Poles Apart (42 page)

I Googled Tanner Wilkinson. There were quite a few listed on LinkedIn and Facebook. But only one of them was the right age. I clicked over to his Facebook page to find that his birthday was listed as October 6, 1972, even though the adoption notice had been dated six weeks later. Eureka! He had to be Beverley’s son. Who else could he be? Even though he was now in his early forties, I thought I saw glimpses of his mother in the various family photos he’d posted. It might have been my wishful thinking at work, but at certain angles, I thought he had her eyes.

I then surfed through several adoption reunion websites that allow birth parents and adopted adults to list their names in the hopes of connecting with one another. I pursued this because I questioned whether I had the right to introduce an adopted child, now an adult, to his birth mother, even posthumously. Who was I to do that?

But all the pieces seemed to be falling into place. It was as if the whole endeavour was charmed in some way. You see, I found Tanner Wilkinson’s name on three separate California adoption reunion websites. The path seemed clear. The Internet is a wonderful thing. When you have a name, a photo, and a birth date, finding an address is only a matter of time. I immediately visited 411.com/California and was rewarded. Thankfully, Tanner Wilkinson did not have an unlisted telephone number. I found him. I found Beverley’s only son, the son she never knew.

I rolled into Santa Cruz in the midafternoon and found the house without incident. It was a nice house. According to Facebook, Tanner Wilkinson was a high school math and physics teacher. He was happily married with three daughters. Beverley had grandchildren. I parked up the road for a few minutes just to gather myself. I really had no idea how this would unfold. After about ten minutes, I decided there was no reason to put it off any longer. I started the car, drove up the street, and turned into the driveway.

He must have seen me pulling in because when I got out of the car, Tanner Wilkinson was out on his front porch waiting for me.

“You must be Tanner,” I said, extending my hand. “I’m Everett Kane. Thanks for agreeing to meet a complete stranger. I didn’t think this was the kind of discussion that should be handled over the phone.”

He shook my hand and smiled while doing it.

“Nice to shake your hand, Everett. You’ve made quite a name for yourself the last little while. As the father of three amazing daughters, I’m pleased to meet you. And your call certainly piqued my curiosity.”

“Is the rest of your clan at home?” I asked.

“They’ve headed down to the boardwalk for the afternoon. I thought it might be easier that way.”

Tanner helped me with the cargo in the trunk. We carried it around to the shaded back deck. He fetched us both beers and then we settled into chairs in the sunshine.

“Look, I know this is kind of strange, but as I said on the phone, I think you’ll want to hear this.”

“I’m in your hands,” he replied.

“I know that you have placed your name on adoption reunion websites to try to connect with your birth parents,” I started.

He nodded.

“Well, through some research I’ve undertaken, I believe I know who your mother is, or rather was, I’m sorry to say. I have no information about who your father might have been.”

It’s hard to pinpoint the look on his face. He tilted his head a little to the side, placed his beer on the table beside him, and leaned forward slightly.

“How certain are you about this? I’ve tried for a long time and have always come up empty. I don’t want to get my hopes up just yet, so you’d better tell me your story.”

“Of course. I understand. I’ll try to do it succinctly, but bear with me,” I said.

I paused for a moment and then started talking, as I’d rehearsed it yet again in front of the bathroom mirror that morning.

“I believe your mother was a woman named Beverley Tanner, a prominent feminist and a co-founder of
Ms
. magazine back in 1971. She gave birth to a boy on October 6, 1972, in a San Francisco hospital.”

His eyes widened at Beverley’s name, but he said nothing and nodded for me to continue. I lifted the lid on the pine box resting on the deck next to me and extracted a few sheets of paper.

“This, I think, is your birth certificate and adoption certificate.” I handed both to him.

“You can see they’re both dated for October 6, 1972, which I know is your birthday.”

Tanner examined them both, his hands trembling slightly. I reached into the pine box and brought out her fourth letter, wherein she described meeting her son’s adoptive parents.

“Tanner, may I ask you, is your adoptive mother’s name June?”

He looked at me with his mouth open, said nothing, but nodded. I handed him the letter.

“You’ll see in this letter that Beverley mentions that the adoptive father called his wife June in their meeting, even though he was not supposed to.”

I waited till he’d read the letter.

“So just to review the evidence so far, Beverley Tanner gave birth to a son in San Francisco on October 6, 1972. She then met with her son’s adoptive parents shortly thereafter and learned that the adoptive mother’s name was June. You were born on the same date, also in San Francisco, and were adopted by parents, where the mother was also named June. And they named you Tanner.”

He briefly held his head in his hands and took three deep breaths.

“Is there anything else I should know?” he asked.

“I’ve brought some photographs of Beverley Tanner, your mother,” I said as I lifted the file out of the pine box and handed
it to him. “I’m no expert, but I think you look like her. I think you have her eyes.”

Tanner opened the file, and as he looked through the photographs I’d mounted on black card stock, his chin started to quaver at bit. Then tears drifted down his cheeks. I gave him a minute. Hell, I needed a minute.

“Tanner, did your parents ever tell you why they named you Tanner?”

He sniffed once, wiped his eyes, and shook his head.

“No. Not really. They just said it was a name I could be proud of.”

“Well, they got that right.”

“When did she die?”

“About three months ago. She’d had a series of strokes over the last ten years. She died in her sleep.”

I reached into the pine box and pulled out a book. I handed it to him.

“This is Beverley Tanner’s, um, your mother’s memoir from several years ago. It makes no mention of you but you can sense when you read it that something is missing in her life, as productive and celebrated as it was. I know now what she was missing.”

Tanner opened the book and flipped through it, pausing on the photographs. He just shook his head a little, trying to take it all in.

“I think your daughters would really enjoy their grandmother’s book.”

He just nodded. I reached into the pine box one more time.

“And here’s a clipping file I compiled so you can see your mother in action and how revered she was for her activism. She used her sense of humour to broaden the base of the women’s movement, to make more women feel like it was their movement, too. That was an important contribution.”

“Why do you think she never tried to find me?” he asked.

“I don’t know. We never talked about it. It was off limits. But I think she might have felt that she’d already disrupted your life once, at the very start of it. Perhaps she didn’t want to disrupt it again. But what I do know is that your mother was one of the warmest, funniest, most intelligent, thoughtful, and committed people I’ve ever met. Whatever the reason, I’m quite sure it was driven by a mother’s love for her son.”

He shook his head but said nothing. I nearly pulled a muscle turning the pine box around on the deck so he could finally see inside.

“You might find some answers in these 2,500 or so letters. She was writing you right up to the end. Each letter is addressed to you. I only read the first few to figure out what was in the box. Then I stopped. They’re all dated and in order. These are for you. I’m quite sure she’d have been deeply touched to learn your parents named you Tanner.”

We talked for a couple of hours that afternoon. I told him everything I knew about Beverley. I told him how funny she was and how she helped drag my dad into the latter part of the twentieth century. With another month, she might have been able to bring
him into the new millennium. I told him how she would touch me on my arm when speaking to me. I told her how committed she was to the rights of women. I gave him copies of her guest blog post on
Eve of Equality
and the obituary I’d written. I told him how amazed and proud she would have been to meet him and her granddaughters.

As the sun started to sink, I left him there on the deck. He’d just started to read the letters his mother had spent more than forty years writing to him. I felt strangely liberated as I walked to the car. At the same time, I felt at peace.

I drove onto CA-1 South but didn’t feel much like driving anymore. So I found a reasonably nice roadside motel near Los Banos and checked in. Stopping so soon for the night meant an early start the next morning. That was fine with me. There wasn’t much going on in Los Banos on a Wednesday evening.

Thursday was yet another beautiful sunny California day. There was not a cloud in the sky as I pulled back onto the highway. I figured I could make it to
LA
inside of six hours if I kept the Elantra pointed in the right direction and was somewhat flexible in observing the speed limit. There was very little traffic on the road at that hour of the morning. I felt renewed and energized. I had a powerful feeling of accomplishment and of closure. I missed Megan. Despite everything swirling in my mind, there was still room for Megan.

I’d given Tanner Wilkinson my contact information and told him to call me whenever he liked. I’d also told him he always had a bed in
DC
if he was ever passing through.

I stopped for breakfast around 11:00 on I-5 South, near a town called Buttonwillow, a name straight out of a Dickens novel. As far as I could tell, there wasn’t much to commend Buttonwillow. But they did have something you won’t find in a Dickens novel. They have a Denny’s. I didn’t stop for long. I got back on the road after the cardio-compromising breakfast special. Tabitha told me I was still on track to reach my destination on time. Two hours later, her voice guided me up to the security hut at a sprawling lot on the edge of West Hollywood. After I presented my driver’s licence to the guard, the barrier magically lifted. I drove in and parked where he’d told me to. I was a little early so I just sat in the car for about twenty minutes, getting nervous. My cellphone bonged with a text.

“Hey Ev. Good luck this p.m. I know you’re going to kill it. (That’s a good thing,
BTW.)
I’ll be watching and cheering. Oh, sorry, but I
did
call your parents about it. I had to. They’d want to know. They’ll be watching, too. See you tomorrow. Love Megan xo”

Great. After I was buzzed into the highly secure reception area, a young man with a headset escorted me into a special room where they fixed me up as best they could. The guy was no Lewis Small, but I thought I looked fine in the end. Then I sat alone in this other rather small room for a time, eating the fresh fruit
they’d laid on. Ten minutes before I was supposed to go on, some guy came and fed a tiny microphone beneath my shirt, pulled it out through the gap between my top two buttons, and secured it with a clip. He slid the battery pack into the inside pocket of my jacket. Finally, yet a different person, a young woman, also wearing a headset, led me through a maze of hallways, and then through a big heavy door. She put her finger to her lips to make sure I was not about to burst into my own special rendition of “Crazy Train” at the top of my lungs. I hadn’t been. I don’t even like that song. So I just stood there amidst some curtains, listening to my own pounding heartbeat.

A minute or two later, I heard music and applause from beyond my field of view. Then, in what was a truly surreal experience, I heard my own introduction in a familiar voice. I thought it was all a bit over the top.