Daughters for a Time

by Handford, Jennifer

  Nonetheless, with each completed form, I felt my body calm, my shoulders drop, my heart heal. Some nights, when I closed my eyes, an image of a precious porcelain-faced baby with lacquer-black hair popped into my mind. I could almost imagine her rosebud lips and almond-shaped eyes. I’d see her a few years down the road when she was Maura’s age, regaling me with her stories from the day. We got to paint, Mom! With our fingers!

  The adoption paperwork was voluminous. We produced tax returns, pay stubs, investment summaries, medical exams, police screenings, fingerprints. We collected letters of recommendation, wrote essays, swore that we would feed, clothe, educate, and never hurt this child. Each form required our signatures, a notary public witnessing them, a certification stating that the notary public was indeed a notary public, and authentication. While unfit parents everywhere were popping out babies, we were being scrutinized in order to adopt a baby nobody wanted. The irony was rich.

  One day, I was outside collecting our mail. My neighbor, Kathy, was at her mailbox, too. We chatted and she stepped easily into my personal life, asking how the “fertility problems” were going. Before I thought it through, I told her that we were putting in to adopt.

  “Mark my words!” she said in her know-it-all voice, wagging her finger at me. “You’ll adopt and no sooner get pregnant. You watch! It happens all of the time.”

  I nodded, refraining from arguing that thousands of adoptive parents out there would beg to differ with her theory. Infertile was infertile, as it were.

  Back in the house, I sat down with a cup of tea and considered Kathy’s point. Maybe, I thought, Kathy and her cohort of intrusive, busybody women who spouted their philosophies whether you asked them or not were correct. “Just watch!” I’d heard them cluck a thousand times. “Your body will relax and you’ll get pregnant!” they’d said, laughing with their mouths open, as if it were the most delightfully ironic thing in the world. How I could have punched them in the mouth, those women who sprouted babies from their hips and arms like eyes on a potato.

  And while there was no science to back up Kathy’s claim, it was true that it happened all of the time.

  Tim was elated that I had finally come around and that we had submitted the last of the paperwork to the agency. And truly, I had come around. My continuing efforts to procreate now sent an uneasy shiver down my spine, as if I were betraying the Chinese orphan whom I had never met but was somehow already growing to love. But still, I was split. I was courting two lovers and was flanked with the attendant guilt. I desperately wanted the baby in China, but I also couldn’t help reserving a glimmer of hope for a last-ditch effort, a secret plan to tempt fate, confuse karma, and trick my body. I pocketed my plan as my own little treasure, something I clung to in private, something I would take out if I ever achieved pregnancy again. See! I’d say. I told you not to count me out.

  In September, we met with our social worker, Dr. Eleanor Reese.

  “Call me, Elle,” she said, standing at our front door, fluffing her nest of wild auburn hair.

  We asked her into the family room, offered her coffee. She sat in the upholstered chair in front of the fireplace. Her eyes were greenish, feline, and her body was voluptuous, with a pendulous bosom and curvy hips. She was dressed in flowing fabrics of bright hues, three-inch heels, and a pound of jewelry. She looked like an advertisement for Chicos. She was so vibrant and I was so anything-but in my khaki pants and blue sweater from the Old Navy Boring Department. The juxtaposition was glaring.

  I was already squirming. Her eye contact was too good. What if she could detect that I wanted to adopt, but that I wasn’t quite finished trying to get pregnant?

  “It’s so nice meeting you both,” Elle said, waving her arm in the air, her bangles falling like dominoes down her wrist. “I enjoyed talking to you the other day on the phone.”

  During that phone conversation, I had told her a bit about Tim and me, our desire to adopt.

  “Tell me more about yourselves,” she said now. “How long have you been married?”

  “Seven years.”

  “And how did you meet?”

  I told her about meeting at cooking school in France—two kids from Virginia falling in love halfway around the globe.

  “A real love affair,” Elle said, shimmying in her chair, bracelets chiming.

  I looked at Elle, wondered what it would be like to be so jolly, to wear such bright clothing, to laugh so loudly, to feel so much joy.

  “Once you were married, did you have conversations about having children?”

  “All the time,” I said. “We both have always wanted a family.”

  “And seeing that you both went to cooking school, are either of you chefs?” Elle asked.

  “Tim and I own a restaurant—Harvest, on Seventeenth Street?”

  “Harvest!” Elle roared. “I have dreams about the braised pheasant and parmesan polenta.” She opened her mouth and let out a gravelly laugh that caused tremors throughout her body.

  “Yeah, that is pretty good,” I admitted, imagining the slow, thick bubble of the deepening sauce sliding into the earthy polenta.

  Tim and I looked at each other, smiled through our eyes.

  “Why don’t you tell me what brought you to the decision to adopt.”

  We told her about the years of trying, the infertility, the miscarriage, the baby room that was dulling with age.

  “I just want to be a mother,” I said in a pitiful voice. Elle Reese’s killer eye contact operated like truth serum on me. With her, I wanted to bare my soul.

  “Have you had a hard time accepting your infertility?”

  I looked at her, paused before I answered. What did she see in me? “I admit, I wanted to have a baby badly. And I haven’t yet completely mourned that loss. But I’m ready to adopt,” I said. “My heart is in it.”

  “Tell me about your family.”

  “My family spans the spectrum,” I said. “I have a father who left us early on—so, not a good thing. But I have an older sister who carried her responsibility to me like a torch, so she’s definitely a ‘positive’ in my family column. And Tim has two parents who are just lovely, incredible people.”

  “Where does your mother fall?” Elle asked.

  “My mother just fell, period. She died of cancer when I was fourteen.”

  “I’m so sorry to hear that,” Elle said, and pulled a thin box of Kleenex from her bag. “For you, raising a child as a ‘motherless mother’—a mother who lost her own mother at an early age—will have its challenges. I recently read a study that showed that these mothers worried more about ‘getting it right’ than mothers who still had their own mothers around.”

  “I want to be a good mother,” I said. “I know that.”

  “When you lose your mother early on, as you did, having your own child is remarkably healing, in that it can restore what was taken from you. But it also forces you to face your demons. There’s no running away.”

  We worked with Elle for a few months. She told us that the wait to get a baby would be about twelve to fourteen months from the time that our paperwork was approved. A pregnancy, plus some. When all was said and done, on the first day of November, the adoption agency sent our dossier of paperwork to China, requesting on our behalf that we be matched with a baby. If all went well, in about a year’s time, Tim and I would fly to China and return with a baby girl.

  Months passed, Thanksgiving and then Christmas. Before we knew it, the New Year was upon us. With each passing day, the adoption grew closer. My daughter, the words that used to get caught in my throat as I thought about adoption were now smooth and welcoming, like a caramel melting in my mouth. Each month brought us closer to getting our referral, the document with information about the baby with whom we had been matched. Each day, my fixation with having a biological baby eased. What was once an obsession was now like a part-time hobby.

  My efforts to get pregnant became halfhearted, at best. Some months I would be aware of my cycle
and would make an effort to seduce Tim on prime nights. But most months, I wasn’t paying attention. The desperation was gone. A new calm had infiltrated my being. One morning, when I was feeling particularly strong and well adjusted, I cleaned out the cabinet below my sink, tossing the ovulation and pregnancy tests in the garbage. I tossed, too, the dog-eared books on the mechanics of getting pregnant and understanding fertility that had filled a bookshelf. Finally, I threw away the ovulation-inducing medication.

  Claire urged me to get the baby’s room ready. “I’ll take you shopping,” she said. She knew everything that we would need, every piece of gear that could possibly be required. Finally, I acquiesced and we went shopping for the big items: stroller, crib, dresser, car seat—impersonal items that could be returned if we ended up empty-handed. Still in their boxes, I lined them against the wall in the baby’s pale-yellow room.

  “We need to get some clothes, too,” Claire said.

  “Not yet.” Still superstitious, I needed to stay away from the onesies and the OshKosh overalls and the rubber-footed sleeper suits. Falling in love with a piece of clothing with duck feet seemed like a bad idea. My heart was only so strong.

  When Tim got home from work, he found me on the floor of the baby room, lying on my back, taking in the scent of lavender sachets and the crisp air from the open windows.

  “For her room,” Tim said, holding something behind his back.

  “What is it?” I asked, seeing the corners of a frame.

  “I found this saying on the Internet,” Tim said. “And I had a guy in Chinatown write it in calligraphy on one side and English on the other.” It read:

  Not flesh of my flesh

  Nor bone of my bone

  But miraculously, still my own;

  You didn’t grow under my heart,

  But in it.

  “Oh my God, Tim,” I said, fighting back the rush of emotion. “I love it. I love it so much.” That was the end of me holding myself at a distance. I was all in. If the adoption fell through and I ended up empty-handed, I would just need to die from a broken heart. Another broken heart.

  “You’re going to be a great mom, Helen,” Tim said. “I know you will be.”

  Chapter Six

  Spring came and the weather was schizophrenic. A sunny blanket of sun in the seventies one day, cold and windy in the fifties the next, tumultuous downpours the following week. Today was one of the gorgeous days, the kind that made you forgive the long, humid summers and endlessly frigid winters. I had spent the day baking: a rack full of mini caramelized-onion quiches and prosciutto tortes, trays of focaccia, and three cakes. I had also helped Tim cook for the lunch crowd and prepare for dinner. Once my station was cleaned, I slipped out the restaurant’s back door, sat on a crate in the alleyway with a tumbler of iced tea, and watched the sun set. I was exhausted but satisfied, excited but calm. When a cool breeze snaked through my shirt and behind my neck, the feeling was so gentle it almost made me cry.

  After saying good-bye to Tim, I left Harvest and headed to Target to get some of the items we would need for the trip to China as well as a birthday present for Maura, who would turn four in a few days. But my car turned left instead of right and I ended up in the direction of Arlington, parked on the opposite side of the loop across from my father’s house. His LeSabre was under the carport. I grabbed the bag of peanut M&Ms from the glove box, locked the car, and went into the park across the street, finding a seat on a swing.

  My pocket vibrated and I checked my phone. It was Tim.

  “Hi,” I said.

  “I just wanted to tell you that a couple just came in for dinner and they have two little girls from China and they’re really cute. I wish you were here to see them.”

  “That’s awesome,” I said. “I love you.”

  “I love you, too.”

  I once read that girls from broken homes were statistically more likely to choose unsuitable mates than girls from stable homes. The logic was simple: she who knows what a healthy relationship looks like will model that relationship and vice versa. If I had fallen into that statistic, I would have ended up with a cheating husband who walked out on me when times got tough. Instead, I hit the jackpot with Tim and his loving family.

  My boyfriend before Tim, a guy named Charlie, strung me along like an overused fishing lure. Even after the Draconian breakup, during which he had looked me straight in the eyes and said with a shrug, “I just don’t care about you the way you care about me,” he’d still drop by occasionally, clinking two bottles of hefeweizen and a white pizza from Fratelli’s. And although I’d practiced a harsh “What do you want?” having imagined the moment a hundred times in the weeks since the last visit, I always let him in with an affable hello, hoping that this time would be different. By the end of the night, Charlie would have my buttons undone and he’d whisper into my ear, “I don’t want to mislead you.” Then what are you doing here? I always wanted to say but never did as Charlie shucked off my shirt. Each time, I was left feeling smaller and less worthy than the time before.

  When I met Tim, I almost faulted him for wanting me. After a father who had left and a boyfriend who valued me so little, I couldn’t figure out what Tim saw in me. There had to be something that he was missing that would soon rear its ugly head, sending him packing.

  One night, when Tim and I were on a ferry from Venice to Corfu, we were lying on our backs on the deck of the bow. The sky was blacker than I’d ever seen and the stars were almost blue they shimmered so brightly. It reminded me of the Lite-Brite I had played with as a kid, plugging each little bulb into the board.

  “Are you sure you love me?” I asked Tim. “Are you sure you’re not going to hurt me?”

  “Not all men are evil,” Tim said. “You’ll see. You’ll see how good I can be to you.”

  In the little park outside of Arlington, I popped a handful of peanut M&Ms into my mouth and chewed, staring at Larry’s house. I took a long breath, inhaling and exhaling with force, feeling the tensile edges of my ribs. I imagined walking up to his door and knocking loudly, with purpose. No hesitation. There are things that I need to know! I’d demand. I could do that. What could be the worst thing to happen? Instead, I got up and walked the loop around the park. I watched as a teenager took my seat on the swing, his friend handed him a beer, and together, they laughed loudly.

  The houses surrounding the park were cute, eclectic. The golden glow of table lamps and porch lights made for a quaint, gingerbread-house effect. As I rounded the last corner, my gaze fixed again on Larry’s house. A sense of daring crawled up my back. As if being coaxed, I took a deep breath and crossed the road. I was now standing at the end of his driveway. My heart hammered. I looked back at my car. When I was a teenager, I, along with a group of somewhat derelict kids, had toilet-papered our math teacher’s house. I remembered the exhilarating feeling that accompanied that trespassing. This felt the same.

  I willed myself to take more steps. Now I was standing at the base of his carport. I reached out and touched the back bumper of his LeSabre. I rode in that car, I thought. As a little girl, I sat in that backseat and believed that everything in the world was good and right.

  Every October, our family would drive out to the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia to take in the sweeping views of the brilliant fall foliage. Claire and I would hunker down in the backseat, my nose buried in a Nancy Drew, Claire’s buried in one of her summer reading selections. The Catcher in the Rye, I remember well, as my sister gasped and giggled her way through it and I begged to know what was so funny. Meanwhile, Mom and Dad were in the front seat listening to the soft croon of George Jones on the cassette player. Every now and then Dad would swing his arm back to tap our knees. “Look out your windows,” he’d say. “You’re missing the beautiful scenery.” Claire and I would look up for a minute and then burrow back into our books, more interested in our sleuthy and scandalous stories than the changing leaves.

  We were happy then, it seemed. I was, anyway. But
I was only nine, maybe ten years old. Claire seemed happy, too. But what do kids know about grown-up things like braving a marriage riddled with sickness and betrayal? At what age does a child learn that her parents might be pillars, but that, easily, they can crumble?

  A few more steps. Now I was standing on the concrete entryway. The front door was staring right at me. My heart buckled in a way that made me wonder if it was strong enough to endure such a stress test. I felt nauseated. This wasn’t a good idea. I wasn’t ready for confrontation tonight. I wasn’t ready to hear what he might have to say. I turned and felt the safety of seeing my car. The shortest distance between two points is a straight line.

  Just then, the front door opened. Larry stepped out, a Hefty garbage bag suspended in the air, his mouth falling open like a ventriloquist’s dummy’s, his eyes as wide as buttons.

  “Helen?” he said, staring at me as if I were a hologram.

  “In the flesh,” I said, in a stupidly casual voice.

  “God, you’re looking more and more like your mother.”

  “That must be weird,” I said, for lack of anything better to say.

  “Spitting image.”

  “Everyone always said that I looked like you.” When I was a little kid, I used to think that meant I looked like a man with a mustache. Claire got to be the one who looked just like Mom.

  “Is everything all right?” His hair was more white than gray; his face was corded with lines, worn and leathery. His voice was more gravelly than I remembered. He wore jeans and a Green Bay sweatshirt.

  “Yeah,” I said lightly. “Sorry to drop in like this. I was in the neighborhood…”

  “Are you hurt? In trouble?” he asked, setting down the Hefty bag.

  “No, I’m fine.”

  “Do you want to come in?”

  “I can’t stay.”

  Larry looked hard at me as he raked his fingers through his hair. The side of his mouth pulled sharply to the side. Oh yeah, the twitching.