The Vanishing Year (20 page)

And just like that, the idea of a father slips away. The shock must have registered on my face because she pauses
to drink a sip of water, licks her dry lips, and gazes off into a corner. Off in the distance, in the kitchen, I assume, a phone rings. Once, twice, and then goes to voicemail. She doesn't even acknowledge it.

When she finally continues, her voice is flat. “I was heartbroken. Naturally I suppose, the way a pregnant teenage girl would be. My parents were at a loss with what to do with me. I dropped out of school, wouldn't leave my room. Labor was a nightmare. I was just so angry, I've never known such anger, even now. Can you understand that?”

I nod, although I can't. I've never been pregnant, never borne a child. The love a mother must feel for a child is ephemeral to me, out of reach. An idea, unattached to any real, rooted emotion.

“After I had you, I got involved with drugs then, myself. Which, admittedly makes no sense. I was a different person. You said you were running from your life? That's what I was doing. I didn't change my name, but I ran away. Bobbed around the country. Didn't hold a job, got arrested a bunch of times. Was addicted to heroin. Went to rehab, found God like I'm supposed to, met Ronald one day at church.”

“Ronald?”

“Oh. My husband. He's at work. An accountant. We have a son, Benjamin. He's at Ronald's mother's house right now. I didn't want him here, for . . . this.” She waves her hand between us, like
this
is something horrid. I'm her first, failed attempt at motherhood. The anger slices under my rib cage, sharp and unexpected. “Ronald doesn't know everything about my past. He knows I was in rehab, but he doesn't know how bad it was. How I was homeless, how I was destitute. He doesn't know I've already been a mother. Can you see?”

She keeps asking me to
understand
and to
see.
Perhaps I should be more lenient, less judgmental, comfort her. But I can't. I should be tolerant, our stories are shockingly parallel.
I imagine nodding sympathetically, maybe touching her arm,
I understand,
with a soft cluck of my tongue and maybe that would be the key. She'd invite me back, we'd have coffee, I'd learn that after all these years all she needed was an outlet and now here I am. Conveniently. I'll become somewhat of an accidental friend, a hidden secret, almost arcane. The vision is romantic, like a love affair.

Her liquid blue eyes implore mine, mirror images of each other, to simply go away. She rambles on, as if talking to herself. “I've already done this once and that was enough. I'm done, okay? There are only so many times a person can explain herself.”

I interrupt her. “So who was Evelyn, then? To you?”

“Evelyn? Oh, she was my mother's cousin. They spoke once in a while before you were born, but I was such a wreck afterward, my mother didn't know what to do. She heard Evelyn and her husband, God I can't even remember his name, Tom, was it?” She taps her fingernail on the edge of the table, thinking. I don't fill in his name, partially because I don't want to divert the conversation. His name was Tim, a tall shadowy man I barely remember. Dark hair, Old Spice. She shakes her head. “Well, whatever. My mother had heard they wanted to adopt. I don't know how or under what context. One of the bad nights, right before I ran away, Mother called her. Begged her. Evelyn didn't want to at first, she said it could get messy with family. She wanted a baby to love, all her own. Not to lose, later, you understand. I guess that had happened before, an adoption fell through. We had to promise to never seek you out. That Evelyn would tell you on her own, when she felt the time was right.”

I appreciate this simple kindness. For all her chilly demeanor, she doesn't have to give it to me, the reassurance that Evelyn's hesitancy came from love, not rejection. She is, above all else, self-aware then.

She sits up straight, pulls her arms against her midsection, protective. “How is she, your mother?”

“She's dead.” My voice is flat and I close my eyes. “You didn't know?”

Her face freezes, her eyes go wide. “No. We . . . well the whole family sort of fell apart later. After my mom died. There was talk of a reunion at one point . . .”

The genealogy website. Growing up, I remember asking Evelyn about family. Other people had cousins, big Fourth of July barbecues and vacations, dramatic fights and people to call when your car broke down or you needed to borrow a hundred dollars. This is what I saw on television. At the time, she'd touched her eyebrow, shook her head.
We have only each other, bud.
I wonder now, had
she
wanted it that way? To protect me? Or to keep me?

Caroline leaned forward, her breath hot on my cheek. Her eyes studying my face, so close we could touch. But we didn't. “Listen,” she said. “No one wanted to hurt either of you. It all happened so fast, and I was barely functioning. But you have to understand. Mother thought if she knew, she'd back out. She didn't know there were two. That she wouldn't want you both. I know it wasn't the best thing to do, but you have to
understand—”

My heart picks up speed. Two? “Both?”

Her hand flies to her mouth and between those long delicate fingers I hear, “I thought you knew. I thought that was how you found me. She knows about you. I just assumed she sent you.”

“Who? Who sent me? Who is she?” My mouth keeps asking questions my brain already knows the answers to.

“I had twins, Zoe. You have a sister.”

CHAPTER
20

“I don't understand,” I say. “You've met her? Where is she?” I whip my head around, like she's going to magically appear in the living room. My hands are shaking and a pulse throbs in my neck.

“I think she lives in Brooklyn with her parents. She was here, oh maybe three or four years ago? She knows about you. I told her, but she had already known. Her adoptive parents . . .” Caroline splays her hands outward and lets me fill in the missing information.
Evelyn didn't know everything.
Why?

She takes a deep breath and stands up. “Her name is Joan, but hold on, I'll get you all her information.” She scuttles out of the room on the balls of her feet, nervous. She's had control of the conversation up to this point, and now she's anxious. Impatient. She returns not more than a minute later holding an index card. She pauses in front of me, running her fingernail over the words, before she hands it over. “We didn't keep in touch. It's all the information I have.”

Her eyes are huge against her pale face. She's beautiful, my mother. I look like her but in small ways. In person,
our differences are obvious. I'm a cartoonish version of her, I'm drawn with a Magic Marker, deep confident lines. She's sketched with an artist's touch: feathery strokes and skittish shadows.

“She's like me, nervous. I take medication, do you? Is that genetic? It was interesting, her mannerisms are so much like mine. You . . . not as much.” She studies me and I duck my head, studying the index card, the words sliding around as my vision blurs.

My sister's name and address in Brooklyn are scribbled with disjointed handwriting, slanting one way then the other.
Joan Bascio.
I look up at Caroline questioningly.

“You can keep that. I copied it.” She looks over at the chair, like she can't decide if she should sit or if the conversation is over, and she ends up half-hovering over me, stooped and nervous, like a Bryant Park pigeon.

“If Evelyn had known, she would have taken us both,” I say confidently. “Why didn't she know?” Evelyn was the most maternal person I'd ever met. Her need to nurture was a constant presence in my childhood, every twisted ankle tended to as though she were a wartime nurse. Every cut and scrape thoroughly scoured with alcohol. Despite being woefully unprepared and hopelessly scattered, she'd make up for her lack of preparedness in fret time alone. Her concern was never limited to me. Any lone wolf, lost child, homeless puppy. She was a natural adopter of all misplaced things.

When I was sixteen, I broke my wrist, just a hairline fracture. I'd been helping her clean the faculty office buildings at Berkeley after school, one of her many patchwork jobs. We'd take the train down from Richmond to the UC campus, moving in and out of the administration building, quiet as mice. I'd stood on a chair, trying to dust a light fixture hanging from a conference room ceiling. When I fell, she screamed louder than I did.

In the emergency room, I alternated between reading and daydreaming, trying to distract myself from the pain. Evelyn was quiet, mostly concerned with the bill, her mind running constant stream of co-pays and deductibles against account balances and paychecks. She processed numbers like a ticker tape. A young girl, about my age, paced along the far wall. Hours later, with my arm set and casted in a thick, white plaster, I emerged through the big double doors back into the lobby and the girl was still there. She sat on the floor, her back pushed up against the wall, mascara streaks down her face. Evelyn squared her jaw, marched right over to her, and after a short, whispered conversation, brought the girl over.
This is Rachel and she's coming home with us for dinner.
She said it so matter-of-factly, neither Rachel nor I dared argue, despite the fact Evelyn and I had eaten hot dogs and baked beans three nights running.
Eat what?
I didn't have the gall to ask. We ate whatever meat Evelyn could find, white and mysterious in the freezer, chopped up with canned vegetables, and then she drove Rachel home. When she returned, her eyes were red-rimmed from crying, but she never explained why. When I pressed her, she just hugged me and called us lucky.
This, mystery meat surprise and all. We're lucky.

The idea that Evelyn could know about another baby and reject her? Impossible.

“She had no idea there were two babies. She wouldn't have taken you. She
couldn't
afford both of you, there was no way. If she would have known, she would have backed out.” She runs her palm along her forehead, as though massaging a headache. “It sounds awful now, I know. At the time, it was just . . . survival. The whole thing was a mess, but I was in too bad a place to care. Mother found someone else interested in adoption and she took your sister. It was all done privately, through an agency.” She finally sits on the edge of the chair, crossing her legs, all knobby knees and pencil calves. “Mother
kept tabs on both of you for a long time. Then Joan came to see me.”

The implication is obvious:
Caroline
did not keep tabs on us.

“So everyone knew I had a sister but Evelyn and me? She knows. You knew. We're the only ones who didn't know?” I set my water down on the glass-top end table with force.

“Well, you can't understand unless you're in the situation. Then later, I just think Joan wanted to find you in her own time. Or maybe she tried and couldn't?”

Yes, that made sense. Hilary Lawlor became Zoe Swanson, then Whittaker. An amateur sleuth might lose that link.

“But you didn't try? To help her, I mean?”

“She didn't ask. I gave her what I knew, which wasn't much.” She presses the pad of her thumb along the arm of the chair, avoiding my gaze.

I say nothing.

“Zoe, there's something you should know.” She reaches around me, parting the window curtain and for a second I can smell her shampoo, her shower soap. She's so close I could lean over and kiss her cheek. “I shouldn't tell you this but someone called me.” Her voice is low. “I think it was a man, it was hard to tell. But someone is watching me, or maybe you.” She touched me then, her hand cold on my shoulder. “He threatened me. He said to leave you alone.”

“Who was it? Who called you?” I'm so confused.

She holds her hands out, palms up, and shakes her head.
I don't know.
“I have a child. He's six. I'm forty-six. He wasn't supposed to be able to be born. I tried for years, to no avail, and honestly believed I was being punished for what I did. To you. To your sister. For my abandonment, my selfishness.”

I become fixated on her words:
I have a child
. My mind snaps back at her, sarcastically.
No, you have three children.
But then again, I don't think of her as my mother, so why would
she think of me as her child? Because,
because
, shouldn't you always remember your children? I never had the luxury of forgetting a woman I've never met, a vague figure of a mother, mostly invented or derived from old, yellowed Polaroids of Evelyn's old friends that I found in her closet. I flipped through them like I was shuffling cards, greedily pawing, until the women's faces were smudged with tiny fingerprints. I always wondered if one of them was my
real
mother. I could never bring myself to ask.

Caroline had easily forgotten us. The evidence is right here:
I have a child.

I realize then, her darting eyes, her fidgeting, her reluctance to talk to me. She was
afraid.
But also maybe, just maybe, relieved. The decision was made for her, who can blame her now?

I stand up. “But you did. You did talk to me. Why?” I swallow. Out of nowhere, I want to cry, I feel the bite in the back of my throat.

“I owe you. I owe . . . Evelyn, I guess? Joan? I'm sorry, whether you believe that or not.” She rocks back on her heels.

“I have to go.” I think of Cash in the car. The faceless, nameless man who threatened Caroline. Later, the way she'd surely be watching out her curtains all night. I hitch my purse high on my shoulder and it swings back, knocking over the half-full water glass. Water edges down the sides of the table, and on the floor, creeping toward the rich, leathery sofa. I suppress the urge to apologize. Caroline's eyes dart from me, to the puddle, and back, and I know she is struggling over which is a larger disaster.

She stands woodenly in the living room, eyes closed. “Zoe,” she says softly.

I stand there expectantly, stupidly still hoping for something, a hug, an apology, a gesture of kindness. Friendship.

“Don't ever come back.”

• • •

I climb into the passenger side and slam the door. Cash had reclined his seat and is startled awake. He shakes the sleep from his eyes.

“Already? What happened?” He adjusts the backrest upright.

“She was threatened.” I blurt. He cocks his head, confused. I take the card with Joan's information and flash it in front of his face. “Also, I have a sister.”

If he's shocked, it doesn't register on his face. He just nods.

“Did you know?” I demand.

He shakes his head. “No, Zoe. I swear. I had no idea.” He turns the key in the ignition and backs slowly out of the driveway. He keeps his eyes forward, trained on the road. “What happened with Caroline?”

“She's a bitch.” I say it forcefully, partly because I'm tugging on the seat belt and it finally breaks loose, but the curse slips out easily and it feels
good.
Even as I say it, I know it's not completely true. It occurs to me then—even without the threatening phone call, would the outcome have been any different? She didn't stay in touch with Joan. “She has a new life. I don't fit in—you were right. Is that what you want to hear?” I huff and sit back, crossing my ankles.

“No. Zoe, I'd hoped I was wrong. You know that, right? What did she say?” He shifts uncomfortably as he puts the car in drive.

“Cash, she got a phone call. Someone
threatened her
if she talked to me.” We're stopped at an intersection and he turns to look at me, his mouth hanging open.

“What? Who called her?”

“I have no idea.” I shrug. “Here's the weird part. My sister, Joan? She knows I exist. She found my mother,
our mother
, three years ago! Evelyn had no idea that Joan even existed. The whole thing is fucked up.”

“I'll admit that's odd.” He rubs his chin. “Will you look for her? Joan?”

“I don't have to look for her. Carolyn gave me her address.” I wave the card in front of him again, blocking his view of the road. He swats it away.

“So what do you want to do now?”

I think about it for a minute. “Honestly? I want to find Joan. I want to meet her.”

“Right now?” He gives me a sideways smile. My anger is like an ocean swell, forceful and overwhelming one minute, receding to calm the next. I watch as we turn the corner, off Caroline's street, and her house fades from view. I feel a small prick of fear: Who called her? Then a crazy idea; could she be lying?

“Yeah. Would that be awful? To just show up?” I wonder out loud.

“Maybe. I think you should call first.”

I let that sit, thinking about what I care more about. My sister's comfort level or my increasingly desperate need to see her. We drive in silence, merge onto I-84 W, and just like that—my mother is gone. Whatever tether I've had is dissolved and I poke at this feeling, repeat the words in my mind. I explore it, the way your tongue finds a hole in your mouth where a tooth once was. I can't decide if I care. A small part of me worries for her, that whispered threat, for her and her little boy and her accountant husband.

“Thanks for coming with me. This has to be so boring for you.” I avoid his gaze by staring at the trees that whiz past the passenger side window.

“Are you kidding? I've said this before, but what I cover daily? It's nothing that gets your blood pumping. This is interesting, Zoe. Reminds me of my Texas days.” He taps the steering wheel. “Who called Caroline? Why would anyone threaten her?”

I think of the break-in. The careening car. The overwhelming feeling that I'm on some kind of runaway train. That my whole life—the penthouse apartment, the perfect marriage, the money and security—is about to come crashing down around me. I've been too complacent, which never goes unpunished. It's all been too lucky, too happenstance. Something is going on, buzzing just under the surface, and I can't figure it out.

“Do you wonder why she hasn't called you?” he asks, evenly.

“Who, Joan? She must have her reasons,” I say a tad snappily, trying to figure out what those reasons might be. “Maybe
she
has a family, or a crappy relationship, or in general, a busy life. Maybe she's an ad executive, or she works nights trying to make ends meet. Who knows? There could be a thousand reasons. People typically believe they have all the time in the world to accomplish things. There are a lot of theoretical ‘somedays.'”

“That's true.” He raises his eyebrow in my direction.

“You don't believe it,” I say, but he just shrugs.

“Who called Caroline?” He comes back to that. My head pounds; I'm so tired. Joan and Caroline and some whispered threatening phone call. It's all too much.

I study his profile—his long, straight nose, his clear intelligent green eyes with a compassionate twinkle, his skin, rough and uneven, presumably from too many days in the hot Texas sun investigating the newest political scandal.

“I know nothing about you,” I say, realizing that it's true.

“You've never asked,” Cash says with a sideways smile and a quick flicker of a glance. I feel my cheeks flush. He's right; I haven't.

“Our friendship started because you were writing a story on
me
. It's not really conducive to a two-way conversation.” I'm justifying myself. Our friendship, if you can call it that, has been shamefully focused on me.