A Mother's Goodbye_A gripping emotional page turner about adoption and a mother's love

by Kate Hewitt

  ‘Minecraft,’ she explained proudly, because I’m sorry, it wasn’t obvious.

  Isaac glanced at me uncertainly; it was clear he didn’t want to eat it.

  ‘It looks delicious,’ I said, giving him a pointed look. We’d all have to try a piece. That’s how these visits always went.

  ‘You still play Minecraft, don’t you?’ Heather asked in that same chirpy voice. She’d started cutting the pieces and they were falling apart, gray icing oozing everywhere like glutinous cement.

  ‘Umm…’ Isaac glanced at me, looking for instruction, but I wasn’t sure what was wrong this time. ‘I play Clash of Clans now,’ he admitted in a low voice, a hint of apology in his tone.

  ‘Oh.’ Heather’s face fell. I would have felt more sorry for her if she hadn’t basically shut down my request for limiting visits.

  Isaac pushed his cake around on his plate and didn’t eat more than a bite, despite Heather’s repeated urgings.

  ‘Sorry, Mom,’ Lucy said as she pushed her own plate away. ‘But it does look kind of gross.’

  Kevin, who hardly utters a syllable during these visits, gave his daughter a glower. ‘It’s delicious, Lucy.’ He glanced at me, just as pointedly, and I looked away. I’d eaten the damn cake, or at least most of it.

  Heather rose from the table, her lips trembling. ‘I’ll get some ice cream.’

  On and on it went, everything stilted and awkward and wrong. Emma came out after we’d finished eating and gave Isaac an awkward wave; it was clear she’d been hiding in her bedroom the whole time. Right as we were leaving, Amy swanned in, fifteen years old and smelling of cigarettes and beer. I’ve watched her get wilder and wilder over the years, and Kev and Heather don’t seem to notice. Maybe they don’t care.

  ‘Hey, Isaac,’ she smirked, ignoring me, and then flounced past us into the kitchen, where she took a carton of juice from the fridge and swigged from it. Eventually we were able to scuttle out, breathe silent sighs of relief. Another month down.

  Neither of us talk on the way home; we’re always subdued on this drive, exhausted by the emotional energy Heather drains from us both. Isaac reminds me of my promise for ice cream, but since he had some at Heather’s I tell him he can have frozen yogurt instead. He accepts, and I pick up some from the Pinkberry on the corner before we head thankfully home.

  After our frozen yogurt, Isaac disappears into his room with his iPad and I try to think of my next steps – refuse a visit? Contact my lawyer? – but I already feel defeated. This is one battle I know I will have to fight, just as I know it will be painful and exhausting, and not just for me. I feel almost as badly for Heather, knowing the pain I will cause her. Knowing I will have to cause it. And what about Isaac? The last thing I want him to feel is as if he’s in the middle being pulled in two directions, and yet of course he is.

  I go to the kitchen and pour myself a glass of wine. I close my eyes and take a long sip, savoring the cool crispness. I finish the glass and pour myself another one. I deserve it, at least today: the one day a month I always dread and somehow survive.

  I wander into my study, the little cramped maid’s room that used to house the boxes of my father’s stuff, and sit in front of my laptop. I can’t quite summon the energy to turn it on, check my emails, find out how the markets are doing. I’ve come a long way since those days when I was so driven and determined to be at the top. A long way down, but it’s a price I’ve always been willing to pay.

  After I lost the partnership to Jill, I was, predictably, shunted to the sidelines, condemned to a lifetime of searching out the next big deal so someone higher up could take credit. It was a demotion, no question, and Bruce and all the other partners were just waiting for me to leave. The trouble was, I couldn’t. Not with Isaac. No way could I start over, log all the hours again, fight my way back up.

  So I stayed mid-level, just as my dad did, and I told myself it was fine. I still made enough money to keep my apartment, pay for a nanny, and then later the outrageous school tuition – over forty grand a year for Buckley. But it’s not a given; it’s not easy. The life I’d wanted for both of us never quite materialized, but that’s okay. We still have more than most. We still have plenty. And I have the most important thing, the best thing: my son.

  When I think back to what I expected, what I hoped for all those years ago, I almost want to laugh. Either that or cry, or maybe just sigh and shake my head over my total naïve stupidity. I intended to take two weeks off when Isaac was born. Two weeks. Was I crazy? Or just completely deluded?

  Losing the partnership was a mixed blessing, because at least without that tempting and expensive carrot dangling in front of me I didn’t feel too guilty about taking another two weeks off after the first two, and thanks to Jill, I let everyone know I’d adopted a son.

  I’ll never forget the exhausted craziness of those first few weeks, even though the moments have all merged together, a blur of wonder and fear and intense joy. Isaac was in the hospital for three weeks, while I attempted to work, going to and from the hospital to visit him, trying to bond from behind a plate glass window. When he was eight days old they let me hold him.

  Heather had signed the surrender papers five days before, and then she’d been discharged from the hospital. It was as if she’d vanished, and I was so relieved. I even convinced myself that the whole open adoption plan she’d come up with wouldn’t materialize; she’d think better of it.

  Then I took Isaac home, needing one of the NICU nurses to buckle him into the car seat because I couldn’t figure out the straps. I felt totally unequipped in every possible way. I’d never changed a diaper. I’d barely held a baby before him, and I’d only held Isaac a handful of times, with nurses looking on, gently correcting me, reminding me to support his tiny head, fragile as a robin’s egg, his pulse throbbing through his skull.

  I’d once imagined that when I brought Isaac home there would be an army to support me – baby nurse, nanny, competent officials to surround me and keep us both safe, guide me through it all. It didn’t happen that way. The baby nurse, who had postponed to start with, backed out completely when she learned that Isaac had health issues – a heart murmur that needed monitoring and weak lungs that haven’t given him any trouble except a touch of asthma over the years.

  Dorothy was visiting her grandchildren in Chicago until the last week of May, when she was meant to have been starting, so for those first two weeks I was entirely on my own, and it felt like being launched into outer space. I wanted to bond with my boy but when I took him out of the car seat into the yawning emptiness of my apartment, I felt as if I were holding a cross between a Ming vase and a stick of dynamite.

  I held him against my chest, so scrawny and small, and tiptoed into the nursery, everything feeling fragile, like the moment was a bubble – beautiful, translucent, and easily broken. I eased into the rocking chair as I cradled him like a football, terrified I was going to break him; that he was going to cry, that I wouldn’t know what to do.

  Then I looked down into his face and saw how he blinked up at me, studying me so seriously, and my heart ached with love and thankfulness and a deep, abiding joy. I’d learn. This would become familiar, easy. He was mine. Of course he was mine.

  I’d already decided on his name, unorthodox as it might have seemed: Isaac, the Hebrew name meaning laughter. It was a nod to my father’s Jewish mother, despite my completely privileged, Protestant upbringing. I wanted to give my son some of his history, ground him in the truth of my family, my lineage. Heather made a face when she heard his name, not the good Irish name she’d probably wanted, but I wasn’t going to back down. He was my son now.

  Still, she played on my early fears during those first visits. Every laughing criticism made me flinch, doubt myself even more. Wonder if I’d ever get this right, if I’d ever be a good mom, no matter how much I tried.

  It’s been a long time since I’ve struggled with how to open a stroller, or had to have Heather help me give Isaac some ant
ibiotics one visit when I couldn’t get him to take a spoonful, but I feel like at each visit with Heather still takes a little something from me. And more importantly, she takes something from Isaac. He feels torn, uncertain; as he’s grown older he’s sensed the tension and sometimes the downright hostility between us, and it worries him. More and more he’s asked why we have to go, and my answers don’t satisfy him. I’m doing this for his sake as much as my own. If these visits worked for Isaac, I’d keep them going. At least, I hope I’d be a strong and good enough person to do that.

  Outside twilight is falling on Central Park in full bloom – daffodils waving their yellow-orange heads in neatly tended flower beds, cherry buds in full, blowsy blossom. I try to summon a pleasure in the sight, but I’m still feeling on edge from my conversation with Heather. I don’t want to go the way of lawsuits and acrimony, but I know I will if I have to. The knowledge lodges like a stone in my stomach.

  I go to find Isaac; he’s lying on his stomach on his bed, the iPad propped in front of him, chin in his hands.

  ‘Time for bed, bud,’ I say gently. He looks up, blinking me into focus, and then he smiles, a grin that steals my heart every time. I’ll never get tired of it.

  ‘Can we have a story?’

  ‘Of course. Wimpy Kid or Captain Underpants?’

  ‘Both?’ he asks hopefully and I smile, that edginess starting to fade. It’s a whole month until the next visit, and maybe it won’t happen at all.

  ‘Sure,’ I say, and I toss Isaac his pajamas before reaching for a book. ‘Why not?’

  Monday begins with the usual chaotic crazy of my working week, navigating school drop-off and getting to work, leaving a note for Dorothy outlining Isaac’s many afterschool activities. Since he started school two years ago, I had to reduce Dorothy’s hours; I couldn’t justify paying her for a full working week when she picks him from school at half past three. I’m not making that kind of money, not really. I made it up to her by finding a working mom from Isaac’s old school who needed daytime care for her baby. We nanny share and so far it’s worked out well, thank God, because I don’t know what I’d do without Dorothy.

  As soon as I get to the office I try to put all mom thoughts to the back of my mind – the science project due next week; the yellow belt Isaac’s working toward in Taekwondo; the reciprocal play date I should have scheduled last week. So often I think of Joanne’s warning when we had dinner together all those years ago – Kids always mean time off. I didn’t believe her; I chose not to, but of course she was right.

  Before Isaac was three months old I had taken four extra personal days. One for that first pediatrician’s appointment I didn’t want to miss, then when he had a febrile seizure and had to go to ER before he was six weeks old; again when Dorothy had a stomach bug and couldn’t come in, and finally because I was just so exhausted.

  Even now there’s always something – sick days, doctor’s appointments, teacher’s meetings. I don’t begrudge any of it, of course I don’t, but sometimes it’s hard. There are only so many favors you can call in, so many people you can ask.

  And the truth is, there aren’t that many people in our lives. Single parenthood and a demanding job make maintaining a social life a challenge. When Isaac was little I took one morning off a week for a while to join a baby group, and I met some nice moms, but our lives were so different – they all stayed at home – that in the end I stopped going.

  When he started preschool, it got better. At the Hebrew Montessori I made a couple of friends; there were play dates, and moms’ nights out, and organized trips to the Central Park Zoo or the Children’s Museum. Having a child feels like an automatic entry into a club; I share knowing smiles with other moms at the playground, I catch someone’s eye as I swing hand in hand with Isaac when we walk down the street, and feel the gratitude expand in my chest that I’m finally part of something bigger than myself. Something wonderful. And now, with Isaac starting at Buckley, there are new friends. I’ve only known Stella for the better part of a year but she and her family already feel integral to my life.

  There might not be a lot of people in my life, but there are enough. There’s Isaac.

  I make it to the office at quarter to nine, which is late by Bruce Felson’s standards, never mind that he often breezes in at ten, only to take a two-hour lunch at noon and come back smelling like booze. That’s the partner’s life, not mine.

  My corner office is gone; they claimed it was because of the full-floor renovation a couple of years back, but I knew the truth. Everyone did. I wasn’t going anywhere, not up and not out, and so I stagnated in the smallest office I’d ever been in since I started at Harrow and Heath, crouched over my computer, researching start-ups that, just like me, were destined for nowhere.

  It was so much less than what I once hoped for, and yet in a bittersweet way it made me think of my dad. Did he give up a promising career to put me first, when my mother got sick when I was so little? I don’t actually know. He never said, and to my shame I never asked. But now I wonder, and if it is true, I know he would say it was worth it, in an instant. Just as I would. I don’t have that old ambition any more. Most days I don’t miss it.

  Occasionally I torment myself with the what-ifs. Never for more than a second or two, and those seconds shame me. But yes, I have them, just as I believe every working mother does. How can we not? You give up everything – baking cookies, being promoted. No woman can have it all, and so essentially you end up with two halves of nothing, always feeling inadequate even as you know you wouldn’t change a thing.

  I push such pointless thoughts away as I sit at my desk on Monday morning, pry open the lid of my daily skim latte and breathe in the comforting steam. I have two start-ups to research – a personal stylist app that’s probably no different than a dozen others that have sprouted up in recent years, except perhaps a bit flashier, and a company started by a woman in her mid-fifties in Indiana, selling child-friendly kitchen gadgets out of her garage.

  I’m particularly taken with the self-heating knife to cut butter and the no-blade fruit slicer, all the quirky tools in fun, bright colors that appeal to kids.

  It’s the kind of company that Harrow and Heath wouldn’t look at for a moment –grassroots, woman-led, family-oriented. I’m amazed it’s even appeared on my radar, but Betty Mills has got a lot of good press lately – just local and indie stuff, but still. I sip my latte and wonder if presenting this kind of company to the partners would tank my career even more. Do I have any lower to fall? Do I care?

  Sara is still with me at least; she stayed even when it was obvious I was being sidelined, and then demoted. She pokes her head into my office to tell me my meeting with a hopeful start-up tech company, a dime a dozen these days, is waiting.

  At lunch my cell rings and I see it’s Dorothy. A tightness starts in my chest – a sign of my rising blood pressure. Please, please let her not be calling in sick. Not last minute.

  She isn’t, I find out seconds later. She’s quitting.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Dorothy says, and she does sound genuinely regretful, a hint of tears in her voice. She’s been with Isaac his whole life. ‘But my daughter’s getting divorced. She needs all the help she can get.’

  ‘You’re moving,’ I state numbly, even though it’s obvious. My mind spins. I’ve always counted on Dorothy, the one constant in our lives.

  ‘Yes. I have to move to Chicago.’

  ‘Chicago…’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Dorothy says again. ‘She called me this morning. I didn’t realize how bad it had become, with—well...’ Dorothy sighs heavily. She’s told me a bit about her daughter over the years; the husband’s a drinker, three little kids, a history of depression. ‘She needs me, Grace. I’m sorry. I’m flying out on Thursday.’

  ‘I understand, Dorothy, of course I do…’ But Thursday? That’s in three days. What on earth am I going to do?

  ‘I know it’s not much warning,’ Dorothy says hurriedly. ‘But I have to.
My daughter… she’s not doing well, Grace. I really am sorry. I wish I could give you more notice.’

  After the call I sit there, my phone in my hand, reeling. Dorothy, gone. Just like that, after seven years. She taught Isaac to walk, she took him to toddler groups, she sat by his bedside through childhood fevers and a frightening bout of pneumonia when his lungs took a serious beating. She’s been there as much as I have and, if I’m torturously honest, sometimes more. And now, just like that, she’s gone.

  I can’t even think how Isaac will react, and more urgently, what’s going to happen after Thursday. Hiring a nanny takes weeks, if not months. I’m in serious trouble.

  I don’t have time to think about it, though, because work has to take priority if I want to keep the job I do have, never mind any chance of upward mobility. That night I get home by six thirty, early for me, already exhausted even though it’s only Monday.

  Dorothy meets me at the door the moment she hears my key in the lock. ‘Everything all right?’ I ask, and she nods.

  ‘Yes, I’ve just got to leave on time tonight, with my trip to plan.’

  I lower my voice. ‘Have you told Isaac?’

  Dorothy shakes her head. ‘No, I wanted to wait. You let me know what you want to do.’ She smiles comfortingly, the way she has when I’ve felt clueless and panicked, when I looked to her the way I would have to my mom, to tell me what to do, or at least to tell me I’m doing okay.

  ‘Right. Okay. I’ll tell him tonight.’ I gulp at the thought. I need to get Dorothy a parting gift, and make Isaac write a card, and right then it all feels like too much. I haven’t ever really wanted a husband, a full-time partner, but occasionally I’d like to be able to say to someone ‘You do it’.