Where We Belong Read online

  “Come here,” he said, leading me over to his couch, making me sit, putting his arm around me and giving me a kiss on the forehead.

  I bit my lip, my whole body filled with sick, numbing dread. “I don’t know why I’m taking this test. I already know I’m pregnant.”

  “You don’t know,” he said.

  “I’m four days late. My boobs are sore. And I’m about to puke.”

  “You’re nauseated because you’re scared. Your boobs hurt because you’re about to get your period. And—couldn’t your cycle be off because you’re all worked up?”

  “My cycle’s off because I’m knocked up,” I said, biting my nails, a habit I had broken in junior high.

  “Look,” he said. “You’re going to go take that test—and either one of two things is going to happen.”

  I stare at him, waiting.

  “It’s either going to be negative. And you’re going to be relieved beyond belief and we can celebrate…” He smiled, then leaned over to kiss my neck, lingering when he got to my ear.

  I pushed him away and said, “Or?”

  “Or you’re pregnant,” he said. “Which would suck. But we would deal with it.”

  “How?”

  “How would you want to deal with it?” he said. “I’d do whatever you wanted to do.”

  “I can’t have a baby. I’m going to college.”

  “Right,” he said. “So we’d find a clinic, somewhere out of town—way out in the burbs or in Indianapolis. Somewhere where we’re not gonna know anyone. And … and I have plenty of money saved from working—so we’re covered there … And I’ll be with you the whole time, holding your hand.” He put his arms around me and said, “And then I’d take you back here. To my bed. And feed you chicken soup and sing to you.”

  Staring at a spot on his wall, I heard him say my name twice, then three times. I finally looked at him.

  “I’d do anything for you, Marian. You know that, right?”

  “Yeah,” I said, even though I wasn’t so sure.

  “Anything,” he said again as I stood, pink box in hand, and headed toward the bathroom, gripped with fear.

  Once alone, I sat on the closed toilet seat and read every word on the box twice, including the words “unsurpassed accuracy.” Then I followed the directions as precisely as I could, wondering how I could have ever thought that the SAT would be the most important test of my life. All the while, I prayed as hard as I’ve ever prayed, especially during that torturous, brutal, heart-pounding, ear-ringing three-minute waiting period, my eyes moving rapidly between the stick and the second hand of my watch. Please, God, do not let a pink line appear, I repeated, over and over and over.

  But it did. So gradually that at first I could almost convince myself that it was an optical illusion. Then brighter and more vivid, until finally, it was darker than the control line, capillary action making a lighter pink halo around it. I had my answer; there was no wondering or praying or hoping left to be done.

  Staring at my reflection in the mirror, I knew that no matter what I did from here, I would never be my old self again. Nothing would ever be the same again. I slipped the stick into my purse and opened the door to face Conrad and the rest of my life.

  “Well?” he said, his skin and lips colorless.

  At that second, something came over me that I will never fully understand. Maybe it was denial. Maybe I was protecting him. Maybe I was beginning the painful process of pulling away from him. Whatever it was, I forced a small smile and said, “Guess what?”

  “What?” he said.

  “False alarm.”

  All the air in Conrad’s body seemed to escape as he kneeled to the ground, his hands clasped. Then he stood and made a whooping sound of a cowboy in an open plain full of buffalo. He followed that up with a high five that made my palm sting and a slap just as hard on my ass. “I told you, girl!” he shouted. “Man! I told you!”

  “You were right,” I said, as he wrapped his arms around me.

  Then we separated and he looked at me, deep into my eyes, as he said those words for the first time, clear and unmistakable as the second pink line. “I love you, Marian.”

  I opened my mouth, but he stopped me, putting his finger to my lips. “Shh. Don’t say anything. I just—I wanted to say it. Whether we had good news or bad. I really love you.”

  7

  kirby

  The following morning, I cave and call my parents. It is a little before seven Central time, and because they are the most predictable people on the face of the planet, I can picture exactly what they are doing. I know my mother is sitting at her dressing table, getting ready for morning mass, and my father is puttering around the kitchen, listening to The McGraw Show on AM radio. On the third ring, they answer the line together, one hello echoing the other. For one weak moment, as I hear McGraw’s gleeful chortle in the background and can nearly smell my dad’s Jimmy Dean sausage cooking up in the griddle, I am overcome with inexplicable homesickness. But the feeling passes almost instantly, replaced by the familiar blanket of animosity. I suddenly can’t wait to tell them where I am.

  “Turbo Kirbo!” my dad bellows. His voice is relaxed—probably because I’m not around. “How’s the Yellowhammer State?”

  My mother chimes in with her first accusation. “Why haven’t you answered our calls?”

  “I e-mailed and texted you guys,” I say, rolling my eyes.

  “Well, you should have called, too,” she says.

  “Sorry,” I say, pleased that I don’t sound the slightest bit sorry.

  “Are you having fun?” my dad asks. “I saw that it was eighty in Mobile yesterday.”

  “Oh, yeah?” I say. And about sixty in New York.

  “Are you remembering to put on sunscreen?” my mother says. “And reapply every few hours? You’re so fair, honey. You don’t want to get burned.”

  I think of Marian’s complexion, now knowing where I get it, and therefore hating it a little less. It looks good on her—so maybe it will on me one day, too. Wondering what I’m waiting for, I walk to the window and push the blinds open a few inches, just enough to get a view of the street below, already buzzing with morning activity, traffic, people—which couldn’t be more different than my quiet street.

  “How’s Charlotte?” I ask. It is a red flag—I never ask about my sister—and my father seems suddenly on to me.

  “She’s fine. She’s sleeping. What’s going on, Kirbs?”

  I turn and cross the room, sitting on the bed, relishing what’s to come. “Um, guys. I’m actually not in Mobile with Belinda and her mother,” I say, listening to the satisfying sound of stunned silence.

  “Where are you?” they finally ask in unison.

  “New York City,” I say, holding up my middle finger and pointing it toward my phone. If this isn’t payback for what I overheard, I don’t know what is.

  “New York City!” my mother shouts as if I’ve just said the front line in Afghanistan.

  “What are you doing in New York?” my dad asks, trying to counteract her hysteria.

  “Is Belinda with you?” my mom demands. “Is her mother?”

  “No. I’m alone … Well … Not exactly alone … I’m at my birth mother’s apartment,” I say, closing my eyes and wondering how it’s possible to both cringe and gloat.

  “What in the world?” My mother’s voice trails off and I can see her staring into her dressing table mirror, her hair still wrapped up in large pink and medium purple Velcro curlers, always removing them right before she leaves the house, sometimes even waiting until she’s in the car, much to the disapproval of my sister and me. “Why?”

  “Why, what?” I snap, thinking that it has to be the dumbest question ever posed.

  “Why are you … there?” she says.

  “Why do you think, Mom?”

  “Honey,” my dad says, although I’m not sure if he’s talking to me or my mom. And then, “We understand why you went. Why you might want to meet he
r. But you should have told us. We could have helped you.”

  “I didn’t need your help,” I say. Which obviously is the truth.

  “I know. But we would have liked to … at least … support you.”

  “Yeah, right,” I mumble.

  I can hear my mother breathing—and I would bet my iPod that she has begun to cry.

  “How did you get there?” my dad asks.

  “I took the Greyhound,” I say, thinking of the lyrics to “America,” the classic Simon and Garfunkel song about the couple boarding the Greyhound in Pittsburgh; my favorite line—which seems appropriate now: I’m empty and aching and I don’t know why.

  “Well,” my mother says, her voice cracking just as I predicted. “Do you like her? Or … not?”

  There it is, I think. What this journey is all about to my mother. Not my need to understand who I am and where I came from, but rather her need to be the one who saved me from a selfish woman. The kind of woman who gives away her baby.

  “She’s awesome,” I say. I can’t help myself.

  “Well, that’s … wonderful,” she says with a sniff. “I’m happy to hear that.”

  “Are you sure you’re happy to hear that?” I ask. “Or were you kinda hoping she’d be awful?”

  “Kirby!” my dad says. “That’s not fair.”

  “Sorry,” I say again, perfecting the art of not sounding sorry.

  “When are you coming home?” my mother asks.

  I tell them I don’t know, probably in a day or two.

  “You have school on Wednesday,” my mother says.

  “I know.”

  “So you’ll be home by tomorrow night?” my dad asks, as I note with satisfaction that it is a question—not a demand. They can’t make me come home and they know it.

  “Yeah,” I say. “But I gotta go now.”

  “Where are you going?” my mother asks.

  “She invited me to go to work with her today,” I say. “She’s a famous television producer.”

  “Of what program?” my mother asks suspiciously.

  “You wouldn’t know it,” I say, her shows limited to soap operas, crime dramas, and, ironically, feel-good reality television.

  “Can we talk to her?” my dad asks.

  “Nope,” I say. “She’s in the shower.”

  “When she gets out?”

  “I doubt it,” I say. “She’s, like, really busy. Anyway. I gotta go.”

  “Okay, sweetie. Have a great day,” my dad says. “Be careful. Keep your wits about you in that big city.”

  “Yeah,” I say, wondering why I feel one drop guilty. “I will.”

  “We love you,” my mom says, but I’m already hanging up, envisioning the scene at my house, knowing there will be more tears followed by melodramatic prayers at morning mass. For my safe return. For my misguided soul. For me to forget all about the woman who selfishly gave me away.

  8

  marian

  “So I called my parents this morning,” Kirby says as we ride the subway to my office. I’m taking her to work in part because I don’t know what else to do with her—in part because I can’t afford a day off.

  “Did you tell them where you were?” I ask as we screech to a halt at the Seventy-seventh Street station, more bodies pressing toward us as I hold our tiny patch of real estate with squared shoulders and firmly planted feet. The air is thick and steamy the way it always is underground on a rainy day, no matter what the season.

  Kirby nods, her gold chandelier earrings swinging along her jawline. She has pulled her hair back in a bun and is wearing makeup, her charcoal liner applied a little too heavily. Combined with my black trench coat I insisted she borrow, she could practically pass for an intern in the office—which I’m frankly hoping people will assume she is.

  “And? What did they say?” I prod, the reality of our situation kicking in the way it has every few hours, sometimes every few minutes, since she knocked on my door. She is my daughter. It is still so hard to believe.

  Kirby loses her balance as the train lurches forward and it takes her a few seconds to regain her footing under her slight, unpracticed frame. “My dad was pretty calm, but my mom was upset.”

  I ask her why, hoping that it has everything to do with her lie to them, and nothing to do with me, but I can tell by the look she gives me that I played a role in her mom’s reaction.

  “I think she’s a little jealous of you,” Kirby says, peering past me at a deceivingly normal-looking man preaching Jesus and veganism, in no particular order.

  “We need to add a commandment,” I say to deflect the statement about her mother. “Thou shalt not proselytize on the subway, at least not on rainy Monday mornings.”

  Kirby smiles, watching him out of the corner of her eye, fascinated, as he gives elaborate instructions about drinking prune juice in anticipation of the imminent Second Coming.

  “Your mother has no reason to be jealous,” I say, wanting it on the record, out of respect and gratitude to the woman who raised her—but also to put Kirby at ease.

  She appears thoughtful, as our preacher shouts, “Lemme hear you say praaaaaise Jesus!”

  Nobody plays along so he bellows a big “praise Jesus” to his own call to action.

  “I don’t know. Maybe it’s not jealousy … Maybe ‘threatened’ is more accurate,” Kirby says.

  I feel myself cringe inside and say, “I think the whole thing probably just took her by surprise. Maybe if you had told her up front, she’d be fine with it…”

  Kirby shakes her head, adjusting her hold on our pole. “No. She would have been upset regardless. I think she views my coming here as an act of disloyalty.”

  “But she’s your mother,” I say. “I’m just … some woman in New York.”

  The insensitivity of my remark is unclear until I see the look of hurt cross Kirby’s face. I replay my words, realizing that they sound more like a disclaimer than how I intended them—as humility and deference to her mother.

  “I mean, obviously it’s much more than that,” I say, scrambling to backtrack. “I carried you for forty weeks … well, thirty-nine. You came a week early. Thank you for that small act of kindness.” I smile.

  She smiles back at me and says that might be the first and only time she’s been early.

  Seconds later, we arrive at our stop on Fifty-first Street. “This is us,” I say, leading her off the subway, up the stairs, through the station onto Lexington Avenue where we dodge traffic, commuters, and pools of rain dotting the sidewalks and crosswalks. As we pass through the glass revolving doors of my building, we are windblown and damp despite our large black golf umbrellas that we both shake and close in unison. I catch my breath and mumble that I’m dying for coffee and ask if she wants anything at Starbucks. “A hot chocolate?”

  She gives me a dry look. “I’m eighteen, not ten.”

  “Right,” I say with a nervous laugh just as I catch a glimpse of Peter in line for coffee, scrolling through his BlackBerry. I get a nervous jolt for reasons that aren’t entirely clear to me as I walk toward him, Kirby trailing a few steps behind. When he glances in our direction, I give him a little wave.

  “Champ,” he says, flashing me a stiff smile that only heightens my uneasiness. Then he turns to Kirby and says hello. “A network field trip?” he asks her.

  She nods, looking flustered.

  I save her. “Yes, Kirby’s going to help out a little bit. We can always use a little extra help in the writers’ room.”

  “Sure,” he says, and then flashes her one of his high-wattage, press-conference smiles that has sometimes earned him the reputation of slick, even ruthless to the few who have dared to cross him. “To referee and break up fights? Good luck with that.”

  “They are healthy debates, not fights,” I say, as I migrate to the back of the line, a few half-awake customers sandwiched between us.

  “Did Marian tell you the rule for the first time you enter that hallowed room?” Peter asks Kir
by over his shoulder.

  She shakes her head as I reply, “It’s not a rule; it’s a tradition.”

  “It’s a rule,” Peter says.

  “What rule?” Kirby asks.

  “The first time anyone enters the writers’ room, they have to perform,” he says, rolling his eyes. “Or they can’t leave. Someone watches the door.”

  She instantly tenses, then looks as if she might puke—or run. “Perform how?”

  Feeling protective but knowing that it will be virtually impossible to shield her from the ironclad custom that I, myself, instituted, I say, “Oh, whatever you’re in the mood for. You can tell a knock-knock joke. Speak in pig Latin. Juggle. Recite the state capitals. Touch your tongue to your nose. One writer did the ganda-bherundasana yoga pose—which was bizarre—and rather vulgar given that he had to strip down to his boxers for maximum mobility … Anything goes but you have to do something … We even made our CEO perform when he dared to enter our domain.”

  Peter makes a clucking sound. “I wasn’t prepared. I haven’t been hazed since college rugby.”

  “It’s not hazing,” I insist. “It’s just a little … rite of passage.”

  “What did you do?” Kirby asks him—and I can see in her face that she is putting the pieces of the puzzle together. Peter is the CEO. The head honcho. My boss.

  “I sang the preposition song,” he says, “to the tune of ‘Yankee Doodle Dandy.’”

  Kirby smiles, as do the two women in line in front of me who likely recognize him.

  “So you better come up with something in the next five minutes. No pressure or anything,” Peter says.

  Then, upon hearing his name called out by the barista, he turns, grabs his drink from the counter, picks up his briefcase with his other hand, and tells us to have a good one.

  “You, too,” I say, as if we are nothing more than colleagues bantering in line for morning coffee.

  * * *

  “I don’t know what to do,” Kirby says, looking nervous, on the way up in the elevator with her orange juice and bagel. She shoves both in her purse as I note that the shoulder strap is frayed. Perhaps I can get her a new one for high school graduation—maybe a classic Chanel—although her mother might not like the idea of that. Maybe a Coach bag would be okay. Maybe I already went too far with the clothes I bought her.