Girls in Trouble (6 page)

“Look at this one,” Harry said. He rubbed two fingers in front of the baby’s face, making a noise like someone calling a pet.
“Chi-chi-chi,”
he said.

“Dad,” George said. “She’s a baby, not a bird.” His father gave a goofy grin, raised his hands, and then turned and headed for the Thai marinated chicken wings.

“My father’s going to be a help,” said George dryly, watching his father pile his plate.

“Well, thank goodness for friends,” Eva said. Watching George’s father made her miss her own parents, dead ten years now. She smoothed down the yellow dress Anne wore. How her parents would have loved all this. Well, she thought, they say you either want to give or protect your
child from the kind of childhood you yourself had had, and Eva wanted to give Anne a childhood like her own. Happy. Filled with love.

“Eva! You look beautiful!” Nora, their next-door neighbor touched Eva’s arm. “Eva!” someone else called and Eva turned to show off Anne.

They had planned to just have the party for a few hours, had even printed the times out on the invitations, but two hours passed and then three, and by six, Eva’s eyes weren’t focusing. Her house was noisy and confused, and her back and feet hurt. She was sure that since she hadn’t carried the baby herself, she wouldn’t need rest, wouldn’t feel as overwhelmed, but to her surprise she found herself scheming about how fast she could politely shoo everyone away, thinking how much she wanted to get back into her nightgown and just be alone with the baby and with George.

The doorbell rang. Who would be coming this late? “Ai-yi-yi,” Eva said.

“I’ll get it,” George said, his smile broadening. He stepped outside to welcome people in, the pink balloons he had tied to the railing dancing around him.

People crowded around Anne, which worried Eva. She watched for runny noses, for coughs, for people getting too close. The baby didn’t seem to mind. Anne was placid and quiet, lying in a bassinet in the living room. She moved her fingers, like baby Braille.

“I have to hold this dumpling!” a neighbor said, reaching for Anne.

“Wash your hands,” Eva ordered. The neighbor rolled her eyes, but Eva didn’t care.

Eva lifted Anne up and felt the baby’s wet diaper against her arm, looked up at her friend Christine and laughed. “Changing time. Again. Like a little leaky faucet.”

“Let me take care of that diaper,” Christine said.

“You already did two,” Eva said. “I’ve been waiting a long time for diapers.” She carried Anne away with a flourish. She made her smile bright.

But as soon as she brought Anne into the other room and set her on the white changing table, her confidence faded. The baby kicked and flailed her arms and moved so much Eva was afraid she might fall off the table. “Stop, stop,” Eva tried to soothe, grabbing a diaper, keeping one
hand on Anne who gazed solemnly up at her. Babies were supposed to have blue eyes, like chips of sky, but Anne’s eyes were this eerie grey. Her hair was this rusty color. Sara’s hair. Looking away, Eva got busy searching for the wipes.

The phone rang. “George!” she called, and the phone rang again, and she lifted Anne up and went into the other room, plucking up the receiver.

“Eva, it’s Sara.” Sara called every day, and usually Eva was happy to talk. All she had to do was look at Sara, and she’d want to hug the girl and take care of her. But now, the baby was squirming, and she could hear a guest calling for her. “The house is filled with company,” Eva said. She thought suddenly of the letter she had first written Sara.
“There’s nothing we like better than to be surrounded by people!”
Ha, she thought.

“Company? What company?” Sara said.

“Just friends. Relatives. You know.” Anne squirmed harder. “Oh, I’ve got to go—”

“Wait—” said Sara.

“I’ll talk to you later,” Eva promised, “I want to talk to you—” and then Anne suddenly peed down the side of Eva’s dress and Eva had to hang up.

She changed Anne first, going back into her room, pulling out a clean diaper. She held both of Anne’s legs up and gently hoisted her up, tugging the diaper under Anne’s bottom, shutting it with Velcro. Anne blew a spit bubble and batted her hands.

“Now me,” Eva said, and went to change her dress, laying the baby in the center of her bed where she could keep an eye on her.

When the baby had first been placed into her arms, Eva had wanted her so much, she was afraid if she moved too quickly, the babv might disappear. She was used to the waiting, the hungriness of her want, but the having was something different, something almost equally terrifying, because now she knew just what she might lose.

All that first night they had brought Anne home, she and George hadn’t been able to sleep. George had hooked up a monitor so they could hear any sound from the nursery, and every time there was even a hiccup, they both sat up in bed. “She’s fine,” George said. He sank back down, throwing one arm about Eva, but Eva couldn’t help tensing, as if something
were about to happen that would be out of their control, and finally, she swung her legs out of the bed and went into the nursery. Anne was sleeping so still that Eva put her hand by Anne’s mouth, just to feel a sip of warm breath against her palm.

She knew she was just a tad anxious. Maybe because she was older and hadn’t been around babies much. Maybe because getting this baby seemed like such a miracle, a last chance, that she felt she had to be extra vigilant. Before Anne had even been born, she and George had bought a library of books on baby care. They had taken a class at the Y, bathing a plastic doll, changing its diapers. They had read so many books on adoption, Eva could recite them. She knew all the pros and cons, how it was important to remember that mothering was what you did, not who you were.

Eva slid out of her pee-stained dress and slipped on another one. Anne made a sound and fussed. “What is it now?” Eva said, bending to pick her up again, patting her back.

She brought the baby back into the living room, just as George snapped a picture, making her and the baby both blink. Eva saw rings of light. Already on the mantel were framed photographs of Eva holding Anne, there was George lifting Anne up, a goofy smile spread across his face. And there was George, Eva, and Sara, who was so pregnant she was holding on to them for support. Nora picked up the photo and studied it.

“That girl. She’s not coming here today, is she?” Nora’s voice sounded accusatory.

“She’ll be over later this week.”

“God.”

“God what?” Eva said. “Sara’s a darling.”

“I’m sure she is. It’s just the things I read in the papers. It’s a wonder anyone adopts at all. The courts just always seem to favor the biological parents.”

“Now wait a minute,” interrupted Christine. “Lane Prager has two adorable adopted kids! And the birth mother is just great. Newspapers love those horror stories.”

“You know the father?”

“He’s out of the picture,” Eva said. “All they have to do is serve him with papers.”

“I’d be nervous,” Nora said. “The stories I hear—”

“Nora,” Christine warned.

“It will all work out,” Eva said firmly.

Eva could smile now, but for a long time she hadn’t been so sure adoption would work out for them. Eva had always yearned for a child, but she had married late, when she was forty, and to her surprise, George, her sweet, tender, loving George, absolutely did not care if he had kids. Eva was the one smiling at babies in restaurants, while George reached for the menu. Eva had to stand close to little ones so she could practically inhale them, while George smiled and cracked silly knock-knock jokes at a distance, and after a few minutes of contact, he had had enough. And while George came to her classroom, dressed up as Mr. Tooth, talking to the kids about brushing, while he laughed and let them climb on his lap, it was Eva his eyes were glued on. He had thought he was so lucky to have found her, that for him, trying for a child too was just greedy. “You’re my everything,” he told Eva when she first expressed her wish for a child. And too, what about their age? “Do we have the energy?” George had asked her. “When our kid is in college, we’ll be doddering old fools. When our grandkid is in diapers, we will be, too.”

Eva refused to listen. She pointed out all the people who had kids later in life. Men in their sixties. Women in their late forties! All you had to do was go to the park and see the older mothers and dads to know how common it was. When she started to cry, George sat beside her and held her hand. “All right,” George said slowly. “Why not?”

Her yearnings though were the only thing that grew inside of her. She bought ovulation kits, tried IVF and embryo transplants, and still, nothing happened, and each time, she grew more and more heartsick. “Well, we tried,” George said, but Eva shook her head. “I think we should adopt,” she told him.

She knew he was ambivalent. He came with her to the adoption lawyer, but the first few meetings, he didn’t ask any questions, even though she touched his sleeve expectantly. “What do you think, George?” she blurted and he patted her knee. “Do adoptive parents ever change their minds about adopting?” he asked, and she started.

“No, no, that’s an excellent question,” the lawyer told them. “Of
course they do. A child can be born with problems you didn’t foresee. Finances can change.”

“You wouldn’t really change your mind, would you, after we brought a baby home?” Eva asked George in the car.

“I was just asking a question,” he said. “Nothing’s even happened yet.” He leaned across the seat and kissed her. “Come on,” he said. “I didn’t mean to get you upset.”

It was Eva’s idea to go with open adoption. It seemed like the best for the child, the best for everyone. She hadn’t been teaching for so many years not to know how important identity issues were with kids. “Sure, that makes sense,” George agreed.

They made up their adoption scrapbook together, pasting in colored photographs of the two of them holding hands in the country, and then in the city and at the beach. Photos of their home and the bright, sunny room that would be the baby’s. They wrote the letter, and got the 800 number, and placed their ad in twenty different little papers:
LOVING COUPLE WANTS TO ADORE YOUR BABY, CALL
1—800—555—7799. But to her surprise, no one called, not even a wrong number. “Why aren’t they picking us?” Eva asked George, astonished. “What’s wrong with us? I’d pick us!”

Finally, a week or so later, to Eva’s great relief, the calls began. The birth mothers didn’t want to speak to George at all (“Well, they’ve all had bad experiences with men,” the agency told them) and the few times Eva tried to get George on the phone, sure his warmth and wit would melt any unease, the birth mothers hung up. But worse, the birth mothers who called didn’t seem to like Eva.

“You go to church?” one birth mother had asked her.

“We’re Jewish.”

“Would you convert?” And when Eva waffled, the woman sighed. “Forget it.”

“You’re a teacher?” one birth mother asked, disapprovingly. “So you won’t be at home for the baby?”

Every plus about them Eva thought of, a birth mother saw as a minus. When she said she loved movies, one girl complained, “Kids need sunshine.” When she said they lived in a semi-urban area, a birth mother
protested, “Then there’s no place for a kid to play.” Every time Eva got off the phone, she felt overwhelmed. And none of the birth mothers ever called back. “Maybe we aren’t doing the right thing,” George suggested, “maybe we should fudge a little,” but Eva was adamant. “No fudging,” she said.

Eva began to despair of ever finding the right one. She began to feel like Miss Haversham, lost in her ragged white wedding gown, waiting and waiting for something that everyone else knew was never going to happen. But what worried her more was George, who didn’t seem distressed at all. “What happens happens,” he told her. “Either way I’ll be happy.”

She couldn’t tell him how that seemed the worst answer of all to her.

All the waiting made Eva feel as if she had lived her whole life wrong, that her possibilities were sifting out of an hourglass. George kissed her shoulder. “So would it be the worst thing in the world if we didn’t have a child?” George asked her, and all he had to do was look at her to know her feelings.

And then Sara had called.

Eva had loved their talks, had loved it that Sara talked with George, that George seemed to like Sara, too. “She’s smart, that one,” George said approvingly. And she had loved Sara on sight, such a dreamy-eyed girl, healthy, from a good home, with an IQ off the charts. Gorgeous red hair. A mouth that had a darling little slant to it. Meeting Sara’s parents was another story. They sat so close to Sara on the couch, they looked like bookends. And as soon as Eva had mentioned a really open adoption, Jack had practically spilled his coffee. “Open is one thing, no doors is another,” Jack said. Sara didn’t speak much and finally, impulsively, Eva jumped up. “Come on, Sara,” she said. “Let me give you a tour. George can talk to your parents.” She held out her hand and Sara took it, and it was then Eva saw the bitten nails painted red and it touched her so much she wanted to reach over and take both Sara’s hands in her own and warm them.

In the den, Sara picked up Eva’s copy of
Wuthering Heights.
“I love the Brontes.”

“Me, too,” said Eva. She folded Sara’s hands over the Bronte. “Borrow it.”

And then Sara began coming over, more and more, and each time she did, she borrowed another book, returning it in such pristine shape that if she didn’t talk about them so excitedly with Eva, Eva wouldn’t even think she had read them. “I can lend you books, too, if you like,” Sara offered.

“Oh, I’d love it,” Eva said, and after that Sara began bringing books over to her, memoirs and novels and once a book about the color red that was so fascinating Eva sat up all night reading, her delight like sunlight splashed in the room. “I love this book,” she told George, but what she really meant was she loved Sara.

Make friends, the adoption agency had urged them, get the birth mother to like you, and Eva had, and it had been ridiculously easy. And ridiculously fun to have another person to do things with. Another person she truly liked. “Our family’s getting bigger,” she told George, exultant.