Moving Forward in Reverse

by Scott Martin

  A sound crept unwilled from my throat: a whimper, gasp, and gag all rolled into one. I could hardly breathe, my eyes locked on this image hovering on my screen. Something heavy was settling in my stomach, making me long to double over, but I couldn’t bear to tear my eyes from these captivating Romanian children.

  Those are my kids, I thought again, with such certainty all other truths faded in comparison. In that moment, this was the only defining fact of my life, the only thing that meant anything at all. Those are my kids.

  Still struggling for air, gasping with my eyes locked on the screen, I fumbled blindly for the phone. When I heard it clatter against the right myo I had to look away from the faces of the children – my children – to align the fingers with the handset. It took several tries, but on my fourth attempt I finally managed to dial the number for Ellen’s line at the clinic.

  It rang and rang and rang, and I felt panic shivering through me. Answer! Come on, Ellen, answer the phone. Please! I couldn’t leave a voicemail. Not about this. She had to answer. She just had to!

  ‘Hello,’ a woman said into the line. My mind was so clouded by panic and need and something entirely indefinable that I almost didn’t recognize her voice as a sound discernibly separate from the peals of the ringing line.

  ‘This is Colleen, Dr. Martin’s nurse. How may I help you?’

  ‘Colleen,’ I sputtered in a garbled rush, ‘this is Scott. Is Ellen available?’

  ‘Oh, hi, Scott. I’m afraid she’s with a patient right now. Can I take a message for you?’

  With a patient, my mind repeated in utter dejection and deflation. In that moment, I resented no one more than the figment of that patient claiming my wife’s attention. Jealousy followed bitterly on the heels of resentment and was quickly replaced by a more rational abject disappointment.

  ‘Scott? Hello?’ Colleen asked and I realized I had to say something or I’d lose even this distant connection to Ellen.

  Like dragging myself up from the mat after a blow to the gut, I managed to utter, ‘Yes, I’m here. Sorry. Can you tell her she needs to read her email as soon as she’s finished with her patient? It’s urgent.’

  ‘Yes, of course. Is there anything else?’

  ‘No,’ I said glumly, adding in a kinder tone, ‘Thanks, Colleen.’

  I replaced the phone on the receiver and turned back to the photograph. My kids. I clicked to the email from Barb. Nadia and Marius. They’re names are Nadia and Marius, I told myself and returned to the faces in the picture, now tying them to the names they were given. Delicate and loving Nadia and wary and devoted Marius.

  ~~~

  Ten minutes after I called Ellen’s office, the phone rang. I hadn’t moved from my seat in the loft-office; hadn’t closed the picture of Nadia and Marius.

  ‘Hello?’ I asked, thinking it could only be one person – it had to be her. ‘Ellen?’

  ‘Call Barb. We’re heading to Romania.’

  29

  45 Minutes in Giurgiu

  ‘Okay. I have both our tickets and my passport. Do you have yours?’ I asked, zipping the smallest pocket of my single carry-on-sized bag around the items I’d just listed. It was the fourth time I’d zipped and unzipped that pocket in the past twenty-four hours.

  ‘Yes, yes,’ Ellen said accommodatingly. We both may have been travel veterans, but somehow over the course of our marriage I had assumed the role of the paranoid planner. I was the Ticket Master, Passport Keeper, and Itinerary Custodian.

  ‘Good. And the shuttle should be here in –’ I glanced at the red numerals of the alarm clock on Ellen’s side of the bed: 7:30 a.m. ‘- fifteen minutes. Perfect. Are you almost finished packing?’ I’m not nagging, I told myself. Just supervising.

  ‘Yes,’ Ellen said again, no indication in her tone that I was a nuisance to her. Today was too momentous for petty emotions and annoyances.

  A fluttering stabbing in my chest and a light clenching across my ribcage traveled upwards and forced a fatuous smile to splay across my face. We were going to meet our Romanian children. It was really happening. I was blinded with excitement at the thought of it; the image of their faces was all I could see. By this time next year we would be the enraptured parents of two adopted children.

  Even though I knew we wouldn’t be able to bring Nadia and Marius home on this trip, I couldn’t help but fantasize about how our first introduction would go. Happy images of Nadia staring up at us with ingenuous brown eyes, wanting to trust us to love her, but uncertain because the only home she knew was the orphanage. And Marius: plump little Danny, as we’d decided to call him after his more Americanized middle name of Daniel, sucking feverishly on his thumb as he tried not to cower behind his sister, his eyebrows pinched in a distrustful frown as he eyed these two strangers who knew his name. Had they come to take him away? Or, worse, were they here for his sister?

  But we’d quickly allay all of their concerns. They would never be separated again, we’d promise. And they’d never need to feel alone. We were there to love them and give them the devoted family they deserved. And one day we were going to take them home, if that was all right with them.

  Maybe we could take them out for a meal, I mused, imagining the four of us nestled in a corner booth, the kind with one curved bench so we could all sit beside each other, the kids between Ellen and me. Of course, our Romanian liaison would have to be there, but still. It would be our first outing, our first meal as a family.

  I wonder what sort of things they like to eat. And what things they dislike. We had so much to learn about each other, Nadia, Danny, Ellen, and I.

  When the doorbell rang announcing the shuttle had arrived, I flinched as if someone had just leapt out of the woodwork and yelled Surprise! My eyes gazed unblinkingly at Ellen, struggling to reorient themselves in the present; my mouth hung neglectfully open, thoughts and words momentarily forgotten. It took three breaths before understanding could bring awareness and function back to my limbs and by then Ellen had zipped her bag and was waiting for me to make my usual declaration that it was time to go.

  ‘Okay,’ I said around a deep breath, trying to calm my frazzled, slaphappy nerves with a reassuring tone. ‘Let’s get this show on the road.’

  ~~~

  Rested and recouped two days after our arrival, we met our Romanian liaison in the lobby of our hotel in Bucharest at 10 a.m. He was an affable fellow who I gauged to be in his late twenties with thick brown hair cut close to his head and long, dark eyebrows that hovered over kind coffee-colored eyes like trim over windows. A tentative smile drew curved lines across his cheeks, creating thin, bowed indents from the sides of his nose to the corners of his lips.

  ‘Hello, Mr. and Mrs. Martin,’ he said when he had reached the nook in the expansive lobby where we were reclining on a beige-and red-striped sofa. His Romanian accent caused his vowels to become short and clipped, making his words sound abrupt, as if we were listening to a tape which kept skipping. ‘My name ees Igor.’

  ‘Please,’ I said in return, standing with Ellen to shake hands with Igor, ‘it’s Scott and Ellen.’

  This brush-off of formality seemed to please him and his smile grew several degrees warmer as he nodded in either affirmation or gratitude, I couldn’t be sure which. He grasped the right myoelectric hand without pause.

  ‘I am here to take you to see cheeldrin een orrphanage,’ he said, the Romanian lacing his words like a strong drink. ‘I have car, eef you come. Okay?’

  The smile that split my lips like a peapod at this long-awaited invitation was bursting with pent-up jubilation. We were finally going to meet our kids! Something seized inside my chest at the thought of it, a sensation that was equal parts giddy exuberance and pained desperation. It had been only a month since I opened the email, laying eyes on the poignant, young faces of my children for the first time. Since that day I had felt consumed by desperation because according to Romanian law, the adoption process wouldn’t even begin to work its way through the court system un
til we had met Nadia and Danny in person. Before that first step, the only thing tying them to us was a “hold” Barb had placed on them. I needed more assurance than that. I knew those were our kids, but I needed everyone else to know it, too.

  We followed Igor out to the circle of parked cars in the circular driveway of the hotel. Igor indicated for us to climb into the back of a mid-70s model Mercedes in a shade of green somewhere between olive and Army. Lucky for us, Mercedes made a great diesel so Igor’s unattractive twenty-five-year-old car may have been rusty, but at least it was trustworthy.

  I slid onto the stained beige velour beside Ellen, not caring how many other butts had sat on these very seats so long as the four wheels and engine they were attached to could get us to Giurgiu and the orphanage. Igor clambered into the driver’s seat and twisted around to peer at us.

  ‘All ready?’ he asked with a kindly smile.

  ‘We’re set,’ Ellen told him as I clicked my seatbelt into the buckle.

  ‘Okay, okay,’ he sputtered, the k’s striking sharp, resonant notes in rapid succession. ‘Den we go.’

  And go we did, merging effortlessly into the synchronized traffic of a round-about before spooling off in our own direction. Elvis’ lilting voice sang to us through the car speakers as we went:

  Pardon meee, if I’m sentimentaall

  When we say goodbye

  Don’t be angry with me should I cryyy…

  ‘So,’ Igor said suddenly, barking the syllable like a sergeant at the head of a brigade; very effectively yanking my focus back to him. ‘Dey tell you what to happen?’ he asked, peeking at us from the rearview mirror, his eyes pinched with concern.

  ‘What will happen?’ I repeated when Ellen and I exchanged equally confused looks.

  ‘Yees. At orphanage. How visit works.’

  ‘Ooohh,’ I sighed, elongating the vowels a bit more than necessary; over compensating, perhaps. ‘Not exactly.’

  ‘Okay. So, we arrive and you meet keeds. You stay at orphanage for forty-five minute, okay? With keeds.’

  I frowned at Ellen who looked at me with confused alarm, her eyebrows drawn together and eyes showing the early signs of panic. So she heard what I heard, I thought and turned to the rearview mirror where the side of Igor’s face was visible in slight distortion.

  ‘We only get forty-five minutes with the kids?’ I asked, trying not to bring to mind the nearly full day of travel it had taken to get here, not to mention the unending days that made up the four long weeks waiting for our travel visas. All of that for forty-five minutes with our children?

  At the pitying glance in the mirror Igor shot my way, I tried to quell the anger simmering inside of me, growing gradually hungrier for a victim to blame.

  ‘Yees. I sorry, but Romania government not allow for more.’

  I felt Ellen’s hand find its way to the flesh of my left bicep and sighed as she gave it a squeeze. So we would only get forty-five minutes. It’s better than nothing, I less-than-successfully consoled myself. Besides, the main purpose of this trip is to get the ball rolling legally.

  Ha! I snorted to myself before the prior thought could settle. Now that was a load of crap if I ever heard it.

  There was no point in denying the fact that I was bitterly disappointed, and by the way she had turned her face carefully towards the window, her grip locked on my arm, Ellen was feeling the same way. But our hands were tied. As Igor had said, ‘Romania government not allow for more.’

  30

  A Kiss Goodbye

  Igor parked in front of a dark brown brick, single-story building hunkered sullenly between its two-story neighbors. It had a chain link fence. A shadow cast by the taller building to the east cut across its entrance and the water-stained sign tacked beside it. Whatever information the sign held, it was written in Romanian and thus lost on me. There was an old, rusty swing set plopped in the middle of a patch of brown grass out front, the seats sagging with pocketful’s of water from the prior day’s rains.

  Ellen grabbed the back of my upper arm in excitement as we slid out of the aged Mercedes. My eyes flickered to her before returning to what could only be our orphanage.

  I wanted to run inside, grab the kids and get them on the next plane out of there. Every muscle from my amputated feet to my neck was twitching in anticipation. My jaw clenched in poorly disguised disapproval.

  After the fall of Communism in 1989, the horrible orphanage conditions thousands of Romanian children had been living and dying in were revealed. With the rallying attention of the Western world and the resources that began pouring in, the conditions had since been improved. Or so they claimed. Looking at this dilapidated little building with water stains weeping from its windows like dirty tears, it was hard to imagine it could have been much worse.

  Igor led us through the chain-link fence leaning slightly askew and down the cracking concrete pathway to the front door. As we hurried past the bisected patches of dirt and dead grass that served as a front yard, I mentioned the swing set to Ellen.

  ‘That hasn’t been used in a while,’ I murmured over the top of her head. She nodded somberly, quickly glancing at the set before turning back to the squat, little orphanage. There was a single, curb-sized step up to a flat porch of less-cracked concrete and a horizontal three-panel window looking in. The double front doors were white-framed glass with metal grating in the shape of fish scales stretching from top to bottom. Someone had at least bothered to try to make the metal grating over the glass doors look decorative, which was more than could be said of the square grills that had been nailed over the window.

  Igor pulled the right side of the double doors open and we followed closely behind him, parading into a dim expanse of an entranceway. White walls and a lack of furniture helped augment the sense of cleanliness, but did nothing to disguise the dilapidation that had clearly seeped inside.

  I looked around, my eyes traveling across the vacant front room, unlit and seemingly unused; straining to see down a dark hallway that led deeper into the building; and turning to the right where a wall and closed wooden door blocked off whatever lay beyond. Nowhere were there any signs that children lived here. No toys, no pictures on the walls, no bottles or blankets discarded across the floor. No signs that anyone lived here at all unless you counted the cleanliness of the place.

  Igor stayed with us until a woman emerged from the shadows of the hall. She seemed to be expecting us, though her greeting was hardly welcoming. She looked us over as she approached before coming to a stop beside Igor. I watched her as they exchanged a few words in Romanian, noting her youth – barely into her twenties, by my guess – and the straight brown hair that skimmed the top of her shoulders. It was the color of Nadia’s hair, I realized, and found myself wondering if Nadia would grow up to look like this woman with her slightly slanted brown eyes and permanently frowning mouth.

  Nadia always smiles, I thought in defense, then realized I was hardly in a position to know this. Nadia was always smiling in my mind because the only mental image I had of her was from a photograph taken when she had been smiling. For all I knew, that could have been a rare and often sought after occurrence.

  The woman looked to us and nodded once, waving a hand towards the hallway. Ellen and I trailed after her as she strolled purposefully over the scuffed wood floorboards, leaving Igor to wait alone in the furniture-less front room. Halfway down the hall, a rectangular patch of light shone through an open door. As we approached, I turned my head, subconsciously slowing my steps like a rubbernecker at an accident.

  Inside, rows of metal cribs lined the floor. They had been pushed together so each row was two cribs wide and four cribs long with gaps between like the aisles of an airplane. Each baby could be reached from one of the aisles, but the other side of his or her crib was pressed against either another crib or a wall. I tried not to think of them as pens at a zoo; tried not to envision potential parents striding casually up and down the aisles, gazing down at the one-, two-, and three
-year olds and saying, Aw, that one’s cute. Look how he sucks his thumb so vigorously. Or, I like the coloring of that one. How exotic! Or, Honey, look at this little one. She would look great in that outfit your mother bought.

  A woman with short-cropped hair and skinny features appeared in the doorway. She stared at us with vacant brown eyes, one hand slowly closing the door to the nursery as we drifted numbly past.

  I shuddered, squared my shoulders, and faced forward as I was clearly meant to do. I hadn’t been able to locate Nadia or Danny inside the cramped little room with the peeling flower wallpaper and single, curtained window. Perhaps they sleep somewhere else, I thought – hoped.

  The woman stopped at another door midway down the hallway but on the opposite wall of the nursery. There was a red cross painted on the white wood door. For a moment I feared something had happened to one of our children. Why are they keeping them in the medical room? I thought accusingly, distraughtly. I turned to the woman, an inculpating question hot on my lips.

  Before I could lash out at the orphanage or the care these women provided, she pushed the door open to reveal an unoccupied room. No bandaged children crying silently on cots or in the corner. No blood or sullied clothes. Just more clean sparseness.

  The woman held the door open with one hand, plastering herself against the wall to give us room to pass. I suppose that’s what qualifies as in invitation, I thought and slid by her to inch into the cramped little room. I sensed Ellen following closely behind me and twisted sideways with my back to a leather-topped exam table to give her room to move fully into the room. Once we had both crossed the threshold, the woman shut the door with a perfunctory clunk.