Empty Arms: A Novel (5 page)

I sit by his bedside all afternoon, telling him about all the dragons that’ll need slaying, princesses that’ll need saving, and forts that’ll need building. “A whole world of adventure is waiting for you, George.” He listens with wide eyes, and I imagine my words taking root inside him. Normally, I do a better job dividing my time among the other babies, but this little guy needs all the love he can get before he leaves. I know from Paul’s horror stories that adoption doesn’t always have a happy ending. I pray for George’s sake that it does.

When he starts to fuss, I lift him from his bed and tuck him against my stomach. If I close my eyes, his weight and squirminess remind me of Emily. They all remind me of Emily. I press my lips against his forehead. The soft clean scent of lotion and baby powder fills my nose. For a split-second, it’s as if it’s really her.

George squeals, reminding me that he is not Emily but he is hungry. I pick up the baby bottle and graze the rubber nipple against his lower lip. Most babies require a fair amount of coaxing before they’ll latch on, but not George. He takes to the nipple right away, as if he’s been doing this for years. His lips smack as he slurps down the milk like a champion. I rock him until his eyelids begin to flutter and he drifts in and out of sleep. He nuzzles close to my body and my heart pulls. How could anyone not want you?

My argument with Paul replays in my mind, and for the first time I wonder if he’s right. Am I being unreasonable? Couldn’t I love someone like George? I close my eyes and hug the warm bundle close to my chest. I imagine watching him learn how to crawl, say his first word, take his first step, and eventually run off with the other children on his first day of kindergarten. But what about the day he learns the word
adoption
? What about the day I have to tell him he’s not really mine and I’m not really his? The day I have to tell him that his
real
mother gave him away. I picture a crushed look on the face of a little redheaded boy who will wonder if the decision was hard for her. He’ll hope that it was, but I’ll always know the truth. I’ll always know that she didn’t even want to hold him; that she took one look at him and then turned away. That she called him a
thing
. Of course, I would never tell him any of that. That would be my secret. But that means there’d always be a secret between us. And I know the corrosive power of secrets. Then one day, when he’s old enough, he’ll want to find her. His life will pull him toward her and away from me. He’ll love me, of course, but there will always be a space in his heart that I’ll never be able to occupy, just like there will always be one in mine that can never belong to him. Eventually, he’ll find her and then he’ll go. And once again I’ll be alone, missing Emily.

T
HE DRIVEWAY IS EMPTY
when I get home and I’m relieved. Spending the afternoon with George was confusing, and Paul is the last person I can talk to about it. The kitchen still looks like a war zone, and the massive hole in the ceiling only reminds me what a disaster my marriage has become.

Need some time to think
, I write on a scrap piece of paper
. Gone home for the weekend.
I prop it against a chunk of drywall, hoping he’ll understand that I need some space to clear my head.

I
T’S GOING ON NINE O’CLOCK
when I cross into Pennsylvania, and it’s nearly ten when I arrive in Angel Falls. I pull into Mom’s driveway, and my tires crunch through hardened snow. The moon is hidden by tall oaks and thick clouds, and the light at the end of the walk barely manages to pierce the dark veil. Her front walk isn’t shoveled, and I sink to my shins with every step. If Daddy were still alive, this walk would’ve been cleared days ago.

I’m out of breath by the time I make it to the front porch. The wind has created a snowdrift that’s crested onto the porch like an ocean wave. My boots cut fresh prints as I slide across it. I tug on the storm door but it’s locked. I lift the mat and feel around on the frozen concrete but all I find are crisp shards of dirty leaves from a long-forgotten autumn. I ring the bell and wait. Wind gusts through the yard, and the tree branches scrape the aluminum siding. I shiver and ring the bell again. The house is quiet, and the moon casts a somber blue glow across a tranquil sea of snow. Thirty years ago, this yard would’ve been trampled with boot prints, sliced with sled tracks, and hollowed out by a throng of snow angels. Tonight, the only imperfection in its flawless surface is the paw prints of a lone squirrel.

I ring the bell once more. Finally, footsteps. Light pours down on me from overhead, and the front door opens a crack. I half expect to see the end of Daddy’s shotgun, but a pair of round wire spectacles peers out at me.

“Mom, it’s me.”

“Catharine?” The door swings open, and Mom is standing there in a maroon velour robe and slippers. She unlocks the storm door and pushes it open. “What on earth are you doing here?”

“I wanted to see you.” I force the heartache and confusion from my voice and punctuate my sentence with a smile.

She moves aside to let me in, eyeing me suspiciously. “Why didn’t you call?”

I stomp the snow off my boots and step inside. “I thought I’d surprise you.” I drop my overnight bag at the foot of the staircase and pull off my boots. Barbara Walters’s voice echoes from the family room. I must’ve interrupted one of her specials.

She crosses her arms and peers at me over her glasses. “Is everything all right?” Her steely gray hair is sticking up in random places, and I wonder if she’d been asleep in her recliner.

“Everything’s fine.” I slip out of my coat and hang it in the hall closet.

I doubt she’s buying it, but she doesn’t push further. “Are you hungry?”

My stomach grumbles, reminding me that I haven’t had dinner. “Starving.” I follow her into the kitchen and plop down at the table.

She opens the old white icebox, pulls out a plastic container, and holds it up. “Chicken dumplings?”

“Mmm.”

She dumps the cold soup into a pot and clicks on the stove. The coils snap and glow red. My eyes dart from the dark brown oak cabinets to the faded yellow countertops to the golden sunbursts on the floor. I swivel back and forth in the green vinyl chair, simultaneously thankful for my updated kitchen back in Lowville and the lack of change here.

“Did you get a lot of snow in New York?” she asks over her shoulder.

“It’s knee deep.” I think of my own front walk and driveway, which Paul snow blows religiously; another welcome diversion.

“Work is good?”

I think of little George and a grin tugs at my lips. “Yep.”

“How’s Paul?” Her tone is cautious.

“He sends his love.”

She clicks off the stove and ladles the soup into a bowl. When she sets it in front of me she doesn’t look convinced. “What’s he up to this weekend?”

I ignore her curious gaze and blow on the soup before I spoon it into my mouth. “Working.”

She scowls and gives in, accepting that she’s not going to get to the bottom of whatever brought me here. Not tonight anyway. “Speaking of work, I had lunch with some of my old nursing friends.”

“That sounds nice,” I say, grateful for the change of subject.

“You know, five out of six of us are widows.”

I frown when I realize where she’s going with this.

“You’re darn lucky to have Paul.”

“Yes, mother, I know.” I don’t have the heart to tell her that my marriage is hanging on by a thread or that I might as well be a widow since Paul and I barely even speak to each other anymore.

She turns to the sink and washes the pot and ladle, leaving me to my soup and my thoughts. Knowing she’s not going to get another word out of me, she says goodnight and disappears down the hall. I hear her turn off the television and lights in the family room and then climb the stairs to her bedroom.

Sitting here in the empty, unchanged kitchen, I can’t help remembering the old days, when Daddy sat to my left, chewing his food and listening quietly as Mom, who sat to my right, complained about the abortion debate that Roe v. Wade had sparked and the ongoing war in Vietnam. “Well it’s official,” she’d say every night when the three of us sat down to dinner, “the world’s going to hell in a handbasket.” My legs would wiggle restlessly under the table as she launched into a diatribe about how abortion was murderous and a waste of human life. How someone could even argue for abortion in the court of law was beyond her. Daddy and I knew better than to get her started on Vietnam, which, coincidentally, was also murderous and a waste of human life. She left no room for differing opinions, just silent nods from her lowly constituents. And she never liked to dwell on the good things going on in the world, like the Winter Olympics in Sapporo or Apollo 16. With Mom, it was always grievances about our country’s moral bankruptcy.

I wash my bowl in the sink, set it in the drying rack, and then climb the stairs to my old room, where I’m greeted by paisley wallpaper and a leftover trace of patchouli. I change into my pajamas and crawl under the covers, but I can’t sleep. Thoughts of Paul pull me toward the future, while memories of Emily hold me back. I trace constellations in the glow-in-the-dark stars that I stuck on my ceiling when I was thirteen. I roll from side to side until the arms on my Mickey Mouse alarm clock point to the two and the three.

I throw off my blankets, flip on the lights, and pace across the room. I stop in front of my old bookshelf; it’s different from how I left it when I moved out. My thick child psychology texts have been replaced by kindergarten finger paintings, and books of piano music stand where my record collection used to be. The gold medal I won at my fifth grade spelling bee hangs from the plaque I received for getting straight A’s all three years of junior high. This bookcase is like a shrine to my childhood. I sit down in front of it and pick up a seashell picture frame that holds a photo of the three of us at the shore. I’m sitting on Mom’s lap wearing a floppy pink hat, and she’s wearing a satisfied smile that only an afternoon of splashing in the waves and building sandcastles could produce. It’s the happiest I’ve ever seen her.

Next to it is the porcelain grand piano music box that Daddy gave me after my first recital. He always loved to listen to me play. I open the lid, and a few notes of “Fur Elise” escape. Resting in its pink velvet lining is one half of the gold ‘best friends’ necklace that I bought in fifth grade. I gave the other half to Angela McCoole because she was the closest thing I had to a best friend, and I wanted all the other girls who were vying for her attention to know that she was mine. The small gold half-heart twists and turns at the end of the chain. I study its fractured edge, remembering the rumors she spread after my parents sent me off to the maternity home. Mom told everyone I was accepted into a program for gifted students, but Angela knew the truth. When I returned to school that fall, she had a new best friend, and whispers followed me through the hallways.

I drop the necklace back in the jewelry box and close the lid. I slide it back into its place next to a small pair of faded pink satin ballet slippers, a Brownie sash full of badges, and red and blue pom-poms. But all of the photos and relics stop at tenth grade. It’s almost as if the little girl who used to live here died. I suppose in many ways she did.

I peel myself off the floor and open my closet door. I half expect to find it bursting with ballet leotards and Girl Scout uniforms, but all I find is a row of empty metal hangers. On the shelf above is a worn-out cardboard box that sits like a lump with its sides bulging. I pull it down and kneel before it. When I lift the flaps, Jim Morrison’s face and shirtless chest greets me. I unfold the poster and spread it across the floor. Angela and I hung these posters in our rooms after Jim turned up dead in his bathtub. Mom hated it and said it represented everything that was wrong with my generation.

Underneath the poster is a bottle of tequila tucked alongside a stack of old records. I lift the half-empty bottle of Jose Cuervo and giggle at the thought of Mom finding my secret stash hidden in a shoebox. I unscrew the cap. The sharp smell pierces my nose and rouses memories from my youth. I press the bottle to my lips. The hard taste makes me quiver and gag. Why did I ever drink this stuff? A warm feeling surges in my stomach and disseminates through my veins, reminding me. I take another sip and sift through the pile of records. The Beatles, The Doors, Led Zeppelin. At the bottom, I find Simon and Garfunkel’s
Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme
album and a world of memories that I spent years forgetting crashes into me like a breaker. I toss it aside and press the bottle to my lips again. I swallow hard and the tequila stings at my throat. I glance over my shoulder, and my eyes settle on the scrolling letters and flower petals on the album cover. I shouldn’t listen to it, nothing good will come of that. But now that I’ve seen it, I can’t think of anything else. I reach for it and slide the vinyl from its sleeve. A photograph falls out and flutters to my side. I pick it up and turn it over. There, in the palm of my hand, are the amber eyes that started it all.
James.
His black hair, burnt sienna skin, and dangerous smile are so familiar that I can practically smell the Paco Rabanne radiating from his skin.