The Corn Husk Experiment

by Andrea Cale

  “Oh, dear loving God.”

  Despite their newspaper covering a northern New York area the size of the entire state of Connecticut, the region often felt like a much smaller community to its staff. Around the newsroom, Mrs. Washburn had a reputation for unrealistic expectations.

  “She claims I ruined their playground fundraising campaign because my caption revealed that it’s 95 percent complete,” the young photographer said with a nervous laugh and a tear forming in the corner of her right eye.

  “I take it the fact wasn’t given to you off the record?”

  “No, of course not.”

  “I want you to call Elizabeth Washburn back as soon as you touch down at the airport in Syracuse—get it over with before your hour drive north to the office. I want you to tell her that I asked you to include an update on their fundraising in the caption. Blame it on me. Now hurry up and get back so I can see the shot of Shaw, Dailey, and Lantzy in their skivvies.”

  “They were in suits.”

  “I know, Max. Listen, you’ve really got to loosen up. Just call me as soon as you have the pictures up in the photo department. You can remind me then about three new assignments we need to go over too. Enough of this sappy stuff. Hurry it up!”

  His comments should’ve set her at ease, but she was always her harshest critic. As Maxine sat in her fully upright airplane seat and clung tightly to the camera bag containing the golden film, her ears popped her back into reality.

  She was sitting in the familiar middle seat, wedged between a napping Ed and a thin adolescent boy whose elbow rested in her territory as he watched Julia Roberts ride away on a horse.

  Maxine’s eyes, too weary for her age, peered at her colleague as she questioned why she couldn’t relax like him. Her eyes were perhaps the only hint of her living a stressed-out, lonely life.

  The rest of her was pretty in a white-T-shirt-and-Levi’s kind of way. She was natural without being frumpy. She didn’t waste much time getting gussied up. She wore little makeup. Maxine wasn’t like other young women in so many ways, yet she was usually more beautiful.

  She stretched her thin photographer’s fingers, ringless in a year when friends from college were getting engaged at seemingly every turn. She ran them through her short brown hair. Her features were so dainty that she pulled off the tomboy haircut like few other women could. The look summarized her inner makeup—fragile and tough tangled up in one strong being.

  Maxine had boyfriends in college and into her twenties, but the relationships always seemed to sour. One ex jumped in the air and clicked his heels together on the drunken night of their first kiss. Another wet the bed on the night of his twenty-first birthday. A third professed on bended knee his desire to get married on their third date. The images of the moments remained as vivid in her memory as one of her photographs.

  She was as particular in her love life as she was in her quality of work. She didn’t intend to hurt anyone. She didn’t want to be alone on Saturday night with a ripped childhood pillowcase, classic Full House reruns, wet hair, and frozen mozzarella sticks that left a depressing hangover in her stomach before she made it to bed. Even so, she wasn’t willing to settle on anything less than perfect, she decided. Not a photo. Not a caption. Not a boyfriend.

  Maxine’s single status never made sense to a number of guys who secretly had crushes on her. It didn’t add up to her family members and girlfriends either.

  “When was the last time you went out on a date?” one of them would ask.

  “Why don’t you put yourself out there more and work a little less?” another would offer.

  “Do you even want to get married?” someone else would question.

  The plane hit a spot of turbulence before Maxine glanced curiously at Ed to see whether it had woken him up. The buck of the Airbus was abrupt enough to release a bit of drool that had been balancing on the corner of his gaping mouth.

  The snoozing bear of a reporter was secretly Maxine’s latest admirer after they had bonded over Legal Sea Foods’ fresh lobsters on DC’s 7th Street on the eve of the farmers’ testimonies.

  To Ed’s surprise, he had shared more in common with the delicate flower of a girl than he expected. She was a fan of his favorite form of entertainment, The Howard Stern Show. He could barely contain his mouthful of cheap beer when the photographer had revealed the fact in the restaurant that night.

  “You? No way,” he had sputtered loudly.

  “You think badly of me, don’t you?”

  “No, man, I love Howard too. But you’re so…Little Miss Perfect, with all due respect. I never would’ve pegged you as a fan. What do you see in the animal?”

  “OK, so there is the edgy stuff with the ladies that I tend to zone out on, but he’s so misunderstood. I love his honesty. He is actually very sweet. I could argue that he is a better man than many of the ones we cover. He’s better at what he does than anyone else in radio. He’s a perfectionist. He’s a misfit. He’s an interesting person with interesting, decisive things to say. I admire his ability to do that because, well, I seriously can’t. I could really go on and on about him.”

  “Absolutely. I just don’t know many other young ladies who’d agree with you.”

  They had moved on to coffees—one decaf, one regular—in hopes of sobering up from the beer. Ed had stirred a melting ice cube into his with a spoon to prolong the evening. Maxine had taken a hard sip out of her own cup.

  “What’s your favorite thing to cover?” Ed had asked.

  Maxine’s tired eyes lit up.

  “Oh, that’s easy,” she had answered with a smile. “Sports.”

  “Sports?”

  The big man had slapped an open paw on the white tablecloth as he looked in disbelief at the petite young woman staring back.

  Maxine had laughed.

  “I love football,” she said. “I love the action shots. I love the looks on players’ faces—whether they’re on the sidelines watching with hungry eyes or in the middle of a dangerous tackle or feeling pained after a loss. It’s fun to cover.”

  “Man, I would love to have been on the sports beat,” Ed said.

  “Why can’t you?”

  The reporter had patted his belly in jest.

  “There’s no way I could hustle around quickly enough with this volleyball.”

  The colleagues had shared another round of stress-free laughter. Maxine knew the real reason. Ed had a reputation in the newsroom of having impeccable instinct. He zoomed in on the truth like no other. If centers of influence in their community had something to hide, they dreaded a phone call from Ed. He was made for the political beat because he cut through the politics. He was lazier than all others on staff only because he could afford to be. It took him minutes to string together a long-lasting story.

  Maxine had sensed a hint of sadness in him though for not going after his dream. It made her want to share a secret.

  “So, on weekends off, when I’m not attached to the police scanner listening for fires or other northern New York breaking news that may need a photo for our great paper, I drive an hour south and stand on the sidelines of one collegiate Division 1 game or another to take pictures. You have to keep that one under your hat, though. I don’t need our editor filling up more of my weekends.”

  Maxine couldn’t hold back a broadening smile, the kind a book nerd might make at a keg party.

  “You do not do that,” Ed had said with a look of surprise and admiration. “How do you get a press pass? What do you capture? No, forget all that. Why?”

  Maxine had graduated from a competitive journalism school that had taught the likes of other sports fans, famous sportscasters, and journalists over the years. Despite graduating, she had managed to keep her media pass and work the sidelines of football, basketball, and lacrosse games, just as she had during her pre-graduate work at the college’s respected student newspaper.

  Over the last several years, she had passionately captured the successful synchronicity of
quarterbacks and receivers who would eventually go on to the National Football League. She was there as young lacrosse stars successfully executed behind-the-back shots at the goal in a rare style reminiscent of the great Gaits brothers. Maxine had been there too when a small basketball forward led his team through the NCAA Sweet Sixteen, Elite Eight, and Final Four of the NCAA tournament. She had captured the parties in the streets on campus where students out of control with happiness had found strength to pull parking meters out of the ground.

  As Maxine was working for the daily newspaper seventy miles north, collegiate athletes were having exceptional years in sports. She had taken full advantage of the times.

  “I’m building up a portfolio,” she explained. “I’ve got to do this someday. I’ve got to make it in sports. It’s my dream.”

  Ed had studied her closely as he finally understood her reason for being single. She already had passion in her life and appeared fulfilled by that. He was intrigued by her lack of interest in love. He knew she wasn’t like any other girl he’d ever met.

  “OK, what’s your idea of the perfect date?” he had dared to ask.

  Maxine had observed the corners of her strong colleague’s mouth quiver up to an unusual, nervous smile and quickly deemed the awkward moment a fine time to jest.

  “Lobsters and coffee in our nation’s capital.”

  Ed, a born realist, knew he wasn’t in Maxine’s league. The ever-dogged reporter had enough beers in him though to stick with the question.

  “No, seriously.”

  “Fine. You really can be pushy, can’t you? Anyway, this is actually an easy one. My perfect date would include a sunny Saturday afternoon Red Sox game in the bleachers with Fenway Franks, beers, and nowhere to go after.”

  Ed had closed his eyes, hung his head, and let air escape harshly from his nose. He was right, he had thought. She really was perfect, except for one thing.

  “That sounds horrible,” he had said.

  Maxine’s eyebrows shot up.

  “I would choose Yankee Stadium.”

  The unlikely pair had let out a final round of laughter until a familiar shot of nerves bounced through Maxine and prompted her to announce a need to rest up for the upcoming testimony.

  As they had retired respectively to their lonely hotel rooms, Maxine had drifted quickly off to sleep, warmed by her decaf coffee, while across the hall, Ed watched hours of SportsCenter and replayed the dinner in his head as though it were part of the ESPN loop.

  On the flight back north, Maxine’s mind rested as the plane soared smoothly through a patch of clear sky. And as she finally nodded off for some much-needed slumber, Ed, awake in the seat beside her, gently reclined her seat a notch.

  CHAPTER 4

  JP

  The Destined One

  Maxine’s plane made its descent toward Syracuse Hancock International Airport over a middle-aged woman who was tracking it through teary eyes, oversized glasses that would not be stylish for another decade, and the rain-stained skylight of her campus office.

  The professor adjusted the glasses with one hand as she brushed dust off a painful memory—a book she was holding—with the other. Infertility: A Practical Guide for the Physician teased her nose and brought one more tear to her eye.

  The book had been purchased a decade ago when she and her husband had been unable to conceive after months of attempts that had turned slowly into years. She had understood that the intended audience included doctors with MDs attached to their names. The closest qualification she had was a PhD in political science with a concentration in international relations, but after countless trips to the fertility doctors with her husband, she had been desperate to decipher her body on her own.

  She had buried the guide in the work shelves several years ago when a doctor’s appointment finally revealed that the culprit for their difficulties was her “poor ovarian reserve.” Those three words hit her far worse than an “F” on one of her students’ exams. To her, she was experiencing the ultimate personal failure. She wanted a baby more than anything she could imagine.

  “Sweetheart, this happens,” her husband had said as he tried to console her. “We’ll keep trying. We’ll have our baby someday. We will.”

  “Keep trying? We’ve been trying for years,” she snapped toward her husband during a ride to their Syracuse College offices. “I’m done with trying. Dunzo.”

  “Where is this negativity coming from? It’s been a frustrating struggle, I know that, but this just isn’t your style, my love. You’re ready to surrender being a mum? I’m not eager to give up on being a Big Poppa.”

  Like his wife, the man was an SC professor. He was also terribly unstylish with pants that rode too high around the waist and ankles. Nevertheless, the professor of anthropology was more in tune with pop culture than any other member of the faculty and began belting out Notorious B.I.G. lyrics in an attempt to make her smile.

  The corners of her mouth gave way.

  “I’m just done trying the conventional way.”

  The couple had been discussing a variety of options.

  “IVF? Donor oocyte? Traditional Chinese medicine? What? Just say it—say anything—and I’ll be your grandest support,” the man said.

  “I’ve been thinking about adoption.”

  Her words were soft yet powerful. He loosened his necktie. She moved the heavy pile of books that had been riding on her lap to the backseat. They both felt a weight lift within the car.

  “That’s not all,” she said.

  “You want to have more than one?”

  “No. Well, I don’t know. I just want to make a go for whoever needs us first. I’ve been doing some research, and I’m ready for our baby now. We know we want this, and we’ve already waited so long; too long. US adoptions can happen within a few months if we’re open to any race or gender. Let’s do it now. Let’s just see where fate takes us on this one. I’m surrendering to it.”

  The man had traded quick glances between the windshield and his wife as he continued driving them toward campus. He held her sandpaper hand in between his shifting of the gears. He slipped their old maroon Saab into its familiar spot at the college with an unfamiliar feeling of hope.

  “Let’s do it, darling,” he had said gently yet seriously. “Let’s allow nature to take its course.”

  Her mood had already begun soaring too high to become dragged back down by his ironic choice of words.

  “Er, so to speak,” he had added quickly. “Let’s adopt whoever needs us; whoever comes to us first.”

  The professor habitually carried two bags with her to work each day—one for books and one filled with papers waiting to be corrected. They often weighed her down like the thought of a seemingly unachievable task. On this particular day, though, they felt like helpful wings. They had given her the momentum she needed to reach her office in record time to make the first call.

  Once inside, she had tucked Infertility: A Practical Guide for the Physician into the bookshelf to deal with on another day, and exchanged it for the Onondaga County phone book. She had excitedly fingered through the Yellow Pages in search of a local adoption agency.

  As the professor gazed up through her office skylight now, she could barely make out the contrail where the plane had been. She thought of her son JP, now seven years old. She was a philosophical woman and believed in free will, but JP opened her mind just a little to the idea of predestination. He was too perfect. He belonged with her. He was truly part of their Hemmings family.

  “Thank you,” she whispered to no one in particular toward an angel-white sky before delivering one last grimace at the aged infertility book that had interrupted her office organizing.

  In a move that went against her progressive recycling ethic, she gave it a quick toss into a metal wastebasket, an item that seemed to let out a disapproving thwong.

  “I know, I know.”

  She grabbed a jack-o’-lantern-toothed photo of JP from her desk and smiled back at the
image of her beautiful boy. Only a couple weeks into his second grade, she worried about how he was fitting in today.

  “How do I get you to realize how perfect you are?” she asked the photo. “How can I help you be more confident in yourself?”

  Always an optimist, she reflected on how far they’d come as a family in their seven years together.

  The professor’s long wait for conception had been put to rest with a phone call from the adoption agency’s placement specialist, a man who would set into a motion a rapid turn of events.

  “We have a possible connection for you,” the man had said.

  “You do? You do! That’s most excellent! Tell me more,” the professor had replied as she removed her signature glasses and unknowingly stiffened her back. “Please! Tell me as much as you know. Spare no detail!”

  The specialist began ticking off the list of notes as matter-of-factly as unfolding a newspaper, adding to the surreal nature of the moment for the woman whose emotions were bouncing all over this new page of her life.

  “Well, we have a teenager carrying a baby boy. This is an African-American family. This particular biological mother has made a decision that was very difficult for her, but is what she thinks is in the best interest of her son. She is clear that she wants him to have opportunities that she can’t offer at this moment in her life. She’s reviewed your application and taken your occupations as professors as sure signs that you’re meant to be the boy’s parents. She just reached full term. It could be a few days, it could be a few more weeks, but, needless to say, the baby is coming. The baby is coming soon.”

  The professor had known she’d remember every syllable of the conversation, yet she had jotted down every word as quickly as she could. The pen helped ground her to the paper, which in turn helped ground her to the desk and then to the floor, resisting her body’s desire to rocket through the office skylight with excitement.

  The specialist had gone on to explain that while the situation was what they deemed a best-case scenario, there were no guarantees.