The Jodi Picoult Collection #3 Read online

  The woman exits backward. She’s wearing faded jeans and an embroidered peasant blouse, and looks much younger than I would have expected. “Sí, bread and refried beans,” she calls out to someone still inside. “I heard you the first time.” Then she steps out and plows right into me. “Discúlpeme, I didn’t see—” Her hand comes up to cover her mouth.

  Her face looks like a photo of me that has been crumpled and then, on second thought, smoothed again—my features, but worn soft by the finest lines. Her hair is one shade blacker than mine. However, it is her smile that renders me speechless. Two eyeteeth, twisted just a quarter turn—the reason I spent four years in braces and a retainer.

  “Gracias a Dios,” she murmurs. When she reaches out I let her touch me, my shoulder and neck and finally, cupping my cheek. I close my eyes and think of all the times I had stroked my own arm in the dark, pretending to be her; failing, because I couldn’t surprise myself with comfort. “Beth,” she says, and then she blushes. “But that’s not your name anymore, is it?”

  In that moment it is not important at all what she calls me, but it is critical what I call her. My voice breaks. “Are you my mother?”

  I don’t know which one of us reaches for the other, but suddenly I am in her arms, a place that I had to imagine my entire life. Her hands run over my hair and my back, as if she is trying to make sure I’m real. I try to narrow my mind to a sliver of recognition, but it’s hard to know whether this feels familiar because I remember it, or because I so badly want it to.

  She still smells like vanilla and apples.

  “Look at you,” she says, holding me far enough away to stare at my face. “Look at how beautiful you are.”

  In the background, someone speaks: a low baritone with a hint of an accent. “Elise? Who’s there?” He steps forward, a lean man with white hair, coffee-colored skin, and a mustache. “Ella podría ser su gemelo,” he whispers.

  “Victor,” my mother says, her voice so full it spills over. “You remember my daughter.”

  I have no recollection of this man, but apparently he knew me. “Hola,” Victor says. He starts to reach for me, and then on second thought, slides his arm around my mother’s waist instead.

  “I didn’t know if it was all right to come here,” I admit. “I didn’t know if you wanted to see me.”

  My mother squeezes my hand. “I’ve been waiting to see you for almost thirty years,” she says. “As soon as they told me who you were . . . now . . . I tried to call you, but no one answered.”

  The relief her words send through me, the fact that she was trying, nearly buckles my knees. It wasn’t that my mother hadn’t called, it was that I hadn’t answered. Because I was flying to Arizona, to be with my father while he stood trial.

  We are both thinking this, and it reminds us that this is not just any reunion. Victor clears his throat. “Why don’t you two sit down inside?”

  Her house is decorated with bright Talavera pottery and wrought iron. As we walk into the living room, I look for clues that will tell me more: toys that speak of other children or grandchildren; the titles of music CDs on the shelves; framed photos on the walls. One catches my eye—it is a snapshot of my mother and me, wearing matching embroidered dresses. I’d seen a similar photo, maybe taken the minute before, or after this one, in my father’s secret stash.

  “I’ll get some iced tea,” Victor says, and he leaves my mother and me alone. You would think, when there is so much to say, that it comes easily. But instead we sit in an uncomfortable silence. “I don’t know where to start,” my mother says finally. She looks down into her lap, suddenly shy. “I don’t even know what you do.”

  “Search and rescue. I work with a bloodhound, and we look for missing people,” I say. “It’s crazy, given the circumstances.”

  “Or maybe it’s because of them,” my mother suggests. She folds her hands in her lap, and we look at each other for another moment. “You live in New Hampshire . . . ?”

  “Yes. My whole life—” I say, before I realize that isn’t true. “Most of it, anyway.” I dig in my pocket for the photo I’ve brought along of Sophie, and pass it to her. “This is your granddaughter.”

  She takes the picture from me and pores over it. “A granddaughter,” my mother repeats.

  “Sophie.”

  “She looks like you.”

  “And Eric. My fiancé.”

  I’d hoped that by seeing my mother some floodgate would open, and all the gaps in my mind would be filled with memory. I’d hoped that some reflex recollection would take over, so that when I heard her laugh or saw her smile or felt her touch, it would be familiar, instead of new. But after that initial embrace, we’ve gone back to what we really are: two people who have just met. We can’t rebuild our past, because we haven’t even leveled common ground.

  For years, I’d sketched my mother out in my mind by stealing bits and pieces of other people’s lives: a woman who stood in the town pool, coaxing her tiny daughter to jump off the side into her arms; a fairy-tale character who died tragically young; Meryl Streep in Sophie’s Choice. Any of those women, I would have known in an instant; I would have been able to fall into easy conversation. Any of those women would have known what I have been doing all my life. In none of my imaginings was my mother Spanish-speaking, or remarried, or awkward. In none of my imaginings was she a total stranger.

  When your mother is made out of dreams, anything real is bound to disappoint you.

  “When is the wedding?” she asks politely.

  “September.” At least, that was when it was supposed to be. I expected my father to give me away—before I learned he might be going to prison for not being able to do that in the first place.

  “Victor and I are celebrating our silver anniversary this year,” my mother says.

  “Did you have children?”

  She shakes her head. “I wasn’t able to.” My mother looks down at her hands. “Your father . . . did he remarry?”

  “No.”

  She lifts her gaze to mine. “How is Charles?”

  It is strange to hear him referred to by that other name. “He’s in jail,” I say bluntly.

  “I never asked for that. I’m not going to lie—there was a time I was so angry at him for taking you I would have willingly sent him to prison for life—but it’s been so long. The only thing I cared about, when the prosecutor called to tell me they’d found him, was you.”

  I picture her standing in the driveway of this house, even though I know it isn’t where I grew up. I imagine her expression at the moment she realizes I am not coming back. I see her face, but it has all of my own features.

  My mother looks at me, hard. “Do you . . . do you remember anything?” she asks. “From before?”

  “Sometimes I have dreams,” I say. “There’s one about a lemon tree. And one where I come into a kitchen with broken glass all over it.”

  My mother nods. “You were three,” she says. “That wasn’t a dream.”

  It is the first time someone has been able to confirm a memory that I couldn’t make sense of, and I feel my arms and legs go weak.

  “Your father and I, we had a fight that night,” my mother says. “We woke you up.”

  “Was I the reason you got divorced?”

  “You?” She seems surprised. “You were the best part of our marriage.”

  The question, now, is burning a path up my throat; the words come out like fire. “Is that why he took me?”

  Just then Victor enters the living room, carrying a tray. There is a pitcher of iced tea, and cookies the size of a baby’s palm, covered in powdered sugar. Under his arm is a shoebox. “I thought you might want this, too,” he says, and he hands it to her.

  She is embarrassed by it. “I thought it might not be the right time,” she tells him.

  “Why don’t you let Bethany decide that?”

  “It’s just some things I kept,” my mother explains, pulling the rubber band free. “I knew that one day I�€