Authors: Louise Behiel
He opened an old door of wood slats held together by a cross bar on the back side and indicated dark narrow stairs. “Although you have to climb them one at a time, they’re safe.”
Looking up into the narrow stairwell, Gray remembered the house had a root cellar but no basement. One time his brothers had threatened to lock him down there in the dark when he’d caught them smoking.
“Do any of my brothers smoke?” he asked his mother.
“Of course not. My children have more sense than that.” She looked at him. “Why?”
“Just wondering.” He followed her up the stairs, his hand supporting her thin arm.
The stairwell opened into a hall lit by a big window overlooking the street. “You used to play up here a lot.” She looked over her shoulder at him. “You said you had more room. I always thought you liked the light from the big window.”
He’d always had a passion for natural light. It was one of the elements of his reputation as a contractor, back ho...back in Calgary.
“Here’s your room.” His mother stepped out of the way. “It’s all yours.”
Fear chilled him as he gently placed his fingertips on the door and pushed. A neatly made single bed stood across from him. A picture of batman hung on the wall above it. A small window...and...and....
On the other side of the room, arcing around the room and closet all the way back to the door were presents. Lots and lots of gaily wrapped packages. He stepped inside, working to keep his jaws together. Some of the boxes were wrapped in red and green Christmas wrap. Others had cars and balloons and horses on them. Some of the ones nearest the door were wrapped in more somber paper and darker colors.
He looked at his mother and she motioned him further inside. Over her shoulder he could see Andie, her mouth a perfect ‘O’.
“Start over there.”
He looked in the direction his mother had indicated. Picked one up and read the card. ‘Merry Christmas Greg, Love Mom and Dad, 1971’.
There were others with similar cards. Then a few said ‘Happy 8
th
Birthday Greg, love Mom and Dad”. He walked down the room and picked up a package wrapped in plain blue paper. ‘Happy 35
th
Birthday son. Love Mom and Dad.”
“Your mother never lost faith, son. She always swore you were coming home to us.”
***
“I don’t think I’ll survive.” Andie spoke softly against his neck as they relaxed in the two-person Jacuzzi tub in their room.
Their love making had been shattering. She was sitting limply on his lap, enjoying the feel of him softening inside of her.
“You’d better.” He pulled his head back to search her face. For a split second, she thought she saw fear in his eyes, but she must have misread the signals. He had nothing to fear and he knew it.
They sat in silence for a few minutes, Gray tracing circles on her bare back. “Come on,” he said lifting her gently. “If we don’t get out of here, we’ll turn into prunes.”
She rose and stepped out of the tub, wrapping herself in a bath sheet then handing him a towel. He wiped himself quickly, then wrapped it loosely around his hips. “I’ll get out of your way. See you in the bedroom.”
Something had been bothering him since they left his parents’ home. He’d been happy to meet his sister and brothers and their families, although at times he seemed lost in the crowd. When the kids got crabby, they’d returned to the hotel, promising to return to the house in the morning. The whole family was meeting there and joining them for a day at the amusement park. No one wanted to waste a minute of this opportunity.
“You okay?” she asked, catching him staring at a blank television screen.
He looked up at her. “Of course. I found my family and my roots. How could I be any better?” His eyes, however, said something very different.
Andie wanted to believe him, but she knew he was in a huge transition – one without any method of preparation. Emotions were battering him and he could easily flounder.
“I can’t imagine how you must be feeling.” She waited for a moment and when he didn’t respond, she continued. “If I were in your shoes, I think I’d be so confused. Loyalties and love. Childhood and adulthood. Anger, grief, rage. What you missed. What you had. I don’t know how a person would begin to put it all together.”
The remote tumbled from his fingers. “All of those things and more. There’s so much of them in me. Dad’s mints and his woodworking. He’s a builder and so am I. There’s no escaping the connection. But....”
“But?”
“I feel like a stranger around them.” He shook his head. “I never expected to immediately become one of the family, but my life has been so different. I think it’s like relating to cousins I haven’t seen for years. I don’t feel....” He extended his hands, palms up. “I don’t feel connected to them.”
“Why would you?” She dropped to the bed beside him. “They are strangers to you, Gray. They’re your family, but you don’t know them. You’ve lived your whole life as someone else. With other people. In another country.”
She settled close beside him. “Do you want some free professional advice?”
He slung his arm around her shoulders and pulled her close. “Of course.”
“Don’t pressure yourself to feel anything right now. Get to know them as individuals and as a group first.”
He nodded without answering and sat quietly.
“I know you’re right but there’s one thing really bothering me. One thing about me.”
“What?”
He pulled away from her and slid out of bed, to pace across the bedroom of their suite. Partway through the third trip away from the bed, he stopped. “I know what this sounds like, but as I watched them today I realized - in some ways I’ve been very lucky.”
“What do you mean?”
“It doesn’t really matter and don’t misunderstand me....” He stabbed his fingers through his hair and turned to face her. “There’s no easy way to say it but I realized tonight my life with the Mills’ was pretty comfortable compared to how it would have been with the Johnsons.”
“That’s probably true.”
“What kind of a person am I to notice those differences? I’ve just been reunited with my family after thirty some years and I sat there aware of how lucky I’d been as a kid in a different family.”
“Gray.” She had to stop this line of thought before it destroyed him. “The confusion you’re feeling might be about the difference in lifestyles, but I think it’s about something deeper.”
“What?” Confusion clouded his eyes.
“You’ve had the most extraordinary, unusual, stressful week. Would it be fair to say any one in your situation might be confused?”
He started to disagree but she held up her hand. “If it wasn’t you?”
He got her drift and smiled. “Point taken.”
“Good. Now let’s go one step further. You were taken as a seven year-old. You don’t remember many of the years with your family because you were too young. And you missed out on forming family memories as a boy or a teenager or a man.”
“Obviously.”
“What you do have is all of those memories with the Mills.”
He looked as if he’d been slapped. “All of this is Ida’s fault.”
“I agree.” She consciously lowered her voice, trying to soften his pain.
“Still, you saw them as your parents. You have all those memories with another family.” She knew he resisted the idea, but her professional training didn’t disappear simply because of a family situation. Especially when she sensed the man she loved was fighting for his place in his own life.
She drew him back to the bed. “Listen to me for a minute. I’ve had Bonnie for five years. Before then, she spent almost five years in different foster homes. She was even adopted once, although they returned her to social services when she re-connected with her mother.”
“How could somebody be so cruel to a little kid?”
Andie shrugged. That and worse happen to kids all the time.
“Where’s home to Bonnie?”
He frowned. “With you of course.”
“So what do you think she’s feeling as she becomes acquainted again, with her birth-mother and half-brother?”
He scowled before he looked away. “I see where you’re going with this line of reasoning, sweetheart, but there’s a big difference. I was stolen. Bonnie’s been placed with her best interests in mind.”
She shook her head. “Kids don’t think like that, Gray. When I got her, she knew she was bad because both her moms had given her away. It took us a long time to get beyond her belief and see their behavior as their responsibility and not her fault.”
“Okay, so how does her situation relate to mine?”
“After you recovered from the shock of the being kidnapped and uprooted, and after some time, you settled into the Mills’ home. People say kids are resilient and that’s why – you settled in and got on with life. Little children do not have the vocabulary nor the emotional intensity to continue to hang on to the past. They cry and scream and rage. And eventually they get over it.”
“But - .”
She shrugged. “Every one of them.”
“But - .”
“No buts, love. Trust me. You didn’t forget, you filed the memories away until you could do something with them. The dreams came up when you were ready. And of course you’re not going to be aware of many aspects of their lives, because you don’t know them as people yet.”
She hugged him. “Give yourself time before you tar yourself with a big brush, okay?”
“Okay. But I still think....”
Andie stopped him in the only way she knew how. With a kiss. Within moments they were tangled in the blankets on the King Size bed, lost in the pleasure of loving.
“You’ll call us when you get home?” Tears choked his mom’s voice.
“Of course, I will.” He hugged his mother then his dad and then climbed into the van.
“Goodbye. Bye.”
His parents stood on the curb, waving until he turned the corner out of their sight.
“Your dad has great candies, doesn’t he?”
“Yes Chloe, he does.”
Silent for a minute, she finally asked, “Are you Gray or Greg now?”
Any other time, her comment would have struck him as funny, but not today. He wasn’t sure if he was Gray or Greg. He didn’t know which name to call himself. Either choice denied the other part of him.
He’d come to Seattle so angry at Ma, feeling so betrayed he couldn’t imagine ever speaking to her again. But after a week with the Johnsons, he didn’t feel like he belonged with them either. Or that he belonged to their family.
He merged into north-bound traffic on the interstate, heading back to Canada. He wasn’t sure he could call it home. And he wasn’t sure he wanted to.
***
Tired cranky kids were no fun to travel with. Neither was a silent brooding man who hadn’t said ten words since they crossed into Canada. Incredible scenery and wonderful weather didn’t slow him down - he drove as if something chased him back to Calgary.
They’d seen all of Seattle they could manage in a week. Especially since Gray’s family had accompanied them everywhere. His brother Ralph hadn’t returned when they left, but they’d spent time with the rest of his family.
One evening his mother had organized a picnic for Gray’s extended family – aunts, uncles and cousins all of whom wanted to meet the returning son.
She feared Gray felt like a goldfish in a bowl. For such an intensely private man, all the attention must have been unnerving. He’d been glad to meet them all. But he was anxious to get home and get his life back under his control.
Relieved the kids had fallen asleep, since traffic from Banff National Park into Calgary was heavy, she surreptitiously watched Gray. He gripped the steering wheel as if he feared it would fly apart.
He hadn’t spoken more than ten words in the two days they’d been on the road. He’d loaded and unloaded suitcases, stopped for bathroom breaks, meals and to look at mountain sheep grazing on the side of the road, even though his body radiated tension and his silence had been unnerving. By late yesterday, even the kids had lapsed into silence.
Once they arrived home, Gray checked out both houses and then helped her carry the luggage into her place. He emptied the water from the picnic cooler and lifted some of the boxes off the roof rack. But he did so silently.
Whatever was going on, Andie was beginning to worry. He’d pulled back inside himself and become more reclusive than the man she’d met in May. Even Chloe had avoided him after he’d snarled at her question about his name. Jamie seemed to be the only one unfazed by his mood. The boy remained close, often pushing his hand into Gray’s or leaning against him in the hotel or van.
“Listen, Andie. I’m exhausted tonight, so I’m going to stay at my place.”
His words dropped like ice in a glass and she shivered although the evening was still warm.
“Don’t worry, I’ll keep an eye on things but I need to check my messages and get my truck ready for work tomorrow.”
She wanted to yell at him and call him a coward. Tell him he couldn’t shut her out this way. She didn’t. Instead, she swallowed her fears and pecked him on the lips and told him to sleep well.