The Red Thread

by Ann Hood

  As she passed Xhao Hui’s field, she looked over hopefully. But it was dark and empty. The baby whimpered, and Ni Fan resisted the urge to comfort her daughter. Instead, she tried to walk faster, despite the pain everywhere. She wanted nothing more than to lie down and sleep. But first she must do this.

  Ni Fan went exactly to the spot where she and Xhao Hui met and made love and dreamed of robots and Beijing. She laid the baby in the fabric, swaddling her in it now, and rested her on the grass. Then she took the sweet potato and tucked it in, resting it close beside the girl.

  Ni Fan took a few steps away. She looked down at her daughter. Pain swelled in her, from her gut to her heart. Would whoever found this child know from that one sweet potato how valuable she was? Would they understand that this was a precious baby?

  Slower now, she walked back along the dirt road, her hand pressing first her belly, then her chest, as if she could keep the pain away. But it stayed and grew. The sun was bright overhead now. Xhao Hui’s field was still empty. Ni Fan bent her head, and walked.

  DOCUMENTS TO CHINA

  A CHILD IS LIKE A PIECE OF PAPER ON WHICH

  EVERY PERSON LEAVES A MARK.

  7

  MAYA

  That night, Maya fell. From skyscrapers, treetops, roofs, and winding stairs. She fell and she fell, but her body never hit the pavement or soft grass or hardwood floor below. Instead, she remained caught in the moment when she realized there was nothing beneath her except air. Her legs pumped and flayed, seeking something solid. Her arms reached out toward the ledges and branches and walls that she flew past, her hands gripped at the emptiness as if they might be able to grab onto something, anything, to stop her fall. But nothing could stop her. Maya just kept falling. She did not land. She spun and twisted. She held her breath.

  “I am a solid guy,” Jack told her the next morning as they drank coffee at her small round table, an ice cream shop castoff.

  The chairs were too small to make sitting on them comfortable, and they forced Jack’s and Maya’s knees to bang together, their bodies to lean toward each other.

  “You’ll see that about me,” he continued. “I can fix anything. Leaks, dryers that won’t dry, and dishwashers that won’t wash.”

  Jack looked rested, even with the stubble on his face. His eyes shone back at her, blue and alert. But Maya knew she had the dark circles under her eyes and the drawn face of a woman who has not slept. Even after her confession last night, Jack had been able to soothe her, to murmur the things that were meant to comfort, and then to press himself against her spoon-like as if they had slept together dozens of times before. Soon his breathing became the slow, even breaths of a sleeping man. But Maya, when she slept, kept falling.

  “Are you listening?” Jack was asking her.

  Maya nodded. “You can fix things.”

  “Except this,” he said. “I can’t fix what happened to you.”

  “I don’t expect—”

  He placed his hand over hers to quiet her. “I know you don’t,” he said. “But until it is fixed, I don’t think you have room for me. For anyone.”

  Maya wanted to tell him that this was one broken thing that was unfixable. But why explain? He was telling her thank you, for the sex, for the coffee. He was telling her he would not be back. This filled her with relief and disappointment both.

  Afraid she might cry, Maya stood quickly, banging her knee hard against his, and then against the hard round edge of the table.

  “I need to get to work,” she said. “So many people depend on me.”

  “And you never let them down, I bet,” Jack said.

  Maya turned toward him, angry. “That’s right. I fix things too. I fix families. I fix their heartache and their loneliness.”

  Jack stood too, carefully. “What about your heartache?” he said.

  “Oh, please,” Maya said, gathering their cups and spoons. “What is this? A Hallmark card?”

  She didn’t like that he followed her into the kitchen, that he put the cream in the refrigerator, the sugar bowl in its spot on the shelf. What she wanted was for him to go. A big man, he filled her small kitchen. Not just with his bulk, but with his smell of soap and man, with his too-heavy footsteps. Maya gulped for air.

  “Look,” Jack said, standing in the middle of the kitchen, his arms opened beside him, “I like you.”

  “Oh, please,” Maya said again. “Let’s not do this. We had a good time, and then I completely lost it.” She shook her head. What had possessed her to tell this stranger the very thing she had kept locked away for so long? “And now I need to get to work.”

  “No,” he said. “I mean, I like you. When you are ready for a relationship, for something more, I want it to be with me.”

  “Okay. I’ll call you when that happens.”

  Jesus, Maya thought, turning on the water and letting it run too hot, is this how people gave the brush-off these days? Angrily, she washed the cups and spoons, the wineglasses from last night. These remnants of their evening embarrassed her. The water stung her hands, but she did not temper it.

  Jack placed his hands on her shoulders and forced her around to face him. Then he leaned down and kissed her on the lips. On any other morning, it would have been a lovely kiss. It would have been a kiss that held promise.

  Maya wished he had not done what he did next. He took his hand and placed it so tenderly on her cheek that she did not know if she might cry, or slap it away. Before she could decide, Jack dropped his hand and walked out.

  Maya stood still, right there in the middle of her kitchen with its cheerful mango walls and gleaming countertops, listening to those heavy footsteps walk across the living room. The door opened and closed with certainty. Still, Maya stood, not moving, until in the distance she heard his car start up and drive away. Only then could she make herself focus on what lay ahead.

  Get dressed, she said to herself. Go to work. Do not think about any of this. Instead, Maya thought of all the babies waiting for parents. She thought of empty cribs, empty arms, being filled.

  “WELL?” EMILY SAID as soon as Maya answered her cell phone.

  “He’s nice,” Maya said. This was not a lie.

  “Did you kiss him? Will you see him again?”

  Maya jingled the keys to the Red Thread in her hand. She was standing at the door, ready for her real life to begin, and cursing herself for answering the phone.

  “You devil!” Emily teased.

  “Oh, Emily,” Maya said, playing with the tricky lock. The key had to go in just right or it wouldn’t open. “I shouldn’t have.”

  The door wouldn’t open. Maya put down her briefcase and leaned against it. Wickenden Street still looked sleepy. Soon enough, college students and mothers returning from dropping kids at school would fill it. But right now, it was quiet. The junk shops and futon store still closed, the Japanese and Indian restaurants also closed but leaving the stale smells of curry and fish in the air. But strongest was the coffee roasting down the street, an acrid, seductive smell that Maya liked. She took a deep breath.

  “No, no,” Emily was saying, “we’re grown-ups here. People sleep together on the first date.”

  When Maya didn’t respond, Emily added, “They sleep together and sometimes don’t go out again. It’s okay.”

  Maya sighed. How could she tell Emily that it wasn’t the sex she regretted, but the intimacy that followed.

  “The sex was actually nice,” Maya said.

  “Nice isn’t what we want at our age from sex.”

  Maya chuckled. “It was good. Is that better?”

  “Yes,” Emily said. She paused, and when Maya didn’t fill the silence, she said, “But why shouldn’t you have?”

  “It’s the after part,” Maya said, choosing her words carefully. “The cuddling. The spilling of histories.”

  She wished she could tell Emily what she had told Jack. Perhaps that would lighten her burden. But look at how she felt now, having told the story just once in a
ll these years. Maya shook her head. No. Only she and Adam had the right to this story.

  “You’re rusty! That’s what you do in relationships,” Emily said. “You cuddle. You tell each other your awful middle names and who you went to the prom with and you show every scar you have and tell how you got it. Did you get to the scar part?”

  “Yes,” Maya said. Her throat felt tight and closed. “I’ve got to go. A couple is coming in—”

  “Okay,” Emily said. “But call me later?”

  Maya promised she would and hung up hurriedly. All she wanted was to get inside her office and begin her day. This time, the key cooperated on the first try. Relieved, Maya went inside. The green lights flashing on all the telephones, the hum of the fax machine receiving documents, the pictures of all those baby girls, soothed Maya.

  As she walked toward her office, her fingers swept gently over the photographs.

  Good morning, beautiful children, she thought.

  By the time she settled at her desk and turned on her computer, last night and the awkwardness of the morning had faded.

  She solved problems with missing documents, with the Chinese government, with background checks and old criminal records and people desperate for this one thing: a baby. She consoled and listened and soothed and solved. So that when the small ding announcing a new email sounded, Maya was back to usual.

  The unfamiliar email address, john 74, threw her off. Families waiting for babies, wanting babies, or just wanting information emailed her every day. She should have looked more closely at the subject line: ABOUT THIS MORNING. Jack. Of course. Jack was often a nickname for John. She read the email quickly. He wanted to see her, to talk. Could they just be friends for now? Could he help her figure this out?

  Maya’s finger hovered over the Delete button. She didn’t owe him anything.

  But then she typed a reply quickly: It’s fine. No need to get together. Despite my breakdown, it was nice.

  She hit Send.

  Nice. That was the word Emily had said adults shouldn’t use to describe sex. But it did describe the evening. Or most of it.

  Another ding. Another email from john74.

  Maya considered not opening it. But she did.

  Nice???????

  She smiled, in spite of herself. Then typed: Okay. Better than nice.

  When his next response came, she laughed. Phew!!!! he wrote.

  Then another email immediately from john74. I really do want to see you again.

  Maya kept that email open as she went about her morning. Almost an hour on the phone sorting out visas for the next travel group. She updated the website, adding pictures of families getting their babies on this last trip. The babies were from Guanzhou, and the pictures of the babies in new clothes, with bows in their hair, held by beaming mothers and fathers under the broad trees on the promenades, pleased Maya. SALLY BURTON WITH HER NEW FAMILY, she typed. SABRINA METZ WITH HER NEW FAMILY. ABBY RANDOLPH. GILDA MASERATI. PATRICIA KENNEDY. Each name like a promise.

  When she finished, Maya clicked onto Jack’s email, still there waiting for her.

  Let me take care of some things first. Then we can get together again. She sent it, her heart banging.

  From her bottom drawer, Maya took out a clean piece of paper. It had the Red Thread Adoption Agency logo on the top in red, with a long red line swirling off that final y.

  Dear Adam, Maya wrote, It has been many years since…

  She stared at the paper on her desk. What was there to say here? Since I ruined our lives? Since I killed our daughter? Since I left you sitting on the lanai with rain falling around you, your head held in your hands, your back heaving with sobs? Do you remember, Adam, how loud my suitcase sounded as I dragged it across the crushed shells that made the path that led away from the door? Do you remember how when you called my name, I did not answer you? Your voice sounded broken. You don’t know that I dared to watch you in the rearview mirror as I drove away. You stood in the rain in front of our little pink house and called my name and I stepped harder on the accelerator, fleeing from you, from what I had done.

  Dear, dear Adam.

  Maya crumpled the paper and tossed it into the wastebasket beside her desk.

  Last night, Jack Sullivan had held her while she talked. He had said, “How does a person go on after something like that?”

  “They open an adoption agency and believe that by bringing children to desperate people, they are absolved somehow,” she told him.

  At first, when she opened the Red Thread Adoption Agency, Maya had believed that. If she could give enough babies good homes, if she could make enough women mothers, then she could forgive herself.

  But now she realized that wasn’t enough. She closed her eyes. Those moments replayed themselves again. The smell of roasted chicken. The warm sunlight. The feel of her daughter in her arms.

  If she could just go back to that afternoon, she would not hurry. She would quiet the noises in her mind: Dinner! Work! Husband! She would just sit and soothe her child.

  But just as it did every time that afternoon came back to her, Maya felt the weight of her baby, and then the emptiness as she fell backwards, out of her arms. The sound, a dull sound really, did not even frighten Maya. “She just fell wrong,” one doctor told them later, in the emergency room. As if it were a simple mistake. Nothing more.

  For weeks, Maya could not erase the image of how her daughter looked right after the fall, the way her eyelashes fluttered, the bubble of spit that formed on her lips and then turned pink with blood.

  Dear Adam, Maya thought, the pen trembling in her hands. But nothing more came to her.

  Outside the office, she heard voices. Maya glanced at the clock. Brooke Foster, wife of the famous baseball player, was early for her appointment. A soft knock on the door before it eased open.

  “I know it’s a little early,” Samantha said.

  “That’s all right,” Maya said, relieved at the interruption.

  The door opened all the way and Brooke walked in. Her short cropped hair and turned-up nose reminded Maya of magical beings: elves and sprites and pixies. She wore a see-through white blouse with a white camisole underneath and a full cotton skirt in pale blue. Flip-flops. From a distance, she might be a teenager, but up close Maya could clearly see the lines at the corners of her eyes and mouth.

  “You have questions?” Maya said after the usual pleasantries. “About the paperwork?”

  There were always questions about the paperwork, Maya knew. But Brooke was shaking her head no.

  Maya waited.

  “My husband,” Brooke said, but then she grew quiet.

  “The famous baseball player,” Maya said.

  Brooke smiled. “Yes. The famous baseball player.”

  She took a breath, played with the hem of her skirt. “He loves me so much,” she said without looking up.

  Then she did look up, her eyes a bright blue against her tanned face. “Too much,” she said. “He loves me too much.”

  “Ah,” Maya said.

  “His love can suffocate me,” Brooke continued. “My friends are always telling me how lucky I am. He makes me coconut shrimp and margaritas. He plants tulips every fall. He buys the bulbs and times the planting to just before the first frost and then he digs these shallow holes and places them in such a way that when they bloom come spring there is no space at all between the flowers. It’s like a blanket of tulips.” Brooke shook her head as if even she could not believe it. “They’re my favorite flowers,” she said. “Tulips.”

  “I can see why your friends are jealous,” Maya said.

  “He brings me coffee in bed every morning,” Brooke said. “He paints my toenails for me.”

  “Brooke?” Maya said.

  “I know. Why am I here, then? Right?”

  “I understand why you’re here,” Maya said.

  “You do?”

  “If he loves you so much, how can he make room for a baby?” Maya said.

  “
Loving Charlie isn’t enough for me,” she said softly. “But I’m afraid that I’m enough for him.”

  “It is surprising how much room there is in a heart,” Maya said.

  “We met the first day of college. He was relentless in his pursuit of two things: playing major league baseball, and winning me. Our senior year, when he was getting scouted by all the teams, I got pregnant. I was young enough or foolish enough to believe he would be as happy as I was. But he told me flat out that he could not have a baby yet. He was just getting started, he needed to concentrate on tryouts, on hitting that ball. We would get married someday and have as many babies as I wanted. I didn’t know what to do. I was twenty-two years old and in love with my boyfriend and pregnant. Before I did anything, I woke up in the middle of the night with this pain, this excruciating pain.”

  Brooke’s hand touched her stomach lightly, unconsciously. “It turned out it was an ectopic pregnancy. And my tubes ruptured that night. I could have died. In a way, I did die, I think. Because I couldn’t get pregnant again after that. Charlie,” she said, shrugging, “he was so grateful I made it. But I lost my only chance at being a mom.”

  “Until now,” Maya said.

  Brooke smiled. “Yes! Until now. I walk in here and I see all those pictures of children and I think: My child will be up there someday, smiling at some woman waiting in line.”

  “How can I help?” Maya asked.

  “I don’t even know. I’m just terrified Charlie will back out. I sent our documents to China and all I can think about is how we will get a phone call telling us we have a daughter and he will say he can’t go through with it.”

  Maya had seen this very thing happen. Sometimes they muttered their decision quickly over the telephone. Sometimes they came to the office and looked at that photograph and said they had changed their minds.