“Were you there when I was born?” I asked.
Jeannie hesitated, then sighed, as though she’d made up her mind to answer any question I had. “Let’s go inside,” she said. “I can’t sit on this hard step any longer.”
I followed her into the house and we circled the hulking trash bags to reach the couch. She sat down heavily, taking the photograph of Lisa and Matty from me to look at while she talked.
“She called me at work one morning to say her water had broken and the contractions were starting,” she said. “She knew what to expect, because we’d talked about it a lot. I called your parents right away so they could set out for Asheville. They left Danny with some friends. Your parents didn’t make it in time. I was able to stay with Lisa in the delivery room. I can’t lie and say it was a piece of cake. That she didn’t suffer. She was afraid and so was I, but we muddled through together.” She smiled into the distance and I knew Jeannie really had loved my sister. My mother.
“And then she cuddled you,” Jeannie said. “Covered you with kisses. I don’t think she would have been able to give you up for adoption to anyone other than her own family. She couldn’t have parted with you. She loved you very much.”
I blinked back tears at the thought of Lisa cuddling me.
“Her pendant.” Jeannie pointed to the photograph. “I gave it to her right after you were born,” she said. “I lied when I told you what the Chinese symbols meant. The symbol on the front actually meant ‘mother’ and the one on the back meant ‘daughter.’ She said she’d never take it off.”
* * *
When Jeannie left, I sat on the couch in the dark living room, staring into space. I was more numb than anything else. I had a living, breathing mother somewhere. Now I wanted to find her more than ever, but she didn’t want to be found.
Then, as I sat there in the dark, I began to think about the living, breathing man who was, in all likelihood, my father.
46.
I found him.
Despite his relatively common name, Matthew Harrison was easy to track down. Still sitting on the couch at one in the morning, computer on my lap, I discovered his professional Web site and dozens of photographs of him. He wore his hair almost exactly as he had as a teenager—in a thick mop of dark curls—and he was a good-looking man with a killer smile. He was forty, the same age Lisa would be now.
He lived in Baltimore and taught at the Peabody Conservatory at Johns Hopkins University. l stared at his pictures for over an hour, searching for—and easily finding—myself in his features. He was married with twin daughters, his biography said. Were they my half sisters? Did I have family living in Baltimore? I searched for pictures of those twin daughters every way I could think of without success.
All that nearly sleepless night, I kept getting out of bed, turning on my computer, and staring at the man I thought was my father. I began to think of what I’d say to him when I spoke to him, because I planned to call him first thing in the morning. I absolutely had to. He’d been so close to Lisa. Did he know she was still alive? Could he know where she was?
* * *
At seven-thirty, I made coffee, my nerves jangling as I watched it brew. I carried a cup of it into the living room, sat down on the couch, and anxiously waited until nine before calling the conservatory.
“Oh, Mr. Harrison just left for Japan with a youth group,” the woman who answered the phone told me. My heart plummeted, and I felt momentarily confused, still picturing him as the kid in the photograph—a teenager traveling with a youth group—when he was more likely their teacher. “You can leave a message on his voice mail, though I don’t believe he’ll be checking it until he gets back in two weeks,” the woman said. “Would you like me to transfer you?”
“It’s urgent,” I said. After a night of planning this call, I didn’t see how I could put it off another minute, much less two weeks. “Is there a way to reach him now?”
“I’m afraid not,” she said. “I can give you his work e-mail address if you like.”
“All right,” I said. I jotted down the address she gave me, knowing I wouldn’t use it. This was not a conversation for e-mail. I was afraid of hitting send and never hearing back. I’d have to wait for his return.
* * *
That night, I lay in bed, my eyes squeezed shut, thinking of how my world had changed in the last couple of days. I wanted my old life back, the one where I knew exactly who I was, but that life was gone.
I gave up on sleep and turned on my night table lamp. Next to the lamp was the novel I’d barely touched since leaving Durham and, next to that, a day-old copy of the New Bern newspaper, the Sun Journal. Craving distraction, I picked up the paper and began leafing through it. At the bottom of one of the pages, I spotted an ad for an upcoming concert in Union Point Park—the same ad I’d found taped to the wall of my father’s RV, with the same photograph from that postcard addressed to Fred Marcus. Jasha Trace. Two men and two women stood on a narrow path that stretched forever through a field. Each carried an instrument: a banjo, a guitar, a mandolin, a violin. And the violinist wore an oval-shaped white pendant.
I sat up quickly, sucking in my breath. Leaning my elbow on the night table, I held the grainy photo under the light. I should never have thrown that postcard away. What had been handwritten on it? Suddenly I remembered what Tom had said about the aliases used in the Witness Protection Program. We try to give them a name with the same initials, he’d said. Frank MacPherson. Fred Marcus. Owner of the PO box. Both of them, my father. Oh, my God. Daddy’d been in touch with Lisa! He knew this was her band.
I jumped out of bed and pulled on my shorts and T-shirt, cursing myself for giving the Kyles the key to my father’s RV. I remembered the bag of keys Christine had left for me in my father’s office. Racing into that room, I switched on the light and moved things around on the shelf until I found the small plastic bag. I shoved it in my pocket as I headed downstairs. In the kitchen pantry, I looked for the flashlights Daddy usually kept there. Christine must have moved them, no doubt sticking a price tag on them in the process. I would have to do without.
Outside, the air was still. Even the crickets and frogs were asleep. I got into my car and drove through the darkness to the RV park, pulling as quietly as I could onto the gravel lane, turning out my lights as I drove onto the cement pad next to my father’s RV. The park was quiet and dark, the trees blocking the moonlight. Turning on the overhead light in my car, I searched through the keys, trying to remember what the key for the RV had looked like. I found a couple of possible candidates and clutched them in my hand as I got out of the car.
I used my cell phone to light the RV door as I tried the first key. It fit, though it took some jiggling before the door creaked open. Inside, I turned on the weak light that ran above the kitchen counter, relieved that the interior of the RV looked the same as it had the last time I’d been inside. Tom hadn’t touched it yet. There was the row of CDs bookended by rocks, and the newspaper ad was still taped to the wall next to the picture of the little girl and boy. I pulled the photograph of the children from the wall. I had no idea who they were, but they’d meant something to my father. The picture was going with me.
I searched through the CDs. There were three by Jasha Trace. Each of the jewel case covers had a different photograph of the four musicians, and in every picture, the violinist wore the white oval-shaped pendant. The photographs were somewhat stylized, making it difficult to make out the musicians’ features even when I held the CDs directly under the light. The violinist’s hair was not Lisa’s white-blond, nor was it dark, but somewhere in between. The other woman’s dark hair was short on the sides, but it fell over her temple in the front. Both of the men—one dark-haired, the other blond and wearing glasses—looked a little shaggy, their hair dusting their collars.
I opened one of the jewel cases and pulled out the booklet inside. It contained page after page of lyrics, and the musicians’ names were listed at the bottom of each song: Ja
de Johnson. Yes! Celia Lind. Travis Sheehan. Shane Lind. Celia’s husband? Maybe Jade and Celia were not a couple after all?
I carefully pulled the ad from the wall and held it under the light. Jasha Trace. Free Concert in Union Point Park. July 13 8 P.M.
I touched Lisa’s face, then the pendant with the Chinese symbols. Mother and daughter. I pressed the picture tightly to my heart and sat there for a moment, my eyes shut.
My mother was coming to New Bern.
47.
Back at the house, I listened to the CDs while I sat at my father’s rolltop desk, searching the Internet for Jasha Trace. I tried to separate Lisa’s voice from Celia’s as I listened to the music, unsure which was which and wishing I knew. Some of the songs were rousing, while others were achingly pretty, a poignant sound track for the information I was discovering. Details were easy to find now that I knew which Jade Johnson I was looking for. They were less easy, though, for me to read.
Jasha Trace had a Web site with a biography of each member, and I read the fiction of Lisa’s life. Jade Johnson had supposedly grown up in Los Angeles, the only child of a doctor and a nurse, both of whom were conveniently deceased so no one could possibly verify the story of her childhood. She learned to play the fiddle at the age of thirteen and taught herself several other instruments over the years. She’d lived in Portland for a few years before relocating to Seattle in 1999, where she’d been a fiddle-playing busker at Pike Place Market and the manager of a café. She lived with her wife and musical collaborator, Celia Lind, and their two children.
Her wife. Her two children. I stared at the photograph of the little boy and girl I’d taken from the wall of my father’s RV. Lisa’s children? Was I related to these two red-haired little kids? How had my father gotten this picture? These CDs? Had he stayed in touch with Lisa all these years? Had they communicated through the post office box?
There was an excellent picture of the whole band on the Web site. Forty-year-old Jade Johnson looked so different from the old pictures I had of Lisa. I guessed she’d dyed her telltale white-blond hair brown all these years. She was somewhere between plain and pretty and she appeared to wear no makeup, although she must have dyed her pale eyebrows to match her hair and used mascara on her blond lashes. In the one close-up picture I found on her bio page, I saw that her eyes were a vivid blue, like Danny’s. She wore a wide smile that gave her a carefree and confident look.
I continued searching through the Web site, and then landed at Wikipedia, where I was able to piece together a bit more of Lisa’s life.
Jasha Trace
Jasha Trace is a Seattle-based American folk group made up of Jade Johnson, Travis Sheehan, and siblings Celia and Shane Lind. Although they played music together most of their adult lives, the foursome did not perform in public until 2006. Their first appearance was at Spoon and Stars, a café Johnson manages in Seattle. Their name, Jasha Trace, came from combining the first letters of each of their names. They describe their music as “Celtic Scottish Bluegrass.” Celia Lind and Johnson collaborate on the songwriting and the foursome works out their arrangements together.
Jade Johnson and Celia Lind, who self-identify as lesbian, were married December 29, 2012, a few weeks after same-sex marriage was legalized in the state of Washington. They have two children, Alex born in 2001 and Zoe born in 2004. Lind is the biological mother of both their children, and Johnson legally adopted them shortly after their births.
I stood up from the rolltop desk and walked around the room, hugging myself, my fingernails digging into my arms. I felt hurt. Cast aside and forgotten. The sadness that had dogged me since Daddy’s death and the breakup with Bryan washed over me with full force. I felt so alone. I’d been an unwanted complication in Lisa’s life. She’d created a new future for herself. A new family. The last thing she’d want now would be for her past to crash into her present.
The pink light of dawn drifted through the living room windows and I was exhausted, physically and emotionally. I sat down at the desk again. Behind me, I heard the CD player click noisily from the second CD to the third, and another Jasha Trace song began, the sound of the band now familiar to me.
Love you, Celia.
The words suddenly popped into my head, and I sat up straight, remembering them from my father’s e-mail. I’d thought he might be having an affair with a woman by that name. Maybe I’d been way off base.
Jumping to my feet, I raced up the stairs to his office, where the computer still sat on his desk—I’d never gotten around to cleaning the drive on that thing. I turned the computer on and typed newbern in the password field, nearly holding my breath as I waited for the old machine to chunk to life. It took me a few minutes to find Daddy’s e-mail and a few more minutes to search for messages signed Celia. There weren’t many e-mails from her, and I read them the way they came up in the search, in reverse chronological order, spread over many years.
May 18, 2012
That is the best birthday card ever. You are amazing! Love you, Celia.
I looked in his sent file to see if he’d sent the birthday card via e-mail, but he didn’t seem to keep much of the mail he’d sent. The next e-mail from Celia was from four years earlier.
February 7, 2008
F, it was so kind of you to send that note. I know you didn’t know Charlie, but he meant so much to J and me—including the fact that he introduced us. It hurt J that she couldn’t go to the service in San Diego, but it was way too risky. We are fine. Love you, Celia.
I remembered that name: Charlie. Grady had mentioned him. He was Celia’s grandfather. Daddy must have been in very close contact with Lisa to know about him and to know that he had died. I searched, but I couldn’t find a single e-mail that appeared to be from Lisa. I had the feeling he’d deleted hers but was less concerned about these few from Celia.
July 26, 2006
F,
J made her plane. She has to change in Charlotte. She’s very upset. Take care of her, please.
Love you, Celia
I stared at that one for a long time. My mother died on July 28, 2006. Suddenly, an incident that had always mystified me made sense.
I’d stayed home with my mother every single day after my high school graduation, turning down a waitressing job because I didn’t want to leave her side. Hospice was involved by then and I knew she didn’t have long.
The day before my mother died—the twenty-seventh—my friend Grace asked me to go with her to the beach. I told her I couldn’t; I needed to stay with Mom. Grace actually cried, nearly hysterical. She said she needed to get away for a few hours. She needed to talk about a problem she was having with her boyfriend. My father said it wasn’t good for me to be cooped up at my mother’s bedside every day and he insisted I go with Grace.
Grace and I lay on the beach for a couple of hours while she told me about a truly ridiculous fight she’d had with her boyfriend. She didn’t sound all that upset about it and I was annoyed that she’d talked me into leaving my mother because she wanted someone to hang out with at the beach. I confronted her about it, angry. I called her selfish, and she finally said, “Don’t blame me! Blame your father! He called me last night and told me you needed a break and I should make up some excuse to get you out of the house for the day.”
I panicked. Was today the day my mother would die? Did he somehow know that and not want me there? I grabbed my towel from the sand. “We’re going home!” I said to Grace, and started for my car at a run.
An hour later, we were back in New Bern. I dropped Grace off at her house, then drove to mine. There was a strange car in our driveway. I parked at the curb and was crossing the yard when Daddy came rushing down the porch steps toward me.
“What are you doing home?” he asked. He was pale, his face drawn as though he’d lost weight overnight.
“Grace told me the beach was your idea!” I said. “Why did you want me gone? What’s going on?” I started to walk past him, but he stepped in front of me, grabbing
my shoulders.
“You need a break, Riley,” he said. “It’s not good for you to be here, day in and day out.”
“Who’s here?” I asked, nodding to the car in the driveway. I looked up at my mother’s window and saw a face that disappeared so quickly I might have imagined it. “Who’s that?” I asked.
“Just one of the hospice nurses.” His voice shook. That terrified me.
“Is Mom dying right now?” I asked. Then a fresh fear ran through me. “Is she dead?”
“No, no, honey.” He pulled me close to him. He smelled of sweat. The scent made me think of exhaustion more than exertion.
“I don’t care about taking a break, Daddy,” I said. “I want to be with Mom.”
He looked me straight in the eye. “Listen, sweetheart. You’ve been wonderful with her. You’ve been such a help and she knows how much you love her. But you’ve been here every minute since school ended, and the truth is, your mom and I need a day together. Just the two of us. Please don’t be hurt by that. We just—”
“Oh.” I felt embarrassed that I hadn’t thought of that myself. “I wish you’d told me. I would have understood.”
“I was afraid—”
“It’s okay. I’ll just…” I looked toward my car, pondering my next move. “I’ll go over to Grace’s. What time … when can I come home?”
He pulled his wallet from his pants pocket, took out a couple of twenties, and pressed them into my hand. “You and Grace go out on the town tonight.” He nodded toward the house. “Give Mom and me till ten or eleven. Okay?” He smiled, and I was relieved to see his pallor disappear.
I hugged him. “Tell Mom I love her,” I said.
I was sure now that he didn’t tell her. I was sure he didn’t mention my name at all when he returned to the room where my two mothers sat. I pictured them holding hands.
I remembered coming home that night. My mother seemed different to me. Lighter, somehow. She smiled when I came into her room to kiss her good night, and I thought, Daddy was right. They needed a day together, just the two of them. Now I knew it had been the visit with Lisa that had put the smile on her face. In spite of the fact that I felt hurt over being left out of that family reunion, I was grateful to Lisa for making it happen.