She pulled her blouse over her head, shivering quickly as a phantom wind whipped her chest. Alex called out her name questioningly; she ignored him. Her breasts, two miniature pears, felt oddly engorged, as if her imagining of motherhood had expanded them in preparation; for an unfamiliar moment, she experienced what a full-chested woman might feel like, her breasts straining at her bra. How many men had held them before Alex Rubin closed them in his grasp? Alex was a cupper, gentle and tentative; there had been pluckers, pullers, snappers, flickers, and mashers. One had emptied a full bottle of juice on her breasts before lapping it up with his tongue; some had emptied themselves. She remembered Anton, a metalhead, interrupting his vigil of sullenness to announce that they looked and tasted like marzipan. There were many. There could have been many more. Of them all, she had chosen Alex Rubin. Perhaps because he had started out tentative, apologetic, and shy; frankly, she was startled by these qualities. Had ceased to expect them from men. With her greater experience, she had given him the gift of his sexuality, and loved giving it. He bloomed in her hand, her mouth, her legs.
Her fingers met below her shoulder blades and flicked the latch of her bra, which brought forth another concerned question from Alex. The bra popped from her chest and slid down her arms until it plonked to the sand, a violet crab. Her khakis were next. To Alex’s relief, her underwear stayed on, though his eyes remained nervously on the boardwalk; the burghers walking it would not look kindly on a striptease in front of their children, and the adoption authorities would not look kindly on an arrest for public exposure. (“We would make successful adoptive parents because we have known both sides of the law . . .”) Was his wife having a nervous breakdown? In frazzled moments, Alex’s instinct was to lay hands on his wife; her skin, cool and marmoreal, seemed to contain an unguent that interacted exclusively with the trouble he felt. But now she was the trouble, and so he stood, blinking, as she walked toward the water, her feet kicking up sand like a pair of hooves. His wife had nice legs that always asked for attention, even now. “I won’t be long,” she called. He leaned down and scooped up the bra, at least a slight gesture in the direction of order.
Now the ocean took Maya’s breasts in its hands. Really, she could not remember the last time she’d swum, and without clothes. The water was soapy and warm, dreadfully gray if she lowered her head under the line, so she kept it above. With one hand, she pulled down her underwear; it floated up like a thread of spittle, then disappeared inside a whitecap. She lay back, stared at the pocked bowl of the sky, let the blackening water inside her.
Her shoulders flinched and she felt a furry cloud of warmth at her thighs. In her reverie, she had floated out, and off the arch of her back she could see Alex peering out worriedly on the tips of his toes. She raised her right hand, waved. Impatiently, he waved her back to the shore. Through the waves sloshing at her ears, she heard the long call: “Maaaa-ya.” She flipped over and began to cover the distance to shore, her arms moving above the water in a downy fog. As she swam, she imagined a thread furling out of her into the ocean, a line she would reel in when their son arrived at their doorstep.
When she emerged from the water, Alex peeled off his T-shirt and held it out like a cape. As she wrapped herself in it, he fumbled to slide her sand-crusted feet into the loops of her khakis, as if she was incapacitated.
“We’re going to have a child, Alex,” Maya said, watching him work. She dropped the T-shirt and slid her hands into his hair.
“You need to lie down, Maya,” Alex said, working below. He reminded her of her father, tying her shoelaces as she sang songs above his head and slapped at its bald pate.
“I was lying down,” she said.
They walked back to the motel, Alex’s shirtlessness blending unobjectionably with the promenade walkers. Alex supported Maya at the arms, as if she had suffered some kind of attack. She enjoyed the feel of her husband’s arms.
Alex laid Maya into bed and ordered her not to move until he returned with dinner. She watched him step outside and obeyed for some minutes, then sat up, stared at the questionnaire, and took a pencil in hand.
1. How do you give love?
A: To love is to lose. If you love someone, it means: “You winning means more than me winning.”
2. How do you receive love?
A: I don’t know.
3. How do you discipline?
A: I don’t. I want to know why, and I ask, though sometimes there is no answer.
4. Describe a great personal disappointment.
A: I once wished to cook in a café.
In this way, she went down the list. When she arrived at the free essay, she wrote:
A child is a new expedition. The ocean refreshed by a new tributary. A child is strength—as three, we will be stronger than two. And a child is wisdom—he will teach us about ourselves as we will teach him. He will be the truth when we shy from it. Can it be, one day, that we will look on our inability to have children as a blessing, because it brought him into our lives? I don’t know. The birth of a child is one of the greatest joys a human being can receive. When it’s replaced by grief because it can’t happen, the grief is as large as the joy was. (Was supposed to be.) But I will not say no. I will hope. In the meantime . . .
After finishing, Maya felt an enormous exhaustion—she could not even reread what she had written. She wondered if she had caught a chill in the ocean. She pulled the tasseled edges off the bed and climbed underneath. She would nap for a minute and wake up when Alex came in. She fell asleep quickly, only laughing once because she thought: What I wrote was so boring, it’s put me to sleep!
She awoke she could not say how much later, though the lights of the room were still burning. She faced Alex’s back—the room smelled of fried fish and potatoes. Alex heard her stir and swiveled in the chair. “I didn’t want to wake you,” he said. “There’s fried haddock and French fries. Best I could find. Everything’s fried here.”
She inquired sleepily what he was doing.
“I want to read to you some of these answers,” he said. “Do you want a cup of hot water? No lemon.”
She held a palm to her forehead. “I’m fine,” she said drowsily.
“Number one,” he said. “How do you give love? One can express love through presents, a hug, or a vacation. How do you receive love? With open arms! How do you discipline? A child must know boundaries, but there will be no spanking in our home. Describe a great personal disappointment. We have lived a beautiful life. Our only disappointment is the one that brings us to this application.”
Then he read the free essay. Alex kept several of Maya’s phrases, for instance “the ocean refreshed by a new tributary,” but otherwise he wrote about making a long journey to their present station (initially, he left the details vague, on the off chance the birth parents were of anti-immigrant cast), but now, having arrived in New Jersey, the Rubin appetite for wandering had been exhausted and the family wished to root in the soil like a tree. They wished to iterate and reiterate; they wished to put down generations, so in a hundred and fifty years, the great-grandchildren of their adopted son or daughter (in the name of increasing their chances, they could not very well leave Maya’s careless assumption that it would be a boy) would feel as solidly American as the birth parents themselves. In this way, Alex betrayed the immigrant identity of the writers, but, he reasoned, the immigrant story was beloved by Americans, and, on second thought, there was no reason to hide it. Financially, the Rubins were finally ready for adoption (“you have to let them know the child won’t starve,” Alex explained to Maya). And even though the child’s grandfather was standing by with a lengthy exercise list, that regimen would not begin for at least three months after adoption. “Funny doesn’t hurt,” Alex murmured behind his back. But Maya was asleep once again.
The next day, Alex’s entry was unanimously voted #1 by the other participants. Alex, forgetting his resentment of them, smiled shyly. Maya wanted to take him by the shoulders and shake him�
�when he agreed to unshell himself, the world loved him. The agency presenter asked him to talk about his method. “This will be new information for my wife, too,” Alex said. “The woman sleeps and the man works.” He winked at her and the group rocked with laughter.
Alex withdrew a greasy newspaper. He had gone for takeout—fried fish. They came for a son, they left with a heart attack, ha-ha. Maya, still groggy after twelve hours of sleep, wondered who this wisecracking man was. Anyway, the fish was wrapped in a newspaper. Alex once more waved the oily copy of the Asbury Park Press. As he chewed on wet haddock, he glanced at the classified section. Slab-Face (though of course he didn’t refer to her that way) had been right—the brochure should resemble a personal. Alex skimmed the entries until he found one that suited: a letter from a retiree who wished to fill the gloaming years with a companionable rest after a lifetime of drive. It wouldn’t be all rest, though—the man had earned well, and the package included, in addition to the driver’s considerable charms, a Mustang with a retractable roof. Alex cribbed Ride With Me’s method: the subtle retranslation of unavoidable facts (the man was winding down) into virtue (the noble quietude of the gloaming years); the casual reference to considerable means (the Mustang); the humor (“in addition to the driver’s considerable charms”). Alex was willing to bet the ad had been answered many times. “I hope we are just as successful,” he summed up. One of the religious women burst into applause. “I’m sorry,” she said, “I just want to hug you right now.”
The picture Alex and Maya took that morning featured Alex grinning like a younger version of himself, his arm around Maya, the sleep hangover in her eyes masked by her pleasure in the pleasure her husband seemed to be taking, for the first time, in their shared endeavor. It was a triumphant photograph because carefree, a visitation by grace at its most needed, and it was selected as the Rubins’ winning shot by the other participants without their needing to have taken another.
+
The morning’s camaraderie still high on their faces, the Rubins were sat down for an exit interview by an Asian woman named Tran Caldwell. Instantly, they wondered if they had been given an immigrant because of their background. Then they wondered if they were given someone so young because they didn’t rank highly with the agency. (Was this Slab-Face’s subterfuge from afar?) Tran Caldwell had high, queenly cheekbones sprayed with a pollen of freckles, and the black sheets of hair that fell from her head glistened with a malevolent healthfulness. Elsewhere, she was as slight as a child—Maya, not a loomer, loomed over her. Maya, who had resolved that the agency employed only adoptive mothers, decided that Tran Caldwell had to adopt because her body was too small to hold a whole other being. Tran, however, was herself an adoptee. An alfalfa farmer from Missouri and his wife had taken her in after Da Nang—their son had been killed shortly before the Americans left. They were still out in Missouri, years past retirement, making war on weevils and armyworms. All this Tran offered by way of introduction.
“There was one last thing we wanted to speak to you about,” she said. “It’s the decision you make about open versus closed adoption.” She allowed the words to settle. Alex was rattled by the transformation of this child-woman into yet another person intending to discuss children in a businesslike way. “Have you given any thought to the issue?”
“What issue?” he said.
“Whether the child will know he or she is adopted,” Tran said. As Alex fought a distasteful expression, Tran said: “You don’t have to discuss it with me. It’s a private decision. But I wanted to tell you what it was like in my case—because I’ve been on both sides.” She was gazing directly at Alex, as if—he felt—she intended to challenge him. His oracular flight in the brochure had led him to believe that a turnaround was in the offing for the Rubins, an atonement for Slab-Face and presenters who had rattled off facts about children as if they were reading to a hospitality conference. This expectation now stalled.
“It’s natural to want no strings attached,” Tran said. “There’s that impression it’s cleaner. Who wants competition from the birth parents?” Maya and Alex exchanged glances, this additional challenge never having occurred to them.
“But what children tend to do when they know they’re adopted but they don’t have clear answers is they make up the birth parents. They tell themselves stories in order to make sense of having been given away. They imagine they were given away involuntarily, which leads to suspicion of the adoptive parents. They say, ‘My real parents really love me, and I am going to go live with them soon.’ They run away. Or the opposite: ‘My parents didn’t love me, so they gave me up.’ These are hard things for a little person to wrap their brain around.”
“I thought you were supposed to say ‘place’ instead of ‘give up,’” Alex said.
Tran closed her eyes and smiled. “All that stuff is silly, I think,” she said.
“So the farmer—he told you?” Alex said.
Tran nodded. “I grew up knowing it.”
“Excuse me,” Alex said. “It’s not exactly avoidable in your case.”
“That’s true,” Tran smiled. Maya looked at Alex reproachfully.
“And you told your children?”
“Here,” Tran said, reaching into her purse. She fished in a date book and pulled out a photo of three children bundled in neon-colored jackets on a playground shrouded in snow: two girls and one boy in various states of developmental anarchy—jug ears, mutinous teeth, shambolic hair. Maya marveled at the cycle: a Vietnamese woman had adopted three white children.
“They fit into your life.” She replaced the photo, Maya watching it disappear with envy.
“So they feel like yours?” Maya said. “I’m sorry—maybe I’m not supposed to ask that.”
“Even yours don’t feel like yours half the time,” she said. “At least that’s what they tell me. As an adoptive parent, the question on your mind is: Is it me? Is this him being a kid or is this him being adopted? But we forget that birth parents usually deal with the same things—they just don’t have the self-consciousness that makes them wonder these things. Also: You can ask whatever you want.” She paused diplomatically. “Mr. and Mrs. Rubin. I am able to have children. But I wanted to adopt.”
Alex snorted. High comfort these people supplied—now this person was waving around the fact that she was not afflicted by the same curse as the Rubins. “Excuse me,” he said. “You’re proposing we share custody with the birth parents?”
“Of course not,” Tran said. “I don’t want to say that involving birth parents is always a pleasure. Some don’t stay in contact. Some lose touch when they move away, or break up, or start their own families.”
“Some won’t let you be,” Maya added.
“Believe it or not, that happens more rarely,” Tran said. “You work out terms. They’re legally bound to obey them. I am saying only this, from experience: One day, your child will ask: ‘Why am I tall?’ ‘Why is my hair like this?’ And they want to know. You can’t bullshit a child. Pardon my language.”
“And so being told their mother and father are not their actual mother and father at age six is less shocking than a white lie about recessive genes?” Alex asked with the authority of a biologist.
“You tell them at age zero,” Tran said. “You tell them at age one. You have pictures out. The birth parents visit. They grow up knowing it from the beginning. You have no idea the resilience of children.”
“Then they’ll be resilient about not knowing it,” Alex said.
Tran pursed her lips and nodded, as if she’d asked for a donation and been declined.
“Wait, Alex,” Maya said.
“Maya, we have a long ride home and work tomorrow,” he said.
“I didn’t want to upset you,” Tran said. “So many of the counselors here lay out the facts and leave it at that. I’ve learned from mistakes. I wanted to share that with you. It was at my initiative that the orientation was revised to include this type of conversation.”
+
The Rubins rode home without speaking, Alex banging the steering wheel with his thumb as if rock were on the radio and not classical.
“I can hear you boiling,” he said finally. “It’s a cult, they are.”
“You were rude to her.”
“I think it’s rude to ask me to pay money for the pleasure of being told what to do with my own child. Do you ever think about it, Maya? They should be grateful to us, but instead they treat us like we did something wrong.”
“You were rude to her because she was small. And Asian. A woman.”
“Forget mammography, Maya. Open up a psychologist’s office.”
“You are always waiting for the world to recognize what a service you are performing for it.”
He looked over incredulously. “Are you upset? Is your railroad mind chugging along? I am upset, too. Don’t take it out on me.”
Maya stared vacantly at New Jersey outside her window. Post-beach traffic was beginning to clot the highway, sedans overstuffed with children, umbrellas, and beach chairs. A truck honked at a convertible filled with beautiful girls.
“Do you think we live in a beautiful place, Alex?” she said.
“What?” Alex said.
“I think back to Kiev, and I realize: Kiev was ugly. It has its cathedrals and streets where you think you’re in Paris. But, really, it’s ugly. But I never noticed, you know. I didn’t know it was ugly until I left. And all these people in the cars—they don’t know that New Jersey is ugly.”
“So why don’t we pick up and move to Paris, Maya,” Alex said. “What’s with you? Where do you want to go?”
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