Unbroken bonds, p.33
Unbroken Bonds, page 33
It comforted Joanna to witness the lack of tension in her home that weekend. Even Hope and Tom were joking with each other. She was also glad that Allie and Hope had mended their friendship.
At one point on Saturday afternoon, Joanna noticed Mark and Tom out by the roses, in a serious conversation. Later, Mark told her Tom had asked for some advice regarding women.
“It seems he’s met someone he’s crazy about,” Mark confided.
“I hope you didn’t tell him to wait years to tell her he’s in love with her.” Joanna smiled, swatting him with the tea towel.
“No! I told him to spend time with her. Get to know her. If there’s something there and the timing’s right, it’ll be apparent fairly quickly to both of them.”
“Sound advice,” Joanna complimented.
The real surprise came a few weeks later when they learned Tom made regular trips from Boston to New York to visit Allie. By New Year’s, they’d made it known they were dating. When Allie graduated in 1981, the couple announced their engagement.
Allie’d always dreamed of a fairy-tale wedding, and Mark as a proud father saw to it she’d have it. The ceremony took place at a Catholic church in Memphis, with the reception at the newly restored Peabody Hotel.
Joanna found it humorous that she was both the mother of the bride and the mother of the groom, albeit stepmother to the bride and birthmother to the groom, as well as the mother-in-law to her own son. Jessie quipped there must be a southern joke in there somewhere.
It felt odd to Joanna to be in the same room with the Wyatts. Catherine and Jack seemed happy and Joanna was glad. She limited conversation with Jack to pleasantries.
At the reception, Joanna’s breath quickened when she noticed Hope sit alone with Jack at a table. Joanna watched out of the corner of her eye to make sure the exchange remained civil. Her fears were abated when Hope got up and Jack handed her a piece of paper that she assumed contained his phone number.
The band played “Endless Love” for the bride and the groom’s first dance. Joanna stood off to the side, tears in her eyes, touched by how happy they looked. Her concentration broke when Catherine’s arm slipped around her shoulder. She too, had the look of a proud mother.
“Thank you for bringing these wonderful children into my life. Without you I never would’ve known Tom, and without you Tom never would’ve met Allie.”
“Bizarre, isn’t it?” Joanna patted Catherine’s hand.
“We’re going to be grandparents together someday,” Catherine pointed out.
“I’m lookin’ forward to it,” Joanna responded.
“Me too.”
The band ended the song and their children sealed the tradition with a kiss that held the hopes and promises of the years to come. The two women gave each other an understanding squeeze. If anyone witnessed the touching moment between the mothers, it was never mentioned.
A few years later, when Allie became pregnant, Tom secured a job in Memphis, at a solar energy company. Allie eventually got a column in an environmental magazine, which she wrote from home, and had two more babies. When they traveled, Mark and Joanna were thrilled to watch the grandchildren.
Around the same time, Hope married Brian Tipton. He took a manager’s position with FedEx in Memphis and Joanna had her children close by; her house became the center of family activity. She adored and spoiled her five grandchildren and was content with her life.
On a sweltering summer day in 1990, Mary finally got the phone call from Tony she’d waited a lifetime for. He’d found their son.
“A woman from CUB put me in touch with computer hackers. I paid eight hundred dollars and within three days they found our son,” Mary’s high school sweetheart explained.
“Is that legal?”
“No, but I don’t care! They found our son! His name is Randy Ayers. He lives in Atlanta with his wife and two sons. He’s a middle school gym teacher and football coach. I just got off the phone with him. He’s eager to meet us. He wants you to call him.”
Through blurry eyes, Mary wrote down the numbers Tony called out to her. Within two weeks, the child she’d given away thirty-three years earlier made a trip to Memphis to meet her. She marked the occasion as bittersweet, when she learned Randy’s childhood hadn’t been the best. He’d been the second child adopted by Tracy and David Ayers. When he was eight years old, his adoptive mother became pregnant with a little boy. It seemed Mrs. and Mr. Ayers favored their natural child over the two boys they’d adopted and treated them unequally. As hard as the boy tried, he couldn’t get them to notice him anymore. This led to defiant and reckless behavior as a teenager. Eventually he accepted the injustice of their behavior, but still struggled with the bitterness.
His attitude toward Mary and Tony was warm and understanding. Being a schoolteacher gave him firsthand knowledge of the problems of teen pregnancy. It touched him that the couple had spent the last seventeen years trying to find him. Randy was also grateful for the brothers and sisters who welcomed him without reservation.
In the perfect culmination for Mary, her long-lost son told her, “For the first time in my life I feel like I have a family.”
She told him, “You do, and this is exactly how it should be.”
A year later, Joanna got a phone call from Jessie’s husband, Russell, with devastating news: Her friend was quite ill and asking for her to come to see her.
Joanna flew into JFK airport on a blustery winter morning and took a cab to the apartment Jessie called home with her husband and son. Russell tried to brace Joanna for Jessie’s condition, explaining she’d refused to go to the hospital weeks ago. Against Russell’s wishes, she’d signed a Do Not Resuscitate form and insisted he call in hospice.
“The chemo has weakened her heart. The doctors say it could give out at any time,” Jessie’s husband explained.
At first glance, Joanna would’ve guessed Jessie was already gone. Her transparent, pale skin seemed magnified by the bright-red turban on her head. Her sunken eyes fluttered, and she smiled when she saw Joanna.
“Well, there you are,” she said with labored breath, removing her oxygen mask.
“Here I am, girl.” Joanna smiled back, suppressing the lump in her throat. In those green eyes, Joanna saw the Jessie she loved so much.
“I fired my hairdresser,” Jessie joked, trying to lighten the moment.
“I never understood why you let someone other than me do your hair in the first place,” Joanna quipped. She sat on the bed and took Jessie’s hand. Jessie winced, with pain.
“Can I call the nurse? Do you want somethin’ for the pain?” Joanna asked.
“No, it’ll only gork me out. I have things I wanna say to you. Things I meant to say. I wanna tell you I’m sorry.” Jessie’s eyes glistened with tears.
“Sorry? Sorry for what?” Joanna’s hot tears ran down her cheeks.
“For what I’m gonna ask you to do. I want you to talk sense into Russ. He has to let me go.” Jessie put the mask on and took several deep breaths. “I’ve fought so hard. He and Zack won’t accept I can’t fight anymore.”
Joanna tried to calm her, rubbing her arm, “Shhhh now, you’re tired.”
“Yes! I’m tired! I’m dyin’. I have to explain why I wouldn’t let Russ tell you I was sick.”
“You don’t have to explain anythin’ to me.”
“Yes I do!” Jessie spoke quickly, with renewed strength. “The odds for me weren’t good from the beginnin’. I did this to myself by livin’ a reckless life. I didn’t want everyone hangin’ around with long faces for months. It’s so ironic, now that I have everythin’ I’ve dreamed of, I get my non-refundable ticket punched. I’ve only gone through the treatments for Russ and Zack. I didn’t want everyone to remember me the way I look now.” Jessie weakly laid her head back.
“The way you look now?” Joanna whispered, “All I see is my friend Jessie. It’s gonna be so hard for me to let you go, too.”
“You’ve been my rock, my safe harbor. You were always there for me,” Jessie whispered.
“You’ve always been my voice of reason, as crazy as that sounds!” Joanna told her.
“That is crazy.” Jessie’s eyes were getting heavy. “Will you do this for me?”
“Yes, of course. But, as long as I’ve known you, you’ve always done things on your own terms. I doubt this time will be any different. Sleep now; put your mind at ease,” Joanna assured.
Prissy and Mary arrived the next morning. Both women had their own private time with Jessie and came out crying the way Joanna had. That evening Jessie was surrounded by her closest friends. Joanna painted Jessie’s fingernails her favorite shade of red, while Prissy gave an overview of the cases she’d observed involving adopted children or birthparents who were challenging the laws that kept their records sealed.
“It’s only a matter of time before a case sets the precedent and overturns the law.”
“Keep pushin’ them. You’ll get there,” Jessie told her.
“Even though I’ve found my son, I still want to see what Mrs. Lewis wrote about me and what the caseworker wrote about Randy’s adoptive parents,” Mary asserted.
“What was it you said, Mary? That you were tired of lookin’ behind you?” Jessie asked.
Mary nodded. “I think we’ve all overcome that syndrome and we’re wiser because of it.”
“Well, if experience from makin’ major mistakes produces wisdom, I must be a genius at this point!” Jessie announced, laughing along with her friends. In a moment, the hospice nurse came in to get Jessie settled for the night.
“Your color looks better this evening, Jessie.”
“These gals cheered me up.”
“Well, I’m going to have to hustle all of you out so my patient can sleep. That way she’ll have the energy for more of this tomorrow.”
The visitors obeyed and went out to the living room where Russell read the New York Times while Zack sorted through Lego spaceship pieces.
Russ smiled. “It’s so refreshing to hear her laugh. I don’t know how she maintains her sense of humor. She’s never complained or been short with us or the health-care people.”
“Thanks for callin’ us,” Joanna offered.
“I figured it was time. They keep telling me it won’t be long.” His voice cracked a little.
The nurse came out to the living room and announced, “Jessie wants to say good night to Zack.” The boy went running to his mother’s bedroom.
“I think we’ll say good night, too, and head over to the hotel,” Joanna told him. “Is around eleven okay for us to come by tomorrow morning?”
“That’ll be fine. Thanks for being here; you don’t know how much it helps,” Russ said.
Sometime during the night, Jessie passed away peacefully in her sleep. Her best friends received the call from Russ at eight the next morning. Hundreds attended the visitation. A private funeral was reserved for family and close friends. Then a public party was held at Diamonds, with music and laughter as people remembered the fiery redhead with stories about her life.
At six fifty in the evening, the club hushed when Russ turned on the closing of the national news. Peter Jennings’s voice filled the silence: “Finally, tonight, we say goodbye to one of New York’s best loved entrepreneurs. Most people knew her as Jessie Diamond, the owner of the famous Diamonds nightclub. She was born Jessica Devereaux in 1939, in New Orleans. Even as a child, she possessed a remarkable talent as a pianist. By the age of twenty, she changed her name to Jessie Diamond and moved out to California, where her music was heard in blockbuster movies and commercials. In 1974 she opened Diamonds in New York and began the fundraising work she said enriched her life. She founded an assistance center for single mothers, which offered job training and child care, as well as aid with the basics. Her greatest work, perhaps, came in the last few years: establishing a foundation to provide free music lessons to young musicians, who otherwise couldn’t afford professional training. Tonight at her nightclub, there is a celebration in her honor. She leaves behind a husband, well-known artist Russell Detrick, and their twelve-year-old son, Zack. Jessica Devereaux was fifty-two years old. That’s our report on World News Tonight. I’m Peter Jennings, good night.” A cheer exploded from the crowd as the TV was turned off.
Prissy leaned over to Mary and Joanna, “Jessie would’ve loved that!”
“She would’ve laughed her ass off!” Mary imagined, wiping the tears she couldn’t help.
“Yeah! She would’ve!” Joanna agreed.
In September 1999, the Supreme Court of Tennessee at Nashville issued an opinion in the case of Promise Doe, et al., v. Donald Sundquist, et al., upholding a new adoption records law stating that the disclosure of adoption records does not violate the right to privacy, giving those who desired it access to their adoption records.
Since 2005, home DNA kits have grown in popularity. To date twenty-six million people have submitted their DNA to various companies, making it easier for adoptees to connect with their birth families.
As of 2020, nineteen states have not unsealed the adoption records from the Baby Scoop Era.
Acknowledgments
Ten years ago, a friend asked me to do an internet search for the mother who gave her up for adoption while residing in a home for unwed mothers. During my research I was fascinated and appalled by these seemingly benevolent institutions whose goal was to convince the young women to surrender their babies to closed adoptions. The more I learned about what is now known as the Baby Scoop Era, the more I felt compelled to write a fictional account of what took place in this country when between 1950 and 1980 1.5 million girls were sent to these homes. I’m indebted to my friend Melissa who put me on this path.
I thank the women in my writer’s group at the Murphy Library who were the first to hear the book and encouraged me to publish.
This book would not have happened without the opportunity for me to present this manuscript during Pitch week 19 at When Words Count writer’s retreat in Rochester Vermont. Thanks to Steve Eisner, Amber Griffith, and everyone there for the experience that profoundly changed my life.
I’m grateful to Laura Tippy and Lynell Aycock for being my first editors and awesome enthusiasts of the story. I have to thank Peggy Collings with Concerned United Birthparents for being a great cheerleader as well as Fran Gruss Levin, Rickie Solinger, and Pamela Karanova the founder of Adoptees Connect for their endorsements.
A huge thank you goes to David LeGere and the team at Woodhall Press for believing in this project and for walking me through the process.
Last but not least, I am grateful to my husband and kids. Your love and support means the world to me.
About the Author
D.W. Hogan is a lifelong writer having majored in English at the University of Alabama in Huntsville. She’s the mother of four grown children and grandmother to two. She is a full-time author and lives in Huntsville, Alabama with her husband. Unbroken Bonds is her Debut novel. Check out DWHogan.com for more information. You can follow her on Facebook D.W. Hogan author and on Instagram dawnhoganauthor.
D.W. Hogan, Unbroken Bonds
