FirstLineFiction beta

from Contest #8

'I wouldn't do that if I were you,' she told me the first time we met.

“What are you, my mother?”

The profound sadness in her tiny smile instantly made me regret the snide retort.  I’ve always hated myself for saying that to her.  Of course, I went ahead and dropped out of college anyway but first, we had another cup of peppermint tea together. 

I’ve been to a lot of job interviews, taken the stage before hundreds of people, had first dates I’d waited years to be asked out on, but no single experience in my life has wracked my nerves more than sitting down with her.

We’d arranged to meet at this small, out-of-the-way coffee shop; it was nice and casual with other people around, but not too many.  First thing I did when I walked in was stand in front of the pay phone, so there was no way anybody could be behind me, and look around.  I spotted her immediately, sitting at one of the small booths, but I just stood there and watched her as my pulse pounded in my neck, making me feel a little dizzy.  She wore a long floral dress and a white bike helmet.

She told me she’d be wearing the helmet so I’d know who she was.  Really though, there’s no way we could have missed each other.  We both had this terrified expectation on our faces as we searched the group of patrons around us –our very similar faces.  Our eyes, of same shape and shade, could not have passed each other without recognition.  I don’t think anyone in that coffee shop could have assumed we were anything but mother and daughter.

The strangest look came over her face when she saw me.  She smiled, but under that was something more, like she was also contemplating bolting for the door.  She raised a tentative wave and I nodded, my feet carrying me toward her well before I gave them permission to do so.  I wondered if she would try to hug me but, thankfully, she didn’t get out of her seat.  I slid into the booth, sitting across from her and held out my hand.

“Umm…” I hesitated.  “Patricia?”

Talk about awkward.  Her first name felt so cold and formal but I already had a mom, so that name was taken.  She smiled just a little, her eyes never leaving my face.

“My friends call me Patsy,” she said, finally shaking my hand.

“Patsy it is, then.”

She seemed to be no less troubled by the whole name issue; having spent twenty years thinking of her baby girl as Laura, I guess it wasn’t easy to start calling me Audrey.  She slipped a couple times but I let it slide –she’s entitled, I suppose.

The initial discomfort was short lived and it wasn’t long before we were exchanging hopeful half-smiles and biographic conversations.  Easy new confidants, we shared past and present ambitions, and consoled each other about regrets, vain and poignant.

She wanted me to know why she gave me up for adoption.  I already knew that though.  She’d been eighteen when I was born, young enough to be terrified but old enough to have options.  She’d wanted to keep me, but this was back when that sort of thing wasn’t really done.  Unwed teenage girls didn’t raise their own kids at that time and adoption agencies were still handing out healthy white babies like Pez. 

“I wanted you to have a good life, better than I could give you,” she said, her eyes still locked on my face, as though committing my every nuance of expression to memory.  “I came from a big family.  I wanted you to know the love of growing up with brothers and sisters.  The papers I got from the adoption agency said your,” her voice faltered slightly, “parents already had two boys.” 

“Yeah.  I have two older brothers.”

“No sisters?”

I shook my head and dropped my eyes, the weight of her gaze becoming unbearable.  We were broaching a topic I’d always wondered about. 

There are all these expressions about blood being thicker than water, and family being flesh and blood, and so on.  I grew up with these people, my family, and loved them fiercely but I’d always been aware that they were not my blood.  There were no shared genetics in our home.  The story of my own DNA had always been unknown to me.

“Do I?” I asked her.

“Sorry?”

“Do I have any sisters?”

She smiled again but it looked more like a wince.  “No.”

“You never had any other kids?”

“No.  I was married twice, but…” she trailed off, shrugging. 

“Never wanted them?”

“I did.  Very much.”

I sighed and picked at the string on my teabag, wondering what exactly it was she saw when she looked at me. 

“I just want you to know,” she started again, “I did what I did because I love you, not because I didn’t want you.”

“Yeah, I know.  I always got that impression.”

I told her about how, when I was around fourteen, my mom let me read the paperwork the adoption agency had sent.  My brothers were adopted too and their forms had all this in-depth stuff about aunts who wore glasses and grandfathers with heart conditions.  My oldest brother’s mom sucked her thumb while giving birth to him.  The envelope I opened only had two pages.  Height, weight, hair and eye color, religious affiliation, hobbies, and a small blurb at the end: “your mother said she loved you very much and wanted to keep you but she couldn’t.” 

I told her I knew she loved me, that I had always understood her reasons.  She started crying and I kind of felt like crying too.

We sat quietly and stared into our teacups for a while.  Two weepy women with the same pronounced, rounded chin and sleepy, dark eyes.  She emptied a packet of Sweet N Low into her tea and I watched her pick up the spoon and stir it slowly. 

“Are you left-handed?”

“Yes.”  She looked confused by my question.  “Why?”

“The way you held your spoon,” I explained.  “Just… I am, too.”

“I thought you might be.”

“Why?”

“My sister likes that sort of stuff.  Most of the family has blue eyes but she told me all the women with brown eyes are left-handed.  I always figured you would be.”

The odd connection of genetic traits didn’t pique my curiosity until later.  At that moment all I could consider was how surreal it felt to hear her talk about her sister.

“I guess she’d be my aunt,” I mused out loud.

“Yes.  Her name is Caroline.”

“I have cousins?”

“Two.  Well, for now.”  She caught my puzzled look and continued.  “They’re very young.  I’m sure there will be more.  You were the firstborn for any of us.”

“That’s weird.  I’m used to being the baby.  Last for everything.”

She smiled again, seeming touched by this comment. 

“What are you studying in college?”

“Where’s my father?”

The smile collapsed instantly.  Her eyes left my face for the first time and darted around the room, fingers (short and slender, like mine) worrying at the corner of her Sweet N Low packet.

“Don’t try to find him.”

“Was he an asshole?”

She met my eyes again but didn’t say anything for a long time so I continued.

“That paper I told you they gave me.  It had all the same information for him as it had for you.  The last thing on there was for ‘basic personality type’.  They wrote down what they thought of you, that you were very sensitive and emotional.  But I guess he wasn’t there for any of that and you must’ve given them all his information.  That last line for him said, ‘father not described in terms of personality’.  I always knew what that meant.”

She tented her fingers over her face, hiding her expression from me but still watching me closely.  She took a deep breath before starting.

“We were together for a couple of years.  I used to ride my bike into town to see him.  I guess I always knew he wasn’t a great guy but…  We had both had big dreams.  I got pregnant shortly before I graduated high school.  He was my prom date.”  There was only a trace of bitterness under her wistful sigh.

“Sounds romantic.”

“He never showed up.”

“Oh.”

“I waited for him for hours.  Finally, my brother called one of his friends to take me to the prom.  Turns out the night I told him about you was the last time I saw him.”

“I’m sorry,” I muttered into my tea.  “Can’t help feeling that was somehow my fault.”

“Don’t be silly.  He was not a nice person and I refused to see that.  The only one who is truly blameless in all this is you.  I’m not the least bit sorry you were born.  You’re a beautiful woman, Audrey.”

“I look like you.”

“Except beautiful,” she teased.

We laughed a bit, watching each other, and let the conversation drift back to likes and dislikes, favorite recipes, where in the world we’ve each traveled.  She was heading back home, out East, and we exchanged addresses and agreed to keep in touch.  It seemed to me she was always holding back from asking if she could see me again.  When we stood to leave I let her hug me.  I also let her pay the bill.

Two weeks later I got a letter from her.  Mostly small talk –she included a couple recipes she’d copied out for me.  It was odd to see how similar her handwriting was to mine.  I sat down and wrote back to her that afternoon.  Over the next few months we wrote regularly but as the communications became more regular, I suppose they also became a little less special.  The delays in my responses stretched out and maybe she took that as a hint and her letters declined in frequency as well.

I tucked everything she sent me into a little shoebox: those recipes, which I’ve never made; photographs of my grandparents, aunts and uncles, my little baby cousins.  She sent me a necklace of hers: “I’ve always wanted you to have this, I know you’re a Pisces too.”  I didn’t have the heart to tell her I don’t believe in that junk and tossed the small fishy pendant into the box. 

The past three years, all we exchanged were Christmas cards with “here’s what I’m up to” notes tucked in, along with the odd humorous newspaper clipping or whatnot.  Until today, that is.  Today a package arrived that got me thinking about that day in the coffee shop.  I went through its contents and sat down at my desk, turning over every word and sigh we shared that afternoon.

Overall, our meeting went pretty well –aside from my stupid, thoughtless comment.  What was I thinking?  I’ve always hated being told what to do and I guess her “motherly advice” rankled me a bit.  I suppose I had a chip on my shoulder at that time but that doesn’t mean it was right.  Too stubborn and proud to apologize, or maybe part of me wanted to hurt her a little.  That was for every time my dad came home drunk and you were not there to protect me.  Or for every awkward question I got asked on the playground at school, “Didn’t your mom love you?” Or the fact that when I faced my own crisis of unwanted progeny I simply did not possess the same strength you did.  Just general failures all around, and nothing ever quite lived up to the perfect little life you’d hoped your sacrifice would bring me.  Take that, bitch. 

I never acknowledged any anger towards her.  I don’t know if that was right or wrong.  It didn’t seem fair in the face of everything else to admit that there were problems, so instead of addressing them, I just let that one tiny comment fester all these years.  That probably wasn’t it, it’s never just one thing, but I can’t take it back now. 

After studying each piece of jewelry in the package that had been carefully wrapped up for shipping, I placed it into my shoebox along with all the other mementos.   I reread the letter Patsy’s mother had written to me and laid it on top of the small pile of correspondences, along with my mother’s obituary, and suicide note.   

back to Contest #8