Other People's Children

by R. J. Hoffmann

  “No. I’m headed home,” Gail said. Jon could hear the smile in her voice. “Pick me up at home. We’re going to do this together.”

  * * *

  They found the maternity ward right away, but it took Jon a while to explain to the nurse at the desk who they were and why they should be kept apprised of Carli Brennan’s status. It probably didn’t help that he felt like he was explaining it to himself. She directed them to the waiting room, and Jon slouched into a chair next to Gail, opposite the large windows overlooking the parking lot.

  “Did she say how far apart the contractions are?” Gail asked.

  “Ten minutes.”

  “So, it’ll be a while,” she said. Gail had read a slew of books on labor even though she wouldn’t be pushing. “What about her cervix?”

  “Her what?”

  “Did they say how dilated she was?”

  “I didn’t ask.”

  “The cervix dilates to allow the baby’s head to—”

  “Gail—”

  “Unless of course the baby’s breech, and then they’ll have to perform a C-section, and if that happens there’s a chance that—”

  “Gail,” Jon said more sharply. Gail’s eyes were dilating. Jon grabbed her hand and gave it a squeeze. He was nervous enough. He couldn’t have her flipping out on him. “We’ve done everything we can. Now we just have to wait.”

  “Right. Sorry. I just can’t believe that it’s finally happening.”

  Jon tried to surrender himself to Gail’s excitement. He’d been trying for months. He tried to ignore all the insecurities that had swelled with each passing day. He smiled in what he hoped was a reassuring way and said the truest words he could summon. “I can’t believe it’s happening, either.”

  This seemed to satisfy Gail, and she pulled her leather notebook from her purse and turned to a page that Jon knew contained a list titled something like People to Call When the Baby Comes. She started with her mother. Jon checked his watch. They’d have at least forty-five more Eleanor-free minutes.

  “You couldn’t have waited a bit?” Jon asked after she hung up. “Until the baby was born? Maybe the first-birthday party?”

  Gail smiled as she searched for the next number.

  “Please tell me that your dad’s coming, too.”

  “That’s the only reason I called her.”

  Eleanor had grown easier to stomach since she’d gone dry. And most of what she said was so ridiculous that Jon found it hard to take her seriously, but she could always crawl under Gail’s skin, and then Jon would have to deal with that. Gail called Jon’s aunt next. Jon could faintly hear Aunt Carol’s excited chatter, and that made him smile.

  Next she called the girls. Every single one of them had been Gail’s friend first, and she had woven them all together. Cindy, Gail’s best friend since second grade, Gina from college, Allison from yoga, Kara from that beach volleyball team almost a decade ago. The apartment on Paulina Street had been their gathering place, where they all drank too much and stayed up too late and laughed too loudly. Allison and Gina both met their husbands there. For so long the girls were embedded into the texture of Gail’s life, but when they moved to the suburbs with their children it was like the fabric unraveled. Maybe Gail’s childlessness rendered her irrelevant. Maybe all those children made the girls difficult for Gail to stomach. It was hard for Jon to know what caused it, but at some point, the girls stopped calling Gail, and Gail stopped calling the girls, until Cindy was the only one Gail still talked to.

  While she worked through the list, Jon scanned the waiting room and tried to place the melody filtering through the speakers. He winced—a smooth jazz version of a song by the Velvet Underground. The sleet tapped a staccato beat against the window. Woman’s Day and Redbook sprawled over Condé Nast and Men’s Health on the coffee table. Three kids with their grandparents—another evidently on the way. Several men alone, checking their phones, knees bouncing. C-sections? At the other end of the room, next to the window, a middle-aged woman peered at Jon, but when their eyes met, she took a sudden interest in the parking lot. She wore a Wisconsin Dells sweatshirt, black sneakers, and a dour expression. It took Jon a moment to place the face: the brown pickup truck outside the diner. He stood.

  “Where are you going?” Gail whispered, her hand cupped over the phone.

  “I’ll be back in a minute.”

  As he approached, the woman studied the cars through the window. “Excuse me, ma’am,” Jon said.

  She didn’t look at him. She was thick, like an oak, and her disheveled hair, a color somewhere between red and dirt, was pruned short. Her mouth turned down at the corners in a way that suited the rest of her face. She kept steady watch on the cars in the lot.

  “My name’s Jon Durbin.”

  “I know who you are,” she growled.

  Jon waited for her to say more, but she seemed to have finished. “Well. I just thought I’d introduce myself.”

  Jon was about to turn away when she spoke again. “She’s gonna regret this.”

  At first Jon thought she was talking about Gail, but he realized she meant Carli, of course. And she was right. He’d been so consumed with Gail and himself that he hadn’t given much thought to what Carli was about to go through. The aftermath would be hard.

  “It ain’t right what she’s doing. You don’t just give your baby away.”

  Jon tried to summon words that might help. “We’ll make the baby happy,” he said.

  She turned from the window, her eyes narrow, her lips thin. “How you know that?”

  Jon opened his mouth, but his own uncertainties tangled his tongue, and no words came out.

  “You think just because you got money you can make the baby happy?”

  “That’s not what I—”

  “It’s a mother’s job to make a baby happy.” Her eyes cut to Gail. “A real mother.”

  Jon cocked his head. “What was that?”

  “You heard me.”

  And he suddenly smelled her, too. Under the cigarettes and the sweat, he smelled the mothballs and the trailer and the canned ravioli, but he forced himself quiet.

  “I said she ain’t a real mother.”

  Jon’s hands curled into fists. “You know nothing about her.”

  Jon turned to go, but she spoke again. “I know enough.”

  The words flew from Jon’s mouth before he knew what he’d say. “So… getting knocked up… that makes Carli a real mother?”

  The woman’s jaw jutted. “Listen here, you son of a—”

  “No,” Jon said. He took a half step toward her. He spoke low and fast. “You listen to me. You don’t know shit about my wife. You don’t know a damn thing about the mother she’ll be.”

  Her eyes flicked back to Gail. “Maybe there’s a reason she can’t make her own baby.”

  “Maybe there’s a reason that a daughter of yours shouldn’t raise one.”

  The woman’s mouth dropped open, but before she said anything else, before Jon could say anything else, he turned and walked stiff-legged back to his seat. Gail finished her call and hung up. He sat down. His pulse hammered, and Carli’s mom glared at him from the corner. He kept his face as neutral as he could, but he stared right back.

  “Is that—”

  “Yes.”

  “What did she say?”

  “Nothing, really.”

  “Should I go—”

  “No,” he hissed.

  “I feel like I should go say something, introduce myself.”

  “I really don’t think that you should.”

  Gail looked at Carli’s mom for a long moment. “Jon. What did you say to her?”

  Jon looked from Gail to Carli’s mom and back to Gail. His legs still trembled with rage, but he forced a smile. “Nothing, really.”

  Paige

  Paige ambled into the waiting room and took stock of things. Marla Brennan claimed one corner, looking, as always, like she was trying to shit a cinder block. The Dur
bins staked out the other. Hopefully they hadn’t talked to one another. Everybody always worried about that first meeting, but it was usually at the hospital that things went to hell.

  She gave the Durbins a quick once-over. Adoptive parents often didn’t realize how important it was to put their best foot forward on the big day, no matter how many times she told them. Gail got the message, though. She wore a long black skirt and an ivory silk blouse. And she even managed to unscruff her husband a bit—no holes in his jeans, and his plain, black T-shirt bore no references to Space Invaders or Blue Öyster Cult. She met so many couples in her line of work, and she always tried to figure out how they fit together. With the Durbins, the pieces didn’t seem to lock tight. Gail could use a cheeseburger or four, but she was beautiful in that dark, Sicilian way. He was all elbows, knees, and shaggy hair. Even with bonus points for the three-day stubble, he only brushed against handsome. Paige decided to start with the Durbins.

  “Hi, Gail.”

  Gail looked up from her notebook. Her eyes were darting, but she managed a smile. “Paige!”

  Jon peered through his bangs. “Hey, Paige.”

  Paige settled into the chair across from them. “How you guys doing?”

  “Nervous,” Gail admitted.

  Jon just nodded.

  “That’s only natural.”

  “How is she?” Gail asked.

  “I checked in with the nurses,” Paige said. “I think we’ve got a bit of a wait ahead of us.”

  “Do you have the adoption petition?”

  Paige patted her bag. “Right here.”

  “And when will you—”

  “Henry will file it tomorrow.”

  “What about the home study?”

  “Next Friday.”

  “What about—”

  “Relax, Gail. It’s all handled. This is your big day. Try to enjoy it.”

  Gail looked as if she wanted to argue, but nodded.

  Paige glanced at Marla and then turned back to the Durbins. “Carli’s mom is over in the corner.”

  “Yeah,” Jon said. “I introduced myself.”

  Shit. Paige took a long look at him. He stared back with an intensity she hadn’t seen from him before. “How’d that go?”

  Jon shrugged noncommittally. “What’s she doing here?”

  Gail looked at him, puzzled. “She’s her mother.”

  Jon frowned. “I mean, why isn’t she in the delivery room with Carli?”

  Paige was wondering the same thing. “I’m not sure,” she said quietly, and then smiled in that way intended to help adoptive parents see that she was an experienced professional, trained to handle anything, to control the uncontrollable. “But I’m going to go sit with her and find out.”

  * * *

  Marla just grunted at Paige’s initial questions, so Paige pulled her yarn and needles from her bag, sat with her, waited her out. The mothers of birth mothers always responded in one of three ways: supportive, sad, or pissed off. The purple vein pulsing at Marla’s temple, the way she squeezed a crumpled coffee cup in her fist, told Paige she was dealing with anger. Gail’s parents arrived. Paul and Eleanor, if Paige remembered right. Marla studied the four of them for a long time, and then glared again out the window.

  “It ain’t right what you done,” Marla said at last. She waved her hand toward the door, toward the Durbins. “All of this. It ain’t right.”

  Paige counted three breaths before answering. “Carli came to us, Marla. She said she wasn’t ready to be a mother.”

  “I guess she was ready to fuck.”

  “It’s not my place to comment on that.” Paige looked sideways at Marla, tried to figure out what would work with this one. “All of that aside—do you think Carli’s ready to be a mother?”

  Marla turned from the window and glared. “It ain’t your place to ask that neither.”

  “It was an honest question,” she said. She softened her voice. “I want to know what you think.”

  Marla tugged at her sweatshirt and looked at the door. “I don’t guess that anybody’s ready,” she said. “Least not till they have a baby.”

  Paige could sense Marla remembering, and her gut told her that those memories were hard ones. She decided to let Marla stew in them, and they sat quietly like that for several long minutes.

  “He came over.”

  “Who? Jon?”

  “He thinks his shit don’t stink.”

  Paige looked up at the Durbins. Gail scowled at her mom. Jon sat two chairs away, studying his phone. Gail’s dad was taking photos of plants.

  “They’re good people,” Paige said quietly.

  Marla opened her mouth and closed it several times before she spoke. “I don’t give a shit what kinda people they are. They’re taking my grandbaby.”

  Gail

  Gail’s mom sat next to her, too close, bent over her nails with a file, sharpening her talons. She still dyed her hair, of course. But the color of it just served as counterpoint to the toll that the gin had extracted upon her face before she finally quit. She layered makeup over the veins that snaked across her nose but couldn’t quite cover the crow’s-feet that clawed at her eyes.

  But the day was one for new beginnings. Her mom had left messages all week, checking to see if Gail had heard anything about the baby. Gail hadn’t returned any of those calls, but now she resolved to be patient with her mom. Maybe becoming a grandmother would allow her to start over, too. Besides, her mom was the price of her dad’s presence. He sat opposite, his glasses perched on his nose, struggling with the settings on his camera. He practiced shots of the potted fern across the room and studied the results on the display. His thick calluses made the tiny buttons and knobs difficult.

  “How’d you pick Mercy?” her mom asked. She looked around the waiting room, her mouth puckered as if she’d eaten something sour.

  “It’s halfway between Elmhurst and Morris,” Gail said.

  Gail creased her notebook open and uncapped her pen. Her hand needed to move. It would help her breathe.

  “Morris? Is that where Carla’s from?”

  Breathe. “Her name’s Carli.”

  Gail paged back and forth between two lists. Things We Still Need from the Store and Baby Names, but everything was crossed off the first, and she needed fewer names, not more. Dominic was her boy name, but she still vacillated between Amelia, Harper, and Maya if they got a girl. Jon was adamant that he didn’t want to learn the gender until the baby was born, but he couldn’t seem to muster an opinion about names. She was leaning toward Maya, which meant generous in Old Persian, love in Nepalese.

  “Carli? I thought her name was Carla.”

  Breathe. “No. It’s Carli.”

  “Where the hell is Morris, anyway?”

  “An hour west. Out past Joliet.”

  Gail turned to a blank page. Her fingers gripped the pen, but her hand didn’t move. Nothing more to plan. No decisions to make. No tasks to manage. But her hand needed to move.

  “Carli. From Morris. I guess that figures.”

  Breathe. “Can you keep your voice down, please?”

  “Why?” her mom asked without lowering her voice. “What’s the big deal?”

  “That’s Carli’s mom over by the window.”

  Her mom looked up from her nails and swiveled to get a good look. “The fat hippie?” she whispered.

  “No, that’s Paige from the agency,” Gail said, working to contain a smile. She had to admit that something about Paige’s quilted knitting bag, her shapeless flowered shift, and her frizzy, gray hair made her look like an aging hippie. “Carli’s mom’s in the sweatshirt. Please don’t stare at her.”

  Gail’s mom studied the other woman. “She looks rode hard and put away wet.”

  “Eleanor,” Gail’s dad said without looking up from his camera.

  “I’m just saying.”

  “How far along did they say she was?” her dad asked.

  “It’ll be a while,” Gail said
.

  “You took your sweet time,” her mom said. “Five hours I pushed you. Felt like you were clinging to my uterus.”

  “Eleanor.”

  So much for new beginnings. Gail’s hand started to move. She titled the list Now. She described the clothes that everyone was wearing. She cataloged the magazines on the table. She listed the types and colors of the cars she could see in the parking lot. She invented names that Benjamin Moore might assign to the color of the rain: Quicksilver, Granite, Wrinkled Gray, Sharkskin. She recorded how each part of her body felt. Head: too large. Hands: sweaty. Stomach: heavy. Shoulders: knotted. Eyes: watery. Feet: ticklish. Arms: empty. None of her lists drifted into the past or the future. She listed now, because now was what she had planned for, now was what she had waited for. Paige was right—this was her day, and she wanted to experience every detail of it. And Gail had been wrong—she could make a list out of waiting.

  “How long are you taking, Jon?” Gail’s mom asked.

  Jon looked up, dazed, from his phone. “What do you mean?”

  “From work. How long are you taking off?”

  “Oh. Two weeks.”

  “You excited?” her mom asked.

  The raccoon eyes flitted from Gail’s mom to the ground to the door and then back to her mom. “I am.” He slipped his phone into his pocket and picked up his coffee from the table. “A little nervous, too, I guess.”

  “Of course you’re nervous. You should be. This is the biggest day of your life.”

  Jon leaned forward, his elbows on his knees. He looked down at the swirl of cream in his coffee. Gail could see the cup shake just a little.

  “Mom,” Gail said.

  “Everything’s about to change. Ev-er-y-thing. I remember when I had Gail, it hit me like a freight train.”

  Jon forced a smile that wasn’t a smile.

  “I thought I was ready,” she said, nodding at Gail. “But when that slimy little—”

  “Mom, I don’t think you’re helping.”

  “I’m just saying. Nothing’s ever going to be the same once that baby comes through that door.”