The Vanishing Year(26)

The third picture is after she got sick. Our last picture together, her head wrapped in one of her paisley scarves, her hair wispy fine underneath. She’s grinning wildly into the camera, with her hands on my face. I’m not smiling, but studying her, like at any moment she might poof be gone, and I’d have only that moment to have memorized her face.

Evelyn lived her life in full force. She rejected all things mediocre, preferring only to spectacularly succeed or fail. She’d always said that she didn’t quite do things right, but she didn’t do them half-assed either, so when she failed, she did so with enthusiasm. Her advice to me, always, win or lose, do it enthusiastically.

I feel my eyes well up, and for the first time in a long time missing her fills me up, and I’m crying. I shove the pictures back in the envelope and ungracefully wipe my nose on my sleeve, which even Henry’s wife can do when alone.

I thumb through the rest, quickly, until I find what I’m looking for. It’s a yellowed copy of a birth certificate with the name of a hospital—Griffin Hospital, Derby, Connecticut—on the top. The father line is unsigned, a blank reminder that I belong to no one. The mother line, a haphazardly scrawled Carolyn Seever. The date is there, May 3, 1985. And my birth name is there. The first person I ever was before I became someone else. I run my finger along the raised letters. Zoe Griffin. Evelyn told me the nurses named me Zoe, after one of their favorite patients. Griffin came from the hospital name.

After my biological mother gave birth, she left me in the nursery. Sometimes I feel as though I am made up almost entirely of secrets, but the one that no other living soul knows is that I took my name back. Before there was Hilary, there was the baby Zoe, abandoned in a Connecticut hospital. After there was Hilary, there was a grown-up Zoe, living in an ivory tower. Sometimes I wonder how all three of us can possibly fit in this one body.

Haphazardly, I shove all the remaining papers back into the box and replace the lid. I hold on to the birth certificate and a folded-up memo from a defunct adoption agency that is fairly useless. The name on the birth certificate is a dead end, a false identity she’d left in a panic—I know this much from my last search effort.

I tip the box on its side and place it back in the corner, behind Henry’s things. I see Tara scrawled in pen on the side of one of the crates and I can’t help it, I lift the lid. I’ve seen it before, of course. But yet, I’ve never snooped. I don’t know why I snoop now. Inside sits stacks of folders, insurance, trust account, taxes labeled with the year. I thumb through them quickly; it’s all very dry. Underneath the folders is a frame and my heart skips. I’ve never seen a picture of her, isn’t that odd? Not one single photo of Henry’s wife, his precious Tara. I have no idea what she looks like, other than one drunken night when I had the nerve to ask Henry. He got this faraway look and murmured beautiful. I’ve been curious, and I grab it.

The photo is taken from behind; her head is turned. I can barely make out her profile. Her hair is loose in waves down her back, but covered with a wispy white veil. It is of their wedding day and the jealousy surges, this awful, clawing, clamping tightness in my throat. Her dress is fitted, she’s impossibly thin, elegant in an ivory fishtail gown. I shove the frame back under the files. I back out of the closet, the bile in my throat. I push sideways the idea of being threatened by a swatch of bare spine and a mane of thick hair.

With the birth certificate and the adoption agency memo in one hand, I call Cash. He picks up before the phone even rings.

“Hi, it’s Zoe. I was following up about the story? If you finished it?”

He pauses. “Yeah, mostly. I had a few other questions. Would you want to meet for lunch?”

I agree, but suggest a coffee shop closer to my apartment than his office. Neither one of us suggests the diner and the conversation is stilted. He asks if I’m okay.

I feign surprise. “I’m fine!” I say brightly. We agree to meet at noon. I check my watch and it’s ten after ten.

I tuck paperwork into my purse, folded into a square small enough to fit in the pocket. I feel guilty, lying to Henry. Honestly, I’m not even sure what I’m doing yet. The lie feels good, fits like a well-made winter coat.

I step out into the sun and the air is brisk. It smells woodsy out, that faint promise of summer. I skip-step to the curb to hail a taxi and change my mind. I walk the six blocks and before I realize it, I turn west.

Henry works out every day at 11:30. Five miles on the treadmill, a hundred push-ups, a hundred sit-ups, exactly one hour, not including the shower. His gym is across the street from his office, and I stand in front of it, hopping from one foot to the other. I’ve never surprised him like this; Henry doesn’t particularly care for surprises (his words, I don’t particularly care for surprises).

Sometimes I think about the Henry who wooed me, buoyant and boyish, and I remember that he liked surprises. I can’t tell if I’ve been conned or if all relationships slow to the everyday, if marriages settle and become mundane at some point. To some extent, everyone puts on a show, their best foot forward, smiling at hobbies they hate, pretending to love football teams they couldn’t care less about, or eating sushi and secretly spitting it into a napkin.

I hover in front of the door. I’m not even sure I can get in the building without a membership badge, which I don’t have. He’s never asked me to join him. I’m still trying to figure out why I’m here when a group of two men and two women barge through the doors, talking and laughing. I scoot behind them and let the mirrored doors close behind me.