She appeared again, holding a bundle of pink fluffy cloth with a small face peeking out of the center. “Here she is,” she said. “What a little love.”
Reaching for the baby, Miranda was suddenly stricken. “Did you want to petition for adoption?” she asked. Mrs. Johnson appeared to be past sixty and so maybe not the best candidate, but she couldn’t be sure.
“No,” said Mrs. Johnson. “I’ve raised five of my own and fostered, oh, about twenty-five over the years.” So that explained all the photos. “I’m just glad to see this one go to a good woman—and I can tell you’re that woman.” Miranda said nothing, but stared down at the tiny face. “Have you decided on a name?” Mrs. Johnson asked.
“Celeste.” She’d decided to name the baby after her father’s mother, hoping it might ignite a tiny flicker of memory in his mind, but so far that had not happened. Her father just mumbled the name a few times and then burst out, “I need an umbrella! Where’s my umbrella?” That didn’t matter now, though. Not with the pink-clad baby held tight against her chest. Celeste reached up from her cocoon and tugged a lock of Miranda’s hair. Miranda inclined her head into the gesture.
“You’ll be hearing from that case worker, Ms. Watkins, about the adoption proceedings,” said Mrs. Johnson.
“Thank you,” said Miranda, tearing up. She wanted to hug her, but it seemed logistically impossible with Celeste in her arms, so she settled for grasping the other woman’s hand and bringing it to her cheek. “I’m more grateful than I can say.” Mrs. Johnson briefly pressed her hand on top of Miranda’s. Celeste swiveled her head around to take them in—her eyes, Miranda noticed, were darker now—and then Miranda was down the hall, in the elevator, and out the door, to where Bea sat waiting.
“Let me see her,” said Bea, setting aside the script she’d been studying. She got out to have a better look. Miranda was still clutching the baby, who had not yet made a sound. But the slam of the car door startled her and she uttered a short, urgent bleat.
“You scared her,” Miranda said. She began a little jiggling motion in an effort to soothe her.
“Oh, I’m sorry, Celeste!” said Bea. Celeste quieted and looked up at Bea. But it was only the calm before the storm because she screwed up her face and opened her mouth to emit a series of staccato cries that seemed to ricochet off the surrounding buildings. “Jesus, did I do that?” said Bea, her hands fluttering uselessly in front of her.
“It doesn’t matter,” Miranda said nervously. “I’ve just got to get her to calm down. Mrs. Johnson said she ate, but maybe she’s hungry. Or thirsty.” She remembered how Celeste had eagerly accepted that water when she’d first found her. “Would you get me those bottles from the bag?”
But Celeste twisted away from both the formula and the water and continued to scream. Miranda’s stomach coiled into a tight knot of fear. She didn’t even have the baby home yet and already she’d run into her first crisis. Courtney was right—she wasn’t equal to this. She knew nothing about infants. She was insane to have taken this on. She could feel herself starting to sweat, armpits pooling, blouse plastering itself to her skin like Saran Wrap. Someone in an apartment above opened a window and yelled, “Tell that kid to shut the hell up!”
“Now, that’s helpful,” said Bea. “Like you have a switch or something.”
But the comment—and the string of curses that followed it—propelled Miranda into action. She hoisted Celeste, still screaming, a little higher on her chest and started walking away.
“Where are you going?” asked Bea.
“I’m going to walk her around the block.” Miranda stopped. “Does that sound like a good idea?”
Bea considered. “Maybe you want to ask that foster mom for help. What’s her name again?”
“Mrs. Johnson,” said Miranda. “But I have to be able to figure this out on my own. I can’t come over here every time the baby cries.” She started walking again, picking up her pace.
“I’ll follow you,” said Bea, getting back in the car.
Miranda rounded the corner with the wailing baby in her arms. She’d heard that Crown Heights was beginning to gentrify, but she saw no evidence of that. Buildings, mostly small and brick or brownstone, were dilapidated, and graffiti ran riot over their facades. The trees all seemed stunted; amber and green beer bottles, many broken, lay in the gutter and strewn alongside doorways; and the one trash can she passed was overturned and lolling on its side. Throughout the walk, Celeste continued to scream.
“Don’t cry,” Miranda said. “Please, please don’t cry.” She could feel the heat emanating from the small body, and she loosened the blanket to give her more air. Bea honked the horn, and Miranda looked over. Thank God she was here—in her distress over Celeste, she’d almost forgotten about her.
“Do you want to get in?” Bea called over the sound of the crying. She stopped the car at the corner, and Miranda, who was fresh out of options, yanked open the door with a desperate gesture. Her hands shook a little, and she strapped Celeste into the car seat before sliding in next to her.
“There’s something wrong with her.” Miranda stroked Celeste’s head. The baby’s scalp was moist with exertion, and her black hair gleamed. “I should take her to a doctor. No—to the ER.”
“Right. We’ll go to Methodist,” Bea said. “That’s the closest.”
Miranda fished a baby wipe out of the diaper bag and dabbed at Celeste’s face, which was wet and mottled. There was much less traffic now and the car sped along Eastern Parkway. As it did, Celeste’s cries began to soften and then diminish. By the time they passed the Brooklyn Museum, they had stopped entirely, and when Bea pulled up to the hospital on Seventh Avenue, Celeste was asleep.
“Look at that,” said Bea. “Who knew that all it took was a little joy ride?”
“Who knew?” Miranda said weakly. Even though Celeste was now calmed, she still felt shaky. They drove back to President Street, where Miranda got out and carefully unstrapped the car seat, not wanting to wake Celeste. Then she hugged Bea good-bye.
“Call me later?” said Bea. “I want to hear how it’s going.”
“I will,” Miranda said. Right now, she could not wait to get upstairs to her apartment and relax. As she put the key in the lock, Mrs. Castiglione poked her head out of her door and then stepped out in the hallway to greet them. Thank God the baby was quiet now; she would have hated her landlady’s introduction to her new daughter to have occurred thirty minutes ago.
“So here she is,” said Mrs. Castiglione, peering down at the car seat that held the sleeping infant. “She’s very small, isn’t she?”
“The doctor says she’s fine; she wasn’t a preemie,” Miranda said.
“My godson, Anthony, he was very small too. We called him Peanut. You’d never know it now, though.”
Miranda had never met Anthony, but she’d seen his photograph in her landlady’s apartment; he had the wide, powerful build of a linebacker.
“And you’re calling her . . . ?”
“Celeste,” Miranda said. “That was my grandmother’s name.”
“A lovely name,” Mrs. Castiglione said. “And a lovely gesture. Your grandmother, may she rest in peace, would have been happy.”
“I’d like to think so.” Miranda’s paternal grandmother had doted on her in the way her own mother had not.
“I know so,” said Mrs. Castiglione firmly. She stepped back to allow Miranda to pass. “Please let me know if I can help in any way. I may not have raised any of my own, but I remember a thing or two from Anthony. Oh, he was a handful!”
“Thanks, Mrs. Castiglione,” said Miranda. “I appreciate that.” It was so clear she would have liked children of her own.
Although Miranda had wanted nothing more than to kick off her shoes and unwind in her apartment, Celeste wasn’t having it. She woke up as soon as Miranda carried the car seat inside, and Miranda
needed to change and feed her before she could even think of having any lunch herself. And when she did, it was just an apple, hastily devoured while she held Celeste tucked in the crook of her other arm; Celeste fussed when Miranda sat down with her, and the only way to keep her quiet was to remain standing. Miranda thought back to how calm Celeste had been in the hospital; what was different now?
Around four o’clock, Bea called to get an update, and at around five, there was a tap on the door. Miranda opened it to find Mrs. Castiglione with a casserole dish of what appeared to be baked ziti and meatballs. “It’s hard to cook anything for yourself in the beginning,” she explained. “I thought you might appreciate this.”
“Thank you so much,” Miranda said. Apart from that apple, she had not eaten since breakfast and was starved. Could she put the ziti on the counter and eat it, straight from the casserole dish, standing up? The aroma alone was making her swoon. If the ziti tasted anything like it smelled, she was going to get the recipe from Mrs. Castiglione and publish it in Domestic Goddess.
“Maybe you’d like me to hold her for you while you eat,” Mrs. Castiglione offered.
“Would you? That would be great.”
Mrs. Castiglione took Celeste in her arms and stood in the kitchen while Miranda tried not to wolf the food down too greedily. “This is so good; is there fennel seed in here along with oregano?”
“Yes.” Mrs. Castiglione looked so pleased. “My nona’s recipe.” And she hadn’t lost her touch with babies; every time Celeste looked cranky or was about to cry, Mrs. Castiglione made some subtle shift in position that seemed to forestall another outburst.
After she had eaten and Mrs. Castiglione left, Miranda felt confident enough to attempt giving Celeste a bath. She’d actually watched a YouTube video on the subject and had all the supplies on hand: ergonomically designed plastic baby tub, organically sourced baby wash, hooded towel, and non-talc powder. Miranda undressed her—the stump of the umbilical cord had healed by now—and held the naked baby in her arms before immersing her. Celeste’s tiny lips formed a circle, like a Cheerio, when her body was submerged. Miranda tensed; the O looked like it might open wide, into a scream, but though Miranda braced herself for the storm, it did not come. Instead Celeste actually uttered a soft cooing sound and kicked her legs, froglike, in the water. The rest—the actual washing, drying, dressing—was relatively easy, and when Miranda finally put Celeste in her bassinet, strategically placed just inches from her own bed, she felt a sense of accomplishment that was nothing less than magnificent.
Although it was not even nine o’clock, she decided to go to sleep; it had been an exhausting day. Tomorrow Supah, the Thai nanny she’d hired, was coming over to meet Celeste and spend a little time with her. Miranda would not need her yet, but she thought it would be a good idea to introduce her into Celeste’s life as soon as she could. It was only when she plugged her phone into the charger that she saw the two missed messages. One was from Evan. Can’t wait to meet the new baby, he said. Call me. The other was an unfamiliar voice with a very familiar name. Ms. Berenzweig, this is Geneva Bales. I saw the news bit about the baby you found on the subway and I was very taken with your story. I am wondering if we might meet. . . .
Geneva Bales wrote a popular column, “Souls of a City,” for the weekly magazine Metro. She had profiled the ninety-six-year-old proprietor of New York City’s last surviving doll hospital, a firefighter who had risked his life to save a forty-pound boa constrictor trapped in a burning building, a young man who received his acceptance letter from Yale the day he buried his homeless, crack-addicted mother. She also weighed in on political figures, celebrities, and people in the news; you never quite knew what Geneva’s take would be. You knew only that it would be quirky, interesting, and totally her own. And now she wanted to profile Miranda and Celeste.
She listened to the message in its entirety and then listened to it again. The accent was hard to place, the voice low and cultivated. Miranda got into bed and turned out the light. Even though Celeste was very close, the distance felt too great, and she carefully lifted her, still sleeping, out of the bassinet and positioned her into the comma of her own curled body.
It was flattering to be considered as the potential object of Geneva Bales’s interest and gain, if only briefly, a moment in the sun. But once the story was made public, it would no longer be fully her own. And the attention might bring with it other, unintended consequences. She turned to the baby sleeping next to her. “What do you think we should do, Celeste?” she asked. Celeste took what seemed like an unusually deep breath, as if marshaling her thoughts. But all she did was exhale, her milky breath impossibly sweet on Miranda’s cheek.
SIX
Miranda sat across from Geneva Bales in the charming back garden of a little Gramercy Park restaurant that even she, hard-core foodie that she was, had never heard of. Celeste had been home for almost three weeks; luckily, Supah was available to watch her for a couple of hours today. Miranda had been loath to leave her, but she reasoned that it was good preparation for her imminent return to work.
“So how are you managing?” Geneva dove right in. “It must be a big change. And so sudden.”
“That’s it!” Miranda leaned closer. “It’s not just that I’m sleep deprived, that my life’s been totally upended or all the other usual new-mother stuff; it’s that there’s been no time to prepare for any of it.”
“Most women get their nine months, right? And adoptive mothers might get even longer because the waiting period can stretch on and on.” Geneva’s expression was warm and sympathetic.
“Exactly. I feel like I’ve been pushed onto a stage without having learned the lines or the blocking; I’m blinking into the footlights and hoping I can wing it.”
“That’s a lot of stress to shoulder, especially for one person.”
“Well, yes, but it’s worth it.” Miranda suddenly pulled back. She hadn’t even formally agreed to the interview yet, and here she was telling Geneva things she hadn’t even fully articulated to herself.
“Of course it is,” Geneva said. “But I’m sure you wonder where your old life has gone; it must be somewhat disorienting.”
“That’s true,” Miranda conceded. “It’s not only the taking care of her that’s new and challenging; it’s having to reconfigure everything else. No more stopping to see a movie on the way home from work, or meeting a friend for dinner without having made plans in advance. I used to be a member of a food co-op in Brooklyn; I’m putting that on hold for a while. Same with running in the park and my book club. Everything has narrowed down to a very fine point: Celeste. And once I go back to work, my job.”
Geneva looked down at her lap, and Miranda realized she was taking notes on her phone. Really? She still had not said yes. Then Geneva looked back at her, her gaze frank and intent. “After I saw that little bit on the news about your story, I was very intrigued.” She looked like she was in her early thirties, with brown hair cut into a crisp, chin-length bob and secured with a black velvet headband. Miranda thought it was a surprising choice; no one she knew wore headbands anymore—at least no one over the age of twelve.
“I’m flattered,” Miranda said. “But I’m not one hundred percent sure that letting you do the piece is the best idea.”
Their food had been served, and she took a bite of her sandwich—roasted red pepper, feta cheese, and spinach on sourdough—and then another, because it was so good. The shrimp-studded corn chowder that preceded it had been equally outstanding. How had this place eluded her radar?
“What are your reservations?” Geneva asked. “I’d like to address them. And hopefully lay them to rest.”
“It’s just that Celeste is still so new to me.” When they had first spoken on the phone, Miranda had told Geneva that the adoption still wasn’t even finalized yet. “I feel like I might be violating her privacy—even though she is just a baby.” There was something el
se too, something she didn’t want to tell Geneva. What if the story alerted someone to the baby, someone connected to her who had for some reason not yet stepped forward? Miranda knew she ought to want that for her—a reunion with her family. But she didn’t.
“I understand,” Geneva was saying. “But I see this piece as a celebration, not a violation. I’d want to celebrate her survival—and your role in it. After all, not only did you find her and bring her to the police, now you’re about to adopt her. Not every Good Samaritan would go so far. In fact, I’d say almost none.”
Miranda thought about that. She did like Geneva—both in print and in person. With her schoolgirl coif and quaintly old-fashioned clothes—prim white blouse, dirndl skirt, and flats—she exuded a refreshingly wholesome sincerity.
“You said you’ve read my column; you know how I do things. No one has ever complained about the way they’ve appeared in print.”
“Well, I am a fan,” said Miranda. By this time, the remains of their lunch had been cleared, replaced by a pot of tea, two bone china cups with matching saucers, and a plate of pastel-colored macarons.
“A little exposure could be a good thing,” Geneva continued. “You’d be surprised how generous people can be when approached the right way.”
“I wouldn’t be doing it for that reason.” Miranda reached for one of the macarons, and the feathery sweetness—coconut with a hint of lime—exploded on her tongue. “I have enough money to raise her.” Though financial help would certainly be nice.
“I’m sure you do,” Geneva said. “But everything is so expensive—schools, camps, lessons—and you’ll want her to have opportunities, exposure to all kinds of things. It would be good to have some outside help if you can get it.”
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