Epilogue
New Jersey, January 1983
"Is it snowing yet? I was promised snow!" Dashing out from behind the bar, Dionne, the only waitress on duty that evening, ran across to press her face to the glass, her scarlet Perspex earrings rattling against the pane. The scarce few patrons on this cold and dismal evening glanced over as she expressed her disappointment at the weather.
The old man at the bar paid little mind to the outside world. With his back to the window, he glanced for about the fiftieth time towards the door, then to the clock that hung above it.
"It's a quarter past seven," Dionne told him helpfully, returning to her post and polishing glasses.
"Nothing wrong with my eyes," the old man replied with a smile. "They're the one bit of me that still works."
He looked over again, and then glanced at his watch for an extra measure.
It was a slow night – everyone had stayed at home, clustered around their television sets for the Superbowl. The bar didn't have a television, or even a radio, and it was populated this evening only by those trying to escape the crowds. That was specifically why he had chosen it.
He stirred his drink needlessly, swirling the olive around the Martini glass. Hands that had once been capable of stitching human flesh together with meticulous precision were now slow and stiffened with arthritis. The cocktail stick slipped from his fingers. "Goddamn it!"
The years had not been kind to him. Some would say he had not been kind to himself, and he was inclined to agree with them. He never had been able to get a handle on his drinking. The problem had ebbed and flowed over the years, much like the drink itself, but he'd never been able to shake it. He knew that was his father's biggest disappointment, even after he'd finally managed to pull some aspects of his life together. It wasn't right, the elder physician told him, more concerned than angry, for a doctor to treat his body with such blatant disregard. He'd offered up a silent apology for his failure at the funeral, saddened that he had never once told him why. Suddenly, he'd understood why his father had never mentioned his mother's illness, or his own; why he had hidden behind fancy breakfasts and blithe letters. He knew now what it was like to be so afraid of wounding someone you care about that you push them away instead. That was, perhaps, his biggest regret, but it was hard to tell – he had a lot of them.
Christmases were the worst. The first year, he had tried. He'd really tried. He'd flown back out to California, where a familiar cheesy grin and matching moustache offered much-needed cheer, but the presence of his best friend's excitable pre-schooler and heavily pregnant wife soon proved to be too much. After a few hours, he bailed and checked into a motel, with little more of an explanation than the sad, mumbled words: "I'm sorry, I can't do this." When BJ's son was born a couple of months later, the role of Godfather had been tentatively proffered in his direction, along with wary "we'll understand if"s and "only if you're comfortable"s. He'd refused.
Nonetheless, BJ remained his closest – possibly only – friend. Despite the distance between them, or maybe even because of it, they stayed in touch. He couldn't handle letting anyone else in. As soon as friends and work colleagues married off and started surrounding themselves with children, he would retreat, and, gradually, as his circle of single friends dwindled, he'd ended up alone.
He'd never married. The idea of settling down held less appeal in his thirties than it did in his twenties, the main difference being that he'd lost interest in women altogether. He'd dated occasionally, but the guilt, fear and sheer, blinding panic that any kind of sexual intimacy brought on was a swift mood-killer. Hoping to cure the problem, he'd had a vasectomy at thirty-six – a decision that broke his father's heart and earned him some curious looks from the surgical staff. 'Why?' everyone wanted to know. 'Are you sure you want to make that decision so young?' Not to mention a few vulgar comments from the male staff about the sowing of wild oats and natural masculine inclinations towards seed-spreading. They'd agonised over the consent forms with him and tried to talk him out of it, and he couldn't help but wonder why he deserved generous thinking time and careful decisions, but she did not. Shamefully, he'd got angry, snatched the clipboard from the nurse and scrawled his signature on it, yelling, "Would you just get on with it already?!"
Nonetheless, despite the reassurance of surgical intervention, his… phobia, as he began to call it, persisted. Some years later, he managed to confess to the aging Sidney Freedman the events that had transpired in California, and the psychiatrist pinned things down very well: the fear of biological consequence was merely the tip of the iceberg, and he had, in addition to this, decided he was bad for women, unworthy of their love and affection, and a danger to their well-being in every sense. The problem was treatable, Sidney assured him, but he'd declined. There seemed little point now. What was the use of rediscovering one's sexuality at fifty-six? Besides, he'd decided, he deserved to be lonely. (Sidney had told him that was the neuroses talking too, but he liked his neuroses – they were his oldest friends and they kept him company.)
Fortunately, he'd thrown himself into his work so much he'd never had the chance to chase women like he used to, even if he'd wanted to. He had struggled on at his father's practice for years, never really able to engage with it the way he had done before Korea, but he stumbled on a news article in the medical journals one day that changed his life. The rumours had long circulated among medical men, and society at large, of a 'magic pill' that would do away with mythical herbal cocktails, backstreet abortionists, and women disappearing for months on end due to 'German measles' or a 'sick relative'. The new contraceptive pill was a step forward, but he knew only too well that the tools were useless without the education; without doctors who would not only dispense the pharmaceuticals, but were actually willing to talk to the young people. And boy could he talk!
It turned out there was little competition for the post, and he was offered a job within a week – in New York. His father had been supportive, but bereft. He must have heard the word "why?" more than a hundred times, and wished he had the courage to tell him. In the end the choice was simple – he could stay there and loathe himself for the rest of his life, or he could move away and at least feel like he was making amends for his own failings in the world; making it all mean something.
Leaving Crabapple Cove earned him the scorn of a lot of his old patients. First of all they were sad to see him go, and then that changed to the protestation that he was too good a doctor to lose to the big city. (That was a lie. He'd seen the complaints since he got back from Korea. His dad used to hide them under his in-tray until he could sugar the pill later on.) Then, when it became clear that honeyed words and fake praise weren't going to dissuade him, the real reason came to light: they didn't want him working on one of 'those' projects that encouraged women to engage in 'that sort of behaviour'.
Sitting on the train to Augusta, on his way to fly out, he'd watched the Cove shrink into the distance. All those years in Korea he'd thought of nothing but returning to his hometown, only to find that he'd come back too jaded, too deeply scarred, too broken to ever fit in again. He'd gotten into the habit of kicking back against authority while in the army, and it was a hard habit to break. It seemed once you started seeing injustice in the world, you started seeing it everywhere, and it wasn't in his nature not to fight that. It was true what Thomas Wolfe had said: "You Can't Go Home Again."
The work was difficult at times, and now he was standing on the other side of things, he couldn't help but feel a little guilty about all the times he'd guffawed through Henry's awkward VD seminars, but he held up well. He was funny and understanding, but honest – everything the kids said their parents and teachers were not, when it came to this topic – and he was met with quiet, respectful gratitude, although the authorities often despised him. He took to controversy with surprising ease. It had never occurred to him over all those years that what he really needed was another good battle – but he found one. Where there was sex, it turned out, there was politics, and the drug was met with fierce protestation in many States, as was any move to talk about sex to young couples. But the youngsters adored him, and as far as the politicians were concerned, he relished the opportunity to get back on his soap box – he thought he'd left it in Korea.
The ongoing conflict in Vietnam was another one of his passionate causes, and although none of his friends who had worked alongside him at the 4077th were surprised by his anti-war sentiments, nobody really understood why he became so agitated over the situation as the fighting continued into the seventies. He threw himself into rallies and protests, opposing the war itself and especially opposing the draft. Conscription had become a hot topic at the White House, and when it finally ended, with the last of the draftees being born no later than 1952, he had damned near collapsed in front of the television from sheer relief.
One person in his life wasn't remotely shocked by his political ardency. BJ had phoned him up after one particularly well-publicised debate: "Saw you on my TV last night. Looked like you were having fun."
"Oh, you know me," he'd replied with a laugh, "just indulging in my favourite hobby of shouting at Republicans."
And BJ would laugh back at him and mutter, "Hey, I voted for that guy."
"Oh, Charles would be so proud!"
He had another hobby, too. It was one he never explained to anyone, not even Sidney. Sometimes, when the sky was clear and the growing light pollution from the cities wasn't too bad, he would walk out onto the balcony or into the garden of whatever rented house, apartment or hotel room he was in at the time, and look up. As he gazed up at the stars, he wondered at how the sky rotated nightly across the earth, changing with the seasons, bringing new planets into view, new constellations, depending on the time and the date. Of his many regrets, he regretted never knowing the real names of the little clusters of light he had pointed out in the sky on that evening in Korea. He couldn't remember what they looked like, far too distracted as he was at the time by the light that glinted in his companion's eyes.
And so, looking up at the stars, he named each and every one of them, often sitting there for hours, counting and naming, his eyes darting across the blackness like he was reading some special heavenly code that only he could decipher. He named them all for her, for their child, and released them into the night, in the hope that somewhere in the world, she would be looking up too.
He never heard from her again. He wrote several letters to her at Langley Porter since leaving San Francisco. For over two years he received no reply, until one day, they were returned to him, every single one, with a note in unfamiliar writing declaring that Emily Winters was no longer a resident. Included in their number were the two he had sent in the February and March of '54. They were returned unopened. He'd cried for a day, drank heavily for another three, and then finally, realising it would do no good whatsoever, he'd burned the letters. He would never know if she'd posted them herself, or if her parents, or even her doctors, had taken it upon themselves to bundle up his mail and send it back, but in case it was the former, he stopped trying to contact her after that. He knew that whatever grief he carried within him, for her, it must be ten times worse. He didn't want to be a reminder of that. No matter what comfort it may have offered him, he couldn't take that at her expense. She had already lost too much, and he had no choice but to let her grieve in peace.
He carried his own reminder, though. The photograph gifted to him by the woman at Fairhaven – he never knew her name – lived in his wallet for decades. It had taken him a while to do it. At first he'd tried to shut it all out. He had told himself he had no right to carry around a photograph of someone else's baby. That was how he thought of his own flesh and blood – 'somebody else's baby' – because that seemed to be how the world viewed him. It wasn't until he moved away that he stopped thinking of him as somebody else's – at least in his own, private thoughts. When he was alone he'd take that picture out and look at it, and let himself think the words he would never have uttered in public: 'my son'.
Then he would tuck the photograph away again, furtively, feeling as if he'd done something wicked, and pour himself a gin and tonic to stop his hands from shaking.
But all the liquor in the world couldn't stop his hands from shaking now. He stared into his Martini, and for the fifth time told himself not to drink it. He'd promised himself he'd be sober for this.
Another glance at the clock. Another two minutes had gone by.
What a pathetic sight he must make, he thought: a grey, lonely, ghost of a man, old beyond his years, slouched over a Martini, suit jacket slung over an old sweater, hands shaking, staring at the clock like he'd been stood up.
Pushing the glass to one side, he turned his attentions once more to the collection of documents that sat on the bar in front of him. He must have read each one a dozen times already, from the formal, crisp, printed documents, boldly emblazoned with the symbol of the C.U.B. – Concerned United Birthparents – to the most recent additions to the file: the handwritten, shakily scrawled epistles that had landed on his doormat only a couple of weeks ago. Words that had made his entire world come skidding to a halt.
He'd dropped everything. He'd cancelled lectures and changed flights and apologised profusely to one particularly irate University professor who didn't have the faintest idea what could be so damned important that he couldn't make his lecture.
He hadn't told him, partly because it wasn't his business, and partly because even as he sat here, he couldn't quite believe it was happening. To speak of it out loud might make it shatter. The information – what little he had of it – matched up, but the words on the paper still felt like a dream. He kept expecting to wake up.
The clock had moved on by another minute, and a deep sense of dread started to settle in the pit of his stomach. He closed his eyes and tried to breathe it away. Sidney had taught him the technique to deal with panic attacks, and he used it now to deal with… whatever it was he was feeling at this moment.
When he opened his eyes again, the door was swaying. And then he was too, because he'd taken one look at the young man who had just walked in, and it was like looking into a mirror.
Or at least, it would have been, thirty-five years ago: jet black hair instead of grey, and distinctly fewer wrinkles. But instead of blue, his eyes were a rich, dark brown. 'Just like his mother's'.
He didn't know what to do with himself. Should he wave? Smile? Cross the room and introduce himself? Instead he just stared, overcome with the enormity of the moment.
Then he looked at him. He was staring right back. The young, startlingly familiar man – the one who was like his younger self come back to haunt him – actually looked, and he knew every emotion that was surging through his aging body was showing on his face, because he saw the recognition register in the younger man's eyes. And then he was walking towards him. He climbed down from his bar stool with a swiftness he didn't even know his legs were capable of anymore.
The young man approached him – he too had a letter from the C.U.B. clutched tightly in shaking fingers. He wetted his lips nervously and swallowed. "Benjamin Pierce?" he asked, his voice unsteady.
And Hawkeye's heart felt like it would burst out of his chest. "Yeah," he managed to respond. He didn't know what to do with himself, so he settled for holding out one trembling hand in greeting.
His son stared at him for a moment, and took the proffered hand, shaking it formally. Then, releasing it again, he threw his arms around him and hugged him. He hugged him so tight he could hardly breathe, but still he held on. He held on like his life depended on it, and he sobbed into that jet-black hair and he never wanted to let go. Twenty-nine wasted years were wrung out of him as he hugged his son to him. The skinny body in his arms shook, and he realised his boy was crying, too.
"It's okay," Hawkeye breathed. "It's okay."
"I can't believe you're here!"
The tearful words in his ear awoke something deeply paternal in him, and Hawkeye clutched his son to his chest, just as he had clutched that tiny photograph he'd been given all those years ago. "I'm here," he said gently. "I'm here. I'm not going anywhere."
They must have stood like that for several minutes, gaining them some very curious looks from other customers, but neither one cared. Hawkeye felt as if a little piece of himself that had been missing for three decades had finally been slotted back into place. He was whole again. As he cradled his son in his arms, dried his tears, kissed his forehead and clutched at his hands – long fingers, surgeon's hands, just like his dad's – Hawkeye offered up a silent prayer to the night sky. 'I found our boy, Emily. I found him.'
And, outside, as tiny flakes of shining white began to fall on the frozen streets, the stars returned to earth.
Appendix
'The girls who went away were told by family members, social services, agencies and clergy that relinquishing their child for adoption was the only acceptable option. It would preserve their reputation and save both mother and child from a lifetime of shame. Often it was clear to everyone, except the expectant mother, that adoption was the answer. Many of these girls, even those in their twenties, had no other option than to go along with their families to avoid being permanently ostracized. For them there was generally little or no discussion before their parents sent them away. Those who went to maternity homes to wait out their pregnancies received little or no counselling and were totally unprepared for childbirth or relinquishment. They were simply told they must surrender their child, keep the secret, move on, and forget. Though moving on and forgetting proved impossible, many women were shamed into keeping their secret.'
- Ann Fessler, 'The Girls Who Went Away'
