Looking for Jane (109)

Angela takes a step toward her, eyes shining. “I’m adopted, Evelyn.” Her words distract Evelyn just enough that she’s able to listen.

“You are?”

“Yes. And when I met my birth mother, we were both nervous, too. I remember that anxiety so vividly. But I needed to meet her, and my mom was supportive of that.” Face flushed, she rests one hand on her midsection, and Evelyn notices a curve that wasn’t there a few weeks ago. Her own stomach gives a little jolt, remembering how that felt, a lifetime ago. “I know my situation isn’t the same as Nancy’s,” Angela continues, “and my birth mother’s wasn’t the same as yours, but I can tell you I’m sure this is going to go a lot better than you’re imagining. This is a good thing, I promise. Now let’s sit down. I’ll get you some water.”

Angela disappears into the kitchen and comes back with a cold glass. They settle down together on Evelyn’s puffy couch and Angela reaches out for Evelyn’s hand. They intertwine their fingers on the seat between them.

“Thank you, Angela,” she mutters, taking a sip. “For everything.”

“You’re welcome.” Angela smiles, squeezes her fingers.

They sit there, side by side, for a few minutes, each staring out the window ahead of them as the clock on the wall ticks away the seconds until Nancy’s arrival. It’s a breathtaking wait.

And then the doorbell rings.

A little gasp escapes Evelyn’s mouth.

“I’ll get it,” Angela says, releasing Evelyn’s hand.

Evelyn knows she should answer the door herself, but she’s rooted to the spot. “Thank you,” she whispers.

Angela pulls herself up off the couch and walks toward the door. A moment later, Evelyn hears the street level door unlocking, sounds from the city floating in.

Her daughter’s voice.

Jane’s voice.

“Hi! You must be Angela!”

“Yeah! Hi, Nancy. It’s nice to finally be able to put a face to your name. Come on in. Evelyn’s just upstairs.”

Nancy’s voice echoes in the stairwell.

“Thank you so much for making the effort to find me, honestly,” Nancy says. “This is the best shock I could possibly imagine. I know I was a bit speechless when you called.”

They’re right outside the door.

“You’re welcome. I just, well… I had to.”

Evelyn rises from her chair with difficulty. Her legs feel like they’re made of glue. She stands still in the middle of the living room. Angela is turning the handle. She’s back inside the apartment. Nancy follows closely behind her, and the room becomes cloudy and silent to Evelyn, as though she’s about to faint. Now all she can see is Nancy’s face. Her daughter’s face.

Jane’s face.

She’s aged since Evelyn saw her last, on the cold January night when the Janes celebrated legalization together, raised a glass to the fact that their underground operation was no longer needed. Nancy’s brown temples are greying, her face is a little more angled, with crow’s-feet around her eyes and laugh lines in her cheeks. She’s in her mid-fifties now. Evelyn notes how thrilled she is that her daughter spent her life smiling so much that she now has such generous wrinkles. They are the precious souvenirs of a life well lived.

Angela retreats and closes the apartment door quietly, leaving Evelyn and Nancy alone.

Nancy clears her throat, and sets her purse down. Her hands twitch at her sides as she steps forward toward Evelyn.

Toward Maggie.

Toward her mother.

“Nancy…” Maggie begins.

“I can’t believe it’s you,” Nancy says, her voice breaking.

“I know.” Maggie nods. “I know. I was worried you wouldn’t.”

Nancy shakes her head, and Maggie can see the tears welling in her daughter’s eyes now. “I have so many questions,” she says. “How did you—How?”

A knot the size of a golf ball is fighting its way up Maggie’s throat. “Nancy, I—”

“You can… you can call me Jane, if you want.”

The tears start to slip from the corners of her daughter’s eyes now, but Maggie continues to fight her own, worried that once she starts, she won’t be able to stop. She needs to control it.

And then, in an instant, she understands that there’s no need for control anymore. This moment will only happen once, and it’s perhaps the most important moment of her entire life. There are no do-overs on this. She can’t stifle the tidal wave of feelings raging in her heart right now, and if she tries, she’ll certainly regret it later. And there’s been too much regret already.

So she lets the moment flow through her, lets the tears fall, and in a few hurried steps Jane is in Maggie’s arms again, the arms that have been aching to hold her since the day Maggie handed her to Agatha and felt her heart tear into two pieces. Two pieces, she thought, that could never be put back together again.

But she was wrong.

“Jane,” she whispers into her daughter’s hair, rubbing her hand in soothing circles on Jane’s back as they press their grief into one another, holding each other up against the gravity of all those years of lost time. Maggie remembers her daughter’s tiny body, swaddled tightly in the crook of her arm in the Goodbye Room as she tucked the yellow booties and note deep into the folds of Jane’s blanket. Holding her grown daughter in this moment, she can still feel her baby.