The Cradle (21 page)

He’d been sitting with his feet up on the table, watching TV. It was just the two of them in the house. It was a few months
since the fire at Delco. Matt was still at his physical therapy, and Chris was at his guitar lesson.

“What?” he said.

“Your father’s mother,” she said, standing beside the table, “lives in this suburb by Chicago. The woman is only a hundred
miles away.” She had printed a map off the computer, along with driving directions. She held them out to him. “Go meet her.”

He turned off the TV. He set the remote down in his lap and reached up and took the papers.

“How do you know where Dad’s mom lives?”

“Because I know,” she said, crossing the room and going back to the kitchen. She called to him from there. “Can you go on
Monday?”

Joe stood and went into the kitchen. He looked down at the papers and looked back at her. She was sitting at the kitchen table
now. A half-finished crossword puzzle was in front of her. “Why would I go?” he asked. “What am I supposed to say to her?”

“I’ll tell you what to say to her,” she said. “It’s not like it’s going to be hard. It’s going to be easy. The reason that
you have to go is that you have a driver’s license, and I can’t just disappear all day on Monday because Mr. Grumpy Burn Victim
would get all out of sorts and not know what to do with himself.”

And now here he was, walking down the street with Ms. Renee Owen, children’s author, his father’s mother.

She hadn’t said anything since they’d left the house. Her jacket was long, cream-colored, all the way down to her ankles.
She had a maroon cap and she walked with her hands in her pockets. She walked fast. It looked like she was thinking.

“It’s better out here,” she said finally. “Thank you. You were right. It is colder. Brr.” Since the afternoon it must have
dropped twenty degrees. The light outside was getting softer; it would be dark in just a couple of hours. Joe thought of driving
back home through the night.

“Joe,” she said.

“Yes?”

“Are you my grandson, then?”

“I’m adopted.”

“Oh,” she said. “I see.”

They walked in silence for a minute or two.

He couldn’t tell if she was angry. Up ahead he could see the main intersection and the suburb’s little downtown area. The
bookstore, he remembered, was right there. Once, he thought she would turn off down another side street, but she kept going
straight, and soon they were waiting at a stoplight.

“Why did your mother never tell him where I was?”

“Because she wanted him to find you on his own, I think.” Marissa had said as much.

“But what made her change her mind?”

“Because I think he’s always gone back and forth,” Joe said, “and almost tried to find you and then stopped, then almost tried
to find you again. For a few years, he was about to—I don’t know. I mean, I was little. Mom said, though, that when he was
in there, in the hospital? She said that he said things. When he was all drugged up.”

“Said things?”

“Yeah.”

“Said what?”

Joe looked away, down the street. He was telling her too much. The car was parked there, across from the bookstore. He’d left
it there all day and had been walking around, waiting for her to come home. He hadn’t wanted to talk to her there.

“Listen,” Joe said. “You know what? I actually think I have to go.”

“Oh,” she said, surprised. She turned to her left and pointed to an orange-and-white sign. “I was about to offer to buy you
a donut.”

“That’s okay,” Joe said.

“You said that so suddenly,” Renee said. “Did I somehow—did I say something to offend you?” She smiled at him, shook her head.
“Why are you going? You just got here.”

“No, no,” Joe said. “Not at all, you didn’t offend me. I’m just—” He reached into his back pocket and removed the folded envelope.
He unfolded it for her, held it out. “I’m actually not supposed to tell you anything else. My mom really wanted me to just
tell you, like, basics.”

Renee was looking at the envelope.

“She told me to just be the emissary,” Joe said.

“Emissary?” She was still looking at the envelope.

“You know,” he said. “Greeter.”

“What’s this?” Renee said.

“From him.”

“How, from him?”

“He wrote it on one of those days,” Joe said. “When he got into one of those moods and decided he was going to find you. My
mom said he actually wrote it the day my little brother was born.”

She took the envelope.

“Our phone number’s written on the back right there,” he said.

Renee turned the envelope over, looked at the number, then turned it back. “And your mother—”

“She stole it out of his glove compartment,” Joe said. “Yeah. So yeah, it’s not sealed. I mean, she read it. I read it, too,
actually. Sorry. I think he just thought he was going to go out and find you and then he just didn’t.”

“No, no, no,” Renee said. “It’s okay.”

She was still staring down at the envelope.

“So I’m gonna go,” Joe said. He took a step back. “So I’ll see you, maybe? Or talk to you? Or something?”

She leaned back and looked straight up at the sky. “My God,” she said. “Is it snowing? It’s supposed to be spring.”

Joe looked up, too. He noticed a few flakes coming down.

“It got cold again.”

“It did,” she said. “You’re right.”

“Well.”

“Are you sure you’ll be safe to drive home?” she said.

“I’ll be okay,” he said. “Snow’s okay.”

“I get so worried about people driving in the snow,” she said.

He stepped away again, just in case she tried to hug him.

“Okay,” he said. “It was nice meeting you. Good-bye.”

She finally let the hand that held the envelope drop down. She looked at him, nodded, and said, “You have to go.”

Joe turned and walked down the sidewalk toward the car.

“Joe?”

He turned.

“It’s just that—will he know? When you get home, will you tell him that you were here?”

“I think my mom’s telling him,” Joe said. “Now. So.”

“Oh,” she said. “Yes. That makes sense.” She raised her eyebrows. “Does that make sense?”

Joe looked down the sidewalk toward the car. He looked back at her. “Do you want me to tell him something for you?” he asked.
“I can.”

“No,” she said, shaking her head. “Oh, no. No. That’s okay. No. That’s not necessary.”

“Are you sure? Because I can.”

Renee again shook her head. “I will,” she said. “I mean I will do it.”

Joe got in the car and started the engine and watched her in the rearview mirror. He thought that maybe she would open it
now and read it right here, which would make things easier. He’d thought that she might even read it right in front of him
on the sidewalk. But she hadn’t. He leaned forward and pulled a copy of the letter from his other pocket, unfolded it, laid
it out on the steering wheel, flattened it, and again looked back at her through the mirror. She hadn’t moved. She was staring
at the Dunkin’ Donuts. He waited. She didn’t open the envelope. Instead she stuffed it into her coat pocket, turned, and walked
back the way they had come. Some bushes blocked his view, and he cut the engine and got out of the car.

He felt bad about copying the letter, as though he’d somehow betrayed his father. But it was important. There had to be a
copy of it. Who knew what she would end up doing with hers? For all he knew, she was on her way back to her house to burn
it in the fireplace. He took a few slow steps down the sidewalk, and at the corner, he leaned forward just enough to see around
the bushes. There had to be a copy, that’s all. She was walking back toward the house.

He waited for just another minute, until she was a speck, a good distance away, before he started after her. Maybe he’d be
able to see through a window.

This was his own plan. His mother had hers, and he had his. This had nothing to do with what his mother had told him to do.
This was only him. And he didn’t really understand what it was that he needed to see or why he needed to see it, exactly.
He knew only that it seemed to matter, collecting all the things—the images of people he saw, what they looked like when they
said certain words, how they were at certain times and what he guessed they were feeling. He wanted to remember every single
thing that happened. Not just here, with her. He did it all the time. His mother couldn’t stand it, the way he asked questions,
the way he probed, and she would absolutely for sure lose her mind if she could see what he was doing now. But he couldn’t
help himself. He made a copy of the letter, and he would keep it, and now he was going to watch her read it, if he could,
and try to see what she looked like, and if he saw that, he would keep that, too. In this case he had not been able to stop
thinking of the moment when she would open it and see his father’s writing and read what he said, and for the first time would
have an actual thing, there, in her hand, that would show her he had grown into a person.

Joe crossed to the other side of the road, hands in his sweatshirt pockets, and tried to keep pace. He doubted she would look
back. He was surprised when she turned on a road they hadn’t been on—she wasn’t going back to her house.

The snow was picking up a bit. He took a few jogging, hustled steps, and at the corner he again paused and leaned to see.
There was the tan speck of her coat. She was still going. He followed her down a long winding street of small homes, keeping
the same distance, and he followed her as she made two more turns.

When he made the second turn, he wasn’t as careful, though, and he had to jump back behind a hedge. She had stopped. She was
across the street, a hundred feet away, in a park. She was sitting on a bench. Joe squatted down a little and was glad that
he could see her—he felt certain this was where she’d read it. He watched her sitting with excellent posture, both feet on
the ground, both hands on her knees. She looked like a painting, there in the snow. It was coming down at an angle, slowly,
but the flakes were big and wet. He reached into his pocket and took the letter out. He held it in his hand, then looked up
at her. He waited. If he could read it just as she did, that would be perfect. That would be as close as you could get. He
had already read it, but he could do it again, or just skim it as she read it.

She reached into her pocket and took the envelope out.

Joe looked down at his copy, looked back at her. She had it out of the envelope now. She brushed her hair back. Joe looked
down and started reading his copy.

July 7, 1997

Dear __________,

If you are getting this letter it means I have finally found you, or maybe just found your mailing address. My name is Matthew
J. Bishop. I am the son you gave up for adoption in June 1969. I am sorry to intrude if you aren’t able to know me.

I am writing this letter because my son was born this morning. I don’t have your address yet, not today, as I write, but I’m
going to find it, I’ve decided.

On the one hand maybe you don’t care about me or where I am or who I am or that I had a son today. If that’s so then please
disregard this letter. I apologize for taking your time.

If that is not the case, you’ve probably lived for a long time wondering about things, just as I have. If you’re that kind
of person then I’m writing to say I’m here, and I’m okay, and it’s okay, what you did, I have lived an okay life.

My wife’s name is Marissa. Our new boy’s name is Chris. He is seven pounds, nine ounces, and he is seven hours old. He has
expressed an interest in knowing you in the future.

Sincerely,
Matthew J. Bishop

Joe looked up. He couldn’t tell if he had read it faster than she or if she was just not reacting. She was sitting perfectly
still on the bench.

The snow kept coming. He felt as though he could crouch here and watch forever and she might never move. The big wet flakes
dropped down into his eyelashes, and he blinked them away.

She moved a little. She lowered the hand that held the letter.

Then all at once she tilted some, there on the bench, and her face went down to her other hand and stayed there.

Joe didn’t know what to do. He thought the wiser way of watching would be to stay here, crouched and hidden, but some force
compelled him to stand up. You shouldn’t always only watch, some voice said. He put his hands in his sweatshirt front pocket.
Do more than only watch. He looked around. There was no one anywhere, it seemed. Renee Owen was still hunched over but moving
now. Her maroon hat had fallen off and was in the snow at her feet. He watched her reach down and brush it off and look at
it, then look at the trees at the other end of the park.

He took a few steps forward, out into the middle of the street, and she turned her head and saw him then, standing there,
watching her, and she sat up straight and looked back at him.

He was too far away to see her face clearly, and now there was too much snow. He waited. So did she.

Then he felt the force again, this time at his shoulder and his elbow. Slowly, the boy’s hand went up into the air, and he
waved.

Darren the Human’s promise was fulfilled five weeks later when the papers came back from Minnesota with his signature on them.
By that time the baby was born. Marissa’s labor came in the middle of the night, and she screamed for the last ten minutes
in the car on the way to the hospital, saying, “I can’t even sit!” Joe stayed back at the house with Glen, and four hours
later, another child came into the world.

It was healthy. Matt stood in his scrubs and felt like an idiot as he watched the whole unveiling and watched his sweating
wife yell out from the pain, but then the red and wet and pink baby was suddenly there, arrived and human, crying, upside
down in the doctor’s arms, and not long after that it was in Marissa’s arms, and she was smiling and crying at the same time,
her face shining and her body spent. She said, “Come on,” to Matt, who was still at the other side of the room, and he walked
over to his new son and touched him on the forehead as Marissa stroked his face. “You’re lucky,” Marissa said. “At least this
one looks like you.”