The Wrong Girl

3

“The woman from the agency said my name is Audrey Rose Beerman, can you believe it?” Tuck laced her fingers together, clamped them on top of her head. “It’s an okay name. But I don’t feel like an Audrey Rose Beerman.”

Jane took a sip of her Diet Coke, not quite sure how to react. What did Tuck want her to do?

“Maybe it’s all about what we’re used to. How we see ourselves.” Plain Jane, Jane the Pain-the nicknames Jane’d been saddled with as a bookish kid in the relentless social hierarchy of Oak Park Junior High had sent her to name-fantasy world. Anything but Jane. For a while she’d wished to be Evangeline, courageous girl of the forest. Then Hyacinth, all flowy skirts and poetry. Her mother chose “Janey” when affectionate, “Jane Elizabeth” when making one of her pronouncements. As in “Jane Elizabeth Ryland is a perfectly good name. Evangeline is ridiculous.”

Hey, Mom, Jane sent a message upward. You were right. Miss you.

But today was about Tuck. “So you didn’t know your real name? Before?”

“Well, yeah. I did. That’s one of the weird things, and tell you about it in a minute. But anyway, my-adoptive mother, I guess I’m supposed to call her-told me the agency always said my birth mother-” Tuck stopped mid-sentence, slumped her shoulders. “It’s impossible. ‘Real’ mother? ‘Birth’ mother? ‘Adoptive’ mother? I mean, the woman I called my mother took care of me and changed my diapers and let me stay left-handed and yelled until the softball coach let me be the pitcher. She’s kind of a whack job, at times, but what mom isn’t, right? My biological mother, who conceived me, carried me for nine months, gave birth to me-she left me at the Brannigan.”

Jane’s eyes widened, she couldn’t help it. How would it feel to take something from yourself, a helpless new human, and give it away? That child was now twenty-eight. Twenty-eight, bitter and confused. And, somewhere, was a woman grieving the loss?

“I’m so sorry,” Jane almost whispered. “But your poor mother. It must have been horrible.”

“Not so horrible she couldn’t dump me at-well, whatever. My life has turned out fine. Even after the shit hit the fan, Laney and I are okay. He insists everything will work out.” Tuck fiddled with the fringe on the chocolate-and-cream afghan draped over the chair. Jane’s mother had crocheted it in her hospital bed, the last afghan she made. “Not feelin’ it so much today, you know?”

Today was turning out to be quite the Sunday. Jane needed to get this talk back on track. Whatever that track was.

“So, Tuck. What is it you want me to do? You got a call from the Brannigan. They said they found your birth mother. You drove to Connecticut, and then what?”

“Long story short.” Tuck folded the afghan over the arm of the chair. “I go to Connecticut. We meet at Starbucks. She’s great, she’s terrific, I’m in a Hallmark card or a Lifetime movie. I’ve never been so happy. I’m crying, she’s crying. We each order a triple venti nonfat latte-exactly the same thing!-and we start crying again.”

Tuck pressed her lips together, closed her eyes briefly.

“‘Audrey Rose. You’re so beautiful,’ she says. ‘I knew you’d be a knockout.’ She said that, ‘knockout.’ ‘You have my dark eyes,’ she says, ‘so skinny, and my crazy hair.’ We spend two days together. I’m thinking-I have a biological family. I have a history. I have a story.”

“Well, that sounds wonderful, Tuck. It sounds like-”

“No.” Tuck slugged down the last of her wine. The timer behind the couch clicked on the bulbs of the brass lamp beside her. Jane was shocked to realize it was almost dark outside. February in Boston. It wasn’t even five.

“I’m telling you, Jane. She’s not my mother. She expected her long-lost daughter. But I’m… I’m not her.”

“You’re not-why would you think that? Come on, Tuck, why would they-?”

“I don’t know. That’s why I’m here. You’re the reporter. My only-you’ve got to find out for me.”

Tuck stood, tears welling, tumbling a throw pillow to the floor. Coda opened her tiny green eyes at the sound, looked up, then dropped her head back into her paws.

“Imagine how she’ll feel? When she finds out?” One tear rolled down Tuck’s cheek, and she swiped it away. “After all the plans? The calls? She looked so happy. But I know it. I do. They sent that poor woman the wrong girl.”