Blood Ties (14 page)

“I don't blame her,” she said after a time. “In her circumstances, I would do the same thing.”

“It is not an ignoble thing to want to know one's mother.”

“You think she will succeed in finding me?”

“It is not impossible.”

“I have seen her, you know.”

“You have?”

“I should have mentioned this before. It happened quite by accident that I came to know who had adopted her. I had to see her. And I did. More than once. So you see, we are very much alike.”

“You can just wait and see what happens.”

“I couldn't decide otherwise now. The decision is not mine alone.”

“I should tell you that the lawyer involved is not the most competent.”

“Oh, I don't want it to happen like that, to be discovered like some kind of criminal.”

“If she thought you were that, she would not want to find you.”

“And the foster parents?”

“The wife is adamantly opposed. She sees this as a repudiation of all she has done for her daughter.”

“She and I should meet.”

Amos thought about it. Whatever happened, these two women, the mother and the foster mother, would be brought together.

“That may be a very good idea.”

“Could you tell her?”

“I will make discreet inquiries.”

She looked at him with wry affection. “You are such a nice man.”

“Now, now.”

They parted with the understanding that Amos would see if Sheila Lynch would want to talk with Madeline Lorenzo.

“We got along so well then, long ago,” Madeline said.

He walked her to the door and watched her cross the reception area and leave. He said that he did not wish to be disturbed. Behind his closed office door, he sat at his desk and looked out the window, his eyes moist with tears.

20

Father Dowling had been pondering Amos's account of his visit with Madeline Lorenzo when he was suddenly called to the school. Grace Weaver had struck Martin Sisk with a pool cue, and Martin cowered in a corner while Grace threatened to beat him further. Edna Hospers finally took the cue from her, and all the ladies converged to hear what Grace's grievance was.

“That man is a beast!”

This increased the sisterly sympathy of her comforters. Martin drew no supporters but crept from the corner holding his elbow. “I think she's broken something.”

“I hope so!” cried Grace.

That was when Edna called the rectory. One of her recurrent fears was that some accident or worse would occur at the center, and the parish would find itself in legal difficulties. Far-fetched, perhaps, but Father Dowling appreciated her concern and went to the school. Edna drew him aside and recounted the episode.

“Of course, the two of them have been an item, Father.”

“I myself have seen them walking hand in hand.”

At that point, Martin hurried up to Father Dowling. He looked at Edna. “Did you tell him what she did?”

“Her complaint is about what you did, Martin,” Edna said, and left him with the pastor.

“Well, now,” Father Dowling said.

“She struck me with a pool cue, swinging it like a bat. The thick end hit me.”

“A lover's quarrel?”

A wonderful blush suffused Martin's cheeks. “Father, I am in my seventies.”

“I sometimes wonder if anyone really feels the age he is.”

“This is my arthritic elbow.”

“Martin, why don't you make it up to her? It's the only way things will settle down.”

“The woman is jealous.”

“Good Lord, is there someone else?”

Again the blush. “She misunderstood me.”

“Which she?”

But it accomplished nothing to tease Martin and make him more foolish than he had made himself. Father Dowling took his other elbow and led him toward the ladies, who parted like the Red Sea. Grace glared at Martin.

“Martin wants to apologize, Grace,” Father Dowling said.

Martin got his elbow free. “Apologize for what?”

“For telling me of the young woman who is pursuing you!” Grace cried.

“Who?” asked a chorus of voices.

“Ask Romeo.”

“I was joking,” Martin cried.

“No, you weren't. I know when you're joking.”

“Grace, please.”

His pleading tone melted her. Her comforters urged her toward Martin. Fearful that a shotgun wedding was in the offing, Father Dowling headed for the door.

“Father?” It was Henry Dolan. “I'll walk back with you.”

“Are you sure your medical attentions won't be needed?”

“My specialty was knocking people out.”

“Grace is giving you competition.”

They went outside and started up the walk toward the rectory.

“If you're free, I would like to continue the talk we had before.”

“Of course.”

Marie's welcome to Henry Dolan rivaled that she gave Amos Cadbury. “Doctor! How are you?”

Father Dowling went on to the study, and in a moment Henry joined him. When the door was closed, he took a pipe from his pocket and showed it to Father Dowling.

“So you've taken up smoking again.”

“No. I tried and found it was not at all as I had remembered. Smelling your pipe smoke filled me with memories of how pleasant it was to light up. I find it anything but.” He dropped the pipe in the wastebasket. “Besides, I didn't like sneaking around so Vivian wouldn't notice.”

“That is no way to smoke.”

“We live in changing times.”

“Alas.”

“Do you remember what I came to you about, my daughter's adopted child?”

Amos Cadbury had told Father Dowling of his recent discussion with Madeline Lorenzo. Perhaps this was an opportunity to find out if objections on the side of the Lynches to Martha's curiosity were what they had been.

“Has anything changed?”

“My granddaughter is adamant.”

“As you suggested, I talked with Amos Cadbury about it. I have just talked with him again. There are developments that you should know of. It seems that a lawyer is looking into the matter of the adoption.”

“On whose behalf?”

“Amos didn't know.”

“Martha,” Henry said softly. “The man she is in love with is a lawyer.”

“If Amos is right, he would not be the lawyer. Does the name Tuttle mean anything to you?”

“Oh my God.”

“It does?”

“This is Vivian's doing. She thinks the birth mother should be warned about Martha's curiosity. That idiot Martin Sisk offered to have inquiries made. I'm sure Tuttle is the lawyer he went to.” He stopped. “Well, I won't go into our little domestic squabbles here. It's bad enough to talk of these family matters with someone else, but Martin Sisk!”

“Amos has spoken with the mother.”

Henry stared at him and then began to dig in the wastebasket. He found his discarded pipe. “Can I have some tobacco?”

“Never smoke in anger, Henry.”

“Oh, I suppose you're right. Maybe I thought I could punish Vivian by lighting up.”

Father Dowling then relayed to Henry what Amos had told him. However incompetent Tuttle might be, there was the chance that he would succeed in unraveling the mystery. The birth mother was considering whether the time had come to lift the veil on the past.

“She doesn't want to be found out as if she were hiding,” Father Dowling said.

“I guess I can understand that, but hiding is what we've all been doing.”

“If Martha makes the discovery against everyone's wishes, things could be very difficult.”

“A point I have tried to make to my daughter.”

“Do you think you might make it again, in the light of these developments? I am relaying Amos Cadbury's wish.”

Henry nodded, turning his pipe in his hands. “Sometimes I think we have made this far more of a problem than it is by thinking we could keep Martha from knowing. After all, what real difference could it make now?”

“The mother of the child faces far more of a real problem, Henry. Her husband, as it turns out, has known all along she had a baby before they married. That presented no impediment to him, and he has been silent all these years. Until recently. But there are her other children. She has four sons.”

“Four.”

“Amos tells me that she is a wonderful woman, a devoted wife and mother.” He paused. “He says she is very much like Martha.”

“It's cruel to keep this knowledge from Martha. If the mother is agreeable, I mean.”

“She wanted time to think about it.”

“I will see what I can do.”

There was a rap on the door and Marie looked in, her expression one of wild anxiety. “Your wife is here. Something has happened.”

Vivian Dolan hurried into the study and ran to her husband. “It's Maurice. Something has happened to him. You must go to him.”

“What happened?”

“He collapsed on the golf course.”

Part Three

1

Vivian Dolan was too upset to go, and so Amos Cadbury did not hesitate to make the trip to California with Henry Dolan, a long flight in which his old friend could indulge his anxieties as they sat side by side in business class.

“We never once went out to visit the boy, Amos.”

“You wouldn't have wanted him to think you were checking up on him.”

Henry liked this explanation. “Of course, Vivian dreads flying, and it would have been a terribly long drive.”

“Henry, he hasn't been there three years.”

“Of course, he sent us photographs of the place, and we had your description too, Amos.”

Better this kind of conversation than going over and over the enigmatic message that explained their flying west. All Henry knew was that his son had collapsed on the golf course and been taken to the hospital.

“He was never sick a day in his life.”

Amos had asked for the name of the hospital and telephoned before leaving for home to get ready to go off with Henry. Maurice was in intensive care.

“What is the diagnosis?” Amos asked the doctor, after identifying himself as the family attorney.

“It's his back.”

“His back.”

He had almost decided to cancel the trip. He would have imagined heart, despite Maurice's relative youth, but his back? Well, Amos was no physician, and maybe a back can be that serious. Why else would Maurice be in intensive care?

Henry had not seemed overly relieved when Amos told him what the problem was. “Children are wonderful, Amos, but they never cease causing anxiety.”

Inevitably they talked of poor Sheila and her adopted child. They were offered drinks by the flight attendant, and Henry asked for a single malt scotch, which he sipped neat. Amos was content with coffee.

“They are a blessing, Henry. Believe me.”

Henry put a sympathetic hand on Amos's childless arm. “I know, I know.”

“Did you speak to Sheila about meeting with Madeline Lorenzo?”

A painful look. “She wouldn't talk about it.”

“It would be the sensible thing. Imagine what she will feel if Martha finds out by herself. I told you that a lawyer is looking into it.”

“Tuttle!” It had suddenly occurred to Henry that the family secret might be in the public domain. Why did all of them, Henry and Vivian, Sheila and George, look on the adoption as somehow shameful? Well, not George. George had approached Amos at the University Club. He took a chair next to his in the library and sat silently for a time. George was a taciturn man, but he was a man of feeling, pathologist or not.

“Henry Dolan has been speaking to you, Amos,” George had said.

“Yes.”

“He speaks for us all, of course.”

“Of course.”

“You've talked with the mother, too.”

“Several times.”

“How is she?”

“Thriving. She has four sons.”

“Four. Isn't that marvelous?”

“She has had some upsetting experiences of late.”

After a moment of silence, George said, “The father?”

“Yes.”

George shook his head. “I wish there were something we could do for her. We owe her so much.”

“She has offered to meet with Sheila.”

A long silence, even for George. “Would she meet with me?”

“I could ask.”

“Please do.”

But before he had been able to follow through on George's suggestion, the frantic call from Henry had come, and here the two of them were sailing along at thirty-eight thousand feet toward California. Below, the moonscape of the western mountains changed colors in the sun. Amos was sure that George's suggestion was his own, that neither Sheila nor the Dolans knew of it. Henry had dozed off. Amos looked down at the changing landscape and thought of his late wife, gone now more than a dozen years, her memory still vivid. Sometimes, at night, he was awakened by the sound of her voice calling him and knew the disappointment that it was only a dream. Still, it was a consoling thought that she was looking after him. It was his deepest hope that they would once more be together, forever. Few who knew Amos would suspect him of sentimentality, but from time to time, late at night, while smoking his cigar and sipping brandy, he put on “Danny Boy” and submitted himself to its lachrymose sentiments. He himself often breathed an Ave for his departed wife, but it was the rising ending of the ballad that brought tears to his eyes.
You will bend and tell me that you love me, and I will rest in peace until you come to me.

Henry slept on, and Amos, too, dozed off. They were awakened by the announcement that they had begun to descend for their approach into the airport known by the disconcerting acronym LAX. They landed and disembarked, and when they came out onto the street, there was the distinctive structure, looking like some long-legged insect. They took a taxi directly to the hospital.