“You just pick up the phone, buy the tickets—oh, and I have to wonder who’s paying for that—and that’s it, all better? If that’s the case, then why didn’t you take her to the clinic in the first place?”
“Mirela. Her name is Mirela.”
“Why did you do this to us, Jane?”
“You never say Mirela. It’s always she, her. It, why don’t you call her it?”
“You are an id-ee-it.”
“And it’s only been six months.”
“And it feels like six goddamn years.” The mattress nudged and eddied Jane as he got up again and flipped on the bedside lamp. Jane shaded her eyes as her pupils shrank.
“I had no say in this.” Pat was standing over her, pointing his finger in her face. “You turned my life upside down, you turned the kids’ lives upside down, and you didn’t even ask me.”
“I did ask you.”
“You didn’t ask them.”
“I did ask you. We talked about it. You just didn’t take it seriously.”
“Bullshit.”
“And I didn’t need your permission.”
“I never adopted her, Jane. There was no legal process—”
“No. Enough. I didn’t need you.”
“Did you adopt her? Legally? Where is the paperwork? Whose is she, Jane?”
“Stop.”
“Where is her mother?”
“I am her mother.”
“Her real mother!”
“I am her real mother.”
Now Jane understood why it rankled her when people asked about Mirela’s real mother. The implication was not only that Jane was unreal, but that Mirela was, too—that she was false, fake, unverifiable until her real mother could be located and interrogated.
Jane got out of bed. “Whose is she?” Pat demanded as she slipped past him out the door.
She moved down the hallway, pausing to steady herself against the wall, hand flat against the spot where PJ’s first-grade portrait used to hang, the one where he was missing all four front teeth.
“Lauren?” she whispered, opening the door to Lauren’s room.
“Yeah, Mom,” Lauren said. She sounded wide awake, like she’d been listening to her parents fight. Her room was closest to theirs.
“Honey, Dad is snoring, so I’m going to sleep with you tonight, okay?”
“Okay, Mom,” Lauren said, moving over in the bed.
Jane tickled Lauren’s hair with her fingers, rubbed her arm. Lauren lay so eerily still in the spoon that Jane knew she wasn’t asleep but rather wanted to be thought asleep. Jane worried the bottom hem of Lauren’s T-shirt between her thumb and forefinger. It had been a long time since she had prayed before bed. She begged Jesus Christ, the only Son of the Father, for forgiveness for her sins, and when she had run out of her own sins she said the Hail Mary and the Act of Contrition, alternating between them over and over, lips silently forming the words, starving herself of sleep like a saint would, although a true saint would never share a bed with a man, or with a child of her own making.
Jane’s mind whirred. She was ground beneath its wheels. She stopped her prayers and instead took an inventory of the child or the girl or the almost-woman whose body was in hers. Lauren’s knees pulled chestward, almost seated in her mother’s lap, her mother’s outline curving around her. As they had begun.
Once upon a time, it was just Jane and Lauren. Or it could have been. Duck and bight and honey-almond folds. The grimy rental on Evans Road. If only they had gotten that far. What difference did it make what other people thought of them, if they knew who they were and knew their love for each other? Surely it would have been the first stop on a big adventure. Jane consented to the thought that erased PJ and Sean and Mirela. Or worse than erased Mirela—just left her where she was, in a dank cot across an ocean. Jane lay down in the thought. The best time of all had been just Lauren, because that was the time when they could get away.
Lauren had gotten away. Or almost, she was almost there. She had what she needed: she was pretty and slim and she got straight As. She was an athlete, she was smart, creative, her teachers paid her lots of attention, they wanted to see her up on a stage—she belonged there, all eyes on her. Two lead roles in a row as a freshman, and no training, no voice or dance lessons, nothing. A natural talent. She was special. Jane had been distracted from her lately, yes, but others were captivated. Lauren was fine. So much more than fine. She wouldn’t be like Jane. She would go to college. She would create a life that was her own, intentional. She would date different boys before deciding on one forever. Her children would be—if she chose to have—her children would be—
The whirring again. She felt herself driven to dust. She pressed her face against her baby’s hair, her ribs under her light hand rose and fell. The baby, the baby, the baby is okay, she is still in her arms, the baby is okay, the baby, the baby is okay.
Lauren
They were pretty sure Mom would get onto the news on all three local stations, but they could only watch one while recording another, over a soundtrack of Mirela’s screams from the backyard, where Nana Dee was trying to play with her.
“I still don’t understand how you could have lost her,” Dad was saying, “when at any moment you can hear her in six counties.”
“Shh, it’s starting,” PJ and Sean said.
“Jane Brennan of Williamsville never thought of herself as an activist,” the reporter began.
“You know, I’ve got four kids; they keep me pretty busy.”
Lauren still startled by four.
“It’s Mom!” PJ and Sean announced. “Mom’s on TV!”
“You look pretty, Mom,” Lauren said. On the screen, Mom’s cheeks were flushed with the wet spring cold, and her hair swept across her brow in a curtain.
“But when Operation Rescue came to town to protest abortions in the area, gaining nationwide attention for what they are calling the Spring of Life, Jane just knew she had to be part of it,” the reporter continued. “You see, her youngest child, Mirela, is adopted.” Slo-mo shot of Mirela spinning on the sidewalk beside Mom, doing the electrocuted smile. “For Mirela to join the family, Jane had to launch her own kind of rescue operation, saving the girl from an overcrowded orphanage in Communist Romania. To see Mirela now, you’d never guess the horrors she escaped, thanks to this Williamsville family.”
“She is adopted,” Mom was saying as the camera cut back to her, then to a scene of chanting crowds, then back to Mirela. “And so, you know, you just want to show people there’s another way, you—you can choose life.”
“Wait, I just saw—was that Dr. Rosen’s picture?” Lauren said.
“But what began as a protest on behalf of lost little lives . . . almost ended with a little girl lost.”
“Ooooohh,” Sean and PJ said in unison, Sean clutching his stomach in mock-pain and PJ slapping his forehead with his palm. “That’s a little straaaiiinnned,” Sean ululated in his opera voice, clutching at PJ’s arm. PJ elbowed him in the gut, and Sean keened with gladness.
“The irony is not lost on me,” Mom was saying on TV. “I’m just glad she’s okay.”
“Mom, you were protesting Dr. Rosen?” Lauren asked. “What was that sign with Dr. Rosen’s picture on it?”
“The protesters had a big reveal in store—one we can’t show you on TV.”
“It was pretty dramatic, yes,” Mom was saying into the microphone.
The news cut to a slow-mo of Mom, her jaw dropping open.
“Mom?” Lauren asked again. “That’s Stitch’s dad. Stitch is my friend.” Mom, on the couch, shook her head and closed her eyes.
“Didn’t that Rosen kid call here the other night?” Dad asked.
“Mom, you promised that you wouldn’t do anything to embarrass me,” Lauren said as the phone started ringing.
“Hi, Glenis,” Dad said. “You’ve got Channel 4? We’re watching Channel 7, and we’re taping Channel 2. Talk to you in a bit.”
“In all t
he hubbub,” the reporter said, “Mirela slipped away. And Jane Brennan the activist. Had to rediscover. Jane Brennan. The mom.”
“I mean, she was fine,” Mom was saying to the reporter, “but I had quite a fright for a moment there.”
“Good Samaritans found Mirela at the nearby Pancake Palace restaurant, where the little social butterfly had already made acquaintances with diners as well as hostess Joanie Schmertz.”
“Joanie from bowling league?” Dad asked.
“She’s a very happy, very, very friendly little girl,” Joanie was telling the reporter.
Cut to Joanie on a ladder propped against the side of the Pancake Palace, inching the dr. rosen kills children banner off the roof with a broom.
“Jesus H. Christ,” Dad said.
“Today, Operation Rescue is back out on our streets, on day four of the Spring of Life protests that have already resulted in two hundred arrests. But Jane Brennan, activist and mom, is on the sidelines for now. She is back home with her kids, including little Mirela, who has now been the happy beneficiary of not one. But two. Rescue. Operations. Deena Sobel, WGRZ News, Buffalo.”
“Who writes this shit?” Pat asked.
“Shit, shit, shit, shit, shit!” PJ and Sean chanted.
“Mom, why were you even talking to a reporter?” Lauren asked.
“We’re supposed to take any opportunity to put a face to our cause,” Mom said. “I had Father Steve’s blessing.”
“He wasn’t even there!” Dad said. “Your hero stood you up!”
“Why did you have that awful sign about Stitch’s dad?” Lauren asked.
“I had nothing to do with that!” Mom said.
“Oh, sure you didn’t,” Dad spluttered.
Lauren felt a crystalline desire, a longing she could feel calcifying under her brow and the nape of her neck, for Dad to stop talking, stop being there. She did not want to have to share her anger with Dad’s anger.
“And why were you talking to them about Mirela?” Lauren asked. “She has nothing to do with any of this.”
“She shouldn’t have been there!” Dad’s voice had climbed to a yell.
If Lauren had to halve her anger to make room for Dad’s, then her pity would see its chance to sidle in and smother her resolution. She did not want to pity her mother, so small and helpless on the couch, so reasonable and remorseful.
“Mirela is nobody’s business but ours,” Lauren said.
“I didn’t volunteer that Mirela was adopted,” Mom said. “The reporter asked me, and I said yes. And then the reporter said, ‘Could you answer in a complete sentence, so it’s easier for us to edit together later?’ so I said, ‘She is adopted.’ Or whatever I said. Then there was an awkward silence, like they wanted me to say more, and I didn’t know if it was just going to be dead air on TV. I guess I forgot it wasn’t live. I was trying to be polite. Notice how they keep cutting away to Mirela or to the other protesters? You can see there that they edit it together to twist the meaning. They manipulate the conversation like that. They manufacture it.”
Dad was talking over her. “They wouldn’t have had any footage to manipulate if you had just shut up! Just shut the hell up! What the hell were you thinking, Jane?”
“Don’t tell Mom to shut up!” Lauren yelled, and Dad stamped out of the room.
Jane slumped deeper into the sofa. “Dad is right. Father Steve stood us up,” she told Lauren. “And as far as I know, the reverend is still in jail.”
“What for?” Lauren asked.
“Or not in jail, in the rec center.”
Mom had gone to all that trouble, and she hadn’t even made it to real jail.
“Why’s he in the rec center?”
“For disorderly conduct and for creating a physically offensive condition,” Jane said.
Dad by the door again. Shifting from foot to foot, snorting, shuffling. Nobody ever accused Dad of wanting attention.
“What does ‘creating a physically offensive condition’ mean?” Dad asked, gripping either side of the door frame like he could tear down the walls if he received the wrong answer.
“It’s when Sean lays a log and forgets to flush,” PJ said from his spot inches away from the TV. PJ said this tentatively, like a peace offering.
“The reverend pulled a bit of a stunt,” Mom said.
“He threw a dead baby into the crowd!” Sean said.
“No—wait, how did you hear that?” Mom asked.
“Everyone heard that,” Sean said.
“Who is everyone?” Dad asked.
“I heard a bunch of lesbians started playing Hacky Sack with the dead baby,” PJ said. He paused and looked around, still concerned that he was interpreting the mood of the room correctly. “That was a joke.”
Sean laughed, trying to reassure PJ. “Right, I get it, because Mom thinks all the baby killers are lesbians!”
“No, I do not—it’s not—it was a doll,” Mom said. Her throat audibly constricted on the word doll. Lauren wondered if her dad or brothers had heard it—that was the tell.
“You don’t know it was a doll,” Lauren said.
“A very realistic doll,” Mom said. “People assumed it was real, and he was shoving it in everyone’s face.”
“I shove my balls in your face,” yelped Sean, and PJ clamped his hand over Sean’s mouth, and Sean slurped at his brother’s palm.
“How do you know for sure it was a doll?” Lauren asked.
“A cop threw up,” Mom blurted out.
“So, right—why would a cop throw up if it was just a doll?” Lauren asked.
PJ made retching noises, opening his mouth wide enough for Sean to hock a loogie into it.
“When you were born, Lauren, Dad said you looked like a doll,” Mom said.
“I did?” Dad asked.
“I don’t remember that,” Lauren said.
“Of course you don’t—you were just born,” Mom said.
Mom only told stories about the three of them that they were too young to remember, stories they couldn’t tell themselves; they couldn’t quibble over details. Maybe that was when Mom loved them best, before they could make memories that she couldn’t have all to herself.
“Did it have a smell?” Lauren asked. “The baby?”
“Lauren, that’s kind of an awful question,” Mom said.
“Lauren, that’s kind of an awful smelly ass you have,” Sean said.
“It doesn’t even matter whether or not it was real,” Mom said. “They made their point.”
“Did you make your point, Jane?” Dad asked. “Did you get your point across?”
“Leave her alone!” Lauren screamed at Dad, standing up as Mom caught her arm, and he punched the door frame with his fist and walked out of the house.
“Hey, Lauren,” Andy said. The tone of a swiveling head. Andy, Stitch, and Rajiv were walking out of Tedquarters. She was late for rehearsal. “Seems like your mom is so busy saving babies that she can’t keep track of her own kid.”
“The irony is not lost on her,” Lauren said.
“Sucks for you to have to kiss her,” Andy said to Stitch, “seeing as she thinks your dad’s a baby killer.”
“I do not think that,” Lauren said. Andy knocked into her opposite hip as he and Rajiv walked past. “Whoops, sorry!” he sang over Rajiv’s screeching cackle.
Stitch hung behind. “I’m sorry he said that,” Lauren told him.
“We’re expected to go to the auditorium now to practice ‘We Go Together,’” Stitch said, looking past her down the hall.
The big closing number, entire ensemble, the fastest choreography, lyrics full of junk and nonsense, mortifying wompa lompa lompas and dippety doo bee dahs. Lauren had skipped the previous run-through of the song, and she hadn’t practiced on her own at all.
Lauren followed Stitch to the auditorium. “Stitch, honestly, I’m sorry about everything that happened with the protest and all that junk.”
“Thanks,” Stitch said, stopping outs
ide the entrance to the wings. “I think they’re set to go. Everyone’s up there but us.”
“Are you okay?” she asked him.
He peered nervously into the wings. Lauren had never seen him nervous before. They could hear Mr. Smith’s voice, sounding tired and frustrated. “The city gave us a round-the-clock guard,” Stitch said. Hands in pockets, head down, pushing the toes of his Converse into the carpet. “Two cops all the time, all night. If you cut through our yard going home tonight, you’ll probably see them.” He shrugged. “Or you could cut through somebody else’s yard, for a change. You know, it’s up to you.”
“I’m sorry you have to have guards,” Lauren said. “That’s terrible.”
“No, it’s not—they’re nice guys.” He was almost stabbing the carpet with his Converse now, like he was trying to crush a cockroach.
“Oh, I’m sure, but—it sucks that you need that.”
“It’s not the first time this stuff has happened. They used to picket us every year on Hanukkah. Right on our front lawn. Screaming ‘baby killer’ through the dining room window while we played dreidel and lit the menorah. My dad used to get so mad.”
“Stitch, I am so sorry.”
“My little brother on my mom’s lap, watching them bang on the window. I remember that.” He tapped his foot three times on the carpet and looked up at her, mouth a thin line, eyes not rheumy but gleaming, appraising. It astonished Lauren to realize that Stitch could cry. He wasn’t going to cry in front of her right now, but he had cried before, and he would again; he was capable of it.
“I’m sorry,” she said.
“Yeah, you keep saying that.”
“I also want you to know that I don’t agree with my mom about this stuff.”
“I get it.” He was looking down again, grinding his toe. “You are not your mom.”
“I think what she’s doing is messed up.”
“It’s messed up to bad-mouth your mom, though.”
“I’m not bad-mouthing her. I’m just saying we disagree.”
“Okay. Congratulations.”
The Fourth Child Page 26