Beach Plum Island (16 page)

“Why didn’t you tell us about him after Mom died?” Elaine asked as Ava pulled open the TV drawer. Not surprisingly, it was crammed full of papers and photographs; she had to slide her hand in and press down on the papers to jimmy the drawer free.

“Not my secret to tell,” Finley said, jutting her chin. “I promised my sister I’d keep their secret to my grave.”

“Why are you telling us now, then?” Gigi asked. Her voice wasn’t accusatory; she was just curious, Ava could tell.

Finley squinted at her. “Who are you again, young lady?”

Ava held her breath, giving Gigi the chance to tell the truth. She was relieved when Gigi said, “A friend of Ava’s and her sons. That’s all.”

“Seeing these girls here, the two of them grown women, made me realize I don’t want to be buried with this secret. Keeping my promise won’t do anybody any good now.”

“Did you ever hear from Peter again?” Elaine asked.

“Not a word.” Finley started to cry, one slow tear snaking its way along the crevices of her cheek. “I thought I’d be able to visit the boy when my social security checks started coming regular and I could finally afford the bus to Bangor, where the social worker was who took him. But when I got all the way up there, they said he’d been removed from their system.”

“Removed?”
Ava’s chest tightened, hearing this. Maybe they were too late after all. “What do you mean?” She sat down between Elaine and Gigi and dropped the pile of papers and photographs onto the coffee table. They slid across the table’s water-marked surface, a mini avalanche of family history. “Did he die?”

“No, no. Nothing like that. Peter was
taken
.” Finley sounded impatient now. “I wasn’t allowed to know the name of his new people without your mother’s permission. Even your mother didn’t know who adopted him. That wasn’t done back then. In those days, birth mothers weren’t allowed to know the adoptive family. Everyone’s privacy was protected.”

“What about Dad?” Ava asked. “When did he find out about Peter?”

Finley squinted at the ceiling. “Maybe a year or so after Elaine came along, I think it was. Your mother had some kind of breakdown and told him about it then. She called me right after that, said she’d made a terrible mistake, telling him. He was that upset. I don’t think their marriage ever fully recovered.”

“Did Dad ever try to find Peter when we were growing up?”

“No idea. He certainly never came to me about it. Even if he had, it wouldn’t have done him much good. His name wasn’t even on the birth certificate and of course there wasn’t any of that DNA testing back then. I suppose he could see, too, how difficult it was for your mother to cope with just you two girls, and decided to leave well enough alone.”

“He was respecting Mom’s wishes,” Elaine pointed out.

“Maybe. Or maybe he was taking the easy way out, as men do.” Finley leaned forward, sorting through the photographs on the table with her gnarled fingers until she found the one she wanted. She held the picture up in front of the three of them, her hand trembling a little.

It was a color photo of a small, serious-looking, dark-haired boy on the same sofa they were seated on now. Peter was dressed formally, in black trousers with red suspenders, a white shirt, and a little red bow tie. Was this picture taken on Christmas? Ava wondered. Or was it a photo to accompany his adoption papers?

Peter’s hands were folded in his lap and he looked about five years old. He had the same square jaw and high cheekbones that Ava and Gigi had inherited from her father, but a feline tilt to his dark eyes that he—and Elaine—had inherited from their mother. Ava could almost hear Finley’s voice admonishing him to “Sit still, for once in your life!” His legs were so short, they stuck straight out in front of him like a doll’s as he solemnly looked at the camera.

Except he couldn’t have actually been looking at anything. Peter was blind, Ava reminded herself, despite the fact that nothing about his expression suggested he couldn’t see the photographer. There weren’t any other obvious disabilities. He looked alert and curious. Perhaps Finley concluded he had problems because Peter was hyperactive, or suffering from anxiety. And what boy wouldn’t, being closeted during most of his early childhood in a single room, with only a sedentary middle-aged woman for company?

Ava wanted to weep, seeing Peter—her brother!—posed like that, trying hard to behave, innocent of whatever fate awaited him. She felt a sense of recognition so deep, it was nearly primal: This boy was her family. Her blood. Her history.

Ava picked up the picture and, without asking permission, slid it into her pocket with the little stuffed dog.

They drove home in near silence, stopping only once at a highway rest stop when Gigi said, “I’m starving hungry! I could gnaw off my own arm! You two must be cyborgs or something, going so many hours without food.”

Ava said she had no appetite. Elaine sighed and said, “I’d sooner slit my wrists than eat any crap fast food loaded with enough salt and fat and toxins to fell a herd of elephants,” but she stopped anyway.

However, once they’d gone through the drive-through, the food smelled so good that both Ava and Elaine started begging Gigi for fries the minute they pulled back on the highway. They had to stop again at the next exit.

“I need gas anyway,” Elaine muttered. “Might as well eat something here.”

“This time, get your own dinners,” Gigi said.

“Yeah? And who do you think bought yours? Santa?” Elaine snapped back.

That was the only altercation. Ava was grateful for the relative peace in the car. She was too exhausted to deal with any more drama, and still reeling from the sensation of walking through her own nightmare at Finley’s house.

“Can we call places tomorrow and try to find out what happened?” Gigi asked from the backseat as they turned onto High Street to drop her off in Newburyport before continuing across the bridge to Beach Plum Island.

“Count me out,” Elaine said. “I’m not ready to do this.”

Ava wasn’t sure she was ready, either, but she told Gigi she would. “It won’t be easy, though,” she warned.

Peter’s last name on the birth certificate was Laurent, Suzanne’s maiden name, and the father was listed as “unknown.” But knowing Peter’s last name might not even be useful if he’d been adopted into another family. Ava didn’t know what the adoption laws were.

“What if Peter’s already dead?” asked Elaine, whose thoughts must have been traveling in similar, if darker, circles. “Do we really want to know?” She sucked down the rest of her soda and rattled the ice in the cup, steering the car easily with one hand but driving too fast for Ava’s comfort. “Think how horrible we’d feel.”

“It didn’t sound like he had anything wrong with his health, just his eyes,” Ava pointed out. “And he’d only be in his early forties by now. Forty-three, if he was born two years before I was.”

“We have to prepare ourselves for that possibility, though,” Elaine said. Her profile was sharply etched against the window, as elegant as some ancient priestess’s against the white collar of her shirt in the darkened car.

“Also, he might not want to see us,” Gigi said, sounding glum. “Would
you
want to see the kids your dad
didn’t
give up? The kids he actually stuck around to raise?”

“No,” Elaine said. “I still don’t, actually.”

“Nice,” Gigi said. “Real nice.” She fell silent for the rest of the ride home.

Ava knew Gigi was hurt. By the way Elaine glanced into the rearview mirror to look at her, she knew Elaine realized it, too. She hoped Elaine was sorry, but didn’t have the energy to intervene. Times like these made her wonder if having sisters was worth the effort—and why the hell she’d started this whole treasure hunt for a brother who would surely complicate their lives even more.

E
laine and Tony had a Sunday ritual they’d started five years ago when Elaine joined his marketing company: they would meet at the gym for an eight o’clock spin class, then treat themselves to dim sum in Chinatown. This Sunday was so hot, however, that Tony called early to suggest the North End pool instead of dim sum.

“We can eat at the snack bar,” he coaxed. “You’ll love it. So retro.”

“A public pool?” Elaine laughed. “God. I didn’t know you were so
communal
.”

“Are you kidding? I love that pool!” he declared. “It’s the best place on the planet to ogle hot Italian guys in gold necklaces and Hugo Boss. And where else can you wear heels with your bikini? Come on. Live a little. They even have ice cream at the snack bar.”

“Okay,” she said. “But you’re treating.”

“Absolutely! The pool is three bucks for the day and the ice cream’s a dollar. It’ll break the bank, but you are so worth it, sweetie.”

They showered and changed into their swimsuits after spin class. Tony drove them to the pool in his green Mini Cooper, a car so ridiculously like a go-kart that Elaine couldn’t even make fun of it. Besides, Tony adored it, saying it was the perfect city car: “If I can’t park it, I can just put it in my pocket.”

The Mirabella Pool was at the edge of Boston’s North End and had a stunning view of the harbor. “See?” Tony said. “It’s like Club Med in the middle of the city.”

“Not quite,” Elaine said, rolling her eyes at a trio of older men with brown, well-oiled barrel chests. The men were playing dominoes. “But the water looks clean enough.”

The pool was deliciously cold, too. They swam laps, then floated on their backs, talking about work and Tony’s new boyfriend, George, who had just moved in with him. Afterward they found an open square of concrete where they spread out their towels and slathered each other with sunscreen. Tony was olive-skinned and dark, with a strong jaw and sensual mouth; he looked like he’d grown up right here in the North End.

Finally, Elaine couldn’t stand not telling him everything. Tony was her best friend and knew her better than anyone. Better than Ava, sometimes.

“So it turns out I have this big family now,” she plunged. “I told you about my half sister, Gigi, right? Well, now it looks like I have this brother someplace. He was born before Ava, and my parents gave him up for adoption because they were still in high school and he was blind and disabled.”

“What? Are you kidding me?” Tony sat up so fast that his sunglasses flew off his head and onto the cement. A teenage girl in a red bikini, platform sandals, and an entire chain-link fence of bracelets stooped gracefully to pick them up. She returned the glasses to Tony with a blindingly white smile.

“Jesus, I hate being this old,” Elaine muttered, squinting at the girl’s tight buttocks and toned legs as she pranced off to join a group of girls who looked like they could be her sisters, all ten of them.

“We all get to be young and beautiful exactly once,” Tony said. “Be grateful that you and I have now moved on to become elegant and wise.” He flipped over onto his stomach. “So is this really your life you’re telling me about, or some Dickensian novel full of intrigue, plague, hunger, and orphans?”

Elaine laughed. “Oh yeah, I own it, baby.” She told him about Ava inviting Gigi to work in her pottery studio, and about discovering Gigi at Ava’s, playing music with her nephews. “I acted badly and had a little snit fit over it,” she admitted. “Mainly because Ava clearly lured me up there to make nice with Gigi without having the decency to tell me anything about her being there first.”

“Ava’s scared of you,” Tony guessed.

“Unlikely. Ava’s tough. But afterward I went a little crazy, I was so mad at her.”

She confessed to going out that night and drinking so much she blacked out, and about do-gooder Gabe saving her from a tattooed motorcyclist. Finally she told Tony about Dad’s deathbed confessions to Ava and Gigi about a brother named Peter, and how once again Ava had tricked her into driving north, only to find out Gigi was coming along for the ride to ask Finley about their brother.

Elaine left no sordid detail unrevealed; watching Tony’s expressions unfold while she talked made her feel like she was a movie he was watching. When she’d finished, she flipped onto her stomach, too.

“So much drama, and so soon after the funeral,” Tony marveled. “Wow. You must be wrung out.” They were lying side by side, propped on their elbows and staring out at the sailboats and oil tankers on the sparkling blue harbor.

“I am.” Elaine reached around to unhook the back of her bathing suit. She wasn’t about to start having tan lines now. “The other thing I’m feeling is dread. I don’t want a new sister in my life. I don’t want a brother, either, especially not this one.”

“Why not this one?”

“Because it’s all too complicated! I love Ava. That’s why I went with her yesterday to Maine. I felt bad about storming out of her house just because that little freak was singing with my nephews. Plus, I knew Ava’s Honda wouldn’t make it that far north. I was happy she asked me. I really was. I know this is important to her, this brother. But I didn’t expect her to invite Gigi along for the ride and rub that whole connection in my face. Ugh. And I don’t know why we should search for some defective brother anyway.”

“Because you want to know what happened to him,” Tony said promptly.

“No I don’t. Not necessarily.” Elaine laid her head down on the towel. The hot cement made her cheek feel like she’d been slapped. “If he’s alive—and that’s a big if—Peter would be in his early forties and probably demented after being passed around a dozen foster families or institutionalized. He probably has hyperactivity, attachment disorder, depression, bipolar disorder, PTSD, or any number of those other horrible disorders kids suffer from when adults abuse them or lock them up.”

“That
is
a long list,” Tony murmured. “Like a whole year of Lifetime movies.”

“Right!”

“What about Gigi, though? She’s had two parents up until now. A solid start in life.”

“True. And I sort of get why Ava wants to bond with her. Ava misses our dad and the two of them are like clones, all artsy and barefoot and everything, and Gigi’s the same age as Ava’s sons. Ava doesn’t see her like I do.”

“And how’s that?” Tony propped his chin up on one hand to look at her.

“She’s insufferable! The girl’s an entitled little prep school brat who deliberately pierces herself and dyes her hair to look like some punk, when meanwhile she takes riding lessons at this fancy country club and probably sleeps in a frilly pink canopy bed. Such a poser! God!”

“She’s only fifteen,” Tony reminded her. “Of course she’s a poser. Who knows who they are at that age?”

“I did. At fifteen, I was president of my class and thinking about colleges. Whatever. Maybe Ava needed a mini-her since I’m always at work and unavailable.”

“Do I detect a snit of jealousy here?” Tony asked.

“About my brother, you mean?”

“And about the girl, Gigi. Such a sixties name. Love it.”

“Probably her mother’s choice. My stepmom’s younger than I am. Did I ever tell you that?”

“Many times.” Tony said this kindly. “And now Gigi’s mom is a widow and that girl is fatherless. Could those factors have entered into Ava’s thinking, when she brought the girl home and introduced her to her sons? Who would also be Gigi’s nephews, if I’m following the story?”

“Oh, blow me.”

“I would, gladly, but you’re not my type.” Tony pushed his sunglasses up so that Elaine could see his brown eyes reflecting the sunlit harbor beyond the chain-link fence. “What is it you’re really worried about, sweetie? That Ava will stop loving you because she’s looking after this little poser? That your brother, Peter, will somehow turn up and eat up the rest of Ava’s free time, because he’s in a padded helmet and has a guide dog? Is there maybe a part of you that misses Ava’s mothering, now that your dad is gone and you’re grieving, hmm?”

“Oh fucking hell,” Elaine said miserably. As always, Tony could hold up a mirror to her life. “I suppose.”

“You know, there’s another way this story could go,” he said.

“How?”

“Maybe your brother, Peter, survived his shitty childhood and will be glad to know he’s not alone in the world,” Tony said. “Maybe he was one of those kids who was resilient enough to make something of himself as an adult, despite whatever obstacles he faced.”

It was only then that Elaine remembered Tony’s own chaotic childhood. She closed her eyes and groaned. “Oh, God. I am so, so sorry. I completely forgot.”

“Of course you did!” he said cheerfully. “But don’t you see? That’s how miraculously resilient the human spirit can be, that you forgot I was a foster kid.” Tony rolled onto his back. “I actually loved my foster mom,” he said thoughtfully. “I still do. She was the rock to my barnacled little self. Now will you please help me choose the best-looking lifeguard? Nobody has an eye for man candy like you do.”

Elaine laughed. “What about George? Isn’t he waiting for you at home?”

Tony checked his watch. “No. He’s probably still at church, singing his little heart out,” he said. “Once a choirboy, always a choirboy. Then he’ll stop at the grocery store and bring us something to feast on for dinner. Did I tell you about his mango chicken?”

“Did I tell you that I’m jealous every time you tell me George is cooking for you?” Elaine said. “I always imagine him in a frilly apron and nothing else.”

“George will be thrilled when I tell him that. You know, you could get yourself one of these homey, live-in boyfriends yourself someday, if you ever get tired of blacking out at clubs.”

“Shut up. You sound like my sister.”

“Because we both love you,” Tony said. “Seriously, honey. These lifeguards are tasty to look at and so are bar boys. But you and I both know boys under thirty are only tolerable until they open their mouths. What about trying somebody maybe a tad older? A guy with something to offer you outside the bedroom?”

“You mean like a nicer car than mine?”

“I mean like somebody who can offer you a decent conversation in the clear light of day in addition to fun slutty pillow talk,” Tony said. “I mean a dinner cooked at home and eaten in pajamas. When was the last time you were in bed with a guy and both of you had clothes on while you talked?”

“I don’t typically go to bed in clothes,” Elaine said. “My high heels destroy the silk sheets.” But she was thinking of Gabe, of his warm brown eyes and deep laugh, and the way he’d held her and wouldn’t stop stroking her hair.

She shook off the image. The last thing she needed was some sensitive needy guy in a nonprofit T-shirt making goo-goo eyes at her. She sat up. “Come on, hunky man. You promised me an ice cream.”

“And pizza. I wonder if they have gelato here?”

Tony pulled on his T-shirt and stood up, offering his hand to her. Elaine took it and they held hands on their way to the snack bar like a pair of children at recess, so happy to be best friends they wanted the whole world to know.

•   •   •

They weren’t going to find out anything more about their brother today. It was Sunday, Ava reminded her when Gigi called that afternoon, so offices were closed. Finley hadn’t known which adoption agency had originally placed Peter with a family, but there were only a few in Maine. Ava planned to call them all, she promised Gigi.

“But not until tomorrow,” she said, “so you might as well find something else to do today. Why don’t you spend time with your mom?”

Ava didn’t understand that her mom probably didn’t even know if Gigi was here or not. Mom wasn’t like Ava, who seemed tuned into everything Evan and Sam did, even though she put on a good show of pretending she wasn’t. It wasn’t like Ava friended them on Facebook or anything. She just asked them questions and Evan and Sam usually told her the truth, maybe because they knew Ava wouldn’t blow up at them.

Gigi was in her bedroom, where she spent another hour on the computer. She’d tried Facebook first, to see if Peter Laurent was on there. He was blind, but maybe they had computers that talked to you or something. When she couldn’t find him, she wondered if his new family had changed his last name. That was a horrible thought. How would they find him then? A family could even adopt him and change his first name, too.

Well, she had to start somewhere. Gigi started researching adoption resources next. There seemed to be a lot of them online. She surfed through Bastard Nation, the National Adoption Clearinghouse, and the International Soundex Reunion Registry. What all adoption registries had in common was this: You couldn’t find somebody who had been adopted unless that person wanted to find you. All you could do was put your information into the registry and hope the person you were looking for did the same.

This site seemed like the best choice. It had been around since 1975 and used Soundex, a phonetic way of indexing names by sound to make it easier to find information on names that sounded alike, but might be spelled differently (Mayer, Meyer, Meier, Maier, Mire, Myer). So Soundex could help find a name in a database, even if it had various spellings. Any adoptee, foster child, or person separated from family who was over eighteen could use it.

Gigi scrolled through a few other sites, and discovered that if adoptions were finalized before 1984, which Peter’s must have been, both the birth parent and the child had to file their consent for an agency to arrange contact between them. Same thing for birth siblings age twenty-one or older.

Basically, anybody looking for someone else could file information with the registry: birth parents, birth siblings, adoptive parents, foster children, legal guardians of people with disabilities. That was the line that stopped Gigi: “legal guardians of people with disabilities.” Peter had disabilities, so even if he wouldn’t, or couldn’t, look for them, maybe his legal guardian had registered to search for Peter’s family.

It was worth a try. Excited now, Gigi read on to see how it worked. The process seemed simple enough. All you had to do was register online and your form was scanned. Information would be indexed on their computer. If data matched, and the ISRR volunteers discovered a relationship existed, they’d notify both people.