Authors: Nicole Conn
Elena Undone (8 page)
Elena never could fully believe in Tyler’s Soulemetry. As Barry put it, it was a bit too “out there love-child hippy dippy.” And had it been anyone but her dearest friend, she probably would have thought it was just so much hooey. But she found herself always mystified by the transformation in her when she sat within Tyler’s sanctuary. Her feeling of exaltation probably rivaled what most people would refer to as a religious experience, and she certainly felt more spiritual in the Soulemetry Gardens than she did in Barry’s church.
That always held almost too much irony for her, but she had long since given up trying to figure out what precisely it was, or why it was. Perhaps she would never understand it. But like Tyler, she accepted these warm and very inviting feelings as a gift and accepted Tyler and his trappings at face value. It was utterly mystifying to her that the two most important men in her life were both preachers of a kind, but at such opposite ends of the holy spectrum.
“Beautiful woman,” Tyler said, taking her hand, “I am so sorry.”
She glanced up at him, trying not to cry.
“I know how painful this is for you.”
“Tyler, you know—I just feel like…I feel like...” Elena blew her nose. “I’ve got to be doing something wrong—”
“Now stop that!” Tyler shook his head, furious. “This isn’t your fault.”
He stopped, breathed in deeply, exhaled. “I think I may have said this a time or two before—but, maybe—just maybe—it’s a sign.”
Elena smiled ruefully. “Well, that is the reason we’ve decided to pursue adopting. But don’t worry, Tyler. We’ll keep trying.”
He looked at her, smiled wistfully, then shook his head. “Please, don’t think you have to.”
“But, of course we will. Just...you know, just in case,” she said, her tone resigned, “whatever it takes.”
“Well, you know, my love, I’m always at your disposal.” Tyler smiled sweetly, then leaned in to give her a gentle hug. When they parted she could see he was getting emotional. “Look, I want what’s best for you, my exquisite angel.”
“Thank you.”
They sat in silence for a moment, both reflecting on their own wishes for the future, until Tyler snapped, Iyler sn them both out of it.
“I know better than anyone, yes?” He looked deeply into her eyes. “Everything you’ve been through...My Lord, between your unforgiving parents and Barry’s crusades du jour—”
Elena shot Tyler a sharp look. He put up his hands— “Okay— won’t go there.
“I swear to God, though, Elena, it’s a testament to your strength—or complete insanity! Either way—”
“Tyler, please. Besides, Nash needs—”
“Nash is fifteen, he’s going to be fine. Barry’s got what he’s always needed out of the church—utter adulation. So what I want to know is: what’s in it for you?”
He winked at her. Elena smiled.
“Come on...give me your hand.” She resisted at first, but he gently took one of Elena’s hands, held it for a long moment. He closed his eyes, began to tune in, but before he had completely connected with his “committee” as he referred to his communing spirits, he stated, “I’ve told you a thousand times if I’ve told you once, he is NOT your Twin Flame with his silly little congregation—”
Tyler stopped quite suddenly. Eyes still closed, he traced a finger over her palm, then bolted upright. “Well, I’ll be...this adoption thing may be the ticket...someone’s definitely coming into your life.” He shook his head again in wonderment, opened his eyes and pegged her own. “In a big way.”
Elena nabbed her hand back and responded wryly, “Yes. A...a baby! Oh, Tyler, I love that you do all this—you know that I do...but I’m just not sure I—”
“Oh, but there’s no denying what I see here. Your destiny is going to happen whether you like it or not, sugar plum. Even you, Elena the Intractable, are no match for your own fate.”
*
Elena had walked through the park for some time, finally releasing all the pent up emotion, all the anger at Millie, Barry—all of it. It had done her a world of good to see Tyler. It always did. But after she had left him, the last thing she wanted to do was go back to the house. She didn’t want to see Barry. Nor did she care to go back to the church, even if she had a pile of paperwork waiting for her there. She was sick of it. Sick of it all.
She really needed to tell Barry she needed to be done with it. She hated the desperate machination of the fertility cycles, having to have sex when she was ovulating, racing against her clock, hoping that Barry’s low sperm count would somehow be overcome by taking drugs, shots. And then there was Tyler. As he said, this had to be what was best for her. And every time she had her period she felt overcome with grief. It was simply too much to endure after…after everything they had been through. After already losing so much. She couldn’t bear to think about it another moment. She couldn’t put hersew bt put lf through this any longer.
Now she simply breathed in the beauty of the park. How she loved this place. Thank God she had found it several years ago and had been coming here ever since. It was the only place she could hear her own mind think, feel what she was feeling without having to confront a need, a question, a must-have, a constant picking at her for everything. Why couldn’t they all grow up and simply take care of themselves—at least a few moments a day?
*
She sat, took a deep breath, and allowed her breathing to calm. A beautiful sunset was on its way. A peach tint laced the edges of indigo blue. Another day finally passing, gave Peyton goose bumps. It was so beautiful. So healing and peaceful.
She glanced down at her palm, and looked again, for the hundredth time at the item her mother had handed her the night she passed away. She still didn’t understand what it was supposed to mean.
Staring back at her was an extraordinarily ornate ring in a setting of gold with a large light blue sapphire glistening in the setting sun. She had never seen it, had never heard her mother even speak about it. She knew every single item of her mother’s jewelry because Carolyn loved to talk about the value in things and had taught Peyton that lesson early in life—“My dear, the only manner in which to judge anything successfully is to apply some sort of value to it.” Having value was an essential for Peyton’s mother, and try as Peyton might to resist this equation, it had been imprinted in her mind.
Suddenly she realized she wasn’t alone in this section of the park. She could barely make out the russet color of the sweater, but someone was sitting at her other favorite bench.
*
Did she hear something? What was it? Elena didn’t know why, but felt compelled to turn. It almost frightened her at first, but then she realized it was a person sitting on her other favorite bench. A woman in a dark coat was sitting there. She wondered what had brought her here to this park, this very moment. If it was another lone person come here to escape her life.
Peyton could barely make out the features of the woman. Ethnic, somehow. Middle Eastern? Indian? Whatever nationality, Peyton could read pain, frustration, a perturbation with the world. Where had she seen her…something familiar. Could the woman see that Peyton was looking at her? Peyton realized she had been studying her for some time.
As if answering, the woman’s head moved slightly in acknowledgment.
Elena looked into the woman’s eyes as much as she was able to in the quickly growing dusk.
Their gaze held for an awkwardly long moment. Elena felt somehow as if time had stopped. Peyton herself felt as if she were on a different level of consciousness. Shook her head and thought she really needed to get more rh ao get mest.
Did she even know she was looking at her, Elena wondered.
Peyton wasn’t sure the woman was looking at her or beyond her, but she suddenly felt very uncomfortable. She got up and prepared to leave. She began to walk the opposite direction, but for some reason she had to look back at that woman again. Something about her.
Peyton turned. The last of the sun flared into her eyes.
Elena stood up and watched the woman turn her direction, but she put her hand up to her eyes and Elena could not make out anything else in her face.
Peyton shielded her eyes. Apparently the woman had already gone.
Peyton turned and walked away.
Elena watched the woman’s retreating figure until she could no longer see her.
“We spent our entire lives working in the same company.”
Edith, a spry eighty-five-year-old, sits next to her husband, Milton, eighty-nine. “Passing one another every day for thirty-seven years. Never said a word to each other. He’d just nod and smile. Always so pleasant...”
“Then I had a heart attack.” Milton’s hand shakes as he takes Edith’s in his. “Thought, I don’t have much more time to let things pass me by. I’m not going to waste another minute.”
“When he came back to work he walks right up to me and says ‘I’m not willing to waste another minute. I’m no Fred Astaire, but I’d like to take you dancing.’”
“Well, I’m not,” Milton concurred, shaking his head. “But you came anyway.”
Edith smiles tenderly. “It was the best date of my life. We married exactly three weeks later in City Hall. And right after, back we went to dance some more.”
Milton’s upper lip quivers as he announces, “And we haven’t spent a moment apart since.”
Edith puts her hand over his.
“The heart knows what the heart knows.”
A year later
Peyton sat tapping her pen, feeling inordinately bored as the Adoption Orientation Instructor droned on and on about all the state’s rules and regulations. The instructor was tall, angular and spoke in a clipped cadence, making the information even more difficult to digest in the community service room annexed to the Women’s Foster Services Building. Following her words, it seemed to Peyton, who sat in the stifling heat in jeans and a gray sweater, that the system made adoption as difficult as humanly possible—and it was that kind of meaningless counterintuitive behavior that drove Peyton to distraction as she sat amongst twenty some odd strangers all sharing the general concept that adopting a child was the most important thing they could do in their lives.
Her mother’s death and what Wave described as “Margaret’s totally and doubly despicable betrayal” had taken their toll. Her patience was almost nonexistent. She felt tired most days, exhausoptdays, eted the rest of the time. It had only been the past two months that she felt some of the fog lift, felt some mornings like getting out of the bed might not be the worst thing after all. She rarely looked at herself in the mirror these days and when she did, what she saw reflected back scared her enough that she put more effort into her appearance. She knew she appeared haggard, tired and unkempt. She fidgeted a bit self-consciously as she glanced about the other people around her.
Shuffling about in her seat, Peyton recognized the need for all these rules and regulations and for understanding how the system worked, but it was almost too much to take in on a single day. She felt her mind shutting down from the endless facts and figures, but then found herself alarmed to hear the stringent care the state took to reconnect birth families with children put into the foster care system.
She could not handle the concept of falling in love with a beautiful little baby, only to have him or her taken away within the eighteen month time frame the state was entitled to in order to restore these abandoned children to someone in their birth family. Not only that, they applied rigorous attempts to do so. She simply could not handle any more loss. She had even asked the instructor during the lunch break if by chance she would have a better chance of keeping a baby if she were to adopt a disabled child. And was thrilled and sickened to hear that the disabled children rarely were reunited with their families.
“Now I’d like to know why each of you would like to adopt,” the instructor urged. “We’ll go around the room.”
A quite attractive woman in her mid-fifties sat with her husband who looked glazed over by their shared experience: “My husband and I lost our son in the war last spring and we have a big house...and we have all this space...you know lots of space...” She trailed off into silence.
“My husband and I have been trying to have a baby for the past three years.”
Hearing the beautiful lilt of an Indian accent with English undertones, Peyton looked up. She was instantly struck by the woman’s exotic Indian features, the aquiline nose, the deep lush eyebrows and dark brown eyes that appeared both vulnerable and weary. Around her shoulder curled a thick mahogany braid. Frowning, she wondered why she hadn’t noticed this woman earlier…there was something about her. Or maybe it was just having seen her outside during the lunch break. No…Peyton felt as if she knew her and she listened closely as the woman continued, “We tried the whole fertility route with no luck and, quite honestly, I’m exhausted. So, we thought maybe we needed to try a new approach.”