Empty Arms: A Novel (28 page)

As the din from the bar fades, I follow Main Street up the hill and cut through the park to my neighborhood. The occasional street lamp cuts through the darkness just enough for me to avoid tripping on the dangerous bulges where the tree roots have nudged the sidewalks out of place. Most of the houses are dark and the families inside have probably tucked in for the night. I stop in front of a white clapboard house with a pink tricycle parked in the yard. A jump rope snakes along the front walk, which is covered in chalk. An empty bottle of bubbles lies on its side near an abandoned hula hoop and a stray sneaker. A window on the second floor is illuminated. Inside a family is probably squished together under the covers reading bedtime stories and talking about their day. It was supposed to be me and Paul in there. All of this should’ve been ours.

I
SPEND ALL DAY
Sunday avoiding Harper’s phone calls, but when I pull into the hospital parking lot on Monday morning, I know it’s only a matter of time until he tracks me down and asks me why I left so suddenly the other night. Do I lie and tell him that the Nasi Goreng didn’t agree with me? Or do I tell him the truth?

I’m still debating it when I step off the elevator and see Harper talking to Delaney. She nods in my direction and shoots me a frosty glare. When he sees me his worried expression turns to relief. “Thank God,” he says, rushing over to me. “I’ve been so worried about you.”

His concern makes me feel even worse.

“What happened to you Saturday night?”

Behind him, Delaney is lingering at the nurses’ station pretending not to listen.

“We need to talk,” I say, pulling him down the hallway, out of earshot. We duck into an empty room and I turn to him.

“Is everything all right?” he asks, putting his hands on my waist.

I push them away. “Harper, I can’t.”

“You can’t what?”

“Do this. Any of this. Go out to dinner with you, listen to your band, kiss you …”

He shakes his head. “Why not? Is this about your husband?”

I shake my head.

He crosses his arms in front of him. “Is it me?”

“No. You’re …”—I shake my head, searching for a word that doesn’t even exist—“… amazing.”

“Well, I think you’re amazing too, so what’s the problem?”

As I look into the kind face that smiled at me across the cafeteria and brightened some of my darkest days, I realize that telling him the truth means that he’ll probably never smile in my direction again. “I have a daughter.”

The concern vanishes from his face. “I’m okay with that.” He reaches for my hand. “Did you think that would scare me away or something?”

“No, you don’t understand. I had her when I was sixteen, and I was forced to give her up for adoption. When I found out that you work in the Adoption Registry, I thought maybe you could help me find her.”

“Wait, is that why you were so interested in my job and the information requests?”

I nod.

“Cate, you know I’d help you if I could, but that’s illegal. I could lose my job.”

“I know. That’s why I didn’t tell you that I tried to find her file.”

“You did what?”

“I sneaked into the Adoption Registry and tried to find her file, but it wasn’t there.”

“When would you even have had the chance? I was with you the whole …” His eyes narrow on me, and his voice goes cold. “When you forgot your purse.”

I can’t bear to look at him.

“So you used me?” His voice is full of disgust.

“Harper, I never meant to hurt you. But you have no idea how much I want to find my daughter.”

He shakes his head and runs a hand through his hair. “All this time I thought you liked me.”

“I do like you … as a friend.”

“Friends don’t betray each other like this.” He storms out of the room before I can plead my case. Tears sting my eyes as I watch him go.

I take a deep breath and force my lips into a smile before I leave the room. When Delaney sees me, she looks at her watch and cocks her eyebrow.

“Sorry,” I mouth as I pass by her on my way to the nursery. But she is clearly annoyed, and I wonder if this will end up in my personnel file in her desk.

The nursery is relatively quiet, except for the newest arrival, little Allison Marie Weiss. Her diaper is wet, so I change it, but her unhappiness persists. I fix her a bottle, but she rejects it. I press her against my shoulder and pat her back, but her pained sobs are unrelenting. I hold her in the nook of my arm and bounce her while we stroll around the nursery. I hum lullabies. I rock her in the rocking chair. But none of it works, and her face turns red as she howls.

“Here, let me try,” Sharon, one of the other nursery attendants, offers.

“Good luck.” I pass her the loud, unhappy bundle and move on to other diapers that need changing. Within a couple of minutes, the ear-piercing wails fall silent. I glance across the nursery to find Sharon bouncing her just like I was doing. She shrugs. “I guess I have the magic touch.”

“Thank God one of us does.”

W
HEN MY LUNCH BREAK COMES
, I hurry down to the cafeteria, eager to find Harper. If he’d just hear me out, maybe I could make him understand why I didn’t tell him about the file. Maybe he could see that I was never trying to hurt him and that I was only trying to find my daughter.

I sit down at the table by the window and watch the door like a hawk, waiting for him to appear, eager for a chance to explain. I wait for an hour, but he doesn’t come.

I return to Our Lady of Peace on the third Saturday in July and light a vigil candle. “For Emily,” I whisper, “may I find you one day.”

Rather than eavesdropping from the hallway, I venture into the meeting room. There’s a ring of empty chairs in the center of the room, and a handful of people form small clusters of conversation in the corners. Suddenly, I feel like the new girl at school. Maybe I would’ve been better off eavesdropping from the hallway. I make my way to the table against the back wall, where I find a fresh pot of coffee, hot water, a basket of tea bags, and a plate of muffins. I take my time fixing a cup of chamomile, hoping the meeting will start soon so I can stop feeling so awkward.

A few other people trickle in, and I take a seat in the circle. I sip my tea and try to ignore the glaringly obvious fact that I’m the only person sitting down. I glance around the room, trying to occupy my thoughts. In the corner, I see a young Asian girl speaking to a middle-aged man and I wonder if she’s Kristin.

“Hi there.” Lane plops down next to me. “Cate, right?”

I nod and behind her a young girl in her early twenties walks in. She has long wavy brown hair and steel blue eyes. She’s exactly what Emily would look like. My attention returns to Lane, but I watch her from the corner of my eye.

“You’re a b-mom, right?” she asks.

“A what?”

She smiles. “A birth mom. Sorry for the expression. That’s how we talk to keep things simple. Birth moms are b-moms and adoptive moms are a-moms.”

“Then, yes, I’m a b-mom.”

“I’m an a-mom,” she says. “I have a son named Ben. He just turned two.” She fishes a photo out of her wallet, and a little boy with dark hair and a Power Rangers shirt beams up at me. “We adopted him from Cambodia when he was three days old. Someone had left him on the front steps of a church.”

“He’s adorable,” I say, admiring his ample grin.

“Thanks.” She stares at the photo before tucking it back in her wallet. “He’s our dream come true.”

Her happiness makes me think of Paul.
There are so many children who need a good home.
Maybe he was right. Maybe sometimes everyone does benefit from adoption.

“I’m really glad you decided to come back. We don’t get many b-moms, and I think everyone would like to hear your story, if you’d be willing to share it.”

“Oh, I was just planning to listen.”

“There’s no need to be afraid, you know. Everyone here has a story that’s close to their heart. The group is very friendly and supportive, there’s no judgment.”

Against the far wall, Rose and Chuck are nodding compassionately as they listen to a middle-aged woman. And over in the corner, Kristin hugs the man she’s been talking to. “The thing is, this isn’t something I talk about very often.”

“Maybe it’s time to change that.”

I consider her words.

“You know, sometimes just talking about it can go a long way in helping you heal.”

It doesn’t take a psychology degree to know she’s right, but it’s always easier to apply that kind of guidance to other people than to follow it yourself.

“So what do you say?” she asks, placing a hand on my arm. “Will you share your story with us tonight?”

I can’t resist her kindness. “Okay.”

Her lips crack into a grin and she clasps her hands together. “Excellent.” She stands and crosses the circle, clapping her hands and raising her voice. “Good evening everyone. Please come and join us in the circle. We’re just about to get started.”

I scan the room until I spot the young brunette. I watch as she selects a chocolate-chip muffin from the table and plops down in the chair directly across from me. She pulls her legs underneath her and sits cross-legged, picking the chocolate chips off the top of the muffin. I try to unglue my eyes from her curly brown hair, delicate features, and thin frame, but I can’t. She looks just like I did when I was her age. Is it possible that despite all my desperate attempts, I’ve stumbled across Emily by mistake?

“Just a reminder,” Lane says. “This is a support group. We are here to listen and support each other. This isn’t a place for judgment or hurtful comments. Tonight, someone new has joined us, and she’s agreed to share her story with us.” She gestures in my direction, and a dozen heads turn and stare at me. “Whenever you’re ready, Cate.”

A flash of heat crawls across my cheeks and neck, and I can hear my pulse racing in my ear. “Hi.” My voice shakes, and I wonder if I look as nervous as I feel. “I’m Cate and I’m a birth mother.”

“Hi, Cate,” the group responds. A couple of people notice my discomfort and smile at me.

I force a smile but my lips tremble and the words come slowly. “I had a baby out of wedlock when I was sixteen years old.” I pause, waiting for horrified gasps and disgusted whispers but find only concerned faces and kind eyes. “My parents were devastated when they found out, and they sent me here to Lowville to live at The Home for Fallen Women during my last trimester. They told everyone that I’d been accepted into a gifted program, but really I was in hiding, waiting to deliver my baby. Living at the maternity home wasn’t so bad. The staff wasn’t very nice to us, but it was comforting to be around other girls like me. At The Home, I didn’t have to hide my belly or feel ashamed. We were like sisters, and we spent hours talking about baby names and fantasizing about motherhood.” I swallow the lump forming in my throat. “There was just one problem. We didn’t know we weren’t going to get the chance to be mothers. Not then, anyway.” I shudder at the memory.

“Whenever a girl went into labor, she disappeared. One day she’d be there, and the next she’d be gone. They wouldn’t let us visit her in the hospital or call to say congratulations. One by one, girls went to the hospital and delivered their babies, and we never saw them again. Now I understand why. They didn’t want us to know what awaited us.

“When I went into labor, the house mother took me to the hospital and left me in the waiting room by myself. It was over an hour until one of the nurses finally came to get me, and I ended up laboring in a storage closet because they needed space in the triage room for the married women.”

Around me, mouths frown and heads shake.

“The entire process was terrifying. I didn’t know what was happening, and no one was around to answer my questions. I wasn’t offered any pain medication, and at one point I actually thought I was going to die. I don’t remember much about the actual delivery because they sedated me at the very end. When I woke up, I realized that my baby had been born and I asked to see her. They told me that I couldn’t because it would just make things harder. I had no idea what
things
they were talking about, and that’s when I learned that they wanted me to give her up for adoption. There wasn’t one cell in my whole entire body that wanted to give her up. But they insisted that I was too young to be a mother and told me that I had nothing to offer her. I fought and pleaded, but they wouldn’t budge. They even threatened me with huge medical bills for my time at The Home and the hospital fees. I thought my parents would back me up, but they insisted that adoption was my only choice. They weren’t even going to let me see her, but I convinced them that I deserved at least that. I got to hold my daughter for ten minutes, and then they took her away. I never saw her again.”