Other People's Children

by R. J. Hoffmann

  “It worked,” Carli finally said. “The final consent.”

  Paige nodded. “It did.” She took a sip of tea. “How do you feel about it?”

  Always the social worker. Fact was, she felt confused. The call with Gail was so strange. Gail’s sobbing didn’t make any sense. Maybe she was crying about Jon, but it didn’t seem like it. Why was she coming without him? And why visit in the middle of the night? “I’ll get to see Maya again,” she said, to reassure herself, as much as anything.

  Paige studied her. “Open adoptions can get complicated. Especially with someone like Gail.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Everybody goes into it with different opinions about how it should work. Different expectations. You should expect some bumps.”

  Carli shook her head. “I’m not going to expect anything. That’s how we got into this mess.”

  * * *

  Carli couldn’t sleep, of course, and she grew tired of flipping through channels, so she sat on the couch with Paige’s laptop, searching for apartments she could maybe afford and second jobs she might land. But after a while all the jobs and apartments started to look the same, and Carli’s eyes began to itch. Around midnight she closed the laptop and pulled out her psych textbook. She would reenroll in the fall, and even though she’d have to reread everything come September, she knew that reading things twice always helped her figure it out better.

  She picked up where she left off. She reread those last two sections. Kohlberg’s stages of moral development. Gilligan’s ethics of care. She still had trouble sorting through both, but she couldn’t help noticing that Kohlberg’s stages, based upon men, were littered with words like contract and authority and conformity and order. Gilligan’s levels, based upon the way women think, talked about nothing but avoiding harm. Do no harm to yourself, and do no harm to others. Carli still got twisted up by that. She struggled through a dense section about classical and operant conditioning, and her eyes grew heavy while reading about memory and forgetting. She finally put down the book when she came to Charles Snyder’s hope theory, because she just couldn’t read about that.

  Carli looked at the clock. Two more hours. She asked Paige for some paper, and Paige gave her a spiral-bound notebook and a pen. Carli opened the laptop again, and she made careful lists in the notebook of the cheapest apartments and the jobs she was most likely to get. She typed homeless grundy county into Google and made another list of nonprofit organizations that might help her. She made a list of things that she still needed to get from the house—her high school transcript, her birth certificate, the blue frog. She was squinting at the Waubonsee Community College website and making a list of all the classes she’d take to become a nurse’s aide, when the knock finally came.

  Paige leaned against the kitchen doorframe, drying her hands on a towel. She didn’t move toward the door, so there was nothing else for Carli to do but get up and open it herself. Gail stood on the steps holding a bundle of pink. Her hair was dyed a greasy blond. Her eyes burned red. Her face looked creased as if it had been folded and refolded too many times.

  Carli’s eyes fell to the baby. Gail held Maya away from her body. Not so much offering the baby to Carli—more like she was trying to touch Maya as little as possible. Carli couldn’t see the baby’s face—just a tiny clenched fist protruded from the blanket. Carli tried to smell the baby, but a cold April wind blew the scent away. She looked at Gail’s face again, and it was beginning to collapse, so Carli held out her own arms, and Gail placed the baby into them. Maya felt lighter than Carli expected, but warm, even through the blanket. She squirmed as she settled in against Carli. She peeled back the corner of the blanket and found that same face from the recovery room, but the lips glowed pink now instead of blue, and her eyes squinted shut as if she were counting to fifty while everyone hid. Something that must have been joy churned in that space below Carli’s ribs. She pulled the blanket back further and studied Maya, drank in every feature, memorizing them, because she didn’t know how long they would stay, or when she would see Maya next. She brushed Maya’s cheek with her fingertips and marveled at its feel, like rose petals or suede.

  Paige said in a clipped voice, “Gail, why don’t you come in.”

  “No.”

  Carli looked up to find tears streaming down Gail’s face. It was the first word Gail had spoken since Carli answered the door, and it rasped like a hacksaw on rusty steel. No? Why the rush? And why the hell was she crying?

  “When your email turned up in my in-box,” Gail said, “I felt nothing but relief.” Gail’s voice faltered. “But someone helped me understand what that email must have cost you.”

  Carli gaped at Gail. As if she knew the first fucking thing about cost. Carli took a deep breath and was about to lay into her, when Gail spoke again.

  “So I brought her back. To you.”

  Maya squirmed against Carli’s ribs. “What do you mean?”

  Gail looked directly at Carli. Her whole body seemed to vibrate with the effort. “I mean that you’re Maya’s mother.”

  Holy shit. Carli searched Gail’s face for answers to the questions she couldn’t quite form, and the tears that streamed down Gail’s cheeks spoke more directly than any words ever could. Those tears explained the strangeness of that call. They explained why Gail came in the middle of the night. They explained her stiffness, her sadness. They explained the sudden weight in Carli’s arms, and the trembly feeling that bubbled in her throat. Gail wasn’t just bringing the baby back. Gail was bringing Maya back to her.

  “But I signed the final consent,” Carli managed.

  “I know,” Gail whispered. “That doesn’t matter. She’s your child.”

  Carli fixed her eyes on Maya, and for a long moment held her breath, afraid that Gail might change her mind. When she felt Gail move toward the street, Carli forced herself to look up. “Gail,” she said.

  Gail turned back to Carli. Her empty arms hung awkwardly at her side, and her shoulders sagged.

  “I just want you to know that—”

  Gail held up her hand. “Carli—” she said. “I can’t. Not now.” And then she turned again and walked quickly to the old station wagon idling at the curb.

  Carli bent to pick up the diaper bag that was sitting on the porch, and she went back inside. Paige closed the door. Carli sat with her baby on the couch. Her baby. She peeled back the folds of the blanket and looked at Maya’s face, the face that Marla had thrust at her in the hospital. It was suddenly all so real and familiar. Not so much in the details—that moment in the hospital was so short. She hadn’t noticed how thin Maya’s eyelashes were, like new grass, and the way that her ears seemed pinned to the side of her head, and how her nostrils flared and wriggled when she breathed. But the essence was unmistakable—the curve, the color, the Maya-ness of that face was just as she remembered. And that smell, like vanilla cream soda. Maya was hers.

  Another knock startled Carli, and she looked up at Paige, who seemed rattled, too. Carli couldn’t move, paralyzed by the thought that Gail, after all that, had come back for the baby. Paige draped the dish towel over her shoulder, ambled back to the door, and opened it. Carli heard Gail’s voice, dry and raw and cracked.

  “Can you give this to Carli? Maya seemed to like it.”

  Paige closed the door and brought a book to Carli. She set it on the coffee table. The cover showed a green wall, a window, and a fireplace. The title read, Goodnight Moon.

  Gail

  Gail lay on her bed for an hour before the fiery dawn arrived. Jon had probably filled her in-box with worried emails. She composed and recomposed in her mind the email that she’d send him from her dad’s phone. She made it longer, packed with reasons and logical arguments and apologies. And then she made it shorter, terse and to the point, until the reasons and explanations and apologies drifted back into it. Finally, she got out of bed and went to search for the cordless to call her dad. On the way to the stairs, though, she found the door
to the nursery ajar, and she stopped in front of it. She stared at the sea turtle rug for a long time, before she finally went to the attic to get boxes and to the office to get packaging tape.

  She packed the books and the stuffed animals and the clothes that they hadn’t taken when they left. She packed the creams and the ointments with the diapers and the wipes. She stripped the sheets from the mattress and packed those, too. She taped the sea turtle rug into a roll. She carried it all to the mudroom, and as the nursery emptied, so did Gail. After she carried the last box, she went back to make sure that she hadn’t missed anything. Only the furniture remained—the crib, the changing table, the dresser, the rocker. She’d need help moving those. And that border. That border with the animals shaped like letters wrapped around the top of the room, declaring it still a nursery.

  Gail went to the basement and returned with a stepladder, a bucket, a sponge, and a scraper. She filled the bucket with water in the bathroom, sponged wet a section of the border, and started to scrape. The progress was slow. The shellac she had brushed across it to make it shiny didn’t help. After an hour, she had removed just two letters—the snake angled like a Z and the frog contorted into a Y.

  Gail climbed down the ladder and stared for a very long time at the X, a giraffe with its back legs spread and holding its front legs up in the air. She considered sharpening the scraper, but the reality was, it was the wrong tool for the job. She went to the basement again and returned with a hammer. She closed the door and climbed the ladder and, without hesitation, slammed the head of the hammer through the giraffe’s torso. Plaster clattered from the lathe to the floor, and dust rose in a cloud. It settled on her hair and her skin as she hammered and hammered. She tore at the stubborn pieces with the claw of the hammer, and she only stopped to move the ladder and to wipe the dust from her eyes. Sweat beaded on her arms, dimpling the powder. It streaked down her face and her neck. Sweat, but no tears. She didn’t seem to have any tears left.

  It took her an hour, and when she was done, the whole room was covered by a snowfall of white dust. She dropped the hammer into the rubble and left what used to be the nursery and closed the door behind her. She trailed white footprints to the bathroom, where she climbed into the shower with all her clothes on and washed off the dust that used to be the walls of the room that used to be the nursery.

  * * *

  Gail sat in the front room and waited for her dad. He didn’t ask why when she told him to come alone, without her mom, because he knew why. She picked up a notebook and a pen but then put them back down and just waited. When the phone rang, Gail thought that it might be Jon, but it was a nurse from a Grand Forks hospital. She used a lot of words that Gail didn’t comprehend. The words made it clear that Jon was hurt badly, but Gail didn’t ask any questions before she hung up, so she had no idea what to expect. She would ask her dad to drive her to Grand Forks when he arrived. She climbed the stairs, confused, exhausted, and numb. She packed enough clothes for a long stay. She packed clothes for Jon.

  She did not pack a notebook.

  Marla

  Marla woke up in her recliner a little bit before dawn. The TV droned. The Bachelorette was on, so she switched it to Duck Dynasty. She wouldn’t go to work. Not after yesterday. Before Larry had sent that picture of Durbin sprawled on the floor, she had paced the house and checked her phone for what seemed like forever. Her forearms burned where she held that baby in the hospital. And she kept smelling pudding. She didn’t like hoping. Hope gnaws at you, until you get what you want. Or until you kill it for good. That picture from Larry told her everything that she needed to know. No way that a pussy like Durbin could keep a secret through a beating like that. He didn’t know where they went—Gail and the baby were gone. She could stop hoping. She never should have started. Hope could be so fucking exhausting.

  She spent the morning clicking from channel to channel, expecting to hear from Larry and Kurt asking for money they didn’t earn, or from Carli, begging to be taken back. She watched Chop Shop for a while—the sound of the saws and blowtorches calmed her nerves. By late morning, she was watching one of the Real Housewives shows, trying to figure out if they lived in Miami or LA. The housewife was ripping into her cook for fucking up a dinner party when the doorbell rang.

  Marla pushed out of the recliner and walked to the door feeling tired and stiff, but she walked quickly. Whether she found Carli or Larry and Kurt, she would get to tell them to fuck off, and that would make the rest of the morning pass better. But when she opened the door, she found a suit, and in that suit, she found Bradford.

  “Morning, Ms. Brennan.”

  “What do you want?” she growled.

  “Mind if I come in?”

  “I do.”

  Bradford smirked in that way he had. “Do you know Larry Gant and Kurt Meyers?”

  Shit. Fucking idiots got themselves caught. “I work with ’em.”

  “Seems that they went after the Durbins.”

  “I don’t know nothin’ about that.”

  Marla made to close the door, but then Bradford said, “I don’t suppose you know anything about that message that Gant sent you, either.” Bradford’s smile widened. “Or the picture.”

  Marla stiffened. She opened her mouth. She closed it.

  “You have the right to remain silent, Ms. Brennan.” Bradford pulled handcuffs from his pocket. “Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law.”

  Carli

  Three weeks to the day after Gail brought Maya back, Carli drove down Route 47 toward the river, even though she knew that she shouldn’t. She should be scrounging the racks at Goodwill for old clothes to wear to her new job, or at Walmart buying diapers, or over at Kelly’s cousin’s house, checking out the old couch he was trying to get rid of. Or sleeping. She hadn’t slept more than two hours in a row for the last three weeks. But Paige had asked her to meet for coffee, and she couldn’t stand up Paige after all she had done. Paige suggested Liberty Street Cafe, but the weather was just too nice to be trapped inside with soybean farmers.

  Carli received more help than she had expected over the past three weeks—and not just from Paige. The Second Chance Center helped her find a one-bedroom apartment in Minooka with drafty windows, carpets that smelled faintly of cat urine, and a small family of mice that seemed happy that the cat was gone. Randy and his truck helped her scavenge a TV, a kitchen table, and a bed from friends of people that she knew. She still needed a couch, but there were no Mountain Dew cans on the windowsills, and she’d rather smell the cat than cigarettes. Paige helped her get a job at KinderCare. She’d start on Wednesday if the background check came through by then. It didn’t pay much, but she’d get to spend the day with Maya, and Maya could stay there at a discount while Carli worked at Giamonti’s. If she started on Wednesday, her first check would arrive in a week and a half. And if she kept eating ramen from the food pantry, she just might have enough for gas and diapers and formula.

  The parking lot perched high above the riverbank, because the river sometimes flooded. The playground nestled halfway to the water and didn’t amount to much, just a set of swings, a merry-go-round, and an old metal jungle gym. A wooden picnic table huddled under an oak that promised shade when the leaves came in fully. Paige sat at the table looking out at the river.

  Carli grabbed her backpack from the passenger seat and climbed out of the car. She unstrapped Maya and gathered her into her arms. She was getting heavier—a substantial, satisfying heavy. Carli nudged the door closed with her hip, stepped over the curb, and walked down the grassy slope. As she neared the playground, the warm wind carried the stink of river mud up the hill to meet her.

  Paige turned when Carli neared the picnic table. “Hey, there.”

  “Hey.”

  Paige got up and wrapped Carli and Maya in a long hug. Paige had hugged her at Liberty Street, too, and it caught her off guard. She wasn’t used to hugs, and it made her feel stiff and scratchy. This time she al
lowed herself to sink into it a bit, and she felt Paige’s warmth. When she was finally released, Carli settled onto the bench. She tugged a blanket from the backpack and wrapped Maya.

  “You look like you haven’t slept for a week,” Paige said.

  “Thanks,” Carli said. “It feels more like a year.”

  “It’ll get a little better at three months, when she starts to sleep through the night. Unless she doesn’t.” Paige poured coffee from a thermos into two black mugs. “She looks beautiful, though. She looks like you.”

  Carli didn’t know how to handle compliments any better than hugs, so she said nothing. Instead, she took a gulp of the lukewarm coffee.

  “How’re you holding up?”

  “It’s hard,” Carli admitted. “Harder than I expected.” She could tell Paige that she was so exhausted that she sometimes closed her eyes, just for a moment, while driving, or that she went to the food pantry early, because she didn’t want anyone to see her there. Or she could describe that greasy feeling in her gut when Maya cried for hours for no apparent reason, or the stack of bills on that battered kitchen table and her terror that she wouldn’t be able to keep their heads above water. But something about the slope of Paige’s eyebrows told her that she knew about all of it, or at least her own version of it, and that she didn’t need to tell her. Instead, Carli looked down at Maya—at her nose and at the gray eyes that were starting to peek through the slits. “But it’s good, too. Better than I expected.”

  Paige sipped from her own mug. “Anybody helping you?”

  “My friend Kelly watched her for a couple hours when I went for my interview.” It had taken Carli two hours to work up the nerve to call Kelly. It felt strange to ask her to watch Maya, and she was surprised when Kelly said yes right away. It also felt strange to call Kelly a friend again, but she didn’t have another word for it. “And Wendy, my sister, watched her for an hour while I slept, but I think that her boyfriend made her do it.”