In Every Way (4 page)

“Six months,” Maria says.

“You look great,” she says. “You feel good? Good. Good. How'd you decide to get in touch?” She shuffles papers within her bag, withdrawing a yellow legal pad and short green pencil.

Anne sounds so comfortable, as if she's inquiring about the wallpaper. But this is not an easy question for Maria to answer. She had decided on abortion. Of course she had, she thinks. She cannot be a mother. Somehow, though, after sharing a house with cancer, Maria has found an incredible increase in tolerance for the protesters on the corner of Franklin Street outside Whole Foods who hold oversized poster boards picturing bloodied fetuses in forceps. These days, when Maria steps into sunlight so bright that it shines through her closed eyelids, she wonders if those rays are strong enough to penetrate her womb and reveal a rosy world of organs to her small hidden passenger. She doesn't know exactly how to answer.

“I'm nineteen,” Maria says. “So. And the woman has the right and all that. But, I don't know. It's hard to explain. You know about my mom.”

“I do,” Anne says. “I'm so sorry.”

“So, I don't know. I'm not religious or anything. And I don't even want to say I've been thinking about life, because that word just makes me think of all those weirdos outside Whole Foods with the signs, but, I don't know, I guess that's part of it.”

“OK,” Anne says, pausing to decode Anne's meaning. “OK. And, can I ask who's the father?”

“Jack Sveboda.”

“Dr. Sveboda's son?” Anne says, naming Jack's father, a cardiac specialist at the university.

Maria nods and then, in a burst, chuckles. She is not sure why she is laughing, but then Anne starts too. It feels good to share any understanding with this woman, even if Maria is not sure what that understanding is.

“I can hear you!” Jack says from the hallway.

He enters the room and removes his hat. Maria is amazed at this, even the slightest condescension to convention, and is for a moment proud. Then a dog enters the room behind Jack and she is reminded that she is still mad at him.

The dog is a stringy border collie with eyes desperate for love and whom, before this morning, Maria had never seen. He cannot be even a full year old. Jack appeared with him only one hour before, unannounced.

“You think it's smart that I got her a dog?” Jack says. “It's so she'll have something to love, you know, for when after.”

“It's smart if she wants the dog,” Anne says.

“Damn!” Jack says, sitting softly beside Maria.

The dog is named Pinky. Jack appeared with him at breakfast, Pinky pulling him by a leash into the kitchen while Maria fried three eggs.

“The hell is that?” Maria had said.

“Your new dog,” Jack said, restraining a determined grin of pride.

“No it isn't.”

“After you pop that thing out,” he said, “you're gonna need something cute to feed. It's science.”

“Take him back.”

“Shelter doesn't take returns.”

“I'm pretty sure that's all they take,” Maria said.

But despite herself, she understands both the logic and the irony of Jack's thinking: that an adoption will fix an adoption. The child will cry out to be loved and cared for, yet she has agreed not to respond. She is leaving that to the Children's Home Society of North Carolina. What will happen to any remaining urge to nurture? Who knows if it will even emerge, Maria thinks. She is not one to trust that it will happen. She has heard tell, yes, of biological love, of biological impulse, but doesn't she have enough biological matter to care for with her mother? She does not need a dog upon which to lavish any excess love.

Jack sits beside Maria and takes her hand.

“I love this beautiful woman right here,” he says. “I don't want to freak you out. But listen. She's perfect. This is all my fault.”

Anne nods, grinning as if she is not sure if he is joking or serious.

“M'lady,” Jack says, and Anne cocks her head. Maria too is confused at the non sequitur, but Jack isn't talking to Anne anymore. He is addressing Maria's mother, who has appeared in the doorframe like a withered bundle of sticks in a bathrobe. Anne follows his gaze.

“Professor Matthews,” she says.

“I
do
remember you,” Maria's mother says. “You dated the boy with the big necklace.”

“Chip King,” Anne says. She laughs. “He did have a big necklace.”

“What is man but a little soul holding up a corpse? You remember that?” Maria's mother says, sitting. “Anne took my Dante class.” She opens one palm as if it might catch something falling from the ceiling, then shakes her head. “Christ. That's not Dante. It's . . .” She looks at what is left of her body and shrugs. “Place my grandchild with the royal family, Anne. Please.”

Recently they've been hitting it hard. Chemo is streamed into her mother's veins twice a week by Dr. Jeanette, an oncologist whose office is housed in a hospital extension at the bottom of a hill behind the Harris Teeter off Highway 86. At her last appointment, Maria's mother told Dr. Jeanette he should just cut out everything other than her heart and brain. “You've got a lot of both,” Dr. Jeanette said, and Maria's mother groaned. “Oh please,” she said. “Go work for Hallmark.”

Her mother cannot abide sentiment, yet Maria's situation softens her. She sits beside her daughter and places one cold hand upon Maria's belly. A sharp joint dashes nonchalant across her womb.

“God, it's always pointier than I expect,” her mother says, and Jack rushes to place his hand atop hers.

“Is there anything more amazing?” Anne says.

The silence that answers is confirmation that there is not.

Maria does not know the baby's gender. She has asked the doctors to withhold the information, thinking it might keep attachment to a minimum. But what does gender matter, Maria wonders, when there is a little person pressing Maria's own flesh against that of her dying mother and her boyfriend? It is becoming increasingly clear to Maria that scientific knowledge is going to play no role in shaping her feelings about this child, a certainty both dangerous and enticing. She aspires not to indulge it at all.

Jack presses his nose against Maria's stomach. “Luke,” he says, projecting directly into her flesh, “this is your father.”

Maria pushes him away, embarrassed.

“OK,” Anne says, removing from her leather bag one sheet of paper. Maria is sure she too is embarrassed and is using this paperwork
as a distraction. Jack sits up, begrudgingly. “Let's look at your bill of rights.”

The stationery is headed with the image of two minuscule baby footprints. Maria imagines the feet of her unborn child, curious if they are yet larger than those on the page.

“You have the right to receive this information, and all legal options related to relinquishment in an accurate, competent, and unbiased manner,” Anne says. “You have the right to change the decision about relinquishment, and to choose to parent the child.”

Jack squints at the paper and says, “Sprechen sie American?”

“Means you can change your mind,” Maria's mother says.

“We gonna wanna?” Jack says.

“Some do,” Anne says.

“We won't,” Maria says. “We want you to give it to Philip and Nina.”

Maria mother and Jack make no reaction to this—they already know about Maria's plans—but Anne raises her eyebrows and smiles, as if this, this is what she had been waiting for.

Philip and Nina. Maria found them on the internet. Family profiles are posted on all agency sites. Each has a photo of a prospective adopting couple with a short message from each. Almost all look like young student council members fresh out of church, their missives drawn heavily from verse. Maria cannot stomach the idea of her child growing up in a house filled with prayer. But as soon as she saw Philip and Nina, she knew she need no longer worry. She knew, in fact, that something magical was happening, something almost as mystic as conception. It was not because of what Philip and Nina wrote in their online message, nor what they look like that made her feel this way,
though their appearance was indeed a point of interest—Nina is half Japanese and so beautiful it seems unfair; Philip is bearded, weathered, and striking—rather it was the fact that Maria recognized Philip's face. She knows who he is, she knows where he lives. And this she has told no one.

Maria's mother's old college roommate Karen lives in Beaufort, where Maria and her mother last vacationed in June. Beaufort is a small town on the coast known for its historic homes and Blackbeard's shipwrecks. Maria and her mother visit every year, sometimes more than once a season.

Maria spent most of her time this past summer sketching sailboats and passersby while seated at the end of a small public pier on a tidal creek. Almost every day, Philip would walk past with a rangy orange borzoi. She still has sketches of him saved within blue sketchbooks tied shut with ribbon. Maria did not know he was Philip then. She would have guessed that his name was something more continental. French, maybe. Claude. Gael. But she was curious about him. He was tall and thick, with a mess of dark hair tangled into a beard that seemed to grow up to his eyes. His wardrobe of loose linen and frayed oxford spoke to Maria of money and something distinctly cultured. At times he wore a knit maroon necktie. He was not exactly handsome, but this improved him in her eyes. Maria cannot remember what her first impressions were. They are colored now by the facts.

The appearance of Philip's face on the agency website astounded Maria less than she felt it should have. It was hard for her to believe, yes. She felt an awareness of some cosmic folly, yes. But nothing surprises Maria like it used to. The world has been filled with an excess of magic over these past few months. The edges of life sparkle and
the shimmer of her days makes Maria increasingly numb. This, the appearance of a face she recognized while searching online for a family to adopt her unborn child, seemed like just another trick in the ongoing magic act of her life.

“Philip and Nina are one of our . . .” Anne says. She searches for the words. “Most complicated options.”

“Meaning what?” Maria says.

Anne searches for more words. “Philip smokes,” she says.

“I smoke,” Jack says.

Anne looks at Maria. There is a moment of silence.

“OK,” Anne says. “If we're sure already, that'll just make things easier.”

She removes a dozen or so thin hardbound books from her bag. Maria has seen these sorts of things before. They are the type of photo albums you order online from uploaded files. Her mother makes one after each trip to Europe. Anne flips through them like an oversized deck of cards before selecting one and passing it to Maria.

Inside are eighteen pages of photographs of Philip and Nina, carefully selected to reveal nothing about where they live. But Maria can tell these are the live oaks of Beaufort, these are its sandy streets. They live in a white Victorian house. She thinks she has seen it before. It looks like so many others in Karen's neighborhood. They have and apparently love that one long-nosed and regal borzoi. They were married in what looks to Maria like Duke Chapel. They smile, but not always. Maria feels a deep unfairness at each photo of Nina. The woman is so graceful on film that Maria wonders at the worth of her own genes. She worries that any child of hers could never match the beauty of this family.

On the first page of the album is a letter typed in a font that approximates handwritten cursive. Maria feels certain that Philip and Nina do not like any font that attempts to mimic handwriting and that they have used it only to appeal to some adoption agency aesthetic. It feels like a secret she shares with them already.

Dear Birth Parent(s),

My husband, Philip, and I cannot begin to imagine all that you are facing right now, but what we do know is that you are a very strong and brave person (or persons).

After one devastating miscarriage and several years of trying to conceive, Philip and I have decided that adoption is the best option for us to start the family we so desire. If there is a child out there who needs us, we are ready to open our home and hearts to that little boy or girl. We also believe in open adoption and are excited about forming and maintaining a relationship with you, if this is something that you desire. We have placed this decision in your hands.

Philip and I have been dating since high school and have been married for fourteen years. We went to the same college and married the year we graduated. Education is very important to us. I have a law degree and Philip has a PhD. He is a professor. For several years I worked as a social worker, but am now a public defender. I love the work. We are natives of Mississippi but love calling North Carolina home.

We enjoy crafts and being outside. Our favorite television shows are Twin Peaks and The Cosby Show, though we do not in fact own a television; we plan on raising our child in a world of their own imagination.

We have one dog, an old and sweet borzoi named Ferdinand. He is very gentle and loves children, but does sometimes have bad breath. We brush his teeth as often as possible.