Other People's Children

by R. J. Hoffmann

“You got a choice.” Marla stood, tucking her cigarettes and lighter into the pocket of her jeans. “Either get that baby back or find some other place to live.”

  Gail

  Gail heard her parents climb the porch steps a little after ten. Jon was up in the nursery trying to change Maya’s diaper all by himself. She couldn’t bear to watch.

  “They’re here,” she yelled.

  “Awesome,” came the muffled reply.

  They rang the doorbell, and Gail forced herself to take a few deep breaths before opening the door.

  “You’re going to need this,” her mom said, handing her a coffee from the cardboard tray. She wore a velour tracksuit, but her makeup was caked on like usual. “You look exhausted.”

  “Thanks,” Gail said.

  “Hey, buddy,” her dad said, giving her a peck on the cheek. He wore a button-down shirt and his church shoes, a nod to the solemnity of the occasion. He handed her a present with a pink ribbon. “You look great.”

  “Thanks, Dad.”

  “You’re supposed to look tired,” her mom said. “Serves you right. You didn’t sleep through the night for the first eight months.”

  And she had colic, and she had chicken pox twice, and it took her six months to potty-train. Gail had heard it all before.

  “By the end of the first week, I was ready to put a pillow over your head.”

  Jon came down the stairs with Maya, and Gail’s mom smiled. “Of course, that was before husbands changed diapers. And I was recovering and nursing. Let me see that baby, Jon.”

  Jon handed Maya over, and Gail’s mom sat down on the couch and cooed softly. I was recovering and nursing, her mom said. Unlike you, she didn’t say, but that’s what she meant. Gail put the gift on the coffee table and sat down across from her mom, resisting the urge to pluck the baby from her.

  Gail’s dad settled on the couch next to her mom. He studied Maya for a long moment, as if memorizing her features. Then he rubbed her palm between his calloused thumb and forefinger. “She’s got good hands, Gail.”

  Then, to Jon, he asked, “How are you doing?” Her dad had a gentleness about him, careful from decades of handling sharp edges, and people often said things to him that they wouldn’t say to others. Gail kept her eyes on the baby but tuned to Jon’s answer.

  “It’s—” He paused. “It’s not what I expected—”

  He sounded like he was going to say more. Gail waited to hear what he had expected, and how Maya stacked up against those expectations, but Gail’s mom cut him off.

  “I love her eyes,” she said, bent over the baby. “They’re beautiful.”

  Maya squinted up at her doubtfully.

  “How can you tell?” Gail asked. “They’re not even open.”

  “They look like Jon’s.”

  Gail’s dad shifted uncomfortably.

  “And her nose.” She looked up at Gail. “She’s got your nose.”

  “Mom. Stop.”

  “What?”

  “Eleanor,” her dad said quietly.

  “What?”

  “She’s adopted, Mom.”

  “Of course she’s adopted. I’m just saying that it’s not obvious.”

  Gail tried to steady herself.

  “It’s all right if it’s obvious, Eleanor,” Jon said. “She’s beautiful just like she is.”

  “Of course she’s beautiful. I’m just saying that nobody can tell. People will see the three of you and not even know.”

  “And that would be better?” Gail’s voice felt brittle. She took another breath, gripped the cushion of her chair. “Nobody knowing?”

  “Gail,” her dad said.

  “No, Dad. We waited a long time, and I won’t have Mom ruin this, too.”

  “We all waited a long time,” her mom said, looking pointedly at Gail.

  “What does that mean?” Jon asked.

  “I’m just saying. I was fertile in my twenties.”

  “Eleanor,” her dad said, finally raising his voice.

  Gail clung to the cushion. Her mouth worked, but the words wouldn’t come.

  “So,” Jon said. “If we didn’t wait so long, you’d be holding a real granddaughter. Is that it, Eleanor?”

  They all froze and stared at Jon. He stood up.

  “Gail’s right,” he said quietly, almost to himself. “Try as you might, we’re not going to let you ruin this.”

  Gail’s mom sat stunned as Jon lifted the baby from her lap. He settled Maya into Gail’s arms, and their eyes locked. When he spoke again, Gail felt like he was talking only to her, like her parents weren’t even in the room. “I think that we’re exactly the family that we were meant to be.”

  * * *

  Gail rocked Maya to sleep for her nap. She could tell it wouldn’t take long. It seemed that her mom exhausted Maya, too. While she rocked, she remembered the look on her mother’s face when Jon put her in her place, and she smiled. He’d never done that before—by unspoken agreement it had always fallen to Gail to push back against her mother.

  Maya was dead asleep when Gail lowered her into the crib. She didn’t even stir. Gail made her way to the bedroom, where Jon lay on top of the covers, his eyes closed, his mouth open, breathing evenly. The early-afternoon sun slanted through the front window. Gail paused at the door for a moment, then gathered her hair and tied it in a knot on the top of her head. She walked to the window and lowered the blinds. She undressed and stood next to the bed, watching Jon breathe. She climbed onto the bed and straddled him, careful not to wake him. She lowered herself to his ear and licked it. He stirred. She kissed his lips, and he smiled, but his eyes remained closed. His hands found her thighs bare and his eyes popped open.

  “You weren’t asleep, were you?” Gail whispered.

  “No.” He smiled. “I was just resting my eyes.”

  He shifted as she peeled off his T-shirt. She kissed him again, and his hands searched. She grabbed him by both wrists and pinned his hands next to the pillow, shaking her head. His smile widened. She kissed his chest and his belly, and then pulled off his jeans and his boxers. He was ready. She climbed back on top, and she guided him inside of her slowly. It had been a long time. His eyes closed, and his face tightened with concentration. Up and down gently until they found that fit, and then she dropped onto him with all her weight and arched her back. He propped himself up, reaching for her breasts with his mouth, but she pushed him back down, held him down with her hands on his chest. His hand groped, and she grabbed his wrists again, pushed them under the pillow. The tingling warmth started near her knees and pushed up her spine, toward her neck. Faster and slower and then just faster, and Jon’s eyes squeezed tight and his mouth fell open. They both somehow managed not to make a sound, and they both strained with it and against it. When they finished, she lay against him, crouched on top of him, her cheek against his sweaty chest, feeling, more than hearing, the pounding of his heart. He wrapped his arms around her, and this time, she let him.

  They lay like that for a long time, their breath slowing. Jon stroked her back and kissed the top of her head. Finally, she slipped off him, dangled a leg over his, snuggled her head into his shoulder.

  “Motherhood becomes you,” he said.

  It felt nice to lay naked and warm against each other again. It had been too long.

  “Remember Paulina?”

  “Yeah,” he said. She could hear the smile in his voice. “I remember Paulina.”

  “I want to go back there.”

  Jon shifted, but said nothing for a moment. “I thought you liked it here.”

  Gail smiled. He could be so literal.

  “I’m not sure that would be such a good idea—with a baby,” he said. “Parking. Schools.”

  “I don’t want to move,” she said. She thought about takeout from Jade Garden and how they used to finish each other’s sentences and the easy, natural way they had. That’s what she wanted, the way they fit with each other on Paulina, without effort, without the heavy silences a
nd puzzled looks. “I want it to be like Paulina here.”

  Jon kissed her on the top of her head. “Me, too,” he said, and she could tell by the way that he squeezed her tight that he understood. “Me, too.”

  Carli

  Carli hung up the phone and wrote up the ticket: a large sausage and a medium pepperoni for delivery. She stamped it with the time and set it on the ledge of the window to the kitchen.

  “Order!”

  Phil, the cook, grabbed the ticket, glared at her like he always did, and disappeared to make the pizzas. The dinner shift had been easy for a Saturday—more delivery orders than eat-in—and Carli already had most of the mess cleaned up. She usually scrolled through her social media feeds in between delivery orders, stalking Kelly and Madison and Andrea, watching life go on without her. But she had turned off her phone hours ago because of Paige’s persistent texts and calls, so mostly she just stared out at the headlights on Division and tried to avoid the eyes of the fucking clowns. On Carli’s best days, she could laugh at the clowns, but tonight, their toothy painted grins seemed to laugh at her.

  She tried not to think about what Marla had done to her that morning. Carli hadn’t given the final consent a second thought until Marla pulled it from the folder. It was just another piece of paper she would sign. It wasn’t another decision to make. She’d made all the decisions seven months ago, closed the doors on all of them. She’d been leaning against those doors to keep them shut ever since.

  * * *

  When Carli found out she was pregnant, she wasn’t sure how to broach it with Andy. She texted him first—she thought it might help to give him some time to digest the news before they spoke. He didn’t reply, and when she called him, he didn’t answer. That night, Andy didn’t show up for his shift. A few days later, she heard that he quit Giamonti’s and was helping his cousin clean carpets. They never really talked about it, but in the end it didn’t matter. The fact was, she knew before she sent that first text that he wasn’t the kind of guy who could manage satisfactory answers to the questions that she never got to ask him.

  Almost a year before Carli became pregnant, Andrea had found herself in the same situation. Carli drove Andrea to Ottawa for her appointment. She didn’t remember what the front of the clinic looked like, but it was sandwiched between an art gallery and Caribbean Tan. She couldn’t remember what the protestors looked like, but she couldn’t forget the hard edge to their voices as they shouted at Andrea, and the horrible pictures on the signs that they waved. She couldn’t remember how long she waited, but she remembered that only the receptionist spoke in that waiting room, and everyone avoided eye contact. She remembered everything about that long, quiet ride home. Andrea turned off the radio as soon as she got into the car. She stared out the passenger window at the cornfields that lined Route 80. When Carli asked if she was OK, she didn’t answer. When Carli dropped her off at home, she didn’t say anything—she just climbed out of the car and slammed the door. When Carli was making her own decisions, every time she thought about that clinic in Ottawa, those awful pictures and that silence kept her from dialing.

  In a way, Carli made the decision to give the baby up for adoption before she even knew that she was pregnant. At the end of her junior year, she got her scores from the SAT that all the kids had to take. She shoved the envelope into her backpack and forgot about it. Mrs. Axelrod didn’t call her down to meet until right before summer vacation. That was the first time they ever really had a meeting—usually she just checked to make sure that Carli was taking enough classes to graduate. And before that day, nobody had ever asked what kind of career Carli had in mind, which was just as well, because Carli had always thought in terms of jobs, not careers. It took her a long moment of silence to work up the courage to say nurse out loud. Mrs. Axelrod talked about bell curves and percentiles and free college. She talked about Carli’s above-average intelligence and unlimited potential. When Mrs. Axelrod said, “But I’m sure that you already knew all that,” Carli didn’t say anything. Unlimited potential Above-average intelligence. Carli did not know all that. She had taken standardized tests every year since first grade, but if Marla ever looked at the results when they came in the mail, she’d never said anything. And when Carli’s teachers said things like I expect more from you, Carli, it had always felt like they were yelling at her for screwing something up rather than challenging her to reach her potential. Throughout the summer, Carli couldn’t stop thinking about that talk with Mrs. Axelrod. Those three words—nurse and college and free—rattled around in Carli’s head. She couldn’t stop seeing that line with her name attached to it, slicing across the skinny part of the bell curve. The word nurse snagged in her throat, but it tasted good.

  It was August, just before Carli’s senior year started, when she brought it up with Marla. Wendy and Randy were out, and Marla was in the den, stretched flat on the recliner, watching Hardcore Pawn. She gripped a Mountain Dew in her fist, and an ashtray with a lit cigarette balanced on her stomach. Carli sank into the couch.

  “No way he’s buyin’ that shit,” Marla said.

  The pawnshop owner, a bald, bearded man with a diamond earring, was ignoring the jewelry on the counter. Instead, he squinted at the skinny man with acne and bad teeth who stuttered through an explanation about where he got the loot.

  “They never buy from the meth-heads.”

  Carli watched for a while, trying to think about how to ask her question using the fewest number of words. “Can I see your W-2?”

  Marla picked up her cigarette and took a drag from it. For a moment, Carli wondered if Marla heard her over the television. She was about to ask again.

  “Whattaya want that for?”

  “For school?”

  “Bullshit.” Marla drank from the Dew. Her eyes darted toward Carli. “I pay my property tax. That’s all your school needs to know.”

  “I need it for the FAFSA.”

  “The FAF-what?”

  “The financial aid form for college.”

  Marla barked a laugh. “You ain’t goin’ to no college. What the fuck is wrong with you?”

  “Mrs. Axelrod says—”

  “Who the hell is Mrs. Axelrod?”

  “My counselor.” Her words, Mrs. Axelrod’s words really, tumbled out in a rush. “I scored real high on the SAT, and she says that with my test scores and merit aid and need-based aid I can probably go to college for free.”

  Marla picked up the remote from the arm of the chair and pressed Pause. The pawnbroker froze on the screen, his eyes pinched to slits, his mouth open, his finger pointing at the customer.

  “There ain’t nothin’ free. That lady’s blowin’ smoke up your ass. Probably wants my social so she can load you up with loans for me to pay.”

  Carli stared at the pawnbroker, tried to think of words that Marla might hear. “I just need—”

  “You just need to get your head out of your ass. And you just need to shut the hell up so I can watch my show.”

  Marla held the remote in the air, glared at Carli with her eyebrows raised, waiting to make sure that the conversation was done. When Carli said nothing, Marla hit Play and turned back to the TV. Carli climbed off the couch, walked quickly to her room, and slammed the door.

  She didn’t sleep that night. She trembled with rage, but you can only stay mad for so long before it wears you out, so toward dawn, she started making decisions. She decided that she would search the attic and the cellar and Marla’s room to see if she could find the W-2 herself. She decided that when school started, she would meet with Mrs. Axelrod again, to see if there was another way. And she decided, no matter what it took, no matter what she would have to give up, she would never end up like Marla.

  * * *

  Almost a month after that night—after she had searched unsuccessfully for the W-2, but before she met with Mrs. Axelrod again—that heavy, greasy feeling in the pit of her stomach and a puddle of vomit in the school parking lot sent her to CVS for a pregnancy tes
t. When she told Marla she was pregnant, Marla called her a stupid bitch and didn’t say another word to her for a week. During that week, Carli scoured the Internet. She studied pictures of smiling couples trying not to look desperate for a baby. As she sorted through those pictures of beautiful homes and well-scrubbed people, she tried to imagine raising a baby on her own, and all she saw was a dingy apartment with cigarette butts in coffee cups and Mountain Dew cans on the windowsill. She saw Marla. The fourth night, she made that decision, and then firmly shut the door on it.

  The Open Arms Adoption Agency showed up first in the search results. She filled out the “Contact Us” form, and Paige called her back an hour later. When they met the next day, she liked the way that Paige listened as much as she talked. Her eyes remained glued on Carli while Carli spoke, and when Carli finally asked her questions, Paige answered them with a gentleness that startled Carli. She left the agency’s office with a stack of books. Carli tried to sort out what each couple was saying and what they weren’t saying in those pages. She narrowed it down to four and then three and then two. She googled the towns and the school districts and asked Paige a ton of questions. Finally, she chose the Durbins. After she met Jon and Gail at the diner, she cried for hours, not because of anything particularly horrible about Jon and Gail, but because she had to cry. And then she called Paige. With that call, she closed the final door.

  Carli took two more phone orders, and on both, she had to ask the callers to repeat themselves. She couldn’t stop thinking about that morning. Marla probably wouldn’t really kick her out of the house, but there was no telling with Marla. That would sort itself out one way or the other, but she couldn’t stop thinking about that baby’s face in her dream. Her gut burned like that paper in the ashtray. Carli had made all her decisions, and she was edging her way toward a different life, a better life, but now Marla was trying to force her to decide all over again. And worst of all, she couldn’t stop smelling vanilla cream soda.