What We Leave Behind (37 page)

“Your family was very generous to me.”

“I’m talking about you and Jonas. You were important to him. You know that, don’t you?

None of us ever understood why you weren’t at the funeral. We thought it was Emily, and Jonas never said a word, until now.”

“I wanted to be there. That was a hard time for me. Your father was a special person in my life. He still is.”

“He’d be a grandpa. He would have loved that.”

“I went to see him,” I told her.

“You did?”

“It was about a year after he died.” I remembered it vividly. Michelle was already with her new family, and I knelt on the ground to feel closer to him, to make sure that he could hear me. “I spoke to him, and I apologized for not saying good-bye.” I also read him the article they wrote about him in the
Times
.

“I told him there was a part of him still in the world with us.”

I didn’t finish the rest of the story. The memory of that day was so powerful that I didn’t want to share it with anyone, not even Amy. I didn’t tell her how I shouted at the ground, “You always told me to do something I loved, and I loved your son and look where that got me,” and how I grabbed a handful of grass and threw it, looking around to see if anyone had seen me. I didn’t tell her how the rabbi came that afternoon and found me sitting there and that he was waiting for the family—for her and for Jonas and the rest of them to arrive—and that the unveiling happened to be that afternoon. When I told him I didn’t understand, he explained that the unveiling was for everyone, that it was
symbolic
, an acknowledgement of death a year after the burial, and by placing a stone at the gravesite with your loved one’s name, there comes finality, and an acceptance of that finality. The ceremony was to say good-bye and to begin again. I had memorized the words.

If I had told her any of this, she would have thought I picked that day to visit Adam on purpose, that it wasn’t just a coincidence in which I interpreted, at the time, to be another sign. And she would have never understood why, when I saw the black limousine turn the corner toward me, I ran.

“That was very thoughtful of you,” she said and acknowledged how close we almost came to seeing each other that afternoon. And then she got right down to business, looked me straight in the eye without an ounce of apprehension, and said, “Give him that child, Jess. Give Jonas that one thing he wants more than anything in the world, what no other woman can.”

“Amy…”

“Listen to me,” she said, “He’s so torn up about Michelle. I’ve never seen him like this. The idea of saving her life and having a baby of his own is all he talks about. I know no one can make this decision for you, but I saw the two of you together and how you felt about each other. Even when he went his separate way, he never got over it. He never got over you. If you believe that everything happens for a reason, then you have to question why all of this is happening now. If you had told him the truth all those years ago, Jonas would have done the right thing. He would have never let you go.”

My ears were taking in the words, the lush tones and delicious sounds, but my heart was unsure of what to trust.

“You can never tell Jonas I told you this, please. She came to see me.”

“Who did?”

“Emily. They had just gotten married and settled into their new house, and I guess she found that picture of you. You know which one I’m talking about?”

I nodded.

“It was in his wallet, Jess. She found it in his wallet.”

Amy continued. “She had asked him first about it, and he screamed at her for going through his things. She said it was the only time he ever raised his voice, and when he was finished scolding her, she realized he never gave her an answer. Needless to say, she was upset.”

“What did you tell her?”

“I was caught off guard, and I’m the worst when it comes to thinking quickly on my feet. I told her it was a patient of his. She knew right away I was lying. She said they’d gone to med school together, and she knew about all his cases.

“You have to know Emily. Her brilliance is her biggest downfall. For some reason it inhibits her from containing hurt and managing emotions like jealousy. She drove Jonas crazy for months about it. He was even mad at me for a while for saying anything.”

“Did he ever say anything more?”

“He didn’t have to. She knew she’d intruded on something important, and she worried incessantly about him leaving. If he was mixed up that summer about leaving her, he was more mixed up the year of the picture fiasco. He saw how weak and desperate she was. He honestly didn’t think she had the coping skills to handle a breakup.”

But I wasn’t listening to Amy anymore. I was thinking about what Jonas had told me about his relationship with Emily and how he’d left this part out. I was seeing Jonas with that photograph in his wallet all those years later. I was seeing him staring at my face long after good-bye and long after years had dragged us apart. I was tired of obsessing over what could have been and how I underestimated how much he cared about me. It was time to make a change. It was time to do something radically different, because the way I’d handled things thus far wasn’t working.

The words rolled off my tongue the way I knew they would. She would know before anyone else.

“I’m going to do it,” I said.

Amy jumped off the couch and took me in her arms.

Whether it was relief that filled my deep sigh or atonement for my betrayal, the calm resounded around me. I had never been as sure about anything in my life.

Jill Sammler was the one who ultimately made the decision to introduce Michelle to her birth parents.

Mr. Sammler was understandably hesitant. He hadn’t wanted to delve into this thorny area, but it was at Jill’s insistence that the truth come out. Their secret had been blown wide open the day they prompted us back into Michelle’s life. By our consenting to do this, there was no proper way to hide our identities, the people who were willing to endure life-changing circumstances to save her.

“Mom,” Michelle said, making specific eye contact with her mother, “I knew you didn’t meet Jessica at the museum.”

“I’m a terrible liar.”

“You were, for a little while,” she continued. “I knew I was adopted, not because you weren’t good parents, you were the best anyone could have ever asked for, but I found out another way.  You’re going to be mad.”

“Michelle, you didn’t,” her mother said.

We all watched as she hugged Benjamin Owen to her chest.

“You did. I can’t believe it.”

Mr. Sammler finally spoke up. “What did she do?”

“She read my journal.”

Michelle nodded her betrayal. I sucked in my breath, knowing I’d have done the same thing, when Jonas whispered to me, “Wonder where she learned that from?”

We all had to be careful, tread lightly, and keep our distance from one another even as we came together in a united cause. These were Michelle’s parents. These were the people who nursed her and ran into her room when she cried at night. These were the people who clothed her and fed her and made sure she was immunized each year, even when they had no idea of her fragility—that even the best intentions sometimes couldn’t prevent bad things from happening.

Jonas and I, although her birth parents, had to take a step back and allow this family, this other family, to deal with their history without outside interference. She wasn’t ours to reminisce about. She wasn’t ours to debate similarities or differences. We’d lost those rights a long time ago.

“I’m sorry,” Michelle said, “that was wrong.” I saw the bold contrast between her conviction and the fatigued figure on the bed. She was hidden under tubes, and her hair was strewn across her pillow, most of it no longer rooted to her head, but she was honest.

Jill Sammler didn’t say anything. She just knelt over her daughter and took her into her arms. The two of them stayed like that for a few minutes when Jill spoke, “I’m sorry, honey. We didn’t want to bring this up now, but it’s important for you to understand how Jessica and Dr. Levy are here to help you. They’re our best chance for a match, and you know how hard we’ve been praying for a miracle. This could be it, honey. This procedure is so important.”

All of our faces were fixed on the bond between mother and child and how painfully it can be tested. Michelle was almost twelve. She wasn’t a kid who didn’t yet understand death. She got it, and she knew what a match would mean for her. It took a gutsy parent to look her child in the eye and lay out the facts. What makes a parent, I understood at that moment, is not so much genetics, but all the other things you give. Anyone can be a parent, but to be a mom or a dad, that takes years of giving with no thought of getting.

Michelle narrowed in on me and Jonas. I said, “We’re so happy to know you. We’re so proud of the young girl you’ve become.”

“Thank you,” she said, and I know she was thanking me for more than the nice things I was saying, for keeping her secret and for the sacrifice I was about to make in her honor. Her gaze shifted to Jonas, who watched her like we had just given birth to her.

“How about you get some rest?” Jill Sammler said.

“I don’t feel much like sleeping, Mom. I want to talk to Dr. Levy and Jessica. Can I?”

She hesitated, but when her husband touched her hand, she softened. The threat was gone. We were no longer the people who could take her child away. We’d become far more than that. We were the ones who could bring her back. Mr. Sammler wrapped his arm around her shoulder and led her from the room.

“I love you, Mom and Dad,” she called out, reassuring them before they were gone from sight.

“We love you too, honey,” they said and walked out the door.

Jonas and I circled around her. “Isn’t this just like being on
7th Heaven
?” she smiled, but neither of us was feeling comical. “
ER
?
Jerry Springer
?” She could see we weren’t going to laugh. I was worried she’d inherited my defense mechanisms.

“I can’t believe you didn’t tell me it was him.”

“I couldn’t. Look at those eyes, though,” I said, directing her gaze to a subdued Jonas. “They’re exactly the same.”

“Tell me,” she started. “From the beginning.”

She seemed to be more interested in the two of us than in anything else.

“She was fifteen…” Jonas began.

“Almost sixteen,” I corrected.

“Yes, almost sixteen, and I was twenty-two…”

“A big shot with a sensitive stomach. He puked on my shoe. A memorable introduction.”

“Guilty.  But it made a lasting impression, so I’m not sorry about that.”

Michelle was listening and smiling almost as much as we were.

“And then he asked me to dance…”

“She tried to act all cool and standoffish like she didn’t want to…until we actually danced. It was her sixteenth birthday, and after that she agreed to have lunch with me, and I whisked her away to Catalina to my favorite restaurant…”

“Which, he failed to inform me at the time, was owned by his family…”

“And we colored, and played games on the table…”

He continued, but I wasn’t following anymore. He’d gotten to the part about climbing a tree, and I was already there, back in California, with Jonas, loving him like I’d never stopped. There was no time or distance between us, just the freedom to be together. It worried me that someone could walk back into your life after so many years and rattle you as if they had never left.

“And then my father died,” he continued, which was the intrusion I needed. Had he not, I might have gone on daydreaming all afternoon. “And I went back to school, and your mom, I’m sure she did all sorts of wild things in the eleventh grade, staging anti-smoking demonstrations, crashing the Oscars, eavesdropping on anyone’s conversation she felt entitled to…”

“How did that weak stomach handle medical school?” Michelle asked.

“It was something I had to get over.”

“Like my mom?” she asked, a question wrought with grown-up innuendo.

There was Jonas, standing over our daughter, trying to be composed, me fidgeting, and a cloud of suspense pummeling through the air thick with truths or non-truths that would spill from Jonas’s mouth.

“Some things you never get over.”

I started to tug on a cuticle that was hanging from my finger, not even attempting eye contact with Jonas, when Michelle blurted out, “How come you never got married?”

Jonas just shook his head back and forth.

“Do you think you will now?”

I sought Jonas’ eyes.

When neither of us could give her an answer, Jonas began, “Michelle, I think you’re getting caught up in the details of right now, but we’re all thinking about your future. You have to trust that we have your best interests at heart.”

“I
was
thinking about the future,” she said, crossing her arms. I noticed how skinny they’d become, marred in color from purple to deep shades of blue. “You have no idea about what’s in my best interest.” She was changing. Something inside her was stealing the strength from her face.

“I think we do,” said Jonas, turning to me for agreement. By then, her lips were quivering, and she was holding in a whimper. “You have no idea,” she stopped herself, shaking her head. “You just don’t know.”

It didn’t matter what she was about to say because she was right. We didn’t know anything. Sure, there was literature for us to read, a how-to guide for understanding leukemia and bone marrow transplants, but third-person accounts are never as poignant as the first. For Michelle, the facts were the life she lived every day. We had no concept of what it was like to wake up being prodded by a needle, to find your hair in clumps across your pillow, to be happily watching your favorite television show and realizing you won’t live to most of the characters’ ages. We didn’t know what it was like to worry incessantly about pain, about being separated from our parents, about making up all the missed work at school, about friends looking at you as though you’ve become
different
. Jonas and I laughed for weeks about his vomiting on my shoe, and our daughter didn’t go a day without unwanted bile. She was correct. We had no idea. All the pamphlets, brochures, and guidebooks couldn’t spare us the worst possible outcome—how to survive life without her.