From Here To Maternity: A Second ChancePromoted to MomOn Angel's Wings

by Tara Taylor Quinn

  I got through the next two as swiftly as I could, and then said, too brightly, “All done. Thank you, Molly, for being such a big girl.”

  Molly nodded, fat tears rolling down her cheeks, the kind I had never been able to witness without a twist in my heart. Molly’s mother pulled her into her arms, hugged her tight, consoling as only a mother can. “What a brave girl you are, sweetie,” she said.

  Watching them, I thought of Emma and the times when I had consoled her exactly that way. My arms ached with the memory, and it was all I could do to keep my face free of the pain.

  I took a roll of stickers from my pocket. Winnie the Pooh. Tigger. Sand buckets and stars. Molly chose three, a small smile now replacing the tears.

  The rest of the day disappeared beneath a full schedule of appointments. I finished seeing patients at five-thirty, but worked at my desk until eight, sipping a tepid Starbucks coffee one of the secretaries had gone down the block to get for me before she left. Such acts of kindness were a jolt to me, as if I had forgotten that good could actually exist in a world that had shown me too much of the bad.

  When even the janitorial staff had left for the evening, I still couldn’t bring myself to go home. I glanced around an office where I spent too much of my time. Framed diplomas from Georgetown and Johns Hopkins adorned the walls. As a girl who would have gone to neither had it not been for academic scholarships, a stint as a swimming instructor and a knack for waitressing, I had once taken such pride in seeing them there. The walnut desk in front of me held a convincing pretense of work, files stacked neatly in each corner, my laptop open and blinking in the near dark of the office. I liked it this way, no lights, dimming the focus of a life at which I tried not to look too closely.

  The cell phone to the right of my computer rang. I glanced at the caller ID, hesitated at answering, then quickly punched the green button before I could change my mind.

  “Let me guess. You’re still at the office?”

  Cathy’s voice was chastising. I considered a half truth—on the way home—offered up with a cheerfulness she would be surprised to hear. But I decided she wouldn’t believe me, anyway. She knew me too well. “Just getting ready to go,” I said. “What’s up?”

  “I have a favor to ask,” she said, to the point as always.

  Cathy and I became friends as undergrads at Georgetown, had remained so in the years since. She worked for the Angels in Our Midst Adoption Agency in Washington D.C., and while I used to want to hear about the wonderful work she did there, it was now the elephant in the living room around which we both tiptoed.

  Her voice held something different now, though, a hesitation out of sync with her normally put-it-out-there-and-it-will-happen approach to getting things done.

  “Shoot,” I said, my stomach tilting a little.

  “I told you about it once. On Angel’s Wings. Our program for older Russian orphans,” she said. “We bring the children to Fairfax for a two-week stay with an American host family who then has the option of adopting them.”

  “Uh-huh,” I said, running a hand around the back of my neck and sitting a little straighter in my chair.

  “Here’s the problem,” Cathy said, exhaling as if she’d been holding her breath. “We have a group of kids arriving on Monday. One of the couples who agreed to host a nine-year-old girl has decided to back out at the last minute. The wife called to tell me this just a few hours ago, and now I have to find someone to take this child for two weeks.”

  “Um,” I said, caught between what I hoped she would ask and what I knew would be impossible if she did.

  “Forgive me if I’m out of line here, Rachel, but I wondered if you and Clay might be willing to let her stay with you.”

  I tried to respond, but failed, rendered speechless by a painful rush of enthusiasm, the flip side of which was my own certainty of Clay’s reaction. “Cathy. I don’t know. This is—”

  “Sudden, I know. I tried two other families I thought might be interested first,” she said. “Neither of them could take her right now. The thing is, this child came for the program last summer. The host family ended up not adopting her because they decided to divorce.”

  “Oh,” I said, one hand to my mouth. It was like this with me. I kept my head low, got through my days with virtual blinders on, not wanting to hear about other people’s pain, too focused on my own to have room for anyone else’s. Until, in moments like this, I was reminded that I wasn’t the only person in this world to know tragedy.

  “We really wanted to bring her back this year, give her another chance,” Cathy said. “And then this second couple backs out. What are the odds?”

  “That’s terrible,” I said, the words low and unsteady.

  “It is,” Cathy agreed. “She needs to be in a home where we could direct other families to visit her while she’s here.”

  “With the goal that one will want to adopt her?” I asked.

  “If it seems right for her,” Cathy said. “Look, Rachel, I know you and Clay decided not to adopt last year, so please don’t think I’m engineering this situation in the hope that you’ve changed your mind. We’re really in a bind, though, and I know how good you’d be with her.”

  “When do you need an answer?”

  “Tomorrow morning?”

  “All right,” I said, nothing in my voice to indicate the decimation taking place inside me. I’d perfected this skill, neutrality under the receipt of life’s least kind blows.

  “I’ll e-mail a picture from last summer to you. Call me on the cell if you don’t get me at the office,” Cathy said. “And Rachel?”

  “Yeah?”

  “We would love to have you and Clay over for dinner one night. It’s been too long.”

  “Yes, it has,” I said, not adding that it was just too painful to sit at a table with a family who still had what we lost. To see how their daughter Amy, once Emma’s constant playmate, had grown these past three years. I didn’t say any of this because Cathy already knew it.

  After I hung up, I sat with the phone in my hand, not sure what to think. My laptop beeped. New e-mail. I put my hand on the mouse, clicked on Read. From Cathy.

  Here’s the photo. She’s darling.

  I clicked on the attachment, downloaded the file. During the few seconds it took to come through, a rush of anxiety flooded through me.

  When the computer beeped, I clicked on Open File and sat back in my chair. The picture filled the screen.

  Above it was the name Sasha Ivanovicha. The girl looked younger than nine. She stood beside a piece of faded playground equipment, a tired old building in the background. She was thin, and her hands were clasped in front of her, plaited braids hanging to her shoulders. Her posture was one of sad resignation, but her blue eyes were hopeful, and it was this that snagged my heart. Made me wonder if it might be a mistake to bring this child into our home.

  I stared at the photo for a long time, unable to make myself close the file. It was one thing to be told of a child in need. Putting a face to the words another thing entirely.

  Clay would be against it. I knew this, and yet, staring at the picture of this little girl—Sasha—I also knew I could not say no.

  Twenty minutes later, I took I-66 to Fairfax, the traffic light at this time of evening. I felt anxious to get there now, eager to put this in front of my husband.

  The thought of him stirred a well of sadness deep inside me. Our marriage had become something I never imagined it would be. Clay and I lived in the same house, shared the same bed. But we were like two strangers, our conversations polite, forced. For so long now, we’d been treading water, still afloat, little more than existing, really. I’d told myself a thousand times that eventually we would get back to where we used to be, but the reality of that had become a pinpoint in the distance. As if the tide kept pushing us farther and farther out, and neither of us had the strength to get ourselves back to shore. It hit me with a sudden flutter of hope now that maybe Sasha was exactly what we need
ed, a reason other than work to get up in the morning.

  At forty-two, I had a life that was in most ways fulfilling. A rewarding career as a pediatrician. Still married to the same guy I fell in love with at seventeen. Clay, an attorney who practiced by the principle of not making a living off the misery of others, was actually one of the good guys. And most days, I still couldn’t believe my luck in being the woman he chose.

  Except that lately I wondered if he now regretted that choice.

  We lived in a big house that somehow made a mockery of the future I had once dreamed we would have. We bought it when Emma was two, and I had every reason to believe that we would fill the three extra bedrooms with brothers and sisters for her.

  But I’d learned that life didn’t always take the path we were so sure it would take, and now I walked through the waiting room of my office each morning, imagining the whispers of the mothers sitting there. Poor Dr. Foster. Such a tragedy. Such a waste. To lose a child like that Emma.

  That was when the anger hit me, the force of it so great that I could barely get through the door and down the hall to my office without collapsing beneath the weight of it. How could this be my destiny? On a good day, I asked myself what I did to deserve it. On a bad day, I did not want to know.

  From the moment I met Clay Foster, I wanted to be his wife and have his children. I wanted the walls of our home to echo with laughter and silliness, unlike the houses we’d both grown up in as only children.

  For a while, we had exactly that. Seven years of exactly that. Emma was like this incredible gift, this streak of sunlight that made us both wonder how we could have been so blessed.

  When we lost her, I wanted to die, too. And if it hadn’t been for Clay, I think I would have done whatever it took to go with my daughter.

  Other people lost children and somehow managed to make their lives work again. That’s what the therapist we saw for the first year after Emma’s death told us. But it had been three years now. And Clay and I were still trapped in a maze of grief, neither of us able to find our way out.

  I had tried to go on. Not because I wanted to. But because I knew I had to. I knew we had to, Clay and I. That if we didn’t, the black hole that had been sucking at our marriage since Emma died would obliterate any love that had managed to survive.

  I pulled into our driveway, pushed the garage remote, and stared at the brick house in front of me. I had once loved coming home to it, loved its warmth and the fact that Clay and I took refuge from the world here together. Now it felt more like a prison.

  We’d lost so much. I knew we could never replace any of it. But I didn’t think I could go on the way we’d been. I didn’t want to anymore. It was like standing behind some bizarre two-way mirror and watching us morph into some unrecognizable version of ourselves.

  Melodramatic, maybe. But Cathy’s call felt like a crossroads. Left turn, there was nowhere for us to go. Right turn, a road that might lead us back to something we once were. At this, I felt a lightness inside, recognized it as possibility.

  I parked the car inside the garage and cut the engine. I sat for a long time, not moving. I would tell my husband how much I wanted this chance. How much I thought we needed this chance. And if he said no, I’d have no choice but to face where we were. No choice but to finally admit that our marriage was over.

  CHAPTER TWO

  VOICE MAIL PLAYED a message from Clay. He was working on a case and wouldn’t be home until late. Nothing surprising in this, and yet disappointment sat like a rock in my stomach.

  Not for the first time, I wondered if he was really working. I wondered if he’d found someone who had managed to take him out of his pain, someone who was not me, who did not remind him of what he no longer had.

  I tidied a kitchen that did not need tidying, restacked a set of books on the coffee table in the living room. Clay and I were rarely here, our house too perfect in its unlived-in state. I felt overwhelmed suddenly by memories of a very different house, a house made a home with its imperfections, toys strewn across the living room floor, Mickey Mouse pajamas thrown just short of the laundry chute, blueberry juice stains on the Oriental rug.

  I sank onto the sofa, not bothering to wipe away the tears streaming from my eyes.

  I finally went up to bed, lay there staring at the ceiling, rehearsing how I would bring up Cathy’s call. I thought about the girl Cathy had asked us to invite into our home, recalled the sadness in her eyes, my heart aching with the unfairness of it.

  The last time I looked at the clock, it blinked 2:00 a.m. Clay still wasn’t home.

  At five-thirty, after a few hours of tossing and turning, I finally got up and went downstairs to make coffee. This wasn’t the first time Clay had worked through the night, but I was deeply bothered by it this morning. It felt like a glaring indication of how unbalanced our lives had become, how unsuitable for a child our home was now.

  I’d just poured my first cup when I heard him come through the front door, the familiar clunk of his briefcase as he set it on the hardwood floor of the foyer.

  I stood at the window facing the backyard, sipping from the pink-and-yellow cup Emma had made me in a mother-daughter pottery class. My hands tightened around it. Clay came into the kitchen and said good-morning.

  “Good morning,” I replied, taking in his short, dark hair, the lines of fatigue bracketing his blue eyes. He was a fine-looking man, the kind of man women automatically turned their heads to stare at when he entered a room. He continued to look better as he got older, something I could not say about myself.

  “Where have you been?” I asked now.

  He looked at me, startled, as if I had opened a door we both agreed to keep closed. “Working, Rachel.”

  “Must be a big case.”

  “It is,” he agreed, cautious, as if he wasn’t sure where I was headed with this.

  Accusation was the subtext here. We both knew it. And I realized suddenly how much I wanted to doubt him. That I wished he were having an affair. Maybe if it were something as simple as another woman, I would have a fighting chance.

  A painful yearning for what we once had nearly overwhelmed me. Clay got himself some coffee, said he was going upstairs to take a shower.

  I whirled around and blurted out the whole thing. How Cathy had called. How her agency had a nine-year-old Russian girl whose host family fell through for the summer camp program.

  “I want her to stay with us,” I added at the end, my voice as firm as I could make it even though my hands were shaking.

  Clay blinked, looked shocked, as if he’d been attacked. “We’re hardly here, Rachel,” he said carefully. “How could we have a child stay with us?”

  It was on the tip of my tongue to say we once had a child that fit perfectly well into our lives, but I pressed my lips together and reached for a calm note. “I thought I might take two weeks off,” I said.

  His eyes widened. This really surprised him. Neither of us had taken any vacation time in three years. I thought how haggard he looked now, how tired, how in need he was of something other than work. He shook his head, retreated a step, said he was going to get that shower, and he’d be back down.

  I decided to make him breakfast. I could not remember the last time I did so. Judging by the look on his face when he returned twenty minutes later, neither could he. Clean shaven now, he smelled of soap and shaving cream, his dark hair still wet. He wore his Saturday running clothes.

  I made his favorite breakfast, consciously or not I didn’t know. He sat down at the table, took a sip of the orange juice, a bite of the scrambled eggs, then put his fork down as if by showing too much enthusiasm he would be giving me the answer I wanted.

  “Rachel,” he said. “I don’t see how we can do this.”

  I waited a moment, struggled to keep my voice level. “We both have plenty of vacation time we haven’t taken.”

  “When are we talking about?” he asked.

  “The children arrive on Monday.”

>   “Monday? Rachel, that’s crazy. I’m in the middle of a case. You have appointments booked three months out. We can’t just not show up for work.”

  “I’m not asking you to do that.”

  Clay hesitated. “What are you asking me to do?” he asked finally.

  From my pocket, I pulled the picture Cathy had e-mailed me. I unfolded it and slid it to the center of the table. “Let an orphaned girl live here for two weeks.”

  He glanced at the photo, stared at me for a moment, his expression weary. “And she just goes back to Russia at the end of it?”

  “Yes,” I said. “All the children go back at the end.”

  “Am I wrong, or isn’t it the hope that the families will adopt these children?”

  I started to answer, stopped, then looked away.

  “Rachel,” he said quietly. “I thought we had been through this before.”

  Suddenly, a fierce anger swept through me, out of control. “No, you’ve been through it, Clay. You made a decision about the rest of our lives, and I’ve had no choice but to go along with it.”

  “I thought we agreed,” he said, his voice level with the control that made him such a success in the courtroom.

  Somehow, this infuriated me, that he had put me in the same category as a jury he must somehow convince, and I barely kept myself from screaming. “What choice did you give me? You are the one who changed your mind about adopting. We will never replace Emma. Don’t you think I know that? But we are drowning in this, Clay. Both of us.”

  With that, I ran out of the kitchen, grabbed my purse from the table by the front door and left the house.