“Texas.”
“Just a for-instance. Of course, we’d start in state. It’s entirely possible your son is living close by.”
“I’ve heard of that happening,” Addie says. “Parents and children seeing each other without knowing it.”
He has no idea how long the search will take. A retainer of two thousand dollars should be enough to get him started.
“I don’t want to give false hope, ma’am,” he says, “but it’s entirely possible we’ll get lucky.”
“Thanks,” Addie says. “But I don’t have two thousand dollars’ worth of luck.”
Warren Finch is still in Greensboro, still living in his mother’s house. Still wearing his big wristwatch, his plaid clothes.
“Your timing coming here today is very interesting,” he tells Addie. He is holding a book the size of an unabridged dictionary, The American Ephemeris of the Twentieth Century. “Because of the transit of Uranus”—he pronounces it your-ann-us—“both you and the child are undergoing huge revolutions. For you, this is a time for expansiveness, for taking action, taking risks.”
They are sitting in Warren’s mother’s rickety chairs, Warren with his giant book in his lap, fumbling through the pages. The house smells the way Addie remembers, like incense and cat litter, though she has never seen a cat.
“There’s a karmic relationship between your chart and the child’s, a reverse nodal situation. This suggests that early in the child’s life you created a sense of unpredictability for him.”
“Which we know,” Addie says.
Warren glances up, his chair teetering slightly. “The child,” he continues, “has entered a volatile emotional period in which he feels himself at the mercy of mysteries that date back to infancy. His family and surroundings feel insecure and unpredictable. And this is just the beginning. A longer-term life change is underway. There’s a lot of conservative energy in his chart — he’s a Virgo with three planets in Capricorn — so the part of him that wants safety and structure is feeling out of control. He could overreact, develop somatic problems because he’s trying so hard to figure everything out during a period that calls for a different kind of response.”
He closes his book, waits for her to talk.
She has nothing to say. She can’t even look at Warren. She looks at the pictures of Buddha taped to his wall. Most of the Buddhas are seated in the lotus position, hands in their laps, fingers lightly touching. One is standing with both hands raised. He is laughing, but not serenely. He looks deranged.
“I’m sorry,” Warren says. “Would you like a cup of tea? I forgot to offer.”
Does he do this on purpose? Addie wonders. Upset her just to have the chance to comfort her?
“I’m fine,” she says, and tears a check out of her checkbook.
How long do African violets live? Is it possible the blue one in Janet’s window is the same one as before, that she’s kept it alive this long? The picture of Janet’s children is different, though the children haven’t changed much — older but still plain looking, in a plain wooden frame.
“I was hoping you could give me an update,” Addie says. “I was hoping maybe you’d gotten another letter.”
“I’m sorry,” Janet says. “I haven’t. The parents don’t have to send updates, and I can’t ask. I can’t contact them at all unless”—she gives Addie a meaningful look—“I have updated medical history for them. That kind of information can sometimes generate a response.”
“Updated medical history like my father died?”
“Yes,” Janet says, and makes a note in the file. “I’m so sorry. When?”
“In 1994, of a heart attack. You can tell them that.”
The Readery has moved from the old neighborhood to a strip mall on Holden Road. The new store is big and square and bright, with plate-glass windows and fluorescent lights and wall-to-wall carpet and a three-person staff. A smell not of books but of carpet deodorizer. No peeling wallpaper, no dusky yellow lamplight, no late-night hours, no professors camped in battered armchairs, arguing.
“I had to sell the house,” John Dunn says. “Business exigencies.”
He and Addie are in his office drinking Starbucks coffee. His walls are bare, his desk is metal. His padded chair swivels and rocks. He is different, too. His beard is gone, and his big glasses; his eyes look weak and tired. He’s wearing an ordinary blue button-down oxford shirt. Addie has to remind herself he is the same man he always was, her old boss, her old landlord, her friend who took her to the hospital and stayed with her and gave her gifts and made her laugh.
Now he’s telling her about his divorce, how his English-professor wife moved to England with another woman. “She looks like me,” he says about the other woman. “I guess that should make me feel better.”
“With or without the beard?”
It’s late when she gets back to Raleigh. William brings over burritos from their favorite takeout. Also a ripe avocado, which he peels, slices, and arranges on a small plate. He drizzles on lime juice. He is always feeding her.
“I’m not hungry,” she says.
He sits down and unwraps his burrito. “When are you going to tell me?” he says.
“Tell you what?”
“Whatever it is you aren’t telling me.”
His eyes are the saddest brown. She wonders if she will ever deserve him. “I don’t know,” she says.
The next day she makes an appointment with a lawyer, a young woman reputed to be the most aggressive family lawyer in Raleigh. Thanks to a cancellation, the lawyer has an opening in her schedule that afternoon.
The lawyer has short sleek hair and a sleek suit, red with black piping on the lapel. Her office is a gallery of diplomas and awards, all expensively matted and framed. As Addie talks, the lawyer narrows her eyes as if to demonstrate that she is listening intensely. It’s this intensity, Addie supposes, that justifies the lawyer’s hourly rate.
“Is there anything I can do?” Addie asks after laying out her predicament.
“To find your son? No,” the lawyer says. “Not yet, and you shouldn’t waste another minute thinking about it. But you have to tell the father. You have to tell him now.”
Comfort Sweet
“I almost didn’t come,” Addie says.
“I didn’t want to,” Shelia says. “It was Danny’s idea. These people don’t bother him. Nobody bothers Danny.”
“My store manager, Peale, says you should always go to class reunions because nobody can ever know you as well as the people you grew up with.”
“That’s because nobody changes,” Shelia says. “Look around. Look at Danny.”
Danny is across the room by the door to the patio, his glasses reflecting the lights. He’s laughing, shaking hands, slapping backs, saying loudly, “Far out, far out.”
“It’s pot,” Shelia says. “Pot keeps him in a good mood. We’ve been married twenty-three years. We’ve lived in four houses and raised two daughters. I’ve had two surgeries to fix my eyes. And the whole time, Danny’s been stoned and in a good mood.”
Dear Roland,
I went to Carswell for our reunion thinking you might show up, all the way from Nevada. Traveled the Farthest to Attend. What took you to Reno? The class directory listed your wife’s name and your son’s; it listed your job as “show business.” I hope that means music.
The party was at Comfort Suites (“comfort sweet”) in the ballroom. There were balloons and strings of white lights and a blue-and-orange banner welcoming the Class of ’74. There was a long table with hot hors d’oeuvres. The whole room smelled like Sterno.