Girls in Trouble (22 page)

They were watching her, and she knew it.

Her parents had stopped lecturing her. Finally. They used quiet, calm voices, which seemed worse, more ominous, than the harsh, angry tones they had used when they had first picked her up at the police station, the two of them rushing in like a winter storm.

There in that awful station, no one had to tell her then how alone she was. Eva and George and the baby had already left the station. She could feel it. By then, Sara couldn’t have cried even if she had wanted to. She couldn’t move from the hard wooden bench, even though her muscles ached. She had botched everything. She hadn’t been able to get a job or a place to stay. She hadn’t had enough money. She hadn’t been able to save her own baby. That woman from the bus had cursed her, spitting out that Sara was a
kid,
a greenhorn who didn’t have a clue how to act like an adult, and every time Sara remembered it, she knew that woman was right. All her chances were over, and Sara felt something breaking apart inside of her.

“What were you thinking? How could you do this?” her parents kept asking her.

“You think Harvard wants felons?” Abby said. “You think Yale does? You can’t see them. You can’t even go near them. You could be arrested, do you understand?”

They rode home in silence. Sara stared out the window, and at every turn she imagined how things could have turned out differently. If she had worn a dress. If she hadn’t bought peanut butter. If she hadn’t been a kid.

Abby twisted around to look at Sara. “Everything’s going to be different now,” Abby said quietly, and all those bright its Sara had been thinking fluttered away on wings.

All that week, Abby took off work and stayed at home, going out only to bring Sara’s bike back. Every time she looked at Sara, her face was so sad, Sara wanted to die, but Abby didn’t lecture her. She made mac and cheese that Sara barely picked at, and once she knocked on Sara’s door. “I’m watching a wonderful old Bette Davis movie,” Abby said. “Come watch it with me.”

They both curled on the couch in the den, watching Bette’s evil sister (who was really Bette in a dual role) steal the man she loved away from her. At the end, when the good Bette got her man back, Abby swiped a finger across her eyes. “Well,” Abby said. “That was nice. I like a movie where everything turns out all right in the end.”

“Her sister still drowned,” Sara pointed out, but Abby waved a hand.

“She was evil. She had to drown to give her sister the happy life she deserved,” Abby said. “Sometimes sacrifices are called for.”

Sara picked at a tuft on one of the couch pillows. Abby pushed Sara’s hands away.

“Love conquered all,” Abby said, “everyone lived and learned.”

Afternoons, Sara watched old movies with her mother, but mostly, she stayed in her room, reading.
Madame Bovary. Anna Karenina.
Women with ruined lives. Books she hoped might make her own plight seem less horrible to her, but as she got to the ends, she felt panicked. There was no escape for these women. Instead, there was a kiss of poison. Instead, there was a final leap in front of a train. Sara flung the books down.

She didn’t eat, didn’t even want to shower.
“You’ll always be in our life,”
Eva and George had told her, and now they had a restraining order. At night, she couldn’t sleep. She sat up and tried to read, but the words blurred on the page. One night, she heard noises in the house and she got up. Abby and Jack kept their bedroom door closed, but tonight it was open. The light was on. She crept by the room, leaning against the wall.

Abby was sitting up in bed, crying quietly. Jack, in his robe, was sitting beside her, rubbing her back, quietly talking to her. Sara tried to listen, moving a bit closer, and then she saw that Jack had his arms about Abby and was stroking her hair back, behind her ears. And then Abby lay down, and Jack covered her with the blanket, murmuring something so soft it was almost a lullaby. Then Jack walked toward the door, and shut it, and for a moment Sara saw his face, and he looked so sorrowful that she drew back.

In the morning, she came down to breakfast, not knowing what to expect. But there was Abby, already dressed, setting out vitamins for everyone, fixing breakfast. There was Jack, downing juice. “Did you sleep okay?” Abby asked cheerfully.

“Sort of.” Sara hesitated. “Mom, I heard you crying last night.”

Abby pulled at her collar. “Just tension. Don’t they say it’s healing to have a good cry? You ought to know that from all those
Psychology Todays
you used to love.”

“No, you were really crying,” Sara said.

“It’s nothing for you to worry about—” Jack said.

“It’s a hard time,” Abby said quietly. “But it’ll get better.”

Sara did as Abby asked. She didn’t try to call anymore, didn’t try to see Eva or George or the baby, but it wasn’t because she didn’t want to. The truth was she was afraid, and not just about going to jail. What if she called and they hung up on her? What if she went by the house and they slammed the door on her? They couldn’t shut her out from her own child, could they?
“Hope was the thing with feathers,”
‘Emily Dickinson said, and now Sara could feel those wings beating inside of her. If she couldn’t have custody of her child, she could still see her, even if it was a supervised visit. And she could still see Eva and George.

Eva was sorting laundry, hoping the mindless work might soothe her, but instead, her nerves frayed even more. This was insane. She had to do something. Striding to the kitchen, she picked up the phone, and though she had promised herself she wouldn’t, she called the adoption agency again. “Did you find the father? Did he sign?” Eva asked.

“We don’t have the adoption surrender yet,” Margaret admitted.

“What if you can’t find him?”

“The courts can terminate his rights. But even after that, they’ll still try to let him know, usually with one of those legal listings at the back of some newspapers.”

“The back of the paper! Nobody reads those!” Eva said.

“Well, don’t be so fast to think that’s a good thing. It’s a doorway for the father to enter later. He can say he didn’t read the listing, he didn’t know about any of it, that he wasn’t being neglectful. And then you could still lose her, because no matter what, the courts always favor the biological parents.”

“This can’t be true all the time.”

“A lot of adoptive parents consider offering an open adoption to the birth father. It’s worth it rather than risking losing a child.”

“Forget it. Absolutely not,” Eva said. “Two people to worry about instead of one!”

“We’ll find him. His rights will get terminated. You just enjoy your baby.”

But Eva couldn’t help worrying. She couldn’t risk the adoption not being legal. Not with the way things had been going. She hung up the phone and then she did a truly stupid thing. She got out the phone book and looked up Danny’s last name in the phone book and then dialed. Maybe he had come home. Maybe his mother knew where he was.

“Yes?” A man’s voice.

“Is this Dannv Slade?”

There was a clip of silence. “No, it’s not. How can I help you?”

“Is Mrs. Slade there?”

“Hang on.”

The phone clattered and then a woman’s voice answered, dry with fatigue. “Yes?” she said.

“Mrs. Slade.” Eva introduced herself casually, as if she were about to try and sell Frances some magazine subscriptions. “I’m looking for Danny. I was just checking whether he was aware that he needed to sign papers saying he knew about the adoption.”

“Who do you think you are calling me?” said Mrs. Slade.

“I’m just looking out for everybody’s best interests,” Eva said.

“He doesn’t want a baby. He’s a baby himself. I already told the agency this.”

“But to avoid any problems, he needs to sign the papers. Do you know where he is?” She hated the desperate way she sounded.

“My Danny doesn’t want anything to do with that baby or that girl.”

“Where is he?”

Frances cleared her throat. “Those papers will be signed. And you don’t need to call here again. Ever.”

Two days later, Margaret at the agency called. “The father signed the papers!” she said, exultant. “We’re on our way!”

Eva fit her fingers into the rungs on the dial pad. “He did? You’re sure?”

“Yup. The server told me. Signed without a fuss. The server caught him just as he was on his way out to catch a plane. Beefy blondish guy. The
mother was there, too. And the server told me he was asking all sorts of questions about what would happen if he didn’t show up at the hearing. That’s usually a sign that the father isn’t going to show, which is very good for us. The courts take no-show to mean no interest.”

Eva’s fingers released from the dial pad. One of the numbers moved a little and for a moment she heard the dial. “So I can stop worrying, right?”

For now.

Eva hung up the phone. She should be thrilled, but the more she thought about it, the more unsettled she became, like she was a glass of champagne and every bubble was going flat. Beefy and blondish guy, Margaret had said. Eva went to the closet where the big blue box was, filled with the initial correspondence she had had with Sara. She never even looked at it anymore. Opening it, she riffled through the contents. Letters. Photos. A notebook she opened that seemed to be a baby journal Sara had started. It all seemed like such a long time ago. And then Eva pulled up a photo of Danny, the one she had been looking for, and she didn’t have to study it very hard to see that Danny’s hair was dark like the richest milk chocolate, that he was thin as a whippet. Her pulse speeded up. She rifled through the pictures, digging deep to the bottom of the box. And then she pulled out another photo. Danny again, standing with one arm slung about an older woman in a bright orange dress, and on the other side of her, his arm around her, too, was a boy two heads taller than either one of them. A big boy. A blond.
Oh Jesus. Danny had a brother.

Reeling, Eva reached for the phone to call George. When the hygienist said he was busy, Eva said she didn’t care. “Get him,” she ordered, and when George got on the phone, she talked so fast, she was out of breath.

“I don’t think Danny signed,” she said. “I think his brother answered when I called the house—”

“Eva, you didn’t—tell me you didn’t.”

“I never spoke to Danny. His mother never told me where he was. Or even if he was here in town.”

“Maybe he was out. Maybe she didn’t want him talking to you. You don’t know for sure Danny didn’t sign. The server could have confused him with someone else he served that day. And if something was wrong, it would be the family that was in error. Not us. And there’s still the hearing.
If he didn’t sign, let him show up. We won’t lose her,” George said quietly. “I won’t let that happen.”

The clock in the kitchen ticked loudly. Outside, Eva heard a squeal of tires.

“We won’t lose Anne,” George repeated. “The papers are signed.”

One night, on the sixth day Sara had been at home, Abby and Jack came into her room and sat on her bed and for the first time, seeing the expressions on their faces, she felt afraid. She sat up, suddenly dizzy. Her fingers pleated the chenille spread on her bed.

Alarmed, she imagined all sorts of terrible things. She had to go to prison. Or they were sending her away, to a boarding school, or to live with some relative she had never met before. She could bear anything as long as they told her she could see Anne again.

And then Abby suddenly gave a long, slow smile. Jack’s expression lightened. Her parents looked at each other and then back at her.

“The charges were dropped, honey,” Abby said.

“They dropped them? Really?” Sara felt the colors in the room growing lighter.

“But not the restraining order,” Abby said. “You aren’t to go see them. You aren’t to go anywhere near them. Do you understand?”

Sara was motionless. “For now,” Sara said.

“No, not for now. From now on.”

“No.” Sara shook her head. “They’re just mad still. That’s all. They just need more time. They’ll see me, we’ll talk. I’ll—I’ll apologize. I’ll do anything.” She stood up.

“Sara,” said Jack. “Do you understand what you did, how terrible it was, how lucky you are that they aren’t pressing charges against you? If you call them now, if you go to see them, you could be in trouble again. Big trouble. You could be arrested.”

She nodded. Her mouth felt suddenly dry, as if she had swallowed construction paper.

“Well, I can see them at the adoption hearing then,” Sara said, glancing at the kitchen calendar. “That’s just two more days.”

“I wouldn’t think of going,” Abby said sharply.

“But that’s different! I have a right to go to that. Margaret told me I could go.”

“Oh, honey, but why would you even want to?” Jack said.

“It’s still my baby. Even if I don’t get to raise her.”

“Sara. Let’s just say it’s the end of a bad time,” Jack said, patting her shoulder awkwardly. “Now it’s time for everyone to get on with their lives. Think about college. Think about all the wonderful things that can happen for you.”

“You can go back to school, you can just forget this all happened. This wasn’t in the papers. No one need even know,” Abby said.

“I know that it happened,” Sara said.

“Now,” Jack said. “What do you say this grounding is over and we all go out to dinner? I’d love to try that new Thai place.”

“Oh, me, too!” Abby’s voice was bright.

“I’m not hungry,” Sara said.

Two days later, the day of the court hearing, Sara got up early. She put on the blue cashmere sweater Abby had bought her for college interviews. She slid on a dark skirt and pinned her hair back with Danny’s barrette. When she came downstairs, Abby was in jeans, drinking coffee with Jack, and she started when she saw Sara.

“Please tell me you’re not dressed up for the reason I think,” Abby said quietly.

Sara drew herself up. She knew they would give her a hard time. “I have a right to be there,” she said quietly.

“No. You don’t. You can’t go,” Abby said. “I know you want to, but you’re in trouble. And if you go, you could be in more trouble. No one wants you there.”