by John Warley
I’m sure my face slacked. “Let me think for a moment.” I panned the remaining cribs, cataloguing their contents, while my mind debated my instincts. “Over there,” I said at last, “is the youngest.” They walked to the crib most distant from the doorway by which we had entered.
“This is Soo Yun. She is perhaps three weeks old. We cannot be certain.”
Soo Yun slept facing away from the four of us collected by her crib. A knitted cap protected her head. The lieutenant and his wife leaned to see her face.
“Can’t tell much,” said the lieutenant.
“She’s sooo tiny,” added his wife, glancing over her shoulder toward Tong Soon’s crib.
“Yes,” I agreed. “So tiny. That is because she has been ill. She will enter the hospital this afternoon for tests.” She came to us ill, but the decision to send her for tests was one I made on the spur of the moment. Her fever had spiked again and I suspected pneumonia.
“Poor thing,” said the wife, contorting her face in a grimace which I read as a studied and habitual response to bad news not affecting her directly.
“That’s too bad,” added the lieutenant.
“Would you care to wait until she awakes?”
The couple made eye contact. “I don’t think that’s necessary,” he said. She nodded her agreement and asked if they could return to Tong Soon.
“Certainly,” I replied. “He is an adorable baby with a sweet disposition.”
That afternoon, when the last visitor had left and the ward returned to normal, I carried Soo Yun to Dr. Lee. He agreed that her symptoms had lingered too long. She would be taken for tests to the Korean Children’s Hospital, a glass and steel tower in the center of the city. As I returned to my ward, I felt the full weight of the stress exerted by every open house.
During my first year at the home, I saw no similarity between my chosen profession and that of my parents, the restaurant. Business wasn’t for me, or so I thought. But as time passed, I came to see that I too had cast my lot in a capitalism of sorts. To be sure, the home made no profit. It was heavily subsidized by the Korean government and the burden of its funding grew annually. But the home, like the restaurant, had a product.
“Life is business,” I heard my father say more than once. Perhaps he was correct. As a girl waiting tables, I remember the expressions of customers who declined the daily specials. There was universality to those expressions, a collective inhale as the eyes narrowed and the forehead wrinkled and the lips pursed from indecision. “No,” they would often say, “I will have …” I remember taking those decisions personally, as though it were not the bibimbop or bulgogi being rejected, but me. Later, I wondered if it mattered that the specials were verbalized. The printed menu lay flat on the table, but specials carried with them part of me; my voice, my enthusiasm, my sincerity. “No,” they would say at last, “I will have … something else.” Someone else.
For a scant instant, I saw that look today on the face of Mrs. Jennings. And worse, infinitely worse, I sensed that internalization of rejection in Eun, flush in the victory of her flawless rope-skipping. I had a ward teeming with daily specials, many so listless, so uninspired, so ordinary that they would never attract a customer. “Life is business.”
The lieutenant and his wife apparently had decided on Tong Soon and filled out forms before leaving. I thought I heard them discussing names, but the interpreter had gone and I could not be sure. In my heart, I sang a song, a lullaby, for Tong Soon. The lieutenant and his wife seemed like good people. Their attraction to him had been immediate and heartfelt. Perhaps a perfect match, as sometimes happened. And who could say what lives, present and future, had been altered in the radiance of that angelic smile and that heavenly coo.
And I wondered if I did right by Soo Yun. I had to be honest, didn’t I? My position demanded it. But by disclosing the medical concern at the outset, I had effectively sealed her in the security of the home. Perhaps that was my intent. Soo Yun was special. The lieutenant and his wife would make good parents to Tong Soon if it all worked out, and he would be fortunate to have them.
But they were not special.
3
Elizabeth
I fixed a nice dinner and I waited for just the right time to bring up THE SUBJECT because I knew Coleman wanted to avoid THE SUBJECT, which was the only thing I’d been able to think about for weeks, THE SUBJECT being the adoption of a Korean girl who may or may not even have been alive when we all—that would be Josh and Steven and Coleman and me—sat down to dinner that evening. Really, I felt like I was pregnant again, with that anticipation you get as the delivery draws nearer and you truly focus on the fact that one day soon you will have another little person in your life, and that feeling came over me all during the holidays and kept coming so that it was all I could do to address Christmas cards and stuff stockings and play Mrs. Clause to Josh and Steven. One night just before Christmas I was sipping some wine and was tempted to tack an old stocking to the mantel with a big question mark where the name should be, and I’ll be the first to admit that was a bit obsessive but I get that way when I want something as badly as I wanted HER.
By the time we sat down to dinner that evening we had scheduled the appointment with Social Services for the interview, and that seemed a perfect segue from Josh’s indoor soccer practice to THE SUBJECT, so I reminded Coleman in my sweetest and most diplomatic voice that the meeting with Monique Hunter was at 4:30 P.M. and that he needed to be there and when he rolled his eyes the way he sometimes does I knew we were going to have a words on THE SUBJECT we’d had quite a few words on in recent months and while I was under no illusions that he had embraced HER like I had, I thought I had brought him around so that if he was not totally convinced we were doing the right thing he was at least less convinced he could possibly talk me out of it and therefore had become reconciled to the idea. Did I expect him to be counting down the hours like I was or perusing catalogs of girls’ clothing or scouting the neighborhood for girls that might be close to her age, whatever that age turned out to be? No. But did I want him to embrace the concept and then, in a day or two, embrace her? Absolutely.
Granted, some people will question my desire for an international adoption when we had two biological boys and could have more if we chose, my husband being one of those people. He had cross-examined me on THE SUBJECT several times and, being a trial lawyer, cross-examination was something he did well. But I thought I held my own, thank you very much, because I refused to concede the idea was some “altruistic daydream,” a phrase he liked to use in these “discussions.” I reminded him that tens of thousands of couples adopted children every year and that many of those adoptions came from places like Korea where strict social customs prevented adoption there. He acknowledged I had a point but countered with a supposition that most of those couples were childless or unable to have more children, and you have to watch him when he rebuts a hard fact with a supposition because lawyers get away with that far too often. I asked him point blank if he wanted a daughter and when he said he did I assured him that my way was the only way he was going to get one and he raised his voice to complain that I was assuming we would continue to produce boys, a supposition. I love turning the table.
The real reason he resisted was his parents. They live in Charleston, South Carolina, where Coleman grew up. Their political hero is Barry Goldwater, if that gives you any insight. Barry fucking Goldwater. Okay, here is an area where I have to plead guilty because I began dropping the f-bomb in college and have never been able to break the habit, and in New Hampton, Virginia, where we live, young women simply did not say such things in 1979 and you can imagine what the reaction would have been in Charleston if I ever slipped up there, which I’d only done twice. Maybe three times. I’m careful around the children, of course, because no mom wants to be called into a preschool teacher conference to be asked where her son could have learned certain words. Coleman says his parents consider me “liberal,” which to them could mea
n a person who missed church one Sunday or who had ever in their life voted for a Democrat. I hold my tongue when we visit them, which we do regularly because it is important to Coleman and important that our sons know their grandparents.
So, back to my dinner. Coleman rolled his eyes when I reminded him of the meeting with Monique Hunter and that reminded me that we were not yet on the same page where the adoption was concerned and I suppose I might have yelled at him and he said he was playing golf that afternoon but that he would be there. One step at a time. As I did the dishes he came into the kitchen to nuzzle me and make amends. He is pretty good in the nuzzling department, and afterwards he bathed the boys and put them to bed and when he does that it can sound like World War III upstairs because he tickles them and gets them laughing at a time when they should be getting sleepy according to everything you read about raising children. But then they read a story and everything eventually gets quiet and I love that time when the house gets still and the boys are bathed and in bed and everyone is safe and accounted for. That is a secure feeling I treasure. That is what I want our daughter to feel when she gets here. Soon.
4
Coleman
In January 1979 I became the newest and youngest partner in Mahoney, Cauthen, Miller & Slade, P.C. Elizabeth fixed a nice celebratory dinner. She hardly cooked at all when we got married but has improved steadily since. I remember buying a better wine than we usually served; a token of my new, better-paid status with the firm. That I spent the extra two dollars at the Gourmet Garden over what the same bottle of Sonoma merlot could be had for at Food King troubled me not at all. From this time forward, I planned to breathe great drafts of the Garden’s pricier air.
Elizabeth noticed the unfamiliar label, a shock of yellow, blue, and green shards like the sunset in another galaxy, although frankly any wine suited her. “Smells wonderful,” she reported as she passed her nose over the rim of the crystal glass she held loosely by the stem.
“At these prices, it should,” I replied, smiling and raising my glass. “To the future.”
Josh was seven. He lifted his milk in a toasting gesture, his glass wobbling precariously. Steven, age five and seated opposite, mimicked his brother, sloshing milk onto the outer rim of his plate and placemat.
“Oops,” he said meekly, glancing toward Elizabeth.
“Oops is right, sport,” I said. “Get a sponge.” As Steven retreated toward the kitchen, I winked at Elizabeth. “Kid’s going to be a sloppy drunk.”
“Coleman, please don’t even joke about that. Josh, elbows off the table.”
Steven returned, carrying a cloth. He approached his chair, kneeling in it to provide the extension his short arms required to reach the spill. His mother leaned toward him to whisper, “A sponge, dear. That’s a dish towel.” Steven nodded, then pressed the towel down onto his soggy mat and newly irrigated plate, daubing the milk and mashing his carrots simultaneously.
“Yuck!” Josh said as Steven guided the cloth between his roast beef and the mashed potatoes. “You got milk in your carrots. Gross!”
Steven stopped, guilt registered on his guileless face. “I don’t like carrots.”
As Josh made a mocking face across the table, Elizabeth spoke, her fork suspended over her plate. “We’re still on for tomorrow, right? You haven’t forgotten.”
I nodded, not looking up. “Sure.”
“You don’t sound excited.”
“Of course I am. I’m excited.”
“I know what you sound like when you’re excited,” she said with a hint of sultriness, “and that’s not even close.”
She no doubt heard my sigh. “We’re not going to start across that minefield again, are we?”
She brought her napkin to her mouth, dabbing her lips and eyeing me in silence until I felt the glare. “We’re expanding our family and you’re treating it like a flu shot. I don’t want to do this if we can’t do it together.”
“We’ll do it together.”
“Then why are you exasperated?”
“I’m not exasperated.”
Josh, following the ping and pong of this exchange, wanted to know the meaning of a word that came out something like “zackerated.”
“Exasperated,” I corrected. “It means put out, irritably fatigued, peeved.” Josh giggled, putting his hand over his mouth. Steven followed.
I had to laugh. “Not peed, peeved. And I’m not exasperated.”
“Then why do I feel like I’m breaking your arm? We talked it through, didn’t we?”
“We talked it through, yes. Whether we thought it through is open to debate.”
“I see. So now you think we shouldn’t do it.”
“I didn’t say that.”
“No, you merely suggested we were adopting a child without any forethought.”
I buttered a roll. “Look, honey, I know how much you’ve put into this. I don’t mean to throw cold water. It’s just that the closer we get, the less sure I am that we should do this.”
“Why? Give me reasons. We want a girl—”
Okay, I rolled my eyes. “You know why.”
Elizabeth narrowed her gaze at me as she strained to modulate her voice. “Yes, I’m afraid I do.”
“Don’t start with the racist tripe again.”
“I certainly will.”
“Well, save it. You simply refuse to recognize the kind of hurdles an Oriental child will face in a town like New Hampton.”
“An Asian child.”
“Asian, Oriental—call her what you want. You know what I mean.”
Steven spoke, his mouth full of mashed potato. “No fighting.”
“We’re not fighting, Steven. We’re discussing.”
“Sounds like fighting.”
Elizabeth continued. “There will be prejudice. I’m aware of that. But there is already an Asian population here, even a Korean church. I think you’re exaggerating.” She let the words hang in the air. “That, or not being honest with yourself.”
“And I think you’re being Pollyanna. You see one of these little almond-eyed fortune cookies and want to bring one home. We’re not talking about a kitten.”
She stood, folded her napkin, and pushed away from the table. “You can be such a jerk, Coleman. I’m going to Social Services tomorrow as scheduled. If you care to come, the appointment is with Monique Hunter at 4:30.”
We watched her disappear into the kitchen, the swinging door rocking on its hinges in her wake. Josh grinned mischievously as Steven turned back to me. “What’s mom mad about?”
“She’s mad because I’m a jerk.” Steven nodded and resumed eating.
Dinner ended, but the air remained charged with a static discord. Clashing sounds carried from the kitchen. The boys toted their plates through the swinging door and soon, from the den, the babble of television intruded; a rerun of The Waltons with its attendant corn pone drawls.
I remained seated, staring at the far wall, looking without seeing and conscious of a miasma in my stomach that seemed to well up with every mention of this subject. I dislike conflict, barely tolerable when I can hold fractious clients at a clinical arms length but unendurable when my most personal relationships clashed. A need for reconciliation arises within me as reflexively as the miasma. Without the enriched atmosphere of familial harmony, I flounder, gasping like a trout on a dock. In the kitchen, shielded from my view by the swinging door, drawers opened and closed with a martial edge. I rose and walked into the kitchen.
Elizabeth stood at the sink, scraping dishes before setting them into the dishwasher. I approached from behind, clasping her waist on either side, and pulled her to me, bending slightly to rest my chin on her shoulder. “I plan to be there tomorrow,” I said. “I’ve just been having some second thoughts.” She remained rigid, scraping dishes. Lean, tapered muscles in her back and trapezius, so familiar from soaping her when we showered together, held firm against me.
“You made it sound as though we’ve never given it the firs
t thought. Like I woke up one morning and decided to drink tea instead of coffee, and oh, by the way, why don’t we adopt a child.”
“I didn’t mean it that way. Sometimes things come out wrong.”
She reached for the frying pan and edged it into the soapy water. “And sometimes they come out like you mean them.”
“Sometimes,” I agreed, feeling her body soften as she exhaled. “Remember when you first suggested it? Steven was what, one?”
“He was walking. One, I suppose.”
“Hard to believe that much time has passed.”
“We weren’t exactly prompt with the paperwork.”
I released my clasp, stepped from behind and turned toward her, leaning against the counter.
“Is the home study the last hurdle?” I asked.
“They have to find a child.”
“You still think Korean is the way to go?”
“The people at Open Arms say it’s still the best source. India will open soon, they tell me, but we’ve waited too long already.” She dried her hands and tossed the dish towel at me. “Thanks for the help with the dishes.”
“Hey, I kept you company. Besides, you know the rules. I cook, you clean.”
A reluctant grin formed on her lips. “But I did both.”
“No wonder the boys complained of stomach pains.”
“Very funny.”
I put my arms around her, drawing her close. Sighing, she turned her head against my shoulder.
“I’ll put the boys to bed,” I said.
“That would be great. They’ve seen enough of me today.”
In the den, I sat down on the middle cushion of the couch between my sons just as John Boy was saying goodnight to everyone on Walton’s Mountain. “Goodnight, Mary Ellen. Goodnight, John Boy. Goodnight, Momma.”
“Time for bed,” I announced. “Who wants a ride?”
With Josh on my back and Steven in my arms, I started up the stairs. The boys knew that somewhere between step one and step eighteen, the upstairs landing, I would stagger uncertainly, as if to put us all at risk for a Biblical tumble backward. In that instant, each boy would glom to me instinctively. Josh would clutch my neck from behind with such tenacity that my windpipe would close. Steven, in front, contorted himself into a ball of hysterics, doubling his body mass and therefore his weight in blithe disregard of whatever laws of physics were at play on the stairs. Each knew the faux-stumble was coming because it always did, but guessing which step would serve as tonight’s trip wire created the mounting tension I relished. I relished it for its power to make them cling to me, to depend upon me to ensure that the game was only a game, to guarantee their safety while creating the illusion of danger. I could feel their young bodies bracing for it, and with each step I climbed, the suppressed giggles climbed with us. On nights like tonight, when I remained sure-footed as high as step fourteen, the squeals of anticipation could not be muzzled, and the three of us began to laugh with an energy that threatened to destabilize the unit. At fifteen, Steven let out a happy roar that echoed downstairs. At sixteen, they shook and contorted so violently and so collectively that I feared losing my balance. At seventeen, a step from the top, I faltered, pitching forward with my upper body so as the fling the boys onto the soft carpet of the upper landing. In a heap we laughed until Steven reached for his fly, to manually restrain his excitement.