Then it crossed my mind that that little blond girl in Burbank who’d wanted to play—she was mine, too. That signed message I’d left for Michaela Blackwell: She must have recognized my name as her egg donor. I’d accepted a bonus of ten grand to let one of the recipient families have my name and photo (money I happily took—and later blew on oxy—with only a twinge of concern about relinquishing my anonymity); clearly, the Blackwells were that family. She must have assumed that I was trying to hunt down my biological child, a daughter I was calling Elli. She’s not Elli! How dare you name her? No wonder she had sounded so panicked.
My legs had turned to jelly. I didn’t think I could stand upright anymore so I slid to the floor of the bathroom and sat there, my back braced against the cool tile wall. Elli loomed above me, a pale figure in a white shroud.
“Well, you really made a mess of things, didn’t you? I thought I was the fuckup twin but you showed me up.” It was the only thing I could think to say.
She slid down the wall to sit beside me. The concrete floor of the bathroom was damp, the grout of the tile marked with ancient mold. It smelled like bleach.
“You were supposed to take her back,” she said. Her eyes were fixed on the toilet stall opposite us, as if anticipating that someone might open the door and walk out adjusting their skirt.
“I was supposed to take Charlotte back to her real parents? Did I miss a text message from you or something? Because no one gave me that memo.”
“I couldn’t text you. I didn’t have your number in my phone, and anyway they only let me have it back briefly to send a message to Mom about staying here longer. And they were watching me the whole time so my message to her had to be”—she squinted, remembering—“a little cryptic.”
Sam will know what to do. Sam will get it. I recalled the text that I’d seen on my mother’s phone. “Cryptic is an understatement, Elli. I’m your sister, not a mind reader.”
“But you figured it out, didn’t you? You figured out who she really is. I thought, if we had any connection at all anymore…you’d just know it. You’d see Charlotte and something in you would recognize her, that she was yours. Like, the instinct I felt when I saw her.”
I laughed. “That’s ridiculous. I didn’t feel that at all. She just looked like a baby.”
“You didn’t?” She blinked, surprised. “Oh. Well, anyway. You still figured it out, right? Except that you weren’t supposed to come here. I thought you’d take Charlotte back to Arizona.”
“And how exactly did you think I would do that?” I imagined ringing the Gonzalezes’ doorbell: Here’s your kid! See you later!
“I don’t know. I thought you’d figure that part out. I couldn’t think straight.” And she laughed a little, though her laugh was more hysterical than bemused. I reached over and put my arm around her shoulders and held her very tight, and pretty soon she was crying, great heaving sobs. “I fucked up, Sam. And now I don’t know what to do.”
“It’s OK. I’ll fix it,” I said. Sitting there on the floor of the bathroom, in that decrepit summer camp, it was almost as if we were children again. I remembered what it felt like to be thirteen years old, and to feel my fate connected to my sister’s, to know that I had the key to her happiness within my grasp.
Her shaved head rested against mine. I knew how the bare scalp beneath her stubble must feel, how naked and achingly sensitive, because I felt it, too. It was nice to know that for the first time in years, there was something we both shared.
* * *
—
There weren’t many things that I missed about being an addict. Passing out in a puddle of vomit, say, or the constant bruises on my limbs from stumbling into walls and furniture, or that niggling feeling that there was something I needed to be ashamed about that I couldn’t quite remember. Waking up to a regrettable one-night stand. Bar fights. Hangovers.
No, I didn’t miss these at all.
But one thing that I did mourn, a year into this latest—and I hoped, forever—round of sobriety, was the end of mystery. I missed the sense of adventure that came from stepping out of your front door into the wide-open night, unsure what would happen next. The electric thrill of what if and what now. An accelerated pulse, the world ready to unfurl. The night could be a blast or it could be a disaster, and the excitement came from not knowing which it would be.
Sobriety required discipline, a constant metering out of days and hours and minutes. I planned everything in advance now, so that there was no chance of putting myself in the path of temptation. I will go to dinner with my sponsor and drink a seltzer and lime. I will attend the AA meeting and then go straight to work. I will binge-watch six straight seasons of Game of Thrones to avoid leaving the house this weekend. I was so careful. I was so safe. But sometimes—if I was totally honest—it made me feel dead inside.
For years, my life had been an exhausting roller-coaster ride, exhilarating highs followed by precipitous lows, and yes, I had been relieved to finally climb off it. To center myself, and finally find an even keel. And yet, as my sister and I marched out the door of that bathroom toward the lodge below, I recognized that I’d felt more alive in the last week than I had in the entire last year of sobriety. It wasn’t just that I had a purpose again, something to work toward; it was that I’d rediscovered the unknown.
This wasn’t only to be found at the bottom of a bottle, I saw now. It wasn’t even about the thrill of adventure, though certainly there’d been plenty of that. It turned out that this—the precipitous adrenaline leap—came from giving your heart to someone, and not knowing what might happen next.
In order to love a little girl, Elli and I had no choice but to take her back where she belonged.
* * *
—
But first I had to spring my sister from a cult.
* * *
—
We’d heard people looking for Elli while we talked—voices on the stairs, a cabin door swinging open on its hinges, footsteps slapping across concrete. Someone had called Elli’s name, an impatient woman’s voice echoing through the oak trees. But by the time we finally left the bathroom, nearly an hour later, the hill was quiet again.
Dusk had settled over the camp, though it wasn’t quite dark. Below, I could see the illuminated lodge, porch lined with fairy lights that twinkled through the scrubby woods. All of the women must have still been inside, because the rest of the campus was empty. As we stood there, listening carefully, I thought I heard the muffled sound of women’s shouts coming from the lodge.
“They’re doing Circle of Confidence,” my sister murmured. “It was supposed to be my turn tonight.”
I had no clue what this meant. I wasn’t sure I wanted to know.
We gathered my sister’s suitcase from her cabin and then headed down the stairs and crossed the meadow, our feet silent in the grass. At the back porch of the lodge, we stopped. Behind the door the voices were louder now, an angry chorus interrupted occasionally by a shriek of fury.
“How long do you think you need?” I whispered to Elli.
“I don’t know. Five minutes, maybe? Ten?” She hesitated. “I’m not sure about this.”
“I am. Go.” I pushed her, gently, away from me. “Don’t worry. I’ll keep them occupied.”
She lingered on the path. “But how?”
“Isn’t it obvious?” I was surprised she didn’t already know. “I’ll be you.”
A funny look crossed her face. She lifted one hand and made a slight gesture—just the barest twist of a wrist, a flattened palm turned sideways—that I hadn’t seen in fifteen years. Then she smiled ruefully, turned, and left.
I watched her walk around the edge of the building, carrying the suitcase in her arms so it wouldn’t clatter on the path. Then I climbed the porch steps, pushed the door open, and braced myself to face GenFem.
* * *
—
They sat in a circle, nearly two dozen women, on folding chairs and lumpy couches placed around the perimeter of a blue-carpeted lounge. Some women clutched mugs of tea and others sat cross-legged on the floor. The whole scene would have reminded me a bit of an NA meeting I used to attend in a rec center in Santa Monica if it weren’t for the fact that all of the women were yelling.