That Kind of Mother

by Rumaan Alam

  “That’s good.” He nodded. “When the social worker hands over her report, which should be soon, we’ll go ahead and schedule an appearance. Now, the courts are tied up. This isn’t life or death, so it’s going to get lower priority. You’ll just have to be patient.”

  She didn’t like being told to be patient. This felt like life or death to her. “I can wait.”

  “There’s absolutely no reason to rush, and no reason to be fearful. This is a noncontested adoption. The baby’s sister would be, in any court’s estimation, his legal guardian. And she wants this.”

  “Yes. I know.” Rebecca relished this. That their arrangement was so amiable meant something, just as the fact that Jacob was conceived in love meant something.

  “You’ve worked out a formal agreement. That’s—above and beyond. Monthly meetings, weekly phone calls, it’s more amicable than any custodial suit I’ve been part of. Judges see this, in divorces, everyone’s at pains to prove they can get along. You’re going into chambers with Cheryl. You’re on the same side. So, I can see that you’re worried, but everything is going to be—there’s no reason I can see that things won’t work out for the best for you, for Cheryl, and for Andrew, most importantly.”

  “We haven’t been able—you asked about paternity. And we haven’t been able to establish anything.” There had been not far to look. They had discussed it, however uncomfortable a discussion it was. Cheryl said she knew nothing; she would swear to it, would have to, before the judge. Rebecca had run over every conversation she’d ever had with Priscilla, though they were a jumble in her mind now. Never once a mention of a man. Not her own father, certainly not Andrew’s. It truly felt mythic, a baby conjured by nothing but the force of his mother’s body.

  McDougal ran a hand through his hair. “So, it’s a snag. But it’s a very minor one. Cheryl—she wasn’t able to provide any further leads?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Andrew, at birth, did not have a father recorded on his birth certificate. That’s fine. Standard. Maybe even statistically the fact in the majority of births inside the District. It has no particular bearing on things. The State of Maryland, like most, invests most parental authority in the mother, anyway.”

  “But. What if? What if we find out that he’s out there, that he just doesn’t know what happened, to Priscilla, to the baby?”

  “Let’s say that’s true. It’s been months. He could have found out, if he wanted to. He doesn’t want to.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Even if he does. It doesn’t matter.”

  “How can it not matter—who his father is?”

  “The child is—Andrew is . . . He is, as far as we can tell, he’s African American.”

  “Yes.”

  “A hundred percent, let’s say.”

  “He seems so. How can you tell these things?” She thought of Kate Chopin.

  “You can guess. So let’s guess. Typically, parental rights pend for thirty days. These are maternal rights, most often, because fathers so rarely enter the picture in cases of adoption. So there are thirty days during which a mom can say—hey, I’ve changed my mind here. It’s rare, but it happens. But it won’t happen here, because there’s no mother. There’s Cheryl, but she’s not going to change her mind.”

  “No, she won’t.”

  “So say, theoretically, that by the time we go to court, this father makes himself known. He would have that thirty-day period. But I think he’d see that this is a great outcome. I think he’d be fine with it. But say he wanted to stop it, for whatever reason. He’d be going against your wishes, the wishes of the woman who has spent the past five months taking the baby to pediatric appointments and buying him formula and diapers. He’d be going against the wishes of the baby’s de facto guardian, his sister, their mother’s surviving child, who also happens to be an adult. A professional. A nurse.”

  “But maybe he would object. Maybe he’d say a white woman has no business.”

  “Rebecca, there is not a judge in this state who is going to privilege the objections of a black man over those of a white woman. Not one.”

  She had never considered that being a white woman was, when weighed against being a black man, superior. That a judge would be more inclined toward her for simply this fact. This theoretical man, Andrew’s father, crept up on her, over the course of Rebecca’s otherwise unremarkable days. Changing diapers, loading dishes, then there he’d be. She’d look at the baby’s flawless face and try to decide who it was she saw there, whether it was Priscilla or the man who’d conspired with her to create Andrew. He just looked like a baby, he just looked like her baby. She both pitied the man and hated him, was grateful to him for having existed and hoped he would never materialize. Whoever he was, he would never be able to take what she now thought of as hers.

  One uninteresting day in April, Christopher came home and handed her a manila envelope. “Take this to McDougal.”

  “What is it?” She put the envelope on the kitchen counter and broke the spaghetti into a pot of boiling water.

  “It’s the will. I’ve had it revised.”

  She unhooked the little prongs that kept the envelope sealed.

  “It can’t be executed while the adoption is pending. But I want McDougal to see it. To be able to show the judge. If he needs to.”

  “Show him?”

  “That after those thirty days are over, after Andrew becomes Stone, he becomes Stone. That when my mother dies, he will inherit twenty-five percent of her estate. That when I die, he will inherit fifty percent of my estate.”

  She was unsure what to say. She had misunderstood Christopher. Becomes Stone, like something out of Ovid. “Yes. I’ll take this to McDougal.”

  They were given a court date in May. They gathered in a windowless conference room, and Rebecca was disappointed because she’d been expecting mahogany and grandeur, maybe a mural. McDougal directed them to answer the judge’s queries honestly and told them those queries would be mostly about their paperwork.

  “Your petition is up to date?” This was the judge’s clerk, her lips tight as though suppressing a smile. “Your address hasn’t changed? Your telephone number hasn’t changed?”

  Solemnity seemed called for, but Rebecca was happy. How could she not smile? “No.”

  The judge studied the papers by peering over the top of his glasses, as people of a certain age did. “You’re Rebecca Stone?” He was just another anonymous man, in another anonymous room, wielding power.

  “Yes, Your Honor.” She felt ridiculous, calling him Your Honor, like a player in a bad television show, what a stupid, presumptuous epithet.

  The judge signed a piece of paper, then another, then slid them across the table toward her. “Congratulations.”

  That was it. Jacob, her parents, her sisters, the nephew and nieces, Ian and Ivy were waiting in the room adjacent. Rebecca, Andrew in her arms, Christopher, Cheryl, and McDougal joined them there. Christine snapped photographs. She’d brought a Mylar balloon. It’s a boy, it declared. But the boy had been among them for six months, of course. They shook hands with McDougal and went out for pancakes.

  18

  YOU GOT SO USED TO LIVING ANY WHICH WAY. LIFE’S CRUEL VICISSITUDES couldn’t interrupt life’s real business: that was not a life. There was much need and Rebecca was grateful for it. The day didn’t take a day, it contained Whitmaniacal multitudes: when the baby woke at two, tongue clacking for some milk, when Jacob woke at seven, ferocious for some cereal, when Christopher woke at seven thirty, intent upon a cuppa, when Christopher left at eight thirty, knotted and laced, when Jacob left at eight thirty, groomed and grouchy, when Andrew napped at ten, joyful then simply switched off, when Andrew woke at eleven, starved and delirious, when Andrew napped at two, tearful and resistant, when Andrew woke at four, refreshed and ridiculous, when Jacob returned, restless and demanding, when the boys ate at five, disgusting and dyspeptic, when they were bathed at six, were read to, fell asleep, sti
rred or did not—every step in between these was a day unto itself. Per this algebra, it wasn’t thirty days she was waiting out but thousands.

  Still: Rebecca kept count. She counted like a woman trying to master a dance. She counted like a penitent marking Our Fathers. You heard stories, samizdat, maybe made up, about what McDougal referred to as “interruption.” Christopher told her of a couple of his acquaintance—or maybe it was an urban myth—who’d engaged a surrogate to carry a child. Upon delivering the baby, the surrogate declined to honor their contract, and the man and his wife discovered they had no legal recourse whatsoever and that, furthermore, he was responsible for the child, financially. Why would you tell me this story? Rebecca had wanted to know. Anyway, it came and went. Thirty days elapsed after what felt a decade, and Andrew Stone was his name, a formality that meant that Priscilla’s name would be forever stricken from the record.

  Now this was just their life, and Christopher fretted. “We should get some help.” He was a blur, mornings, fastening his watch and knotting his tie, packing papers into his case, urging her to hurry with Jacob’s shoelaces.

  She was irked by this we but let it pass. “It’s fine. You’re taking Jacob today, yes?” He took Jacob to school, unless the ambassador needed him.

  “I’m taking Jacob today.” Christopher finished his toast. “You remember that tomorrow is that thing?”

  She remembered but couldn’t reach the specifics. There was often some thing and Rebecca often found herself making excuses. “Christopher.”

  “Look, just ask your mother to come.” He knew the contours of this argument. “This one is important. It’s the secretary himself. He’ll want to meet you. All this socializing is the precursor—”

  “—so I come and look pretty and sit and talk with the wives.”

  There was a sigh that he didn’t fully articulate. “I can’t control society—”

  “If you know I’m not just another wife, why do you want me to—”

  “Damn it, Rebecca.” Christopher was angry. “There’s a job, at the bank. I wouldn’t ask if it weren’t important.”

  She stacked dirty plates one atop the other. “A job? You have your dream job.” This she remembered, at least. That to serve at the pleasure of the Crown was his dream come true, his Yale Younger Poets Prize. Andrew began to whine and Rebecca picked him up out of the mechanical swing.

  “Dreams change. They have to.” Christopher looked at her. “This is private sector money.”

  “We hardly need more money.” Had he been keeping this from her or had she not been paying close enough attention?

  Christopher was out of patience. “What would you know about that, Rebecca?”

  What did she know of it? Very little, probably. This whole scenario (dirty dishes, fussing baby, the too-bright kitchen) was stupidly familiar. The thematic repetitions in her life were so uninteresting. “I’m just a wife, fine. I don’t know about money, I don’t know about anything. You go out into the world, I stay here.”

  “There is another mouth to feed, after all.”

  She held the wiggling complainant closer. “I think we can leave the baby out of it.”

  “I have little interest in a fight. I need to drop Jacob now. I’m just telling you that I want this job, at this bank. Bob says, Public relations is diplomacy. So you needn’t frame it as me somehow betraying some old dream, some me you thought I was.”

  When they’d first met, they’d conspired. They’d be great, at their jobs, as people, as a couple. Rebecca had been but twenty-eight, but those promises were not the bluffs of youth, because Christopher had been of course already a grown man. It was the fever of early romance, in which everything seemed erotic and urgent, and everything seemed possible. “I’m not judging you.” This felt important to establish. Christopher was the same man, more or less; to live was to change.

  He was quiet. “I want this job. And you should want it for me.”

  “I’ll ask my mother.” She relented because that was how it went in a successful marriage.

  “You know”—he had more to say—“something very sad happened, and then something very wonderful happened, out of that sadness, but you can’t let it go. You wanted this, but you’re still dissatisfied. You can’t go back to—enjoying life, being that person you were.”

  This was fair. This was probably true. Rebecca had put the playpen in the kitchen, because that seemed to be where she spent most of her time. She bent over and put Andrew in it, sitting up, though he was still unsteady and would sometimes topple over, in slow motion, like a tree dying of natural causes. She smiled at him through the mesh of his prison. “I can’t go back. To that life. You’re right there. But I’m happy. Most of us in this family are very happy.”

  “You won’t let the baby out of your sight. With Jacob, you were at work within—weeks. We made room for him in our lives. Now, our lives, they’re unrecognizable.”

  “I need to be with him. It’s different. You know why.” Rebecca knew that Christopher wouldn’t deny her anything when it came to Andrew, wouldn’t put his foot down as he might with respect to Jacob: a bias to demonstrate that biology was no bias at all.

  “It’s not good for you. For me. We’re happy but we could be happier. I’m going to get this job and that will change things. You need to make changes, as well. Hire some help. Find yourself again.”

  “I’m not ready to have someone new. Jacob has had a loss, too.” The boy had asked. Mommy, is Priscilla coming? She hadn’t told him that she was dead, though the books all said it was better to be honest. Everything dies; trees as metaphor; no, Mommy and Daddy won’t die for a long, long time. Andrew had gone from being friend-who-came-to-stay to new baby brother, and Jacob accepted this. Children accept. It’s adults who struggle.

  Christopher looked away. “You do what you think is right. And you call your mother. For me. Tomorrow. One night.”

  How little he understood her, Rebecca thought. Christopher hadn’t played what would have been his most persuasive card: poetry itself! The thing suffered without her (he could have said). That she would have liked to hear, there she would have agreed. She was a Younger Poet! James Merrill had said so. Her ego was monstrous, which was why her effacement of such was such an impressive feat. To spend the day grouping toys into like categories was an accomplishment. “I’ll call her this afternoon,” she said.

  Christopher and Jacob drove off to Woodley Park Montessori, setting off just as the baby was yawning. Motherhood was in the timing, mother as not conductor but bureaucrat, the monster who makes the trains run on time.

  19

  AT THE MONTESSORI DROP-OFF/PICKUP THERE WERE TWO TYPES OF women (there were only women): the working moms and the mom moms. Rebecca cast her lot with the larger tribe and never discussed poetry. She didn’t even bother brushing her hair. You’re forgiven much when there’s a baby on your hip. Among these women, Rebecca was a legend. Word of what they had done had spread, metastasized. This was a sort of fame and Rebecca thought of Diana, a midlength skirt, the redheaded prince at her hip. Everyone loved Diana and everyone admired Rebecca.

  “I’ll see you this afternoon. Have a great day!”

  Jacob was uninterested. He ran away, and Rebecca and the baby walked back to the Volvo in chummy quiet as they did, now, mornings, because Christopher had gotten that job after all and was busy at the bank, a place she’d never been. But Rebecca had fulfilled her vow, put on something pretty and shook hands with the secretary. He was quite elderly but he was still handsome. The secretary had gripped Rebecca’s hand tight and leaned in toward her ear. She couldn’t remember what he had said. Christopher was proud: the man had known Truman, Kennedy, Johnson, Carter, he told her. The man was a legend, and he’d tucked Christopher beneath his wing and there’d be lots of money to boot.

  Rebecca drove. She couldn’t help a little smugness, even if satisfaction was a mere siren call. Whenever Rebecca thought, Job well done, there was something: bronchitis, a field trip
, Christopher schlepping up to New York, the time she thought Andrew had swallowed one of those curlicue gold Bs that held her earrings in place. You couldn’t get accustomed to a rhythm that staccato but Rebecca gave herself over to it because sometimes it felt good to be punished and maybe some punishment was in order. How dare she feel joy like this after a sadness like that? But she glanced in the rearview and Andrew’s eyes were closed and that was as it should be.

  She turned the music down, and sang quietly. “‘Maybe this time, I’ll be lucky. Maybe this time, he’ll stay.’” Her life was full of he; Jacob Andrew Christopher melded into a singular he that Rebecca was charged with satisfying or waiting for or worrying over or imploring to stay. Those early days, with Jacob, Rebecca had relived in every passive moment the experience of giving birth to him. She took scant recollections and sensory impressions and polished them into something resembling a memory but probably far from reality. She had Tchaikovsky, and masked attendants, the frustration of not knowing her own body, the reassurance of Priscilla’s hand, the beautiful pulsing whorl of Jacob’s soft head, the prickle of maternal feeling. She’d formed the whole thing into something effectively emotional but with no relationship to reality. It was like that Christmas commercial for freeze-dried coffee; it made you cry even if that coffee was disgusting. With Andrew, in these found moments, Rebecca thought of nothing in particular.

  There was a duck pond, not far from the grocery, but pond, like poem, had an elastic and generous definition. It was a man-made puddle, and Rebecca suspected it had something to do with plumbing and the condominiums nearby. Some ducks had taken up residence there. Who knew where ducks came from, and how they chose a home for themselves. Mothers like Rebecca went there to throw balls of gummy bread into the water, so at the very least there was food.

  Andrew was nine months old; what did he care about ducks? Some percentage of the things she did for the children were actually for her. The more clever rhythms in some of Seuss seemed strictly for Rebecca’s benefit. The days were long and repetitive, too. She pulled into the little parking lot and sat for five minutes, ten minutes, fifteen minutes, twenty minutes. Rebecca let them slip by. She did not even fidget. Then he stirred, and Andrew was out of sorts, sweaty and confused. He wailed as she changed him. Thank God for the ducks, bless the ducks, Rebecca wanted to kiss each and every one of them. She was happy to look at a living thing that needed nothing from her.