Sport Of The Gods

    Like a sailboat tacking toward a harbour, my fingertip strayed through Texas, Arizona, California, and Colorado, before stopping on a resonant name.  "Here," I said.  "Here is where I want to go."
     A week later, in an air-conditioned taxi heading for Moisant Airport, I confessed to last minute misgivings.
     She stared out the window at the delta flatlands on which an uneven crop of factories, power poles, and eucalyptus, gasped under a sticky sun.  "Ain't nobody's life but your own," she said, implying that she still didn't agree with my decision.
     "You got in your mind what you'll do when you get there?" she asked, being an habitual practitioner of foresight, never my strongest suit.
     A whiff of sulphur dioxide penetrated the taxi's defences and provoked a familiar nausea that I willed down with worse thoughts.  "I imagine calling them foul names," I said, "or I imagine them dead.  But if they are kicking around somewhere, there's just one question I want answered, and that's    Why?"
    An incoming plane roared overhead and I instinctively looked up to see if it was Southwest Airlines, then rummaged in my bag to check my ticket.
    "Maybe you think your life's made you tough," she slipped into her mothering tone, "but I know different.  There's always room for a fever wind to sneak in under the door."  She was the kind of person who thought every burned out satellite would land on her house.
     "You worry too much," I said.
     "Somebody's got to."  She touched my elbow.  "But you remember now, when you get back I'll be here to pick up the pieces."
     "Stop it or you'll make me cry," I teased, though I was secretly grateful for the reassurance.
     "If you did them tears wouldn't be your last, that's for sure."  She pretended to be annoyed and glared at the red doors of a delivery truck in front of us.
     On the plane I searched out a window seat, hoping the view would distract me from my destination.  All of the logical questions had been asked.  Why did I need to know who my parents were?  What could they teach me about myself?  In spite of discouraging responses, I always came back to a vague unfulfilled need, which I could no longer ignore.  Blood had to be satisfied.
     Landing too late for official inquiries, I mono-syllabled my way through an ex-rodeo driver taxi ride from the airport to the Sixty Six Motel.  There, in the bathroom, I squeezed toothpaste onto my brush, but temporarily paralyzed like a deer caught in car headlights, held it under the tap until the blob of blue disappeared down the drain.  Removing my clothes, I stepped into the tub, turned on the hot water and backed up to let the shower splash at my feet.  As it warmed, I walked into the downpour, stopping only when a lava rain obliterated everything but the trickles of cooling rivulets that cascaded down my skin.  Like meat on a spit, I turned to let the water baste me until I was warmed to the bone.  Steam filled the room and was soon so thick that I couldn't breathe.  In a panic I stumbled out of the bathtub and ran across the coarse motel carpet to the picture window.  Gasping for air, I leaned my forehead against the cold glass and wept childish tears of self-pity.
      The man in the state records office peered over his half frame glasses.  "You might want to write some of this down," he said.
     "Oh?  Is there a lot?"
     "It's simply a precaution.  You might forget and I'd have to break into the computer again."
     "Forget?  This is me we're talking about."
     "Trust me," he said.  "Write.  I've done this before.  Okay.  You were born here, in St. Francis Hospital on August 8th, 1985, and 2:23 in the morning.  That makes you twenty two and a Leo."
     "If you say so.  I thought I was twenty one and a Scorpio.  Have you got any more?"
     "Certainly.  Mother's name, Vanessa Diane Smith.  Father not named."
     "Why not?"
     "Oh...uh...if the mother doesn't want to...that is if she's...embarrassed.  You know what I mean?"
     "Yeah.  So I'm a bastard.  What else?"
     "Just a note that the child was to be placed for adoption.  Were you?"  He looked at me with a mixture of sympathy and disbelief.
     "Is that it?"
     He nodded.
     "Great.  With a handle like Smith, I shouldn't have a problem finding my parents."
     "You could try ACAPS," he offered.   "That's a private agency who track down adoptive children and parents."
     Through the agency I narrowed the Smiths down to ten.  After several `never heard of them' calls and some who claimed to have already met their children, I was left with three possibilities, which forced me in the direction of open doors.  I discovered that one lived in Los Angeles, one turned out to have died, and the third was close mouthed and suspicious, but on the pretext of compiling a family tree, I arranged to meet her for an interview.
     At the chosen restaurant, I realized I hadn't asked for a description, so was left standing in the door like a jilted blind date, gaping around the room for someone near the correct age.  No one fit the image of my mother, so I sat at a table and ordered a coffee.   As if from nowhere a shadow appeared over me and a timid voice said, "Excuse me, but I was supposed to meet someone, and I was wondering...?"
     My coffee halted in midair, I looked up open-mouthed, and was disappointed.  The woman who stood holding her handbag in front of her as if she wished to disappear behind it, had dark hair, and a sharp nose; nothing like my features.  Crestfallen, I decided to proceed with the questioning for the sake of politeness.
     "I'm sorry," I recovered.  "You must be looking for me.  Can I offer you something?  Would you like a coffee?"  I gestured toward my own.
     The woman sat opposite me and with a shy glance asked, "Would you mind if I had a drink?  Rye and ginger?"
      After ordering, I placed a pen and note pad on the table as if I were a secretary at a business meeting.   "I explained on the telephone about the Smith family tree," I said, "and I thought you might help me fill in a few blanks."
     The woman stirred her drink and her eyes skittered sideways.  She wore an expensive but slightly out of date suit, her straight hair was cut in a flattering blunt fashion, and her face was tanned to a leathery brown.  She had high, haughty, almost Indian cheekbones.
     "Are you married?" I asked.
     "Divorced."
     "Your married name is Smith?"
     "No.  It was Hodges, but I've gone back to Smith."
     "Do you have children?"
     "Three."
     "And how old are they?"
     I wrote conscientiously on my note pad, nineteen, eighteen, and fourteen.  Even with the dissimilarity in looks it was possible that a twenty two year old could have been born out of wedlock, yet I knew this woman was not my mother.
     "When were you married?" I asked, trying to rule out my own conception.
     "January 10, 1986."
     It could still be her.  "And when did you meet your husband?" I asked.
     She looked puzzled at the relevance of the question and then shrugged.  "We knew each other for a long time before we were married."
     When I asked if she had any brothers or sisters, she studied me longer than it should take to answer the obvious.
     "A brother," she paused.  "And...uh...I had a sister.  My brother's in a home now, and she died some years ago."
     "Your sister, was she older or younger than you?"
     "Older?"  Again she paused and then decided on a yes.
     "Was she married?"
     "Uh...she was a bit wild.  Never settled down you know.  Never found the right man as they say."
     "Did she have any children?"
     "I've just told you," the woman spoke through tight lips that had become white around the edges.
     "I'm sorry to upset you," I said.  "If there's some skeleton in the closet it doesn't have to go down in the family history."
     "Then why are you asking?"  She took a large drink of her whisky.
     "I should explain."  I started a doodle of triangles on my note pad.  "Part of the reason I'm doing this is because I was...was adopted at birth and have only just found out my last name."
     The woman leaned forward and said in a harsh whisper, "What do you want from me?"
     I was taken aback and took a deep breath.  "Actually," I said, "I'd like to meet my mother and father.  That's why I asked about your sister.  If she did have a child it might be me."
     "Oh."  The woman crossed her arms and there was a long silence as she stared at me, then at something over my shoulder, then down at her lap.  "Would you mind if I smoked?" she asked, and fumbled in her handbag for a package of Camels and a slim gold lighter.  After the first inhalation she sighed and said, "Let me think."  Her hand trembled as she raised the cigarette.  "I suppose it's possible," she began.  "I should remember, but she might have tried to hide it.  Yes, I do recall her looking a bit large at one time about...when would it be?"
     "1985?"
     "Maybe.  There was no man around that we knew of, at least not a steady one, and if she had a child she certainly never mentioned it."
     "What was your sister's name?"   I didn't want to hear the answer.
     "Vanessa," the woman said.
     "Oh Christ."  I put my hand over my eyes.  "She must have been the one.  She was my mother."  I leaned back in my chair and the world stopped revolving for just a moment.  The revelation was expected but no less shocking.  "I guess that's it then."
     I was surprised I could speak; my voice sounded like it came from somebody else.  "At least I know now.  But how did she die?"
    "She drank," the woman said quietly.  "There was a fire, an accident."
    "Oh my God.  How could she?  I feel like I've died before I was born.  Oh.  So.  I suppose it doesn't make any difference.  I never had a mother anyway."
    "I thought you were adopted," the woman said.  "Weren't you with a good family?"
    "Let's just say it was not the ideal upbringing.  To put it bluntly it was hell on earth."
    Ice cubes rattled in her glass and her suntan turned a jaundiced yellow.  "You've come through it all right.  You seem like a sensible person."
    "I'm alive if that's what you mean.  I'm not crazy but that's only a matter of appearance.  At my age the scars don't show.  Why did she have to die before I found her?  Damn her.  She should know what she did to me."
    The woman bit her lip.
    "She stole my childhood from me.  I never had the chance to be innocent.  She wasn't there all the times I cried myself to sleep with no one to hold me."
    The woman snatched  her cigarettes and lighter from the table.  "I'm sorry," she said.  "I have to go."      She stood up and knocked over her glass.  Ignoring the surrounding stares, she hurried out of the restaurant while I watched a melting ice cube skate across the table in its own pool of water until it fell and smashed on the terrazzo floor.