Square in the Face (Claire Montrose Series) (4 page)

She shut her eyes, but Claire could see them still darting beneath lids as fragile as tissue paper. “It’s like if you went to a fortuneteller who could
really
see the future. And she looks at your palm and knows that in the next month your house will burn to the ground, your dog will run away, and you’ll find out that your best friend is sleeping with your husband. She holds your palm in her hands and she sees all this in an instant. And meanwhile you sit there, you’ve paid your ten bucks, and you’re smiling, oblivious. Because you don’t know shit. And that’s what it’s like waiting to hear the counts.” Lori opened her eyes and looked up at the ceiling. A tear spilled down her cheek. “And I don’t know if it will feel any different even if he does go into remission. Because even then I’ll worry. Because one day we could go in for a routine check-up and have the rug pulled right out from under us again. How do you ever let go? Because you know now that the way things
seem
can be a lie.”

Claire couldn’t imagine trying to pass the days without knowing what lay ahead. How could you sleep, how could you eat, knowing your child might be taken from you? Lori’s hollowed-out face answered her question.

“And what if everything we’re putting him through doesn’t work - or it only works for a little while and then the remission fails? If that happens, then they stop talking about a cure. Then the only hope is a bone marrow donation. Only we don’t have any options. Dr. Preston told me a couple of days ago that Max isn’t a match, and there isn’t one on the national bone marrow registry.”

“Couldn’t you or Havi donate?”

“It doesn’t work that way. Kids get half their genes from each parent, remember? Havi and I would have to be cousins before that had a chance.”

“Could you sponsor a bone marrow registration drive?” Claire had seen signs for one once on the bulletin board at the Mittleman Jewish Community Center, Jewish parents from back East seeking a match for their daughter. A few months later, she’d heard that the girl had died.

“Dr. Preston says your ethnic heritage is reflected in your bone marrow. Where am I going to find a bunch of half Irish-German, half Mexican-Americans - with maybe a little Mayan Indian thrown in?”

“What about having another child?” Claire asked. “Didn’t I hear about a couple who’s daughter had leukemia and then they had another baby who turned out to be a match?”

“I asked Dr. Preston about that, but he said that girl had a different kind of leukemia than Zach does, one that was a lot slower.” Lori’s words were calm, but she was eating crackers so fast it seemed as if she wasn’t even chewing. “There probably isn’t enough time to have Havi’s vasectomy reversed, get pregnant and have a baby. That’s assuming they could reverse it. And the doctor asked me - what if I got pregnant and we did an amnio and found out the baby wasn’t a match? Would I be willing to have an abortion just so we could try again?” Lori shook her head, her lips thinned down so they nearly disappeared. “I told him yes, which I think shocked him a little. But I guess that’s not even really an option.”

The cat came into the room, tail held high, and uttered a questioning purr. Claire leaned over and ran her hand down its back, over the arch of the spine, then began scratching behind its ears. Its eyes slitted with pleasure. “What about getting a lawyer or a private investigator?”

“By the time this finished dragging through the courts, it wouldn’t matter any more. Besides, we don’t have the money. We were in debt even before Zach got sick. Now our eighty percent insurance coverage no longer looks like such a good deal. One day in the hospital is fifteen hundred dollars, and Zach was there for a week. We’re one step away from those people who appear in the Consumer Credit Counseling ads,” Lori said, mimicking the man with protuberant teeth and a Hee Haw accent who was a staple of late night commercials. “‘Thanks to Consumer Credit Counseling I got me a
caahr
again.’”

“And there’s no chance the place where you had the baby will tell you where she is?”

“The Bradford Clinic? I called them while Zach was in surgery getting his Port-A-Cath.” Lori’s fingers rubbed a spot on the left side of her chest, just below the collarbone.
 
“I talked to Vi Trumbo, the head nurse. I still remember her. She’s one of those small women with a lot of personality.”
 
Lori bounced the flat of her hand rapidly on the table top. Her wedding ring made a clicking sound. “She had this husky voice and she always wore these ridiculously high white high heels. Sometimes when I was leaving she used to slip a Reese’s peanut butter cup into my hand and give me a little wink. See, Dr. Bradford was always wanting you to eat this impossibly healthy diet.” Her lips twisted. “And I know Vi remembered me. She told me the records are completely sealed, and that she ‘could neither confirm nor deny the birth of any child at the clinic.’ I started to argue with her. Then she told me that she was sorry she couldn’t be of any help. And then she hung up. When I called back, she threatened to sue me for harassment, and then she hung up again.”

“How’d you find out about these people, anyway?” Claire asked. The cat had jumped on her lap and was now kneading her belly with unsheathed claws. “Ouch, stop that!” Claire said, and tried to hold the cat’s paws still.

“Sorry, One Sock got weaned too early or something. Kick her off your lap if you want.” Lori’s nails clicked as she picked at the seam in the tabletop. “The Bradford Clinic ran an ad in the campus newspaper, along with everyone else who wanted a baby. Guess they all figure it’s a better bet that a college girl’s kid might be smarter, or at least not born addicted to crack Even back then, most of the ads promise open adoptions. You know, be part of your kid’s life, celebrate his birthdays with his new family, get a monthly packet of photos.” Between fine hard bracketing lines, Lori’s mouth trembled. Her fingers touched her lips, the table, smoothed the edges of a discarded napkin, picked up the box of crackers and put it down. Claire wanted to take Lori’s hands in hers and hold them until they quieted. “I didn’t want any of that. I knew that the only way I could do it would be to do it clean. And then I saw this one ad promising to pay all your living expenses, plus a scholarship, in exchange for a completely closed adoption. There I was, working twenty-four hours a week and trying to go to school full-time when I turn up pregnant. I thought I had found the solution to everything.”

“Wasn’t it hard to do it?” The cat was kneading harder. Claire pulled the edges of her jacket until the fabric overlapped, hoping to protect herself from the cat’s claws with a double layer of fabric over her belly. One Sock saw right through her strategy and began to knead ever higher, aiming its claws straight at her heart.

“Not when I made the decision. The baby didn’t seem real to me. I told myself I was helping out some couple that couldn’t have a kid, and if they were rich enough to pay the clinic’s fees, they would be rich enough to give it the good life. Besides, Dr. Bradford made you work for the money. I got tested more with that baby than I ever did with Max or Zach. You got your diet sheet about what to eat, and you came in every week to be weighed, measured, and to have drug and alcohol tests. Once a month, you got an ultrasound, only they never let you keep the picture. I have nothing to show that I even had a daughter. You should see the boys’ baby books. Ultrasounds, footprints, hospital wrist-bands, little locks of hair.”

“What about Havi? Have you told him yes?”

“No. And I don’t want to tell him now unless I need to. What if I tell him and then we can never find her? What would I gain then?

Claire thought, but didn’t say, that it must be a terrible burden to carry alone.

“What are the chances that your daughter would be a match for Zach?”

“Twenty-five percent.” Lori saw the starkness of the number register on Claire’s face. “But if Zach needs a transplant, then
his
chances right now are zero. That’s why I need you to find her for me. I mean, you’ve done this kind of thing before. There must be some way of” -. Lori stopped, her head cocked. She was up and on her feet before Claire even heard a sound. “He’s calling me.”

The cat jumped off Claire’s lap and followed Lori. Only then Claire heard the faint wordless cry from the back of the house. Uncertain, she stood in the kitchen for a moment, then walked back into the hall.

The door at the end of the hall stood open, and inside Claire could see the boys’ room. The bunk beds were painted a glossy red. Two child-sized chairs stood around a low wooden table covered with a half-dismantled wooden train set. One Sock was at the foot of the bed. The first sight of Zach’s face pulled the breath from Claire’s chest. Most of his hair was gone, his face was pale and bloated, his eyes half-open. The neck of shiny blue and gold pajamas was pulled down. Just above the face of a cartoon Hercules, looking desperately out of place, a plastic plug was embedded in the wall of his chest.

Lori knelt by the bed and put her arm under her son’s shoulders. She helped him half-sit up to take a drink from a white plastic sipper bottle. His head seemed too big for the rest of his body. “Hey, Zach,” Claire said softly from the doorway, but she couldn’t tell if he had noticed her or not. When he was done drinking, he let his head fall back. Lori gently lowered him back down to his pillow. She leaned over him and lightly ran her hand over his head, barely brushing the few strands of black hair that remained.

When they walked into the hall, Claire put her arm around her and gave her tight shoulders a squeeze. “I don’t know how you handle it.”

How would she ever find Lori’s daughter, Claire wondered as she set out for her daily five-mile run. Since quitting Specialty Plates, she tried to be careful to maintain a productive rhythm to her life. She did volunteer work, spent time with Charlie and was thinking about taking a class at Portland Community College. Still, she was afraid that she might end up sitting on the couch eating Cheetos and watching two women wrestle on the
Jerry Springer Show
. To help ensure that that didn’t happen - or at least that if it did, she wouldn’t get terribly fat - she tried to run each day.

Still missing the swinging metronome weight of a ponytail, she trotted down the street. The sky was overcast, the clouds threatening rain. Just judging by the weather, it was hard to tell if it was February or November or some month in between. It was the kind of day that made even native Oregonians long to live in a place with real seasons.

As she ran, Claire remembered the day she and Lori had become friends seven years before. Even though Lori had been the new employee in Specialty Plates, she had been the one to ask Claire to lunch, suggesting a new Thai restaurant in Northwest Portland. Claire had envied the direct way she had extended the invitation, as if she never worried about whether anyone liked her or who she was. She also didn’t seem to worry overmuch about the department’s rules, not even glancing at her watch as they ate up more and more of their allotted time making ever-widening circles, seeking a parking space somewhere in the same zip code as the restaurant.

In the years Claire had lived in Portland, the northwest corner of the city had gone from being slightly seedy - filled with ramshackle old houses, thrift stores and sad-eyed alcoholics pushing stolen shopping carts - to relentlessly gentrified, with reborn candy-colored Victorian houses, chi-chi shops, and beautiful girls on Rollerblades being towed behind Irish wolfhounds. Sometimes Claire missed the old Northwest Portland, back in the days when it had not yet started looking like an outpost of San Francisco.

As Lori’s Honda threaded the narrow, crowded streets, she had said, “I think this situation calls for a sacrifice to the Parking Goddess.”

“The Parking Goddess?” Claire echoed. At the time, she still hadn’t quite decided how she felt about Lori. Lori dressed as if she were ready to prowl down a runway, not the orange-carpeted corridors of Oregon’s Specialty Plate Department. Next to Lori, Claire felt practical and plain. Lori wore a lime-green wool suit with matching four-inch Via Spiga heels. Claire was wearing black cotton pants and a white Gap T-shirt. Her hair was twisted into an impromptu bun, secured with a pencil.

“If you can’t find a space, then you must make a sacrifice to the Parking Goddess and she will reward you.” Without any further warning, Lori leaned on the horn. And then again. People on the sidewalk turned to stare. The man in the car ahead of them held up his middle finger. Claire sunk low in her seat and covered her eyes with one hand so that she could no longer see the world outside her window.

“It only works if you do it at a time when you’ll draw a lot of negative attention.” Lori smiled unselfconsciously at the people gawking at them. “Now the Goddess will reward our sacrifice.”

Under the shelter of her hand, Claire could feel her face burning. This, she decided, would be her last lunch with Lori. Then two seconds later, a spot opened up directly in front of Beau Thai. It was even on the corner, so Lori could pull right in without parallel parking and tying up the already slow traffic.

At lunch, the rest of Claire’s reservations evaporated as Lori launched into a wickedly funny imitation of their boss, Roland. Roland was known for his collection of elephant figurines, and his conviction that with enough catchphrases (“Quality is Our Watchword!”) and computer-generated graphs, he could whip Specialty Plates into ultra-efficiency. Lori steepled her hands in front of her and spoke through her nose in a high, prissy voice. “Claire, your effort as a self-directed work unit has maximized output and avoided redundancy. If only the other associates would model your paradigm.” Still in character, Lori favored Claire with a sideways leer. Claire had to laugh. Lori had Roland’s number, from the way he spoke incomprehensibly in a vain effort to seem smart, to his fumbling attempts at flirtation that might have qualified as sexual harassment if they weren’t so pathetic.

The fact was that with or without Roland’s slavish devotion to the latest management guru, their department grossed a lot of money for the state of Oregon.
 
For a fee, Oregon motorists could order license plates containing their chosen word or phrase, up to seven digits. People were vain, but that vanity brought in a lot of money for the state. There were 78,988 vanity plates on Oregon vehicles, each of which had cost fifty dollars initially and then thirty-five dollars a year.

Most requests for personalized plates were for a person’s hobby, occupation or first name. Others were more creative. That was where the problems began. People were always trying to slip something past you. The whole task of rejecting or accepting these messages involved detecting perceptual crime, a difficult area for the government to regulate.

Until she had quit last fall, Claire had spent eight hours a day approving or denying applications for vanity plates, deciding if the abbreviated or encoded messages were obscene or otherwise objectionable. Her tools were a set of dictionaries (including specialized ones for slang and obscenities), the bathroom mirror (to make sure that something didn’t take on a whole new meaning once it was seen in a rearview mirror) and a good eye for vulgar and otherwise offensive words.

In the ten years she worked for the state, Claire learned how to say “fuck” in thirty-eight different languages. Unfortunately, most people didn’t go to the bother of using a foreign language when they decided they wanted to communicate something titillating. They simply requested plates like HOTMAMA (or, more rarely, the mirrorized AMAMTOH), and then were surprised when they were rejected.

After Lori started working at Specialty Plates, Claire realized she had found a kindred spirit. Like prairie dogs, they began to pop their over their shared cubicle wall to snicker at the general strangeness or stupidity of the public, with their all too frequent requests for BITEME. While their friendship had loosened in the months since Claire quit Specialty Plates, no longer fueled by daily coffee breaks, it still remained strong.

 
Now Lori wanted Claire to help her find her daughter. As a hedge, she explained. Just in case. That was what she said, anyway, but Claire had heard the edge of desperation in her voice. But what could Claire do? Maybe Lori could run an appeal in the newspaper. Maybe the adoptive parents would come forward if they knew Lori wasn’t going to ask for her child back.

But would a newspaper appeal work? Any parents who craved secrecy enough to go through the Bradford Clinic would be unlikely to come forward ten years later. Clearly, the answers to Lori’s questions could be found in the clinic - but how could Claire get her hands on them? Claire decided to check at the neighborhood I Spy Shoppe. Jimmy had helped her out in the past. Maybe he could give her some “off the record” tips about procuring something that wasn’t technically yours.

A twinge of guilt pricked Claire as she neared her mother’s apartment building. They hadn’t talked since Claire had returned from New York. In many ways, Charlie was the mother Jean had never been. Deciding to say hello, Claire hit the stop button on her watch.

Claire didn’t need to worry about finding Jean at home - Jean was always home. Her days were structured around the listings in
TV Guide
. Judicious use of her two VCRs and five TVs meant she never had to miss a program. On birthdays and Christmases Jean gave Claire copies of shows she had taped off PBS (while watching something else entirely) that she thought might appeal to Claire. They were usually shoestring documentaries about elderly beekeepers or the closing of a cardboard box factory.

A square brown UPS truck waited for her to cross the driveway before pulling into the apartment’s parking lot. She was surprised when she and the driver arrived at Jean’s door at the same time. His hand truck was loaded with a stack of a half-dozen cardboard boxes, the largest about a foot square, the smallest only about three inches across.

“Are those all for my mom?”

“You’re Jean’s daughter?” The smile he gave her, white even teeth in a tanned face, made Claire realize why so many women fantasized about UPS drivers.

Claire nodded and pressed the buzzer. “You know my mom?” Alarm bells were beginning to ring in the back of her head.

“Yeah, lately I’m here nearly every day. Say, does she own stock in them?”

“In who?”

He held up one of the boxes so she could see the return address. “QualProd.”

“What’s that?” Claire pressed on the buzzer again, wondering why her mother wasn’t answering the door. She could hear the muffled sound of the TV, but that didn’t necessarily mean anything. Jean left her TVs on even on the rare occasions she did leave the house.

“Oh, you know. One of those home shopping channels.”

“Oh, crap,” Claire said. She tried the knob and found it unlocked. She pushed the door open.

The living room was dim, the shades drawn so that nothing competed with the forty-inch Goldstar with separate twin speakers that held pride of place. Her mother sat on the ratty green velvet couch wearing a white bathrobe with gold appliquéd butterflies. In her left hand she had a cup of coffee, and in her right hand she held a pencil poised over a notepad open on her ample lap. On the arm of the couch next to her lay the cordless phone.

“Mom” - Claire started, but Jean shook her head without answering, her eyes riveted on the screen. On a little revolving black velvet pedestal lay a tennis bracelet, lit up so that every stone sparkled. In a slightly panicked tone, a man rattled off, “Only a handful of these bracelets remain in stock, and our phone lines are sizzling.” In the corner a digital display counted off seconds, going from thirteen to twelve to eleven as Claire watched. Her mother picked up the phone and punched in a number.
 

The UPS man put the clipboard into Claire’s hands and pointed at a line. “Could you sign for your mom, please? She looks busy.” Claire scribbled her name, anxious to have him leave. Maybe he had seen weirder sights in his deliveries, but Claire was embarrassed by her mother, the moth-eaten couch, the garish appliquéd butterflies, and most of all by the TV, where a knock-off Hermes silk scarf had now appeared on screen. “This scarf is not available in stores,” the announcer said.
Probably because any one who could examine it under a bright light would realize it wasn’t worth fifty-nine dollars,
Claire thought. On the fine white print running along the bottom of the screen, she noticed the scarf wasn’t even made of silk, but of something called Zilk, which had a little trademark symbol after it.

“Got it in the nick of time!” said her mother triumphantly, setting down the phone. “The operator said it was one of the last five left.”

“See you soon, Jean,” said the UPS guy as he finished stacking the boxes against the wall.

Claire waited until he had closed the door behind him. “Mom, what in the heck is going on?”

“What do you mean?” Her mother opened her eyes wide, but then was unable to stop herself from transferring her gaze from Claire to the TV set, where a set of nesting dolls was now on display. Instead of Russian grandmothers in babushkas, a fat-looking Clinton doll swallowed up Hillary, Monica, Linda Trip and even a tiny Socks.

“All this stuff, Mom.” Claire waved her hand at the boxes the UPS man had left, as well as the knickknacks that now covered every horizontal surface. “The guy said he was making deliveries nearly every day. Why are you buying all this stuff?”
Her mother pressed her lips together. “I haven’t seen you in six weeks, and the first thing you do is start yelling at me.”

The twinge of guilt was back, only now it was more of a spasm. Her mother was right. What gave Claire the right to come into Jean home and immediately start lecturing her? She sat down beside Jean on the couch and picked up her mother’s hand. Jean kept it limp, but she didn’t pull away.

“I’m sorry. You’re right. I shouldn’t just waltz in here and start interrogating you. I was just worried that maybe you were spending a little too much.”

“Oh, no. Not at all. The prices are very reasonable. Better than you would find at any store. Although most of the merchandise they sell is so special it’s only available through QualProd. I’ll give you a catalog to take home.” Jean brightened. Come look at what I’ve done with the bathroom!” She got up and pulled Claire to her feet.