The Lost Daughter (20 page)

I can’t get the word
school
right, so I leave it out. Funny how the easiest words come hard. Last week when I was here, I read up on Freud. He’d have something to say about why I can’t type
school
, but I don’t know what it’d be.

“Time’s up,” comes a voice at my shoulder—the Gustavson guy, who seemed asleep but here he is at the top of the hour, ready to surf his horse-racing sites. I nod. I sign off. I buzz over to Mrs. K’s desk and put my name down for the session in an hour. I go to the printer and count my copies. I fish coins out of my pocket. Back at the desk, I lay the copies and the payment down.

“My goodness,” said Mrs. Kendrick. “You’ve made a lot of copies. Are you going to
read
all this?”

Is this a library? I want to say. Are these books? Do you promote literacy? But I work not to be irritated with Mrs. Kendrick. I pluck a ballpoint pen from the tall cup on the desk. I sign my name to the letter. Then I push two more quarters across. “Stamp?” I ask.

When Mrs. K frowns, her eyebrows draw together like a pair of beetles. With her index finger she draws the letter toward her. “We’re not a post office,” she says, “but I might have a spare stamp for you. Do you need…” Her eyes stray to the writing in the letter. I know she’s not supposed to be reading it; she’s not supposed to interfere with the patrons’ private concerns. But I don’t say anything. “Do you need an envelope, too?” When I nod again, Mrs. K makes a few gestures across the surface of the letter. She does it so quick I can’t read the difference, but I know what she’s up to. She’s fixing the words I got scrambled up. Then she opens her drawer and pulls out an envelope already embossed in the top right corner.

“Address, me,” I manage to say. My throat feels dry.

“Of course,” Mrs. K says. She passes the envelope to me. I quiet my shaking hand just enough to copy the address I’ve pasted onto the letter. Then, carefully, using my lousy right hand to steady the paper, I fold it into thirds, the way I’ve seen people do, and tuck it into the envelope. This takes a long time, but Mrs. Kendrick turns her attention to something on the computer while I work. When I’m done, she says, “Now a stamp’s just forty-four cents. You’ll need change.”

“No,” I say, a little louder than I should. “Envelope.”

“Right.” The eyebrows go up, then down. “Absolutely right. And you’ll mail this yourself, then? Or would you like me to put it in our Out box?”

“Please,” I say.

I really do like Mrs. Kendrick.

Forty minutes until I can get back onto the computer. I tuck the
printed information into my side bag. I wheel over to the stacks. There isn’t much here in the county library. The building is mostly to manage all the real libraries in the towns and also the Bookmobile. But there’s a little poetry section, and in the middle of it I pick out the new book I found last week, with the jacket photo of the pretty, pale woman—she looks kind of like the mother I keep imagining—who died from leaving the gas on. While I wait for my next turn, I move my lips. The words are wicked harsh. They describe a place full of stone and blank faces.
Mother, mother,
she writes, and she says her mother brought her here, to a cold kingdom. I don’t understand these verses. And they’re really hard to memorize. But there’s something about their fierceness that yanks at me. This girl says what she feels, whether it’s fair or not.

When the guy after Gustavson gets off the computer, I’ll log back on. I don’t have much time left for the things I need to do. I’ll leave the lists of schools alone for now. I want to read up more on the nature and causes of hypoxia in infants, what can be hoped for. That’s going to be the subject of my college essay, when I get that far. I want to be prepared. The other thing I’ll do before Luisa comes back will be to check
MyBirthMom.com
, where I registered a month ago. Yes, crazy people lurk on a website like that. Yes, I’ve wasted a lot of time already, writing back to women who say they gave birth near Windermere fifteen years ago. Yes, each one of them so far has been either lying—why do they lie? Do they imagine I wouldn’t know if I’d actually been born in Louisiana?—or African American. But somewhere out there lives the person who let me slip from her body into the world. Someday, maybe, that person will get a second thought, will want me back.

I read once that memory begins when language begins. Ziadek’s told me they thought I was retarded at first, because I didn’t speak
until I was four years old. But I know I had language before then, because I remember. I even remember all the work I had to do to shape the words inside my head into sounds that Ziadek and Luisa and Katarina could understand. Still, I don’t remember as far back as that other mom, the one I call
Mother
in my head. The earliest memories I have are of Jude and Robby, Katarina’s kids, putting me up in a tree. I remember they challenged me to climb down. Look at her, Jude said, she looks like a bird with a wing broke. And he poked at me with a stick. And Robby said, Well, jump then! We’ll catch you! But I didn’t jump because I knew he wouldn’t. I sat there on the branch looking down at them while they went farther and farther away, and then I wet my pants because I couldn’t hold it.

Does my real mother have other kids? Kids that would have been mean to me like Robby and Jude? Kids she loves more, so she got rid of me? These are stupid questions, the kind of questions a person like Luisa would ask. But I can’t help it, they run through my head over and over.

You do not do, you do not do
, I read in this book of poems by the blond mother,
Any more, black shoe
. But that’s about a girl who hates her father. I don’t even have a father; I never think about a father.

A throat clears a gob of phlegm. The second guy’s off the computer. Quickly I tuck the book back onto the shelf. I wheel myself over to the station and log back on. Out of the corner of my eye I spot Mrs. Kendrick, smiling at me. For safety’s sake, I open a window on the computer next to the windows I’m really investigating.
THE MATHPAGE
, this extra window reads in bright letters;
TOPICS IN PRECALCULUS
. I’ve already studied this site, but Luisa won’t know that. If she comes in without warning, I just have to click on this math page. I glance at the clock. I need to pee. My throat’s parched. But I’ve only got a half hour. I set to work.

D
anny was the only one free to meet Sean for a beer. Gerry, he maintained in the garden at the Half Door, was getting henpecked. “Pussy-whipped,” said Danny.

“That’s ugly,” countered Sean. “I don’t care what you think about Kate, that kind of talk is ugly.”

It was after seven, the sun below the horizon already. Sean had left for the bar as soon as Brooke got home. She’d had her walk, he maintained to himself; he could have his happy hour. His brother fidgeted, across from him. Danny was losing his hair, not from the forehead like Sean, but balding from the back of the crown, like a monk’s tonsure, so his face still looked like the mischievous kid he’d been in high school. “Call ’em as I see ’em,” he said. “You know she got her tubes tied, after Derek?”

“Pretty good idea.” Sean sucked on his beer. “They’ve got four. The economy’s not helping anyone.”

“But she didn’t tell Gerry, man. No consultation. That is fucked up.”

“You don’t think Nora would do that, if she didn’t want any more?”

“No way. It’s a decision you make together.” Danny smacked his lips. He looked around the bar. Danny was in sales, and he was always hoping to make a contact at the Half Door. He turned back to Sean. “Brooke?” he said.

Sean felt a knot in his lungs. He coughed. “We’ve got a little disagreement,” he confessed, “about family size. But she hasn’t tied the tubes.”

“You so sure? She hides something, that one. With that little smile of hers.” Danny attempted a poor imitation of Brooke’s sly smile. He was on his fourth beer, Sean on his third. Sean had known his brother long enough to detect when Danny was spoiling for a fight. That was how they’d grown up, after all—the four of them teasing and prodding each other, looking to hit a nerve, while Fanny wrung her hands and Mum egged them on. But Sean didn’t want a fight. He wanted someone to help him figure out his life.

“I think,” he said, signaling Tommy for another, “she’s seeing someone.”

He hadn’t meant to say that; didn’t know he thought it until the words were out of his mouth. But Danny only grunted. “Bitch,” he said. “You think she married you just to get the one kid?”

“I think she married me”—images of the early days, the curve of Brooke’s hip and the warm light in her eyes, flooded Sean’s head—“because she loved me.”

“They get over that.”

“Speak for yourself, Danny! You’re over Nora. You keep her around because you couldn’t get along without her. But you don’t love the woman.”

“Hey, I am not the cuckold here. You want a detective on it? I know a guy.”

“I do not want a detective!” Sean slammed the new beer onto the counter. Foam sprayed. “It’s this guy,” he said, tamping down his voice, “she knew in high school. Lives in Boston. Seems he can’t get enough of the Mass Pike. I check the phone and see his caller ID on it. I don’t know what the fuck’s going on.”

“You ask her?”

“Sure! She says he’s divorced, he lost a kid, he’s lonely, it’s old times. She doesn’t invite him to meet her husband and kid, though.”

“And she’s hedging on having another kid.” Danny nodded sagely. “Makes sense. She is still a good-looking woman.”

“You’re not helping me.”

“So talk to the priest.”

“Consult a celibate about my wife. That makes plenty of sense.”

“None of it makes sense if you’re talking females. Either they get fat on you or they screw around on you. Those are the choices.”

“I love my wife, Danny, can’t you get that?”

He’d taken the bait. He saw that with Danny’s satisfied grimace. “I’m just trying to help, brother,” Danny said casually. “Look, are things okay at the print shop? Because I can get you a commission job. Territory as far as Springfield, you’d meet some new people, you’re still a young guy—”

“Fuck you, Danny. All right? Next time I want your help I’ll put a hole in my head instead.” Sean slapped a twenty and a ten on the counter and turned to leave. Before he’d slid from the stool, his brother was already looking around the room, eyeing business prospects.

A storm cloud seemed to build right behind Sean’s eyes as he walked home in the autumn twilight.

Work, he said to himself, that was all it was—they were still in the hole at the print shop, and Larry not meeting his eyes, it made him anxious, snappish. No, that wasn’t it. It was Brooke. Twice,
now, she had admitted seeing this Alex character. Both times she had gone on long walks after. When he talked to her at night, she was half listening. When they made love, he felt her half absent. They said only human females had orgasms, but hers seemed to come from some blunt animal part of her, while the human Brooke was spinning a thread somewhere else. He almost wished she would bring up adoption again; at least that would mean she wanted to keep building a family with him.

Talk to the priest, that was all Danny could offer. But Christ, he hated the Catholic church. Only the choir had kept him going, when he was younger, until he realized how out of tune all the voices were. Now he sang on the symphony stage, with people who hardly knew one another. Bach was a genius, but he gave no advice. All Sean wanted were two simple answers. Why wouldn’t his wife bear him another child? And what gave with this Alex character?

She’s having an affair with him.
That was one answer, and it fit both. What did Brooke call it? Occam’s razor. Simplest answer probably the right one. What it had to do with a razor he never understood. Felt the edge of a razor right now, cutting at him, slicing him into ribbons.

Brooke had dinner on the table, chicken in some kind of lemon sauce. “You’re in fine shape,” she said, glancing at her watch. It was almost eight. “I fed Meghan already.”

“So we don’t have family dinner now?” He felt it like a contagion caught from Danny: a compulsion to pick a fight.

“Sure we do. At seven. When people use their cell phones, I even remind them.” She poured herself a glass of red wine. “This is like the fifth time in two weeks, Sean.”

“Eat with Meghan then. If you’re so uptight about mealtime.” He popped open another beer and set it on a coaster. He watched Brooke move fluidly between stove and table. She had cut her hair
a week ago, and bought a couple of new tops on sale. She looked younger, more sprightly. Through her cotton sweater he could make out the shape of her nipples. Who was she looking so sexy for? Alex? “Be like Mum if you like,” he said. “Feed my supper to the dogs.”

Their eyes met. This was Brooke’s chance to call his bluff—to say, “All right,” pick up his plate of chicken and rice, and dump it into the blue plastic bowl by the fridge. And then to take him to bed, where he wouldn’t perform but would thrill to the touch of her fingers on his skin. Instead, she sipped her wine. She said abruptly, “I am not your mum. I don’t know what’s gotten into you. Meghan wanted to play her arithmetic game with you. She made it up—”

“I know she made it up,” he interrupted. “I fetch her from school, remember? While you’re hawking weed killer.”

“What is going
on
with you? Is it work? Are there more layoffs?”

He looked from her to the glazed carrots on his plate. He’d tended those carrots in their backyard—St. Valery, the brightest, sweetest kind. He had a momentary impulse to fling the whole pretty thing in her face. His head hurt. What would it take to shake the truth out of her? Why had she never trusted him with the truth? “I’m not hungry,” he said. He pushed the plate away and picked up his bottle. “I’m going to find my daughter.”

“Sean, she’s in bed.”