In Every Way (27 page)

“What?” Maria says, but she knows.

“I remember when you hung all these,” her mother says.

Maria would have rolled her eyes at this only so long ago. But now she sits beside her mother, leaning her head onto her shoulder. She understands the sting caused by the passage of time, how its markers can be difficult to witness. Even when Bonacieux began to crawl, Maria missed the days of immobility. The passage of each stage was both exciting and an end.

“Mom,” she says, “I can't have Disney posters up anymore.”

“There are no Disney posters here.”

Maria points to
The Great Mouse Detective
.

“Well, that doesn't count,” her mother says. “There're no princesses in that.”

IT IS EASY
to find out where Philip and Nina have gone. There is so much information online. On Duke University's website Maria finds Philip's office hours, the listing for his spring courses, his office mailing address. The new proximity of her daughter—Durham only a dozen miles east—begins to work on Maria's mind. It would be so easy to just drive over there and find her. But Maria will not. There are guidelines she draws up to govern her own conduct. She will not find Philip and Nina's house. She will not spy on them. She will not surprise their family by showing up on the door or dining at the next table over. She will allow no scene to play out in front of Bonacieux. But in addition to the information about Philip's classes online, Maria also reads on Duke's events calendar that a panel discussion about adoption has been scheduled, its focus on transracial pairings in the South. It is being held at the law school. One of the experts is Philip.

She understands she should not under any circumstances attend the event, but while removing her childhood clothes from her closet, Maria finds herself in Bonacieux's bedroom. She is picking out a dress for her to wear to Easter brunch, and Bonacieux is on the floor below, pulling at Maria's leg. Maria picks her up and her daughter's arms go around her neck. And Maria begins to cry, because she knows she is not actually in Philip's house with her daughter, even though she can smell her, she can feel her soft flesh and hear her sighing into her ear. She knows that when she turns around, she will not see the nursery in which she spent so many hours, but rather the empty walls of her own childhood bedroom.

The event at Duke is open to the public. Anyone can go. And if she did, she would not cause a scene. She would not even speak with Philip if it seemed inappropriate. And though there is no reason why Nina
or Bonacieux should be there, perhaps they would be. Maria wouldn't want anything more than a glance—something to help her reattach her daughter's image, because it keeps receding from memory. At night, in bed, Maria conjures Bonacieux's face, but it only rises to the surface in pieces. The curve of her neck, the roll of her chin, the small bags beneath her eyes, how her nose curls. These she remembers from having sketched them so many times, the act of putting pencil to paper itself a type of dance with which Maria could more soundly commit her daughter to memory. But even the sketches she no longer has, the book left behind in Philip and Nina's house. It is the relic of all her attention. All she has left are photos taken on her cell phone, but these seem incredibly inadequate. They don't look like her child. Bonacieux has become a cloud.

She dresses in one of her vintage dresses, one that Philip has never seen. She looks at herself in the mirror, gazes over her shoulder. Smooths the fabric across her stomach. He would be surprised if he saw me in this, she thinks. I look new.

FIVE DAYS LATER
she puts the dress back on. Maria has been to Duke before, dozens of times. More. It is only twenty minutes east on 15-501. She usually enters its faux Gothic landscape with a joke, knowing that its splendor has so little to do with the rest of the city, but today her awareness of civic division is dulled by a growing anxiety.

There has been some local cobranding of the event with the
News & Observer
, as the topic has political relevance to three different state house races, and so it has drawn a large crowd in which Maria may hide. It is a good turnout for this type of thing, something Maria can appreciate after having sat through so many of her own mother's
sparsely attended events. She finds a seat in the rear of the small auditorium, in shadows, among students. She wonders if she too looks like a student. She is not sure. She doesn't understand exactly how people see her nowadays.

She scans the crowd for Nina or Bonacieux, but does not see either. She tries to temper her expectations, telling herself there is no reason they would attend, but as the seats continue to fill, she keeps her eyes peeled. There is an undercurrent of disgust with herself as she does so. She has seen herself as a character on film before, the crazed spurned woman. But she is here only to catch a glimpse. She reminds herself that the event is for the public, that she is just part of the crowd. In truth she knows that she is not there for legal discourse.

Philip appears on the small stage, setting a soft leather briefcase on the table. Maria has never before seen him in a proper suit. He exudes the same casual elegance as always, now elevated by performance. His tie is a green polka-dot foulard, the thin wool suit navy blue. He sits behind a table with three other professors, all women. He arranges papers before him, chatting with his colleagues, then points emphatically to a part of the crowd far away from Maria. Along with Philip's fellow speakers, Maria follows the line of his finger and finds, to her astonishment, Nina and Bonacieux. They have entered without Maria's knowledge and are now encircled by a small group of admirers. Maria catches her breath. Her neighbor turns in curiosity, and Maria tells herself to remain calm. This is their debut, she thinks. Philip and Nina have only just returned to town. He is not even teaching this semester. This is the first time his colleagues have ever even seen Bonacieux. But the child is having none of it. Her face is buried in Nina's shoulder. Her hair has grown, a small lick of gold now swinging onto her neck.
Nina pets it as she talks to their friends. Maria is glad Nina is not forcing Bonacieux to reveal herself. She simply allows the child to keep her face hidden, which Bonacieux does, until Nina takes her seat. Then Bonacieux opens her eyes and points them directly at Maria. Maria smiles instantly and almost waves, but there is no sign of recognition. A sea of faces fills the seats between her and her daughter. Maria is simply lost in the swells.

The discussion begins, though Maria barely notes it. She watches the movement of Nina and Bonacieux. From time to time she even hears her daughter's voice, squealing across the room. At one point, Bonacieux begins to fuss. It is a new act, one Maria has not yet seen. She cries out, pushing against Nina. People in surrounding seats look at them, annoyed. Students whisper. Maria wonders for a moment if something is actually wrong, but it soon becomes obvious nothing is truly amiss. This is just a young child trying to sit through an academic roundtable. The child has every right to cry. Nina should not have brought her here, Maria thinks, even though she is glad that she has. The cries continue until even the moderator pauses in her discourse. Nina rises and, bouncing Bonacieux on her chest, exits through a side door as the child continues to scream. The discussion resumes, but Maria can hear her daughter in the hallway.

She has a longing to rise from her seat, find Bonacieux, and take her into her own arms. She is confident she could soothe her. At the same time, though, Maria feels a strong and surprising surge of relief that Nina is the one who now has the task of actually doing so. This appreciation of Maria's freedom comes as a shock, and it occurs to her that her dreams of Bonacieux have all been about moments that require no real work. Napping together, feeding, walking, the first few
moments of waking. So quickly she has forgotten the hours of toil, of unbroken attention, of the inability to even shower for some days or the act of scheduling a nap several days in advance. She is blindsided by the discovery that a part of her has been growing in the child's absence, a part of her that wants nothing to do with being a mother. It is as if the time away from her child has poisoned the purity of Maria's emotion. Even the flap of hair growing on the back of Bonacieux's head seems to Maria less lovely than its absence. Maria is both disappointed with this discovery and, in a way, relieved. The realization that her desire points not only in the direction of Bonacieux, but also along a path directly away from her, carries with it a breath of freedom.

Eventually Bonacieux falls silent and Nina returns with her to her seat. Nina is flushed and clearly mortified. Maria savors the comfort of her hard plastic seat and is, for the first time, truly glad that she has come here.

Onstage, Philip has almost nothing to say. It is not until well into the discussion that he finally speaks, and only then it is after the moderator, a modish Indian woman who is so lovely that Maria can barely hear her over the mute of her beauty, turns to him and asks directly about his own experience.

“Yeah, my wife and I have been through it,” Philip says. “Not a transracial adoption, exactly, but we would have. We were just so ready. It was the child who first became available that we adopted. It's a complicated process, whatever the ethnicity of the child, and I don't mean bureaucracy. What I mean is, it's just hard having a child.” He laughs. A few audience members chuckle along with him. Maria glances around—they are the older ones, the other parents. Those who understand.

They discuss Philip's firsthand experience of process, a recitation of timeline and fall-throughs, all of which Maria has heard before. And then the moderator says, “Were the parents involved at all?”

“Of our daughter?” he says. “Birth parents?” He looks toward Nina. “No. Not at first.”

“What do you mean?”

Holding his gaze on Nina and Bonacieux, Philip considers his words carefully. He says, “The mother found us.”

People gasp. They are the same ones who moments before had been laughing. The same with whom Maria thought she had shared an understanding. Her face flushes. She should have expected as much, she thinks. She begins to feel the error of her attendance.

“She found you?” the moderator says, bewildered.

“Yes.”

“How?”

“It's not hard these days, not with the internet, I guess. It didn't come from a bad place, I don't think. But it made things pretty difficult for us, for a while.”

“Did she try to take the child?”

“No, no. Nothing like that,” he says. “I'm not going to get into it, but it's all settled down now anyway. And in any case, our daughter . . .” He places his hand on his chest, unable to even find the words for a moment. He looks toward Bonacieux in the crowd. “Everything's worth it for her. In a way it's been good for us.”

They move past Philip's account, but Maria can think of nothing else. He was generous to her, is what she thinks. Already she understands it was folly to ever think she could again be involved in Bonacieux's life. Just being here, seeing Philip and Nina outside of Beaufort, it is clear
that the pressures of the world would be too great. At least she can leave this room with the kernel of hope that she is not hated, she thinks.

The discussion ends and Maria rises with the crowd. But there is a bottleneck on the steps. Students are speaking to each other, pausing in the aisles and on the stairs. Maria looks over her shoulder. She feels an urgency to escape immediately, to exit before being seen. Never before has she felt such a need to flee from her own child. Nina and Bonacieux have approached Philip onstage. They are laughing. Philip is kissing Bonacieux's head. Nina's back is to Maria, who is inching her way to the door, but too slowly. Bonacieux turns from Philip and looks directly at Maria. Maria does not expect to be seen, again banking on the crowd to keep her hidden, but this is only barely a crowd now, and her cover is quickly thinning.

“Mar,” Bonacieux says. “Mar!”

Maria pushes at the students before her, but there is nowhere for them to go. They push back, annoyed. Again she looks over her shoulder. Philip and Nina know Bonacieux's vocabulary well. They know what she means by Mar. They scan the room, but not with much interest. It is as if they cannot imagine Maria might actually be here. But she is, and Nina sees her first. Her mouth draws into a thin line as if pulled from either side. She wraps both arms around Bonacieux and turns the child so she cannot be seen. Clearly terrified, Nina says something to Philip. Maria watches his mouth. “Go,” he says. There is an exit by the side of the stage.

“Mar!” Bonacieux says again, straining to look over Nina's shoulder as she rushes to the door. “Mar!”

The door opens, a bright sliver of sunlight swallowing Nina and Bonacieux, before narrowing back to darkness.

Maria, during all of this, has stood frozen on the steps, as if caught in a spell. She cannot believe she has come here, that she is the one causing terror and the need for flight.

Philip remains at the lectern. The lights have been brightened. The crowd, unaware of the drama playing out in their midst, has begun a more steady stream out through the exits. Philip lifts his briefcase and calmly places his papers inside it. He maintains a visage of taut focus. Businesslike, he steps down from the stage and approaches. He stops a half dozen steps below her.

“Is this going to happen often?” he says, his voice flat.