The Remedy for Regret (6 page)

In fact, a few months later, everything shifted for me. A strong gust pulled at my sail and I found myself on a new course on unfamiliar seas. One unforgettable day in May—the day I found my mother’s medical records—I pretty much ceased to contemplate what good things awaited me. I began instead a different kind of meditation, one I still can’t seem to wring free of my thoughts.

I was looking for summer clothes. I knew they had to be in a box that my dad and I hadn’t had to open yet since moving in. There were several boxes marked “MISC” sitting in the garage, filled with unrelated things that the movers had thrown together when they had just odds and ends from various rooms left to pack. Dad was at the base. It was a Thursday afternoon, about four o’clock.

The first box I tried was stuffed with appliance manuals, a bag of fishing tackle, a set of Tupperware bowls, a broken soap dish and two empty photo albums. The second had a set of ugly brown curtains on top and then, thankfully, my shorts and summer shirts. I started pulling them out and was almost finished when I came across a couple file folders bound together with a thick rubber band. On the tab of each was my mother’s name:
Madeline Longren
. Stamped across the front of both were the words “Medical Records.”

I had been on my knees, but the moment I realized what I was holding, I sat back on my bottom. I fingered the tabs for several minutes before taking the rubber band off, as I knew I would.

It didn’t take long to find what I was looking for. Every entry was in chronological order. I just headed to the entry that bore my birthday. There was a lot written there. Several pages. I didn’t understand most of it, but I was really just looking for one word. Embolism. I figured when I found it, I would find out how in the world my mother got one. Eventually I saw the word, though I almost missed it because there were two other words in front of it. It was on a document labeled post-mortem. I read the three words, saying them out loud.

Amniotic Fluid Embolism…

A tremor ran through me. I knew what amniotic fluid was. I had been swimming in it when I was living inside her. My heart began to pound as I read more:

Amniotic Fluid Embolism suspected by attending when seizures started. Shortness of breath began during last stage of labor. Pt. became slightly cyanotic during episiotomy repair, alterations in mental status preceded coma. Traces of lanugo and vernix found in lungs on histological examination indicative of AFE.

Something was being revealed to me, I could sense it. But I didn’t know what it was.

I took the files into the house, into my dad’s study. I looked at the books on his shelves, hoping that the one I wanted wasn’t at his office on base. I figured it wouldn’t be. It was a college textbook on medical terms and he hardly used it anymore. I saw its blue binding and I stood on his desk chair to reach it. I turned to the A’s. Within moments I found it. Amniotic Fluid Embolism. I read in silence, understanding at last what had happened. Amniotic fluid had entered my mother’s blood stream and had flowed into her lungs where it wasn’t supposed to be.
Whose fault was that?
I wondered. I didn’t know what lanugo and vernix were but her records said they were indicative of AFE, of amniotic fluid embolism. I turned to the L’s and read in horror. I turned to the V’s and my shock turned to despair.

Lanugo was the soft downy hair that had covered my tiny body inside her.

Vernix was the white, creamy protective layer that had covered my skin.

My hair, my skin.

Bits and pieces of my little body had floated off into her bloodstream and suffocated her.

I sat there in my dad’s office, choking back sobs. I wanted so much to ask my dad if it was true, did this really happen, because, like all people who are suddenly given bad news, I wanted it to be a mistake.

But I didn’t do it. I went back out to the garage and put the records at the bottom of the first box, underneath the appliance manuals and fishing tackle. I replaced the tape and then shoved the box back where I found it. When my father came home that night, I pretended to be sick with menstrual cramps. I had only been menstruating for four months, but Blair had recently told me cramps were a good excuse for hiding other kinds of aches. He gave me Tylenol and I spent the evening in my room, on my bed, wishing with all my heart that Corinthia was right, that there was a way to be re-born. To go back and do it over and this time get it right.

I shake this image of me lying miserable on my bed in Arkansas out of my head. The plane is now starting its wild, rushing jaunt across the tarmac in preparation for its lift skyward. I want to convince myself that Simon is right, that I did not kill my mother. I didn’t mean to. But he didn’t mean to kill that woman and her little daughter, either, and look at him. He is languishing in his regret.

Regret.

That single word brings Corinthia back to the forefront of my troubled mind.

A few days after I learned the truth, when I was still walking around in a fog of remorse, Corinthia had asked me what was bothering me. We were in her backyard and I was helping her hang laundry on her clothesline. I wanted to tell her everything but I was afraid. I just told her I had done something I wish I hadn’t.

“Well, you know what the remedy for regret is, don’t you?” she said.

I shook my head. I didn’t.

“Find a way to make it right,” she replied.

Her answer left me feeling hopeless and I started to cry in front of her.

“What if there is no way I can make it right?” I said.

She must have wondered what it was I had done, but she didn’t ask.

“Well, can you live with it?” she said instead.

I wasn’t sure. I didn’t think I could.

“No,” I whispered.

She leaned down so that her eyes met my eyes and rested her hands on my shoulders.

“Then find someone who
can
make it right,” she said, looking deep into my soul.

I think even then I knew whom she meant. But that was also a hopeless suggestion. Even God has limitations.

Give it a rest, for God’s sake. You didn’t kill your mother, Tess.

Simon’s angry words are repeating themselves in my head as the plane surges forward. I want to believe he is right but that’s not how it feels. Now everything else is suddenly swirling in my head; Simon’s grief and his unrevealed news, the remembered scent of Monica’s baby, memories of the abandoned infant in the peach box, my father’s phone call earlier today, the sound of Corinthia’s voice and lastly the face of the woman in the airport who told me I was the answer to her prayers.

I feel weighed down. I want to be above it all. I want my own world to be far behind me as I rush to Blair’s side.

The plane pushes upward against the gravitational pull of the fallen earth, willing itself heavenward, but I can feel the resistance all around me; that force that wants to send me back to the broken world where I belong.

St Louis, Missouri

A
s I get off the plane at the St. Louis airport, I am only vaguely aware that this place is unfamiliar to me. I have never flown into the St. Louis airport before. The few times I’ve been to this city, I have come by car. Like all major airports I’ve been in, this one is bustling with activity and I am alone in it. There is no one here to greet me, and though this does not surprise me, it doesn’t bother me either. Dad and I traveled so much when I was a child that I grew up accustomed to living out of a suitcase for weeks at a time and being in a strange place where I know no one.

I make my way to baggage claim, watching all the travelers around me who I can tell have just come home. I can see it in their walk and in their faces. They look relaxed and nearly bored. The thrill of travel is over for them. They are from here. They are home.

I find it interesting and unsettling that one of the first things people want to know about me when I meet them is where I am from. It shouldn’t be that difficult a question to answer and for most people, it probably isn’t. But like a lot of children of military parents, I struggle with the answer. In the past I’ve been tempted to say that I’m from nowhere. But even in jest, that sounds far too poetic. Or arrogant. Like I believe myself to be above space and time. Like God.

But the truth is, I don’t feel like I’m from anywhere. I am not from the Azores, though I was born there. I am half-British but I have never been to England. I have lived in Virginia, Maine, Nebraska, Arkansas, Ohio and lately Illinois, but I don’t feel like any one of these places is where I am
from
. If I were to die today, I suppose my father would bury me next to distant, deceased Longren relatives who lie under the grass in a small cemetery in central Wisconsin near where his parents live. But I’ve never called Wisconsin home. Chicago is beginning to feel like home to me. And since it has always been Simon’s home, I feel a growing attachment. But I doubt I will someday be buried there. I doubt I will ever say it is where I am from.

The luggage carousel for my flight is empty and unmoving when I reach it. I lean against a wall, waiting with dozens of others who were on my plane for our suitcases to find their way to us. I think about the other times I have been to St. Louis as I wait.

The first time can hardly be counted. Dad and I drove through St. Louis two weeks after Blair, Jewel and I found the baby and reluctantly gave it up. We were on our way to Wisconsin to see his parents, my grandparents. We looked at the famous arch from the air-conditioned confines of our car as we crossed the Mississippi River into Illinois. I don’t remember much about that particular trip. Too much had happened in the preceding few weeks. I do remember Dad asking me, more than once, what I thought of Shelley. But there was nothing to think of Shelley at that point. I had only known her for about a month, about as long as he had.

The second time was about a year later, for my fourteenth birthday. Dad took Blair, Jewel and me to downtown St. Louis where he got us our own hotel room—right next to his. This time we went up inside the amazing arch. I began to hyperventilate when I saw the arch’s shadow swaying in the muddy river below us. Blair thought it was hilarious. Jewel began praying under her breath that I would not faint. I was glad to come back down and touch solid ground. Two days after we came home from that trip, Dad gave Shelley an engagement ring.

The third time was when Blair, who had moved to St. Louis after college, got married and I was one of the bridesmaids. I decided to drive out from Ohio for the wedding. My address at the time was the spare bedroom at Dad and Shelley’s, where I was contemplating going back to college. I was in sort of a mental in-between place. I was twenty-three, not dating anyone and very unsure of what I wanted to do with my life. I still needed eighteen credits to complete the business degree I thought I wanted, but I had no motivation to do anything about it. I had no job then, either. At Dad’s urging, I had returned to the house we had moved into—him, me and his pregnant, second wife—after we left Arkansas.

It was the house where I spent the last three years of high school, where Zane was born, and where Dad hung up his Air Force uniforms after deciding Zane needed a normal, stationary life. His orders to Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton were to be his last. My father retired from the Air Force the same month I graduated from high school in Ohio and he began his new career as a lecturer at a medical school. Shelley, who was just a new second lieutenant when she met my dad in Blytheville, gave up her commission as soon as her four-year commitment was up so she could be a fulltime mother to Zane.

Lucky Zane.

So there I was, five years out of high school and I was still looking for my place in the world. I had changed my major three times, had worked part time at an animal shelter, a French restaurant, an antique store and a private school for gifted children. I had moved away from Dayton and come back twice.

My father was very patient with me during this chaotic time in my life. Too patient, really. I wanted him to sit me down and talk some sense into me. He just kept writing out checks to Wright State University for the phantom degree I pretended to pursue. To her credit, Shelley tried to find ways to help me, but she really had no idea what it was like to stare at a big world with no idea of where to go in it. So nothing she said really mattered to me. That she is only twelve years older than me probably had something to do with my indifference to her counsel as well. Not because she wasn’t old enough or smart enough to know anything, because I am sure she was. It’s just I couldn’t—and still can’t—think of her as a mother figure capable of dispensing advice.

So when Blair called me after tracking me down at my Dad’s and asked me to be a bridesmaid at her wedding, I decided a road trip was in order. She offered to fly me out then, too, as she had already gotten quite adept at spending Brad’s millions, even before the wedding. But I was glad for the opportunity to be alone in my car for the long stretch of hours between Dayton and St. Louis. It was actually one of the best decisions I had made in a long time, because on the way back from the wedding, I took a side trip to Chicago to visit a friend from my sophomore year of college, which incidentally I spent at the University of Ohio. It was this same friend, Emily Trowdell, who now lives in Atlanta, who convinced me to stay in Chicago, helped me get the job in the Customs Office at O’Hare where she also worked, and who later introduced me to Simon—a friend of a friend of a friend.

I met Antonia at O’Hare, too. She made several trips to Italy that first year and I came to know her on a first name basis because she always seemed to come through customs when I was on duty. She intrigued me and I apparently intrigued her. She told me on our second meeting she would give her left foot to have my color hair, but not her left or right arm, because she would need them both to style it. Antonia said my auburn hair was the exact color of the sky over the Mediterranean at sunset. She also told me, on our third meeting, that I was very wise to stay away from beige. I had laughed. Veronica Devere, Blair’s mother, had told me the same thing when I was fourteen. It was one of the few things I remember her ever saying to me. I went to work for Antonia at
Linee Belle
my second year in Chicago when she offered me two dollars more an hour than what the customs office paid, plus a regular work schedule and an impressive title—assistant manager.

So in sense, St. Louis, with its celebrated Gateway to the West, became a gateway for me personally. I used it as a passageway to move out on my own—for the last time—away from Dad and Shelley, away from the place where my childhood was supposed to have ended and my adult life was supposed to have begun.

My suitcase is one of the first to be deposited on the carousel and once I have it, I follow the Ground Transport signs to the rental car agencies section. I pick the one with the shortest line, but I soon discover the lone woman ahead of me wants a white Cadillac Seville, not a blue one, and that she is prepared to be adamant about it. While the flustered rental car agency explains there isn’t a white one available, I take out my cell phone and press the speed dial button for Blair’s number. I hope she will be mentally able to give me good directions to the hospital. I have no idea where anything is in relation to this airport.

Blair’s cell phone number rings six times before her voice mail picks it up. In a sunny tone that doesn’t fit the day, Blair’s recorded voice asks me to leave a message. I quickly leave one, telling her I am at the airport, in line to get a rental car and will wait to hear back from her before I leave.

Fifteen minutes later I am sitting in a red Camry in the rental car parking lot and my phone call has not been returned. I decide to try again and I get the same message after six rings. I hang up without leaving a second message and whisper, “This is not good,” to the steering wheel. I have Blair’s home address and the GPS on the rental will no doubt get me there, but I doubt anyone will be at home. I can call a couple of local hospitals and ask to speak with the family of a patient named Brad Holbrook and see what happens. I can look for a hotel room near the airport and at least have a place to sleep tonight while I keep trying to reach Blair.

I decide on choice number three but I dial Blair’s number one more time before starting the car. Blair’s number rings five times and I am almost ready to hang up when I hear a man’s voice say hello.

It can’t possibly be Brad. I do not know the voice.

“Hello?” I say. “I’m looking for Blair. Do I have the right number?”

There is a pause.

“Can I ask who this is, please?” says the voice.

If I had the wrong number he would not have asked this, so I must have gotten through to Blair’s phone. But I am hesitant to give this stranger my full name.

“This is Tess. Can I speak to Blair, please?” I say, trying to inject a little authority in my voice.

Another pause.

“She can’t come to the phone right now. You’ll have to call back some other time,” the man says.

“Wait!” I yell into my phone, fearing he is going to hang up on me. “Blair called me earlier today. She told me Brad had a heart attack and she asked
me
to come to her. I just flew in from Chicago and I am sitting in a rental car at
your
airport, okay? Now can you please let me talk to her?”

A third pause.

“Just a minute,” he says and I can tell he has placed his thumb over the mouthpiece of Blair’s phone. Several long minutes pass.

“Look,” he says and his voice sounds softer, but strained. “This is just a really bad time. Brad… Brad died half an hour ago and everything is a little crazy.”

As he says the word “died” I feel my breath catch in my throat. “Brad is dead?”

“He… he never regained consciousness after he collapsed,” the man said, emotion lacing his words. “They don’t think he suffered.”

“And Blair?” Emotion is now thick in my own voice.

“She’s taking it pretty hard,” the man continues. “A doctor here at the hospital has given her a sedative. We are getting ready to take her home.”

I have no idea who he means by
we
. “Can… can I ask who you are?” I venture.

“My name is Peter Agnew. Brad was a partner in my investment firm. He… he worked for me.”

“I am so sorry,” I mumble because nothing else seems adequate. I am aware that my cheeks are wet and that the lump in my throat has expanded into something larger and heavier and has moved down into my chest. I am aching for Blair.

“My wife and I are going to stay with her tonight,” Peter Agnew is saying.

“Does she know I am here?” I say, feeling alone in strange place. It’s a new feeling.

“She’s not very lucid right now,” Peter says. “It might be best if you got a hotel room for the night. There’s a Holiday Inn just across the freeway from the airport. I can call ahead and tell them you’re coming. I can put it on the company credit card. What’s your last name?”

“You don’t have to do that,” I start to say.

“I am sure it is what Blair would want,” Peter assures me. “I will come and get you in the morning and bring you to her, okay? Now, what’s your last name?”

“It’s Longren,” I answer, and then I have a sudden thought. “Mr. Agnew, if she wakes in the night and asks for me, please tell her where I am. If she wants me to come to her, I will. I don’t care what time of the night.”

“That’s very kind of you, Miss Longren,” Peter Agnew says. “I promise I will tell her. I will try and come for you around nine tomorrow.”

“Okay.”

We say our goodbyes and I click off.

It takes a tremendous amount of effort to maneuver the unfamiliar car out of the lot and to look for a way to get across the freeway where a cluster of hotels is located. I finally locate a street that takes traffic under the busy freeway to the other side. It does not take long to find the Holiday Inn and true to his word, Peter Agnew has called ahead. My room key is waiting for me. It is after eight and I am as hungry as I am weary. The hotel clerk must sense this because when I ask where to get a quick bite to eat he suggests I call a nearby pizza place that delivers free to the hotel. He gives me the phone number and I head to the elevator and my room on the fourth floor.

Once inside the room, I fling my suitcase onto one of the two double beds. I make the call to the pizza place as I sit on the other bed and kick off my shoes.

I am exhausted but I should call Simon.

In a few minutes
, I think to myself. I stretch out on the bed to rest my eyes for just a moment but my body willingly gives in to the pull of sleep.