Looking for Jane (83)

“Tina and I should have been more up-front about why I wanted to speak with you.” Angela takes another deep breath. She’s half regretting reaching out to Evelyn at all. Maybe Tina was right, and this search for Nancy Mitchell is going to get too messy. “If Margaret Roberts is dead, I wondered whether you might be willing to meet her daughter, you know, as sort of the next best thing. Since I found the adoptive mother’s letter, I’ve felt a bit of a responsibility to connect these dots. If I can locate Margaret’s daughter, would you maybe be interested in meeting her? Telling her a bit about her mother, if she wants to know?”

Angela watches Evelyn’s features morph as a wave of emotions colour the canvas of her face.

“Yes,” she says, her eyes shining. “I’d like that very much.”



* * *



A few days after Angela’s tense meeting with Dr. Taylor, she and Tina are back at their ob-gyn’s office for the results of Angela’s early ultrasound. Tina perches on the edge of a chair in the corner of the cool, brightly lit room while Angela settles herself down on the crunchy white paper of the exam table. The nurse today is a squat, curvy twenty-something woman with black hair pulled up in a puffy topknot. Her scrubs have Simpsons characters on them, and Angela likes her immediately.

“Is this your first pregnancy ultrasound?” she asks Angela with a toothy smile.

Angela hesitates. “You mean for this pregnancy?”

The nurse’s smile falters. “Yes.”

Angela nods.

“Okay, excellent. And you’re at, what”—she consults her computer screen—“about seven weeks?”

“Yup.” Angela’s stomach is fluttering with nerves now. But the good kind. Like a first kiss.

“Okay, good. Good. And how have you been feeling?”

“Nervous.”

The nurse nods sympathetically and types several words into the system while Angela waits. Tina catches her eye and winks. “All right, then! Dr. Singh will be with you shortly. Hang tight.”

She slips out the door and leaves Tina and Angela alone again. They can hear a child wailing from another room down the hall. A phone rings.

“Always lots of waiting, eh?” Tina says. Her hands are fidgeting in her lap.

“Ha! Yeah. The anticipation is kind of killing me, T.”

“Oh my God, I know.”

“Right?”

“Fuck.”

They both laugh. Angela shakes her head and lets her eyes wander across the walls, vaguely registering the crayon children’s drawings and public service announcements for the flu shot. A few minutes later, the door finally opens again.

“Hi, Angela, Tina,” Dr. Singh says, nodding at them both. “Nice to see you again.”

“You, too,” they mutter in unison.

“Well,” Dr. Singh says. “I have some more very good news for you both. Based on what we could see in the imaging, you have at least one viable sac in the uterus.”

“Did you say at least one?” Tina pipes up.

Dr. Singh is smiling. “Yes. There’s a shadow behind the first sac and they couldn’t quite get a clear angle on it during the ultrasound. There’s a chance you may be pregnant with twins, but we can confirm that today with a fetal Doppler.”

Tina is on her feet now, striding over to Angela. She puts her arm around her wife’s shoulders. “So you mean we can…”

“Listen to the heartbeat. Or possibly heartbeats, yes.”

“Ha!” Tina exclaims.

Angela can’t stop smiling. “We’re really pregnant, T!”

Tina plants a kiss on her forehead. They’re beaming like newlyweds.

“I’ll just get the monitor set up for you,” Dr. Singh mutters, busying herself with a small white machine Angela doesn’t take much notice of. “Just lie back, Angela, and lift your shirt. This will be just like an ultrasound.”

Dr. Singh squeezes the cold blue gel onto Angela’s midsection. She turns up the volume on the system and all three of them freeze, their breath caught. She glides the wand over Angela’s belly as the Doppler crackles. It reminds Angela of trying to tune an old radio.

A moment later, the doctor stops the wand and holds it steady.

Thump-thump-thump-thump-thump-thump goes the machine, but there’s another strand of beats weaving in with the first. The most beautiful sound Angela has ever heard. A perfect harmony.

“That’s two heartbeats, ladies,” Dr. Singh confirms, and both Angela and Tina burst into tears at the same moment. Tina nearly crushes Angela’s hand as she squeezes it.

“I love you,” she says.

“I love you, too.”

The moment suspends itself in time, drawn out and shimmering with a pale golden light. A precious and rare moment of pure, unadulterated joy.

“Congratulations,” Dr. Singh says. “You’re having twins.”





CHAPTER 23 Nancy




SPRING 1987




Nancy has spent the half-hour streetcar ride to Dr. Taylor’s house thinking about how much she’s been lying to her husband.

Nearing the intersection closest to Dr. Taylor’s street, Nancy tugs the cord for her stop and pulls herself to her feet, cradling her pregnant belly with one hand and bracing herself against the nearest seat back with the other. A woman in a seat across from the back door smiles at her, and she feels her baby squirm along with her guilt.