Rescuing Julia Twice (7 page)

Ricky practically drops the food. He assumes I've seen a mouse. Or a ghost.

“What's the matter?”

“I haven't bought any clothes for Julia,” I moan. “She doesn't have anything. We can't bring her out of the orphanage buck naked, which is how she'll be handed to us, buck naked.”

“Okay, calm down. We'll get her some clothes tomorrow. We're not leaving until Wednesday.”

“I don't even know what size she is. I've never even bought baby clothes.”

“You're just nervous. Everything will be fine, you'll see. Go to Bloomingdale's first thing tomorrow and buy her a whole bunch of clothes. If the sizes are wrong, we'll exchange them. Don't be so afraid.”

I think back to that fateful day in the fertility clinic last May. For six months I needed to have my blood monitored every other day while we were trying artificial insemination. Ricky came with me every time, which was good because I'm a complete coward when it comes to medical intervention. The technician had wrapped the rubber tourniquet around my arm and told me to make a fist. She already knew I was one of those problematic patients who needed her husband to hold her hand.

“Come on, darling. Try to relax,” she had said, wriggling my arm. “I need to find a vein.”

Bruised from too many blood tests (or bloodlettings, as I called them), it took three attempts for the nurse to jam in the needle. I felt a searing pain. I started to cry. Ricky rubbed my shoulders. Afterward, I said, “I can't do this anymore.”

“Okay, you don't have to,” Ricky said, and without skipping a beat he added, “We can adopt. There are millions of babies who need homes.”

“Really?” I said, snuffling. Lately, I had been thinking that if I couldn't even tolerate blood tests, how in the world was I going to be able to move on to more aggressive in vitro fertilization treatment with its daily injections? I'm terrified of being put under with anesthetics. How was I going to be able to undergo a surgical egg retrieval of maybe a dozen eggs and then an implantation of multiple embryos? What if I had twins or triplets? In the back of my mind, I knew I wouldn't. I couldn't. I never said anything.

“Ricky, we've never talked about adoption before,” I said.

“I know,” he said. “But this is grueling for you, and if we move on to in vitro, there's a huge risk of failure, whereas adoption is a sure thing. And, we only have enough money for one attempt. Our COBRA won't even cover the procedure.”

I rolled down my sleeve, stood up, and hugged this man who seemed too good to be true. I might not be able to make a baby with him, but I knew then and there that no matter what, we'd always be able to muddle through our darkest hours. I felt like the luckiest woman in that fertility clinic that day—the one who walked out, never to return.

I arrive at Bloomingdale's on 59th and Lexington, breathless. The door is locked. I cup my hands around my cold face and peer through the steamy, tinted glass. It's five to ten, and my teeth are chattering. Standing alone on the frosty street, my mind drifts back to a time when shopping here with my mother was the most natural thing in the world. Shopping was love; shopping was sustenance; shopping was what we did. Especially before the start of each and every season. If she were here with me now and I was twelve again, we'd be shopping for bathing suits and lacy coveralls for a winter break in Puerto Rico. This might be the one place where she wouldn't constantly flick her wrist to see what time it was. We'd have grabbed ten bathing suits, definitely bikinis, before
slipping into the dressing room. She'd let out a sigh of relief while settling into a chair, letting her heavy pocketbook fall to the floor. She was a beautiful woman, still. She'd been a bleached blonde practically my whole life. She had large blue eyes and good bone structure, but she had a complicated life with my father, and the strain of their relationship tightened her face. I was the most important person in her world, which must have made me feel useful. I'd model the bikinis, one at a time.

“What do you think of this one?” I'd ask, seeking her approval.

“That suits your figure,” she'd say, looking up and down, pleased at the sight of my slender body. “See if they have that one in another color or pattern. You could always use an extra suit.”

After she'd paid for the suits, she'd hand me the big brown bag and say, “Use everything in good health.” Then, she'd pause. “But don't tell your father what we bought today.”

It was an odd thing to say, because there never was any detectable shortage of money. But I never asked why she said that. It made our shopping ventures seem like a clandestine mission between mother and daughter. I realized years later that she was subconsciously trying to alienate me from my father by creating secrets between us he couldn't be privy to—secrets that didn't even matter but secrets just the same.

I'm startled when I hear the sound of keys jiggling the front door. An effete man dressed in an impeccable wool suit leans his head outside and says, “Welcome to Bloomingdale's.” He doesn't know I've been here a million times. I look as though it's my first visit.

“Can I help you?” he sing-songs, tilting his head one way and then the other.

“Do you, are the, do, where are babies' clothes?” I stammer.

“They're on the lower level,” he says, sweeping his arm in a balletic gesture toward an escalator. “Right down there,” he points for emphasis.

I hear my heart thumping in my chest. I am in a foreign world when I reach the bottom of the escalator. Teeny clothes hang on wee hangers,
and neat piles of shirts and pants are stacked on tables. They look like dolls' clothes. I should be delighted, but I'm dizzy and disoriented. I'm buying baby clothes for my baby who's not here, whom I don't even know. It's another reminder of how upside down mothering can be when you're adopting a baby and you're shopping for her and you can only hazily picture her height and girth. I must look like I've stumbled into a postnuclear world. An African American saleswoman comes over and gently says, “May I help you?”

“Um, yes, I need baby clothes, for a baby, my baby, but she's not here now.”

She looks at me quizzically for a moment. “I think I understand. Come with me.”

As I trail her I keep stammering. “Yes, I'm adopting a baby. She's seven months, and I'm going to get her in Siberia in a few days.”

“Siii-beeeeeer-iii-aa?” she says while clearing her throat. “Well, well, darling, I think we better look at some of these old winter clothes we have right here. Some are even on sale. C'mon, honey.” I trot behind her like a duckling following its mother. She hands me tiny snowsuits, and I hold them up and eyeball them.

“I like the yellow one,” I say. It is a one-piece suit with a hood. It's fuzzy, and it has pink swirly buttons. I hold it up to my cheek and try to imagine what it will be like to see Julia's little face poking through the hood. “Yes, this is good.”

Yellow seems like a good color for starting a new life. Like the sun coming up. A new day. A new life. Better than pink. I remember that her crib quilt is also yellow.

For the next forty-five minutes, I look at nearly every piece of clothing for a one-year-old baby. This kindly woman is the mother who is not here for me now. I wish my mother was here with me now, but our relationship has been strained for a decade. There's no intimacy or shared moments, only anger—anger because so many things have gone wrong
and they can't be put right. Everyone says things will change when I bring Julia home, that giving her a granddaughter will give us another chance.

Our rift started when I got divorced in 1994. I had married an Englishman who seemed to her like Prince Charming. My marriage was filled with jet-set travel and diamonds. I waited for real life to begin, but it never did. My mother could not understand how I could walk away from such financial security.

Even through the process of adoption, tensions between my mother and I have not melted.

By the time I'm ready to leave, I have filled two big brown bags.

“You're gonna have the best-dressed baby around,” she says while ringing up the clothes. “And the warmest.”