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A year ago, I’d thought I’d lost all chance of having my own child. A year ago, I hadn’t known about Meredith.
Okay, so it still hurts a little. A lot even. But I’ll get my baby. I’ll get Meredith.
“Oh, my gracious,” said the woman on my left, dressed in a pink-flowered shirt stretched tautly over her rounded belly. “Here we are, jabbering all around you.”
“Would you like me to switch places with you?” I offered. “Sounds like you two have a lot of notes to compare. Is it your first baby?”
“Oh, yeah,” the lady on my right said, “and it’s not gonna come a moment too soon. I want to see my feet again. I’m wondering now if I have feet.”
I couldn’t help but glance down at her lime-green flip-flops and her very swollen feet and ankles. She definitely possessed feet, but whether she would like them if she saw them was another story.
“I know what you mean. Nobody ever warned me being pregnant could be so miserable. But I wouldn’t trade it for anything,” the pink-flowered-shirt lady said. “You have kids?”
The question didn’t contain the power to knife me like it had. I hesitated for a moment, worrying the inquiry like a loose tooth, just to check. A little twinge. But not the big one. “No kids yet,” I said.
“Oh, but you’re not that old. You still have time. You’re what? Thirty-two? Thirty-three?” the flip-flop-shod woman asked.
“Thanks. I’m actually thirty-six. And my husband and I are adopting.” Just saying the words banished the ache inside me.
“Oh, wow…. That’s such a great thing to do. Wow! I’m impressed. A boy or a girl or do you know?”
“A little girl. We’re adopting a baby from China.”
Pink Flowers’ eyes went round. “Don’t they kill off all their girls over there? They want boys, right?”
In a delicate, split-second assessment, I decided she wasn’t ready for a lecture on China’s population explosion or why girls were more frequently adopted than boys. “Oh, they love their little girls. We just requested a baby girl.”
The other woman smoothed a hand over her rounded abdomen. “Well, that baby’s gonna be a lucky little girl, what with you and your husband rescuing her. She’s gonna be so blessed.”
I’d encountered this remark before, too. You don’t negotiate five months of the Paperchase From Hell and four months of The Wait without hearing some variation of the “You’re such a hero” speech. I offered up another smile and said, “We’ll be the lucky ones.”
“So why’d you decide to adopt from China? I mean, couldn’t you have any real kids?” Pink Flowers asked.
That question, which would have tormented me a year ago, still possessed a sharp edge. I considered her use of the word, real, as if I’d get a beautiful China doll instead of a flesh-and-blood baby. “No. We couldn’t have biological children.”
She gasped, popping a hand over her mouth. Her eyes welled up with tears, and she laid a hand on my arm. “Oh, I just…that’s awful. How long have you guys been trying? I just can’t imagine not being able to have a baby.”
The redhead in the flip-flops joined in, her eyes pained as well. “Was it endometriosis? I have endometriosis. I had to have surgery, and that fixed me right up. Did you try the surgery?”
Ann Landers would have recommended responding with, “Why do you need to know?” But I found I couldn’t do this to these ladies. They meant well in their clumsy way. I shook my head. “No. I had cancer.”
“Cancer!” both of them breathed in unison. I could see them busily counting their blessings: they were cancer-free and could conceive…and would hold their babies within a few weeks.
“Yes. Ovarian cancer.”
The mention of the big C had a way of killing conversation. The two women fell as silent as a pair of bookends. I swung shut mental gates to hem in the memories. The day the biopsy had come back positive, the surgery, the chemo. I’d made it through. And here I was, in my sixth cancer-free year, hoping for a routine ob-gyn exam. Just let it be normal.
To distract myself, I let my eyes wander over the waiting room.
On this Thursday morning, Dr. Kaska’s Queen Anne armchairs were crammed with expectant mothers. The only other flat-bellied women in the room were a sullen mother-daughter pair, the girl dressed in tight blue jeans and a barely-there crop top that showed off her belly button ring. Her over-mascaraed eyes brimmed with suppressed rage at being with her mother in an ob-gyn’s office.
Another Cherie, I thought to myself. I know how the mom feels. I caught the woman’s eye and gave her an encouraging smile. She smiled back, her face lighter and not so drawn.
I did know how she felt. I’d raised my husband’s baby sister from the time he and I had returned from our honeymoon sixteen years ago. The truculent eleven-year-old, who regarded her new sister-in-law as something just short of a horned she-devil, had been waiting for us on our front-porch steps. Not exactly the welcome a blushing bride wanted, but I’d known Cherie came with Joe like a piece of Samsonite luggage. After all, it was just the two of them.
Cherie had not improved with age. Just last night, she’d called, mooching money because her funds had run short.
The door opened, and another pregnant woman came in, a toddler clinging to her skirts. For a moment, as she stood eyeing the packed waiting room, my heart froze in my chest. The boy’s wheat-straw head, buried into her billowy maternity dress, could have been Matthew’s.
The mother in the mother-daughter team jabbed her daughter and stood up. “Here, ma’am. You can take our chairs. You and your little boy.”
The boy turned then, looked me straight in the face. My heartbeat returned to normal. He was nothing like my Matthew.
Matthew had come into our lives like a sudden summer thunderstorm. One minute we were a couple, the next we were parents. Well, foster parents. He’d been eighteen months old, scrawny and small, with big blue eyes that stared in terror when the Division of Family and Children Services had brought him to us.
And we’d just got him into big boy pants and had enrolled him in preschool when DFCS had come to take him away.
Eighteen months, give or take. That’s all we’d had. Eighteen months to drift into the idea that Matthew was forever. Eighteen months for Joe to slip into the habit of introducing Matthew as “my son.” Eighteen months to lose our hearts completely, to forget the foster in foster parents.
The optimism in my heart flickered and dimmed. Consciously, I replaced the memory of the loss with a stern reminder: Once you get on that plane for home, Meredith is yours forever, and nobody can take her away.
IN THE EXAM ROOM, I stared at the ceiling while Dr. Kaska did her business below the belt. No matter how often this had been done, it never got any easier for me. In fact, the idea a ticking time bomb lay in my gut made me all the more tense. Six years. You’re cured. They’ve looked. You’re cured.
“Relax, Sara. It’s not like you’re a stranger to Mr. Speculum here.”
The nurse behind Dr. Kaska laughed, and all I could think about was, Gee, they’re looking at my privates. Doesn’t that get old pretty quick?
Latex gloves came off with a snap. “Okay, all done. Get those clothes back on and we’ll talk in my office.”
Dr. Kaska, neat and pretty with a heart-shaped face, seemed dwarfed by the huge desk dominating her office. I’d asked her about it some years before, and she’d explained that her father had built it for her. Now I sat across from the graduation present a proud dad had crafted with his own two hands, and I thought about Joe.
Would he be excited enough to do something like that? Would he take time away from his construction business to labor over a chunk of wood large enough to float his grown daughter down a river?
Dr. Kaska grinned. “Everything looks fine. I mainly wanted to catch up with you about the baby. I’m so jealous! I want to go to China, always have. And you get to bring back your very own life-size souvenir.”
I looked heavenward. “You sound like Joe. He tells everybody we’re going for Chinese takeout in a big way.”
“So he’s excited? I’ll bet he can’t wait to hold that baby girl.”
My stomach tensed. Joe excited? Not exactly the right word for it. “Um, you know Joe. Cautiously optimistic.”
“Just like a guy. Got to have that empirical evidence. No faith whatsoever.”
“He worries.”
“About the cancer?” Dr. Kaska bit her lip. “I can’t tell you it won’t come back, Sara. And neither can your oncologist at Emory. But we were lucky—you were lucky. We caught it early, and you’ve had no recurrences for five years, nearly six.”
“I know. I tell that to Joe all the time.”
“You’ve got something left to do on this earth, that’s for sure. Ovarian cancer is a sneaky, sneaky cancer. And, based on what I see from your oncologist, you beat it. Now look at you. You and Joe are going to have this beautiful bambino…and a trip to China to boot. How long do you have to stay again? I forget.”
“A week and a half to two weeks, something like that. We’ll be in her province—the province where her orphanage is—for most of it, then in Guangzhou for the last bit.”
“Guangzhou? That’s Canton, right?” At my nod, Dr. Kaska looked off dreamily. She came back to the present. “Enough gossiping. I’ll get your test results back to you double-quick so Mr. Worrywart won’t have a heart attack. Last year, I thought he was going to come back in the exam room with you.”
“I think he feels like if he ever gives up his vigil, it will come back. He thinks he can single-handedly scare it away,” I said.
“He must have done something right. Now you and Joe call me the minute, the absolute minute you get the call. I’m just so tickled for you. You’ve been through a lot, but you’re coming through just fine.”
I got up from my chair, relieved to have the appointment over. I had done it. All by myself, nobody holding my hand. I had done it.
“Sara?” Dr. Kaska’s concern stopped me. “Is—is something bothering you? You don’t seem like your usual chipper self.”
I hesitated. For a moment, I just stood there, not sure what to say. I couldn’t find the words to explain how recalcitrant Joe was being, how he grumbled about even assembling Meredith’s crib until “we know for sure.”
Maybe I didn’t want to admit it to myself.
But his superstition all these months—from the start of the adoption, really—had tainted even my hardy optimism.
How could I tell Dr. Kaska that sometimes, especially late at night as I lay sleepless next to Joe, I worried that maybe Joe hoped things wouldn’t work out.
That maybe he hoped we wouldn’t get a baby at all.
CHAPTER TWO
IN THE PARKING LOT, my mood lightened under the bright April sunshine. I shook off my doubts and headed for the car. If I hurried, I could get back in time to make my half day at work, though I could probably forget my lunchtime walking session.
Walking was Habit Number Two I’d planned on implementing during The Wait for Meredith. Cursing—or actually, not cursing—had been at the top of my list. I’d given myself four months on that one. It still hadn’t taken.
My cell phone chirped, conjuring up Habit Number Six, the final step in my transformation to a mom: Actually getting along with my own mother.
“Sara? Is that you?”
No mistaking the querulous voice greeting me. “Ma, it’s me.”
My mother sniffed audibly. “Well, finally. I’ve been trying to get you for ages.”
A beep interrupted our conversation, letting me know that I’d missed at least one call—and knowing Ma, probably more. “I’m heading for work, Ma. I’ve just left the doctor’s office.”
“You have time to take a morning off, but not any time to look in on me.” The petulance of a four-year-old ruled her words.
I clenched my teeth until I remembered to relax my jaw. Breathe. It’s just your mother. You can do this. Breathe. “I checked on you yesterday afternoon, remember? When I got off work?”
“Right. For twenty minutes, and I should be grateful for that.”
Knowing this song had about thirty verses to go, I decided to cut today’s performance short. “What do you need, Ma?”
“Need? Can’t I call you just to talk?”
I didn’t bother arguing. In response to my waiting silence, she grunted. “I do need something. I need you to take me grocery shopping. Oh, and something for a headache. I think I’m getting another migraine.”
The stifled groan inside me rattled my innards in a frantic bid to escape. Yesterday when I’d stopped by, my mother had been her usual belligerent self, with the exception of being mostly sober, and there’d been no mention of a bare cupboard. Today’s headache was probably part of her customary morning hangover.
My jaw was tight again. I sucked in a lungful of air in an attempt to relax and not lose my patience with her. “What are you out of? Can’t you pick it up in Campbell?”
“You know I don’t, er, have a license.” She pointed out the fact delicately, leaving out the reason: She’d kept her license after her first DUI, but had a snowball’s chance of getting it back after the second one. I’d sold her car and banked the money, doling it out monthly to supplement her Social Security. Then she added, “You have sick days. You could get off. You’re off already because you went to the doctor this morning.”
“What. Did. I. Tell. You. About. That.” She’d shot my patience to hell, but at least it hadn’t been in record time.
“That you were saving your sick days for the baby.” She dragged the words out, clearly unhappy with the boundaries I’d set. Then, in a rushed, all-in-one breath, “But I need you, too, Sara, and that damn baby’s not even here yet. They’re probably taking your money and telling you that you’ll get a baby. Just like they did with all those infertility treatments.”
The reins on my temper broke, letting it run away like a wild horse. “Goodbye, Ma. I’m hanging up now before I say something I regret. And I am not answering this phone if you call back, not until I cool off.”
But as I was about to click the phone off, Ma played her trump card. “Well…I guess I could pick it up at the IGA. I have a little cash on me. And the store is just across the street.”
I held on, wondering when the other shoe would drop. And it would—with the pain of a stiletto to the instep.
Sure enough, she interrupted my, “Okay,” to interject, “Yep, I’m kinda thirsty anyway. I might pick up a six-pack while I’m there.”
I sank my teeth into my cheek to hold back the slew of cuss words I wanted to shower her with. “Okay, fine, Ma. You win. What is it you need? I’ll pick it up.”
It was only when I was slinging a gallon of milk in the grocery cart ten minutes later that I remembered I hadn’t called Joe the way I’d promised. A glance at my watch told me he was probably taking his lunch break, but I couldn’t get my cell phone to work in the store.
What the heck. I’d just stop by his job site and skip any pretense of lunch.
Joe’s current job was off Highway 80, so I hustled down Bellevue Avenue. I drove through downtown Dublin with an eye out for red lights and cops, slaloming the curve around the courthouse and cursing the idiot driver in front of me who couldn’t get the hang of using a turn signal.
The drive from Joe’s job site would take twenty minutes once I hit the open road to Campbell, where I worked as the absenteeism prevention coordinator for Bryce County schools. Make it in time to get in my half a day? Maybe, if the old guy in the rusty El Camino in front of me would make a hole and make it wide.
JOE CLAMBERED DOWN from the roof when he saw me pull up. I admired my husband’s denim-clad backside as he came down the ladder. Nearly thirty-seven years old, and he was in better shape than he’d been in high school. Manual labor had kept him hard and muscled.
I couldn’t say the same for me. At thirty-six, I had a stubborn ten—okay, make it an even dozen—extra pounds that wouldn’t come off for love or money. I had to admit it was better than when I was on the fertility treadmill. Then I’d blimped up like Mr. Big Boy.
The fear in his face abated when I sketched a wave and called, “Forgot to call. Sorry.”
“I thought—” He broke off as he neared me.
“Everything’s fine. I just thought I’d stop by and see how things are going here.”
He shrugged. “Going pretty good. We’ll get the framing done today. You going back to work?”
“On my way. Thanks for the flowers.”
A pleased expression filled his eyes. “Yeah. The azaleas were blooming this morning, did you notice? Saw it when I put Cocoa out. Damn dog was on the couch.”
“Hey, at least she wasn’t in our bed,” I pointed out.
He growled in the back of his throat. “How on earth do you think you’re going to discipline a kid if you can’t discipline a dog?”
