What We Leave Behind (29 page)

“Grace?”

And with the help of my racing heart, I turned around, and there he was.

“It’s me,” I said.

He smiled. The same smile I’d seen a thousand and one times, the same smile that told me he was genuinely happy to see me.

“What are the chances of this?” he asked. “Wow, I can’t believe it’s really you.”

“Yeah, it’s been a long time.”

He leaned in to place his arms around me, a friend giving an old friend a hug, but there was nothing friendly about the way my face rested on the space between his shoulder and his neck and how his scent crept into my nose and other places. I saw how time had changed us and what remained exactly the same.

“You look great!” he said, pulling back faster than I’d expected.

“You too,” I said, noting he was no longer the lanky boy but a broadchested man. Gone was the tan, but the skin was as smooth as ever. His hair was the same; there were traces of gray. Time had been kind to him. Although aged, he now possessed a distinguished quality I hadn’t noticed when we were kids. I inhaled.

“How long has it been?” he asked.

“Thirteen years,” came racing out of my mouth.

“I can’t believe it’s been that long. What are you doing here? Is everything okay?”

Doctors and patients traipsed by, oblivious to the reunion between two intimate strangers. “I’m fine, I’m here visiting someone.” And then I stopped, or he interrupted me. I wasn’t sure which happened first.

“You live here in New York?”

“No, I still live in California.”

“This is too much.” He appraised me with those eyes. “How have you been?”

“Do you think we can go somewhere and talk,” I asked, “alone?”

Without answering, he possessively took my arm and led me to a door adjacent to his waiting room.

“You still fidget,” he said, unlocking the office and offering me a seat.

“Here’s the key to the bathroom,” I said, handing him the ring while he paged one of the nurses to pick it up.

When I got comfortable, he asked, “Did you know I worked here?”

I contemplated my potentially explosive response. There was nothing fateful about our meeting today. Having a sick daughter in this hospital had been scripted long ago. We were players in a much bigger story that bound us together. It could be argued that we had never parted.

“I had no idea. I always assumed you lived in Boston.”

“I commute. I still can’t get over this,” he added. “You’re so not ‘almost sixteen’ anymore, and you’re much quieter than I remember.”

My heart hurt, and I didn’t want to cry. Not yet.

I said, “A pediatrician.  Dare I say how much it suits you?”

“You were right all along.  This is where I belong.  You can say it.  You told me so.”

“If only it were that simple,” I said.  “Was it hard to give up pathology, the years you invested?”

He turned serious and said, “It was way harder giving you up.  A lot harder.”

I wanted to stay in the present, but he was guiding me back to the courtyard. “You made it look so easy.”

“I know,” he said, not disagreeing, studying his hands and the platinum band that circled his left finger. “It’s what I had to do.”

I thought about symbols and what they represent, and the ring on his finger prohibited me from pressing on. Seeing Emily was opening the door and stepping into a scene in Jonas’s life I never knew. Mostly, because I chose not to look. Had I been wiser in my youth, I might have known that everything about her affected me, and if Jonas knew that too, maybe things could have gone differently.

The interminable silence passed, as we made our way back to the present. There was so much I wanted to say to him. I wanted to hear about his life; I wanted to share stories of mine. I wanted to know him again, feel close to him again; but I was worried that once I shared the news, there wouldn’t be anything but accusations and blame. If only I didn’t have to tell Jonas news that would change his whole life. Then I would have told him how good he looked, how at peace he seemed with himself, how in a brief encounter in a hospital corridor, years hadn’t passed, and we were the same two people who once were in love.

“Jonas,” the only thing I could muster was, “it’s good to see you again.”

“Something’s wrong, Jess. Tell me what it is.” His hand rested on mine; the bands between us touched like concrete fences.

I said, “I know you’re busy, but there’s something I need to tell you.”

“Anything. What is it?”

“There’s a patient here,” I started, while the fragments of the story turned into logical sentences. “She’s almost twelve years old, a little girl…”

“Is she yours?” he asked. “Is she sick?”

“Her name’s Michelle Sammler.”

“I remember that name. She came in with bruises all over her body. Initially they thought it was a case of abuse, until the doctors diagnosed her with leukemia. She’s back in the hospital?”

“She had chemotherapy, went in to remission, and just recently relapsed. She needs a transplant. It’s her best chance for survival.”

I was reminded of our childish medical bantering, and ironically realized that this medical discussion was as profound as we would ever discuss. Rebellious tears formed in my eyes. I could feel them pooling, willing them not to spill over. An awful silence permeated the room, making what we weren’t saying louder than the quiet.

My face was now in my hands, resting in my lap, hiding the evidence of my distress. I hadn’t wanted him to see me cry. I didn’t want our reunion to be like this. It should have been a tender meeting, not news of a child whose body was ravaged by a killer disease. The crying kept me from having to speak the truth; and while it bought me some time, it couldn’t obstruct the dam from bursting, and the droplets of deception from floating out of my mouth. The words poured forth; I had no opportunity to censure them.

“She’s yours, Jonas.”

“What?”

“She’s yours.”

“I’m not sure I understand.”

“She’s ours. The little girl in there dying is our daughter, Michelle. I gave her up. I didn’t know, I swear…”

“Jessica, this isn’t funny.”

“You had left for Boston by the time I found out. It was weeks after you’d said your good-bye. I never heard from you again, and it was over and you were clear about what you wanted, and I loved you so much, enough to let you go, and I hated you too, but I knew I couldn’t get rid of it. I couldn’t abort our child. She was made with so much…” I had to stop myself from saying the word again. “I thought about telling you, but I didn’t want you to think I was trying to trap you or keep you. My God, I was sixteen. I didn’t have it in me to be that malicious or selfish, and I knew I was too young and too irresponsible to raise a baby on my own. It was the hardest thing I ever had to do, but, the baby, she was matched with a very nice couple and on the day I gave birth to her, they took her from me and I never saw her again.”

I didn’t want to look up, afraid of what I’d see on his face, so I kept my face buried in my hands, hiding the shame, hiding the agony, hiding the mess that was dripping from my nose. When I finally did look up, his face was a mix of anger and regret. He hovered over me, ready for battle. Maybe if I continued to speak, he wouldn’t lash out at me.

“For years,
this, you
, it was all behind me, until I got a phone call from this lawyer acting on behalf of the family, talking about privacy and parental rights. He said my daughter was here, and they’d consulted with Dr. Greene about her options; when they found out she was adopted, they asked if there was a chance she had a blood sibling, and I said yes, because I have a son. I thought that’s what they meant, and I was on my way from LA. When I got here, they told me they needed a full-blood sibling.”

He still didn’t say anything. He just sat there. His accusatory eyes glazed over.

“I have a daughter?” he spoke, the words hollow and barren. “And you’re telling me now, all these years later? You didn’t think it was something I had the right to know?”

I looked him square in the eyes, “No, I didn’t.”

There was another silence between us. It was only a few, insignificant seconds, but it felt a lot longer.

“How could you do this?” he asked me, searching my face for something, whispering to control his venom. In loving him and trying to protect him, I had betrayed him.

“Does it matter now?” I asked. “Hadn’t you said to treasure the moment? You think I planned this? You think I wanted it to be this way? This wasn’t what I wanted, none of it.”

“Why didn’t the attorney contact me?”

I looked at my shoes, studying the intricate lines that held them together. “I didn’t write down a father.” I cowered.

“What did you write?” he hurled at me.

“Deceased,” I spat at him. “Deceased. There, does that make you feel better? At the time, you were gone. Not just vanished, not just missing or lost, dead. Don’t you get it, Jonas? You broke my heart. I thought I’d never recover. You were this boy I thought I knew, and then you became a stranger. Maybe you always were. Did I ever know the baby’s father?”

This is when he turned toward the wall and threw a punch right through it. When he faced me again, he fumed. “Do you have any idea what you’ve done, what your lies have cost? You can’t play God, Jessica. It’s not your right. I have a wife and…”

“Emily,” I said.

“Do you know what this is going to do to her? Do you know how many lives you’ve disrupted?”

“I’m sorry.”

“
I’m sorry?
Is that all you can say?
I’m sorry?
You have my child, and you keep it from me…you lie to me…”

“I didn’t lie to you.”

“A sin of omission, what’s the difference?”

I shrugged.

“And you tell me now, thirteen years later, that you gave our child up for adoption and the only reason you’re sharing this bit of news with me, this otherwise insignificant information, is that I’m expected to share in your grief? What about my rights? What about what you took from me when you made a decision without consulting me first? What kind of person does this?”

“I lost a lot too,” I spat back. He wasn’t looking at me. He was holding his bruised hand. Blood was starting to drip onto the floor. “Hate me, curse me, but don’t forget what I gave up. Don’t forget what this did to me and how it changed my life. It didn’t have to be this way, Jonas. You were the one who walked away. You were the one who never looked back. If you had even called one time, just once, maybe I would’ve told you, maybe it could’ve been different, but you didn’t. It still doesn’t change anything. She’d still be here, and she’d still be sick.”

“She doesn’t even know us. How do you know her parents even want us around? Legally, she’s not our child. We have no obligation to her. Besides, we can’t help her.”

Jonas was beaten. Gone was the adoration in his eyes, the place I used to occupy. He had once been my harness. Now I was floating in the air.

“They wouldn’t have contacted us if they didn’t want us here.”

“They contacted
you
.”

There was no fight left in me. “If nothing more, I just wanted you to know about her. I wanted you to know how much I once cared about you, how I couldn’t bear the thought of giving up that part of you. What you want to do with that is your decision, but please don’t hate me.” My eyes pleaded with him. “If you saw her, you’d understand. She’s beautiful and smart and…”

“I think you should go now.” His hand was getting worse, and he was wrapping it with some tissues on the desk. “You’ve done enough damage, but that’s always been your way. You’ve always been trouble, Jessica. Just get the hell out of here.”

His words were like a dagger. They ripped into me as I walked from the room.

I stayed away from the hospital the rest of the day, walking the streets of Manhattan, barely noticing the casual snow that flurried from the sky. It was a cold day, dark and cloudy, and I pulled my coat close to me as I walked distances with little care about direction or destination.

Seeing Jonas after all these years brought back a tidal wave of emotions. The freedom to love him was overshadowed by the responsibilities that were now mine. I yearned to be young and fifteen, to love again as though love was all that mattered.

I stopped in front of a store window and saw a different face staring back at me. So much for the preparation I’d put into making myself presentable, desirable. I studied the woman in the glass and the sounds of Asia’s “The Smile Has Left Your Eyes” were escaping the open doorway. It was the perfect song for this depressing scene.

Before the accident Marty would have been the person holding me close, assuring me that things would turn around; but I’d failed him, and before him I failed another man I had loved. I witnessed the disapproving looks in both their eyes. My self-destructive behavior was as potent as the wreckage that I had created. Could I have willed all of this to happen? Was this how love always worked?

I deliberated my next move. I had given my daughter life, and I was helpless to its revival. Then there was my marriage, in need of similar resuscitation. I worried how Marty would react if I told him that I had a child with Jonas, the only man besides him that I had ever loved.  But the betrayal and the dishonesty is what Marty wouldn’t be able to forgive.  He cherished all the firsts he believed we shared together: our first pregnancy, our first delivery, our first child. They were not, in fact, firsts at all for me. I thought if somehow Michelle could be cured, I could redeem myself. But if she lived, would I be able to play a role in her life? And would the burden be too much for my marriage to bear?

It was late when I returned to the empty hotel room. My hair was wet, and my fingers were frozen inside my gloves. I’d felt even emptier than I had when I’d left that morning. Jonas’s disdain had turned me inward. I’d become disengaged from everything around me. The hole within me was gaping wider and wider. I half expected to see it there when I undressed for bed, evidence of the mistakes I had made. Every direction I turned left irreparable damage. Maybe, I thought, Michelle was the one thing I could save.