“Oh, my God!” Jill cried. “Oh, my God.” She put her hands over her face and rocked and cried.
“I know, I know,” Mom whispered, and, taking hold, laid Jill’s head on her shoulder. So they sat close, holding each other.
After a long time Jill sat up, wiping her eyes. “I’ve gotten your shoulder all wet.”
“It’s nothing, nothing. Are you all right?”
“It’s a beautiful letter… . I can’t believe I’m holding it in my hand. Such a beautiful letter.”
“Yes, I cried, too, when I first read it.”
“If only she’d signed her name!”
“Darling, you’re missing the point. That’s the last thing she would have done. She wanted confidentiality above all things. She was scared. She felt threatened.”
For a while Jill considered, imagining herself in a situation like that, but she wasn’t able to make it ring true.
“Maybe,” she said, “since so much time has passed, she’s changed her mind and wishes she could see me.”
“It’s possible. But even so, I don’t know what either she or you could do about it. That’s the law.”
“I think it’s wrong, and I’m not the only one who thinks so. I’ve read that there are lots of people and active organizations who are trying to change it. Don’t you agree they should?”
“I’m not sure I do. There’s much to be said about keeping a child secure in one family, with one loyalty and no conflicts.”
“A child, yes,” Jill countered. She was beginning to feel a renewed impulse toward action. “But not an adult. Momin a few more months I’ll be eighteen.”
“I know that.” The mother’s voice was touched with sadness.
And Jill, at once aware of the sadness, put her arms around her. “Morn, you’ll always be my mother. You’ve done everything for me, you’ve been”
“Oh, when I think of what we went through to get you!” Now the sadness merged into laughter. “References and investigations, a thousand questions. We were so afraid we wouldn’t be as perfect as the agency seemed to think we ought to be. And when finally we came to get you, that raw November day, it was sleeting and we had you wrapped like an Eskimo …”
So they sat and talked all the rest of the afternoon, while the rain splashed from the eaves and sluiced the windows and the dinner went uncooked.
It was decided: Dad would go to Nebraska with Jill and find out what they could.
“It looks the same,” he said as they drove up in the car they had rented at the airport. “I wonder whether Mrs. Burt is still here.”
Down the long corridor between the mansion’s library and solarium, Jill followed him. She thought, My mother walked here. Right here.
“You all right, Ladybug?” Dad asked.
“Fine. I’m fine.”
Dad went into the office. “I want to pave the way, show my credentials as a doctorit might carry a little weight, who knows? And make clear that you’ve come with your parents’ blessing.”
Jill sat down in the anteroom, a beige, neat place with comfortable chairs and magazines. It was the waiting room of a doctor or lawyer in any prosperous community. Hearts beat faster in these waiting rooms, she thought.
After a long time Dad came out to her. He whispered, “Mrs. Burt retired two years ago. This one’s not the most lovable person in the world, but come on in, anyway, and do your best.”
The young woman behind the desk was attractive, but she didn’t smile when Jill was introduced. She was a businesslike type.
“Your father has told me what you want,” she began, addressing Jill. “Surely you must know you can’t have it.”
“I suppose I hoped,” Jill murmured.
“The records are sealed. The original birth certificate, not the new one issued after your adoption became legal, is in the hands of the state, in the Bureau of Vital Statistics. And sealed,” she repeated. It was as if she were slamming the door.
Nevertheless Jill persevered. “But your records here? I thoughtoh, I want so much to know, only to know!” And realizing that she had clasped her hands in supplication, she unclasped them and continued in a reasonable tone, “I hoped you would understand and help me.”
“But you knew better, Doctor,” the woman said to Jill’s father. Her manner was respectful, yet it contained a reprimand.
“Yes, I knew. But there is here a psychological need that can’t just be ignored.”
“It is curiosity, Doctor.”
“I differ with you. It is more than that.”
“If we were to satisfy all these requests, then the promises that were made to the original mothers would be worthless, wouldn’t they?”
During this exchange Jill’s eyes rested on the desk. A Lucite nameplate stood facing away from her. She had a quick knack of reading either backward or upside down: Amanda Karch, it read. Behind it lay a large legal-size file. Clearly it must be the agency’s private record of her birth. She felt a surge of ferocious anger. Here lay the truth only a few feet away, and this woman, knowing the truth and seeing as she must Jill’s awful need for it, refused it. By what right? This insignificant bureaucrat, this self-important
And suppressing her anger, she asked quietly, “Are there ever any circumstances in which records are unsealed?”
“Very rarely. You have to convince the courts that you have good cause; for example, a serious illness that is difficult to diagnose and which might be genetic, or a severe illness of a psychiatric nature that might be a threat to sanity. Rare situations.”
“I see.”
“None applies to you.”
Jill did not answer. Her eyes returned to the file and stayed there.
“I would advise you to dismiss this from your mind. You have, so your father told me, no other problems. Then you’re a lucky young woman, aren’t you?”
“Yes,” Jill said.
Dad took her hand as he spoke. “Needless to say, Miss …”
“Karch.”
“Miss Karch. Needless to say, we are terribly disappointed.”
The woman half rose, dismissing them. “I understand, Dr. Miller. But I can only tell you again, for your own good, put this out of your mind. Don’t let this useless question become a neurotic obsession. Don’t disrupt your lives.”
“Thank you very much,” Dad said.
They were driving back to the airport when Dad suddenly drew over to the side of the road.
“What do you think, Jill? Shall we go home? Have you got any other ideas?”
Miserable in her defeat, she answered with a question. “What idea could I have?”
“Taking it to court.”
“You heard what she said about that.”
“Cold fish,” Dad muttered. “Though I suppose she must know what she’s talking about.”
“It would cost so much to get lawyers, Dad.”
“Don’t worry about that.” He started the car. “As soon as we get home, I’ll make some inquiries. Now let’s have a bite to eat. Dinner on the plane won’t amount to much.”
It was late evening when the plane began its descent over New Mexico. The mesas threw dark blue shadows over the brick-red earth. To those who knew nothing about this land, the cliffs were no more than immense walls of rock. But to those who knew it well, they were the home of an ancient people. Down there the mes-quite grew, the pinon pine shook in the wind, and the river ran. Jill stretched and craned to see whether she could identify any familiar places.
“Remember the time we started on a Sunday and Jerry forgot the water bottles?” Dad asked. “Which reminds me, I think we’re going to win the battle for the farmers over those water rights. It’s a hell of a thing, diverting water from farms to supply a resort hotel for dudes.”
Jill understood his attempt to take her mind off her problem. It saddened her to see her father look so troubled, and she said quickly, “Dad, you don’t have to humor me. I’ve lost today, but I’m not down-and-out, and I’m not giving up.”
A month or so later Dad reported the results of his investigation. There was indeed no chance at all of winning in court. Attorneys here at home, as in Nebraska, were positive about it. The court required good cause, and Jill had no good cause.
She took the news stoically. By that time she had been admitted to Barnard College in New York and had her game plan in place. Once there, she would seek out one of the adoptee organizations about which she had read. Others in her situation had been successful, so there was hope for her.
With some bitterness she remembered the warnings of that chilly woman at the home for unwed mothers. She had called Jill’s search an obsession. Well, it was as good a word as any, she supposed.
So she packed her new clothes with many differing emotions: sorrow at leaving home, excitement about her new life in New York, pride in her achievementand the obsession.
The organization’s office was in a wing of a simple, private home in a small town not far from the city. There were two little rooms, in each a desk and a row of green metal filing cabinets.
“We’re a small group,” said Emma Dunn. “I’m a re—
tired social worker, and this has become my full-time project. I’m adopted myself, you see. Mr. Riley is the sole other staff member and the rest are volunteers, a few of them teachers, psychologists, a couple of lawyers, and the others just plain good people. Now sit down and tell me about yourself.”
When Jill’s brief story was finished, she nodded. “It’s the usual beginning. Do you have your birth certificate? I mean, it goes without saying, the certificate that was given out after you were adopted.”
“It’s at home.”
“We’ll need it, unless you know the names of the hospital and the doctor.”
“I do, but he wouldn’t tell anything, I’m sure.”
“You said your father’s a doctor. Could he get in touch with this doctor? Sometimes doctors do things for each other.”
Foolish, Jill thought. It wouldn’t work. But she conceded that it would be worth a try.
When she phoned home that night, Dad agreed to try, as she had known he would. A few days later he called back. His voice had a downbeat.
“It didn’t work, Jill. He’s an old man, still in practice, and very sympathetic. But he can’t break the law. He made that clear, and I understood. I was even a little embarrassed about having asked him to.”
“Thank you, Dad. Thank you, anyway.”
“Is everything else all right, Jill? Working hard? Having fun?”
“Yes to both. New York’s wonderful. I’ve made friends and I love it, but I’m thinking of Christmas vacation and coming home too.”
“So are we, dear. We miss you terribly.”
“Christmas vacation” put a thought in her head. How would it be to take a detour on the way home with a stopover in Nebraska? Suppose she were to see the doctor herself? Maybe a nurse or secretary could be approached. The thought turned into a resolution and stayed with her through the term.
Accordingly, on a day of bitter cold, with snow high on the western plains, she found herself sitting before still another desk opposite a white-haired, partially deaf old man. The lighted windows from the building across the narrow street enlivened the dark afternoon. When he had finished, very kindly and clearly repeating to Jill what he had already told her father, the doctor remarked, “You’re looking at the hospital where you were born.”
Quite dispirited by now, Jill only nodded.
“I only wish I could help you, young lady. I really wish it. But if I were to speak those words to you, they would haunt me. I’ve never stepped outside of the law, and I’m too old to start now.”
“Words? What words?”
“Your record. When your father called and gave me the date of your birth, I went back to my dusty files. I only delivered one baby that day, a girl.”
Jill’s eyes filled. So close, so close again … right there on the desk.
The old man coughed and bent down to open a drawer. “Darn those pills. I never know where they are.”
And Jill leaned forward. On a typed sheet she had time to recognize only one name upside down: Peter … Alger something … Mendes. She drew back just as the old man’s head came up.
“I’m really sorry I can’t help you, my dear.”
She had to get out of the office fast, to write down the name. Her heart was hammering. Had she imagined a twinkle in the doctor’s eye? He’d given her a bit of a chance without breaking the law. Whoever this Mendes was, it was a clue, at least. Perhaps he was a relative or a friend of her mother’s. Or perhaps he was her own father?
At home late that night, trembling, she told her parents.
“Peter Alger,” Mom said.
“Not Alger. There were more letters.”
Mom reflected. “What else could it be but Algernon?”
“It’s an odd name,” Dad said. “Why does it ring a bell in my head?”
“You’ve heard it?” Jill cried.
“It seems to me I’ve seen it. Seems to me that I read it in some periodical. Maybe he’s a doctor who wrote something in one of the medical journals. Well, I’ll have one of the girls in the office go through the medical directory on Monday. There are lists of all the physicians in the United States, you know.”
“No, not a doctor,” Dad reported on Monday evening. “Still, that name bothers me. It’s the Algernon that sticks in my mind. Maybe I’m imagining the whole thing, yet I seem to see it on a page and see myself reading in the office, the way I do when I eat my sandwich for lunch. Doesn’t seem to be too long ago, either.”
“Well, what do you generally read, then, besides medical journals?” asked Mom.
“A lot of things. All the magazines for the waiting room, National Geographic, The Smithsonian, besides all the popular stuff. And then my special-interest pamphlets and brochures, Bureau of Indian Affairs, the Sierra Clubwhatever’s lying around.”
“You’ll never find it,” Jill said.
“Don’t say that. The more I think about it, the more sure I am that I saw that name within the past year. And we generally keep things on the shelves for a year or so. They fill up the space and look nice.”
It’s a wild-goose chase, Jill thought. And yet one never knows.
The winter passed, the summer came and went, and the sophomore year began. She had gone back to Emma Dunn and given her the name for whatever use the committee might be able to make of it. And then one evening Dad telephoned.
“You’re not going to believe this! I’ve found Mendes. It was in an article on Indian archaeology that came today. He’s a professor of archaeology in Chicago. Wait, here it is. Write this down… . What are you going to do, write to him?”