The Red Thread

by Ann Hood

  “Of course,” Maya said, even though she did not have a free minute in her day.

  She had to review portfolios for the group scheduled to travel to China next week to pick up their babies. She worried that something would go wrong. Sometimes, a couple got to China and changed their minds. Sometimes, the baby was ill or different or developmentally worrisome. At the last minute, Maya had had to make a change somehow, or wait for faxed medical reports to run over to Hasbro Children’s Hospital.

  The entire ten days her families were away from her in China, Maya worried. These babies, their photographs spread out before her, all looked fine, healthy. This orphanage posed them in front of large plastic fruit: bananas and pineapples and melon towered over the children, who sat looking confused in bright red silk jackets. But Maya knew better than to trust the photographs.

  The couple walked into the office when Maya gestured toward the chairs in front of her desk. The sight of all those babies in those photographs spread out there made the woman start to cry.

  Maya swept the photographs into a neat pile and turned them facedown beside her. Then she held out the box of tissues that she kept on her desk. People cried in this office. They cried from the nervousness of waiting for their referral. They cried when that referral came and they could see a picture of their baby for the first time. And they cried when Maya had to tell them their application was rejected.

  The woman nodded and took a tissue. But she didn’t blow her nose or wipe her tears. She just crumpled it into her hand.

  “We looked over the information,” the man said. “We even started to fill out the forms.”

  “How carefully do they investigate your background?” the woman blurted, sitting upright.

  The man was chewing his bottom lip.

  “It’s pretty thorough,” Maya said, knowing this was not the answer they wanted. “I had a couple just last month,” she continued, “the husband had an arrest years ago, in college, for marijuana possession. A small thing really. But the couple chose to hide it, and when they were discovered, their application was rejected.”

  “But if they’d told the truth?” the woman asked. She had stopped crying and her mascara left dark smudges under her eyes.

  Maya shrugged. “I can’t say for certain. But it is possible that because it was so long ago, and he was so young when it happened—”

  “It’s Gary,” the woman said without looking at her husband. “Back when he was in high school, he was on the hockey team, you know? And after a game one night they all went drinking and there was an accident.”

  She stopped.

  Maya waited, but the woman just slumped back in her chair.

  “Two of my buddies died,” Gary said quietly. “I was drunk and I was driving and they died.” He shook his head, as if what he said still didn’t make sense. “This was over twenty years ago,” he added.

  “We have tried everything,” the woman said. “For the past five years I have been poked and X-rayed and inseminated and anything else you can imagine. We’ve spent over thirty thousand dollars trying to get pregnant and then my neighbor shows up one day with this beautiful baby from China. And she tells me she adopted her because of you. She came here and a year later she was standing in my living room with her daughter. After we were here the other night, I could actually imagine it might happen. Finally. I was so excited I started to fill out the papers, you know? And then I get to the part about criminal records and background checks and fingerprinting and I realize we aren’t getting a baby from you.”

  “It was twenty years ago,” her husband said again.

  “I know a woman,” Maya said, “who also was responsible for someone’s death. For her own child’s death. And her guilt is so large that she doesn’t want anyone to know. So she won’t file the papers, because then she will have to answer questions about what happened and maybe be told that what happened was so terrible that she doesn’t deserve a second chance.”

  “But why shouldn’t I be able to get my baby just because of what he did?” the woman said, crying again.

  “I’m saying that you should tell them what happened and perhaps you will get a baby. Not like this woman I know, who is too afraid to lose something again,” Maya said.

  They sat in silence for a moment.

  Then the woman said, “I don’t know if I have the stamina to go through it and not get a baby.”

  Maya nodded. “I’m just saying that you should consider going forward.”

  As they walked out of her office, the husband put his hand on the small of his wife’s back and Maya saw the woman flinch at his touch. She wished they would fill out those forms and not hide from their past. Carefully, she spread the photographs of the babies across her desk again. The sight of the open faces of the babies calmed her.

  When the phone rang, she was able to answer it without any sign of what had gone on in her office with the couple.

  “Maya? It’s Jack Sullivan.”

  That same feeling surfaced again, just as it had when he’d kissed her so briefly after dinner.

  “I’m going to be in Providence next weekend and I thought I might be able to buy you a piece of pie.”

  “I don’t know,” Maya said. She tried to think of excuses to tell him, but her mind was blank.

  “Maybe just grab a cup of coffee?” Jack was saying.

  What harm could coffee do? Maya asked herself. “All right,” she said.

  “Don’t sound so excited,” Jack laughed.

  “I’m sorry,” she said, “I’m just busy here.”

  They made arrangements to meet, and Maya got off the phone as quickly as she could.

  What was it about this particular man that was making her act this way? she wondered. He really was not so very different from the other men Emily had set her up with. She did not find him especially attractive. That stomach! And so little hair. But it had been years since she’d been with a man really, and perhaps that kiss had reminded her of all she had given up. In that moment, she had caught his scent, soap and lime. A few years ago, in an effort to try to connect with someone, she’d had some misguided brief relationships. But the sex had been unsatisfying and her inability to open up had ended things quickly.

  Now here was this Jack Sullivan. A nice enough man. She tried to imagine him naked, but the thought made her laugh. Her husband had been a big guy, but solid. Thinking of him now, she could clearly picture how the muscles in his arms moved when he moved the oars in their kayak, how his large hands touching her hair, her breasts, the dip of her stomach between her hipbones, made her feel.

  Maya swiveled her chair toward her computer with its screen-saver of colorful tropical fish swimming and clicked on Google.

  Adam Xavier, she typed. Her fingers trembled on the keyboard. He used to call her Madame X sometimes and it would make her feel safe somehow. Ridiculous how easily a person can fool herself into believing nothing bad can happen, that she is safe from catastrophe.

  The computer blinked. Then Adam’s name appeared before her, over and over.

  He had many publications, she could see that even through the tears that filled her eyes. Maybe he was bald and soft now, like Jack Sullivan. A lot can happen in a decade. She glanced down the list, hit Next, and watched as his name appeared again. Maya clicked an entry with Santa Barbara in it. He had left Hawaii too, and had joined the faculty of UC Santa Barbara eight years ago. That was when she’d started the Red Thread.

  Maya clicked again. “Adam Xavier and his wife Carly welcomed a daughter, Rain, on June 6.”

  Maya swallowed hard and read it again, as if this time there would be no wife, no daughter.

  Rain.

  He didn’t like names like that. Hadn’t he laughed when a colleague of theirs named her daughter Summer? The entry was from the University of Hawaii alumni magazine. 2006. Adam had a wife and a two-year-old daughter.

  She tried to picture him other than how he had been when he was her husband. She thought of his de
termination and confusion when he baked her that pie. She thought of how grief ravaged his face that night in the hospital emergency room, the sound of hailstones as big as golf balls banging the windows, denting cars in the parking lot.

  That hail had dented their car in such a way that when that long night was over and they were finally going home, Maya couldn’t open the passenger door. Instead, she had to go in on his side and climb over the stick shift, knocking over his cold coffee that he’d left in the cup holder. She thought of how his blue eyes grew cloudy with accusation in the months before she realized she should leave him, leave Honolulu.

  Maya clicked the Next button again, and still more entries appeared.

  But she felt weary and sad. She didn’t need to read anything more.

  A firm knock on the door startled her. Maya looked up and there stood Nell Walker-Adams. Could her day get any worse, she wondered as she motioned Nell in.

  “Nell Walker-Adams—” the woman began.

  “Yes,” Maya interrupted. “Please. Have a seat.”

  Maya could smell the leather of Nell’s briefcase, the citrus of her expensive perfume.

  “I apologize,” Maya said. “I haven’t had a chance to read your letter. We have families preparing to go to China and that is always a busy time here.”

  “It’s just a thank-you note,” Nell said, her eyes focusing now on the photographs.

  “A thank-you note?” Maya said.

  “For the other night. The orientation.”

  “Ah,” Maya said.

  This woman led her life by very particular rules. Maya could not remember receiving a formal thank-you note since the invention of email.

  Nell’s gaze settled on one of the photographs and she picked it up. “These babies,” she said. “They’re placed with families?”

  “Yes.”

  “And those families waited how long?”

  Maya fought the urge to make her return the picture to its place.

  “Fourteen months,” she answered.

  Nell studied the picture, then looked directly at Maya. “I don’t want to wait that long.”

  Maya managed to make a sympathetic sound. “The process,” she explained. “The paperwork and home study—”

  “Do you know that John Adams’ house is in Quincy?” Nell said.

  Maya frowned. “Yes.”

  “There is a staircase there. The main staircase. No one is allowed to go up or down it, except once a year, on the Fourth of July. On that day, only the descendants of John Adams enter the house and walk up that staircase.”

  “How interesting,” Maya said. She wished Nell would put the photograph down. She wished she would leave.

  Nell smiled—smugly, Maya thought. “My husband is one of those descendants. Of John Adams. Every Fourth of July we go to the Adams party and he walks up that staircase.”

  “A very distinguished lineage,” Maya said politely.

  “What would it take to move to the head of this queue?” Nell said, her voice firm, her gaze unwavering.

  “It doesn’t work like that,” Maya said.

  “Everything works like that.”

  “Everything except the Chinese government,” Maya said.

  “Surely one of these orphanages would be pleased to receive a generous donation—”

  “These children are not being sold, Ms. Walker-Adams,” Maya said. She struggled to keep the harshness out of her voice.

  Nell studied Maya’s face. “Of course they’re not,” she said finally.

  She looked again at the photograph she had been holding, a nine-month-old girl with a funny tuft of black hair and a quizzical expression. Then she placed the picture back on the desk, right where it had been, and stood.

  “Thank you for stopping by,” Maya said. “If you have any other questions, please feel free.”

  As Nell collected her briefcase and adjusted her fitted jacket, Maya added, “Enjoy your staircase.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “The Fourth of July,” Maya said, forcing a smile. “It’s in a few weeks and your husband will again climb the staircase.”

  Maya expected Nell’s face to betray nothing, or perhaps a flash of anger or indignation. But instead her façade softened ever so slightly.

  “I want a baby,” she said quietly.

  If Maya were a different sort of person, she might have comforted her in some way. But she simply nodded and took her seat again, turning her attention back to the portfolios on her desk even before Nell was out of the office.

  5

  The Families

  NELL

  Nell leaned against the building, and cried. For that moment, she did not think about her Thai lesson that she was going to be late for. She did not think about the people who passed her, averting their eyes. She did not think about her mascara, which had surely started to run. All she thought about was that baby she wanted, that vague round image that had lodged deep in her mind and that Maya Lange was keeping from her.

  In Nell’s world, a twenty-dollar bill slipped discreetly into a maître d’s palm got a preferred table ahead of people with reservations. A dropped name got seats to Red Sox playoffs, sold-out Bruce Springsteen concerts, smash plays. Nell was used to getting what she wanted. So how could a baby, something so ordinary and commonplace, elude her like this? Even now, as she pressed her back against the cold stone wall, women with babies in strollers and Snuglis walked by, Russian nannies walked elementary school children down the street, distracted mothers held on to their toddlers’ hands.

  Everyone, Nell thought as she watched them, everyone had a child. Except her.

  The Pergonal made her hormones go berserk. She knew that. Perhaps that was why Maya’s firm refusal of her offer had set her off like this. Perhaps those hormones were responsible for this feeling she had now of being left out of a club, the only woman in Providence, in the entire world, who didn’t—couldn’t—have a baby. Right now, all Nell knew for certain was that she hated Maya Lange. And that somehow she would get herself a baby.

  She took a deep yoga breath to collect herself. Take air in. Hold. Release. Again. After three breaths, she had stopped crying. She took out her BlackBerry and sent an email to that woman at work who had adopted not one but two babies from Guatemala. As soon as Nell hit the Send button, she felt back to normal. In control.

  She dotted her cheeks with her handkerchief, careful not to rub off whatever foundation and blush were still there. She reapplied her lipstick. She smoothed her hair. She walked briskly, confidently, forward.

  THEO

  Theo hated teaching Thai to overachieving businessmen looking for an advantage in the Asian market. They were rude, smug, aggressive. Looking at them lined up in front of him, Theo tried not to think of how more and more lately he hated more things in his life than he liked. He tried to think of the island off the coast of Thailand where he had spent six blissful months working as a dive instructor. How being 14,000 feet under the sea had eased his broken heart.

  He thought of the German and British tourists who stayed at the resort, a stretch of beach scattered with thatched-roofed huts, an open-air bar, and hammocks. Each week, a different girl fell in love with him, and he found himself drinking Tiger beer and making love all night, their flesh salty warm from the sun.

  “Is my company paying for you to stare at us?” a student said. “Or to teach us Thai?”

  The guy, in an expensive gray suit with a stomach out to here and a ruddy face, was sneering.

  Theo fought his desire to sneer back. Think Tiger beer, he told himself. Think pretty blond German woman in your arms.

  Theo smiled. He introduced himself and passed out the books, Thai for the Businessperson. Inside were phrases like, “I do not accept the terms of your contract,” and “Shall we meet in your conference room at 9:00 a.m.?”

  Will you sleep with me? Theo thought as the men took their books. That wasn’t in there, though every class someone asked him how to say: “Can you find me
a woman for the night?” and all of the men carefully wrote it down. Someone always came up to him after class and asked how to request particular sexual favors, which Theo dutifully wrote down for them phonetically.

  “Lesson one,” Theo said, and the men all opened their books.

  He wondered what it would be like to be so obedient, so focused. For one thing, he supposed, he would have some money and not be forced to teach fat businessmen through a night school program. “Greetings.”

  The door flew open, startling everyone. The men all seemed to frown and swing their heads in unison to watch a tall, lean woman stride in. She wore narrow jeans, a white button-down shirt, and a blazer. All business with a bit of sexiness thrown in: the shirt was unbuttoned just enough so that Theo could see the lace of her bra. And she wore high heels. Despite himself, he grew aroused. Thinking of those German women in Thailand, and now this, after the mandatory sex with Sophie to get pregnant. Theo shifted.

  Without an explanation, the woman took a seat right in the front row. She leaned over—that lace again!—and took a book, opening it immediately before looking at him expectantly.

  “Lesson one,” Theo repeated. “Greetings.”

  Halfway through the class, the same guy as before blurted, “Is it true that it’s taboo to make jokes about the king in Thailand?”

  Theo saw the woman roll her eyes.

  He tried to make eye contact with her, to let her know he was on her side. The guy was obnoxious. But when she saw him looking at her, she frowned and looked away.

  Why had that aroused him? Was he going to spend the next ten Tuesday nights trying to hide his hard-on? The woman wasn’t even that attractive. Too much makeup. Her hair cut in a bob, his least favorite look on a woman with its severe edge, neither long nor short. Worse, she had on a headband. Theo hated headbands on grown women. His attraction to her was further proof that all of this adoption business and Sophie’s single-minded pursuit of a baby were pushing him into places he did not want to go.

  For the next twenty minutes, Theo talked about Thailand. He told them the story of Ramakian, how a young couple in love were banished to the forest and Sita, the bride, got kidnapped by the evil king. When he reached the end where Sita and Rama are reunited, Theo felt himself get choked up, the way he always did when he told this story. One man fell asleep, releasing small squawky snores every now and then, his chin resting on his chest. But everyone else seemed to come to life. Even the woman. Their books lay open in front of them, but they all listened to Theo. As he described Bangkok and its Grand Palace and Wat Phra Kaew, even the obnoxious guy took notes.