Chapter 2 #11
She follows me downstairs, where Ximena now stands with Mi-la-gros in the kitchen. Her jaw is puffy on one side. She unpacks two containers of ice cream. “My mouth is killing me, so it’s ice cream for dinner.”
At that, Milagros shrieks with joy, and even Mercedes cracks a smile. Ximena turns to set the table and sees my unicorn picture. Her eyebrows raise. “You did this? You are wasted as a maid. You should be an artist.”
I catch Mercedes’s eye. “In another life, maybe,” I reply.
“Oh! That reminds me.” Ximena starts rummaging in the tote she brings to work every day and removes a sealed manila envelope. “Someone left this for you today at the motel.”
I take the envelope and open it.
A birth certificate. A license. A social security card. All for Georgia Gilligan.
On Ximena’s birthday, while the girls are cooking her a special meal, I walk to the library. It is always cool in there, and they have free computers to use. I sit down at a terminal and open the Yahoo! search engine, thinking of Mercedes. Then I type the name adam ambrose.
When the screen fills with hits, I click each one.
Here is Adam winning a youth basketball tournament in Vermont, his hair too long and curling over his eyes.
Here’s a small--town newspaper article about his acceptance to Brown.
A notification of his initiation into an engineering honor society.
A website for his company, with a formal photo of him and description of his position there.
I can’t help it; I touch the screen with one fingertip. The photograph is black--and--white, so I can’t see the blue of his eyes.
I start a new search: people missing 9/11.
Five weeks after the Twin Towers fell and the planes crashed, there are lists of the dead. By now, there are also photographs of flyers that have been posted all over the city:
marlyn capito bautista, marsh mclennan
janet marie alonso, missing from tower 1, 97th floor
i am looking for my son, his name is kenneth tarantino
firefighter sergio villanueva, ladder 132
have you seen my daddy? jason jacobs
I don’t see Adam’s name. But I don’t see mine, either.
I spend hours poring over these lists and images, until my eyes burn and the librarians tell me that the building will be closing in ten minutes.
I do one final search before I go. When I leave the library, it is with the name and phone number of Fenimore Hurlihy, private investigator, tucked into my pocket.
When I hire the private investigator, it takes three weeks and every dollar I’ve saved before he contacts me, saying that he has information.
I meet him during a lunch break. Hurlihy is cadaver--thin and loomingly tall.
He has a nicotine addiction he’s trying to quit, so he wears rubber bands around both wrists and snaps them whenever he has a craving for a cigarette.
His office space is below a dance studio, and when I come to our meeting, I can hear the tinkling sounds of a piano and the thump of feet striking the ceiling above me. “You get used to it,” he says, following my gaze as I sit down across from him.
I had told him I had a cousin I was afraid had died in the attacks at the World Trade Center, and that my family was looking for confirmation.
Hurlihy opens a folder and passes me a flyer like the ones I had seen on the internet. This is a copy of a copy, faint and faded, black and white. A woman stares out, blankly, holding a baby. eloise ambrose, it says in bold black letters. missing.
“There is a missing person’s report filed with the NYPD, too,” Hurlihy informs me. “The presumption now is that any of those still missing in the terror attacks are dead.”
My eyes are suddenly damp.
Hurlihy shifts, clearly uncomfortable. “I, uh, definitely see the family resemblance. I’m sorry for your loss.”
He thinks I am grieving this woman in the photo, and in some ways, I am. But the reason I’m crying is the writing at the bottom: Please call Adam with info, 917--555--3022.
Which means he is alive.
On my wedding night, Adam’s fingers were threaded with mine, our hands pressed into the mattress on either side of my head. He leaned down closer, and I chased his mouth with mine, but he held back just far enough to be out of reach. “Stop teasing,” I said, squirming.
When the phone rang, I startled.
“Let it go,” Adam said. “The machine will pick it up.”
It was midnight. No good phone calls come at midnight.
I picked up the phone. “Eloise?” Evie said, her voice shaking. “I think I need help.”
Though she’d made an appointment for an abortion the following week, she had started bleeding in the meantime. When the bleeding wouldn’t stop, she called me, panicking, which is how I knew this was bad. Evie never panicked. She was as resourceful as they come.
It would have taken me too long to get to her, since we lived on opposite ends of Manhattan. So I told her to call 911 and said I’d meet her at New York–-Presbyterian Hospital.
By the time I got there, she had already been taken into surgery.
She had listed me as her next of kin. I sat in the waiting room thinking of the first day we met, when she sized me up for my conservative clothing and found me lacking.
I wondered if we had become friends by default or because it was meant to happen.
Two girls without families, each one needing a sister.
At three in the morning, the surgeon came into the waiting room.
“Evelyn’s going to be fine,” she told me.
“She had a miscarriage, and started bleeding heavily. When she got to the emergency department, we did an ultrasound and found retained products of conception, so we performed a D&C. But during the procedure, she began to hemorrhage again, and the bleeding couldn’t be controlled.
We had to do an emergency hysterectomy.”
“What? Why?”
“The excessive bleeding could have been due to an arteriovenous malformation or a cervical ectopic pregnancy—-we won’t know till we get the pathology results.”
“But she . . . she’s going to be okay?”
The doctor nods. “Once she wakes up, you can see her.”
An hour later, I was taken to her room. Evie looked so unlike herself—-so pale and still in the bed. But then she shifted, rustling the blanket. “I know it’s your wedding night,” she rasped. “I didn’t know who else to call.”
I blinked, trying not to cry. “If you wanted a sleepover, Evie, you could have just asked.”
Evie shook her head. “Bright side? I can cancel the appointment for the abortion.”
Someone who didn’t know Evie as well as I did would relax hearing that, thinking if she could make jokes, she must be okay. But I knew better. “I’m so sorry, Ev.”
She turned her face toward the blank white wall. “I probably wasn’t cut out to be a mother. Mine was an addict, and anyway, I don’t have much luck finding a guy who sticks around.”
“Maybe steer clear of bosses that are already married.” I crawled onto the bed with her and lay down, holding her hands.
We faced each other, mirror images, and I thought of the mosaic I’d made when we had been fighting in college.
We were yin and yang, light and dark, reticent and brash.
I wouldn’t recognize myself without her.
“You can adopt, or use a surrogate, if you want kids,” I promised.
“And if you don’t, you can have mine. You’re going to be the best godmother ever. ”
Our joined fists beat between us like a heart. “What’s in the job description?”
When I was growing up, godparents were responsible for making sure a child found his or her way to Jesus.
But now, I looked at Evie and smiled. “The good stuff. Getting manicures together. Going to Serendipity for ice cream sundaes on their birthdays. Keeping secrets, like who they have a crush on and which parent they love more.”
“Diaper changes?” Evie asked.
“Optional,” I told her.
She closed her eyes. The lids were translucent, fragile. “Sign me up,” she said.
At the end of October, I am ready. I ask Cletus for two days off and tell Ximena I am going to visit an old friend. None of this, really, is a lie.
I have saved enough for a cheap ticket, thanks to the fact that Ximena won’t take any rent money from me.
I feel brave, and, more important, I feel like my old self.
My skin isn’t pasty anymore and I’ve walked off whatever weight I gained.
My mind is quiet. When Adam sees me, I will look like the girl he fell in love with—-not the shadow who disappeared two months ago.
I’m doing so well, in fact, that I realize I don’t need the medication anymore. It makes me feel like I’m watching the world through a veil, and when I see Adam again, I want to be as clear--eyed as possible. So I take the lithium and valproate and flush them down the toilet.
I book a flight for November 11. 11/11, two months after the most public tragedy in America, and the most private tragedy of my life. 11/11, the number you see on your alarm clock and make a wish.
I’ve only been on a plane twice before. Once when I went from Alabama to Boston, and once in college when Adam and I flew to Miami for a long weekend, a surprise for my birthday.
He laughed when I read the safety pamphlet from cover to cover and oohed at the free peanuts and the whole can of Coke I was given.
Flying now is different. There are National Guard soldiers with rifles at the airport.
I have to show ID at the security checkpoint, and when I pass my fake license over, I hold my breath until it’s returned.
A security officer dumps the contents of my duffel bag on a metal table and sorts through it all before jamming it back inside and waving me forward.