Brooke (Orphans 3)

"I think I can cut to the chase," he said, "and I know how eager you people are to find proper homes for these children. We're on the same side," he added with a smile, and I suddenly realized that he could be very slick when he wanted to be.

Mrs. Talbot stiffened. "We're not taking sides, Mr. Thompson. We're merely following procedures."

"Precisely," he said. "May I use your phone?"

"Very well," she said. "Go ahead."

"Thank you."

Mrs. Talbot stepped back, and Peter went into her inner office.

"I'm so excited about you," Pamela told me while Peter was in the office on the phone. "You take good care of your teeth, I see."

"I brush them twice a day," I said. I didn't think I was doing anything special.

"Some people just have naturally good teeth," she told Mrs. Talbot, whose teeth were somewhat crooked and gray. "I always had good teeth. Your teeth and your smile are your trademark," she recited. "Don't ever neglect them," she warned. "Don't ever neglect anything, your hair, your skin, your hands. How old do you think I am? Go on, take a guess."

Again, I looked to Mrs. Talbot for help, but she simply looked toward the window and tapped her fingers on the table in the conference room.

"Twenty-five," I said.

"There, you see? Twenty-five. I happen to be thirty-two years old. I wouldn't tell everyone that, of course, but I wanted to make a point."

She looked at Mrs. Talbot.

"And what point would that be, Mrs. Thompson?" Mrs. Talbot asked.

"What point? Why, simply that you don't have to grow old before your time if you take good care of yourself. Do you sing or dance or do anything creative, Brooke?" she asked me.

"No," I answered hesitantly. I wondered if I should make something up.

"She happens to be the best female athlete at the orphanage, and I dare say, she's tops at her school," Mrs. Talbot bragged.

"Athlete?" Pamela laughed. "This girl is not going to be some athlete hidden on the back pages of sports magazines. She's going to be on the cover of fashion magazines. Look at that face, those features, the perfection. If I had given birth to a daughter, Brooke, she would look exactly like you. Peter?" she said when he appeared. He smiled.

"There's someone on the phone waiting to speak with you, Mrs. Talbot," he said, and winked at Pamela.

She put her hand on my shoulder and pulled me closer to her. "Darling, Brooke," she cried, "you're coming home with us."

When you're brought up in an institutional world, full of bureaucracy, you can't help but be very impressed by people who have the power to snap their fingers and get what they want. It's exciting. It's as if you're suddenly whisked away on a magic carpet and the world that you thought was reserved only for the lucky chosen few will now be yours, too.

Who would blame me for rushing into their arms?

1 A Whole New Ball Game

In my most secret dreams, the sort you keep buried under your pillow and hope to find waiting in the darkness for you as soon as you close your eyes, I saw my real mother coming to the orphanage, and she was nothing like the Thompsons. I don't mean to say that my mother wasn't beautiful, too, wasn't just as beautiful as Pamela, because she was. And in my dream she never looked any older than Pamela, either.

The mother in my dreams really had my color hair and my eyes. She was, I suppose, what I thought I would look like when I grew up. She was beautiful inside and out and was especially good at making people smile. The moment sad people saw her, they forgot their unhappiness. With my mother beside me, I, too, would forget what it was like to be unhappy.

In my dream, she always picked me out from the other orphans immediately, and when I looked at her standing there in the doorway, I knew instantly who she was. She held her arms open, and I ran to them. She covered my face with kisses and mumbled a string of apologies. I didn't care about apologies. I was too happy.

"I'll just be a few minutes," she would tell me and go into the administrative offices to sign all the papers. Before I knew it, I would be walking out of the orphanage, holding her hand, getting into her car, and driving off with her to start my new life. We would have so much to say, so many things to catch up on, that both of us would babble incessantly right up to the moment she put me to bed with a kiss and a promise to be there for me always.

Of course, it was just a dream, and s

he never came. I never talked about her, nor did I ever ask anyone at the orphanage any questions about her. All I knew was she had left me because she was too young to take care of me, but in the deepest places in my heart, I couldn't help but harbor the hope that she had always planned to come back for me when she was old enough to take care of me. Surely, she woke many nights as I did and lay there wondering about me, wondering what I looked like, if I was lonely or afraid.

We orphans didn't go to very many places other than to school, but once in a while there was a school field trip to New York City to go to a museum, an exhibition, or a show. Whenever we entered the city, I pressed my face to the bus window and studied the people who hurried up and down the sidewalks, hoping to catch sight of a young woman who could be my mother. I knew had as much chance of doing that as I had of winning the lottery, but it was a secret wish, and after all, wishes and dreams were really what nourished us orphans the most. Without them, we would truly be the lost and forgotten.