Morrow fumbles around in her bag for a moment before extracting a small box from it. She holds it up. “I have these cards we could use,” she says. “They’re conversation cards.” She pulls a face. “They were meant for my daughter. An attempt to get her to talk to me. She’s a teenager, so...” Her voice trails off as she looks down at the box. “Anyway, she took one look at the box and said it was a lame idea.” Morrow turns the box over and studies the back of it. She shrugs and looks up. “They’ve never even been opened.”
“But she came here,” Blythe says. “She came to the window.” Blythe thinks of her mother, wondering if she stayed or left after Blythe never came back from the post office, if she even knows what’s happening. She wishes her mother had come to the post office window and pounded on it, had called her name.
“That’s true,” says Morrow. “She did. It surprised me, her coming here.” She looks toward the window. “I wonder if she’s still out there or if they made her leave.”
The other women shrug. No one in the room knows what is going on out there. As the day has dragged on, they’ve looked out the windows less and less. Seeing the free world is its own kind of torture. Blythe lets herself imagine walking out of here. She might just fall to her knees and kiss the parking lot asphalt when she does.
“She looks like you,” Nadine speaks up. Her voice is ragged and hoarse from all her yelling.
“Oh,” says Morrow, sitting up a little taller. “You think so?”
“Yeah, I mean, what I saw of her, she did.”
Morrow gives them an odd smile. “Well, that’s nice to hear, considering she’s adopted.”
“Oh, I had no idea,” says Nadine. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be sorry,” says Morrow. The odd smile on her face is replaced by a genuine one. “I like hearing it, actually. There’ve been so many times I’ve studied her face, trying to find something of me in there, even though I know it’s genetically impossible.” She pauses. “Genetics,” she says, wistful. “That’s actually the reason I came in here today.”
“Genetics?” asks Blythe.
Morrow runs her hand halfway down her ponytail, then stops and rummages in her tote. She produces the package she’s checked on numerous times since she entered the post office. “This,” she says, as if that is an explanation. She chuckles at the blank stares looking back at her. “Sorry. I’m not making any sense.” She gives the padded envelope a little shake. “It’s a DNA test. My daughter’s DNA test. She wants to find her biological mother. Or, as she says, her ‘real’ mom. Her real mom who will, no doubt, let her get a tattoo.”
“A... tattoo?” asks Blythe.
Morrow makes a scoffing noise. “My husband and I made a rule a long time ago. We had a friend who got a tattoo as a teenager, and later in life she regretted it, thought it looked childish and unprofessional. We watched her go through a pretty long, pretty painful process to have it removed. It led us to make the rule that our kids weren’t allowed to get a tattoo till they have graduated from college to, you know, have more time for their brains to develop.”
Morrow thinks about this before she adds, “We made the stakes pretty high. If they get a tattoo before they graduate from college, we stop paying for college.” She shrugs, then continues. “Ourson never questioned it. Even now that he’s an adult, he’s said he’s glad we made him really think about the permanence of the decision the way we did.”
She shakes her head. “And then our daughter comes along, and getting a tattoo is the only thing she seems to want in life. She brings it up all the time, thinks we’re so backward and uptight. All her friends are doing it, and why can’t she? She doesn’t get the part where we are just trying to think about her, for her own good.”
She looks down at the envelope she is holding, squinting at the address printed on the front. “We’ve been fighting about it a lot lately. We fought about it last night. And later, when I went up to check on her before bed, I found her with the DNA test. She freaked out and chased me out of the room, and, well, we haven’t really talked about it since. I tried to get her to talk to me this morning, but she just stormed out of the house and left for school.”
“And you’re sure she was taking the DNA test so she can find her biological mother?” Sylvie asks the question gently, her voice softer than usual.
Morrow purses her lips. “Maybe not her mom specifically. We have talked about it in the past, submitting her DNA to one of those genealogical sites. You know, just to see if she has any blood relatives out there. I understand the curiosity, the wanting to know where she came from. I never stood in the way of that. But I thought it was something we’d do together, that we’d talk about it before she did it, at least.”
“I know where I came from,” Blythe quips. “And that doesn’t necessarily make things better.” The others chuckle and nod their agreement.
Morrow looks down at her lap, rubs her palms along her thighs. “But this whole thing with her desperately wanting a tattoo andme holding out has driven us apart. We used to be so close. We joked that she was my broke best friend. But then we moved here and she just withdrew. I thought she’d come around eventually. But it’s her senior year. In the fall she goes to college and...” She drops the envelope back inside the tote. “I fear I’m losing her. And then I saw her with that test last night, and it was like confirmation that she’d rather have any other mother than me.”
Nadine speaks up with confusion in her voice. “But then you were going to mail the test?”
Morrow nods. “After she left for school this morning, I thought about it—about what I could do to make things right. So I went up to her room and found the test. She’d thrown it in the trash, but I was able to pull everything together and get it ready to send off. I sat around all morning debating about whether I could go through with it. I mean, this is a Pandora’s box I can’t close once it’s opened. Who knows what will come from it? Maybe she will find her bio mom. Maybe she will love her more and I will lose her for real. But the more I thought about it, the more I knew that—it’s kind of like the tattoo—denying her this only makes it more enticing. And so, before I could change my mind, I got dressed and came here.” Morrow thinks about being pulled over on the way there, but she leaves that part out. Still, the wordinvalidhovers in her mind.
Sylvie’s head is nodding in approval. “I think you’re doing the right thing,” she says. Blythe and Nadine make affirming noises. “I think it’s a good way to tell her you’re there for her, no matter what.”
“I hope so,” says Morrow.
“I mean, she came here. She’s clearly worried about you. She snuck past the cops and took a big risk to try to get to you. I don’t think that’s someone you’re in danger of losing,” says Blythe.
“I think it’s just a kid trying to find her own way,” Nadineadds. She looks around the room before looking back at the other women. “It’s hard enough to find your way as an adult.”
They all nod in solidarity, then silence falls for a moment until Sylvie says, “I almost got a tattoo when I turned fifty. My husband called it my midlife almost crisis.”
“He didn’t want you to do it?”
Sylvie thinks about her answer before speaking. “He wouldn’t have forbidden it if I’d pushed to do it, but no, he preferred I didn’t.” She pauses again, then adds, “I still kind of wish I had. 'Course I’m too old now.”
