By Blood (22 page)

I was startled awake by the phone, then the voice on the other end. The Bell System operator. Would I receive a collect call from Israel from Mrs. Truva Golan?

I do not know this person, I replied.

Softly in the background, I could hear the operator conferring with the caller, soon coming back on the line to say: The other party says she is the assistant of Mrs. Orna Knobloch.

Yes, yes, I said in anticipation of some further developments in the story of my patient’s mysterious origins.

Good morning, Professor. We are about to send out the material Mrs. Knobloch promised for you. I would like to make sure we have the right address for you at the university, the exact building and room number where mail is received.

I am on leave, I told Mrs. Golan. Please take down my temporary address.

I am not calling the university now?

No, madam.

There was silence on the line.

I am afraid I have broken protocol, she said. We have a duty of confidentiality, which I’m sure you understand. We have vetted your university affiliation—

(they contacted the university!)

—and the department secretary verified your position on the faculty. But we cannot speak so freely without proper identification, without a formal letter of request, which I cannot seem to find. Forgive me. But I must send all the information to your verified university address, since …

I understand completely. There is no problem. I will simply have a colleague forward it to me.

I was doomed. What colleague would sort through my mail and forward it to me? Who there still trusted me? Particularly as I was tracing information about a woman, a young woman … If the parcel was to be opened by the secretary, the department head would question the contents, and then … Oh, God, I would be banished from the university forever.

Thus did I work myself into a panicked state, as was my wont. It was three o’clock in the morning. I could not go back to sleep. Nor could I sleep the entire day, one that seemed inordinately long, as the sun of springtime lingered, slanting into evening.

Five days of isolation followed.

At the end of which, I knew: I had to find Michal Gershon. To stop here, and deliver nothing more, was to add another abandonment to the patient’s life. I would find a way to receive the files. I had to believe they contained Michal Gershon’s address. This I would send to the patient. She would find her mother.

My new hope, though dim, was to find the patient’s mother alive and well and open to loving the daughter she had surrendered.

I emerged from my isolation. I walked along the margin of the dusking ocean, wondering how I might retrieve Mrs. Knobloch’s files. An hour went by. Full dark fell upon us. Bonfires bloomed along the sands. I let the problem recede from my direct consciousness and listened to the surf, the rhythm of the sea. And by the mysterious process through which these thoughts arise, a plan came to me.

There was a postdoctorate student, a young woman who had remained friendly with me throughout—or at least civil and polite. I would call her, I decided, and tell her a near truth: I would say I was searching for the birth mother of a cousin who was adopted, a story that closely followed the path of my heart.

I was surprised when her telephone answered with a recorded message: Please let us know the date and time of your call, and leave a message at the beep. The beep came. I babbled. Another beep sounded, and the line hung up. I called again. At the beep, I tried to make my message more coherent, and was again cut off by the second beep. Answering machines were illegal, and rare; the Bell System owned all the equipment and had forbidden the use of the devices on their lines. Under normal circumstances, if no one was home, the phone simply rang and rang until the caller gave up. I therefore did not know how to behave in the face of that machine. I froze at the thought of being recorded; my words sounded stilted to me; I was aware that I was leaving a record of a lie.

She returned my call nonetheless, sounding quite at ease. She thought it “touching” that I was helping my cousin and asked no questions about the matter. Yes, she would stop by the secretary’s office often and “keep an eye out” for the envelope; yes, she would forward it; no problem, she said. I gave her my address in San Francisco. Then, at the end of the call, her voice grew tentative, and she asked:

But how
are
you, Professor?

I am … doing all right, I said.

She said nothing for several seconds, then:

I hope everything works out, she said. I would enjoy working with you again.

I nearly broke into tears. This was said so freely, so openly—the first hint that my life at the university was not a complete ruin.

Thank you, was all I could choke out in reply. And she rang off with another promise to forward my mail.

The patient’s next session proved to be inconsequential. She spoke of the major event that had just happened in the world, the fall of Saigon, the dramatic and humiliating exit of the helicopters from the embassy roof. She discussed a matter at work, however desultorily. She spent a little time puzzling over the relationship between Clarissa and Andie—they never fought, it seemed. It appeared the hour would end with little accomplished, I thought with relief.

Then, as the session neared its close—as always, we analysands dangle ourselves before the fire only when we know it is about to go out—the patient suddenly sighed, sat quietly for a time, then said:

You know, Dr. Schussler. I can’t help thinking about my adoption. And it’s come to me that, not only have I been abandoned, but that I’ve been abandoned twice. First by whatever mother gave birth to me. Some Jewish woman named Maria—how odd, a Jew named Maria—a widow too desperate to raise me, or not ever married—or a prostitute, even. Why stop with nice mothers? Mothers come in all varieties, don’t they? Witness Mother, Mother with a capital M.

And then I was abandoned—junked!—by my grandfather. Whoever he was. Mad Catholic patriarch. Funny to think of how I could have bumped around in the world during those first months of my life. Why stop at two abandonments? Maybe others took me up and left me—nuns, priests, village ladies—why not? A whole Europe full of people ready to abandon little Jewish babies.

As I listened to the patient, I understood that all the pretty parcels I had sent, showing a decent life in the camp, could not wash away the stain. Only her birth mother could remove it. Perhaps by giving a mother’s love? Or, at the very least, a decent explanation of why she had never come for her.

Eight days later, Mrs. Knobloch’s parcel arrived, courtesy of my graduate student.

It contained a thick pile of papers. On the last sheet: Michal Gershon’s last known address.

I have it all, said the patient. Everything I need to find her.

It was not the joyous voice that had greeted the first parcels about her mother.

Name, address, everything. It would be so simple. Just write a letter to this address and see what happens. I mean, maybe … maybe it’ll just come back saying, Moved, no forwarding address. Or, No such person. Or a letter saying, You’ve made a mistake. I’m not your mother. Or the worst: Nothing. The worst thing is that nothing at all comes back.

She laughed.

Watch out what you wish for, she said. I wanted to know about my mother, and now I do. But now what? Is this a ticket to a new understanding of my life, or a bomb that’s going to blow up everything?

Consider one more possibility, said Dr. Schussler. That you remain essentially the same person you were, neither new nor destroyed.

The patient laughed again. You mean it’s all a lot of trouble for nothing?

Not at all, said the doctor. It is a challenge.

The patient sat silently for several seconds, then said:

But what happens if I find her and she rejects me all over again? She could just say, I didn’t want you back then, and I don’t want you now.

Do you really think anyone would say that to you?

Yes, said the patient. I do think someone will say that to me.
Has
said that to me. I mean Mother.

Your adoptive mother.

Yes. Capital-M mother. She didn’t want me then, and she doesn’t want me now.

That is not true. Why are you punishing yourself again? Your mother was conflicted, put in a situation not of her own choosing. And now she is afraid of your father and unable to handle her own feelings.

I’ve spent my whole life looking out for Mother’s feelings! It all amounts to rejection for me.

This last was said in her cold, angry voice. After which she sat back, mute. One could imagine her arms crossed over her chest, the glum expression on her face. The seconds ticked away as traffic noise filled the space in the therapeutic conversation.

Finally the therapist said: And so you believe your Michal Gershon must do the same.

Of course.

But why? Why would she?

She gave me away. Isn’t that enough evidence?

Perhaps she wonders what became of her child.

She could have looked for me, if that’s what she wanted. Like I said a couple of weeks ago, mothers come in all varieties. Maybe she’s a shit.

So then, said the therapist, it will be she who is lacking. Not you.

Ah, said the patient. Yes. I suppose so.

Her voice drifted off, so that the “I suppose so” was a near whisper.

I sat pained as I listened to her indecision and fear, the awful sense she carried inside her, ontologically, of being unwanted. I saw how adoption, far from liberating a person, could inscribe a sense of defect inside one’s heart, as deep and indelible as any work of the genes. She had “inherited” her feeling of being unworthy; she had come to consciousness with the knowledge of having been given away. I could not imagine any path for her but toward the truth. Nothing could possibly cure such feelings of unworthiness except understanding why: Why had her mother given her away?

What should I do? she asked her therapist.

Do you really want me to give you the answer? replied the doctor.

The patient sighed. Of course not. No one can do that for me. But … I’ve barely digested the bad meal fed me by one set of parents. Why subject myself to another mother? Maybe I can just put all this information aside. And wait.

You are not required to do anything at all, said Dr. Schussler.

Yes, said the patient. I’m just going to put all this on the shelf. And see how I feel after a while.

A perfectly realistic decision, the doctor said.

How could she! The therapist had pulled her client relentlessly toward the birth mother, and now—after all the hard work I had done to find her, laying my overcoat across the therapist’s mud swamp, so to speak—now the doctor thought to say: Well, never mind.

It was the therapist’s guilt and fear. What relief Dr. Schussler must feel to put it all aside, go back to “Mother” and “Father,” the two parental figures who predate the whole dark, messy, terrifying connection to the exterminated Jews of Europe.

The month of June ended; July went by; the August hiatus loomed. Throughout, the patient never again mentioned her birth mother.

As the sessions wore on, my feelings about her denial began to evolve. Initially I was merely angry at Dr. Schussler and felt somewhat forgiving toward the patient; such reticence seemed natural, protective, given the scar upon her soul. Soon, however, by the time we had come to the fourth session, and the patient still had not said a word about her mother, my emotions began to take on a more sinister cast, which, given my history, should have been a warning to me.

The patient began to bore me. What dullness she revealed as, week by week, she ventured nothing more daring than a discussion of work issues (things far too technical for the therapist to remark upon), thoughts about finding a new apartment (without taking any action whatsoever thereupon), rants about lesbian-feminist politics (she was against separatism, a position unchanged since the second session I had overheard), current events about which she could do nothing but moan (the FBI shootout at the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, the congressional report on CIA abuses in spying upon Americans).

Such timidity! Such a lack of curiosity! With all the new avenues opened up to her by the knowledge of her origins, she had withdrawn into the safety of the quotidian. It was one thing for her never to have set off on this road. But now that she had begun—was indeed close to her goal—her repression and denial was outright … cowardly!

She had toyed with my emotions, I felt. She had presented herself as a complex person of merit, someone who might understand me. I had been fooled. Betrayed! Could this dull person possibly be the young woman I thought I loved as a daughter? My god. She had revealed herself as spineless, shallow, listless—
common
.

There remained but one more session before the August hiatus. I did not care to attend. Why waste an hour listening to the patient’s vacant chattering? I decided instead that I wanted to see what she looked like, in the flesh, for real. My goal: to erase the ideal image of her I had been carrying within me all this long year.

I wanted to see with my own eyes that she was an ordinary girl. Perhaps she really was the common-looking woman I’d seen in the elevator, she of the matted brown hair, flushed cheek, and sweaty brow. Unlovely. I would be released from caring if she did not conform to the lovely vision I had constructed in my mind: if her movements were not graceful and delicate; if her eyes were not intelligent; if the swell of her lips was not the perfect portal for the creamed-coffee flow of her voice. I thought of the patient’s flaws as I had learned of them through the eyes of her mother and the therapist: the frizzy hair, “dirty” blond; the eyes that go “dark”; the low, “disgusting” gums; thinness to the point of seeming ill. The “weird” triangular head she had ascribed to herself, Yossele Rosensaft’s head: ugly on a woman. I would station myself before the elevators at the end of the patient’s hour and wait to lay eyes upon this flawed, disgusting, unlovely creature.

I stood before the three elevators at the appointed time. The eyes of the cherubs rolled left then right, following the path of the cabs as they rode up and down the shafts. The center car made a slow descent: stops on seven, four, two; on the mezzanine—could they not walk down!—finally at the lobby. At last the doors rolled back: to reveal the plain woman with matted hair! Her hair, still matted and unruly. The flushed face now red with a pimply rash. She duck-walked forward with rounded shoulders.

Immediately the car to the right opened and disgorged its passengers. And a young woman emerged: another woman who might be the patient! Brown hair, skinny, curly hair—who could tell under such a mop of hair if a head is “triangular”? Perhaps she was indeed the patient, fluffing up her hair to hide the shape of her skull. She, too, walked toward me, her step martial, strident, ungainly.

I turned and followed them out of the lobby. Which one was my patient? Oh, God, why did I not think to say good morning, so that each might reply and reveal herself through the sound of her voice? I trailed behind them as they walked toward Market Street, at which point each turned and went a separate way. I stood there dancing from foot to foot, unable to decide in which direction I should go, feeling such disdain for them that it came into my mind to think, Unworthy bitches! When suddenly I realized the elevators were not done for the day; car upon car would yet discharge its passengers.

I raced back to the lobby. I was sweating, still shifting from foot to foot. The guard fixed his gaze upon me.

He came at me in two long strides.

What is the trouble here? he demanded, his powerful body towering over me.

He knows what I am about! I thought desperately. He knows I am a threat! Yet I managed to reply:

I am late. Meeting someone. And I am agitated at my tardiness.

I heard a deep chord of skepticism rumbling in his chest, saw his eyes running over me like those of the cherubs, his beautiful, frightful countenance as unmoving as their bronze faces.

Then, behind him, the left elevator opened its doors.

Over the guard’s shoulder I saw her: the young woman who had lived in my mind all these months. Slim as an iris stem. A nimbus of brown hair suddenly ignited by a band of sunlight. Delicate cheekbones. Chin pointed like the fulcrum of a heart. Movement as elegant as a willow.
Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?

Is there a problem? said the guard.

He must have seen it: the sudden lightning of desire on my face.

I found myself in front of the building, next to the patient, about to move toward that lovely form. All the disdain had been drained from me; my plan to hate her had utterly failed. She was all my imagination had created, and more. And I would have followed her anywhere, if she would have me.

A hand gripped my elbow.

Get along your way, sir, said the guard, his eyes fierce with threat, his arm turning me away from Market Street.

But I am a tenant here,

I said weakly.

I said, Get along your way!

The patient was leaving me! I watched her shape recede as she crossed Market Street, where she would disappear into the crowd. I tried to tug my elbow away from the grip of the guard. I looked down at the hand restraining me. And I was about to protest again—when suddenly it came to me that I was being held in the hand of Providence.

Truly, I was not a believer. Before that moment I had no faith in divine intervention into the world of men. Yet right then I knew some force had been sent to save me from my fearful desires. There was no reason this guard should have left the building to accost me. I had never seen him challenge anyone as he had challenged me. Now I knew why he was placed in our building; why his beauty so unnerved me.
Each single angel is terrible
.

Thank you, sir, I said to my angelic guard.

He screwed up his eyes. He had not expected this gratitude. He hung over me, still holding my elbow.

I suppose I missed my niece, I said to him. I should go in and phone her.

He said nothing, only continued to hold me by the elbow to escort me inside, then see me into an elevator car. I rose up the shaft knowing I was being watched over: the guard watching the eyes of the cherubim, as they watched me ascend to eight.