Cora was leaning against the sofa when I turned around. I shook my head.
“She didn’t answer,” I said.
“I’m really sorry,” Cora said, her face sorrowful, accentuating how bloated and tired she looked. “I honestly didn’t think she was going to run away, I thought she was just trying to get some attention.”
I sighed. “It’s certainly not your fault. I told her to call by seven or I would have to tell Benny.”
“What will he do?” Cora asked.
“Depends,” I said. “He’ll do as much as he can, you know, legally. If this kid is old enough, he’ll try to charge him with whatever he can. I’m going to try Emily again.”
I dialed Emily’s, and her mother answered. My relief at speaking to another mother I knew was only slightly greater than my humiliation at calling her over my daughter’s transgressions twice in one month.
“Hi, Jean, it’s Ali. How are you?” I asked, forcing myself to slow down and be civil.
“Oh, hi, Ali,” she answered. “Emily had a nice time last night.”
“Well, it was lovely to see her. I was actually calling to see if she was home? I’m looking for a friend of Letty’s and thought she might know him,” I said, trying to keep my tone light.
“Emily’s not here.” Jean said, sounding a little puzzled and a lot curious. I hated it. We’d been close when the girls were little, but we’d drifted apart while the girls stayed friends—although when I looked back over the past several months, I had seen Emily less and less. I didn’t know why I hadn’t noticed it before.
“Does she have a cell phone?” I asked, and Jean laughed.
“Who doesn’t?” she replied, giving me the number. But she wasn’t ready to let me go just yet.
“Is everything okay?” she asked.
“I think so,” I said, cautious of telling her too much before I knew anything.
“Well,” she said, then hesitated.
“What, Jean?”
“I just . . . I’ve been worried, you know, at some of the things Emily has said . . .”
“Okay. Like what?”
“Just, things, you know the way girls are.”
She laughed. I stayed silent, letting her twist in the uncomfortable quiet, knowing she would crack. She cleared her throat, and I heard ice falling into a glass.
“I don’t guess the girls have been very close this year, that’s all. There’s a boyfriend, I hear?”
I was suddenly very, very tired, and no longer cared that Jean might think I had lost all control over my daughter. The thing was, apparently I had. My concern won out over my pride.
“Jean? Pardon me for being blunt, but my daughter seems to have run away. I don’t know this boy at all. His name is Seth, and if there’s anything, anything at all, no matter how minute or unsubstantiated, I wish you would just tell me, because I need to find my daughter.”
Now it was her turn to be silent. I waited. When she spoke again, there was no false concern in her voice, only the urgency of one panicked mother to another, and it no longer mattered that we had grown so far apart.
“Okay, let’s see . . . yes, I know his name is Seth, but I don’t know a last name. Hang on, let me get to her room. She might have it on her computer; she has no idea I know the password.” I heard a door opening and then fingers on a keyboard, but she kept talking while she worked. “All I know is that from what Emily has told me—now keep in mind this is an adolescent girl who might be a little hurt that her friend is moving away from her—”
“I get it, thank you,” I said.
“Okay, so she says that Letty started hanging out with a real party crowd, older kids, she hardly talks to any freshmen anymore. Their other friends from middle school all seem to be mad at her for dumping them. Emily says she’s one of the only ones who still talks to her. She wasn’t going to go on the birthday dinner, but I made her.” Her fingers stopped tapping.
“No, I’m not seeing a Seth on her MySpace page,” she said. “I’ll check her e-mail.”
I was impressed. Not only did I not know if Letty even had a MySpace page, I certainly wouldn’t have been savvy enough to have discovered her passwords. And, to be honest, I still held the belief that my daughter deserved a certain amount of privacy. But I was reconsidering that.
“Nope,” Jean said. “I’ve got nothing but e-mail from Letty where she mentions Seth, and . . .” More tapping. “No good information there, just talk about parties, kissing, the usual. Okay, let me think for a minute, see if there’s anything else on here that might be useful.”
“Thank you, Jean,” I said quietly.
“Parents have to stick together these days, don’t we?” she murmured, still working on the computer.
“I guess so,” I said, but she wasn’t really listening at that point.
Finally she sighed. “Ali, I’m sorry, but there’s just not much here. I tell you what, wait for about ten minutes. I’ll call Emily and tell her to be honest with you when you call. I assure you, she’ll tell you what she knows.” Her voice had turned dark. I believed her.
And as I hung up I had to question my own parenting. In any other situation, Jean’s level of involvement in Emily’s life would have been horrifying to me. But perhaps that was what was called for. The things I was going on to Cora about, insisting how things were different now, how I had to be more strict, perhaps I was only skating across the surface of what being a parent now meant.
All I knew was that Emily was going to be at home that night, and my daughter might not.
I kept an eye on the clock and called Emily after ten minutes had gone by. When she answered, she sounded nervous.
“Hello?”
“Hi, Emily, it’s Ali.”
“Oh, hi,” she said.
“Your mom talked to you?” I asked.
“Yeah. What do you want me to say?”
“I don’t want you to say anything that’s not true,” I said, trying to put her at ease. “I promise I won’t tell Letty that we talked, okay? I just need to know that she’s okay, and since she hasn’t talked to me about this boy she’s seeing, I really kind of need someone to do it for her.”
“Okay. Well, his name is Seth Caple, he’s a sophomore, and he lives out in the Estates.”
I was scribbling down notes as she talked. “Do you have his number?” I asked.
“No, but I might be able to find someone who does, if you want.” But she sounded doubtful.
“That would be great,” I said. “So, what else can you tell me about Letty and Seth? Did you see them today at school? Did she talk about running away?”
She hesitated. “No-oo, she never said anything. But I’m not surprised.”
“Really? Why?” It took everything I had to not just yell at her,
Tell me what I need to know!
But I didn’t want to frighten the information right out of her, make her freeze up like a bunny.
“She just got, really into him, you know? And she liked that whole crowd; she was trying to be more like them. She acted like the rest of us were just big babies or something. And, I mean, I don’t know if you know but, they do drugs and stuff, and someone told me that Seth sells, too.”
“Seth sells drugs?” I repeated, glancing at Cora, who bit her lip.
Emily started backpedaling immediately. “Well, I just heard it, I’ve never seen him do anything.”
“Okay, I’m going to try to find him now that I have a last name, but, Emily, if you could find anyone who might have his number, I’d sure like to get it, okay?”
“Um, okay,” she said.
“And if you think of anything else, let me know, please? And if Letty calls you—”
Emily laughed a bitter laugh from a friend who’d been dumped. I felt sorry for her, and angry at my daughter. Emily had been a good friend to Letty for years, and she’d been hurt by Letty’s callous disregard. I couldn’t blame her for being bitter.
“Well, if she does, would you tell her to call me, please? And then let me know she called?”
“Okay,” Emily said, “I’m sure she’s fine. She’s just, you know, out partying or something.”
“Thanks, Emily,” I said, hanging up. I knew she said it to make me feel better, but it certainly didn’t. I turned to Cora, who was already sitting in front of her computer, and gave her Seth’s name. We turned up plenty of Seth Caples, but none who appeared to be the right age or geographic region.
Finally we checked for just his last name and Golden Gate Estates and found three Caples. We printed out directions and headed out, me driving and Cora navigating.
“So what are we going to do?” Cora asked. “Just walk up and ring the bell?”
“You have a better idea?” I asked.
“I guess not,” she answered.
“I can’t believe she’s doing this to me,” I said.
“And yet you want to do it again.”
I laughed. “You sound like Benny.”
“Benny’s a smart guy.” I shot her a look, and she amended it. “Usually. Benny is
usually
a smart guy. So, what have y’all been talking about?”
“I guess there’s not a whole lot to talk about. I’m still cautious, I suppose.”
“That’s certainly understandable.”
“Yeah, and I’ve been thinking a lot about what you said.”
“Really?” she asked. I laughed.
“Why do you sound surprised?” I asked. “Have I not been listening to your advice for more than half my life?”
“I thought you’d spent more than half your life ignoring my advice,” she said with a grin.
“No, not true. Sometimes it just takes a while to sink in that you’re usually right.”
“So what was this brilliant advice I gave that has finally sunk in?”
“In all fairness, I never said it was
brilliant
.”
“Okay, okay, point taken. What was this vaguely coherent advice I gave?”
“I don’t remember your exact words, but you said something about Benny being an anachronism, an idealist?”
“I remember,” she said.
“You said that as soon as he had an outlet he would calm down, and I should be patient with that. He has an innocence about him, doesn’t he? A cop, for heaven’s sake. But he’s innocent about a lot of other things. And, honestly, it’s one of the things that I love about him. It was one of the reasons I fell in love with him to begin with, that innocent determination and belief that he could make things right. And you know what? This is going to sound so crazy, and you’re the only one I would admit this to . . .” I trailed off.
“Ali, come on, you’re killing me!” she prodded me with a laugh.
“Well, when I saw him at the restaurant, I really
saw
him, like for the first time in years and years. And you know what?”
“What?”
“He’s really cute.”
“Oh, good Lord,” Cora said, beginning to laugh in earnest.
“He is,” I insisted, making her laugh even harder until I finally slapped her on the knee, laughing myself now.
“Okay,” she said, catching her breath. “Yeah, he is, I guess.”
“I just, I saw him the way he really is. He really turned into a handsome man, and he’s kind, and he’s funny, and he knows his job. And he’s a good man going through a hard time. I think I did the right thing by leaving, and now
he’s
doing the right thing, just like he always does. It’s . . . comforting. I suppose we just both needed a break. And you were right; I need to be patient with that.”
“So that’s a good thing, right? Have you told him all this?”
“I would have, but then our daughter went and ran away.” I sighed. “But it got him to really give some thought to the baby, so maybe there’s a bright side to it all.”
“Oh?”
I could practically feel Cora tense up.
“All right, let’s have it. What do you have against this?”
“I don’t have anything against you wanting another baby, Ali,” she said, but it wasn’t how it sounded. “Or, maybe, I don’t know. Why now? It would be such a long time between kids. Do you really want to have a teenager, be going through this again, when you’re in your fifties?”
“I always wanted more kids, Cora. I wanted ten kids, twelve. I wanted my own little army of kids,” I said, and now, so many years after being so grateful for Letty, the grief of it overwhelmed me again. “It’s not fair, it’s just not fair.”
“No, of course it’s not. It’s not fair.”
“And there are a lot of women having babies at my age. Hell, I’d be on top of a trend for the first time in my life.”
Cora looked out the window for a minute before she spoke, her voice soft. “Ali, what if it doesn’t work? What if the embryos are . . . bad?”
“But I can at least try. I want a full sibling for Letty. And look, I’ve gone through the heartbreak before, I can handle it if it happens again, but if it doesn’t, then I have a chance for another beautiful baby. And I want it, Cora, I really do. Why do you think I’ve kept them for so long?”
“I never thought about it.”
“Really? You never thought about them? Waiting there?”
“No,” she said, and I didn’t know what I heard in her voice, if it was shame, or regret, or something else entirely. “No, not like that. I guess I thought they just . . . faded away. I guess I didn’t give them much thought at all.”
“No, there are tons of them out there. There are even embryo adoptions now. You can donate them to other couples, donate them to science. Or destroy them. I couldn’t do that. I guess a lot of other people can’t do it either, because a lot of them are abandoned.”
“Abandoned?”
“Well, they just stop paying. And, I suppose, try to forget about them. Don’t look at me like that. I understand the temptation of it, okay? It’s not as easy as people make it. If you’ve never been the one looking at the forms, then you couldn’t possibly understand. But that’s part of it. At least I won’t be wasting all of our work. I’ll be giving them a chance.”
“What if they’re all good?”
“Viable.”
“Okay, what if they’re all viable? Are you going to implant them all?”
“Transfer them all. You hope for one to implant.”