Jury of One

16

Alex explained things, moving slowly at first before gaining some comfort. He had been adopted by the people Shelly saw in the photograph at his house-Gerhard and Patricia Baniewicz. Everything he’d told her was true-his dad was an immigrant who sold machine parts, his mother a second-generation Russian who worked at an assembly plant-except that they weren’t his biological parents. They had met in their midthirties-they were only a year apart in age-and married less than a year later. They rented a floor of a small house just south of Mapletown in a heavily concentrated Polish neighborhood.

After several years attempting to conceive, the couple learned that Patty Baniewicz was infertile. They were rejected by adoption agencies because they failed the “rule of seventy” applied by many agencies, which added up the ages of the two parents and disqualified those over a cumulative age of seventy. So they turned to private adoptions-attorney adoptions-and after two years made the connection. Alex came into their lives after eighteen months of waiting, the product of an entirely confidential transaction between attorneys. They didn’t know the name of the family who had brought them Alex, and that family didn’t know them.

Shelly listened intently. She was not surprised at the ages of Alex’s adoptive parents, because she knew well the ins and outs of adoptions. She knew the “rule of seventy” and that most parents who went the private adoption route were older, sometimes in their late forties or even fifties. She also knew that the unintended consequence was that many of these parents passed away when their adopted children were young, leaving the children in an often precarious situation-for the second time in their short lives.

Yes, she had researched it quite a bit herself. She even knew how to find her son, knew the long way and the shortcuts. Either way, it was fairly expensive and difficult. But it could be done. She knew how. She just hadn’t ever done it.

Gerry Baniewicz died, as Alex had originally told her, of an aneurysm when Alex was ten. Three years ago, Patricia died after a very short and unsuccessful bout with pancreatic cancer. By the time it was discovered, the cancer had spread to her lungs and was inoperable. She died 137 days after getting the news. She had made what preparations she could for Alex. Financially, she would leave little behind. Elaine Masters had agreed to take Alex in. She was an alcoholic and everyone knew it, but she was also a kind woman who simply could not keep up with her troubles. It was because of Ronnie, Alex said, that Patricia could die knowing that someone would be looking out for Alex. Alex recalled his mother, at home and near death, grasping Ronnie’s hand and making him promise that he would stay by Alex’s side.

Shelly sat next to Alex. She searched his face as discreetly as possible, for evidence of her parents’ traits, her own characteristics. His strong chin-maybe that was a Trotter trait, like Shelly’s father. The eyes, she could see some of her mother, the shape not the color. His features were primarily dark, however. She didn’t want to say it, even think it: Alex probably looked more like his father, whoever that was.

It had been ninety minutes now, since Shelly had learned. The first hour was a fog; neither of them spoke more than a handful of words. Shelly was absolutely transfixed by him, this boy who had sought her out a year ago under the ruse of needing help with a disciplinary proceeding, when all he really wanted was to meet his mother. This boy who sought Shelly’s approval, who seemed to be making an effort to comply with her wishes for him-at least until-well, that could wait. Her mind, her heart was enough of a tidal wave already.

Oh, look at him! He was a sensitive, compassionate kid.

He was a drug dealer who shot a police officer.

“Tell me how you found me,” she said, though she could probably guess herself.

“Hired a guy,” he told her. “Some of the I-bankers use private investigators when they’re doing due diligence. I used one of them. Put me back about twenty-five hundred. He went to some agency-”

The Department of Public Health, Bureau of Vital Statistics.

“-and got someone to give him a peek at the birth certificates.”

There was a birth certificate for every child born in this state. The certificate contained the birth mother’s name and age, as well as the place of birth. For adopted children, an amended birth certificate was then placed on top of the original, with the adoptive family’s name. The procedure Alex’s investigator undertook was a routine, though technically illegal one, looking at the original birth certificate to find the name of his biological mother.

“So then we knew your name, and it didn’t take us long to find you.”

She nodded. For such a loud-mouthed, opinionated attorney, she was suddenly without words. She knew more about the process of locating a parent or child than he did. She could have found Alex. All these years, she could have and didn’t.

“I just wanted to meet you,” he continued. “That school thing-that fight. That was kind of my excuse. I just wanted to see you in person. I didn’t know if we’d ever get to know each other. I didn’t know if I’d ever tell you.”

She had never felt so disarmed. She wanted to duck under the table in shame. All of the rationalizations she’d lived with seemed empty. She was without excuses or words.

“It’s okay,” Alex said.

Was her remorse that obvious? She couldn’t know. She couldn’t think rationally now. What could she say to this boy? What should she say?

A knock on the door. The five-minute warning. Their time was up.

Shelly could recall the conversation almost verbatim. Last May, before the warm weather had broken. She and Alex were walking along the lake on a Sunday, only a short walk from Alex’s offices at McHenry Stern. She was cold and Alex had given her his long black coat.

She didn’t know, in hindsight, why she had told him. Maybe because she had known, of all people, he would never repeat it. They didn’t share friends or run in the same circles. So he was safe. Yes, that would have been the easy way to rationalize it. But that wasn’t the truth. The truth was, she had always opened herself more to children than adults. She had few close friends, perhaps by choice. The truth was, in the four months she had known Alex up to that point, she had come to rely on the friendship as much as Alex. She’d never told anyone, other than the police, of course. She’d never told anyone and she suddenly felt the urge.

The truth was, she wasn’t just helping Alex get his act together. She’d needed his friendship as much as he needed hers.

I was raped when I was sixteen, she’d told him.

She’d told him everything. The reaction of the police. Her thoughts of abortion. The reaction of her parents. Her life afterward.

I had the baby, she’d said. I gave it up for adoption and never saw it. Not then or ever again. An attorney came in, had me sign the papers, and it was over.

And now, as she sat across from a boy who was her son, she recalled Alex’s reaction. The loss of color to his cheek, the catch in his throat when he tried to vocalize a response. She didn’t discern the subtleties then, the difference between shock and disappointment, or perhaps the mingling of the two.

How, she wondered with the knowledge of hindsight, had that information affected Alex? When she told him of her rape last May, she was telling him he would never know his biological father. And worse. She was telling him that his birth, his very existence, was the product of a criminal act.

It came to her now, the reason for her need to purge to him that day. That hadn’t been just any old Sunday in May. And-yes, now that she thought about it-it had been Alex’s idea to meet on Sunday. He had bought her lunch and given her a small gift, a pair of earrings. She had accepted it for what she thought it was, a gesture of appreciation for everything she had done for him. It had never occurred to her then that it was a Mother’s Day present.

The guard entered the room and unlocked Alex’s handcuffs from the table. Alex stood up in his handcuffs and looked briefly at Shelly before being led out of the room.