The Lost Daughter

If it turns out that you don’t go to college, remember you can still get an education from the people you meet. Every single person who comes into your life, from a doctor to a trash collector, can teach you something if you let them.

“IT’S RAINING.” TIM RAISED HIS PALM IN THE AIR AS THEY left the movie theater.

CeeCee felt a cool, fine mist on her face. “I like it,” she said, as she piled her hair on top of her head and covered it with her floppy black felt hat. She liked the rain; her hair did not.

“Now you look like Annie Hall.” Tim grinned at her as they started walking through the throng of students toward the diner two blocks away. They’d just seen Annie Hall, a perfect first-date movie. “You’re not goofy like she is, though.”

“She’s goofy in a cute way.”

“Yeah,” he said, “and you’re serious in a cute way.”

“Ugh.” The thought was deflating. “I don’t want to be serious. I want to be fun and …” What was the word she wanted? She raised her arms to the sky and twirled in a circle. “Madcap.”

“Madcap?” He laughed, grabbing her arm to prevent her from bumping into a group of students. “I actually like that you’re serious,” he said, letting go of her all too quickly. “You don’t take life for granted.”

He was right, but how did he know that about her? “You don’t really know me yet.”

“I’m observant,” he said. “Insightful.”

“And modest.”

“That, too.” He stopped briefly to light a cigarette. “So, how come you sound like a Yankee?” he asked as they continued walking.

“Do I? I thought I sounded pretty Southern by now. I was raised in New Jersey until I was eleven.”

“What brought you down here?”

She wasn’t ready to answer that question. He already thought she was serious enough.

“Family stuff,” she said with a shrug.

He didn’t press her, but the sudden silence that followed her answer felt awkward. She glanced at him out of the corner of her eye. He seemed older than he did in the mornings, a true grownup. She wondered if he felt the age gap between them tonight, especially with her spinning on the sidewalk like a ten-year-old. Maybe he wondered what the heck he’d been thinking when he asked her out. He even looked different than he did in the coffee shop. Better, if that was possible. She’d never noticed how tall he was. Sitting next to him in the theater, she’d been painfully aware of his long, lean, denim-covered thigh brushing against hers every time he shifted in his seat. Hold my hand, she’d thought over and over again. Put your arm around me. He did neither, much to her frustration.

“It’s unusual for a guy to be a social work major, isn’t it?” she asked to break the silence.

“You’d be surprised,” he said, letting out a puff of smoke. “There are quite a few in my program. I’m actually more interested in the policy aspect of social work than in working directly with people. I want to be able to influence policy.”

“Like what kind of policies?” She saw their reflection in a storefront window as they walked past. She looked like a little munchkin in a big floppy hat.

“Policies that empower people at risk,” he said. “Like that couple you waited on today. They’re old. One of them is obviously disabled. And they’re black. Three strikes against them right there. So, who advocates for people like that? Who makes sure they’re taken care of?”

Oh, God. He was so smart and so well educated and he was stuck with a ten-year-old munchkin for the evening.

“That’s what you want to do?” she asked. “Advocate for people?”

A group of preppies passed by, and Tim acknowledged one of the guys with a nod. “Yes,” he said, “but the policies I care about most involve prison reform.”

“Why?”

“I think we need better prisons,” he said. “I don’t mean prisoners should be living lives of luxury. That’s not what I’m talking about. I think we should rehabilitate prisoners, not just incarcerate them. And I think the death penalty is wrong and should be unconstitutional.”

“I thought it was unconstitutional.”

“For a brief period of time, it was. Just this past June, though, it became legal again in North Carolina.”

She didn’t think that was so terrible. “Well, if someone kills a little kid, for example, I think he—or she—should have to pay the same price.”

He stared ahead of him as they walked. She could tell he didn’t like her response, but she wasn’t going to sell out her own principles just to please him. He turned toward her, a look on his face she hadn’t seen before. Was it anger? Disappointment?

“An eye for an eye, huh?” he asked.

“Why not?”

“Well, where do I start?” Tim dropped his cigarette butt to the sidewalk and stepped on it, then dug his hands deep into the pockets of his blue windbreaker. “I believe that some of the people getting executed are actually innocent. Maybe they didn’t have a good enough defense because they were too poor to get a decent lawyer. And even if they are guilty, I think it’s wrong to take a life. Even the life of someone who murdered someone else. Two wrongs don’t make a right.”

“So, I guess you think abortion is wrong, too?” Ronnie’d had an abortion two months ago in August. CeeCee went with her to the clinic, and she cried while her friend underwent the procedure, not because she thought it was wrong but because she thought it was sad. Ronnie didn’t understand her tears.

“It was only ten weeks old, CeeCee,” she said. “Besides. It was going to be an Aquarius. You know I don’t get along with Aquarians.”

“Sometimes abortion’s a necessary evil.” Tim looked at her. “Why? Have you had one?”

“Me? I haven’t even had sex yet.” She cringed. Why had she told him that? What an idiot. But Tim laughed and reached for her hand, holding it at his side as they walked.

“You’re the coolest girl,” he said. “You just tell it like it is.”

The diner was packed with students and the whole building seemed to vibrate with their chatter. She and Tim pushed through the crowd toward a booth in the back, Tim stopping to greet people he knew. He had an acquaintance at nearly every table. It didn’t matter whether the students were jocks or stoners or preps or the heavy-lidded artsy types. He knew them all. The one thing all his friends had in common was that they were significantly older than she was. He introduced her to a few of them. The guys barely seemed to notice her. The girls smiled at her, but she sensed there was something underlying their cordiality. She hoped it was envy and not disdain.

“I love this atmosphere,” she said, once they were seated. This was the world she wanted to be part of. “All the students. It’s like I can—” she breathed in the scent of smoke and French fries “—like I can smell textbooks in the air.”

He laughed. “I take it back,” he said. “You are goofy after all.”

She took off her hat and watched him smile when her hair spilled over her shoulders.

“You deserve to be one of these students,” he said.

“Someday, I will be.”

“Is it just the money?” he asked. “I mean, were your grades good enough? Your SAT scores okay?”

She nodded. “I was this close to getting a scholarship.” She held her thumb and forefinger a quarter of an inch apart.

“I’m sorry.” He wore a small frown. “That doesn’t seem fair.”

“It’s okay. Really.” She looked down at the menu, uncomfortable with his sympathy.

“When do you think you’ll have enough money to go to school?” he asked.

“Another year, if Ronnie will continue to live with me and split our expenses. We just share a room, and I know she really wants us to get an apartment, but she doesn’t care about saving money. I’ll have to get a better job. In a few months, I should have enough experience to work at a good restaurant and then I’ll get better tips.”

“I like your ambition,” he said.

“Thanks,” she said. “So, where do you live? You must live near the coffee shop, since you’re there every morning.”

“Just a few blocks off Franklin,” he said. “I share a house with my brother, Marty. My father owns it, but he lives in California, so he lets us use it.”

“Just your father? Are your parents divorced?” She hoped that wasn’t too personal a question.

The waitress, a blonde with stick-straight, shoulder-length hair, pouty pink lips and blood-red fingernails set glasses of water in front of them.

“Hi, Tim,” she said, but her eyes were on CeeCee. “How’re y’all doin’ tonight?”

“Good,” Tim said. “Bets, this is CeeCee. CeeCee, Bets.”

“You watch out for him, CeeCee,” Bets said with a wink. “He’s a dangerous man.”

“Thanks for the warning.” CeeCee laughed.

“Y’all ready?” Bets pulled two straws from her apron pocket and laid them on the table.

Tim raised his eyebrows at CeeCee. “Do you know what you’d like?”

She wasn’t ready to eat in front of him; she was bound to spill or get something caught in her teeth. “Key lime pie,” she said. That seemed safe. Tim ordered a barbecue sandwich.

“What did she mean about you being a dangerous man?” CeeCee asked, once Bets had left their table.

“She’s just yanking your chain,” Tim said. He took a drink from his water glass. “To get back to your question about my parents, they weren’t divorced. My mother died not too long ago.”

“Oh, I’m sorry,” she said, but it was a half-truth. They now had something in common: they were both motherless. She wondered if his mother had also died of cancer, but didn’t ask. She didn’t like it when people asked personal questions about her own mother. “Is your brother in school, too?” she asked.

“No, no. Marty’s not school material.” Tim drummed his fingers on the table as if he could hear music she could not. “He was in Vietnam,” he said. “He went there a nice kid of eighteen and came back a bitter old man.”

“So, he doesn’t work?” She unwrapped her straw and dropped it into her water glass.

“Yeah, he does. He’s in construction. Someone was crazy enough to put a hammer and a nail gun in his hands.” He laughed.

“What do you mean?”

“Nothing.” He shook his head as if clearing it of the topic, then leaned forward, folding his arms on the table. “So back to you, my mysterious CeeCee. You said you’re only sixteen. Did you start school early or what?”

“I started early and then skipped fifth grade,” she said. “I moved to a new school. Went from a good school to a crummy one and I was way ahead of what the kids were doing, so they skipped me.”

“I knew you were smart,” he said. “Where’s your family?”

She wondered how much to say. “I don’t want you to feel sorry for me, okay?” she said.

“Sure, okay.”

She played with the wrapper from her straw. “My mother is dead, too,” she began.

“Oh, no,” he said. “I’m sorry.”

“She had breast cancer, even though she was only in her twenties, and we moved down here from New Jersey so she could be in a study at Duke. She died when I was twelve, and then I got kind of shuffled around.”

Tim reached across the table and rested his hand on hers. “In her twenties.” He shook his head. “I didn’t think that happened.”

His eyelashes were as pale as his hair and very long. She studied them to keep from doing something stupid, like turning her hand over to grasp his. “Neither did she,” she said, “so she never looked for a lump or anything.” She didn’t tell him that she would always have to be vigilant about her own health. She didn’t want him to start thinking of her as a woman who would lose both her breasts, the way her mother had.

“What do you mean, you got shuffled around?”

He hadn’t moved his hand from hers. As a matter of fact, he tightened it around her fingers, running his thumb over the skin above her knuckles. Her pulse thrummed beneath his fingertips.

“Well,” she said, “they put me in this place … I was never sure what it was, exactly … I called it juvenile hall because it was full of kids who were screwed up.”

“A residential facility.”

She smiled. “Right, Mr. Social Worker.”

“Go on.”

“I stayed there while they tried to find my father. My parents weren’t married and I’d never met him. It turned out he was in prison for molesting kids, so I guess it’s just as well that I never did.”

“I’d say so.” Tim nodded. “It must have been a huge disappoint—”

Bets picked that moment to show up with their orders, and Tim had no choice but to let go of CeeCee’s hand while she put his food in front of him.

“Here you go, hon,” Bets said to CeeCee as she set down the key lime pie. “You want some extra sauce, Timmy?” she asked.

Timmy? CeeCee squirmed. How well did Bets know him?

“We’re good,” Tim said.

“Okay,” Bets moved on to another table, calling over her shoulder, “Y’all enjoy, now.”

Tim pushed his plate an inch or so toward her. “You want a bite?” he asked.

She shook her head. “Looks good, though.” She played with her straw wrapper again as he bit into his sandwich.

“So,” he said, once he’d swallowed, “after they found your father, then what happened?”

“They put me in foster care.”

“Ah,” he said. “You’ve had some experience with social workers.”

“Plenty.” She drew the tines of her fork across the smooth, pale surface of her pie. “I was in six different foster homes. It wasn’t because I was a problem,” she added. “Just crazy circumstances.”

He nodded. He understood.

“The last one was the best. It was a single woman with some young kids who were really sweet. As soon as I graduated, though, I was on my own.”

“You’ve been through a lot,” he said, taking a sip of water.

“It wasn’t all bad,” she said. “I met a lot of people. You can learn something from everyone you meet.”

“That’s a very wise statement.”

“Hey, Gleason!”

CeeCee turned to see one of the jocks walking toward their table. He was black, clean-cut and handsome, and probably seven feet tall. She’d see him around town from time to time, usually carrying a basketball. Sometimes she could hear him dribbling the ball even before she saw him.

“Hey, Wally, what’s up?” Tim set down his glass and slid his palm across Wally’s in greeting.

Wally shook his head in disgust. “That chick you saw me with the other night? She laid a bad trip on me, man,” he said.

Tim laughed. “Tell me something new.”

“You hangin’ at the Cave tonight?”

“Not tonight.” Tim nodded in her direction. “This is CeeCee,” he said.

CeeCee raised her hand in a small wave. “Hi,” she said.

“Out to lunch with that hair, girl,” Wally said, in what she assumed was a compliment.

“Thanks.”

“All right, boss,” Wally said to Tim. “Check ya later.”

They watched Wally walk away, his hand smacking the air as he bounced an invisible basketball.

“Do you know everyone in Chapel Hill?” she asked.

Tim laughed. “I’ve lived here a long time.” He picked up the sandwich from his plate. “You have to talk for a while so I can make a bigger dent in this thing,” he said. “Tell me about your mother. Were you close to her?”

He was definitely social-worker material. He wasn’t shy about the questions he asked. “Well.” She ran the tines of her fork the other way on the pie and admired the checkerboard pattern she’d created. “My mother was an amazing person,” she said. “She knew she was going to die and she did her best to prepare me for it, although you can never really be prepared. I guess you know all about that.”

He nodded as he chewed, his face solemn.

“At first, she was really angry,” she said, remembering how her mother would snap at her for the slightest infraction. “Then she’d sort of … you know, swing between being angry and being down. And then she got very calm.”

“DABDA,” Tim said.

“Dabda?”

“The five stages of grief. Denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance.”

“Wow, yes, that fits,” she said. “What’s bargaining, though?”

“It’s like making a deal with God.” He wiped his lips with his napkin. “Dear God, if you let me get better, I’ll never do anything bad again.”

“I don’t know if she did that,” CeeCee said. It hurt to imagine her mother trying to bargain her way out of the inevitable. “I did, though.” She laughed at the realization. “I was always promising God I’d be a good girl if he’d make her better.”

“I think you were probably a very good girl.” Tim’s voice was gentle.

She looked at her uneaten pie. “I’d expected a miracle would save her right up until the end. You know what she did?” She couldn’t believe she was going to tell him this. “She wrote me letters before she died,” she said. “There are about sixty of them. She put each one in a sealed envelope and wrote on it when I should open it. There was one for the day after her funeral, and then one for each birthday, and then there’d be some that were sort of haphazardly dated, for years when she thought I’d need a lot of advice, I guess. Like for when I turned sixteen, there was an envelope that said ‘Sixteen,’ then one that said ‘Sixteen and five days,’ and then ‘Sixteen and two months,’ and so on.”

Tim swallowed the last bite of his sandwich and shook his head in amazement. “How phenomenal,” he said. “She was how old?”

“Twenty-nine.”

“Man, I don’t know if I could be that strong in her shoes.”

She was glad she’d told him.

“So you still have dozens of letters from her to open?” he asked.

“Actually, no.” She laughed. “I opened every single one of them the day after her funeral.” She’d sat alone in the guest bedroom of an ancient great-aunt reading her mother’s words, many of which she’d been too young to understand, but not too young to treasure. She’d cried and rocked and hugged herself for comfort as she read them, feeling the loss deep in her bones. There was much in those letters she hadn’t understood. She’d skimmed over the advice about sex, too young even to be titillated by it. The words of wisdom on child rearing were meaningless to her. It didn’t matter that she didn’t understand them; she cherished every stroke of her mother’s pen. “I still have them, though.” The letters were under her bed in a box that had traveled with her from foster home to foster home. They were all she had left of her mother. “She always told me I could decide whether to be happy or sad,” she said. “When she got to the … what did you call that part of the acronym? Acceptance?”

“Right.”

“I guess that’s when she told me that she realized she could spend her last days being a miserable bitch—her words, not mine—or she could spend them being grateful for the time she and I had together. She made up this song about being thankful for the morning and the trees and the air. She said I should sing that song to myself every morning, and—” She suddenly clamped her mouth shut, embarrassed. She was saying too much, almost giddy with the relief of having an attentive listener.

“Why’d you stop?” he asked.

“I’m talking too much.”

“Do you sing the song?”

She nodded. “In my head, I do.”

“And it helps?”

“So much. I feel like she’s still there with me. So I try to be thankful for everything, including every hard thing that’s happened to me.” She looked down at her pie. She’d made a mess of it. “Whew,” she said. “I never talk this much. About my life, I mean. Sorry.”

“Don’t apologize,” he said. “I like getting to know you better. And I think you were lucky to have that mother of yours as long as you did.”

“I haven’t given you a chance to talk at all,” she said.

“We have time for that, CeeCee.” Tim stared at her for a moment, then smiled. “I like you a lot,” he said. “I don’t think I’ve ever met anyone as positive as you are.”

The compliment meant more to her than anything else he might say. If you were positive, you could do anything.

He offered her a ride home after they left the restaurant. She climbed into his white Ford van, the overhead light giving her a glimpse of the mattress in the back, and her knees nearly gave out from under her. She wanted him to suggest they go into the dark cavern back there. She wanted him to be her first lover. But when he pulled up in front of the Victorian boardinghouse, he got out of the van and walked around to open her door.

“I wish I could ask you in,” she said, as he walked her up the porch steps, “but we’re not allowed to have male visitors in our room.”

“That’s okay,” he said. He leaned down to kiss her. It was a light kiss and she had to make herself pull away before she asked for more.

“I’ll see you tomorrow morning,” he said. The porch light was reflected in his eyes, and he gave her hair a little tug, like the black woman had done at the bus stop.

She returned his smile with a wave, then unlocked the door and raced upstairs. She wanted to tell Ronnie about this perfect night, even though her roommate would never understand why she felt such a thrill over being able to talk to someone the way she’d talked to Tim. Look at all she’d told him! He even knew she was a virgin. She could tell him anything about herself and he would receive it all with compassion and understanding.

Next time, she’d give him a chance to tell her everything about his life, and she’d listen with the same attentiveness he’d shown her.

She was a completely honest person, though. It would never occur to her that he was not.

Chapter Four

I have no idea what kind of girl you are now, so I don’t know what to say to help you and I hate that I can’t be there with you. I get so angry sometimes that I won’t be able to watch you grow up!

Here are a few things you need to know. First, don’t have sex! But if you do, get birth control pills or condoms. You can get them at Planned Parenthood. Second, sex is not all it’s cracked up to be. The earth doesn’t move, especially not the first time, and any woman who tells you that it does is a liar. Third, don’t trust boys! Here are some lies they’ll tell you to get you to sleep with them:

1) I never felt this way about anyone before.

2) Of course I’ll still respect you in the morning.

3) My balls (testicles) will turn blue and explode if we don’t make love.

4) I promise I’ll pull out before I come.

I can’t believe I’m writing this to you, my little twelve-year-old baby! It’s hard to imagine you’ll ever be old enough to need this advice, but for what it’s worth, there it is.

THE ROOM SHE SHARED WITH RONNIE WAS NOT MUCH bigger than a closet. Their twin beds were perpendicular to each other, and two narrow dressers lined the wall, leaving barely enough room to walk across the floor. Two nights after her date with Tim, CeeCee came home after working a double shift.

“Any messages?” she asked, her attention darting toward the phone. She’d seen Tim at breakfast that morning, but the coffee shop had been crowded and there’d been no time to talk.

“Uh-uh, sorry.” Ronnie looked up from her bed, where she was painting her toenails. “But there’s a package for you.” She nodded toward CeeCee’s bed, where a small, square box wrapped in brown paper rested on her pillow.

“Weird,” CeeCee said. It was rare for her to get mail. She picked up the package by the cord tied around it. Light as air. Her name and address were printed in black ink.

“I shook it and it sounds empty to me,” Ronnie said. “How’d tonight go? I take it Tim didn’t stop in?”

“No.” CeeCee sat on her bed and kicked off her tennis shoes. Her feet hurt and she massaged her toes through her kneesocks. “Is he ever going to ask me out again?”

“I hope so.” Ronnie sounded genuinely sympathetic.

“Why can’t I just ask him?” CeeCee pulled one end of the cord, but it was tightly knotted. “Why do we always have to wait to be asked? Can I borrow your nail clippers?”