In A Country Of Mothers

by A M Homes

  Tug of war, winner gets Jody. Claire was pulling hard, throwing her weight into it. Without knowing what she was doing, Claire had entered a competition to prove who was the better mother.

  “I’ve made an appointment a week from Tuesday,” Claire said, lying — she hadn’t made the appointment yet, though she planned to. “Perhaps you could drive her up the weekend before.” She paused. “We haven’t talked much about how you feel, but my impression would be that having Jody somewhere else would certainly take some of the pressure off. It must be hard on you.”

  “It is‚” Mrs. Goodman said. “I thought it was the flu.”

  “I did too,” Claire said.

  “When she called me from school, I brushed it off. She’d been saying she was sick for weeks and I ignored it. You think I don’t feel terrible?”

  “I can imagine.”

  “Can you? Every time I walk down the hall to my bedroom, I pass her door. She just lies there as though she’s waiting for something. She looks at me and I don’t know what to do. I could just cry.”

  “Bring her back,” Claire said. “I promise I’ll take good care.”

  BOOK THREE

  27

  Mr. and Mrs. Goodman drove Jody back to New York. She lay like a queen across the backseat, propped up with pillows and wrapped in a blanket. A video camera — a combination get-well birthday-Chanukah present from her parents — rested on her stomach, leaving Jody with the feeling that while she’d lost the contest, she’d been given what amounted to a nice consolation prize.

  When they pulled up to the building, Mrs. Goodman took her bag of cleaning supplies out of the trunk and hurried upstairs, spraying anything and everything with Lysol, Fantastik, 409, creating a kind of chemical fog that simulated a super clean, germ-free environment. Jody imagined her mother asking her to say “Aah” while she sprayed the stuff directly down Jody’s throat.

  Her father carried in bags of food brought from home. When he made a move to sit down, her mother patted his back and pointed him toward the door. “The car,” she said. “You never know what they’ll take.”

  The apartment seemed smaller and crummier than Jody remembered. Though it was still early in the afternoon, already it was getting dark. A breeze seeped in through the window; the pipes banged. Coming back just now might not have been such a great idea; still, it was done. She was there, and she was staying. Besides, Claire was taking her to the doctor.

  “I’ve made an appointment,” she’d said. “I’m taking you. Next week.”

  “Taking me?”

  “I’ve arranged my schedule so I can go with you. Would you rather go alone?”

  “No,” Jody said. “Not particularly.”

  “I’ve also asked your parents to come in after they drop you off. I thought it would be useful for the three of us to talk. Do you have any objections?” Claire paused. “Would you like to be there?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “So, I’ll see them at four.”

  Her mother made the bed with sheets that smelled like Clorox, hung new towels in the bathroom, filled the refrigerator with juices and frozen foods, and then said goodbye.

  Jody raised the video camera to her eye and filmed her mother leaving.

  “We’ll call you tonight from home,” her mother said, blowing sterile kisses as she walked backward toward the door.

  “You could stay over,” Jody said. “Get a hotel room, go to a play, relax. It’s a lot to drive back and forth in one day.”

  “I’m tired of Neil Simon. Besides, your father likes to sleep in his own bed. I’ll call you.”

  Jody closed the door and put on the chain, puzzled that neither of her parents had said anything about their meeting with Claire. Did they think it was a secret?

  The telephone rang. “Hello,” Jody said, expecting it to be Ellen.

  “Welcome back. It’s Peter Sears.”

  The boy who came on your stomach, Jody almost added. “I can’t talk now,” she said.

  “Yeah, I know. Someone from Gary Marc’s office is friends with a friend of my dad’s. He said you almost died or something. So listen. I was thinking you might want to go to a movie, or”—he paused—“we could stay home and play.”

  Play what, Jody wondered. Knock, knock — who’s there? No one’s home right now, but I’ll come on your back later.

  “I’m sick,” Jody said. “I can’t see you.”

  “You’re not, like, pregnant or anything, are you?”

  “I’m not like anything,” Jody said, slamming the phone down.

  “Are you among the living?” Michael asked when he called later that afternoon.

  “Hard to tell,” Jody said.

  “I spoke with Harry last week. He’s decided you either killed yourself or joined a convent. You should call him.” Michael stopped. “So, listen, you want a part-time job — come in a couple days a week, file my dirty underwear, the usual stuff?”

  Jody wanted it. She wanted to do something. But she never knew when, without warning, she’d either have to lie down or fall down, when suddenly a mysterious free-floating fever would make her head beat with the deep tribal rhythms of pain. She didn’t want anyone to see her spastic shuffle back and forth from the Xerox machine. She didn’t want anyone to ask why Michael hired the handicapped.

  “I want to but I can’t,” Jody said. “Not yet.”

  “Well, whenever you’re ready …”

  “Thanks.” For an asshole, Michael was pretty nice.

  28

  “Tell me about Jody,” Claire said. “How was the trip back? How’s she doing?”

  “She’s settling in,” Mrs. Goodman said.

  “Good,” Claire said. “Good.”

  “If you could give me some background information…. Jody and I have talked about her being adopted — could you tell me the story behind that?” Claire glanced at the Goodmans, crossed her legs, picked up a legal pad, and started making notes. The Goodmans were short, round people who looked as if they’d once been taller but something, perhaps an accident, had squashed them slightly.

  “When our son was born, there were complications,” Mrs. Goodman said. “It wasn’t possible to have more children.”

  “Ben had heart problems,” Mr, Goodman said.

  “Ben”—the missing name. Sam and Claire had considered naming Adam Benjamin, but then decided to go with something shorter.

  “With Ben, it wasn’t like it is now, with specialists, machines, miracles. We were on our own. He lived for nine years. Good care. His mother’s good care, that’s what kept him alive.”

  “Was Jody adopted before or after your son died?”

  “Ben,” Mr. Goodman said. “He was named for my father, who lived to be a hundred and one. When we married, we talked about having four or five children. We always wanted more.”

  “It didn’t happen until later,” Mrs. Goodman added. “A lawyer we were in contact with called and said he’d heard of a baby.”

  “What did the lawyer tell you?” Claire asked, in a voice a little too loud. She felt like she was hearing the B side of her own life story.

  “There was a lot of secrecy,” Mrs. Goodman said, twisting her fingers together as though she could braid them. “It’s not easy to lose a child. We wanted Ben to have a sister. And there we were with this beautiful little girl and he was gone. He would’ve loved her so much. If I left Jody with anyone, I worried. I was convinced that if I even turned my back, if we had an evening out, the crib would be empty and she’d be gone.”

  “It must have been quite a strain on your marriage.”

  The Goodmans didn’t answer.

  “I love her as much as you do,” Mr. Goodman said softly to Mrs. Goodman. “You know that. Maybe I don’t show it as well, but I do.” He wound his watch, then raised it to his ear and listened to the even ticking for a few seconds.

  “Perhaps,” Claire suggested, “your worries had more to do with your son’s death than Jody’s arrival.”


  Claire was disappointed in the Goodmans. For twenty-four years she’d pictured her child’s family as superior, sophisticated in a European manner: bound leather volumes, Oriental rugs, summer trips to France. Mrs. Goodman sat before her in a cotton knit suit, her hair sprayed in place, a thick braid of gold around her neck. There was nothing to indicate that this woman had been entrusted with a special task; she could’ve been anyone’s mother. Claire breathed deeply and gave the Goodmans a chance to come clean.

  “You know she was sick before, when she was a baby,” Mrs. Goodman said. “The most horrible ear infections. I thought I’d lose my mind. Sitting in waiting rooms with her on my lap — I remember thinking I was just going to keel over. It was too much; but she got better, thank God. And now, again. You think we don’t feel guilty? We never wanted her to go to Los Angeles. I never even wanted her to leave home.”

  “There are things Jody wants,” Claire said. “She has to try and achieve them.”

  “Seeing her like this brings back everything,” Mrs. Goodman said.

  “What about Jody’s biological parents? What were you told about them?”

  “In excellent health — health was very important. The mother was unmarried, from a good family. That’s it. That’s all we knew.”

  “And you just went along with this?”

  “We had no choice. We wanted a baby.”

  “What was the lawyer’s name?” Claire asked.

  Mr. Goodman rubbed the side of his face. “It’s been so long now, I don’t remember. He died about fifteen years ago, I remember that.”

  “In those days adoption wasn’t what it is now,” Mrs. Goodman said. “You didn’t go out to lunch with the mother.”

  “Okay,” Claire said, “then tell me what Jody was like as a child.”

  Mrs. Goodman clasped her hands together, tilted her head backward, and closed her eyes, as if going into a trance. “All the little girls in the neighborhood would come to our house with their stuffed animals. Jody loved stuffed animals and birthday parties. They’d set up a table, prop up all the animals around it, and at each place they’d put a cookie or a candy. Then they’d go around and eat all the treats. A lot of cookies,” Mrs Goodman said, opening her eyes, laughing. “I baked a lot of cookies.”

  Claire smiled. “What else can you tell me?”

  These moments of pleasure in the family album gave Claire something like a sugar high, so thick and sweet and good it almost made her sick. But she wanted more, as much as she could get.

  “Her first day of elementary school,” Mrs. Goodman said, “I put her in one of those Florence Eiseman dresses, the kind with the appliqué—she had such beautiful clothes — and we walked to school. I stayed. The whole first day I stayed right there outside the door, along with a few of the other mothers. We couldn’t leave.”

  “And later?”

  “Everyone liked her. Lots of friends. Kids coming and going. They liked our house. We were very tolerant.”

  When Jody was thirteen, when the Goodmans were chaperoning her first boy/girl parties, Claire was thirty-two years old. She and Sam were married, living on Eighty-third Street. Claire was still working nights at a crisis center, coming home at five in the morning, smoking dope with Sam, going out for eggs in the diner on the corner, and then sleeping until it was time to do it again.

  The buzzer went off.

  “Tolerant?” Claire asked.

  “We didn’t make them turn the stereo down,” Mrs. Goodman said. “We kept potato chips and Coca-Cola in the cupboard.”

  “There’s so much more to talk about,” Claire said. “Do you think you could come in again tomorrow morning?”

  “We weren’t planning to stay over,” Mrs. Goodman said, looking at her husband.

  “Could you?”

  “I think it’s enough for now,” Mrs. Goodman said. “We really need to get home.”

  “Well,” Claire said, “if anything comes to mind, give me a call. Whatever I can do, I’m at your disposal.”

  They both nodded.

  “Oh, I almost forgot. One last question,” Claire said, picking up her legal pad. “What’s Jody’s date of birth?”

  “December 10, 1966,” Mrs. Goodman said, standing up, letting Mr. Goodman help with her coat.

  “That’s the date she was delivered to you?” Claire asked.

  “No, her birthday. I don’t know what time, but Fm sure that was the day.”

  How would you know? Claire almost asked. “Isn’t it possible she was born a few days earlier — say, on the sixth?”

  Caught up in the memory, Mrs. Goodman spoke quickly. “The lawyer called us and said, ‘Your package has arrived and it’s wrapped in pink ribbons.’ I’ll never forget it. We arranged for our pediatrician to examine the baby at the hospital.”

  “Which hospital?” Claire asked aggressively.

  Mrs. Goodman buttoned her coat, an ugly full-length down that looked like a sleeping bag.

  “Where was she born?” Claire asked again.

  Mrs. Goodman’s face went cloudy and she turned to her husband. “Downtown,” she said. “In the city. We didn’t go there ourselves.”

  “Doctors? Columbia? Capitol Hill?”

  “Yes, one of those,” Mrs. Goodman said.

  “Which one?”

  Mrs. Goodman shrugged and pulled on her gloves. “I really can’t remember.”

  The patient in the waiting room knocked on the office door.

  “Just a minute,” Claire called.

  “Nice meeting you,” Mr. Goodman said, shaking Claire’s hand. “We’re grateful for your interest in Jody.”

  “We’ll talk,” Claire said.

  And the Goodmans left.

  Claire was dizzy. The session had gone fifteen minutes over. Bea was in the waiting room; Claire was late. The date was wrong. Everything was all wrong. It was an error — that was the best explanation. An error, something fouled up in all the paper shuffling. Worse things happened. Sometimes people took the wrong baby home.

  29

  Tuesday morning, riding in a cab across town, Jody was drenched in sweat, plastered to the backseat as though she were riding the Cyclone — the amusement park ride where the bottom drops out and all the brave souls stick to the sides, defying gravity.

  She was nervous about seeing Claire. Whatever had gone on between them before had been invigorating, but also a relief when it was over. Something about the way Claire got too close — focused on Jody as if she were the most important thing in the world — was weird. And she did it so naturally that Jody felt like shit, certain her discomfort was only a personal reaction, a reflection of her distrust.

  “I have failure to thrive,” Jody blurted on their way to New York Hospital.

  “Only infants have that,” Claire said.

  Claire looked different — more life-size, worn, less like a goddess.

  “I am an infant. I knew this would happen. Just because I never told you doesn’t mean I didn’t know. I’m my brother. I’m my mother. This is full realization.”

  “Actualization,” Claire said.

  “Whatever.”

  “It was a pleasure to meet your parents,” Claire said.

  Jody shrugged.

  “You mean a lot to them.”

  “It’s not me personally who means a lot,” Jody said. “It’s a child. A child means too much.”

  “When you’re a mother you’ll understand,” Claire said.

  The cab pulled up in front of the hospital. Jody overtipped the driver and tripped over her feet getting out of the car.

  “Are you okay?” Claire asked.

  The only reason she was letting Claire take her — besides the fact that she was too tired to take herself — was that she figured that since Claire had little kids, she was used to taking people to doctors and explaining what was wrong with them. Jody, on the other hand, couldn’t explain anything anymore.

  A nurse led Claire and Jody down a hallway of closed doors a
nd warning Signs: BIO HAZARD, CAUTION: RADIATION, DANGER: OXYGEN. Then she handed Jody what looked like an application form attached to a clipboard and left them sitting outside a room marked EXAM ONE.

  Jody stared at the forms. She was about to throw up.

  “Do you need help?” Claire asked, taking the clipboard away from her. “Here — I’ll ask the questions, you tell me the answers.”

  Just getting up and getting dressed was more than a day’s work; the hospital was too much.

  “Would you like me to come with you?” Claire asked when the nurse called for Jody.

  “No thanks.”

  Leaning back against the cold white wall of the examining room, Jody felt like she was in a fog.

  Dr. Marilyn Esterhaus walked in, asked the same questions everyone else had asked, and with thick rubber gloves felt Jody’s stomach, liver, and spleen, then asked if they’d ever been enlarged before she got sick. They hadn’t. Esterhaus listened to Jody’s chest, making her breathe deeply so many times that she started to black out and had to put her head between her knees.

  “It says here,” Esterhaus said, looking down at the forms, “that you had radiation treatments to your ears. How many treatments?”

  “Five or six. I really don’t know.”

  “Let’s try to find out.” Esterhaus pulled the gloves off with a fast snappy sound. “I’m going to have some blood drawn. You can get dressed, then come down to my office. By the way, have you ever had an AIDS test?”

  “Negative.”

  “Negative meaning you haven’t had one?”

  “Negative, meaning it came back negative.”

  “So there’s no reason to do another one?”

  “Guess not,” Jody said.

  Dr. Esterhaus slipped out of the room. A minute later Claire knocked on the door and said, “Can I come in?”

  “Why not.” Jody was dressed but still sitting on the table. Her shoes were on the floor.