Trail of Broken Wings (13 page)

Every day I would comb their hair, rearrange their clothes, and settle them into their make-believe dollhouse. They were perfect with perfect lives. Every night I would oversee a wedding ceremony between Ken and Barbie, who would live happily ever after. Sonya asked me what happened after they were married. “They have babies,
bewakoof
,” I said, repeating the word for stupid that my father called her. “Everyone knows that.”

Eric comes home early from his meeting. I’ve just finished scheduling dinner with friends from the Junior League. Twice a week, I work with them on community service events. My primary job is to set up the thank-you parties for generous donors. Since Eric and I move in the same circles as many of the donors, the parties become an excuse to spend time with friends.

“An unexpected surprise.” I kiss him on the cheek and take his light coat. Shaking it out, I hang it up in the hallway closet. When I turn, he is still standing in the same place. “Is everything OK?”

Taking my hand, he pulls me close. My head nestles perfectly beneath his. He rubs his hand up and down my back and over my hair. “I love you. You know how much, right?”

“You’re scaring me.” I step out of his arms, wrapping my own around me. “What’s going on?”

Eric and I met on a blind date. It was six months after Sonya left. Working as an interior decorator, I was making a reputation for myself. With an eye for detail and a unique ability to bring my clients’ imaginings to life, I became a hot commodity. Papa told everyone it was because I never grew up. I was still playing make-believe house.

We dined at a restaurant in San Francisco, overlooking the bay, and munched on bruschetta and a spinach salad. An expensive bottle of red wine was waiting at the table when we were seated. When I told Eric I didn’t drink, he told the waiter he would have iced tea with me, never questioning why I detested the smell of alcohol. I assumed since Papa didn’t drink I hadn’t acquired the taste for it. That night, on my doorstep, Eric asked to see me again. No kiss, no hug. A decision sealed by a nod. I watched him slip back into his car and knew I had met the man I would marry.

“Adoption.” Eric pulls out some printed papers, jarring me from my memories. Stapled perfectly together. “I started the process a few months back. Before everything happened with your father.” He cups my cheek, his excitement evident. “I wanted to wait to tell you until I had some good news. I know how hard everything has been for you.” He pulls out another sheet, showing it to me. It has the name of a woman on it. “This young woman is six months into her pregnancy. She’s looking for a couple to adopt her child.”

People have children for varied reasons. To make a family whole, to give meaning to their lives, or to re-create themselves, but this time do a better job. I join friends at Little League games or swim meets. Their knuckles clenched, the lines of their face set in worry, they watch for their offspring to validate their existence. But for their child to succeed, the parents have to create a foundation to stand on. To set, by example, what it means to be the best. The children watch your every move, learn how to act by your actions. If you make a misstep, you chance losing their trust forever. I often wonder which of my parents I modeled myself on and which one I trusted.

“I thought we had agreed to keep trying,” I say, refusing to take the papers. I turn toward the den, the darkness beckoning me. Early on, Eric had his sperm count checked at the fertility clinic. Since it was fine, we assumed the problem was mine. Though he wanted to attend every appointment I had with the fertility specialist, I assured
him it was routine checks and his time was better spent at work. If there was anything life-changing, I would share it with him. “We don’t even know what the process will entail. And what about the child?” I start to ramble, my voice rising. “Do we want a boy or a girl?”

“Hey.” He reaches out, grabs my shoulders. Turning me to face him, he tips my chin up with his finger. “Slow down. We don’t have to have all the answers right now.”

“Then why did you bring this home?” I smack the papers in his hand, wishing they would disappear like a fog over the bay in the early morning. “Did you think about discussing this with me first?”

“I thought that was what we were doing.”

Eric borrowed his company’s private jet to propose to me. We flew to Los Angeles, where he had reserved a table at Spago for lunch. Afterward, he took me on a boat ride into the middle of the ocean. We spent the afternoon riding waves and watching dolphins. It was a perfect day. On the plane ride back, the stars offering us their blessing, he got down on one knee and asked me to marry him. Taking both my hands in his he said, “You are the woman I’ve been searching for my whole life. Please be my wife and give me the world.”

It’s impossible to give someone the world. You can show them glimpses of yours, hope they join you in it, but to give them the world means you have to be willing to give up your own. Nonetheless, I was sure I had fooled us both. That somehow, giving myself would be enough. Now he was telling me what I always suspected. I was not enough. He needed more from me. His love was an illusion, a façade that would reveal its true nature soon enough. When my womb remained empty, he would choose between his dream and me. Destiny demanded I would lose.

“It’s too soon,” I say. Motioning around me at the empty house in our wake, I begin to make excuses. “We don’t know how to be parents.”

Memories start to filter in, crowding out the conversation.

Darkness falls. A young girl is walking down a hallway. Doors open and close, but no one sees her. Crying out, she begs them to hear her. The words stay lost in her head. There is no audio. Tears stream down her face, creating a puddle as vast as the open sea. In one last act of desperation, she slams her hands against a door, but the impact makes no sound. Falling to the ground, she understands she is alone and will always be.

“Hey,” Eric wraps his arms around me, jarring me. “I’m scared too. But we’ll be great parents. The best. Any child would be lucky to have you as his or her mother.” He kisses my shoulder. “I would have given anything to have been adopted as a child.” He assumes I understand his need, accept his decision. “I know it’s not the best time, with everything going on with your father. But if we don’t move on this, another couple will. This finally might be our chance.”

“No,” I say, facing him. Fight or flight—both options guarantee I lose. “I can’t do this right now. I’m sorry.”

Six in the morning. The sun has only started to peek above the horizon. Dew from the night before blankets the grass. Birds start to awake, chirping the arrival of a new day. The hospital corridor is quiet. A shift change in progress. Nurses hand charts to one another, everyone speaking in quiet tones. Visiting time isn’t for another two hours, but they are used to me coming at odd times. A daughter grieving for her father.

“He had a good night,” his nurse says. “Vitals were steady.”

“Thank you.”

I barely slept all night. Eric worked through the night while I lay awake in our bedroom. Maybe he needed distance, though I yearned for his warmth. I hear parents complain that they forget about one another standing under the same umbrella with their children. I wonder what they would say if I told them standing together, without children, can tear you apart.

Papa is asleep. That explanation is my only comfort when I visit him. I believe he is dreaming a wonderful dream, lost in the streets of his beloved India. That he is happy and safe wherever he is. After Papa fell into the coma, I researched the condition and people’s experiences. Patients claim to have heard things said in their presence, felt specific people around them. That gives me hope. Papa has to know I have not abandoned him. I will wait forever for him to open his eyes and see me standing here.

I am not foolish. It may seem like that to my sisters, who hate him. They had cause to, I did not. I hated his actions toward them, hated him hurting the sisters and mother I loved. But with me he was a different person. There are a myriad of reasons why I was special. My frailty allowed him to protect me, or maybe because I look like him. A small voice whispers that he simply chose one of us to love and I was the lucky one. Perhaps parents understand their capacity, accept their limitations. They are only able to give so much of themselves to another, to love one person unconditionally. They pick a favorite and the others must fend for themselves. Whatever the reason, I was the one loved. Adored by both parents, I am indebted to them for life for making me the chosen one.

“Hi, Papa.” Bending down, I kiss his forehead. After smoothing the blanket over his body, I rearrange his pillow to make him more comfortable. I scan the machines, checking his vitals. Since his admission to the hospital I have become an expert at reading them. What used to be a foreign language is now decipherable. “Did you have a good night?”

Pulling up a chair, I bring it right next to the bed. Holding his hand, I lay my head down on the bed. Exhaustion seeps into my limbs. I want to curl up and fall asleep. We played a game when I was little. The nights when sleep was elusive, he would pick me up and fly me around like an airplane. Through the living room, in and out of the bathrooms, past the den until we returned to the bedroom. While
Sonya lay in bed watching, he would fly me around our room once, twice, until the airplane was all out of fuel. “Time for the plane to land at the gate,” he would say, tucking me into bed.

“Me, Daddy, me now,” Sonya would yell when she was younger. He would pick her up and play the game, but I knew it wasn’t the same. Her plane ride was shorter, quicker, without nearly as many turns or the same level of excitement. She must have caught on too, because after a while she stopped asking.

“Eric is pushing for a baby.” The machines are the only sound in the room. “He wants to adopt a child.”

Papa loved Gia. It was obvious from the way he played with her. The day of Gia’s birth, he arrived at the hospital loaded up with gifts.

“I told him not now.” The screeching wheel of the food-service cart as it comes down the hall announces it is breakfast time. They always pass Papa’s room. No reason to bring a plate to the man who is dependent on a tube for his sustenance. “Not when you’re here, fighting for your life.”

The day Mama called me with the news, I was getting ready for our weekly meal. Our plan was for me to pick them up and drive together to sample a new restaurant that had received rave reviews. My cell phone began to buzz just as I was slipping my earring in. “I’m on my way, Mama,” I said into the phone, not giving her a chance to speak. Grabbing my keys off the mantel, I rushed out the door, the phone still to my ear.

“He’s collapsed, Trisha,” she said, interrupting me. “The ambulance is taking him to the hospital.”

Her words washed over me. My keys dropped. I stood frozen, paralyzed from shock. Eric came home and drove us to the hospital. We met them in the ER, but the doctors were baffled. He had fallen into a coma with no explanation as to why.

“Please wake up.” I pace the tight room. It is as large as my guest bathroom. “How am I supposed to be a mother?” He stays silent. Not a
muscle moves or twitches. Picking up his hand, I whisper, “What kind of parent would I be?” His hand stays limp. Left without an answer, I collapse back into the chair and sit, watching him for hours, hoping for a sign. When none comes, I leave the hospital, more confused than before.

MARIN

When an adult has been abused as a child, he or she lives life always expecting the other shoe to drop. That is because it always did. There was never a good day that did not end badly. Sadness always followed happiness, and fear always preempted confidence. A guaranteed emotional roller coaster when you are not the one in control. For Marin, Brent’s emotional state always took precedence over hers. Her state of being was dependent on his.

Only three times in Marin’s life had she fallen to her knees and asked the heavens for help. The first time, calling on all the deities that Ranee prayed to religiously, Marin had begged not to leave India. No matter how excited her parents were about the new world, she had no desire to leave the one she knew. Her friends, the extended family, were everything familiar. As they packed their entire household, Ranee regaled Marin with stories that she had heard about America. Roads without cows walking alongside. Schools in buildings instead of outside, seated in the dirt. “Everyone owns a car,” Ranee had said, laughing excitedly at the thought. Clean air, doctors that don’t have to be bribed for care, and most important, Ranee said, kneeling down to face Marin eye to eye, women have all the rights in the world. No
matter what Ranee said, Marin knew deep inside herself she did not want to go. But her first prayer went unanswered, and they boarded the plane for the new world, her hand securely in Ranee’s, while Brent carried Trisha across the tarmac.