My mother disagreed. My dad was Jewish and my mom was nothing, and to them, pregnancy was a choice.
I was somewhere in between.
“You don’t understand,” I told her that night. “You wish Dad looked at you the way Julian looks at me.” She stopped sorting clothes and let the quiet settle.
“I know,” she said. “If you loved him less, I’d tell you to have it.”
I told her she didn’t make sense. I told her there were options. I told her she was just jealous and heartless and it was my body and he wanted it and I loved him so I had to have it. I had to. She didn’t understand. She was aged and stubborn and she didn’t understand.
That Sunday, Julian and I went for a walk along the reservoir.
“We don’t have to keep it,” he said. “But if you love me, please, don’t kill it.”
So I had it. For him. And we gave our six pounds, fourteen ounces to a couple from New Hampshire on August 19, 1989. They came to pick her up two days after I’d gone into labor. They did it in another room; the literature said it was best not to meet adoptive parents. Julian wanted it open, but I wanted it closed. So we signed our names on dotted lines that even eighteen years wouldn’t undo. No, I do not want my birth child contacting me. No, I do not want the progress reports.
* * *
The Unitarian Universalist church in Cambridge, Massachusetts, was stone and beautiful and surrounded by bumper-stickered cars. It was cold out, and I was worried about Emma, so I pressed her tiny face to my neck as we dashed from Jared’s sedan to the basement’s back door. The place was packed with screaming children dressed like animals and bearded shepherds herding angels upstairs. The basement smelled like attic and the costumes were dated but the energy circling the room was powerful and warm. A rainbow flag hung next to a bulletin board and painted Plato quotes wrapped the room’s upper wall. A girl with a head scarf was buried in her cell phone and Joseph appeared to be flirting with a Wise Man. The moment we entered, Emma started wailing, and the entire tableau seemed to freeze and face us. A gray-haired man in the middle smiled at me and I knew he was the minister even before I saw his robes. He didn’t say anything but held his hands out slightly to his sides, palms out and fingers spread. I nodded back and shifted Emma around so everyone could see.
The pageant director was a chubby man in his fifties. He cupped my elbow in his palm while he explained the procedures and walked through the logistics for the following day. I was to sit in the front row and hold Emma wrapped in blue cloth in my lap. Henry, the Stouffers’ baby, was the first baby Jesus; however, should he start crying or moving around, the director would give me the sign, Ms. Stouffer would take Henry down to the basement, and I would move forward and hand Emma to Mary. Conceptually, it seemed a bit bizarre. But I was assured elbow-in-hand that two babies were essential, so I smiled at him with only my eyes and pretended my head hurt so I could go back downstairs.
I saw my first pageant in Mesnil-le-Roi, just outside Paris, when I was in France the year after graduation. There was a Swiss boy and it was his idea, but it was stuffy and the goats smelled so we left and went back to his apartment. I’d thought I’d have a different mind in France—but when I landed at de Gaulle, it was still me. I worked in a school and walked around on weekends trying to force bohemia. When I came home, I was yearning for someone to whisper to, but everyone was twenty-three and living in New York.
Julian and I broke up just before I left. We’d tried to make it work after the adoption, but things were never quite the same. Giving her away was my decision and, like it or not, Julian understood what it meant. The baby asked if we really meant our forevers; he said yes, and I said I didn’t know. I wanted to experience the world and meet new people and everyone says you’re supposed to be single for at least some time. He tried to get me back, but not for too long.
The problem was, I’d broken up with him while I was still in love, so I never had the time to let it wash out. My mom said I shouldn’t marry the first guy I dated and my friend Eliza had said I looked like I was bored. But I never met anyone better. I dated other men, but I seemed to pass them by, waiting for someone who’d trace my back while I slept and take me to church on Sundays. I’d meet Him in Paris, after Paris, in graduate school, at work. But each location passed as I rolled them off my shoulders. My sister called it a fluke at Thanksgiving one year when a friend of our aunt’s asked about my husband.
“It’s strange,” she’d said, passing the gravy. And I’d felt a sudden urge to pour it on her head.
* * *
When I got back home that night, everyone was in the kitchen and living room preparing for dinner. My sister, her husband Alex, their sons Michael and Gabriel, my brother Henry, his wife Zoe, and their three children, Annabel, David, and Toby. My mother was thrilled to have her family reassembled and she scrambled around the kitchen, assigning tasks and things to chop. When I opened the door, everyone ran over to hold Emma and I could see my mother smiling behind the island in the center of the kitchen. The adoption was far less of an event than the births of my nieces and nephews and I specifically requested that I didn’t want a shower or any public announcement. My sister had driven up in October, but it was the first time Henry or any of the kids had met Emma.
“Meet your new cousin,” he said to Annabel, who was thirteen and held her arms out immediately.
“Oh my God,” she cooed. “She’s adorable. I love her!”
“Annabel was just saying in the car how excited she was to meet Emma,” Zoe explained. “She doesn’t have a sister so she was saying she wanted to give Emma all her old dolls when she’s older.”
“Wow,” I said, wide-eyed. “Annabel, that’s so kind of you. How grown-up.”
I tried to imagine what Emma might look like when she was thirteen but I only saw another version of Annabel. Inevitably, I’d thought of this same scene a hundred times when I was younger: Julian’s and my child meeting her new family in some kitchen somewhere. She was probably in that same kitchen right now—eating Christmas dinner, if her family even celebrated the holiday.
Still, it was nice to get attention for once, and not have to give it. The prospect of bringing Emma to every family holiday from now on filled me with a kind of comfort, and the idea of her older cousins playing with her and teasing her made me extremely glad. I tried to forget my (rarely expressed) concerns that the whole thing was a big mistake, and for the most part I managed. Seeing her inside my family gave it all a little context, and I was proud to be bouncing her on my knee while the adults sipped decaf coffees at the end of the night.
Christmas Day was the same as it always was—only I’d woken up early with my brother and sister to make a little stocking for Emma that I unpacked later while Henry held her up so she could watch. Zoe had planned to cook French-bread French toast with a fresh strawberry sauce but she’d forgotten to get enough eggs, so I volunteered to make a quick trip to Whole Foods, the only market nearby that’d be open. I tried to take Emma with me but my mother insisted I leave her.
“It’s fine,” she’d said. “I had a few of these myself.” I looked at Emma, clutching a new stuffed snowman, and watched her blink at me, gnawing. I wondered for a moment how well she could recognize me but dismissed the thought as ridiculous. Emma didn’t cry too often with the particular request of being returned to my arms and it sometimes made me insecure.
* * *
I ran into him at the supermarket. Of course. The last time it’d happened was three years ago at the liquor store on Christmas Eve. I saw him before he saw me, holding a slip of paper and roaming down the spice aisle. He looked good, the same, slightly pudgier than he was a few years ago, but still sporting his mop of curly brown hair. My reaction to his presence was always visceral, and I felt my hands start to shake slightly as I watched him. It struck me in that instant that I could have just turned around, walked to another aisle, and avoided the
encounter. But I didn’t even consider it.
“Jules,” I said. The nickname came out by accident. He turned around, looked at me, and we both stared, then grinned.
“Of course,” he said.
“I know.”
“Just—of course,” he said.
“I know.”
We hugged and it was only slightly awkward. We communicated occasionally via e-mail, but I hadn’t told him about Emma yet.
“How are you?”
“Good, good. How are you?”
“Good.”
“Glad we got all those details out of the way,” he said, smiling.
“I uh . . . I saw your Christmas card. Your oldest is getting . . . big.” I was looking down, suddenly. Desperate for the conversation to flow smoothly.
“Yeah,” Julian said. “He’s nearly fifteen.” He was studying me. We stood there for a few more seconds, just taking each other in.
“How’s, uh . . .” I could tell he didn’t know what to ask. “. . . the newspaper. Are you still . . . ?”
I interrupted him. “I’m taking some time off.”
“To work on the book?”
“No, actually, to raise my daughter.” I hardly used that word and it felt strange to say aloud. He looked at me and his mouth hinged open.
“Oh! Oh my gosh. Wow, Audrey, congratulations!”
“Thank you.”
“Who’s the, um, did you . . .” I saw his eyes dart to my left hand and back again.
“Adoption,” I said. Nodding with my mouth closed and then trying a small smile, waving my hands at my sides. “The irony!” But he didn’t laugh, and I could tell it still hurt him like it hurt me. We stood in silence again, rocking.
“What are you looking for?” The subject change was pathetic.
“Coriander,” he said. “Apparently it’s essential, so I offered to run out. You?”
“Eggs.”
“Ah.” Silence again. Then he smiled. “Is her name Emma?”
I nodded.
“You never got your Chloe, did you?” I said.
“I didn’t,” he laughed. “Alexis didn’t like it.” The thought of his wife made me uneasy and I realized, suddenly, that I should say I had to go.
“Listen.” I took a step toward him. “I need to run home, but if you want to meet her, stop by the First Parish service tonight when you leave St. Andrew’s. Nine o’clock. Jared roped me into having her play Jesus. Well, understudy for Jesus.”
“You’re kidding,” he said. “I miss Jared. He’s ridiculous.”
“Everyone does.”
“Well, I’ll be there.” He shifted his bag up on his shoulder. “Nine o’clock First Parish?”
“Nine o’clock First Parish.”
* * *
I convinced my family, finally, that they didn’t have to come “be supportive,” and I drove Emma alone to the church and held her in the basement amid the sea of swarming children, parents, costumes, and cardboard. Jared arrived a little after I did and led me to my seat in the front pew slightly before the pageant was scheduled to start.
“Hi,” he said, kissing me on the cheek.
“Hi,” I said. “Merry Christmas.”
“Merry Christmas.” I waited for a second but then went on with it.
“I ran into Julian at the supermarket today.”
“Of course you did.”
“I know.”
“Was it . . . ?”
I cut him off. “It was fine.”
“Did you . . . ?”
“Yeah.” I took a moment. “He knew her name was Emma.” I decided to leave out the part about inviting him, but I scanned the crowd obsessively as the congregation built like a wave behind me. I was undercover—smuggling a baby Jesus whom no one else could see. I imagined The Tempest, the mythologies, and all the secret sets of twins I’d spent so long assessing in grad school. But then they lit the candles, so I stopped imagining and searching and tried to think about the present.
It was pitiable, pathetic, but I wanted him to come. Wanted him there, badly, to see me and Emma and understand that this was hard but that I wanted it. That it was hard but I was okay. But the pews were nearly filled and I didn’t see him.
They dimmed the lights and I held Emma tight in my arms. I looked behind me and saw an old man writing in a notebook. Behind him, a kid yanking at his mother’s shirt. To their left, shadowed by the balcony, a young couple pressing together and sharing a program. The boy was lanky and freckled and the girl was petite. She traced tiny circles into his palm, toying with his hand on her lap. The girl whispered something in his ear and he shook his head. She offered him a piece of gum and he refused. I looked away as the backlights faded, but I could just make out the boy pulling his hand away. I remembered a party in the city I hadn’t thought of in years when I’d told Julian not to hold my hand because it was juvenile. I remembered wanting both hands that night—for gestures and hugs and brushing back my hair. That’s the feeling I needed to remember, I thought. Not those nights in his car.
* * *
A small boy walked down the aisle with a giant North Star and the choir began a version of “The First Noel.” I breathed in the pastor and the warmth of the other bodies. The wise men came and the shepherds and the sheep. I looked behind me again but I still didn’t see Julian. The candles on the chalice dripped wax onto the lambs and the songs from the choir made the angels start flying. More angels came, and the kings and the queens. I looked back again but the door was still shut. He wasn’t coming.
Somewhere, buried in the manger, a baby was crying. It screamed and shrieked to the decrescendo of “Silent Night.” Somewhere, someone was making a sign; somewhere, Jared was gesturing furiously. The Wise Men shrugged and Mary started crying. But I didn’t notice. Emma had her tiny hand wrapped around my finger. I pressed her against me until the song had ended. Until the dust started falling like snow and I could feel her tiny breath on my neck. My daughter, I thought, was not twenty-two and home from some college with a family I didn’t know. She was breathing against my chest as the pews sank and rose.
I heard the creak of a door behind me and turned, quickly, to see Julian shutting its heavy frame behind him, panting. Jared’s hands were on Emma and I felt him pulling and myself letting go.
Sclerotherapy
Karen found out the tattoo of the Chinese character on her right ankle actually meant soybean five months after she got it. Inner resolve and outer peace, a general levelheadedness and tranquility was the translation printed under the thin black character she had chosen from the chart on the wall. Soybean was the translation her brother’s Asian roommate awkwardly gave her after she modeled it for him in the smoky dorm room on the fifth floor. He asked if the artist was Chinese, and she shook her head. She asked if he was high, and he shook his. Karen slid the leg of her jeans back down and bit at a nail. The roommate fidgeted. I mean, he probably just copied them onto the chart from a takeout menu. The tang of incense clung to Karen as she walked down five flights of stairs.
* * *
“So it’s five veins today, right?” The nurse made small movements with her pencil as she flipped between thin papers on a clipboard. Karen didn’t respond but shifted her weight back in the chair. The thickly set woman pushed her lips out and adjusted the waistband of her brightly patterned scrubs. “Five veins, yes?” The question was repeated slowly, with an emphasis on the word five.
“That’s what they tell me.” She was a woman of sixty-two; it wasn’t her first time sitting in the polyester recliner. Wasn’t the first time the thick substance would be injected carefully into her calves. She hated the experience. Not just the pain of her legs thickening then thinning, but also the two-hour view of nothing but her ankles. Socks were usually the solution, folded down and over the youthful rebelliousness stamped above her
anklebone. But in the Sclerotherapy Clinic, there were no ridged socks to cover her shins, and no smile to cover her keen self-consciousness. In the Sclerotherapy Clinic, she thought, there were only fat nurses and varicose veins.
The blood in Karen’s veins was beginning to drain out. Her body lay inflexibly strapped to the recliner, tilted at a harsh angle so her feet were raised high above her head. The sting of the injected gel still tingled over her skin, making the thin unshaven hairs on her legs stand up.
“All right now, Karen, try to relax.” The nurse opened a small drawer and removed a bundle of compression stockings. “I’m sure you know the drill by now.” She squirted down the nozzle of a Lubriderm bottle and thick white lotion plopped into her hand. “But remember, you can’t take these things off for two weeks unless you’re lying down.” Her hands rubbed each other and attained an oily glisten in the office light. “Your veins gotta glue themselves together, see, so the blood is forced to find another path.” Karen nodded and blinked slowly.
* * *
What does it mean? she had been asked by a coworker one spring about twenty years ago when sweat had rubbed the usual Band-Aid off her ankle. Karen tugged at her earlobe. It means inner resolve and outer peace, a general levelheadedness and tranquility. The woman nodded, smiled politely, and turned back to her desk. I was nineteen, Karen said, almost sarcastically. She opened her mouth again but realized she had nothing to say. The question always bothered her. Made her hate herself more with each false explanation. But she kept at it, as if it might somehow compensate for having soybean etched permanently into her skin. Karen swung her chair left and stared into her computer screen. The case she was studying stared back, its importance suddenly mocking her.
* * *
“Oh.” The nurse paused. “I didn’t know you had a tattoo, miss.” She grinned slightly. “What does it mean?” Karen had expected it. In fact, she was surprised it had taken this long.
The Opposite of Loneliness: Essays and Stories Page 11