God and Jetfire

by Amy Seek

  “And these are our luxurious guest accommodations!” Paula indicated the futon, which had been unfolded and made up for me in the playroom. “We had it in Indiana and, actually, according to previous guests, it’s supposed to be quite comfortable!” Between the playroom and the kitchen, there was just an open threshold and a large window over the kitchen sink. Curtain rods had been installed in both openings.

  Paula opened a door from the playroom onto a covered terrace. We stepped outside, and she pointed to the corner of the backyard, where there was a small storage shed.

  “And that is where we’ll keep the television!”

  * * *

  Just then, Erik stepped out through the screen door, holding Jonathan, squinting and blinking. I was surprised to see him in physical form. I’d almost forgotten he had a shape.

  “Hello, Amy!” Erik spoke for Jonathan. “Can you say hello?” He brought Jonathan close to me. His head bobbed, and with his chin still low in Erik’s chest, he caught my eye. I do not know what I expected in that moment.

  “Hi, Jonathan!” I smiled at him and touched his hand. “How are you?” He looked back blankly, furrowing his brow at the sunlight.

  Erik handed him to me, and as I took him I realized I’d forgotten his weight, how elbowy and hard he was underneath the coating of soft flesh. He was difficult to manage, bendy and rubbery, full of will, looking this way and that. But whatever my expectations—maybe that we would merge like liquids the moment we touched, maybe that everything I’d wondered about him would have some kind of fleshy answer, or perhaps that the seven pounds of deep mechanics removed from me a month ago would click into place and I’d operate normally again—I forgot them in that instant. I didn’t feel anything more powerfully than Erik standing twenty-four inches away, observing us. He and Paula were both smiling as they watched me greet him, and their presence produced an almost physical constraint. I stiffened from the outside, and at the same time my interior weakened, emptied of conviction. I felt loosely confined, like a boat in a log flume, free floating till it bumps an edge and is dumbly realigned to the direction of travel.

  Molly had wanted us to lay out our expectations in detail, but I don’t think we would have been able to address the fine grain of this moment, when, taking him in my arms, all my impulses went to war: my motherhood against their Entitlement, my hunger to enjoy our old intimacy against the costs they might bear to see it. But I didn’t allow the battle to rage on for a second. I had an instinct even stronger than all the others: to protect their newborn family. I shut everything down, turned myself off, and simply drove myself numbly like a vehicle from within.

  “Wow, he’s gotten bigger! He has so much color!” I said, my heart hollow. Jonathan blinked his eyes at me, and then at the sunlight. He arched his back and jerked his head to look over his shoulder. His whole body reverberated with every motion, muscles in his abdomen called into action by surprise to counterbalance the movement of his head. He was getting ready to cry.

  “We’re still dealing with the colic,” Paula said. I didn’t want to think about what that might mean. Paula took him from me. “But I think the problem here is that he’s extremely sensitive to transitions. Waking up, going to sleep, moving from one space to another, having someone new enter the room.” Paula touched her forehead to his. “It’s all very difficult, isn’t it?”

  * * *

  Paula had dissertation work to do, and so Erik suggested that we take the kids to a park about a mile down the road. I felt myself detached from desire, instinctively reducing myself to avoid those edges. I had no idea whether I wanted to go to a park about a mile down the road with a family that wasn’t mine, but I knew that the answer was, of course, “Yes! That would be great!” Erik buckled the kids in the car, and we pulled out of the driveway.

  “The nice thing about our location,” he explained as we drove, “is that we’re just a ten-minute drive from the university, and there’s a nursery school—that’s it there—we think we’ll put Sarah in next year. It’s within walking distance of the house.” Erik pointed to the school on the corner with a pine-needle-covered playground, and we crossed the intersection. “So even though we’re not in the university neighborhood per se, several of our colleagues live in this area, and there are a number of places we can get to on foot.”

  We arrived at the park, and as Erik was unbuckling Jonathan, a woman with short black hair standing on the edge of the parking lot seemed to recognize us. Erik waved.

  “I thought that was your car!” she said as she walked quickly up to us, crouching a bit to acknowledge the kids through the windows. Erik handed Jonathan to me and unbuckled Sarah from her car seat. Jonathan started squirming.

  “Heather, this is Amy. Amy, Heather is in our department; we went to college together.” He took Jonathan back from me and turned to Heather. “I was just telling Amy that we have a few colleagues who live near here. Heather and her husband had a not-so-small influence on our decision to move to North Carolina. In fact, they were the ones who helped us find the house; I’m not sure if Paula told you about that.”

  “Hi, yes, thank you very much.” Heather nodded. “I credit myself with bringing them here!” She paused, looking at me to tell her who I was.

  “Hi!” I said, unsure of what to say. We hadn’t had a single conversation about what we should do in this situation.

  “Amy is—well, is Jonathan’s birth mother!” Erik laughed. “She came down from Ohio to visit for a couple of days! Amy is studying architecture there!” He said it as though each one of those facts surprised him.

  “Oh, wow.” Heather glanced quickly at Jonathan and stepped in to shake my hand. “It’s so good to meet you.”

  Wow, I thought, myself. I would have understood if he had called me a friend or distant cousin or a babysitter or an incoming theology undergraduate who wanted a tour of the parks in Durham. But of course, the truth. Why wouldn’t we just tell people the truth?

  “It’s so amazing you’re here. Jonathan is such a beautiful baby!” Then she turned to Erik. “Did you guys meet in Indiana?”

  “Well, you know Amy contacted us through the agency in Indiana, but they have offices here as well, so the transfer wasn’t difficult.” Erik elaborated the story, and we shared it like newlyweds, realizing it was fun to tell together. The improbability of our finding each other made everything seem meant to be. It was also easier to tell about it than it was to live inside it, and I found our conversation a welcome break from the alien new order of things.

  As we talked, we strolled toward the swing sets. I helped Sarah into a swing and pushed her.

  “Putt … putt … putt…!” as my dad would say when he’d pull the swing back, holding it suspended above his head for a moment, your heels dangling at his forehead as you barely held your seat, wondering when that moment of free fall was going to—“Poooom!” He would charge forward, pushing the swing until it was high above the reach of his arms.

  It was a relief to play with Sarah. I could grab and squeeze and hold her tight, and even as she laughed and listened closely to me, there was no reason to fear I would swallow her whole to return her to my insides. Periodically, I would hear Erik and Heather laugh, but I couldn’t tell what they were talking about. Maybe Paula’s program, or Erik’s research. Erik came over and handed Jonathan to me. He laughed as he realized he was focused on his conversation and hadn’t asked. “I’m sorry, would you like to take him?”

  I took him in my arms, my certainties about him reduced to a single fact: you have to cradle the wobbly head on the neck.

  “Want to see something, Jonathan?” Sarah had her own curiosity about him, and she bridged the gap between us. I crouched down with him, but soon he was stretching with all his arms and legs. He was the kind of baby that arches its back and pushes against everything.

  Paula told me he’d been crying a lot. We were calling it colic, but he was doing what any animal taken away from its mother would do. Crying his eyes out, sc
reaming until he had no voice. I had a secret hope that when we saw each other, some sublime peace would overtake him. I wanted to see our connection in his sudden silence. I had that hope, and I had its opposite. I hoped, for the sake of all our futures, that he wasn’t crying for me. And from what I could tell, he wasn’t. Not for me, not for anyone. He was just broken. Between my letting go and his family taking hold, there was a fracture, and now there was no one who could give him comfort.

  Erik suggested we go home; Jonathan was probably hungry. I carried him, blind with crying, to the car.

  On the drive back, Jonathan fell asleep, and I reached around and felt for Sarah’s feet. When I caught one, I turned around and smiled at her. She was smiling already, waiting to see what I was going to do next.

  “So, Amy, I’d meant to ask, how does it feel to be back in school? Paula said you’re applying for internships for the winter?” Erik didn’t talk about himself, except when asked, and then he was keenly attuned to the precise intent of the question. The things he shared had already been processed and organized, and he retrieved them generously on request. I could imagine him having been very popular in high school, an athlete and an intellectual with a military demeanor. A genuine good kid, accustomed to early-morning chores on his family’s farm. I felt especially sloppy, immature, and female next to him.

  He receded to the background around Paula, who was both more outgoing and more laid-back than he was. She was the oldest of her siblings. She reminded me of the girl in my neighborhood growing up who was at least three years older than the other kids we’d play with. She would inform us of such things as: Today we will play cosmetology school in the basement. She was the accepted leader, and we didn’t think to supplant her or resent her bossiness; without her we had no idea how to have such intricate and involved forms of fun. I looked forward to spending time with Paula. I fell into a familiar role, listening and responding to her, following her cues.

  When we got home, Paula asked if I’d like to feed Jonathan. She handed me a bottle and I positioned him on my lap. I wasn’t sure if I was helping them as they prepared dinner, or if they were helping me, offering me a moment of closeness with my son. I held the bottle to his mouth, and the angles of his chin against his chest, of his forehead and nose, bore no relationship to the view of him I’d had when I was filling him up with my own milk. I remembered the sharp pull in my chest when he would get a good latch, the way he’d draw me toward him as he nursed, tugging at a deep seam that wound and tangled through my entire body; I would sit stunned and silent, hypnotized, captured in an interior net. It had seemed then that our closeness was inextinguishable; it extended forever in all directions. But now touching him felt forced. Like being introduced to each other by friends who didn’t know our intimate past, and because of decency, we shook hands like strangers. I held the bottle like a writing implement, and he drank as though it were the only thing he knew.

  * * *

  We had a small dinner, after which Erik washed the dishes and Paula and I sat in the living room and finished our wine.

  “I have to tell you, Amy, that you look very good for someone who just had a baby this summer! I have so many friends who complain about their baby weight. Is there a secret?”

  We both laughed. My secret was that I hadn’t been able to eat very much; my own hunger alone wasn’t enough to motivate me. I’d grown accustomed to swallowing an egg and imagining it like a marble drop game, the channels and funnels and gears it would pass through to somehow reach my son. Now I dropped things into an infinite void.

  “It’s funny you say that,” I said, “because I was in the computer lab the other day, and someone I hadn’t seen since last quarter came in, and he sat down next to me and asked me when I was going to have the baby!”

  “What would that make you now, eleven months pregnant?” Paula exclaimed. “But, you know, people see what they expect to see. I can’t tell you how many times we’ve been walking together, Erik, the kids, and I, and someone will say they can tell we’re all related. It’s Sarah’s eyebrows, or maybe it’s just that Erik and Jonathan are both bald. I don’t know! I’m of course thinking about how little we look like a family, but I guess when you put us all together—”

  Erik refilled my glass of wine.

  “Well, it seems like Sarah is really good with Jonathan,” I said. “I was watching her with him at the park.”

  “She’s a natural caretaker,” Paula said, holding her glass out for Erik. “Sometimes when Jonathan’s asleep I’ll remind her not to wake him. She’ll watch him quietly and then pet him so, so gently.”

  “Does she see her birth mother much?” I asked. Her birth mother was now a kind of sister to me.

  “Yes, we make sure she sees her at least once a year. It’s a long trip; we go there. And unfortunately, at least for now, we don’t see her birth father.”

  “We’re off to bed; Amy, do you want to say goodnight?” Erik returned with Jonathan and lowered him gently into my lap. I held him and tried to think of what to say in front of everyone, realizing at that moment that my son would always be handed to me, and I’d forever be watched.

  “Goodnight, Jonathan!” I said, straining. Paralyzed by self-consciousness. If motherhood was so powerful, my instincts should be kicking in. I shouldn’t have to practice—I should be ready to perform on the spot. I should cradle him naturally, as if I could protect him from all present and future pains.

  But I’d already exposed him to the very real unknown. I’d dealt his first blow. So what now? What was I supposed to say?

  “I’ll see you in the morning,” I said, retrieving a toy truck from the inside edge of my chair. I would distract him with a truck, rolling over the surface of his belly, from the things I couldn’t share with him.

  I couldn’t see them looking at me; I only felt them smiling. I don’t know if they noticed my awkwardness or whether they derived any satisfaction from it. Maybe they were surprised to see I’d lost my touch so completely, so soon. My motherhood was a brief fog. How could they help but enjoy this evidence it had all but dissipated?

  I held him limply, my wrists loosening from my heart the way they used to during piano recitals, when I’d find myself overwhelmed by the keys’ impenetrable code. He began to cry. My body bowed. I handed him to Paula. The wound was already healing in a manner that excluded me, and I could want nothing more than for him to learn her shape and adapt to it. Soft and pink would be his comfort.

  She held him firmly; we were erasing my motherhood from both ends. She knew exactly how hard to pat his back, like I knew with dogs. The limit. Too soft and they remain a distant mystery. Too hard is of course mean. But just under too hard is a kind of acknowledgment of exact material limits. It is being known. And dogs turn and smile at you like you’ve cracked them, the species barrier and their own. Paula knew the precise physics of swinging Jonathan over her shoulder without overprotecting his head. She could communicate in her body that this high-speed lift up into the air was a kind of joke, and it would make him smile and stare at her, full of suspense. He knew very little about the world, but he knew the next good thing would come from her. Perhaps I was really the audience, and Paula and Erik who felt watched.

  I watched and smiled as she showed me the things my son liked to do, how he liked to be held, what made him laugh. I already trusted them as his parents. But still, I didn’t want to be shown—as though there were information to know about my son that I didn’t already know by filling him up with blood and causing his heart to pound.

  * * *

  Closing the curtain in the playroom that night, it seemed silly, what I had expected. There was no way to return the amputated limb to the body and expect coherent action. The thing I’d somehow confused with my own extracted and wandering soul was a helpless, tiny baby who reached only for miscellaneous things: dangling hair, a filthy toy, those trinkets in the margins of the Dear Birth Mother letters. He wasn’t substantially different from all the other babies
in the world I’d never taken interest in, and he evidently hadn’t been spending our time apart thinking about me. His life in the last few weeks hadn’t been about discovering his sonhood. There was in fact no secret between us, no wholeness to return to.

  And we were only at the very beginning of doing adoption. I could see clearly that he would need a long, long time to build muscle, and learn to talk, and learn what dogs are and what adoption is, and build forts and learn to read, and have his first tablet of lined paper, and meet his cousins, and have a crush, and scrape his shins on asphalt, and go to summer camp, and step hard on the edge of a shovel, and push it into the ground, and touch sharp things with his toes in the ocean, and learn arithmetic and algebra and geometry and trigonometry and calculus, and learn to dive, and practice piano, and quit piano, and slam doors, and move houses with his family probably several times, and make friends, and switch cereals, and get in trouble at school, and figure out that he likes physics but not chemistry, and learn to drive, and study for the SATs, and fall in love, and long for summers not to end, and lie sleepless at Christmas, and throw away his old favorite things, and throw water balloons, and fight with his sister, and find a temporary truce, and mourn his dog’s death, and fly twenty times in a plane, and taste alcohol, and score a hundred baskets—before I might ever get a chance to ask him how he felt about this whole thing. I would have to let him live an entire life, and we wouldn’t know the results of the experiment until it was over. There would be no opportunity to discover an error in the formula and begin again. Years would pass, so much would happen, and we might think about the life we missed, but we wouldn’t really be able to miss it.