This duality—established at our first conversation—becomes the defining quality of our reunion. I am full of need and I am full of understanding.
Catherine doesn’t admit need from her end of our reunion. She has the same feelings and desires that I do, I know she does, but her life has been largely lived and not largely explored. She likes things to be nice and easy. She likes to have fun. She doesn’t seek understanding. She believes she understands well enough.
I would say that Catherine thinks of me like a new girlfriend, an acquaintance that she is trying to incorporate into her life. In this way, she can keep me at a distance while trying to be polite. But the truth is, she is also pissed because I’m not a new girlfriend. I am an old secret and the way she had it worked out, I was supposed to stay hidden. She has to be furious with her new pal. Of course, I’m just guessing.
THE ADOPTION BOOKS are accurate when they report that an adoptee
needs
to be close to the birth mother and to have some form of regular contact. After ten days pass without a plan to meet, I feel I am going insane. I have to take some action for myself and my own well-being.
I make a call.
“I’ve booked a flight. I’m coming at the end of the week, just for a couple days,” I blurt over the telephone line.
“Oh,” Catherine says. “Well, that’s kind of short notice.”
It sounds like she is at work. Her voice has a professional clip.
“I’ll stay in a hotel ... ” I stammer. My stomach churns. “I won’t impose. We can just visit when you have time.”
“It’s only been ten days, crimeinee,” she says. Her voice is like a knife.
I almost say that I won’t come.
I almost hang up the phone.
“It’s fine. It’s fine,” she concedes, just in time. “Just come. Jessie can’t wait to meet you anyway.”
SUNDAY MORNING, 7:00 AM, I am booked on the earliest flight to Reno. Standing in line to get on the plane, I’m on the phone with Jessie and she’s totally pissed. Fire feels like it is coming out of the phone. “Fine, you don’t want me at the airport, I get it,” she says.
“It’s not that I don’t want to meet you,” I say. “I need to just do this one person at a time, Catherine first, then more people can come in but this is really intense. I don’t think I can handle more people, right away.”
Jessie says nothing more but I feel her on the other side of the line, tapping her foot and drumming her fingers on her kitchen countertop.
“It’s fine,” Jessie finally says again.
“It’s not personal, Jessie,” I say, “please understand.”
“I do, I do, I totally understand,” she says, only her voice is not understanding.
“Jessie, come on, I’ll see you when I get there,” I say. “I cannot wait.”
I hand my ticket to the man at the gate and he scans the numbers with a computerized wand. Converging with the rest of the passengers, I go down the long walkway that funnels travelers into the belly of the plane.
“Come over after I have a couple hours with Catherine, please? ”
“Well, I don’t know. I’ve got a lot to do today,” Jessie says. “Anyway, I gotta go.”
She hangs up the telephone, gone as fast a hummingbird.
All that has happened is that I’ve asked to see Catherine first, just for a couple of hours, and then I will meet Jessie in the afternoon. This is the way it needs to be—the child who was given away needs to have some control as she returns to the world of those who rejected her, but Jessie is not interested in psychology.
What gets me is not that she’s pissed. What gets me is that she is pissed in the same way I get pissed. She is abrupt, hurt, and incredibly fast to react and then she is off protecting herself with excuses of being busy.
I’ve behaved in exactly the same way for most of my life and now I get to see that this is the way my people are. I thought I was so wounded before—incapable of managing slights and hurts and disappointments. No, that wasn’t it. This is how my people deal with pain. They get snippy, they hang up the phone, they run away.
“Welcome to Southwest,” a flight attendant says.
I hear myself say thanks and walk down the aisle, smiling this weird, stupid smile. I should be really upset with this situation with my sister but I’m not. I’m learning about myself by the simple act of engaging with her.
“Please fasten your seat belt,” comes the voice of a flight attendant, from the front of the plane. “And turn off all electronic devices.”
I buckle myself in and take a deep breath. Here we go.
TWENTY-SIX
BREAKFAST IN RENO
RENO AIR IS like no other—it is bright and crisp and laced with the smell of sage. Reno air is mountain air with a bite.
When I step off the plane in Reno, the old smell hits me.
The next blow is that my mother isn’t waiting.
Slot machines, cigarette smoke, and strangers greet me instead.
Welcome home.
I weave down the long corridor that leads through the terminal, passing signs advertising all manner of entertainment from hookers to musicals. If I believed the postings on the walls, I’d be at a casino as fast as a Checker Cab could get me there and I’d be feeding my silver dollars into a Wheel of Fortune machine.
Janet used to say, “You cannot win playing another man’s game,” and this was how she felt about gambling. Did I make that up? Was the voice of reason born inside of me, all on my own? I cannot say with one hundred percent certainty but I do not gamble with my money. I only take risks with my heart.
CATHERINE HAS LEFT a message on my phone and says she will meet me at the curb, since parking is such a hassle.
If this were Denver, Chicago, or New York City, I’d get the whole excuse about parking hassles and the need to keep things simple. But Reno International is only large in name. At this time in the morning, on a Sunday, the Reno airport is like a ghost town. A dried wheel of sagebrush actually rolls past, pushed by the morning wind as I snap my phone closed.
Yes, Catherine is pissed.
No, she really didn’t want me to come.
Yes, my heart is broken.
No, I’m not surprised.
I cry as I stand at the curb, waiting.
I wonder if this is too much for me to bear? I ask myself if I need to just toss in the towel and go home now?
I ask myself the question of all questions—the one I always ask when I can’t take care of myself:
What if it was Josephine instead of you?
The answer is so clear when put into that context, and I am about to turn around and go back to buy a return flight when a huge blazer roars up to the curb.
Catherine drives the rig like she’s a cowgirl on a horse and waves her hand, only the gesture is impatient, as if I am a task on a to-do list that she doesn’t want to be responsible for.
Catherine pulls on the emergency break and gets out of her rig. She comes around to give me a quick hug and I’m there, in my
pathetic sadness—crying and lost. I’m a forty-four-year-old baby. What could be worse?
Something about my tears makes her even more impatient and she sighs.
She hugs me, just for a second, and then tries to let go but I won’t let her get away. I hold on to her familiar body, close my eyes, and breathe in her smell. I can’t help myself. I just have to do this. She is my mother, my very own mother. How can I not hug this woman? How can I not want her?
“I missed you,” I hear myself say.
She pats at my back, exasperated, impatient, and distracted. But does she also soften? Is there something that gives way in her? I want to believe it’s true. I want to believe she wants me too.
“Okay, it’s okay,” she says, clearing her throat. “Let’s get you into the truck.”
THE DRIVE TO her place is filled with chatter. She talks about how upset Jessie is, as if I didn’t know, and apparently there is some problem at work as well. It’s important, what she is saying, these details of her immediate life, but I don’t follow her line of thinking or reasoning. It hurts to think in that way—to take in intellectual information. While she talks, I nod and smile as if I am following along but what really goes on is that I am taking in—as deeply as I can—the timbre of her voice. It’s so musical and right. And look at her! My hungry eyes reconfirm that she looks just right with those long fingers, long legs, and her slim womanly body.
Like I did in Portland, I absorb her into my senses, only this time, being with her is that much more precious. I know this moment will not last. I know I may never see her again. I know I have to make the most of our time together.
Finally she runs out of talk and reaches over to touch my arm.
“I’m so glad you’re here,” Catherine says. “It was a hassle, rearranging everything, but now I see you, I am really glad.”
“I’m sorry it was a hassle,” I say.
“Oh, pooh,” she says, waving me off.
SHE MAKES A few turns and we are in a neighborhood of tract houses—cookie cutter lookalikes. The colors are indistinct whites and tans.
“Home sweet home,” she says, pushing a button to open the garage.
I won’t stay here with her; rather, I have a hotel, but we have agreed to start here. Jessie will come soon and then we’ll have breakfast.
Catherine leads the way and her garage is tidy. She has a few pieces of painted furniture, which resemble the furniture in Jo’s room.
In through the back door, past the laundry room, down a narrow hall, and we’re in an open area that is the living room, dining room, and kitchen. Trotting over to meet Catherine is a huge black cat. Another cat sits in the middle of the living room and it is a skeleton covered with hair.
“There’s my babies,” Catherine says. She talks baby talk and scoops up the smaller cat with its fur mottled the colors of beige,
orange, gray, black, and white. The animal hangs as limp as dirty laundry. “This is Sadie,” Catherine explains, “she’s got cancer.”
I keep my hands behind my back—being allergic and all. “I’m sorry,” I say.
“I just love her so-oooo much,” Catherine says, nuzzling into the furry bones and poor Sadie has the face of a Muppet. That cat is very close to death.
Catherine lets Sadie drip to the floor and heaves the big black one into her arms.
“This is Shadow. He’s the one with diabetes. I have to give him a shot twice a day, which is why it’s so hard for me to travel.”
Catherine rolls the cat in her arms until his white belly is up and he bats around at her face.
The phone rings and Catherine rolls the big cat under her arm like he’s a sack of flour.
“That’s going to be Jessie,” she warns and her voice holds the question,
Can she come?
Already I pick up on the nuance and I’ve known her for less than a month.
“It’s fine.”
Catherine snaps open the phone and before even saying hi, she says, “Come over. It’s okay.”
While they chat, I wander around the living room. Her home feels like she feels. Tidy, contained, beautiful.
She has all-white furniture and white wall-to-wall carpeting. A crucifix hangs on the wall, there are vanilla-scented pillar candles, and a glass coffee table.
There is no garden in her yard; it’s just grass and big decorative stones. At the edge of her yard is a tall fence connecting her to all her neighbors.
“Well, dry your hair and come on over, honestly,” Catherine says into the phone, snapping with impatience. While I don’t care for her tone, it helps to hear her be pissed at someone else. I don’t take it so personally—or at least the earlier demonstrations of impatience don’t cut so deep.
Catherine flips her phone closed.
“She’ll be a few minutes, maybe twenty. Should I make coffee?”
“Coffee is good,” I say.
Catherine tosses Shadow down and the cat ambles a few steps before rolling on its side like a water balloon. It bats at the air with its black paws.
Catherine goes into her kitchen, talking about how she loves her little coffee machine, since it makes one cup at a time.
I drift down the hall, nodding like I’m listening, but I’m not.
She has a lot of flowers in her home, mostly made of silk. On the wall there are hanging plates painted with the faces of movie stars from the ’50s—Yul Brynner in
The King and I
, Clark Gable hunched over Vivien Leigh in
Gone with the Wind.
Down the hall and around the corner is her guest bath, all white with a white linen shower curtain. On the white counter, on a small plate, are pretty pastel shell-shaped soaps—which I know Jo would love.
In fact, what I think as I move through Catherine’s house is
how she is so much like Jo. Feminine and delicate. There is a level of innocence here too.
Out of the bathroom and into the guest room, I stop at a row of photos and there is Jo looking up at me from a black-and-white photo of a little girl in a tutu, tights, and ballet shoes. But that’s not Jo. That’s my mother when she was little. I look at the black-and-white for a long time.
Was my mother well loved as a little girl?
From the looks of the photo—smiling child in a tutu—I would say yes.
I would also say she has been very lucky.
I WEAVE DOWN the hall and past her bedroom, which I do not go into. I feel like that is too personal a threshold. That is her private world but of course, I make note of all those pillows and the cozy bed. I have the same set up at home.
One more room is her office and I wander in, keeping my arms crossed over myself.
Catherine has a PC computer on a tidy desk and little-kid art is taped to the walls—modest little rainbows and stick figures holding hands. The message “We love you Grammy” is written in the hand of a child.