Now Luke
Now
Luke
Reunions between an adopted child and his birth parent are often characterised by an intense honeymoon period which can feel a bit like a love affair.
Who Am I? The Adoptee’s Hidden Trauma by Joel Harris
Samuel lies on his little sheepskin rug in the corner of the kitchen. Hannah arranges and rearranges the flowers she bought from the florist earlier; I am stirring apple sauce, checking the slow-roasting pork, salting the potatoes, and all with an undertow of frenetic excitement. Alice is coming for lunch.
Earlier today I got out the paint pot we keep under the stairs and painted over every single fingermark and smudge of dirt I could find. Hannah polished the dark brown furniture my mother gave us, clunky mahogany antiques that feel too old-fashioned for our home. A few minutes ago she lit a Diptyque candle she’d been given for her birthday and now the kitchen smells deliciously of roasting meat mixed with fig and fern. The table is laid with linen napkins bought earlier from the gift shop. I have even polished the wine glasses. Ridiculous levels of over-preparation, but it’s the only way either of us can keep calm.
When there’s a knock at the door – one o’clock, she’s exactly on time – my stomach swoops and I am momentarily paralysed by a desire to run. Not towards the front door but away from it.
‘It will be fine,’ Hannah says, and she takes hold of my hand and pulls me out into the corridor, a gentle shove in my back until I am leading the way.
I open the door and find Alice standing there, and there’s a rush of chemicals, no other way to describe it, coursing through my veins, a surge of intensity that is like nothing so much as the feeling of being in love.
She stands on our doorstep dressed in a blue denim shirt and white jeans, a paper wrap of sweet peas held against her chest.
‘These are for you.’ She thrusts them at Hannah as she walks through the door and Hannah presses them to her face and inhales.
‘My absolute favourites. Oh Alice,’ she says, looking up at my birth mother. ‘You look exactly like Luke. And Samuel looks just like you too.’
Her voice wavers dangerously and Alice reaches forward to pull her into a brief, spontaneous hug.
‘Believe me,’ Alice says, ‘I’ve done nothing but cry for the past few days.’
She releases Hannah and looks at me – a fractional pause; you’d need to be deeply attuned to notice it – and then we embrace too. How can I explain what it’s like, this shyness, this shall-we, shan’t-we first-date-ness between mother and son? It’s easier for Hannah and Alice, that’s all.
In the sharp bright light of our kitchen, Alice spots Samuel on his rug and gives a little cry of anguish that seems familiar to me, perhaps from a lifetime ago, perhaps recorded somewhere in my cellular memory, who knows?
‘Just look at your little boy,’ she says. ‘He’s you exactly, isn’t he? Those eyes, my God.’
But then she moves away to look out at our little garden with its tiny bed in full bloom: irises, freesias, delphiniums (my other mother’s handiwork; she’s a fanatical gardener).
‘What a place you have here,’ she says, and does Hannah notice the way Alice’s voice shakes, her fight for composure? Her examination of the garden, I understand, is simply a decoy while she gets herself back together.
And yet with the presence of Hannah and Samuel, the relaxed setting of our own home, this lunch is the antithesis of our first one.
The food is perfect. Roasts are my speciality and I’ve really put my back into this one. The pork is scented with fennel seeds and cloves, the potatoes are hot, exploding little mouthfuls of crunchy sweetness.
And within minutes it seems Alice and Hannah are like old friends. They have art in common and a shared passion for Rodin. Alice tells us she still goes to the V fractional, just the slightest hesitation, but I catch it. And I also register the seconds of pain that flash through her eyes.
‘Goodness,’ she says. ‘The weight of him. The feel of him.’ She sniffs his head. ‘That wonderful baby smell. What is it, milk, soap? There’s a sweetness, isn’t there? I’d quite forgotten.’
She is wearing a long necklace of black beads, and Samuel, nestled against her chest, grabs hold of it in his fist and pulls.
‘Oh you cheeky thing,’ Alice says, pulling a puppet show of facial expressions, eyes wide, mouth in a round, exaggerated ‘O’. And Samuel laughs, for the first time in his life, a deep-bellied chuckle that neither of us has ever heard before.
‘Oh Alice,’ Hannah cries, ‘you made him laugh.’
And Alice does it again, no trace of self-consciousness as she performs for our son, eyes open, eyes shut; a simplistic version of peekaboo that triggers another outburst of giggles.
‘You are such a sweet boy.’ She presses her lips against Samuel’s scalp.
There is this great big dent in my heart, no other way to say it. Once upon a time, Alice would have pulled faces for me too.
Perhaps in the silence that follows we are all thinking the same thing.
Hannah leans forward and says, voice low, ‘Oh Alice. Poor you.’
Alice closes her eyes for a second; she nods.
‘I tried, Luke, I really did. But in the end I couldn’t keep you. And after you’d gone, well, to say that I regretted it …’
Hannah says, ‘I’m sorry,’ and I know from the break in her voice that she is fighting tears. I hear the words she leaves unsaid. Sorry for asking about it. Sorry for what happened, for losing your son.
‘You did the right thing for me,’ I say, even though I believe the opposite is true. Take a child from its natural mother? How could that possibly be the right thing? But instinctively I understand that this woman, this real live mother of mine, cannot cope with the truth. ‘It was brave of you. You gave me a life with the security of two parents, even though it was the last thing you wanted.’
Alice reaches out to cover my hand with her own, and it’s the first relaxed physical contact between us.
‘Luke,’ she says. ‘You have grown into the nicest human being.’