In Search Of Her Own

“Doesn’t sound like you had much fun.”

“Fun wasn’t one of my priorities.” Victoria realized immediately how smug she sounded, so she added, “Learning was fun for me.”

“Well, for me it was just plain hard work. I got through law school by the skin of my teeth.”

“Then you’re a lawyer?”

“Not anymore,” he replied “I passed my bar exams and set up practice as an attorney, but after a couple of years of sitting in a stuffy office, neck-high in paperwork, I decided I’d had it. I closed up shop and began working as a private investigator.”

“Really? How exciting,” said Victoria.

“To be honest, it’s not as exciting as it looks on television,” said Phillip. “I’m rarely into the shoot-’em-up cops-and-robbers stuff. In fact, sometimes my job is downright tedious. And I still get bogged down with paperwork, but at least there’s a certain undercurrent of adventure that I didn’t have as a lawyer.”

“Exactly what do you investigate?”

“Missing persons. Kids mostly.”

Her breath caught momentarily. “Missing children?”

“Well, there’s always the husband or wife looking for a spouse who’s left town. But most of my clients are searching for children—parents looking for runaway teenagers or divorced people whose mate has stolen their children.”

Victoria’s interest perked. “Really? You mean, someone just comes to you and says, ‘My child is missing,’ and you go out and find their child?”

“Essentially yes. But it’s not quite that simple. Like I said, there’s a lot of paperwork involved, and I run into my share of roadblocks and dead ends. And frankly, sometimes there’s not a happy ending.” His voice trailed off. “Some kids end up dead.”

Victoria shuddered. “But most of the time you.you find the missing child?”

“Most of the time.” He chuckled. “I’m a very persistent man. I don’t give up easily.”

She sat forward, her pulse quickening. She could feel the rhythmic pounding in her ears. “How do you do it, Mr. Anders? Where do you begin?”

He laughed, a gentle, warming sound she found most appealing. “Really, Miss Carlin, you don’t expect me to give away trade secrets, do you?”

She sat back, embarrassment coloring her cheeks. “I’m not trying to pry. It’s just so fascinating to think that you can go out and track down someone who’s missing. You must make a lot of parents very happy.”

He laughed again, mirthlessly. “And I’ve enraged a few, as well. But that’s another story.”

“But if someone were looking for someone,” she persisted, “you would be willing to go out and search for him—or her?”

“Well, I would need to know the circumstances, of course. I may push the boundaries at times, but I stay within the law.”

“Of course. That goes without saying.”

He studied her with a disquieting frankness. “Are you looking for someone, Miss Carlin? A missing child?”

She averted her gaze, her thoughts drifting off to a familiar darkness. Yes, I seek a nameless, faceless child—my sweet little boy lost, heart of my heart, my very life. I never stop looking, and yet I wouldn’t know him if I passed him on the street.

“Did you hear me, Miss Carlin? Do you know of a missing child?”

Victoria rotated her coffee cup between her palms. Her hands were trembling. “I never said that, now did I, Mr. Anders?”

His gaze remained unflinching. “Sometimes a person’s silences say more than their words.”

“I’m just very intrigued,” she replied with a nonchalance she didn’t feel. “I never knew a private investigator before. It must be a very challenging and rewarding occupation.”

“It keeps me busy. In fact, too busy at times.”

“Too busy?”

“Yes—when my wife was alive, anyway. Pauline and I didn’t have the time together we should have. I was gone a lot.” Phillip’s words fell away, as if he realized he was saying too much, revealing more about himself than he intended. He drained his coffee cup When the waitress walked by, he signaled her for a refill.

“Do you have children?” asked Victoria, knowing immediately it was a subject she shouldn’t be broaching. What if he turned the question back to her?

Phillip grimaced. For a moment he said nothing. Finally he looked away, a glint of pain evident in his sable brown eyes. “No, we never had children,” he replied somberly. “To tell you the truth, it’s the greatest regret of my life.”

Victoria looked away, discomfited by the man’s unexpected confession. “Well, there’s more to life than children,” she murmured without conviction, her words unnaturally stiff and precise. She quelled the impulse to admit to Phillip that she, too, knew how it felt to regret something deeply, to live daily with a raw emotional wound that ruptured at the slightest inadvertent prick. But exposing her own pain would serve no purpose. She and Phillip were, after all, virtual strangers.

“Well, now that I’ve bored you with my life story, I think it’s time for me to pick up the check,” said Phillip offhandedly.

“Thank you, but I really wasn’t bored,” she assured him with a heartfelt smile. Suddenly, illogically, she didn’t want their conversation to end, but she could think of no legitimate reason to linger, so she said dutifully, “I guess it is time to get back to my car.”

Phillip nodded, reached for the check and tossed a crisp one-dollar bill on the table. A contemplative silence settled over them as he drove Victoria back to her stalled automobile.

Chapter Two

That evening Victoria couldn’t get Phillip Anders out of her mind. His presence lingered like an afterglow, baffling, disconcerting and yet undeniably pleasant. As she rattled around her small, modern condo, sorting her mail, putting away dishes and browsing through her latest educational journal, his image was never far from her thoughts. She turned on the late-night news, but the newscaster’s voice sounded so disturbingly similar to Phillip’s, she quickly snapped off the set.

Even as she drifted into a restless slumber shortly before midnight, she saw his face in her mind, his classic features as solidly chiseled as a Michelangelo sculpture—and those eyes, so expressive and compelling, seemingly reading her very heart. And his voice—surely it wasn’t the television now. In the hazy, rainbow reveries of her dreams she could hear the richness of his deep baritone and the mirthful ripple of his infectious laughter.

When she awoke the next morning, the image of Phillip Anders still occupied her mind, like some rare, esteemed object her consciousness had instinctively decided to accommodate. As she bathed and dressed and ran a brush through her cascading curls, fragments of her dream lingered. As she sipped her coffee and nibbled a slice of whole-wheat toast, she wondered where he was and what he was doing at this very moment. Even as she sat at her kitchen table grading test papers, her thoughts strayed inevitably to him.

She found herself absently tracing Phillip’s features in her mind—his long, distinctive nose, his generous mouth and that sturdy cleft chin. In her imagination she could picture his riveting, darkly lashed eyes, his sardonic smile and the thick umber brown hair that just touched his collar. The images appeared unbidden and left her feeling disconcerted, perplexed

She wanted to see him again, but she knew she didn’t dare.

What’s wrong with me? she wondered. Had she taken leave of her senses, allowing this stranger to monopolize her thoughts? Surely it was a temporary aberration, perhaps even a predictable corollary of the grief process After all, for the first time in her life she was utterly alone, perhaps her mind was simply filling the void with the first person who happened by.

“And if I believe that, I’m sure someone has a bridge somewhere they’d love to sell me,” she mused dryly.

No, there was something about Phillip Anders that set him apart from everyone else she had ever known—a mysterious quality that attracted her and disarmed her at the same time She wanted to see him again and learn more about him

But she hadn’t thought to ask for his business card, nor did she have the slightest idea where he lived. Surely he would be in the phone book, but she had no logical reason to call him He might think her forward, even brazen. But, in fact, women did phone men these days and no one considered it unseemly.

But the thought of phoning him, of pursuing Phillip Anders in any manner, left Victoria with a knot of panic in her chest and a sudden dryness in her mouth What made her think he would even want to see her again? They had nothing in common. Surely he had demonstrated no interest in her as a woman And he was, after all, still grieving for the wife he loved so deeply and to whom he was obviously unswervingly devoted.

But there was more to her hesitation. Much more. And before her fantasies whisked her into the tempting arms of Phillip Anders, it was time to acknowledge the real reason for her reluctance to face him. Yes, already she could feel that old barrier resurrecting itself in her mind—the nameless, inscrutable panic that welled in her chest at the prospect of a man becoming close—any man.

There had been no man in Victoria’s life since Rick Lancer seven years ago. In fact, there had been no man before or after Rick. And even now, because of Rick, there would probably never be anyone for Victoria.

Now, on this quiet Saturday just a few weeks before the end of the school term, Victoria allowed herself to think about Rick and about those days that still moldered in the deepest recesses of her emotions. She was standing before the bathroom mirror about to apply a hint of blush and a dab of mascara. Her long, natural red curls were pulled back from her forehead and spilled down the back of her neck. Her large green eyes were framed by thick, dusky red lashes. Her teeth were even and perfectly white Her flawless ivory skin was marred only by a spattering of freckles that dotted her nose and cheeks. She didn’t wear much makeup; she preferred the natural, clean-scrubbed look, the look her father had loved. It was that sweet, guileless naiveté of face and spirit that had prompted him to call her “Daddy’s good-as-gold little girl.”

She paused, the mascara wand in hand, and gazed critically at her unadorned face It was no longer the face her father had loved, childlike and innocent, but the face another man had praised. Rick Lancer had called it a beautiful face, but he could have been lying even about that. Still, Victoria had been told, with a note of approval by an occasional student and an air of condescension by a fellow faculty member, that her natural good looks made her appear much younger than her twenty-six years.

But Victoria didn’t feel younger. Sometimes she felt incredibly old. She wasn’t sure she had ever felt young or attractive, except perhaps when Rick Lancer had called her beautiful. For a time he had made her feel beautiful. But not for long. Even now, when she thought of him, she felt ugly inside, damaged. She still wondered how Rick could have prompted such intense, contradictory emotions—love and hate, joy and despair, a sense of beauty.and degradation.

Thinking of Rick sent her spiraling into one of those dark moods that compelled her to reach for her thick, well-worn journal She sat down at her desk and, in handwriting marked by quick, gracefully scrolled letters, she wrote:

Saturday, May 2

I keep going back to the past, reliving it, as if I’ve been sentenced to play it over and over again in my mind like a broken record, the sound always shrill and discordant.

I keep asking, How could I have been so foolish?

I was naive, I admit that, and overly protected by my parents. From earliest childhood my life followed a strict regimen—full days of classes and long hours of homework so that I could excel in every subject. Piano and voice lessons filled whatever free time remained. There were few opportunities for friends and recreation, and little chance to indulge in frivolous pastimes like shopping or telephoning, daydreaming or watching TV.

I remember vividly the most defining—and devastating—moment of my childhood. I was a young girl—seven years old. My parents threw a birthday party for me and invited my classmates. My father overheard me on the phone telling a classmate what present I wanted—a certain doll, or book, or game. Afterward, Father scolded me, saying, “You shouldn’t ask your friends for gifts. It makes you look greedy, as if that’s your only reason for a party. If someone asks you what you want, tell them you don’t want a present.”

“But I do want presents,” I argued plaintively in my reasonable seven-year-old logic. “Why should I say I don’t when I do?”

“Because a proper young lady is careful not to appear selfcentered, as if gifts are all that matter,” my father explained. “It’s the company of your friends that counts. In fact,” he added in that intrepid voice of his, “to teach you a lesson, I’m going to instruct all the parents not to send gifts, so you’ll understand what’s truly important in life.”

So no one brought gifts, and I felt deeply shamed to think that everyone considered me a selfish person. That party was the worst event of my young life; all the children seemed to understand even without saying it that I didn’t deserve to receive presents As my classmates played games and ate cake and ice cream, I struggled to pretend that nothing was wrong, but I couldn ’t keep back the tears. At last I ran to my room and collapsed on my bed in deep sobs. My parents sent the children home and never mentioned the party again. but from then on I was known to my classmates as “the girl who doesn’t get presents.”

After that party, I made it a point never to ask for gifts for Christmas or birthdays; I simply showed grateful appreciation for whatever I was given. But Father’s lesson had been too well learned I found it difficult to ask anyone for anything—a favorite food, help with homework, a preferred television program. At all costs I would not be considered selfish.

My goal in life became to accommodate others, to make sure they were happy and content. I found a sort of spiritual satisfaction in sacrificing my wishes for another’s, as if I could somehow atone for my childhood greed.

That attitude carried over into the rest of my life. I grew up feeling that my own needs and desires were somehow shameful and suspect, and that it was in bad taste, if not actually sinful, to let others know what I wanted The proper thing was to pretend I had no needs or yearnings—better to acquiesce to the wishes of others and make them happy. So I grew up determined to please my parents by behaving like their perfect little girl

I was careful never to vent my emotions around them—anger, fear, frustration, disappointment or sadness; rather, I always wore a smile and pretended everything was wonderful, so that my father would give me his smile of approval and praise me for being his “goodas-gold little girl.”

My mother, too, seemed to love me most when I was on my best behavior, so I saved my tears and anger for moments when I was alone in my room, where I could sob into my pillow or pound my mattress with my fists when I was angry.

I realized as an adult that my parents had taught me, perhaps inadvertently, never to be candid with another human being, nor to express my own wishes and desires, but rather to bow to the opinions of others and deny in a sense my own personhood, my own right of expression, even my own right to make mistakes.

But when I turned eighteen, things changed. I was seized by the same sense of daring and rebellion that was typical of others my age. I found myself wanting to strike out against the limits imposed on me, to stretch myself, to do something bold and excessive, perhaps to begin walking down an unknown road and never turn back I was obsessed by a restless yearning for something that had no name, no substance, no form. I dreamed of recklessly toppling my sane, sensible world

It was during this period of inner conflict that I met Rick Lancer. He was playing summer stock at a little theater near the university. A classmate introduced us. I loved Rick immediately. He flattered me, courted me and carried me away with his dreams and schemes, only to eventually compromise me and cast me aside.

Rick was an actor with an actor’s flair and sense of the dramatic. He prodded me out of my shyness, chided me for my rigidity of spirit and taught me to “loosen up.” He promised me the world, the moon and the stars—or at least a wedding and a honeymoon, as soon as he saved up the money from his next gig He gave me an inexpensive ring with diamonds no more real than his love for me. I still recall his words: “We’ll announce our engagement when I get the lead in summer stock. Doll, we’re as good as husband and wife. Don’t let some silly little paper keep us apart. Let me love you the way a husband should “

I never actually said yes to Rick, but neither did I quite say no. I felt emotionally overpowered by him, mesmerized by his flamboyance and style And, of course, I had been brought up to please without protest those I loved. and so I let Rick Lancer take what he wanted.

By the time I realized I was pregnant, Rick had already journeyed to New York with a local acting troupe My letter telling him about the baby was returned marked Address Unknown.

My pregnancy devastated my parents and put an irreparable chink in their carefully laid plans for my life They told me I had betrayed the long years of nurturing and intense devotion they had invested in me My father considered my pregnancy an act of rebellion against him. “After all I’ve done for you, to think you could do this to me— heap shame on the family name!” But he had a remedy for every situation, even the tragedy of an unwanted pregnancy.

“You made a mistake, but we’ll take care of it,” he told me, his voice edged with contempt. “It’s all arranged. Your mother will go with you. No one will ever need to know Your life will be back on track before you know it.”

I burst into tears and for the first time in my life stood up to my father “No, no, no! You can’t make me kill my baby! It’s mine and you can’t have it!”

When I refused the abortion, my parents sent me to a private university in another state where no one knew me. I completed my sophomore year and earned a straight-A average, but I was going through the motions, dazed and numb. I was painfully alone, except for my baby growing inside me—my wee, constant, unseen companion. At night I would lie in bed and talk to my child, pouring out my hopes and dreams for the two of us. I would feel him kicking, a foot here, an elbow there. We played a little game: I’d press the spots where he kicked and he’d nudge me back. Kick and nudge, kick and nudge. I vowed I’d let him grow up to be his own person, but even as I made the promise, I knew I could never keep it…because I couldn’t keep him.

My parents made it clear I couldn’t come home with a baby, and when I threatened to go elsewhere, my mother told me the awful news My father was seriously ill and needed me at home “He asks for you constantly, dear. You’re the only one who can comfort him.” Two weeks later I delivered my baby—a pink, thrashing, bawling seven-pound boy I saw only briefly as he was taken from my body and placed in a bassinet I wanted my son more than I had ever wanted anything in my life, but in my mind all I could hear was my father’s voice denouncing me: “You’ve sinned You don’t deserve to keep your child!”

So I signed the papers for his adoption, convinced my life was over at the tender age of twenty. I never anticipated the emotional upheaval I would experience by giving up my child. After he was taken away, I felt a physical ache for him—my arms ached to hold him, my breasts ached to nurse him. It was as if my very heart had been torn from my chest

Three days later I returned home, desolate, my arms empty, to offer my ailing father what little comfort I could muster. But without a word or a glance he’d delivered his ultimate rebuke. He’d died of a massive heart attack hours before I arrived home, and somehow I knew it was my fault; my weakness and selfishness were to blame.

As I settled in at home and began my junior year at the local university, my father’s death struck me with its staggering reality. His desk was cleared, his chair empty, his possessions gone The walls were silent, the rooms enormous without his voice, his presence. Worst of all was the growing conviction that I had caused his death. My shame had killed him

“No,” Victoria said aloud with a decisiveness that startled her She dropped her pen on the desk and slammed her journal shut. She was trembling, the memories assailing her as if it had all happened yesterday “No, it wasn’t my fault’ Dear God, why can’t I put it behind me?”

She ran to the bathroom and splashed cold water on her face and blotted the wetness with a towel. She stared soberly at her reflection, a dark accusation clouding her eyes. “I didn’t kill Father,” she told herself severely “God has forgiven me The guilt is gone.if only I can someday forgive myself.

“I’ve got to get out of here. Maybe some fresh air will clear the cobwebs of memory from my head.”

Victoria went to her closet and took out a suit, a double-breasted blazer and pleated trousers in powder pink crepe wool. She dressed quickly and left her condominium.

Her car was still in the shop, but the local mall was within walking distance, and she could use the exercise. She would walk to Elaine’s Fashion Boutique, a chic little women’s shop she frequented on occasion; she liked their styles, and their prices weren’t exorbitant. Yes, she would go there and buy herself something frivolous. No, not frivolous The annual faculty tea for graduating seniors was scheduled for next weekend and she needed something new to wear—perhaps a pretty pastel dress, something delicate and springlike.

But later, at Elaine’s, as she browsed through a rack of high-priced garments, she had second thoughts. Maybe I’d better make do with what I have at home, or I could try the rack of sale dresses, she mused, then chided herself for always giving in to her practical nature.

I’ll just try on a couple of these expensive dresses, she decided, just to see how they look. She walked over to the dressing rooms where several women stood waiting She noticed a little boy sitting in a straight-back chair near one dressing room. He sat stiffly, frowning, obviously fighting an advanced case of restlessness Something in his features made Victoria take a second look. He had thick, obstinately curly red hair, large green eyes and a turned-up nose lost in freckles.

Victoria’s heart began to beat faster. He looks like me as a child, she marveled silently Her thoughts raced. He’s about the right age. He could be my son!

Victoria struggled to remain calm. This had happened before-a chance encounter with a child who looked as if he could be her son. The likelihood of meeting her own child was remote at best, so why did she always react this way, with such a flash flood of emotion? Why couldn’t she put her child out of her mind as she had intended six years ago at his birth?

She knew the answer. Too much had happened since then. Since her conversion three years ago, Victoria had been plagued by the question of her son’s eternal destiny Did he have Christian parents? Would someone tell him about Jesus? Would he listen? How Victoria yearned to find him and tell him herself.

Since her mother’s death, she admitted it had been even more difficult to quell the desire to see her son, to touch him just once, to share her faith with him and assure herself he was happy and healthy. Now, staring at this child—a stranger’s child—fidgeting in his chair, Victoria realized the desire had become an obsession.