These Things Hidden (16 page)

I
know I need to form the question carefully, to make it sound like it is a natural part of our conversation. “How long were you married when you had Joshua?” I ask, trying to sound normal, but inside I’m screaming.

A ripple of pain passes across her face. “Joshua’s adopted. Someone else did the hard part, but we get to enjoy him.”

“How old is he again?” I ask. My voice sounds too high.

“He just turned five last month,” Claire said proudly. “We’re not sure of the exact day he was born, but we don’t think he was more than a month old when he was left at the fire station.”

“Fire station? He was left at a fire station?” Still my
voice doesn’t sound like mine. I clear my throat and take a sip of my soda. This doesn’t make sense. It isn’t the way it happened.

“His mother left him at the fire station over on Oak Street in the middle of the night. One of the firemen called Human Services and then took him to the hospital. Human Services called us the next day and we got to take Joshua home with us.”

“Did they figure out who she was? The mother?” My heart is fluttering in my chest. She can’t know, I tell myself. Only four other people in the world know that Joshua was mine.

Claire shakes her head. “No. We never found out. We figure it was a young girl who came from out of town and left the baby there, then took off again.”

“What about the father?” I ask.

Claire shrugs. “No idea. Jonathan and I held our breath for a long time. We were sure that someone was going to come and reclaim him. But they never did. Six months after we brought him home, we legally adopted him.” Claire pushes her plate away. “Ugh, that was good, but I’m stuffed. We should be getting back.”

Suddenly, I realize I don’t have any way to pay for my meal; I left the money my father gave me at Olene’s. Claire must see the horror on my face because she reaches out to touch my hand.

“My treat,” she says. “You can get lunch next time.”

“Okay, thanks,” I say with relief. We go back to the store and have a steady stream of customers the rest of the afternoon. It isn’t until Joshua bursts through the front door and I see him for the second time that I’m sure. He looks just like Christopher, the same sharp-angled face, the same beautiful brown eyes. Except for his hair—like me, his hair is white-blond and stick-straight.

“Hi, Mom. Hi …” Joshua squints his eyes in concentration. I know he’s trying to remember my name.

“Allison,” Claire finishes for him.

“Hi, Allison,” he says. I look carefully at his face and wonder if on some level he might recognize me. Maybe if he takes a good, long look at me and hears my voice. I know that it is ridiculous to believe that he will throw himself into my arms and whisper,
You finally came back for me, I knew you would.
But part of me hopes there will be a flicker of recognition, like the light from a firefly on a warm summer’s night. Hopes for a special look that will pass between the two of us.

But his eyes barely land on my face and he’s gone. “Can I have a snack?” he calls from the back room.

He doesn’t know me. I’m no one to him. I should feel relief, but I don’t. It makes me a little sad.

“Does he know?” I ask Claire once Joshua is out of earshot. “Does he know he’s adopted?”

“He knows,” Claire answers. “We’ve never hidden it
from him. We celebrate his birthday and the day of his adoption each year.”

“Does he ask about her? About his mother?” I’m almost afraid of the answer.

“Not really,” Claire answers. “But we tell him she did a very good thing. That she wanted a better life for him and she must have loved him very much to give him up.”

“Oh,” I say. “That’s nice.”

“So,” Claire says, pointing to a calendar. “How does Thursday, Saturday and Sunday look to you?”

I try to focus on the dates, but the calendar is one of those personalized ones. A large photo of Joshua, holding a soccer ball and wearing a bright green soccer uniform, is staring back at me. “Allison?” Claire asks. “Is that too many hours?”

I tear my eyes away from the calendar. “No, the more hours you have available, the better.”

“Great. You’ll work with Virginia on Saturday. She’s only going to be here through October or so and then she and her husband spend the winter in Florida. You could probably take on some of her hours, too, if you want.”

I can hear Claire, but all I can think about is Joshua in that little green uniform. He plays soccer. Just like I did. I wonder what else we have in common.

S
he has another two hours before she needs to be at St. Isadore’s. As a student nurse Charm is expected to spend time in all departments in the hospital. Next week she is scheduled to begin her mental health rotation.
I’ll fit right in,
she thinks to herself. Working with this population will be nothing new to her, between Charm’s mother and her mother’s boyfriends—probably three-fourths of them were mentally ill. All but Gus, of course. She feels a little bit guilty about storming out of her mother’s apartment the other day. She called her mother and apologized for the way she left things. But at the end of the conversation Charm couldn’t help but ask the question, though she really tried to hold the words back: Was she still planning on marrying Binks? Her mother responded by hanging up on her.

She’s already completed rotations in community health geriatrics, internal medicine, pediatrics and maternity. Maternity was the hardest. Seeing all those beautiful newborns wrapped up tightly in the way that makes them feel safe and secure. Charm hadn’t known how to wrap the baby up that way and neither did Gus. They just laid a blanket over the top of him and hoped for the best.
If only I would have known,
Charm often thinks.
I could have done so much better.

After Allison Glenn left and Christopher took off, Gus and Charm just stood there in amazement. Charm held the crying baby close to her chest, swaying back and forth, trying to shush him.

“Did you know that girl?” Gus asked Charm over the howling baby.

“That was Allison Glenn,” Charm said in disbelief. Allison Glenn and Christopher? Charm still couldn’t reconcile the thought of her brother and Allison Glenn. Together. Having sex. “She goes to my school. She’s going to be a senior. Her sister is in my class,” she explained to Gus.

“We have to call someone. We need to get that baby to a hospital,” Gus said, overcome by a spasm of coughing.

“Maybe they’ll come back,” Charm whispered. The baby’s cries stopped and his cloudy eyes, an indiscrimi-
nate color, squinted up at the overhead light. His mouth curved into a small pink circle.

“I don’t know,” Gus fretted. “He should see a doctor.”

“Allison Glenn is, like, the smartest girl in school. I didn’t even know she was pregnant,” Charm marveled. “She’ll come back—or Christopher will. They can’t just walk away from this. They have to come back.”

Gus looked doubtful. Charm couldn’t imagine taking the baby to a hospital, telling the world Allison Glenn’s secret. “You were a firefighter, Gus. You said you delivered a baby once—”

“I
helped
deliver that baby and we got her right to the hospital,” he interrupted, wheezing. “That girl should get to a hospital herself. We need to get this baby to the hospital.”

“Can’t we please wait a while?” Charm begged. “He seems okay.”

Gus sighed and sat down heavily in a chair. “We need to get some things for him, some formula and diapers. We’ll give them a few hours, Charm. That’s it. This isn’t a game.” Gus went resignedly out into the night and returned a short time later with four sacks filled with everything they could possibly need to take care of a newborn.

“Look at all this stuff,” Charm said in amazement, handing Gus the sleeping infant. “I didn’t know a baby
needed so much.” She reached into the bottom of a bag and pulled out two receiving blankets, baby wipes, bottles, formula and tiny blue pajamas with a bear embroidered on the front, laying each on the counter. The last item she pulled from the sack was a blue-and-red Cubs baseball cap. “Gus?” Charm looked at her stepfather in surprise. “A baseball cap?”

He shrugged and smiled wearily. “Gotta get them started young.”

The two sat up together that first night, taking turns trying to feed the baby, holding him, both falling a little bit in love with him, but knowing it couldn’t last. They knew that if Christopher or Allison didn’t come back they’d have to do something.

“Be brave,” Charm whispered in the baby’s ear. “Everything will be okay.”

Now Charm makes her way into Bookends, wanting to see five-year-old Joshua and Claire for herself. Sitting in her car, she sees Joshua through the store’s plate-glass window; he is dancing around in a circle, waving a dog treat over Truman’s head, laughing. You are brave, Charm thinks to herself. So brave. Claire comes up behind Joshua and plucks the treat from his fingers and bends down to feed it to Truman. Charm smiles. They are fine. Through the window, a tall girl with chin-length blond hair steps into her line of vision. Though she can’t see her face there’s something familiar about
her that Charm can’t quite put her finger on, something in the way she carries herself, in the way she tilts her head. It isn’t until she is driving home that she realizes who the girl reminds her of. Allison Glenn.

Charm laughs out loud and shakes her head. It’s impossible, there’s no way. It was years until Allison Glenn would be released from prison. She must be going crazy.

A
fter Allison was taken away by the police, I was trying to fall asleep when the phone rang. Biting back tears, I answered it, hoping beyond reason that it was Allison. It wasn’t.

“I’m calling about the baby,” a man said. I didn’t know who he was at first and then it dawned on me. It was the man whose home Allison had driven us to that night. Where she left the baby.

He told me that Christopher had left and wasn’t coming back. Ever. And Allison needed to come get the baby.

“She can’t,” I sobbed. “She’s gone. You’ve got to keep that baby away from here,” I said desperately, thinking about what my parents would do if they found out that Allison had another child out there. Selfishly, I thought
of myself, too. There was no way my parents would believe that Allison drove to Christopher’s alone with a newborn baby. They would figure out quickly that I had helped her, and I couldn’t handle their wrath, not all by myself. “You have to take care of him. Please,” I begged. He kept on insisting that I explain where Allison went and finally I spat out, “She’s in jail. They took her away.”

“Why?” he asked, obviously surprised.

“Just turn on the television,” I said, getting choked up again. “But keep that baby boy away from here. My parents … No one can take care of him here. He’s better off with someone else. Make sure he goes somewhere safe. Please,” I begged.

When I least expect it, the thought of that little boy creeps into my mind. I wonder where he ended up. I know that Charm Tullia and her father don’t have him anymore. When school started that next fall I saw Charm in the hallways. For two years we would look at each other out of the corners of our eyes, but never spoke about that baby boy. Except once.

After Allison was arrested, people whispered about me behind their hands, looked at me as if I was a freak. When the teachers weren’t around, someone would say something obnoxious. I never got used to the comments, but I learned how to deal with them. I learned not to make eye contact, kept my head down. I made sure to
move with the crowd, stayed to the edges of the hallway, but still the words felt like sharp blows.
How’s the murderer doing in prison? You’re sister isn’t such hot shit now, is she? Are you a baby killer, too?
There was a twisted glee in their voices. They enjoyed every moment of Allison’s very steep fall. It was always the same people—the girls she’d played soccer and volleyball with, the boys her group sat with during lunchtime.

Near the end of my junior year—nine months after Allison was arrested—I made the mistake of lagging behind to talk with my government teacher after the bell rang. You’d think that these morons would have moved on, found some other weaklings to bully, to try and make feel worthless. When I stepped out of the classroom, I found myself in a nearly deserted hallway.

I knew I was in trouble when Chelsea Millard, a senior who had been one of my sister’s best friends, and two of her lapdogs stepped into the empty corridor. Though it was springtime and the temperature was warm, goose bumps sprouted on my arms and I shivered when I saw Chelsea straighten her back. A look of righteous indignation settled on her face.

My second mistake was my hesitation. I should have just kept walking, kept moving forward with my head down. But I didn’t. My feet did a ridiculous stutter-step and Chelsea and her friends cackled at my awkward dance. They circled me, hands on hips with elbows
jutting out like the wings of crows and looked down on me scornfully.

“How’s your sister doing?” Chelsea asked snidely. “I bet the women there love Allison.” Her friends laughed and I noticed how ugly meanness looks on girls, how it transforms their eyes into thin slits, their mouths into pinched crab-apple smiles. Bitter grins, like they just bit deep into something sour. I stared, transfixed on their grotesquely changing faces, and shuddered.

“Sour,” I said before I could stop myself. Their laughter stopped suddenly. Their faces relaxed in confusion but then their eyes narrowed even more. Black angry slits. “Shhh,” I said out loud to myself. “Shut up. Don’t talk.” I knew I was acting strangely, but I couldn’t help myself.

“Did you just tell me to shut up?” Chelsea asked in disbelief, and stepped more closely to me. Sweat began to gather at my forehead. Beads of perspiration pooled between my breasts and slid down my back.
Oh, good,
I thought with relief,
I’m beginning to evaporate.
I covered my mouth to hold back a giggle. I didn’t think I said that out loud, but I couldn’t be sure.

“You’re crazy,” Chelsea spat. “Just like your baby-killing sister.” I looked down at my shoes and wondered if I was getting smaller and smaller. I hoped that I would continue to drip and melt until there was nothing left.

“Are you hiding something under there?” one of
Chelsea’s friends asked. She reached for my T-shirt. To avoid her hand, I stepped back, crashing into the bank of lockers behind me. “Are you hiding a baby, like your sister?” She grabbed for my shirt again, this time clutching a handful of fabric. In the process, she grabbed the soft, fleshy skin of my stomach and wrenched it upward. I cried out in surprise and pain.

“Leave her alone.” A firm voice came down the hallway. The afternoon light was streaming brightly through the high windows that lined the hallway, making it difficult to see the figure that was moving toward us. As the person approached, I realized it was Charm Tullia.

“Just leave her alone,” Charm said evenly. She didn’t look afraid or intimidated by the older girls, just annoyed.

“What are you going to do about it?” the girl who still held fast to my shirt asked.

Charm ignored the girl and continued to peer levelly into Chelsea’s eyes. The stare-down seemed to go on forever until finally Chelsea lowered her gaze and said to her friends, “Come on, let’s go, we’ve got practice. Freaks,” she said loudly as she bumped past Charm, her entourage following closely behind.

“You okay?” Charm asked me, gently touching my arm. I stared at her small, nail-bitten hand, surprised it hadn’t passed through my skin. I hadn’t evaporated into nothingness.

“I’m still here,” I said softly.

I meant to thank her. I wanted to thank her. But I simply drifted away.