Where We Belong Page 5

  Hello. I’m Kirby Rose. Your daughter.

  Hello. I’m your daughter. Kirby Rose.

  Hi. My name is Kirby Rose. I think I’m your daughter?

  The word daughter seems too intimate, but there is really no other word to use (besides technical ones like “offspring” or “progeny”), and no adjective to clarify the relationship, as there is with birth mother. My thoughts jolt to a standstill as the elevator doors open directly into the foyer of an apartment. Beyond the foyer, I can see the living room with large windows covering one whole wall. Everything is neat, sleek, perfect, and there is no sign of children or babies. My relief over this fact makes me uneasy; I already care too much.

  And then. There she is, walking gracefully toward me in cotton pajamas in a preppy pink and green print. They are a bit baggy, but I can tell she is slim, an average height. She looks younger than my parents, about thirty-five, although it’s tough to guess the age of grown-ups. She has blond hair highlighted even blonder, pulled back in a messy but stylish ponytail. Her face is thin and longish, and for a second I see myself in her. Maybe our noses or chins? I decide that it’s just wishful thinking; she is way prettier than I am.

  I look down at her bare feet, dainty and narrow, her toes painted a deep plum—so unlike my mother’s broad, callused feet and oddly shaped toes. I look back at her face, into her eyes, and decide she looks kind. At the very least she doesn’t look bitchy, and she is probably smart and hardworking, too, because dumb, lazy people don’t end up in the penthouse. Then again, maybe she has a really rich family, but she doesn’t have that Paris Hilton-y, spoiled look.

  “Hello,” she says, her voice light and pleasant, her expression curious. “Can I help you?”

  I clear my throat and ask, “Are you Marian Caldwell?”

  “Yes,” she says, and for one second, I have the feeling she knows. But then I see a flicker of impatience. The baby she had eighteen years ago is the farthest thing from her mind.

  I look down at my shoes, take a deep breath, and try not to mumble. “My name is Kirby Rose.”

  No reaction, of course. She doesn’t know my name. I tuck a piece of hair behind my ears and force myself to look into her eyes again. Something changes in them.

  Sure enough, she says, “Are you?…”

  My pulse quickens as I nod, trying to breathe, trying not to faint. Then I say the words I’ve said in my head a thousand times. “I think you’re my mother.”

  Her smile fades, all the color draining from her already fair complexion, as she stares into my eyes. She looks more scared than I am, completely frozen. An eternity seems to go by before she reaches out and touches my arm and says, “Oh … Goodness. It is you.”

  I smile, but my throat feels so tight and dry that I can’t speak and start to worry that I’m going to cry. I don’t, though. It feels like a pretty major victory.

  “Please. Come in,” she says, backing up, motioning for me to step forward.

  I take a few small steps and say, “I’m sorry to roll up on you like this. I can come back another time.…”

  “No. Stay. Please stay,” she says.

  I nod, telling myself she means it. That she has to be at least a little bit happy to see me again.

  4

  marian

  It is the most surreal, disorienting, and downright dreamlike thing that has ever happened to me. Yet at the same time, I don’t know why I’m so shocked. After all, I always knew that this moment could happen and was acutely aware that she turned eighteen on the first of this month: the golden birthday when all she had to do was call the agency and ask for the contact information that I updated every few years, as a matter of course. I was under no legal obligation to do so—I could have chosen to remain anonymous—so I’m not really sure what made me do it. Maybe it was strictly to alleviate guilt, because it seemed like the right thing to do. Maybe part of me was waiting for the assurance that she was okay—that I hadn’t given her to a dysfunctional, ignorant, impoverished family. But maybe, on some deep-down level, I wanted her to return to me. Maybe I wanted to see and touch her again.

  Regardless of why I did it or what I wanted, I truly didn’t think she would try to contact me, at least not for years and years, until after she had children of her own. And I certainly didn’t imagine that it would happen out of the complete blue at eleven o’clock at night in a city where drop-in visits simply don’t occur, even among the closest of friends. After a fight with my boyfriend, no less. That is all beside the point now. Because she is right here, standing before me, waiting for me to say something.

  In a haze of emotion, I insist that she come in, silently hanging her jacket in the hall closet and stowing her heavy backpack under a long ottoman in my foyer. I pause awkwardly, considering a venue for our first conversation. The living room feels too formal, while my small den, where I keep all my personal mementos, too intimate. I don’t think I’m trying to hide anything from her; I just don’t want to overwhelm her—or somehow give myself a home court advantage. So I settle on the kitchen, flipping on the lights, then dimming them, then turning them up again. I gesture toward two stools positioned at my marble-top island and we sit on opposite sides, nervously gazing at each other, our faces frozen in expectant smiles. I know that as uneasy as I am, she has to be more so, if only because she is half my age and in unfamiliar surroundings.

  I frantically search for something to say, something weightier than idle small talk and something lighter than the cold, bare facts of how her life began. I come up empty-handed, which only makes me more anxious and flustered.

  “Are you hungry?” I finally say, standing to open the refrigerator. I stare down at a row of Vitamin Waters, a bag of European lettuce, a container of egg whites, and a large container of Greek yogurt, cursing myself for not swinging by Dean & Deluca on the way home from work yesterday, my usual Friday routine.

  “No, thank you,” she says as I repeat her name in my head, a name that never once occurred to me in all of these years of wondering what it could be. Kirby. Kirby. Kirby. I can’t decide whether I hate it or love it, but give her parents points for originality—and resist the sudden, overwhelming urge to ask about them. What do they do for a living? What are their politics and religion? Do they look anything like her? Like us, I think, still startled by our resemblance, one that is becoming increasingly clear to me despite the fact that I’ve never been good at seeing such likenesses. I suppress all questions about them, worried that my curiosity will come across as invasive or jealous, just as I realize that for the first time ever, I actually am a bit jealous that another woman had a hand in shaping the person sitting before me. The fact that I have absolutely no right to feel this way, that it was entirely my decision to give her to them, only makes the wistfulness grow and expand in my chest. I tell myself that I’ve endured none of the hardships of motherhood, that it’s like watching a marathon and wishing you were crossing the finish line. I tell myself to stop being so self-centered. This night is about her needs, not mine, and although I am not her mother in the true sense of the word, I try to conjure something of a maternal instinct. I think of my own mother, and her solution to many problems: comfort food and a good night’s sleep.

  “Are you sure you’re not hungry? We can order. There’s a great deli nearby that will deliver a grilled cheese and tomato soup inside ten minutes. It’s like they always have one ready, figuring someone in a ten-block radius has to be in the mood for a grilled cheese.”

  Realizing that I’m babbling, I stop talking, and she shakes her head, thanking me again.

  Overcome with a fresh wave of emotion, I hide my face, turning back to the refrigerator. “Can I at least get you something to drink? Coffee? Tea? Vitamin Water?”

  She hesitates, then, almost as if she’s humoring me, says, “Sure. I’ll take a Vitamin Water.”

  “What flavor?” I ask. “Orange or lemon?”

  “It doesn’t matter.”

  “No. I guess it really doesn’t,
” I say more to myself than her. Then I steady my hands as I select an orange one, unscrew the cap, and pour it into a tall glass.

  “How did you get here?” I ask, dying to know where her journey began, craving a visual of her neighborhood, her house, her bedroom. I have never been this greedy for information—not even at the start of a relationship when you’re eager, even desperate, to know everything about someone. In fact, it occurs to me that staring at her face, waiting for her to speak, feels a little bit like falling in love. There is intrigue and affection, with a narcissistic, needy ingredient.

  “I took a bus,” she says, as I notice a complete lack of an accent. At least there is nothing in her voice that I can detect or trace to a particular geography. “Greyhound.”

  “Oh,” I say, horrified, remembering the story of the man who decapitated his seatmate on a Greyhound bus.

  “Yeah. It was sort of gross. But it got me here.”

  I nod and say, “And where do you live?”

  “St. Louis.”

  “Is that where you’re from? Originally?”

  “Well. Originally I’m from Chicago,” she says, flashing me a pointed look. “But yeah, I’ve lived my whole life in St. Louis. In the same house.”

  I digest this with the eerie memory of my first and only trip to St. Louis, about ten years ago, when Kirby would have been seven or eight. I went there for a friend’s wedding, and after the ceremony, rather than heading straight to the reception, I went for a walk alone, meandering around the blocks surrounding the church. I distinctly remember the damp chill of the air, the steel-gray of the sky, and the thin, low-hanging clouds, all of which compounded the loneliness that comes with attending a wedding solo. I remember the sound of my heels crunching in the scattered remains of late fall leaves and the look of the modest brick bungalows with their gambrel roofs, stained-glass windows, and tidy, manicured yards. House after cozy house, many with American flags, window boxes filled with flowers, and metal screen doors adorned with initials. Most of all I remember turning the corner back toward the church parking lot and being filled with an intense pang, almost a longing for her, along with the chilling sense that she was nearby. Looking back, it seems an unlikely, eerie premonition—but then I realize that the feeling wasn’t at all unusual. I got it almost any time I was in a new setting, with strangers, and sometimes even in my own neighborhood. Yet I still confide the story now, telling her of the coincidence.

  She looks skeptical but humors me. “Where was the wedding, exactly? What part of town?”

  “I don’t recall,” I tell her. “It was a big Catholic church. Huge. Stone. Stained glass. St. Joseph’s? Or Mary’s, maybe?”

  She says, “That really doesn’t narrow it down.”

  Her reply isn’t impolite, but from it, I glean that she is not only smart but capable of being a smartass.

  “No. I guess it doesn’t,” I say.

  “But it could have been in my neighborhood,” she says, softening slightly. “I live in South St. Louis. Near St. Gabriel the Archangel. That’s our parish. Could the wedding have been there?”

  “Maybe,” I say, picturing her skipping along the sidewalk in a gaggle of girls, clad in navy and white Catholic-school girl uniforms. Crisp, pleated plaid skirts and woolen cable knee socks. On the way to a soda shop. One of them daring the others to smoke a cigarette that Kirby refuses.

  She holds my gaze then hesitates, taking a deep breath. “Well, guess what?”

  “What?” I ask.

  “Even though you had me in Chicago … I had a feeling you lived in New York.” She shrugs as if this admission embarrasses her as I wonder what she knows about me. Has she seen any of the few press photos of me at red-carpet events? Or maybe even the blurb with Peter from Page Six?

  “Yes,” I say. “I’ve lived here a few years. I work in television—so it’s sort of here or L.A.”

  She looks surprised—which in turn surprises me. “Television? Are you an actress?”

  “No. I’m a producer.”

  “Of movies?”

  “No. Television. Have you heard of the show South Second Street…?”

  “Yes!” she says with a jolt of girly enthusiasm and a huge smile. I notice that her bottom teeth are slightly crooked, the middle two overlapping. She clearly hasn’t had braces, and I wonder whether her parents can’t afford them or simply decided she didn’t need them badly enough, maybe even wanting to keep the character in her smile.

  I smile back at her. “That’s my show.”

  “I love that show. It’s so good,” she says. “I like that contractor guy. Shaba Derazi? Is that his name?”

  I nod. “Yeah. He’s a good guy.… He’s actually filming a movie in Toronto right now. With Matt Damon.”

  She looks giddy with the inside information—although not as thrilled as I am that she knows and likes my work. At the same time, I feel guilty that I know nothing about her fears or passions or dreams for the future. I don’t know whether she is left or right brained, athletic or uncoordinated, introverted or extroverted. I don’t know if she’s ever been in love or had her heart broken. And although I understand that being in the dark about these things is part of the deal with adoptions, at least closed adoptions, I still feel a sense of shame for being so clueless about my own flesh and blood. I look away, as my mind races through the last eighteen years, filling her face and name in to all the generic scenes I’ve imagined, often against my absolute determination not to think about her. Kirby swaddled in a bassinet. Kirby learning to crawl, walk, talk. Kirby climbing onto a big yellow school bus on her first day of kindergarten. Kirby losing her first tooth. Kirby waking up on Christmas morning and racing downstairs in a red flannel nightgown to find a Barbie Dream House. At least I hoped these were the visions of her life, and nothing resembling the guilty nightmares I sometimes had. Kirby, hungry, cold, lonely, abused. I look at her, overwhelmed with the relief that she is okay. At least she appears to be okay.

  “So. Tell me more. Tell me all about yourself,” I say.

  She crosses her arms, and says, “What do you want to know?”

  “I’m sorry. I don’t mean to sound like I’m interviewing you.”

  “It’s okay,” she says, but still offers no information.

  “So. I know how old you are,” I say. “Eighteen.”

  She nods, expressionless. “Yeah. I had to be eighteen to get your name.”

  I nod, remembering the contract I signed—as well as the lie I told on the signed, sworn affidavit. I don’t know the identity of the birth father. I push him out of my brain, as I’ve done a thousand times before, and at least a dozen tonight.

  “So you’re a senior?” I say.

  She nods.

  “Are you going to college next year?”

  “I don’t know. I just got into Missouri … Last week.” She shrugs, then glances out the window overlooking a darkened Madison Avenue. “But I really don’t want to go to college.”

  Her answer disappoints me, but I pretend to be unfazed. “You can always take a year off to think about it,” I say. “That’s what I did.”

  My voice trails off. She gives me a look, and I can tell she suspects what I did during that year, but she doesn’t ask. Instead she clears her throat and says, “So I’m sure you’re wondering why I’m here…”

  Without thinking or hesitating, I reach across the table and cover her hand with mine. Her fingers are cool, slender, delicate, her middle one dwarfed by a large turquoise ring that extends up to her knuckle. She tenses, but doesn’t recoil, and I return my hand to my lap. “You don’t need a reason,” I say.

  She gives me a look I can’t read and says, “I just … needed to meet you … I felt like … something was missing … you know … not knowing … where I came from and stuff…”

  I consider echoing the sentiment in a knee-jerk fashion, implying that something has been missing in my life, too, but know this isn’t true. Earlier tonight the only thing I thought was missing was a
proposal from Peter.

  “Well, I’m glad you’re here,” I say instead, although I’m fairly certain that this is an overstatement if not an outright lie.

  She swallows and waits as we both stare at each other awkwardly then look away in unison.

  “Okay. How about this,” I say, focusing on a fleck of gold in the marble counter. “I ask you a question. Then you ask me one. We’ll take turns. Anything goes.”

  She nods, as I realize that it is a dangerous game for me. What will I tell her when she asks about him? The truth, of course, but there are so many gradations and interpretations of the truth that such a thing, in its pure form, practically doesn’t exist. At least it hasn’t in my life—and maybe that is true for everyone.

  “Okay. Let’s see … Do you have any siblings?” I say.

  “One sister,” she says, and then tells me that her parents thought they couldn’t have children but then got pregnant right after they adopted her. “Her name is Charlotte. She was a miracle,” Kirby adds, expressionless.

  “Are you close?”

  She shrugs. “Yeah, Charlotte’s cool. Really nice. And she’s a crazy good swimmer with the best butterfly time in the city’s history. She has Olympic potential—she’s that good.” She gives me a telltale eye roll and says, “Everyone loves her.”

  “Wow. Maybe a little too perfect?” I guess.

  “You could say that.”

  I smile, but she remains stone-faced.

  “Your turn,” I say.

  She bites her lip, then copies my question and asks if I have any siblings.

  “No. I’m an only child. My parents love to travel and thought it was easier with one child,” I say, the explanation I’ve always accepted at face value suddenly sounding ridiculous.