The Vanishing Year(61)
I nodded in the way one does when they’ve just learned their father was named Trout Fishman.
“Well, he was in a band, played the drums and had a chin dimple. There’s something about a chin dimple, right?” When I don’t answer, she gives a little cough and continues, “We met the usual way, and dated. I loved him, probably more than he loved me, but I think that’s typical in high school. He was a good kid, stayed out of trouble. Until he got his girlfriend knocked up.”
She pauses and for a split second, it occurs to me that he’s out there somewhere. Another link, another tether. Someone else to find.
“There was the usual drama at first. Our parents cried, the kids at school whispered. But I hadn’t been the first girl to get in trouble and Lord knows I wouldn’t be the last. Our parents talked of helping us, so we could finish high school, maybe even go to community college. Trout took electrician classes at the vo-tech school. We were excited. But not always. One night, we fought. I was riddled with insecurity, thought I was holding him back. I was a burden. I was seven months pregnant and hormonal. He left, slamming the door behind him and went to blow off steam with his friends. He ended up at some druggie’s house, a guy we didn’t talk to in school because he was going nowhere. But then again, I was a teen pregnancy statistic so who was I to judge? This guy gave him a handful of quaaludes and told him it would erase all his cares. To a seventeen-year-old kid, staring at fatherhood and dealing with a hormonal girlfriend, with no job? He couldn’t have said anything more perfect. Trout took the whole handful at once. They laughed, thought he’d be stumbling around bumping into walls, they weren’t really known to kill you back then. It was the eighties. But Trout had a weak heart, as it turned out. He just couldn’t handle a street drug. He had a heart attack that night. Fell into a coma and died a week later.”
And just like that, the idea of a father slips away. The shock must have registered on my face because she pauses to drink a sip of water, licks her dry lips, and gazes off into a corner. Off in the distance, in the kitchen, I assume, a phone rings. Once, twice, and then goes to voicemail. She doesn’t even acknowledge it.
When she finally continues, her voice is flat. “I was heartbroken. Naturally I suppose, the way a pregnant teenage girl would be. My parents were at a loss with what to do with me. I dropped out of school, wouldn’t leave my room. Labor was a nightmare. I was just so angry, I’ve never known such anger, even now. Can you understand that?”
I nod, although I can’t. I’ve never been pregnant, never borne a child. The love a mother must feel for a child is ephemeral to me, out of reach. An idea, unattached to any real, rooted emotion.
“After I had you, I got involved with drugs then, myself. Which, admittedly makes no sense. I was a different person. You said you were running from your life? That’s what I was doing. I didn’t change my name, but I ran away. Bobbed around the country. Didn’t hold a job, got arrested a bunch of times. Was addicted to heroin. Went to rehab, found God like I’m supposed to, met Ronald one day at church.”
“Ronald?”
“Oh. My husband. He’s at work. An accountant. We have a son, Benjamin. He’s at Ronald’s mother’s house right now. I didn’t want him here, for . . . this.” She waves her hand between us, like this is something horrid. I’m her first, failed attempt at motherhood. The anger slices under my rib cage, sharp and unexpected. “Ronald doesn’t know everything about my past. He knows I was in rehab, but he doesn’t know how bad it was. How I was homeless, how I was destitute. He doesn’t know I’ve already been a mother. Can you see?”
She keeps asking me to understand and to see. Perhaps I should be more lenient, less judgmental, comfort her. But I can’t. I should be tolerant, our stories are shockingly parallel. I imagine nodding sympathetically, maybe touching her arm, I understand, with a soft cluck of my tongue and maybe that would be the key. She’d invite me back, we’d have coffee, I’d learn that after all these years all she needed was an outlet and now here I am. Conveniently. I’ll become somewhat of an accidental friend, a hidden secret, almost arcane. The vision is romantic, like a love affair.
Her liquid blue eyes implore mine, mirror images of each other, to simply go away. She rambles on, as if talking to herself. “I’ve already done this once and that was enough. I’m done, okay? There are only so many times a person can explain herself.”
I interrupt her. “So who was Evelyn, then? To you?”
“Evelyn? Oh, she was my mother’s cousin. They spoke once in a while before you were born, but I was such a wreck afterward, my mother didn’t know what to do. She heard Evelyn and her husband, God I can’t even remember his name, Tom, was it?” She taps her fingernail on the edge of the table, thinking. I don’t fill in his name, partially because I don’t want to divert the conversation. His name was Tim, a tall shadowy man I barely remember. Dark hair, Old Spice. She shakes her head. “Well, whatever. My mother had heard they wanted to adopt. I don’t know how or under what context. One of the bad nights, right before I ran away, Mother called her. Begged her. Evelyn didn’t want to at first, she said it could get messy with family. She wanted a baby to love, all her own. Not to lose, later, you understand. I guess that had happened before, an adoption fell through. We had to promise to never seek you out. That Evelyn would tell you on her own, when she felt the time was right.”