“She’s my mother?” he whispered.
I looked at Johnson.
“How much did you know?”
“She came to me the night before she left,” she said. “She showed me a letter from her doctor. She said the cancer had already spread.”
“You knew for 18 years?”
“I knew she was sick. I did not know exactly what happened after she left.”
“She never contacted you again?”
“She even refused to tell me where she was going. She only made me promise to give you the letter and to always keep an eye on her son.”
“You watched me hate her.”
Johnson’s face crumpled.
“I watched you raise Leo, and every year I wondered whether keeping my promise was wrong.”
I was devastated that the answers to all my questions had been so near yet so far.
Johnson went on, “I stayed close because I loved Leo, but also because I felt guilty. I thought helping you was the only way I could make up for my silence.”
“What gave either of you the right to decide what I could handle?”
“Nothing,” she said. “I had no right.”
Leo finally spoke. “So she left just after I was born? Did she even know my name?”
The question silenced us.
“Yes,” I said. “She chose it with me.”
“Did she ever hold me?”
I remembered Goldi standing above his bassinet in the darkness.
“Yes. When you were born, she did hold you.”
“So she didn’t leave because I have Down syndrome?”
“No. I thought so, too, but no.”
My voice broke.
“She was right. I would have spent all my time trying to save her and would not have known how to balance it all with taking care of you.”
His eyes filled.
“Would you have wanted her to stay?”
“I think we both would have.”
“Then why didn’t she let you choose?”
I had nothing to say. Leo stood up and walked away from the table.
I followed him into the hallway.
“I thought my mother abandoned me and you just didn’t want me to know,” he said.
“I didn’t want you to think you weren’t loved. I love you, Leo.”
“But you also thought that she left because of me?”
“Yes, and I hated her for 18 years.”
He angrily wiped his face.
“I feel happy that she loved me. Is that bad?”
“No.”
“I also feel angry.”
“So do I.”
We stood there crying together, relieved by the truth while being wounded by it at the same time.
Then Leo asked, “What did she look like?”
That question shattered something inside me.
For 18 years, I had told him nothing about his mother. I had convinced myself that I was protecting him.
The realization made me feel sick.
Goldi had decided that I couldn’t handle losing her.
I had decided that Leo couldn’t handle knowing her.
The same kind of silence had moved from one parent to another.
“Come with me,” I said.
I took him into the garage.
At the back of a cabinet sat a sealed plastic box I hadn’t opened since we left our old apartment.
I had found it too painful to look at what was inside it.
Inside were Goldi’s photographs, university notebooks, a green scarf she wore every winter, and a silver bracelet I had given her on our first anniversary.
Leo sat beside me on the floor.
I showed him a photograph of Goldi laughing at the beach.
“She hated sand,” I said. “She complained all day, then refused to leave because the sunset was beautiful.”
He smiled.
I showed him our wedding photograph.
“Was she funny?”
“Very.”
“Did she sing?”
“Terribly.”
“Do I look like her?”
For years, I had avoided looking for Goldi in him.
Now I could see her everywhere.
The curve of his smile.
The dimple in his left cheek.
The way one eyebrow lifted whenever he was confused.
“Yes,” I said. “You do.”
At the bottom of the box was an old address book I had stored away.
I had always told myself that one day I might need it if I ever wanted to find out where Goldi had gone.
I simply never had the courage to do it.
The hatred and pain stopped me as I wondered what good could come from finding a mother who had abandoned her son. Now that I understood why she left, I needed to know what had happened to her.
Goldi’s mother’s name and contact information were inside the address book.
Goldi and Rachel had been estranged for years.
I had met Rachel only twice, and Goldi hardly ever talked about her.
I decided that it was finally time to reach out. I hesitated for almost an hour before making the call.
