Now Luke
Now
Luke
Adoptees may try to integrate their birth parent into their lives too quickly. They are anxious to traverse the missing years as quickly as possible and forge a strong mother/child bond. Inevitably this may backfire.
Who Am I? The Adoptee’s Hidden Trauma by Joel Harris
Alice is to become our nanny. However many times I say that to myself, I still can’t quite take it in. In other words, Alice, my actual mother, whom I have known less than two months, will be here week after week ensconced in our family lives. As reunions go, you’d have to say this one has been pretty monumental.
We struck the deal, Alice, Hannah and I – and Samuel, of course, cocooned on his grandmother’s lap – over tea and eclairs in the French Café. Alice will arrive at 9.30 a.m. and leave at 6 p.m., Tuesday to Thursday, though she has offered to work extra days whenever Hannah needs it. She won’t accept any more than a hundred pounds a week, which is considerably less than any of the au pairs we saw. We tried to insist on paying more, but she wouldn’t hear of it.
‘Look at him,’ she said, stroking the back of Samuel’s neck with her index finger. ‘He’s so adorable, frankly I should be paying you.’
‘You’re just saying that to make us feel better,’ I said, and Alice laughed.
‘Luke, it works for all of us. You need someone you can trust and I’m ready for a change in my life. It’s perfect.’
On our last night before Hannah returns to work, I cook fillet steak and open a bottle of our favourite Rioja. Candles burning on the table, Samuel wide awake and passed across the table from one to the other as we take turns to eat.
‘I’m going to miss him.’
‘Of course you are, but it’s only for three days. And once you’re in the office, working on a piece, you’ll forget about him.’
‘I will not,’ Hannah says, a little fierily. ‘But at least I won’t have to worry about him. We couldn’t find a safer pair of hands if we tried.’
‘Are we asking too much of Alice?’
‘No, I think she genuinely wants to do it. She’s so close to Samuel already. It’s almost uncanny.’
‘I hope it brings Alice and me closer too.’
‘Alice has bonded so quickly with Samuel because he reminds her of you.’
‘Far easier to deal with a baby than the weird, fucked-up grown-up version.’
Hannah laughs. ‘Exactly.’
We’re making tea and getting ready to go up to bed when the phone rings. It’s 9.30, which means it’s my mother, also making her last-minute preparations for bed, including her nightly phone call.
‘Hello, darling, just ringing to wish Hannah good luck tomorrow.’
‘Hi, Mum. Would you like to speak to her?’
‘No, no, I’m sure she’s busy getting ready. Send her my love. So the new au pair is starting in the morning? What’s her name?’
Duplicity is hard. It steals the words from your tongue, the breath from your lungs.
‘Alice.’
‘Alice?’ my mother says, and I wonder in my coldly alert, paranoid state if her mind is whirring with all the Alices she has known. Alice, Alice, now where have I heard that name before? ‘Alice who?’
‘Oh, er, God, I can’t remember her surname.’
‘Darling, you are hopeless.’ My mother is laughing. ‘How old is she?’
‘Um, fortyish, I think.’
‘Oh, quite old then. What’s her situation?’
If only I’d insisted on passing the phone to Hannah; she would have dealt with this inquisition so much better than me. She is sitting on the bench, Samuel asleep in her arms, watching me intently.
‘How do you mean, Mum? She’s a part-time painter. Looking to supplement her income, I guess.’
‘But what’s her experience with babies? She is a proper au pair, isn’t she?’
‘Of course she is. Mum, let’s talk tomorrow. Hannah is keen to get an early night.’
I hang up and join Hannah on the bench, bent double with the drama of it all.
‘Oh babe,’ she says, ‘this is so complicated, isn’t it? But the moment your mum knows about Alice, it’s going to feel easier.’
‘I can’t tell her.’
‘Not yet. But soon. Things will become much simpler once Christina knows who Alice really is.’
Such prescient words. If only I’d listened.