Perfectly Clear

by Michelle LeClair

  When we walked into the room, she was propped up in the bed, dressed in a hospital gown and head cap. Durand had said the birth was by cesarean.

  “These are the people who want to adopt the baby,” Durand said.

  She didn’t say anything at first. She just looked at us with a blank stare. Once again, Sean stood at the back of the room while I took the seat next to her bed. Self-consciously, I dropped my handbag beside me. I studied the woman’s face.

  “Hi, I’m Michelle,” I said gently.

  An awkward silence followed. The birth mother and I had nothing in common except for the baby she was giving away, whom I wanted so desperately. When she did look at me, I tried not to read her thoughts. It was too frightening.

  I noticed she was holding a pamphlet in her hand and rubbing it with her finger.

  “Oh,” I said. “You are holding the Lord’s Prayer. I love that prayer. It reminds me so much of my father. The Lord’s Prayer was his favorite.”

  She seemed unmoved. “I’m not very religious,” she said. “The nuns just walked in here and handed it to me.”

  I don’t know what came over me, but I took hold of her hand then. I was surprised she didn’t pull it back.

  “You have given us the greatest gift,” I said. “I do not judge you for making the decision you made. I am grateful to you. I promise you this little girl will be loved more than you can imagine.”

  For the first time she smiled, ever so slightly.

  “What will you name her?” she asked.

  “We have named her Savannah,” I said.

  She laid her head back on her pillow and looked up at the ceiling. “I love that name,” she said. Finally, a connection.

  “Do you have any other questions?” I asked.

  “No,” she said, turning her head away.

  “What if she wants to contact you when she’s eighteen?” I asked.

  She paused, looked back at me. “Well, I guess if she has to,” she said.

  With that, our meeting was over.

  “Thank you,” I said.

  She didn’t respond. As Durand led us out of the room, I looked at Sean, who was distinctly pale.

  “Sean,” I said, “you don’t look so good.”

  “I’m just trying to take it all in,” he said.

  Of course, I thought. How could I blame him? This was a lot for Sean to digest. I’d sprung it on him so abruptly. We had agreed to adopt, but it may have seemed only theoretical to him. Now there was a real baby in the picture. What if he backed out? I’d seen him break promises before. It never mattered whether it hurt someone else, as long as everything went his way. What if this was one of those times? What if we went home and he said he didn’t want another child? I knew how that went. He’d fight until he wore me down, the way he always had. But this was too important. I was not going to leave the hospital committing to the baby only to have him ruin everything later.

  I tried talking to him one last time. “Sean,” I said. “Sean, please. Tell me you’re sure about this. I know this came out of the blue, but you have to be honest about what you’re thinking. We are talking about a child’s life here. We cannot mess around. There is no backing out once we leave this hospital. There is no stopping it at that point.” He didn’t blink.

  “I’m fine,” he said finally.

  “Okay,” I said. I tried to empathize with his hesitation, but I actually never doubted that he would love our little girl. He just had to get used to the idea. I knew I could get the church to help if he had trouble adjusting.

  Durand walked us back downstairs. He said the baby would be ready to go home at ten the following morning. Birth mothers normally had thirty days to change their mind, he said, but ours had signed a waiver saying she didn’t need the time. Her mind was made up. The baby was free for us to adopt her. I hugged Durand good-bye and promised we’d be there at ten sharp the next day.

  I could hardly contain my excitement as Sean and I walked to our cars. I couldn’t wait to get home to tell Sage, I said. Our six-year-old son had wanted a sibling for so long. He was going to adore his baby sister! After dinner we could all go shopping for baby things! We’d need to get a crib and formula and bottles and diapers . . .

  “Oh my God, Sean!” I cried. “Can you believe it? We have a daughter!”

  Sean pulled the keys from his pants pocket and opened his car door. He didn’t seem to be hearing a thing I was saying.

  “I didn’t think she was going to be that dark,” he said.

  I felt like someone had knocked the wind out of me. “What does that mean?” I asked. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing.

  “No, nothing,” he said. “The mother. I just didn’t expect her to look like that.”

  * * *

  I barely slept that night. All I could think about was bringing my baby home. There had hardly been time to wrap my head around it. Only twenty-four hours earlier, I’d been standing in an airport, listening to an attorney I’d never met tell me about a newborn. Now she was coming home with me and I was overwhelmed with joy and anticipation. Ten o’clock couldn’t come fast enough.

  The night before had been just Sage and me. As expected, he was beside himself at the thought of having a baby sister. His birthday was a week away and this was the best birthday present ever! he said.

  “I love her and I haven’t even met her yet, Mommy!” my sensitive son squealed.

  I’d called my family and friends to share our good news and gathered up Sage to go baby shopping. The two of us ran around the department store until closing and checked out with two big cartloads of baby things. Sean was sleeping when we got home, which was what I’d hoped for. The less time we spent in each other’s company, the more unlikely it was that he would question the adoption.

  It was ten thirty p.m. by the time I got Sage into bed. I slipped gingerly into mine so as not to awaken Sean. After hours of tossing and turning, I rose at five. After getting Sage off to school, I spent the morning organizing the baby’s room. I began getting ready to go to the hospital. I was toweling off in the bathroom when Sean came in and sat on the edge of the tub. We had less than an hour and he still hadn’t showered or shaved.

  “I’m not going,” he said.

  “What do you mean, you’re not going?” I asked.

  “I can’t do it,” he said.

  “What do you mean, you can’t do it?”

  “I’m not adopting her.”

  At that moment, I gained another kind of clear: I finally understood that my marriage was never going to work.

  I was so sure that Sean would come around, that he would realize this little girl was meant for us and we could offer her the loving home she deserved. But ours was not a loving home. For years, I had done a stellar job of pretending to the outside world that we were a model family. Sean was the perfect stay-at-home dad, taking care of our adorable little boy, while I worked to provide us with a comfortable living. The problem was, the marriage didn’t live up to the image. I couldn’t remember the last time either of us had been happy together. There was constant simmering tension. I couldn’t stand to be around him most of the time, much less give him sex, and he resented me for being the elusive wife he couldn’t quite conquer. The only people who knew the truth were our auditors and the Chaplain. Give us your money and we will save you, they’d promised, but all they ever did was tell Sean to get a job and me to start acting like a real wife.

  I was done kidding myself. The marriage was over. It probably should have never been.

  There would be no more pretending. There would be no more emergency meetings with the Chaplain. There would be no more putting up with his pushing and shoving and calling me names. There would be no more soliciting auditors or the Chaplain for advice about how to get him to work. There would be no more asking how to save our marriage. I was going to divorce h
im and raise this child. He had forced me to choose and I chose her.

  “I’m going to pick up our daughter,” I said. I could feel his eyes burning into my back. My eyes welled with tears.

  I quickly finished dressing, loaded the car seat in the car and drove to the hospital alone. Any anger or sadness I felt when I left my house melted away after I walked into the nursery and saw Savannah in her bassinet. The nurses welcomed me warmly, then crowded around as I scooped up the baby and cradled her against my chest. I was a bundle of nerves, but nothing ever felt so right as holding my daughter. I rubbed Savannah’s swirly black curls. “Girl! You’re going to have to learn how to do her hair!” one of the nurses cried. Everyone laughed, but I could hardly wait.

  I said my good-byes to the nurses with hugs and words of gratitude. On the way to the car, I had a paralyzing thought. I remembered that the car seat was still in its box. Sean would normally have handled installing the car seat, and the idea of doing it myself filled me with trepidation. What if I can’t do it? I thought. The nurse is going to think I’m completely unqualified to take this child home.

  The nurse held Savannah while I pulled the car seat out of the box. Nervously, I read the instructions, and within a few minutes the car seat was secure. I took the baby from the nurse and strapped her in. She looked like a peanut in that big seat. I thought about what this was supposed to look like, the new mother sitting in the backseat with the baby while the other parent drove. But there wasn’t anyone in the backseat. It was just Savannah and me, and I was petrified. What if something happened while I was driving? I wondered. What if she stopped breathing?

  I steered the car with my left hand and held my right hand on her chest. To calm myself, I talked to her all the way home to Valencia: “Savannah, this is you and me. It is going to be you and me and you are going to be fine. The beauty that you are will shine so brightly that every person who meets you will love you. I don’t want you to worry. Everything is going to be okay.”

  My house was full of friends when we arrived. Dror and Virginia brought food and drinks for the occasion. Mary Mauser, my new FSM and spiritual advisor, scurried around, making sure everything was perfect. My friend Alana came in juggling a stack of baby gifts. Everyone took turns holding Savannah. The baby seemed to revel in the attention. It was such a happy occasion, except that Sean was sulking. I listened as people congratulated Sean, telling him how beautiful the baby was and what a great day it was and what a wonderful thing he had done. He barely acknowledged them. After an hour or so, when it was time to put the baby down for a nap, I walked upstairs and Sean followed.

  “You have seven days to find her a home,” he said, as if talking about a stray dog.

  “Excuse me?”

  “I’ll let you keep her for a week,” he said.

  You’ll let me keep her? I thought.

  The strangest feeling of calm came over me. I knew Savannah wasn’t going anywhere. Sean could protest all he wanted. I wasn’t afraid of him anymore.

  “You heard what I said, didn’t you? Didn’t you? You have a week, Michelle.”

  “Okay, Sean,” I said, turning to walk back downstairs.

  * * *

  Sean didn’t follow through on his seven-day ultimatum and Savannah was still living with us, but I was planning for a future without him. I began taking control of my life in anticipation of being a single mother. I could no longer rely on his family to babysit while I made evening sales calls or took weekend business trips. My solution was to take the kids everywhere with me. They went to meetings and church functions and my human rights talks and conferences. We were the Three Musketeers and I loved it.

  Waiting for the adoption to be final, Sean and I entered the most dangerous phase in our marriage. He didn’t care if the kids were around when he shoved me into a wall or screamed that I was an “out-ethics cunt.” I fantasized about the day I never had to share the house with him, but I wasn’t about to let him know I was leaving him and risk delaying or even forfeiting the adoption. Until he signed the adoption papers, I had to hold on.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Endings and Beginnings

  Savannah was three months old when we got the news that the adoption was final. Sean had come to love her but it was too late for us. We barely spoke anymore and when we did it always turned into an argument. I didn’t care what he told the ethics officer—about what a bad wife I was, so cold and unfeeling—because I was on the way out of the dysfunctional mess we called a marriage. I wasn’t prepared to spend one more miserable day of ugly accusations and name-calling and physical abuse than I had to. In fact, I had signed us up for a marriage course at Flag in Florida to assist with the split. Once we got to Clearwater, I would beg and plead with the auditors and the Chaplain to let the marriage be over. I was certain when they saw how unhappy I was, and how hopeless another crack at reconciliation would be, they would agree to assist us with a divorce.

  Sean had agreed to the trip, but I’m sure he had a different scenario in his mind about how it would play out. Why wouldn’t he? He didn’t believe we would end up getting divorced. Every time we turned to the church with our marital troubles, the same thing happened: I was blamed for our problems because I was not performing my wifely duties; he made promises about finding a job and curbing his temper; and the church pressured me to give the marriage another try. I was sure he expected the same routine again.

  Not this time. I was finished negotiating. They could keep me in session for weeks or months and browbeat and bully me until I couldn’t take any more. They could threaten to take me down on the Tone Scale and label me a Suppressive Person. They could lock me in a room without food, water or a working toilet. But I was done.

  I didn’t think it could get any worse between Sean and me. But a few weeks before we were due to leave for Flag, it did.

  That monstrous night—one I could never have imagined—began with a neighborhood birthday party. Our next-door neighbor, Mr. Johnson, was celebrating his eightieth birthday and his wife wanted to mark it in style at a fine local hotel. The Johnsons were two of the few neighbors I knew, because they were retired and I often saw them coming and going. Residents of our neighborhood had the big jobs they needed to afford the multimillion-dollar homes in this gated community in the Santa Clarita Valley. I might see other people on the weekend and get a wave or a quick hello. The Johnsons owned one of the biggest estates on the block—a home measuring six thousand square feet—and even then they had downsized from a much larger home in Brentwood after Mr. Johnson retired.

  Mr. Johnson had made his millions in the disability insurance business, and even in retirement the couple maintained an extravagant lifestyle. Mr. Johnson had a wandering eye, and Mrs. Johnson pretended not to notice when he flirted with me. Both were jealous of anyone who had more than they did, and Sean and I were in our thirties and owned the only house in the neighborhood worth more than theirs. This made us competitors of a sort—at least in the Johnsons’ eyes. Mr. Johnson had often made innuendos about how we were making our money, but I always just smiled. I let his comments slide because I assumed he didn’t mean any harm, and I never wanted to get on the Johnsons’ bad side because I’d heard the resulting freeze could take forever to thaw.

  Whether to accept the invitation to Mr. Johnson’s birthday extravaganza wasn’t even a question. The Johnsons ruled the neighborhood. I told Sean we were going, like it or not. He didn’t like it, he said. I told him to make sure to get his tux out of storage. The party was black-tie. That didn’t go over well at all, but I didn’t care. “We have to go, Sean,” I said.

  “So you’re going to force me to dress up and you’re going to pretend?” he asked.

  “That is exactly what we’re going to do,” I said. “So you can put on your tux or I’ll go alone.”

  We were among the last people to arrive at the hotel. The banquet room was grand, with oversized crystal
chandeliers, thick gold velveteen drapes, bone china on white linen tablecloths and white roses on every table. It looked like a wedding was about to take place. Sean and I took our assigned seats. I knew the neighbors on the opposite side of the table, but the two women next to me were pretty much strangers. I’d gotten glimpses of them because they lived in the house across the street from ours, but I had never actually met either of them. They were a handsome couple, I thought. One wore makeup and was dressed in a feminine black suit and ruffled white blouse; the other had short, slicked-back hair and wore an expensive man-tailored tux. She introduced herself as Charley Harper. The other woman was her wife, Maria, she said. I was intrigued by the couple and wanted to engage them in conversation. Surely the church wouldn’t object to a little neighborly chatter.

  Maria didn’t say much. She just sat there, sipping champagne while everyone else drank margaritas. I thought she seemed annoyed. But Charley was just so open and warm that we hit it right off. She asked about our kids and said she saw Savannah playing outside when she was walking her dog. Her accent was unmistakably Southern.

  “Where are you from?” I asked. Charley said she was born and raised in Mississippi. “I’m from Oklahoma!” I cried. Two girls who said, “Y’all.” We bonded instantly.

  Sean didn’t seem interested in joining the conversation. Like Maria, he sat there without saying a word. For the rest of the evening, Charley and I chatted about everything from the difficulty of finding places in California that served good fried chicken to how West Coast folks knew nothing about fried okra and didn’t know what they were missing. We talked about the unique beauty and culture of the South and how LA could really benefit from a lesson in good old Southern manners. She was so confident. She offered no excuses for who she was or what you saw. She was comfortable in her own skin. I envied her that. Listening to her talk, I imagined sitting on a porch with her somewhere in the South, drinking sweet tea and hearing all about her life. For just a moment I forgot what my life was like outside of that beautiful room.