On our porch stood an elderly woman with a long gray braid over one shoulder, leaning on a cane, in a lavender cardigan and a pair of worn tennis shoes. Beside her was a younger woman in a pink quilted jacket, small and sturdy, with a round smiling face and the slanted almond eyes of a person with Down syndrome. She was holding a paper sack, and she waved at me with her whole arm. “Hi!” she called out, cheerfully. “I am Becca! I made cookies!” Behind me, Peggy said in a stricken voice, “Judith. Rebecca. Oh, Lord.” Cody said, in a flat, stunned voice, “Mom. That is the baby from the picture.”
The old woman looked at me with calm, tired, intelligent eyes. “Mr. Brewer,” she said. “I am Judith Ames. I am sorry about the dishes. Peggy broke a casserole on your kitchen floor. I heard it from the car.” Peggy covered her face. “Judith, I told you I would call.” “I know,” said Judith. “But you have been saying that for thirty seven years, and I am seventy nine. I thought it was time we came ourselves.” She smiled at me. “May we come in?”
We sat in the living room, and Becca, who was thirty seven and entirely at ease, sat on the arm of the couch and ate a cookie and swung her feet. Peggy told it from the middle of the floor, with her hands knotted together. In the summer of 1986, she was sixteen, and the boy she loved was killed in a car wreck two weeks before she learned she was pregnant. Her parents, strict Baptists, sent her to an aunt in Tulsa, where she gave birth in the winter. “The doctors told me the baby would have Down syndrome,” she said. “My parents said that a child like that could not be raised. They said it was a mercy to give her up.”
An old woman with a long gray braid and a young woman with a bag of cookies on the porch ended a lie that began as a mercy.
“I held her for an hour,” Peggy said. “And then I signed the papers.” She wiped her eyes. “But Judith was the nurse that night. She had no children of her own. She came to me in the hallway and she said, If you want, I will take her. I will love her as if she were mine.” Judith nodded. “I did. I do. She is the light of my life.” I looked at Becca, who waved at me again, and I found myself waving back, a ridiculous stunned wave. “For thirty seven years, I drove to Tulsa once a month,” Peggy said. “I invented a sister, because I could not stand to leave a hole in the year. I told myself it was the only way. I sent what I could. And I held her every month for an hour.”
I looked at my wife of thirty three years and a feeling went through me that I did not expect. It was not anger. It was not even sorrow. It was something clean and very strong, like standing in a cold river. “Peggy,” I said. “You thought I would not have wanted her.” She shook her head wildly, tears running down. “No, I thought you would not want me. I was ashamed. I was a girl who gave away her baby. I thought you would see me as someone who had failed.” I crossed the room and sat down beside her and put my arm around her, and I felt her small shoulders heave. “Peg,” I said, “you were sixteen. You did what you were told. Nothing in the world could make me think less of you.”
Becca had put down her cookie. She had been watching us with grave attention, the way a child watches grownups argue, and now she got up, crossed the rug, and climbed into the lap of Peggy, which was not a small thing to do, as she was a sturdy woman, and the chair gave a groan. “Do not cry, Peggy,” she said. “It is okay. I knew you were coming.” Peggy held her. “You knew?” “Judith told me you were my first mom,” said Becca. “She told me when I was little. She showed me your picture. She said you are the one who gave me the sky.” Everyone in the room was crying then, even Cody, who had slipped over to the window.
Cody came back and knelt in front of the chair. He was twenty, tall and awkward and tender. He said, to the round smiling face on his mother lap, “Hi. I am Cody. I think I am your brother.” Becca looked at him with delight. “You are tall,” she said. “I like tall. Do you like cookies?” “I love cookies,” said Cody. “Then you can have this one,” said Becca, solemnly, and she handed him half of what she was holding. He ate it, still crying, and said it was the best cookie he had ever tasted. I think he meant it.
Judith had been sitting quietly, watching. Now she took a long breath. “I have a request,” she said. “I am seventy nine. I have a heart condition. Becca is thirty seven and has lived with me her whole life. She works at a bakery and takes the bus by herself. But she cannot live alone, and I worry what will happen when I am gone.” She turned to Peggy. “I did not come to ask for anything. But you have a husband, and a home, and a son. And you have always been her mother, too.” I looked at my wife, and she looked at me, and neither of us hesitated for even a second. “She can come live with us,” I said. “Whenever you want. Starting tonight.”
Judith moved into the small house across our street, which came up for sale in June, and we all bought it with some help from the church. Becca stays with us on weekdays and with Judith on weekends, and sometimes the other way around, depending on her mood.
At church, the Sunday after Easter, the preacher asked the congregation to stand and tell who they were thankful for. Becca stood up straight in her pink dress and said, in a clear, ringing voice, “I am thankful for my two moms, and my dad, and my brother.” The whole room was silent. Peggy, beside me, took my hand and squeezed it. Becca sat down and fixed her hair. On the way home, in the truck, she asked if we could stop for ice cream. Wayne, I said to myself, you are the luckiest man in Arkansas. And I pulled into the Dairy Queen.
