Letters From The Ledge (15 page)

“Hey, can we change the subject?”

She sighed heavily. “Sure.”

“I need my birth certificate.”

He watched her face turn to shock. “Why?”

“Passport. I got my pictures done but now I need to go do the actual application.”

“What on earth do you need a passport for? Is there something I should know?”

“I already talked to dad about it.”

“Well how about you talk to me about it? Where are you going?”

Brendan started to rub his legs. “Can we talk about it some other time? There’s some stuff I really need to do.”

“You want your birth certificate, I want details. What are you and your father cooking up now?”

“We have a deal. Business school in the fall, but I want to spend the summer in Europe. Take my camera, travel, see the world a bit–it’s a graduation gift.”

“Ah yes. You tapped into his
love
of traveling.” She looked offended. “Very smart move, Brendan. Does this ‘Sarah’ girl know you’re leaving?”

He scrunched up his forehead. “No. And if she did she probably wouldn’t care. I told you, we’re just friends.”

“Yes. You said that.”

“Can I go now?”

She huffed, obviously frustrated. “Fine, Brendan. Go. Far be it from me to want to be involved in your life a little!”

“So, my birth certificate?”

Ginny looked out the window. “I’ll find it. Don’t worry about it.”

He left her sitting there, sipping her brandy and looking hurt. He could hear the characteristic clink of the glass bottle topper as he shut the door to his room. Leaning back against the door, he pulled out the joint and finally lit it, taking a couple of long, slow drags, then slid down the door until he was sitting on the floor, arms resting on his knees.

She’d been drinking more lately, and hiding it better. Addiction was a slowly growing tentacle and he could feel its grip tightening on his own heart. “Hereditary predisposition” was what they called it in health class. Whatever it was or wasn’t, he couldn’t afford to end up like either one of them.

Then the realization hit, quick and dirty, like a sucker punch below the belt: their crutches had different names but they were made by the same company. It was enough to make him snuff the joint right back out in the ashtray. There had to be a better way, but Tess’s next letter was waiting, and he was going to need some stability. He picked the butt back up out of the ashtray and brought it with him onto the ledge, just in case.

It was strangely comforting, sitting out there when he read her letters, like she was hovering nearby, reading the text over his shoulder and whispering in his ear. Being out there and trying to imagine her, to relive her decision over and over again, had become more of a routine than a personal agenda. It was a way to feel her. To connect to the unseen presence he still felt when he concentrated on her face.

He pulled out the envelope and slit the top with the blade he’d grabbed on his way out. It reflected the light just right and the sight of it caught him up short. He rubbed one of the bare spots on his arm, realizing he’d already planned out where the next cut would be. He was in trouble, and he knew it.

He’d always wondered about people like him–sitting in the middle of the tracks while the train barreled toward them. He’d always figured they were too stupid to see it coming, and if they didn’t get out of the way then they deserved the hit. But he realized, with absolute clarity, that everyone saw it coming. Some people just chose to ignore the whistle.

The first page was a poem. His gut ripped open as he read it, feeling each word like a blade across soft tissue. He lit the joint and began to cry. Strapped to the tracks. Helpless.

Emptiness

My heart’s name is poison

It eats the shards of brokenness

And feeds on the hard tack of long suffering

Days without number

And deeds without names stalk and plague

Reaching about like blind guides

Latching onto the first signs of movement within the darkness

Bleeding and then lapping up their own blood

Hungry reminders of untold emptiness

Never full

Searching

Finding pain where comfort should be

Dear Brendan,

Sometimes I imagine my life like a novel. What if my destiny is to be a master painter, whose paintings can actually change the souls of those who look at them long enough, but the dark forces of evil in the world have kept me imprisoned and tortured so that my gift languishes in the darkness of my own fear and brokenness? There must be a happy ending there somewhere–a gallant knight who comes to rescue me from my chains and sets me free to fly above the dungeons that have walled-in my gifts. Gifts that once belonged to the light, a long time ago. As I fly above the darkness, those gifts are given back to the light, and all is well in the world again. Evil is conquered, but not without a fight. Never without a fight.

For a long time I thought you were my rescuer Brendan, but you can’t be that anymore, and once I’m gone you’ll see that eventually. The angels will rescue me now. They can help me to fly. They can take me places that you and I can’t go.

I know you. If you’re still reading these letters then you’re holding on too tightly, but I want you to be free. At some point you’re going to have to let go. You can fly without the angels. You always could.

You have so many amazing gifts. Share them with the world. Share them with other people. I promise, you won’t regret it.

Love,

Tess

Brendan looked out across the sea of buildings. It was still light. He could tell which building Sarah lived in, but it no longer mattered. So what if it
was
him she’d seen? So what?

"You want answers?"

"I think I’m entitled."

"You want answers?"

"I want the truth!"

"You can’t handle the truth!"

-
A Few Good Men

Brendan got up in a daze and wandered out to where the bottle of brandy sat, still on the table with its crystal top laying next to it. His mother was gone. Probably sleeping it off, but at the moment he didn’t care.

He took the cut crystal bottle, left the lid, and headed for Ginny’s office, swigging directly out of the bottle as he went. The stuff hit his gut with a burn that seemed to turn acid against the rawness that was already eating him a live.

He knocked on the door. As it creaked open, he found it empty and neatly arranged. He pulled open one of the filing cabinets, but none of the drawers held anything that looked even remotely helpful. He spent over an hour reading through every important-looking folder in the place, and learned a fair amount of information that might prove useful in the future–like the financial records for the private investigator his mother apparently kept on retainer. His father really was kidding himself.

The only cabinet he couldn’t get into was a locked one in the corner. He searched the desk drawers for all the usual places people hid keys. Nothing. Finally he reached his hand up under the middle desk drawer and there it was–stuck to the bottom with some kind of tacky putty.

"Bingo! Real smart mom." He took another large mouthful of brandy and saw the bottle in his hand–her bottle, and swallowed with some difficulty. Then he pushed the bottle away from him as if it were poison. He wanted to wretch right there, but the key was burning a hole in his hand. He had to know what was in that filing cabinet. If the private investigator’s records weren’t locked up, what else was there that was worth protecting?

The key fit easily into the lock, allowing access to two smaller drawers stuffed with rows of neatly arranged file folders containing the usual bullshit. Life insurance documents, the deed to the apartment, bank records, tax returns. By the time he got to the back of the second drawer it was beginning to seem pointless.

"Why do people hide this stupid stuff?" He pulled out an unlabeled file containing a picture of his mom as a teenager. She was pregnant. Now in her mid-forties, there was no way this had been him. "Unless of course they’ve got something really good to hide…"

Maybe a brother or a sister he never knew about? A scandalous teen love child she had to give up? The rest of the file looked like legal stuff–adoption papers, signed by Virginia Campbell–and pictures of another woman. Then a birth certificate.

He scanned it quickly to find the sex and identity of his mystery half-sibling.

"New York State Department of Health…Certificate of live birth…blah blah blah…Infant: Brendan Cole Foster. What?" A brother named Brendan? How bizarre was that? "What, you felt guilty giving up your mistake so you named me Brendan too? Did that make you feel better, mom?"

He kept on reading the document. The mother’s name was listed as Gina Marie Foster. Father: John Doe. "What the f-" He kept reading. It was signed in nineteen eighty nine–the year he was…

Brendan dropped into the chair. He looked again at the infant’s name and then the birth date. May 1
^st
, 1989. His stomach was playing tug-o-war with his diaphragm. He started thumbing through the other pages in the folder until he came to it–a certificate of adoption, dated three days after the birth certificate. A new birth certificate was attached to the adoption papers, renaming him Brendan Cooper Evans and listing the father as Frank Cooper Evans and the mother as Virginia Rose Campbell.

"You can’t do that. That can’t be legal."

He rubbed his temples. It didn’t make sense. Nothing was making sense. What happened to the baby that his mother had been carrying?

"Oh my God!"

Brendan looked up and found his mother staring at him from the doorway, one hand clasped over her mouth. His eyes were glassed over with unshed tears, his resolve like pure hardened steel. He could feel the anger welling up, and he desperately needed to cut, but he had to hear this out. He had to know.

"Did you have something you wanted to tell me–"MOM?" Or maybe I should call you something else. What would you prefer? Liar? Imposter? Pretender? Fraud? Go ahead–PICK ONE!!!" He screamed so loud she shook with the shock and fear of it all and started to crumple in the doorway.

Brendan pushed away from the desk and stalked over to her with the file folder flapping in his hand and shook it, leaning over her and yelling.

"What the hell is this? Who the fuck
am
I!"

He stood over her for a full minute more and when she didn’t respond he took the two birth certificates and threw the rest of the file folder at her, scattering its contents and walking out of the room. As he crossed through the house he could hear her crying but he no longer gave a shit.

As he passed through the living room he pulled some cognac off the wet bar and headed for his bedroom, slamming the door to his destination. He ripped out the cork with his teeth and sucked down a huge gulp, which sat teetering on top of the brandy, anxious to make a reappearance. He sat down on the floor and rolled a joint. Once he’d taken a few drags he started to calm down and laid the two birth certificates side by side in front of him. His eyes started to cross as he stared from one to the other, studying the names and dates, transferred so flawlessly. If he’d only ever seen the one where he was renamed he wouldn’t have even suspected. Cooper was his father’s–was Frank’s middle name, so it made sense they would change that to match. A perfect plan–neat and tidy and no one the wiser. Just like always.

Brendan grabbed the blade out of his desk drawer and pulled up the sleeve on his left arm. He was clumsier with his right hand so the left arm had been pretty much left alone. He drifted into the zone and started cutting, letting the blood run freely down his arm, absently watching the paths it took as it dripped onto the carpet.

He could barely focus when he heard the knock on his door. The joint was burned out in the ashtray and the room reeked of smoke. When he looked up and saw his mother standing in his room he could tell by the look on her face she hadn’t been prepared for what she saw. To her credit though, she stayed calm and merely played the game.

Glancing over toward the cognac she smirked. "So, that’s where it went. I was looking for that."

He didn’t even try to hide his contempt. "I’ll bet you were."

She looked at the haze in the room and back at the bottle perched on the desk. “I’d have to say that’s the pot calling the kettle black, Brendan.”

He ignored her comment. "I see you’ve regained your composure."

Ginny stood with her arms crossed against her chest. "I see you’ve lost yours." Surveying the damage Brendan had done to his skin, a small cry escaped from her throat. "Mind if I sit down?"

When he failed to respond she took a spot at the end of his bed.

He looked down at the file folder she was carrying and then at the birth certificates still lying on the floor. "Come to retrieve what’s yours?"

"No. I’ve come to give you what’s yours." She laid the file folder on the bed next to her. He noticed the gesture and nodded but otherwise made no sound whatsoever. He just waited.

Ginny took a deep breath and started out. "A lot of this isn’t going to make much sense to you, and I’d rather hoped we could do this when we both had a clear head, but I doubt you’re willing to wait for the stars to align.”

“Now’s good with me.”

“The facts are the facts and they’re pretty straightforward, but the whys behind them are a little more complicated and I don’t expect you to understand them." She laughed derisively. "I don’t even understand them sometimes."

He watched her look around the room again. Everything was in its place, except for a fifth of cognac, an ashtray full of marijuana remains, and blood on her eighty-dollar-a-yard carpet. For the first time she noticed the other scars.

"Not your first time?"

Brendan was stone-faced. Let her look. Let her take a good, hard fuckin’ look.

When he didn’t respond she took another deep breath. "When I was seventeen I got pregnant. My parents forced me to go live with my aunt in Atlanta for the duration of the pregnancy. They wanted me to get an abortion, but I refused. My aunt helped me find a family through a private attorney that wanted to adopt and so we went through the whole process. I got to meet them, and it was all set to…to work out."

Ginny touched the top of her forehead with the tips of her fingers. She looked at the cognac sitting on the desk and swallowed.

"Go ahead. Worked for me." He extended the bottle toward her and she took it with shaking hands. After a long drink he took it back defiantly and swigged off of it himself, wiping his mouth in an exaggerated motion with the back of his hand.

"Must you be vulgar?"

"Must you beat around the bush?"

Ginny looked at him a good long time before answering. "You think you’re so smart, don’t you? You don’t know anything."

"Try me."

He watched her chest heave up and down as she tried to swallow enough air to get the whole story out. "When I was in my eighth month I went into labor unexpectedly. It was too early. They couldn’t stop the process. Then there were…complications. There was a lot of blood. The placenta separated too early, and the baby–he died inside of me. I never even got to hear him cry."

Brendan swallowed as he watched a fresh tear fall down Ginny’s cheek. "When was that? What year?"

"Nineteen seventy-nine."

Brendan nodded.

"The next day I was still in the hospital–still in shock–and I started bleeding again, heavily. The doctors had a lot of trouble getting it to stop. Whatever they finally did worked but I was sick for a long time. I got an infection and eventually it cleared but…I didn’t marry your father until I was in my twenties. We’d been married several years before I figured out that I was no longer…able to have children."

"So now my life is a soap opera?"

Ginny stared at him with cold eyes. "Do you think this is easy for me? You arrogant little bastard–you’re just like your–"

"Like what mom? Like who, exactly?" He picked up the original birth certificate and waved it around. "Am I just like ‘John Doe’? According to this I don’t even have a father."

Ginny took the bottle back from him and took another long drink. She kept talking as if he hadn’t said a word. "When we decided to adopt there weren’t very many healthy white babies available. The young girl who had you was only fourteen at the time. She…" She kept licking her lips and swallowing, trying to get the words out.

"She’d been raped, and nearly aborted you. It was a very painful situation for her. She was so young–so traumatized. She didn’t want to meet us, and she never even held you. We got you when you were three days old."

"Who held me for those first three days?"

"No one. You were sick. You were too small and you weren’t breathing very well, so they kept you in an oxygenated incubator until you improved enough to come home with us. It didn’t take long. You were small but very strong and you fought for every breath. I sat by that incubator day and night praying for you to survive long enough for me to hold you just once. When they finally put you in my arms you were kicking so fiercely I was glad I wasn’t the one who’d had to carry you on the inside."

Brendan smiled.

"You haven’t stopped fighting since."

The smile faded quickly from Brendan’s lips as he realized he was the bastard son of an unknown rapist, as opposed to the unknown son of a plain old bastard. He wanted to laugh. Which was worse? "Well, I can see now why you weren’t exactly anxious to get that out in the open."

"I wanted to wait until you were old enough to handle it. Then you hit sixteen and became… some kind of an alien. I’ve been waiting for you to normalize ever since."

"And?"

"And I’m not so sure that now was the right time either but what’s done is done, right?"

"Thanks for the vote of confidence."

"Oh, that’s rich Brendan! You’re sitting here stoned, stealing our booze and drinking it in front of me, tattooed, pierced and cutting yourself with a razor blade while I watch your blood drip down your arms and you want–what? A vote of confidence that you’re ready to handle what is perhaps some of the most painful news of your entire life? Get real, ok?"

"No thanks. Reality sucks."

"Yeah. It does. And the sooner you learn that the better."

"No problem. I’m already there."

"Good, then we’re done?" Ginny started to get up.

"Wait."

She sat back down.

"What do you know about her?"

"Nothing. Like I told you, it was a closed adoption. All I know about her is what’s in that paperwork. It’s yours now. You can have it all."

"Which birth certificate is the real one?"

"They’re both real Brendan, but once we adopted you legally everything was changed." She pointed to the original. "That’s not your name anymore. You are legally Brendan Cooper Evans. Unless you decide to do something about it."

"What’s that supposed to mean?"

"It means, Brendan, that you are eighteen years old now. You’re free to change your name or do whatever you want legally and your father and I can’t do anything about it."

"Don’t call him that."

"Don’t be juvenile Brendan. We have been there for you every day since day one. You think the woman who gave birth to you but couldn’t bear to hold you deserves preferential treatment here? You think that’s what makes you a parent? DNA? Think again."

Ginny rose from the bed and crossed the room to the door, taking the cognac with her. She stopped at the doorway and turned. "So, now you can get your passport. Are you going to tell me where you’re going?"

"Europe. But beyond that I don’t really care."

She nodded silently and left the room, closing the door behind her. Brendan rolled another joint and let the rest of the night fade into a muted cloud of white-ish gray.