Ten seemed the right age. Of course the books all say that’s much too late. They say you should start talking about it right away. But he’s an unusual child. He has always liked structure — organizes his toys (to explain his system would take another, much longer letter), eats his meals off divider plates. We were afraid to unsettle him.
He looked at us like we were reading him a math problem. He asked the questions we were expecting: who were his real parents, why didn’t they keep him.
We said what we’d planned. His parents loved him, we said, and wanted him to have a better life than they could give him.
Now he seems to be trying to figure out how he’s supposed to feel. He has always believed there’s a right way to do things, to think, to feel, and that if he pays attention, he can figure out what it is. Lately I’ve noticed him looking differently at women my age, women who are old enough. He studies them in church, in the library, in the grocery store. If a friend’s mother cheers him on at a ballgame, he turns his head and stares. He talks to the lady who feeds the ducks in the park. He seems to be testing for some spark of recognition.
Do I need to mention that this is hard for me?
You must wonder if he will ever look for you. I can tell you: he’s already looking.
IV. Grown
December 2007
Dear Byrd,
When my brother and I were young, we thought Christmas would be better if we had a fireplace, so our parents ordered one from Sears — bright red bricks printed on big sheets of cardboard, with a mantel sturdy enough to hold our stockings and a black cardboard fire with holes for an orange light to shine through. My brother did all the perforating and folding and assembling himself. Every night leading up to Christmas he’d say, “Let’s turn on the fire,” and we’d sit on the rug and imagine we were getting warm.
My brother liked figuring things out. On Christmas Eve he would lie in his room pretending to sleep, waiting for our parents to go to bed. As soon as they turned out the lights (all but the Christmas tree lights, which they left on for Santa) and closed their bedroom door, my brother would sneak into the living room to check for presents — not to open them; he just wanted to see them, to know they were there. He was proving his theory that in the very instant our parents went to bed, Santa Claus would have come. For him, that was the magic of Christmas. Not the presents Santa brought, but the absolute infallibility of Santa’s timing.
Now our mother has an electric fireplace, a wall-mounted thing with synthetic logs and a heater and a fan. I don’t know what happened to the Christmas fireplace.
I’ve spent every Christmas Eve in that house. This year will be no different. My husband is packing the car as I write. He’s a good sport, my husband, and a methodical packer.
We married late — I was forty-four, too old for a big white dress and a grand entrance. I wore a blue sweater and a wool skirt and he wore his suit and we stood in front of a justice of the peace, a tall, stooped man with a cough, and read the vows we’d written. Simple vows. I will always love you. I will never leave.
I can guess what you’re thinking: I’m not qualified to make such promises and don’t deserve them. You’re probably right. But there comes a time, even for someone like me, when there’s nothing to do but throw yourself into whatever your life is. My life is a secondhand bookstore and a husband and a house on a hill and a pair of finches, green-wing singers who can turn their heads all the way around.
The man I married is not your father. Your father was a musician. Not famous, but he had a gift.
He married someone else soon after you were born, and they had a son, your half-brother. I never met your father’s wife, though I once spoke with her on the phone — at least I think it was her. She died in a car accident years ago. By the time I found out, it was too late to send a sympathy card, even if I’d known where to send it.
I haven’t seen your father since you were born. I’ve gone to two high school reunions hoping to. At the last one, our thirtieth, he wasn’t even listed in the class directory. No one had heard from him. He’s probably off somewhere leading a secluded and mysterious life. He never quite belonged to us, your father. He was never mine.
But you.
I looked for you, years ago. I’ve written you letters, a box full, all unsent.
This one I am mailing, because you’re grown now. Your coming-of-age letter.
Maybe one day you’d like to meet me. Maybe not. I have hopes but no expectations. Here’s one decision, at least, that gets to be yours. This letter is my invitation to you, a standing, arms-open-wide invitation to visit if and only if you want to, when and only when you’re ready. I’m easy to find; the agency that placed you has all my information. I’m sure you have questions for me. I promise to answer if I can. Maybe you have things you’d like to say. I promise to listen. I’m a good listener; your father always said so. He once said that when I listened, it was like I let everything else fall away. If he ever loved me, it was for that.
Don’t worry about calling first. Just come. That way if you change your mind at the last minute I’ll be none the wiser. We have a nice guest room, freshly painted antique white (I don’t know your favorite colors), with windows overlooking a creek. You can stay as long as you like.
For now, I should stop and post this so that my husband and I can leave for my mother’s, a two-hour drive. When we get there my husband will insist on parking on the street, leaving the driveway open for people may or may not show up. (“Just in case,” he’ll say.) My mother’s Christmas tree will be lighting up her picture window, a little tabletop tree with bubbling blue lights. We’ll walk inside and the house will smell like ham and mulled cider and cigarettes. My mother will get up from her electric fire to greet us. She’s probably camped there this very minute, toasting her hands, glancing at her watch, wondering if we’ll be late as always. Wishing we were there already. Trying to be patient. Trying, as she does, as mothers do, simply to wait.
A Short History of Sam
He is a curious, careful child, touching things with his fingertips to feel how they’re put together, sometimes taking them apart and remaking them into new things with motors and wheels. He thinks, his whole family does, that he will become an inventor. No one thinks claims adjuster. No one ever does.
He grows up, marries, and at twenty-nine, moves to Bisbee, Arizona because his wife wants to be near her parents and convinces him the desert air will cure his asthma. Which it does. But it doesn’t erase the old panic, the sense that he could run out of breath at any minute.
Bisbee was once a mining town, then an almost-ghost town, then a town of squatters — artists, craftsmen, outlaws, misfits, refugees. Now ordinary people like Sam and Margaret live here. Bisbee is higher and hillier and usually at least ten degrees cooler than Tucson — where Margaret’s parents live — and redder. Everything is red: red rocks, red hills, red as far as you can see. In a certain light it seems the whole world is on fire.
The days can be scorching, but the nights cool off fast, and the sky fills up with stars. Sam buys a telescope. He keeps a calendar of eclipses and meteor showers.