Moving Forward in Reverse

by Scott Martin

  I had tried people on both sides of the ocean now, and no one seemed to be capable of or interested in helping. Oprah may have been a long shot, but the council members in Romania and our own agency representative should have been a shoe-in. What was I missing? Who was I missing?

  The camera panned away from Kroft and flashed to the stern countenance of Christiane Amanpour, promoting one of her special contributor’s in-depth international reports to follow. This episode’s topic of interest: organized crime’s use of poor women from former Soviet republics to supply their prostitution operations.

  Another broken system, I thought with disgust as the broadcast cut to commercials, then my mouth quirked as I half-mockingly considered reaching out to Christiane Amanpour about our adoption. She at least seems willing to stand up to unjust bureaucracies.

  ‘You should contact Senator Murray.’

  I glanced at Ellen, sitting on the opposite end of the sofa.

  As had become our custom, she had spouted the comment seemingly out of nowhere, leaving me to try to unscramble her thought process and discern the underlying intention. Washington State Senator Patty Murray? I mused and tried to decipher what she had to do with me. What could Senator Murray have to do with – Of course! Should have known Ellen would be on the same page I am. Even watching 60 Minutes we’re in each other’s heads.

  Senator Murray, the woman who was told she couldn’t make a difference because she was just a “mom in tennis shoes,” then climbed her way into the State Senate anyway. A mom, a do-gooder, and someone with clout. Just who we need, I thought with an appreciative smile for my clever wife.

  ‘Great idea!’

  33

  Martins Don’t Quit

  ‘Thank you for calling the office of Senator Patty Murray. My name is Shawn. How may we help you?’

  After so many phone calls to different offices, I was beginning to think you could tell a lot about a person from the people who assisted them. Shawn’s voice was crisp and cool but not distant or uninterested like others I’d encountered. And the way he said ‘how may we help you,’ as if I were talking to a member of a team and not a subordinate, made me smile and nod with approval.

  Even as leery of getting my hopes up as I had become, I was feeling more optimistic already. I took a steadying breath and dove into the heart of the matter, telling Shawn about our adoption and the unfathomable delay we were being forced to endure. The longer I talked, and the quieter Shawn became, the more vehement my speech grew. I had been working so hard to suppress the emotional burden of our journey, bracing a mental wall against the overwhelming tsunami that threatened to capsize my carefully composed calm. It was rapidly becoming too great a swell to be held at bay. I was exhausted, overwhelmed, and altogether disheartened.

  When my tirade against the negligent lethargy of the Romanian government came to an end, closing with a father’s heartfelt appeal for help, my breathing was slightly labored. I hoped I hadn’t sounded too frantic. I was looking for help retrieving my kids, not a one-way ticket to an insane asylum.

  When Shawn’s voice finally came across the hum of the phone line, I held my panting breath and pressed the speaker closer to my ear.

  ‘I promise you that Senator Murray will be made aware of your situation,’ he said with potent earnestness. ‘You can expect to hear from me no later than a week from today.’

  Despite my fears and past experience teaching me not to count on the help of others in this, I felt myself beginning to submerge in the first warm notions of relief. Tendrils of hope and gratitude pricked the back of my eyes. Since undertaking this quest, I had felt like one man trying to carry the weight of ten up a mountain pass, refusing to rest for fear of finding myself subsequently unable to resume the climb. With those few words, Shawn unwittingly shouldered a sizable fraction of that weight, relieving me of its strain.

  ‘Thank you,’ I gushed ardently into the microphone.

  ‘It’s my pleasure. I’ll be in touch.’ And with that he hung up, carrying my hopes across the line with him. As I replaced my own handset in its cradle, the muscles around my mouth twitched. I was smiling. I could scarcely remember what it was to smile – to feel enough positive emotion to engender a smile. I had the sudden urge to leap to my feet and do a victory dance; to call Ellen up and tell her we were going out to celebrate. I had just had my first potential breakthrough. There was hope!

  ~~~

  As tempting as it was to believe wholeheartedly in Shawn and Senator Murray, I knew I couldn’t stop there. I had to keep climbing. So, after a few moments of mentally patting myself on the back and talking myself down from interrupting Ellen with this modicum of progress, I resettled at my computer desk. I needed to have a contingency plan; to be prepared in case this avenue turned into a dead-end as well and left me shouldering all the weight once again. Who would I turn to if Senator Murray couldn’t help?

  Still intimately aware of the pains and sorrows caused by the Romanian officials I’d reached out to, I decided to continue pursuing people on this side of the Atlantic. What I needed, though, was someone with pull not only in the States but in Romania as well. Someone whose name would mean something in the Romanian court system.

  I took a swig of my Diet Coke, and decided the U.S. Department of State was a good place to start. Go big or go home, as they say. To my mind, this was a foreign affairs issue of the highest caliber. As a tax-paying citizen of the United States and a frustrated father, I was feeling cocky enough to ring up Colin Powell himself if it came to that.

  Hm, I thought with a smirk as I grabbed a piece of notepaper and jotted down the heading ‘People to Contact’. After a moment of ponderous consideration, I shrugged and set the tip of the pen on the first line, writing the letters, P-O-W-E-L-L in capital letters. Chuckling at my own audacity, I returned to the computer screen and Googled my way to the homepage for the State Department.

  Probably a good idea to have backups in case Powell falls through, I mused facetiously.

  I knew the people with the greatest knowledge were always the secretaries, so I would start with the department secretary, introduce myself and capsulate the issue, then ask who best to contact. I rummaged my way to the ‘biographies of the Principal Officers, Assistant Secretaries, Ambassadors, and Chiefs of Mission listed by title or country’ and started taking down names.

  By the time Ellen arrived home several hours later, I had a nice list going. My scribbles ranged from Powell to the Under Secretaries for Political Affairs (the overseer of foreign bureaus seemed a reasonable person to call) and for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs, whose goal it was to strengthen the relationship between the people and government of the U.S. and the citizens of the rest of the world (my adoption would be a perfect way to strengthen such relationships). They were followed by the interim U.S. Ambassador to Romania (obviously he was relevant) and the contact info for various divisions of the Bureau of International Organization Affairs, which engaged in “multilateral diplomacy” to promote and defend the overlapping interests of the American people (I considered Nadia and Danny to be my primary interest), and the Bureau of European and Eurasian Affairs. I was in the middle of scribbling the number for the State Department’s Public Division when Ellen crept up behind me.

  ‘Keeping busy?’ she asked as she rested her hands on my shoulders to kiss the top of my head. ‘What’s this?’ I felt the weight of her hands shift as she leaned around me to get a look at my list. Happy to oblige, I moved the right myo so we could both look my list over with an unobstructed view.

  After a few moments of quiet consideration, I felt Ellen lean back with a chuckle. I narrowed my eyes, feeling a bit defensive in the face of this reaction. Is she laughing with me or laughing at me? I wondered.

  She squeezed my shoulders and, still laughing softly, commented, ‘You’re like Jimmy Stewart in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. You know the film I’m talking about? From 1939?’ I nodded. I knew it and the do-gooder with big ambitions and righteo
us intentions to whom she was referring.

  ‘I’ll take that as a compliment,’ I replied and continued to compile my list. It’s only a back-up plan, anyway, I silently defended myself.

  Kissing my head around another snicker, Ellen released my shoulders and made her way back down the stairway. ‘You hungry?’ she called from somewhere below. ‘I was thinking of making asparagus.’

  I sighed. My list may have been a little idealistic, but it wasn’t crazy. Heck, I’d call the President himself if I thought it’d get my kids home sooner. No one was too important for me not to bother them with the lives of two young children. No one.

  ‘Sounds good,’ I called over my shoulder and released the pen from the myo’s grasp. I’ll do more tomorrow, I thought as I closed the Internet and clicked the power button on the computer. Tonight, I’m having a relaxing dinner with my wife.

  I patted my notepaper and nodded approvingly at the work I had done, still proud of my earlier success with Shawn. I slid from the chair to head towards the stairs. At the top of the steps leading to the bedroom below, dismal realization dawned. Had she said asparagus?

  ~~~

  I spent the rest of the week collecting names and numbers for people and departments in D.C. that I could reach out to. I even checked the prices of flights, feeling less-than-enthused by the idea of more phone calls. Besides, people were far harder to brush-off when you had to face them in person, and I was feeling rather obstinate to boot.

  As the days slid past and my contingency list grew, I found my eyes straying to the phone more and more. Shawn and I had spoken on Monday and he’d promised to follow-up in a week. I hadn’t expected to hear from him on Tuesday, or even Wednesday, knowing these things took time, but by Thursday my fears were beginning to outweigh my optimism. I would catch myself staring at the phone as it sat in cantankerous silence like a senile old man, the fingers of one myo jittering nervously on the desk as I ground my teeth on my woes. I knew I could pick it up and start working my way through the numbers I’d gathered, but the physical action of flying out to Washington, D.C. seemed far more appealing. Then there was the tiny, irrational voice in my head that seemed to think calling someone else meant giving up on Shawn and Senator Murray.

  Don’t be ridiculous, I scolded my sentimental half. It doesn’t mean that at all. In the end, I found myself striking a bargain with the debaters in my head: I’d wait until five o’clock on Monday and if I still hadn’t heard from Shawn, I would book my tickets to D.C.

  ‘Right,’ I told myself when Friday evening brought only more obstinate silence from the phone line. I hadn’t organized this contingency plan for nothing. But it was only that: a back-up. Plan B, to be enacted if Plan A falls flat. I had to give Plan A a fighting chance before throwing in the towel.

  With one last pleading look at the phone, I schooled my expression and tempered my emotions. I wasn’t going to let Shawn’s absence weigh me down.

  Martins don’t quit.

  ~~~

  A telephone was ringing.

  I froze, momentarily confused as Genesis thrummed from the speakers. Is that coming from my head?

  Then it sounded again, a distinctive, all-too-familiar blaring from the corner of the desk. It’s the phone!

  I surged from the chair, half-scrambled across the desk to the phone, and yanked the handset free.

  ‘Huh-hullo?’

  ‘Mr. Martin?’ a man asked. Do I recognize that voice? I wanted so badly to recognize that voice. I twisted the dial on the computer speakers, hushing Phil Collins’s voice from the music.

  ‘Yes?’ Shawn? I wanted to ask. I was me, but was he Shawn? It was noon on Monday, five hours from my imposed deadline. If it was Shawn, he was cutting it pretty close.

  ‘This is Shawn from Senator Murray’s office.’ I exhaled and fumbled my way back into the chair. Thank you. Thank you thank you thank you!

  ‘Hi, Shawn,’ I said, seconds before a dark fog cast ominous shadows over my thoughts. He said he’d call back, but he hadn’t promised it’d be good news when he did. I felt my hopes teeter like a tree whose trunk had been cut.

  ‘I spoke with Senator Murray about the issues of your adoption as we discussed,’ Shawn began. I nodded along forlornly, seeing that all-too-familiar brick wall looming in the distance. ‘Well,’ he continued, blissfully ignorant of the sway he held over the course of my life, ‘she was able to pull a few strings. Your case is on the current court docket.’

  I went still. Relief so potent it burned my eyes and throat came flaring to the surface. I was suddenly acutely aware of what it must feel like to be a father stranded in the waiting room of a hospital as doctors fought to save his newborn’s life. How it would feel to experience that instant of insurmountable and incomparable gratitude when they emerged from the room, wiping hands on clean towels to say at last, Your baby’s going to be fine.

  ‘Thank you.’ The words were barely more than a whisper.. ‘Thank you.’

  ‘You’re more than welcome, Mr. Martin.’

  ‘Please,’ I said, clearing my suddenly parched throat. ‘Please, it’s Scott. And pass my thanks along to Senator Murray as well, if you will.’

  ‘Of course.’

  Within seconds of ending my call with Shawn, I lucked out and caught Ellen in her office between patients.

  ‘Free up ten days from your calendar early next month,’ I told her. ‘We’re heading to Romania to get our kids!’

  34

  Penguins in a Snowstorm

  In preparation for leaving Romania, Nadia and Danny were placed into foster care. It was their first experience away from the orphanage. They were with different families – the fact of their separation aggravated me – but the concept of using foster homes to ease their transition into family life made sense.

  With our Romanian adoption coordinator and interpreter, Katarina, leading the way, we first went to the home where Nadia was staying. It was a box-shaped house with mustard yellow walls and white trim around its windows. The yard was nothing more than a couple feet of buffer between the house and the road and neighboring buildings on either side. Four walls and a roof seemed to be all these people had, but at least they appeared to be well-maintained roofs and walls. I had a clear impression of people who didn’t have much, but respected what little they did own.

  Clutched to her chest, Ellen cradled a carefully folded jean jumper dress with vibrant yellow, blue, and pink flowers embroidered along its hem, a plain white t-shirt, and matching blue lace-up sneakers. It was an outfit we had picked out for Nadia months ago.

  We trailed after our liaison, huddling against each other like penguins in a snowstorm. My nerves were like the rope of a tree swing that’d been through too many harsh winters and supported far too much weight, frayed with only a few desperate threads left intact. I couldn’t breathe, couldn’t even begin to fathom the torrent of emotions whirling within me; I was about to meet my daughter for the second time.

  An elderly woman with a short bob of grey hair layered on top of black and round, clear-rimmed glasses, and the welcoming face of an all-American grandmother from a cover of The Saturday Evening Post drawn by Norman Rockwell answered the door. She wore a white, flower-patterned dress with the shapeless cut of a smock but which she filled out in an ample, motherly way.

  After Katarina made the introductions, Ellen and I were each hugged in turn, then beckoned into the square, little home where her husband – a white-haired man with bronze skin and a shy smile – waited. The couple also had a biological daughter, a petite girl of about seventeen with short dark hair, whose hand, as she walked towards us from the back of the house, was wrapped around Nadia’s. From beside me, Ellen let out a tiny, strangled whimper and reached for my arm.

  Nadia trailed behind the older girl as far as her short arm would allow, and looked from Katarina to me to Ellen with wide, uncertain eyes. The couple’s daughter led Nadia to the squat sofa on which Ellen and I sat and said a few words in Romanian. I didn’t und
erstand most of it, but what I did catch was all that mattered: ‘Mama and Tata,’ she had said while Nadia’s face was turned towards us. Mama and Tata.

  I started to cry then. Unsolicited tears welling up in my eyes dangerously close to spilling over the edge. All I could hear were the words ‘Mama and Tata’ echoing in my head as I met Nadia’s searching eyes. Through the glimmer of unshed tears, Ellen and I were beaming with irrepressible, effervescent smiles as our little girl took our measure.

  ‘Hello, Nadia,’ Ellen cooed gently. ‘I’m your mama.’ Her voice hitched on the word ‘mama’ and another whimper escaped as her hand fluttered to her mouth.

  ‘Hello, Nadia,’ I said quickly to draw Nadia’s attention long enough for Ellen to regain her composure. Despite my certainty that under the devoted care of her foster parents Nadia had experienced parental affection, I feared that such emotional displays from Ellen and me, who were still virtual strangers, might do more harm than good.

  ‘I’m your Tata,’ I told her and watched her blink owlishly up at me.

  Recomposed, Ellen reached for the pile of clothes on her lap, holding it out to Nadia with the shoes on top. Nadia’s brow furrowed and she backed hastily away from the proffered bundle, bumping into the legs of the couple’s daughter behind her. Slowly, Ellen lowered the gifts to the sofa and extricated the navy jumper from the rest. She let it fall open as she held it out to Nadia once more, waiting while Nadia eyed the colorful flowers embroidered on the garment. After a few moments of consideration, Nadia reached out and took the dress from Ellen, holding it up against herself as if judging its size. A round of stifled chuckles and encouraging oo’s and ah’s floated about the room. When Nadia looked up again, she met our eyes with the same bold smile on her face she had worn under the sunglasses back in the Giurgiu orphanage.

  That’s my girl, I thought and nodded encouragingly back at her. With the ice successfully broken, the couple’s daughter began inveigling Nadia into trying on the shoes. I hated to rush our stay but neither Ellen nor I could fully relax until we had both of our children with us and were heading back to the States once and for all. Danny was still who-knew how far away in some other home; every minute seemed an interminable period to wait.