Oona Out of Order, page 26
How foolish that she’d let her broken chronology confine her for so long. Even the trip to Egypt had been born of avoidance, running away from fate as she was catapulted toward it. But this year abroad wasn’t about trying to hide or subvert, it was her rage giving her a choice, to fry or fly, say no or say yes. So she chose yes. She said yes at a snake farm, when offered a cobra’s head to kiss for good luck. She said yes to playing guitar at a party of German divorcées at a beachfront café, and yes again all four times they asked her to play Sheryl Crow’s “All I Wanna Do.” She said yes at a shooting range, firing off rifle rounds at paper targets. She said yes to piercing her navel and yes again to removing the hoop a month later when the piercing became infected. If her future wasn’t malleable, why put limits on the present? So she said yes, yes, yes, and sometimes she wished she hadn’t, but mostly she was glad she did.
No wonder Kenzie had stayed away a full year. (Though how did he afford it? Working odd jobs? Family money?) It felt good to get lost and was tempting to stay lost. When December came, she thought, Where to next? India? China? If culture shock was now her favorite drug, either one should provide an ample fix.
But as she considered new destinations, the months apart from her mother became magnified. It was time to return to the familiar. It was time to go home.
Oona had called Madeleine regularly during the year, and though she hadn’t felt homesick while exploring villages and jungles and cities and beaches, the moment she arrived at the airport for the journey back, she missed her mother with such ferocity, she could barely endure the day’s worth of travel before reaching JFK.
Madeleine greeted her at the airport with a big bouquet of orchids, which was semi-crushed in their ensuing hug.
“How was it?” her mother asked.
“I didn’t want it to end. But I’m also glad it did.”
“Sounds like you had a lot of fun.”
“Yeah, even though bad things also happened. I got pickpocketed and sunburned and my belly button turned into a horror show and I never wanna hear that Sheryl Crow song again. Still, it was one of the best years of my life.”
“Pretty remarkable, considering how it started off.”
Edward. A part of her still wanted to say his name aloud, the cinders within her still smoldering. But there was a freedom in making mistakes, feeling broken, falling into the void, and then climbing out. A freedom in letting go, setting aside, moving on.
She gave her mother a tired, exasperated smile. “Don’t worry, I won’t ask you to mess with my future again.” Doesn’t seem like I can outrun it, anyway. And maybe that’s okay.
They ended the year drinking champagne in the Park Slope brownstone, Oona no longer feeling bereft or betrayed. She missed nobody and regretted nothing. If she could explore foreign countries with ease, she could handle yet another foreign timeline. She was ready for anything.
But there are some things nobody is ready for.
PART VII
More Than This
1999: 35/24
24
“Happy New Year! And Happy Birthday!”
Oona’s eyes fluttered open as if from a refreshing nap. No shock, no queasiness, no physical jolt. She was getting used to leaping.
Normally, she’d be flooded with a yearning for a return to the sequential, for a remission from this time illness. But she didn’t wish for any specific year.
Whatever comes next, I can handle it.
“Happy New Year, Mom.” How steady her voice. How relaxed her shoulders, her hands folded in her lap. How wonderful to begin the year serenely instead of disoriented, to float instead of free fall.
“It’s 1999 and you just turned thirty-five,” said her mother from the other end of the couch.
“Great. I can’t wait to see what the year brings.”
Madeleine tilted her head, eyes bright with intrigue. “There’s something different about you.”
“There is.” She offered a secret smile and glanced down. The light caught her platinum ring, the wings winking at her as she turned her hand. What was this? There was writing on her left palm.
“I never know what to expect when you leap…”
As her mother continued to speak, Oona surreptitiously read the note on her hand:
Ask Mom about tattoo/check her bag for answers.
“… and even though it’s still the same you each time, I swear, it’s almost like your face changes somehow and—”
“Can you tell me about my tattoo? I think I’m ready for an explanation now.” She tried to bury the note of strain in her tranquil tone.
Madeleine, reaching for her champagne glass on the coffee table, froze in the awkward position. Retracted her arm and sat back against the sofa. “Oh, sweetheart, you can’t force these things. The right time will present itself and you’ll know what you need to know when you need to know it.” She stood and put her hands on her hips. “Shall we have some cake with this champagne?”
“Actually, I’d love some tea.” Better to choose a beverage meant for warmth and comfort. Plus, it would keep her mom busy for a few extra minutes.
“Of course. I’ll make you a cup.” Madeleine pointed across the room. “In the meantime, your letter’s on the mantel.”
“Okay, thanks.”
The letter could wait. Once Madeleine was out of the room, Oona went over to the armchair, to her mother’s handbag.
She sifted through its contents: leather gloves, a day planner, a tube of hand lotion, receipts, two slim books (Saint-Exupéry’s The Little Prince and Rilke’s Duino Elegies), a key chain shaped like a miniature dream catcher, a pack of tissues. Would any of this help her figure out her tattoo? But then a flash of yellow in a side pocket caught her eye: a greeting card envelope. A birthday card? It couldn’t be for Oona; she loathed yellow.
She slipped out the buttery envelope. Four capital letters were handwritten on it in black ink: M.D.C.R.
Her gaze ping-ponged from the envelope to her tattoo, from her mother’s cursive to the permanent calligraphy on her wrist.
“I hope chamomile is okay.” Madeleine came in with a steaming mug. “I put in extra—oh, shit.” Hastily setting down the mug, she plucked the envelope out of Oona’s fingers.
Her daughter stared at the space the yellow rectangle had occupied, hand still raised. “Sorry I went through your things, but … what’s in the envelope?”
“I shouldn’t have … I should’ve…”
“What’s in the envelope, Mom?” In her head, a trickle of snowfall obscured logical thoughts, the cold white intensifying.
“A congratulations card.” Madeleine slipped it back into her purse.
“For who? For what?”
“For Mackenzie. For winning an essay contest.”
“Mackenzie who?”
Dread darkened her mother’s eyes, and she spoke slowly, like she was inching along a narrow ledge. “Mackenzie Dale Charles Ray.”
Her mental blizzard intensified, each gust of white blowing away half-formed questions.
“Let’s sit.” A guiding hand on Oona’s arm, and she went from sitting to standing, from holding nothing to holding a mug of tea.
It was her only tattoo. She’d connected the hourglass and swirls of galaxies to Dale, but the initials had eluded her. Like an inept crossword solver, she’d always filled in the blanks incorrectly. Now Oona had the answer key. “Mackenzie. Dale. Charles. Ray.”
“Yes.” Beside her, Madeleine sat with her bag on her lap, tentative fingers hovering in the space between them.
“Mackenzie as in Kenzie?”
“Same person.”
Perplexed, Oona asked, “Why would you not tell me he’s my brother?”
“Because he’s not your brother.” There was a tremor in Madeleine’s voice and a crease of dismay between her eyebrows.
“Then who is he?”
“Your son,” said Madeleine.
Two syllables that spun the room sideways. If Oona’s life had been a string of pearls, this would be when the thread snapped and they scattered. The mug in her hand shook. “There’s no way I had a son. I’ve always been on birth control.” The mug hit the coffee table with a clack as she set it down; tea sloshed over the sides. “I don’t understand, how could—forget about the tea.” She shooed away her mother’s hand wiping at the spill.
“I just don’t want it to stain the wood.”
“You might want to reprioritize your list of things to worry about right about now.” Oona massaged her jaw in a vain attempt to loosen it. Everything felt too tight: her clothes, her skin. Her skull a room with shrinking walls. “I … I don’t even know where to start. I can’t believe you’ve kept this from me. How could you betray me like that?”
“I never betrayed you, Oona. You were the one who decided to keep it a secret. Until he was older. Until you were ready. There was no way you could’ve raised a child with your—situation.”
“I know!” Baffled anger clanged through Oona like a tower bell. “Hence the fucking birth control.” The clanging quieted, replaced by a murmured mantra of four letters. M.D.C.R. The D stood for … “Dale. He was the father?”
Madeleine nodded like a bank teller in a holdup.
“Did I…” But there was no need to frame it as a question. “I got pregnant on purpose. Because I knew Dale would die. And since the band wouldn’t be his legacy, this would be a way…”
“Part of him could live on.” Madeleine’s voice was full of tiptoes. “And once you knew your son as a grown man, it was inevitable you’d want to bring him into the world when you leaped back into your younger self.”
I have a son. Dale’s son.
“Kenzie was there in 2015 for my first leap.”
A hint of relief, eyes brighter, Madeleine said, “He was? Oh, good. You intended for him to be part of your life after he was eighteen.”
“No. You don’t get to look happy about this.” Her mother’s face fell. “I thought he was my assistant! He never said anything about being my son—at most, a friend. Why didn’t either of you tell me the truth?”
“I … I can’t speak for something that hasn’t happened yet.”
“And what about when I met him in 2003? Why did he pretend not to know me? Was he even pretending?”
“Honey, none of this has happened yet, so I really don’t know.” She massaged her temples with her fingertips.
Unable to fully process the twisted timelines, she pressed on. “And where is he now?”
“A friend of mine adopted him. She even agreed to keep the name you gave him, provided he took her surname.”
“How generous of her. What friend?”
“Nobody you’d remember. She moved out of New York when you were little.”
“She’s a lesbian, right?”
Madeleine dropped her hands. “That’s right. How do you know that?”
“Kenzie told me he had two moms.” Who’d both die in a few years. But Oona wouldn’t make the same mistake again; she’d spare her mother this knowledge before it happened.
“They’re taking great care of him.”
“Great care?” Oona echoed with sarcasm. “Who are these women?” Dark clouds in her head. “Where do they live? Where is my son right now?”
“I can’t tell you.”
“Are you fucking serious?”
Madeleine recoiled and put a hand to her cheek. “We have an arrangement with them. I’m allowed to visit once a year under the guise of being a family friend, but he can’t know about you until he’s eighteen. I can assure you he’s doing well. He’s healthy. Happy. Thriving.”
Thriving without me, his birth mother. Unaware his current mothers will be killed before he finishes college.
“He’s … how old now?” Her head too muddled to line up the numbers.
“Fourteen. Fifteen in May. Born after Dale died.” She gave her daughter a beseeching look. “You couldn’t handle the leaping and being a mother. Plus, the grief over Dale—”
“What about the grief over intentionally having a kid only to give him away?”
“It wasn’t easy. You learned one of the hardest lessons about being a mother early on: you have to put your child first. Your own happiness is less important.”
It was a compliment like a piece of candy dusted with arsenic. Oona shook her head to refuse it. “Why couldn’t you take him? Be more than a distant family friend to him.”
“Oh, sweetie.” A quiver in her voice. “It’s not like I could’ve hidden him away from you. And there was no way of knowing what kind of impact your leaping would have on him. How could he grow up facing a different version of his mother every year? You wanted to protect him.”
“And now I want to see him. Is he in New York?”
“No. I’m sorry, but you can’t have any contact with him. The terms of the agreement—”
“You think I give a shit about any agreement right now? Show it to me, I’ll tear it right up. I’ll pay whatever fine—”
“It’s more than a fine. You could go to jail. That wouldn’t be good for you or your son.”
“What would you know about it? You let me give away my own child and then lied about it for years. Stellar parenting there, Mom.”
“Stop it,” she snapped. “You knew. You knew Kenzie would grow up to be a fine man, because you’d seen the result. And when you gave birth however many leaps later, you knew he’d turn out well raised by others, hard as that was to accept.”
Oona paused to consider the twisted logic of tangled timelines, her life like an M. C. Escher drawing, years like staircases turning in on themselves to form a tangible but implausible whole. She wanted to crumple that drawing and toss it aside. Get a blank sheet and create her own staircases instead of blindly ascending and descending steps already sketched out for her.
“You know what?” She held her mother’s gaze, eyes and voice a flat sheet of ice. “I’m tired of accepting what Earlier Oona laid out for me. I’ve done it before and it fucking backfired. I’m sick of being treated like Present-Day Oona doesn’t know what’s best for her. And what’s best for me right now is to see Kenzie. Now are you gonna tell me where he is?”
“I’m sorry, but I can’t.”
“Then I’m sorry, but you need to get out of my house.”
Madeleine opened her mouth in slow motion but no words came. No sound at all as she stood, collected her things, and left.
The tea was tepid, but Oona gulped it anyway; it quelled the dryness in her throat, but not the ache. All this time spent missing Dale while part of him lived on, in secret. While her mother knew and said nothing. Yes, Madeleine was an easy target for her ire and betrayal—a betrayal that eclipsed Edward’s, because this was a matter of blood—but she also had Earlier Oona to blame. How could she have abandoned Kenzie? It was confounding, this self-loathing for something she’d already done and had yet to do, like being a warped version of Schrödinger’s cat.
Not warning herself of a doomed marriage was one thing, but hiding her own child from herself? Earlier Oona might’ve considered that to be sensible and wise, but this Oona wanted to tell her to fuck off, to beat the shit out of her, to punch and kick her to a bloody pulp.
Empty mug in hand, Oona reached back to throw it, aiming at the mantel. Except—there it was, the white envelope with her name on it. Her arm sagged.
“Fuck you … me…” she muttered.
Might as well see what her so-called sage self had to say.
Oona,
Anger is a poison and forgiveness is the antidote.
“What kind of fortune-cookie bullshit is that?” she seethed.
Of course, that’s not going to help you right now. Your anger is totally justified. There’s nothing I can tell you that’ll make you understand certain choices I made. I keep thinking if I share some of the things I’ve learned, you won’t have to learn them the hard way. Instead, trying to protect you often ends up making things more convoluted. So I’ll keep it simple.
In your top desk drawer is a plane ticket and a Post-it with an address.
Kenzie is in Boston. More information awaits when you get there.
25
All Oona brought to Boston was a backpack, a small suitcase, and her guitar. The taxi dropped her off on a narrow cobblestone street in Beacon Hill lined with brick row homes. Snow dusted their black window shutters and old-fashioned gas lamps dotted the block. Picture-postcard perfect.
Is this where my son lives?
She matched the number on the door to the address on the Post-it. As she was about to ring the bell, she stopped, her finger an inch away from it.
What if Kenzie’s life was as lovely and perfect as these homes? Could she really come stomping in amidst all this quiet charm? Could she cause such a disruption?
Then again, how could she not see her child? A child she had with her first—arguably only—love. However idyllic his home, however much he might be thriving under the upbringing of his adopted mothers, it was no substitute for his biological mom.
I’m doing a good thing here.
It shouldn’t have required so much self-coaxing, but she rang the bell. Waited agonizing seconds before the door opened. A rotund rosy-cheeked woman with wispy white hair and Ben Franklin–style eyeglasses stood before her.
Is this one of the women raising my son? She’s old enough to be his grandmother. Older than his actual grandmother.
Oona opened her mouth to deliver the impassioned speech she’d silently practiced on the journey to Boston. All that came out was a cloud of foggy breath.
“Oona, how lovely to see you. Happy New Year!” The woman drew a shawl around herself against the cold, her face friendly, absent of suspicion.
“Happy New Year,” Oona echoed, though the phrase rang hollow. Shocking New Year, more like. Bitter New Year.
“Come in, come in, it’s nippy out there.” She beckoned, opening the door wider. “I’ve got your keys and paperwork close by.”
