Rescuing Julia Twice (19 page)

Leah makes one more attempt to feed the baby.

“Okay, Josh, suit yourself,” Leah says, taking the food away from the baby and putting it back in her large bag.

The next three days, Ricky and I are treated to a whirlwind of pleasure: a film screening, theater, restaurants. Katya minds the three children.

On Sunday morning I squeeze Leah tightly, wishing we could stay longer.

“Thanks so much for everything.”

“You'd better go. You might hit traffic on the M4.”

Ricky and Julia are in the backseat. I slide in. Ricky hands me a tissue.

“It was a good trip,” he says.

On the plane, I take out my diary and jot notes.

I write, “Hire full-time nanny,” and I run a circle around the phrase three times.

Julia is sitting in the seat between Ricky and me. I lean over her and show Ricky the notation.

I search his eyes for approval.

Ricky reads the words and nods.

“Yes?” I say.

“Absolutely.”

“I almost forgot,” Anna says, slipping back into the apartment. “I made a set of these for you.” She fishes for an envelope in her bulging faux leather bag and hands it to me with a beam of pride splashed across her young, fresh face. Inside is a batch of photos from the mommy-and-me ballet class Anna takes Julia to. I shuffle slowly through the stack, gazing at the images of tiny, tippy-toed ballerinas twirling, spinning, leaping in their pink bodysuits, tutus, and soft slippers. I see a little girl I don't know in these pictures. Julia participating in a group. She's part of something. One of. That's how it seems, anyway. She's not off in a corner or outside the circle. I draw one of the pictures closer to my eyes. Julia sits snugly against Anna looking relaxed. Anna has tied back her thin blonde strands with a pink ribbon. With Anna's blonde hair, blue eyes, and broad Polish face, she and Julia look more like mother and child than Julia and I do. I teeter on that thin line between horror and delight. The thought of Julia being in sync with another woman is heartening, even though that woman is not me.

“These are wonderful,” I say, rearranging my taut face into a smile. “Thank you so much.”

I hug her briefly.

“I'm glad you like them,” she says, gingerly reopening the front door. “I better go. See you tomorrow.”

Her footsteps fade as she walks to the elevator. I reopen the door quickly and call out her name, but it's too late. The elevator doors groan shut.

“Never mind,” I say to myself. “Another time.”

I wanted to ask Anna what it's like when she's with Julia. How
she
feels. Is it satisfying? Has she enjoyed being her nanny these past three months? When Anna came for the interview in late December, she glowed when she talked about two children she had taken care of for three years. She carried a picture of them. “These are my children,” she had said, showing me the frayed photograph she kept in her wallet. Ricky thought it was slick salesmanship. I believed it was genuine love. When I called the mother of those children as a reference before hiring Anna, the woman gushed about Anna's dedication to her babies.

Having Anna take care of Julia five days a week from nine to five while I work has released me from a suffocating inert existence. I can eat without constriction in my throat. I can go to the bathroom without straining. I can think. I had no idea caring for a baby all day long would leave me unable to care for myself, but it did. I wasn't able to coalesce with my child, to find a rhythm where neither of us was sacrificed. Constant preoccupation with her needs and mine wiped out moments that should have filled me, her, us, with joy. Ultimately I felt like an interloper in the mommy-and-me group I founded, and we stopped going. Never have I failed at anything so spectacularly.

Anna is reliable, cheerful, and tender with Julia. She arrives every morning on time, carefully coiffed, a vision of loveliness. No matter how cold it is outside, she doesn't complain. She has found ways for her and Julia to fill long days outside the apartment so I can work. In addition to mommy-and-me classes, she does what I used to do: she strolls the avenues, ducking into Barnes & Noble and other shops to pass the time.
She also has nanny friends with young charges. She tells me they congregate in apartments where the babies play. I've gone from being completely frightened of having a stranger handle Julia to being ecstatically happy to have regained some of my freedom. When I spoke to Leah the other day, she said, “You did the right thing. There's no shame in having help.” The first few weeks were a little nerve-racking. I'd check in with Anna every few hours on her cell, but I quickly felt I could trust her. Now I don't talk to her until she brings Julia back at the end of the day.

I imagine a conversation in which I look into Anna's blue eyes and ask her:
Do you love her? Does she love you? Do you love her the way you loved the two children you used to care for?
I need to know this, because I want to know if Julia can attach.

Anna is stoic, professional, and practical, and if she's having issues with Julia, she doesn't let on. But I have noticed that when she arrives in the morning, Julia doesn't run and greet her. At the same time Julia doesn't put up a fuss when Anna puts on her jacket and hat and wheels her out of the apartment. She shows no distress at leaving me. At day's end, Julia tumbles into the apartment. She's not affectionate or clingy with Anna. Did Anna need to hold Julia tight when someone snapped that loving photo? When Anna calls out to Julia and says “good-bye,” Julia doesn't respond. She doesn't even look up.

I'm afraid that asking Anna these questions would cause her cheeks to puff up, her face to redden.
Of course I do,
she'd say, emphasizing each word with staccato crispness. I don't want to put her on the spot. I don't want her to tell me she loves Julia to protect her job. Or to protect me.

I run through the photos one more time. In one Julia is sitting on the wooden floor, her chubby legs and arms outstretched. She looks like a porcelain figure. Her dark eyes are bottomless. She seems lost in thought. She is a puzzle.

I feel a warm kiss on the back of my neck as I make eggs in the kitchen.

“Happy Valentine's Day,” Ricky coos.

“I thought I'd let you sleep late. Want eggs?”

“I needed the sleep,” he says, pouring himself a cup of tea. “She's eaten?” he asks, gazing over at Julia, who is in her room, fifteen feet from the dining room table, toppling anything that stands vertically.

“Yep. Eggs?”

“Sure, eggs would be dandy. What do you want to do today?”

“Do you know what today is?” Ricky looks perplexed.

“It's … ” he looks over at the calendar. “It's Valentine's Day. I knew that. Did you want flowers?”

“No, not Valentine's Day, I mean yes, it's Valentine's Day, but why is this day special?”

Ricky's eyes narrow. He's beseeching me to tell him.

“It is exactly one year since we became Julia's parents. A year ago today we woke up in the Moscow Marriott with a baby in a laundry basket in our hotel room.”

“Hard to believe. Mmm. Those eggs look good.”

“Yeah, it's a funny thing, to associate her with Valentine's Day, no?”

“Better than all that forced flowers and chocolate stuff. She's our little Valentine.”

I gaze at Ricky's sweet face. I often wonder what a biological child of ours would have looked like. I see her. A girl with high cheekbones, chestnut brown hair, and the green eyes we both have.

For a change, the apartment feels calm and peaceful. It's cold outside, and there's nowhere we have to be. I look at Julia, who is now climbing on and off the couch, and wonder if there will ever be a day when I temporarily forget that she is not my flesh and blood. Today, a year behind us, carries weight. It puts a marker in time. It's like an anniversary and birth rolled into one. We've been together for a year, but that day, to me, felt like her “birth.” I drift back to last June 28, her first birthday, and recall how sad I was because I hardly felt anything except some vague pang of guilt for having become this child's mother. I thought about the young Russian girl who gave birth in the grim gunmetal gray hospital Olga showed us. Did she hold her? Did she cry when she handed her
back to a nurse for the last time? Does she think about her long-lost baby on June 28, and does she regret her choices?

It's funny—we chose an international adoption because we wanted it to be clean and final and without interference. But sometimes I wish I could just steal a few secret moments to ask her questions that dog me.

Three days later I arrive at Dr. Traister's office. I gave Anna the morning off so I could take Julia for her third well-visit. So far the doctor's been pleased with her progress. Dr. Michael Traister specializes in treating foreign-adopted children. He recommends a second round of vaccines when they come home because he doesn't trust the ones they've received in Russia. He knows to look for low muscle tone and aberrant neurological symptoms that might have gone undetected. He knows children with fetal alcohol syndrome don't always show signs of mental disorder right away. He's been very enthusiastic about Julia's progress. She walked at a year, started forming words a month later, is solid and strong.