“We’re getting close,” Janice said. “It might be you find all the health information you need in the narratives, but if you want more . . .” she trailed off.
Did she want more? She didn’t know. Maybe. Maybe it was okay to want more.
“I’m not sure,” she told Janice.
“Well, if you do,” Janice said, “it’s time to start that letter.”
52
She and Stephen met for lunch at a bistro in an up-and-coming neighborhood called Highland Park. The place was airy and bright and the waiters recited specials with ingredients like duck confit and locally sourced lamb.
Stephen told Maribeth about settling on a Christmas gift for Mallory. “I decided to buy us tickets to something after all. A musical, which is something Felicity would not have taken her to, but I think Mal will like it,” he said. “The Book of Mormon. We’re going on New Year’s Eve. It’ll be over by ten, and then I can go back to my hotel like the geriatric I am, and she can go out.”
“Sounds like you found a great gift,” Maribeth said politely.
It was the first time they’d seen each other since the kiss and perhaps that was why everything was so formal, so nice.
She told Stephen about passing out in the steam room. She had assumed he’d find it an amusing anecdote, but instead he was alarmed. If he’d had his doctor bag with him, she suspected he would’ve examined her on that spot. (Not that Maribeth knew if he even had a doctor bag; he just seemed like the kind of old-fashioned physician who would.)
“It’s nothing,” she reassured him. “It was just the . . .” She stopped short of saying shock. She did not want to tell him that she’d found her birth mother. It felt too intimate now that they were skirting a different kind of intimacy. “The heat,” she finished.
“You have to be careful,” he said.
“I know. They won’t let me back in the club until I get a note from my doctor.” She paused. “That’s still you, right?”
“If you still choose me.”
“What?” She had not mentioned Jason, his existence, let alone the fact that they were back in touch. And Maribeth had kissed Stephen once. She did not know if that warranted a discussion about choosing.
He gently reminded her of her own statement from their first appointment. “Oh, yes. I still choose you,” she said. But the statement felt perjurious now.
“I’ll fax over a letter,” he said. “I know the manager.”
“Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.”
They carried on like this, low voices and safe conversation, until Stephen called for the check.
Outside, the sky was bright and the air smelled of snow. The shopkeepers were salting the sidewalks. Stephen offered her a ride home but Maribeth preferred to walk. There was a park nearby and she liked the looping trail around the reservoir. It was up a steep hill but she could handle those now.
Before they parted, there was an awkward pause.
“I keep thinking I’m not going to see you again,” Maribeth admitted. “Now that we don’t have weekly appointments.”
“We can do this weekly,” he said. “Or more often. I have time.”
“I did wonder about that. Do you have any other patients?” Now that they were outside in the raw cold, it was like they could be themselves again.
“Most of my patients were ones who loyally followed me from the old practice and I don’t take on many new cases, but yes, I have other patients,” Stephen said. “I just had Louise schedule you last.”
“Why?”
“The same reason I eat dessert last.”
“You just skipped dessert.”
He smiled. “It felt redundant. And at that first appointment, you seemed like you needed, I don’t know, a soft place to land.”
“Is that why you had me come weekly? And why you charged me so little?
“I charged what the standard Medicare reimbursement would be.”
“You still didn’t answer the question.”
“And you still haven’t told me who you really are,” he said.
“All I’ve been doing is telling you who I really am.”
He didn’t look entirely convinced. Which, she supposed, was fair enough.
“Are we going to talk about that kiss?” he asked.
“What kiss?” she asked.
He held her chin in his hand. The kiss that followed was as delicate and fleeting as the snowflakes that were starting to fall.
“That one,” he said.
53
She wrote five drafts of a letter to her birth mother. Each one worse than the last.
My name is Maribeth Klein and forty-five years ago you gave me up for adoption. I am not angry. I am not seeking explanations or recrimination, but mostly answers. Recently, I suffered a heart attack and—
It sounded like a cover letter. She tore it up.
I am the daughter you gave up for adoption. I’ve had a good life. I’m not angry. Four years ago, I became a mother myself and there are things in my own children I don’t recognize—
Why bring up the twins? What if she wanted to meet them one day?
On March 12, 1970, you gave birth to a baby girl. That girl was me. I don’t know why I haven’t tried to get in touch with you before. I’m not angry or upset. But recently, I . . .
This all felt wrong. And why did she keep insisting she wasn’t angry?
Upstairs she heard a roar and a woot. It was Sunday. It must be a football game. Todd and Sunita had not invited her to watch, but she knew she would not be unwelcome, and she needed the distraction. She shoved the notepad underneath the scrapbook she’d just bought to hold her letters to the twins and went upstairs.