Mercy Train (24 page)

Iris couldn't say she'd made peace with her private self just yet, but she could say, This is who I am, without hedging, without second-guessing, without reservation. That's all one can really ask for, she thought. It was enough.

 

SAM

With her grandmother's letter still in her pocket, Sam felt a new resolve as she raced across town to get Ella. But the traffic on Regent Street was backed up all the way to Park. She hit the steering wheel. It was 4:06 already, and she was late. How could a place as small as Madison possibly need this many bicycle stores? A group of college girls in jeans, heels, and tight little tops hobbled in front of her car holding their arms. And why didn't the Coasties ever wear coats?

The traffic started to move, and Sam jammed left through the tail end of the yellow light at Monroe Street, her palms damp on the steering wheel. On Jefferson, her brakes screeched as she skidded to a stop in front of Melanie's house.

“Hi,” Sarah sang, as she opened the door, Ella on her hip. “Melanie's stopping off at the wine store. She told me to tell you to hang out for a bit.”

But Sam wasn't listening. She pulled Ella from Sarah's arms; the recognition in that soft, perfect face, the smile on those pincushion lips, was enough to make her feel, for just a moment, grounded, holding fast to her child.

“Dadadadada,” Ella said, pulling Sam's hair.

“Thank you,” Sam said to Sarah. “Here, let me pay you.”

“Oh, that's okay. Melanie already covered it.”

Rosalee yelled a sing-song “Sarah” from inside the house.

“Okay. Well, thanks again.” Sam turned, hugging Ella against her chest.

“Come on in. Melanie will be here in a minute.”

“We should go.”

“Sarah! Come here right now!” the toddler called.

“I'm coming, Rosa. Wait,” she said to Sam, “let me get your stuff.”

She jogged to the kitchen and back with the diaper bag, her face ruddy and young.

“See you soon, little girl,” Sarah said to Ella, touching her cheek.

Rosalee raced down the hall and slid in her socks into Sarah's legs.

Sam waved quickly as she headed to the car. She strapped Ella into her car seat and kissed her on the forehead and on the petal-soft mouth, as her breasts surged with milk, hard mounds on her chest. The sun was already gone from the sky, the dusk, a cold arrival in the fall, unwelcome and gray.

But she had her baby back.

“What do you think, baby,” she said, “should we go home?”

As she drove, Sam looked in her rearview mirror, at the reflection of Ella, who sucked her pacifier and watched the streetlights in the pale yellow sweater Sam's grandmother had knit. Her life was coming back into view.

*   *   *

“I was thinking about what you said earlier,” Theo said. “About adopting.”

“Sorry. I shouldn't have said anything,” Sam said, rounding Lake Monona, lit up by the low moon.

“It's okay. I think, when it comes down to it, I don't really want a kid that badly,” he said. “Not that I've ever admitted that to Cindy.”

Sam thought of her friend Mina again, who had been a surrogate for her gay brother, and felt a bite of envy for such sibling closeness. To love someone enough to give over your baby—because how could it not feel like yours?

“You won't know until you have one,” she said.

How strange to imagine the time before Ella when she didn't yet know this feeling, this churning mix of worry, need, longing, joy, attachment, resentment, bewilderment, and obsession—this love that had flattened her.

“Yeah. But that seems like a pretty big risk to take. I could be like that woman who gave her adopted kid back.”

“I read about her.”

“And I bet you thought she was awful.”

“You're right. I did,” Sam said.

As she drove past the food co-op, she thought about all the things they were out of at home, and she tried not to think about the day, to parse its meaning.

“I'm going to research the letter. Try to find out about Grandmother. We should know this stuff about our family.” She felt a tug on a cord deep within her, a link to a connection she hadn't known she was missing.

“Go get 'em, Sherlock.”

“You're the one who did Dad's family tree. Complete with a tree drawn in colored pencils.”

Theo laughed. “Did you talk to him yet?”

“No. But I'll call him. I will.”

“Yeah,” Theo said. “Right after you clean out the gutters.”

She deserved her brother's skepticism, but despite her earlier posturing she wanted to see her father. She was finished with harboring childish judgments. They were a waste.

“Hey, what are you guys doing for Thanksgiving?” she asked.

“Cindy's brother's family's house in Arlington.”

“Don't sound so thrilled.”

“We should plan a visit one of these days, Sammy. It's been too long.”

It happened about once a year. They would decide to be closer, and then a month later the sentiment was eclipsed.

“Let's do that,” she said.

“For real this time.”

“Yes. I'm in. Hey, Theo?”

“Yeah?”

“We'll bury Mom.”

“We'll bury Mom,” he said.

Sam felt herself righted, optimistic even, gliding on a steel track toward home. She glanced back at Ella, her curious face visible in the intermittent streetlights.

“Check your calendar. We'll talk dates.”

“All right, sister of mine,” Theo yawned. “I better go. A benefit Cindy's dragging me to.”

“For?”

“Some children's something or other.”

“Nice, Theo.”

“Oh, come on, they'll get their money.” He laughed.

*   *   *

As Sam turned onto their street she was comforted by the block of worn-in houses wedged close together, warmly lit—dinnertime—the smell of oaky smoke from her neighbor's wood-burning stove, the winking colored lights wrapped around Ted's porch, which he had yet to take down from last Christmas.

She juggled the diaper bag and hugged Ella to her, stepping carefully up the dark front steps to the house. She shoved the key in the door and kicked it open. Inside it still smelled deliciously like pound cake. They were home.

The answering machine blinked red.

“Hi, Samantha. It's your dad. Marie and I are headed your way, and we'd love to stop by and see you. If that's all right with you kids, of course. In two weeks or so? We have a few more stops up here in Canada before making our way down. Well, okay then. Give me a call when you can. Kiss my granddaughter for me.”

Sam blew her cheeks out with a sigh. She had lost years with her father, for reasons that no longer held much weight. She would call him in the morning. It was a start.

After changing Ella's diaper and suiting her up in footed dinosaur pajamas, Sam placed her in a plastic rain-forest-themed monstrosity called the Jumparoo and finally took off her coat. Ella chewed on a plastic toucan and bounced up and down in the bungee-attached seat.

Jack arrived a few minutes later, his chestnut curls spilling over his ears, a stain on the front of his sweater—pea soup? His eyes were tired, but when he walked in the door they brightened at the sight of Ella jumping away. Sam felt the warmth of familiarity, but it was more than that. She had missed him.

“Sorry I'm late,” he said, setting the takeout bags on the table and shaking off his coat, which he hung on the back of a chair. His lips were cold as he kissed her cheek. He went to Ella and swooped her up, tossing her in the air until she giggled. “How are my girls?”

“We survived,” Sam said. “Ella did great.”

“And you?”

“I couldn't do it.”

Jack's eyes were dark and gentle, the way she used to see them so long ago. Her heart beat like a cornered animal as she gathered her nerve.

“I'm going to cancel Franklin's commission.”

Jack dropped his chin in disappointment.

“I'll call him tomorrow and apologize,” she said.

He pursed his lips but then nodded. “Okay. You got to do what you got to do.”

He set Ella down on the carpet, and she crawled off to retrieve a stuffed bunny.

“I'm just not ready,” she said.

“It's a process. It'll take time. You took a hiatus to make a life.”

Yes, she thought, I made life. And I have also taken it away.

“Maybe that phase is over, I don't know.” She didn't quite mean it, but she wanted to taste the idea, roll it around on her tongue.

“Phase?”

“Clay. Pots.”

“Since when is your art a phase?”

She smiled at him, thankful. “You're right. I'm just being defeatist.” Ella gave a high-pitched scream, experimenting, and smiled at Sam. “Before I forget, I talked to Ted today.”

“Any morsels for me?”

“His father was a scientist at Los Alamos. The hydrogen bomb.”

“Nice. Wow. Hippie Ted with a bomb-maker dad. Good one.” Jack picked up Ella and put her on his lap. “Are you hungry? I couldn't remember what you wanted. So I punted. Just got a bunch of stuff.”

She felt a momentary pique—she ordered the same thing every time—but, as she reminded herself, this was not the stuff of tragedy. It did not have to be symbolic or weighted or tucked away to add to a pile of resentments. It was just dinner.

“Let me put Ella to bed,” she said.

“Good night, my little pumpkin.” He kissed her all over her face as she smiled and squirmed. “I missed you today. Sleep well. Let Mommy sleep tonight.”

*   *   *

The dark room was a warm cocoon, shades drawn, and the soft rush of air from the humidifier hushed out the sounds of the house and noises from outside. Sam rocked in the glider chair that had been her mother's, as Ella nursed, sleep near. As her eyes adjusted, Sam could just make out the letters of Ella's name on the wall, which Jack had bought and mounted in an arc above her crib.

“Do you want to name the baby after your mother?” he had asked quietly, in bed one night, a few weeks after Iris had died.

“No,” she had said quickly. “Iris was Iris. I like our name.”

“Me too.”

Sam picked up Ella and switched her to the other breast. The elephants of the mobile above the crib spun aimlessly in the parched air blowing from the heating vent. She closed her eyes and listened to the faint clank of plates as Jack set the table for dinner.

*   *   *

“What's all this?” Jack asked, palming a clay apple she'd made in kindergarten.

“A box Theo sent. Of my mom's. My dad found it in his garage. He took it by accident after the divorce.”

“Your early work?” Jack raised his eyebrow and held out the apple.

She smiled and took an edamame pod from the container, squeezing out the beans with her teeth. He put the apple on the table next to other mementos she'd looked through earlier.

“I'm almost finished going through it. I wish I could be more like Theo and just let it all go.”

“No, you don't.”

“No, I don't.” She sopped up soy sauce with a piece of a spicy tuna roll, sucking the salty liquid from the rice. “So,” she said. “Congratulations.”

He smiled and shook his head. “It's nuts, isn't it? Not that it's anything yet. But I'm pleased.”

“Me too.”

“Unfortunately I have a huge stack of papers to grade tonight,” he said, standing and stretching.

“Jack?”

“Hmm?”

“Nothing. We can talk about it later. Go do your work. It's been a long day.”

He kissed the top of her head.

When he was gone and she was once again alone, Sam pushed away the Styrofoam containers of food. She opened the small Bible and ran her thumb along the edges of the gossamer pages, hoping for something else, some other clue. The pages opened to a folded square of light blue paper, stained yellow in its crease, with a piece torn out near one of its edges. She held the delicate paper up and turned it over, but all that appeared to be on it was a very faint handwritten number 8. She flipped through the Bible again but found nothing else tucked inside.

Sam gathered up her grandmother's recipes, which she'd left in a messy pile after she'd discovered the letter. She stacked the cards one by one and, sure enough, after Peach Chartreuse there it was: Pound Cake. The measurements were in cups, which would have helped, and the recipe called for ten eggs. She'd been close. A note at the bottom of the card read,
Add vanilla and pinch of mace
. From her grandmother, to her mother, to her. Sam smiled, feeling a sense of rightness in that simple continuum. She ran her finger over her grandmother's handwriting and set the card aside.

She tipped the last of Iris's keepsakes onto the table, spilling the contents in a small dusty heap. Of course she had wanted to find some talisman or diary or telling residue of her mother's life in the box, and of course she had found none of those things. But neither could she part with what remained. A few centimes and franc coins rolled and spun. A cracked postcard from Zurich, the writing faded to an illegible shadow. A photograph of Sam—age four, she guessed—in a polka-dotted dress and saddle shoes, and an adolescent Theo, his hair feathered over his ears, in front of a Christmas tree, and another of all four of them, Iris's face turned away from the camera, and Glenn in a candy-cane-striped tie. A photograph from sometime in the fifties of her parents—they must have been newly married—in the living room of the old farmhouse Iris had grown up in, his hand on her knee. And another, from a later time, of Theo, ten or so, in brown corduroys and a turtleneck, laughing as he bent toward a pig behind a fence.

The last picture was of her grandmother standing in front of a plowed field, a swaddled infant—Sam—asleep in her arms. So I have been to Minnesota after all, she thought. She pulled the picture closer. Her grandmother's face was hardened, worn, squinting into the sun. A utilitarian woman. A farmer's wife. For almost sixty years she took care of the house, a husband, a child, the chickens, the canning. Who was she before she was Mrs. Olsen, when she was just Violet? Sam flipped the photo over:
Mother and Samantha, September 1967
. The picture warmed something in Sam. It spoke of history and continuity, of life lived and of life still to live. She pulled the letter from her pocket and slipped it under a magnet on the refrigerator along with the photograph.