. “Please. Sit down, ma’am.”

The woman’s smile warmed the very air around her. “Thank you, dear.”

Her companion, so in sync that Tia couldn’t imagine he wasn’t her husband, put a hand under her elbow to guide her. Tia cut her eyes at the teenager sitting beside Tia’s now empty seat, choosing him, despite his tattoos, ripped jacket, and untied shoes—such a
strange mark of toughness—rather than the young woman sitting on the other side. Even at ninety, a man couldn’t easily accept chivalry from a woman. The kid ignored her. Tia tapped his shoe with hers. She widened her eyes at him and nodded toward the couple.

“Um, wanna sit down?” he asked the older man, rising with reluctance.

The older woman reached over and patted the teen’s scorpion tattoo. “What good manners. Your mother would be proud.” He half smiled enough to change from a thug to a boy, and as he helped the man, the woman winked at Tia.

People rose as the bus approached Green Street. Tia glanced at the stores outside. She lined up behind an exiting girl; a Pre-Raphaelite angel with gold hoops the size of dinner platters, and stepped off the bus one stop early. She headed to the gift shop.

Once home, Tia splashed milk on Cheerios. She stood as she ate, watching
Jeopardy!
on the small television on the counter, alternating bites of cereal with clearing the previous day’s dishes, and then ended her meal by placing her supper bowl in the loaded dishwasher. After wiping the counter, she reached for the shopping bag she’d brought home.

Tia gathered photos of Honor and straightened them into a neat stack.

Rough tapestry covered the scrapbook she’d bought. Tia searched her desk drawers until she found a silver Cross pen that had belonged to her mother, testing it before writing. “Birth Name: Honor Adagio Soros,” she wrote in her best Catholic schoolgirl handwriting, and under those words, “Adoptive Name: Savannah Hollister Fitzgerald.” Cobalt ink sank into the thick ivory pages.

Below her daughter’s names, Tia wrote “Father: Nathan Isaac Soros,” and “Mother: Tia Genevieve Adagio.” She pasted in a photo she and Nathan had taken of themselves at a secluded park. They’d balanced Nathan’s camera on a rock to take the picture. Nathan smiled at the unmanned Canon with a crooked grin; Tia thought she looked sadly brave wearing the happy face she’d always put on for Nathan.

Under the picture of her and Nathan, she placed her only pregnancy photograph. Taken by her mother just weeks before her death, it was a picture her mother had insisted Tia keep forever. The late afternoon sun lit Tia’s large belly and left her face in shadow.

She picked up the image she’d kept from Honor’s ultrasound—white swirls in a grey background—and pasted it below the pregnancy shot; beside it, she put the newborn picture from the hospital, Honor’s face still pinched from exit and entry. Had Tia been more kindly inclined toward Caroline and Peter, she might have given them the picture five years ago, but giving them Honor had seemed sufficient.

Tia dreaded the day Honor asked why Tia had abandoned her. She couldn’t tell her the truth: keeping Honor would have bound her to Nathan forever, giving Tia license to call him, meet him, and lose herself again. Hundreds of times a day, Tia would have looked at Honor and thought about Nathan—Nathan who lived with his wife and two sons. She refused to saddle her daughter with her own longing. She didn’t want to watch her daughter pine for a father as Tia still did.

When Tia and Nathan’s affair had reached the four-month mark, she’d longed to see him as he was before she knew him. “Please,” she’d say, “bring me some pictures of you as a boy, as a teenager, in your twenties.”

Finally, she realized that she’d reminded him enough times, and that she’d never see him any way other than how he appeared in front of her. He wouldn’t give her any more of himself than what showed up in her apartment once a week. She didn’t need him to spell it out—apparently there were degrees of cheating, and he wasn’t willing to take his past out of his house and show it to her. That belonged only to his wife. Tia didn’t want that for her daughter. Carrying that craving ate away at a person. Even now Tia wondered what Nathan had looked like at every age, what he looked like now. Not knowing made her feel as though something was always out of reach; as though she was always undeserving.

She carried a large wooden chair to the hall closet, the weight
forcing her to drag it the final few feet. Standing on it, she brought down a softening shoebox from the top shelf and carried it to her desk. Grabbing a handful of old family shots, she wondered where to start. The album she planned to put together would help Honor understand her roots. Tia wanted to be ready for the day Honor came looking for answers.

She measured her own bony shoulders and photo scowl against those of her great-grandmother and ancient aunts. Tia pictured Honor, years forward, judging how much Tia had taken from her.

Tia turned from the family photos and grabbed the pile of annually received Honor pictures. She picked one from each birthday collection, tucked them in a beige folder, and went to find her coat.

 • • • 

Back home again, Tia poured herself a shot of Jameson. She carried the drink and a slim white bag to the living room. She drank half the shot and then arranged the copies of the photos she’d made at CVS, putting them in order from baby Honor, to Honor at age five. On top, she put a copy of the newborn picture stolen from Honor’s first moments on earth.

Dear Nathan.

Tia touched her hand to her chest and slowed her breathing. She’d had no contact with Nathan since he walked away. She wrote and rewrote, until she’d composed a version that fit her imagined scene of Nathan reading the letter. Under her name, she added her phone number, her email, and her address. After a moment’s thought, she wrote the word “work” and underneath the name and address of the senior center.

She folded the letter in thirds and tucked it in with the pictures of Honor. Tia wrote the address of a house to which she’d never been invited and the return address of an apartment that Nathan had never seen.

She lifted the pen and wondered,
Why now
?

For five years, she’d imagined sharing Honor with Nathan. Fantasies of his seeing the light, his running to her—“I missed you! I
want to see our baby!”—had been her presleep soothers for five years. Reaching out to Nathan had tempted Tia since the day she gave birth.

So,
Why now
?

Tia could think of no answer except
Why not now
?

She stamped and sealed the envelope and placed it in her purse. In the morning, she’d mail Nathan their paper baby.

CHAPTER 5

Tia

A week after mailing the pictures, Tia hadn’t heard a thing. Nathan remained underground. She dawdled as long as possible before leaving the house that morning, hoping her phone would ring that second, or the next, or right after that.

Tia tried to fool herself that she’d sent Nathan the pictures without expectations, but she could only lie to herself so much. Finally, she left her apartment. Crocus shoots poked through in her front yard. She’d assumed the gardening chores since moving in almost six years ago, throwing in fall bulbs and buying flats of annuals when they went on sale in late June. Flowers bloomed all summer. Tia reminded herself of those masses of daisies and irises when Katie insisted that Tia suffered from a prickly view of life.

The past Friday, Katie suggested that Tia might benefit from making an effort to celebrate one joyful thing about her life each day. Tia didn’t suppose her coworker would appreciate Tia writing “I don’t have to see Katie on weekends” on Tia’s happy list. Still, Katie’s advice managed to worm into Tia’s brain, and she found herself rummaging for her life’s blessings as she headed down Green Street. A blessing: her mother’s job at Brandeis had allowed Tia to afford
college, a blessing that Tia hadn’t truly appreciated until she spent a year after high school working at the Gap. She prayed to never fold a pair of jeans again.

Blessing: she’d matriculated and graduated.

Not such a blessing: two months after graduation, she met Nathan, who had a grant studying those working with the elderly and chose as his research site the agency where she then worked.

Okay, Katie. Good news, bad news. Blessing: I got a college degree. Blessing: I fell in love with a good man, a wonderful husband and father. Curse: He wasn’t mine.

 • • • 

Tia’s first appointment waited on a wooden bench in the hall. She knew Mrs. Graham lived for their appointments, because her client told her this each week, which made Tia want to weep for Mrs. Graham’s loneliness. Tia thought she’d do better by her clients if she took them home instead of writing reports about them. She’d tuck them into her best chair, buy a giant-screen TV so they could watch old movies, tote home the newest best-sellers, and tempt their worn-out palates with home-baked treats. Her clients needed so much more than she could offer in sixty-minute sessions.

The agency was housed in a church, where the side lobby served as a client waiting room. The building smelled of years of dinners cooked in the mammoth kitchen and sweat from the men and women of Narcotics and Alcoholics Anonymous who filled the meeting rooms each night.

“Hey, Mrs. G,” Tia greeted Mrs. Graham. “You look sharp. New dress?”

“For goodness’ sake, this dress is probably twenty years old.” Mrs. Graham preened, even as she tossed her head at the compliment. “So, when are you going to call me Marjorie?”

“I wish I could.” Their exchanges were stale from overuse, but Mrs. Graham, like so many of Tia’s clients, thrived on a repetition of affectionate conversation. Weekly, Mrs. Graham reminded Tia how much she disliked the agency policy that forbid calling clients
by their first name. Her boss believed that it gave respect to the clients—but Mrs. Graham found it the opposite.

“I miss the sound of my given name.” Mrs. Graham pressed her lips until they whitened. She shook her head. “Sam’s so far gone he never says it.”

“Your friends must call you by name.”

“Friends? Either they’re dead, or I’m too dead on my feet from ministering to my Sam to see them.”

Tia leaned forward and put her hand over Mrs. Graham’s. “How about I call you Marjorie when we’re alone?”

“I’d like that.” Her expression lightened, and years flew away. Tia saw the woman, not the client. Mrs. Graham’s strong bone structure and her lovely widow’s peak gave testimony to a memorable face. “It gets lonely, you know. Nobody wants to see an old lady. We’re invisible.”

Tia’s clients deserved recognition. They should also serve as warnings. The senior center should distribute tiny medallion likenesses of their clients engraved with the words
Don’t Deny Your Future
and affix them to young people’s dashboards instead of Saint Christopher medals.

Tia picked up a yellow legal pad and ran down a checklist of urgent and recurring items. Meals. Visiting nurses. Respite services. These referrals for Mrs. Graham and her dementia-cursed husband were the supposed reason for their meeting, but Tia believed the list was far less important than the hour of friendship and connection.

“So, Marjorie, brass tacks,” Tia began their session. Mrs. Graham enjoyed Tia’s tough talk, as it offered the woman a chance to do the same. “Have you given any more thought to putting Mr. G on the waiting list?”