Passage I

PROSE FICTION: This passage is adapted from the short story "Elba" by Marly Swick (©1991 by the University of Iowa). Fran is the narrator of the story.

Mother, who wanted to keep her, always thought of her as some wild little bird, but I knew she was a homing pigeon. I knew that at some point in her flight path, sooner or later, she would make a U-turn. A sort of human boomerang. So even though I had long since stopped expecting it, I was not surprised when I walked down the gravel drive to the mailbox, which I’d painted papaya yellow to attract good news, and found the flimsy envelope with the Dallas postmark. I didn’t know a soul in Dallas postmark, or Texas for that matter, but the handwriting reminded me of someone’s. My own.

I walked back inside the house.

"Still raining?" Mother asked. She was sitting in her new electric wheelchair in front of the TV, painting her fingernails a neon violet.

"Just let up," I said. "Sun’s poking through. You know anyone in Dallas, Mother?"

"Not so as I recall." She dabbed at her pinky with a cottonball. Mother was vain about her hands. I was used to how she looked now, but I noticed people staring in the doctor’s waiting room. She had lost some weight and most of her hair to chemotherapy, and I guess people were startled to see these dragon-lady nails on a woman who looked as if she should be lying in satin with some flowers on her chest.

"Why do you ask?" she said.

I opened the envelope and a picture fluttered into my lap. It was a Polaroid of a sweet-faced blond holding a newborn baby in a blue blanket. Before I even read the letter I knew. I knew how those Nazis feel when suddenly, after twenty or thirty uneventful years, they are arrested walking down some sunny street in Buenos Aires. It’s the shock of being found after waiting so long.

"What’s that?" Mother said.

I wheeled her around to face me and handed her the Polaroid. She studied it for a minute and then looked up, speechless for once, waiting for me to set the tone.

"That’s her," I said. "Her name’s Linda Rose Caswell."

We looked at the picture again. The blind woman was seated on a flowered couch, her wavy hair just grazing the edge of a dime-a-dozen seascape in a cheap gilt frame.

Mother pointed to the envelope, "What’s she say?"

I unfolded the letter, a single page neatly written.

"She says she’s had my name and address for some time but wanted to wait to contact me until after the birth. The baby’s name is Blake and he weighs eight pounds, eight ounces, and was born by cesarean. She says they are waiting and hoping to hear back from me soon."

"That’s it?"

I nodded and handed her the letter. It was short and businesslike, but I could see the ghosts of all the long letters she must have written and crumpled into the wastebasket.

"I guess that makes you a great-grandmother," I said.

"What about you?" She snorted, pointing a Jungle Orchid fingernail at me. "You’re a grandmother."

We shook our heads in disbelief. I sat silently, listening to my brain catch up with my history. Forty years old and I felt as if I had just shaken hands with Death. I suppose it’s difficult for any woman to accept that she’s a grandmother, but in the normal order of things, you have ample time to adjust to the idea. You don’t get a snapshot in the mail one day from a baby girl you gave up twenty-four years ago saying, "Congratulations, you’re a grandma!"

"It’s not fair,” I said, "I don’t even feel like a mother.”

"Well, here’s the living proof." Mother tapped her nail against the glossy picture. "She looks just like you. Only her nose aristocratic"

"I am going to work." My knees cracked when I stood up. "You be all right here?"

Mother nodded, scrutinizing the picture in her lap, "You going to write to her?"

“Of course I am," I bristled, "I may be some things, but I am not rude."

"You going to invite them here? Her and the baby?" She swiveled her eyes sideways at me.

"I haven’t thought that far," I said.

"Well, don’t put it off." She slid her eyes back to the television. "She’s been waiting twenty-five years. You worried she’s going to be trouble or ask for money? For all we know, She’s married to a brain surgeon with his and her Cadillacs."

"She didn’t mention any husband at all", I said, getting drawn into it despite myself.

"Maybe you’re worried she’ll be disappointed in you," she said, "You know, that she’s had this big fantasy for all these years that maybe you were Grace Kelly or Margaret Mead and who could live up to that? No one. But you don’t have to, Fran, that’s the thing. You’re her flesh-and-blood mother and that’s enough. That’s all it’ll take."