Empty Arms: A Novel (11 page)

I duck out to the pay phone in the lobby and dial directory assistance in that area code. A woman with a southern drawl answers. “Directory assistance. How may I help you?”

“Yes, I need a phone number for someone in Eagle Pass, Texas.”

“The name, please.”

“Bale. James Bale.”

“I have one listing for a J. Bale,” she says, “at 1527 Grange Road.”

My mind races. Can it really be that easy? I fish a scrap of paper and a pen out of my purse. “Go ahead.” I scribble down the information she provides.

“Would you like me to connect you?”

“No!” I hang up before she says or does anything else. The yellow paper trembles in my hands. Seeing his name feels foreign, as if we knew each other in an entirely different lifetime. I guess after twenty-three years, it might as well have been. But now that I know the truth about what happened after he left, my anger and resentment have been replaced by curiosity. I tap the paper on my finger and stare at the shiny black handset. One phone call is all it would take to find out how different everything could’ve turned out. I want to call him, but where would I even begin?

I’m so preoccupied imagining how my conversation with James might play out that I don’t even notice the empty bassinet in the nursery until an hour into my shift. The tiny linens have been stripped down to the mat, and the name placard is missing. I search the nursery, but the little troll boy is nowhere to be found.

Delaney barrels through the door with a stack of files in her arms. “Oh good, you’re here. Misty called out sick this morning so I’m going to need your help today.”

“Del, do you know what happened to George?”

She stops and cocks her head. “Who?”

“I mean Baby Boy Thompson?”

“Oh, him. The rep from Children’s Hope picked him up last night.”

I stare at the empty bed, imagining the little troll boy with his new family. I know I should be happy for him, but my heart is heavy. I miss his toothless grin, his torch of hair, and the way he needed me. I want to ask her who adopted him and where he’s going to live, but Del won’t know, and if even if she did, she wouldn’t tell me.

“Here,” she says, shoving a brown folder at me. On the front there’s a blue and white emblem of a cupped hand with a sleeping baby in its palm. “This needs to be filed with the Registry.”

“The what?”

“The Adoption Registry.”

“I don’t know where that is.”

She huffs, inconvenienced by my ignorance. “Take the elevator to the basement and make a left.”

Before I can ask her anything else, she turns on her heel and walks away.

“Goodbye, George,” I whisper to the empty bed.

When I’m alone in the elevator, I peek inside the file. A photo of George is stapled to his birth certificate. His adoption papers are there too, with Amber’s neat signature at the bottom. I think of my own jagged signature at the bottom of Emily’s and self-reproach rises like bile in my stomach. For the first time in my fourteen years working here, I wonder if this job is really helping me fill the void in my heart or if it just keeps reopening old wounds.

The elevator stops in the basement, and the doors open to damp air that smells like mildew and industrial-strength laundry detergent. Exposed pipes and wires run along the ceiling, which isn’t much higher than my head. The cinderblock walls and linoleum floors are a pale, yellowy green, like infected mucus. Long, round fluorescent light bulbs hum and flicker overhead as I follow the signs down a long hallway toward the Adoption Registry. In all my time here, nothing has ever required me to venture down here.

There’s an unmarked door at the end of the hallway. I glance around for an indication that I’m in the right place, but there aren’t any. I open the door slowly, and a bell jangles, startling me. I peer inside. There’s an old wooden counter, and behind it are thousands of brown files just like the one in my hand. I step inside, but there’s no sign of life.

“Be right with you,” a voice calls from somewhere deep in the files.

The faded yellow walls and threadbare orange carpet remind me of the Lowville General that I remember from 1973, long before the twelve-million-dollar renovation; before computers and fancy diagnostic equipment and the dulling of society’s stance on premarital sex and unwed mothers. Like a fossil, the Adoption Registry is the only evidence that the Lowville General I remember ever existed.

The lack of sunlight makes this place feel like a prison cell, and I wonder if the person who works here is on disciplinary probation, because I can’t fathom why anyone would willingly choose such a spiritless work environment.

“How can I help you?” We both freeze when our eyes meet. It’s him: Cord in the corduroys. I can’t help but notice that he’s wearing camel-colored cords and a white button-down shirt. He’s much cuter up close. Much younger too. Thirty tops. He tucks a strand of hair behind his ear and smiles. His teeth aren’t as straight as they looked from across the cafeteria, but his eyes, which I’d thought were brown, are actually a very complicated hue of green, like a piece of malachite.

“Hello at last,” he says.

“Hello at last.” I stare at him awkwardly, wondering what to say next.
Hey,
I like your cords. I see you have them in camel too. Do you have them in every color? Do you work down here willingly or are you being punished? Have you ever considered braces to straighten your smile? Speaking of your smile, why do you smile at me? Who
are
you?

“I’m Harper,” he says, as if he heard the question in my mind. He extends his hand and I shake it.

“Cate.”

Despite his crooked teeth his smile has the warmth and radiance of a sunrise. “It’s nice to finally meet you, Cate.”

“It’s nice to meet you too.” I slide the file across the counter and glance at the archives behind him. “What is this place?”

“This,” he gestures to his cheerless surroundings, “is where we keep the records for every child adopted from Lowville General.”

My ears perk up. “Every child?”

“Every single one. These archives date back to 1886, the year the hospital opened.”

My mouth falls open. It’s like a vault of lost identities and somewhere among them must be Emily’s. “So, what do you do here?” I ask, tucking my left hand into my pocket before he notices my wedding band.

“I enter the new files into our database.” He picks up George’s folder and adds it to his pile. “And I handle the information requests.”

“What’s that?”

“It’s when an adoptee writes in and requests information about a birth parent or vice versa.”

“I didn’t realize people could do that.” For twenty-three years, my head has been swimming with questions about the daughter I gave away and all this time a simple information request could get me the answers. “Is that one?” I ask pointing to an open envelope next to his keyboard.

“It is.” He pulls out the form and shows it to me. “This one is from a birth mother.” Joanna Galen’s name is written in hopeful blue ink. “She’s requesting identifying information about her son, who she relinquished in 1963.” He shakes the computer mouse and double clicks on an icon.

“You have all that information right here?” I ask, eyeing the computer monitor.

“Not quite. I’m working on it though.” He tucks the now loose strand of hair behind his ear again. “Right now the database contains about five years of records. It’s going to take a long time, but eventually this whole system will be electronic.”

I was right, he is a computer guy.

“For someone like Joanna Galen, who relinquished back in 1963, the database tells me her file number, and then I can go back to the archives”—he nods to the files behind him—“and find the documents the old-fashioned way.” He types her name, Social Security number, and the year she surrendered her son and then hits enter. He turns the monitor toward me, and I watch as an hourglass spins on the screen. Then a number appears: 10263. Harper writes the number on a sticky note and turns to the files. One by one, he slides the metal walls to the right until he gets to the section that holds Joanna Galen’s file. He kneels and sifts through the folders until he finds the one he’s looking for.

He opens the folder and sets it on the counter between us, revealing a black-and-white photo of a tiny face with plump cheeks, a patch of dark hair, and eyes that are open just a slit. It’s stapled to a pile of papers that contain all the answers to Joanna Galen’s questions. My heart swells with excitement.

Harper lays Joseph Galen’s birth certificate and adoption papers on the counter for me to see. “These files contain two types of information,” he explains, “identifying and non-identifying. Non-identifying information is trivial stuff, like the baby’s hair and eye color, birth weight, and length. For the parents, it’s usually their ages at the time of the child’s birth, education levels, health histories, and other details that won’t identify them. Non-identifying information is pretty easy to come by, and anyone involved in the transaction can request it.”

I cringe.
Transaction
makes it sound as banal as selling a stock, but if Joanna Galen was anything like me, giving up her son was probably more like amputating a piece of her heart. “Why would anyone want trivial facts?” I ask.

He shrugs. “I guess it gives the requester some hope to survive on.”

I nod politely, but it’s obvious he’s never been on the other side of a request form.

“There’s also identifying information,” he adds, “which can help someone identify a birth parent, an adoptee, or other birth relatives. It includes information like current names, past names, addresses, places of employment. You get the picture.” He flips through the papers in Joseph Galen’s file and then stamps Joanna’s Galen’s information request with a big red
DENIED
.

My heart lurches. “Why is it denied?”

“By law we have to follow a mutual consent system. The only way a birth parent can get identifying information about an adoptee is with signed consent from the adoptee. The process works in reverse too. No consent form, no identifying information.”

“And how exactly would someone like Joseph Galen go about giving his consent?”

“He can fill out a consent form, which we’ll keep in his file in the event someone is ever looking for him.”

“So if you receive his consent form tomorrow, would you send his mother the information she’s looking for?”

He chuckles, but his smile fades when he realizes I’m not joking. “Consent must be given before the information request is received. Trying to back fill all the information requests we receive would be an administrative nightmare.”

A sinking feeling pulls in my stomach. “Does this system ever work out for anyone?”

He shrugs. “Sometimes, I guess.” He grabs a form letter from the shelf beneath the counter and tucks it into the self-addressed stamped envelope that Joanna Galen had sent with her request.

“What does that say?”

“It’s just some lawyer-speak about the protection of identifying information. It gives Mrs. Galen the option to write back and request non-identifying information, if she so chooses, or to give her consent should her son ever request identifying information about her.” He licks the envelope shut and drops it in the mail bin.

I imagine Joanna Galen opening her mailbox and finding the envelope from the Adoption Registry. She’ll tear it open right there in the street, but she won’t find the answers she’s been looking for. Instead she’ll find a form letter, with its lawyer-speak and its empty offer for some trivial non-identifying information. My heart wilts for her.

Harper tucks the strand of hair behind his ear again. “I have to say, no one has ever shown so much interest in my job. Most people think it’s pretty boring.”

His grin is less adorable now, and part of me wants to strangle him for keeping people like Joanna and Joseph apart. But I remind myself that he doesn’t know any better, and I force my tone to remain friendly. “Well, I work in the newborn nursery, caring for the babies whose information is in those files, so it’s interesting to me.”

“I see. You protect them before they’re adopted, and I protect them after.”

“Hmm, I’m not sure ‘protect’ is the word I’d use to describe what you do.”

He crosses his arms with a look of amusement. “What word would you use?”

“Complicate.”

“Complicate?!” He laughs, but I can tell I’ve insulted him. “How does upholding patient privacy laws complicate things?”

“From what you’ve told me, these privacy laws seem to be designed to keep people apart.”

“Boy, you really call things like you see them, don’t you?”

“Look, I didn’t mean to offend you. I know you’re just doing your job.” Suddenly, a plan takes shape in my mind. “Let me make it up to you,” I offer, cringing at how unnatural my flirtation sounds. “Let me take you to lunch.”

The injury in his eyes immediately gives way to flattery. “All right. But only under one condition.”

“What’s that?”

“No cafeteria food.”

W
HEN
I
RETURN HOME
after work, the house is cold and dark. I turn on the lights, crank up the thermostat, and put on an extra sweater for warmth. The message light blinks on the phone.