Girls in Trouble: A Novel Read online

  The phone rang. “George!” she called, and the phone rang again, and she lifted Anne up and went into the other room, plucking up the receiver.

  “Eva, it’s Sara.” Sara called every day, and usually Eva was happy to talk. All she had to do was look at Sara, and she’d want to hug the girl and take care of her. But now, the baby was squirming, and she could hear a guest calling for her. “The house is filled with company,” Eva said. She thought suddenly of the letter she had first written Sara. “There’s nothing we like better than to be surrounded by people!” Ha, she thought.

  “Company? What company?” Sara said.

  “Just friends. Relatives. You know.” Anne squirmed harder. “Oh, I’ve got to go—”

  “Wait—” said Sara.

  “I’ll talk to you later,” Eva promised, “I want to talk to you—” and then Anne suddenly peed down the side of Eva’s dress and Eva had to hang up.

  She changed Anne first, going back into her room, pulling out a clean diaper. She held both of Anne’s legs up and gently hoisted her up, tugging the diaper under Anne’s bottom, shutting it with Velcro. Anne blew a spit bubble and batted her hands.

  “Now me,” Eva said, and went to change her dress, laying the baby in the center of her bed where she could keep an eye on her.

  When the baby had first been placed into her arms, Eva had wanted her so much, she was afraid if she moved too quickly, the babv might disappear. She was used to the waiting, the hungriness of her want, but the having was something different, something almost equally terrifying, because now she knew just what she might lose.

  All that first night they had brought Anne home, she and George hadn’t been able to sleep. George had hooked up a monitor so they could hear any sound from the nursery, and every time there was even a hiccup, they both sat up in bed. “She’s fine,” George said. He sank back down, throwing one arm about Eva, but Eva couldn’t help tensing, as if something were about to happen that would be out of their control, and finally, she swung her legs out of the bed and went into the nursery. Anne was sleeping so still that Eva put her hand by Anne’s mouth, just to feel a sip of warm breath against her palm.

  She knew she was just a tad anxious. Maybe because she was older and hadn’t been around babies much. Maybe because getting this baby seemed like such a miracle, a last chance, that she felt she had to be extra vigilant. Before Anne had even been born, she and George had bought a library of books on baby care. They had taken a class at the Y, bathing a plastic doll, changing its diapers. They had read so many books on adoption, Eva could recite them. She knew all the pros and cons, how it was important to remember that mothering was what you did, not who you were.

  Eva slid out of her pee-stained dress and slipped on another one. Anne made a sound and fussed. “What is it now?” Eva said, bending to pick her up again, patting her back.

  She brought the baby back into the living room, just as George snapped a picture, making her and the baby both blink. Eva saw rings of light. Already on the mantel were framed photographs of Eva holding Anne, there was George lifting Anne up, a goofy smile spread across his face. And there was George, Eva, and Sara, who was so pregnant she was holding on to them for support. Nora picked up the photo and studied it.

  “That girl. She’s not coming here today, is she?” Nora’s voice sounded accusatory.

  “She’ll be over later this week.”

  “God.”

  “God what?” Eva said. “Sara’s a darling.”

  “I’m sure she is. It’s just the things I read in the papers. It’s a wonder anyone adopts at all. The courts just always seem to favor the biological parents.”

  “Now wait a minute,” interrupted Christine. “Lane Prager has two adorable adopted kids! And the birth mother is just great. Newspapers love those horror stories.”

  “You know the father?”

  “He’s out of the picture,” Eva said. “All they have to do is serve him with papers.”

  “I’d be nervous,” Nora said. “The stories I hear—”

  “Nora,” Christine warned.

  “It will all work out,” Eva said firmly.

  Eva could smile now, but for a long time she hadn’t been so sure adoption would work out for them. Eva had always yearned for a child, but she had married late, when she was forty, and to her surprise, George, her sweet, tender, loving George, absolutely did not care if he had kids. Eva was the one smiling at babies in restaurants, while George reached for the menu. Eva had to stand close to little ones so she could practically inhale them, while George smiled and cracked silly knock-knock jokes at a distance, and after a few minutes of contact, he had had enough. And while George came to her classroom, dressed up as Mr. Tooth, talking to the kids about brushing, while he laughed and let them climb on his lap, it was Eva his eyes were glued on. He had thought he was so lucky to have found her, that for him, trying for a child too was just greedy. “You’re my everything,” he told Eva when she first expressed her wish for a child. And too, what about their age? “Do we have the energy?” George had asked her. “When our kid is in college, we’ll be doddering old fools. When our grandkid is in diapers, we will be, too.”

  Eva refused to listen. She pointed out all the people who had kids later in life. Men in their sixties. Women in their late forties! All you had to do was go to the park and see the older mothers and dads to know how common it was. When she started to cry, George sat beside her and held her hand. “All right,” George said slowly. “Why not?”

  Her yearnings though were the only thing that grew inside of her. She bought ovulation kits, tried IVF and embryo transplants, and still, nothing happened, and each time, she grew more and more heartsick. “Well, we tried,” George said, but Eva shook her head. “I think we should adopt,” she told him.

  She knew he was ambivalent. He came with her to the adoption lawyer, but the first few meetings, he didn’t ask any questions, even though she touched his sleeve expectantly. “What do you think, George?” she blurted and he patted her knee. “Do adoptive parents ever change their minds about adopting?” he asked, and she started.

  “No, no, that’s an excellent question,” the lawyer told them. “Of course they do. A child can be born with problems you didn’t foresee. Finances can change.”

  “You wouldn’t really change your mind, would you, after we brought a baby home?” Eva asked George in the car.

  “I was just asking a question,” he said. “Nothing’s even happened yet.” He leaned across the seat and kissed her. “Come on,” he said. “I didn’t mean to get you upset.”

  It was Eva’s idea to go with open adoption. It seemed like the best for the child, the best for everyone. She hadn’t been teaching for so many years not to know how important identity issues were with kids. “Sure, that makes sense,” George agreed.

  They made up their adoption scrapbook together, pasting in colored photographs of the two of them holding hands in the country, and then in the city and at the beach. Photos of their home and the bright, sunny room that would be the baby’s. They wrote the letter, and got the 800 number, and placed their ad in twenty different little papers: LOVING COUPLE WANTS TO ADORE YOUR BABY, CALL 1—800—555—7799. But to her surprise, no one called, not even a wrong number. “Why aren’t they picking us?” Eva asked George, astonished. “What’s wrong with us? I’d pick us!”

  Finally, a week or so later, to Eva’s great relief, the calls began. The birth mothers didn’t want to speak to George at all (“Well, they’ve all had bad experiences with men,” the agency told them) and the few times Eva tried to get George on the phone, sure his warmth and wit would melt any unease, the birth mothers hung up. But worse, the birth mothers who called didn’t seem to like Eva.

  “You go to church?” one birth mother had asked her.

  “We’re Jewish.”

  “Would you convert?” And when Eva waffled, the woman sighed. “Forget it.”

  “You’re a teacher?” one birth mother asked,
disapprovingly. “So you won’t be at home for the baby?”

  Every plus about them Eva thought of, a birth mother saw as a minus. When she said she loved movies, one girl complained, “Kids need sunshine.” When she said they lived in a semi-urban area, a birth mother protested, “Then there’s no place for a kid to play.” Every time Eva got off the phone, she felt overwhelmed. And none of the birth mothers ever called back. “Maybe we aren’t doing the right thing,” George suggested, “maybe we should fudge a little,” but Eva was adamant. “No fudging,” she said.

  Eva began to despair of ever finding the right one. She began to feel like Miss Haversham, lost in her ragged white wedding gown, waiting and waiting for something that everyone else knew was never going to happen. But what worried her more was George, who didn’t seem distressed at all. “What happens happens,” he told her. “Either way I’ll be happy.”

  She couldn’t tell him how that seemed the worst answer of all to her.

  All the waiting made Eva feel as if she had lived her whole life wrong, that her possibilities were sifting out of an hourglass. George kissed her shoulder. “So would it be the worst thing in the world if we didn’t have a child?” George asked her, and all he had to do was look at her to know her feelings.

  And then Sara had called.

  Eva had loved their talks, had loved it that Sara talked with George, that George seemed to like Sara, too. “She’s smart, that one,” George said approvingly. And she had loved Sara on sight, such a dreamy-eyed girl, healthy, from a good home, with an IQ off the charts. Gorgeous red hair. A mouth that had a darling little slant to it. Meeting Sara’s parents was another story. They sat so close to Sara on the couch, they looked like bookends. And as soon as Eva had mentioned a really open adoption, Jack had practically spilled his coffee. “Open is one thing, no doors is another,” Jack said. Sara didn’t speak much and finally, impulsively, Eva jumped up. “Come on, Sara,” she said. “Let me give you a tour. George can talk to your parents.” She held out her hand and Sara took it, and it was then Eva saw the bitten nails painted red and it touched her so much she wanted to reach over and take both Sara’s hands in her own and warm them.

  In the den, Sara picked up Eva’s copy of Wuthering Heights. “I love the Brontes.”

  “Me, too,” said Eva. She folded Sara’s hands over the Bronte. “Borrow it.”

  And then Sara began coming over, more and more, and each time she did, she borrowed another book, returning it in such pristine shape that if she didn’t talk about them so excitedly with Eva, Eva wouldn’t even think she had read them. “I can lend you books, too, if you like,” Sara offered.

  “Oh, I’d love it,” Eva said, and after that Sara began bringing books over to her, memoirs and novels and once a book about the color red that was so fascinating Eva sat up all night reading, her delight like sunlight splashed in the room. “I love this book,” she told George, but what she really meant was she loved Sara.

  Make friends, the adoption agency had urged them, get the birth mother to like you, and Eva had, and it had been ridiculously easy. And ridiculously fun to have another person to do things with. Another person she truly liked. “Our family’s getting bigger,” she told George, exultant.

  Of course, there were times she worried. One night, when she and George were taking a walk in the neighborhood, using flashlights to show their way, Eva blurted, “Do you think we’re the only people she’s considermg?

  “I don’t know. I guess we could ask,” George said.

  “I’m afraid to hear the answer. What if she is? What if we’re second choice? What if she’s not going to choose us at all?” A door slammed shut and Eva shone her light at it.

  “Well, we’re still taking calls, right?”

  “What calls? We haven’t had a new one in weeks.” Eva glanced at the neighborhood. Her eyes were already adjusted to the dark and she shut her flashlight off. “I want this so much it’s making me crazy. Doesn’t it make you crazy, too?”

  George shrugged. “She’s been pushed into things enough. Let’s just let her be.”

  But Eva couldn’t let anything be. The next day, she went into town and bought a beautiful blue box. In it, she put all the initial flurry of exchanges. The letters and photos. And she shared the box with Sara. “You saved all my letters?” Sara asked.

  “Every one,” Eva said, sifting through the box. She showed Sara the first letter Sara had sent them, the copy she had made of her and George’s response. There was Eva’s wedding picture, and then another picture of Sara and Eva and George in the backyard. Eva glanced at Sara, who was frowning. “Is something wrong?” Eva asked.

  Sara shook her head. “Why are you saving everything?”

  “Maybe it will be a scrapbook for the baby,” Eva said.

  “Maybe,” Sara said, and Eva winced because maybe could also mean no.

  Eva didn’t tell Sara that sometimes, when she felt most unsure, when she worried that every time the phone rang it might be Sara telling them she had chosen someone else, Eva would get down that blue box. She’d reread all of Sara’s letters, she’d study the photographs, as if each one might be a talisman keeping their covenant.

  One day, when Eva and Sara were just sitting out back on the chaise lounges, sipping iced tea, Sara talked about what it would be like to recuperate from giving birth, how it would feel to go back to school in the fall, and how anxious that made her. She talked about Danny, too, how much she had loved him, and how he had hurt her. Eva had to admit it was hard to listen to that because the girl was in such pain, it was hard to make the appropriate supportive noises about Danny getting back in touch when what she most hoped was that he’d disappear forever. But then, as Sara cried, all she could think about was how much this young girl was hurting, how awful a thing it must be to be sixteen and pregnant and abandoned to boot. She got up from her chair and leaned over and wrapped both arms about Sara and rocked her. Sara looked up at Eva, blinking. “My parents think I’m a fool for loving someone like that. They think I made the biggest mistake of my life,” Sara said.

  “It’s never a mistake to love,” Eva said.

  “The baby’s a mistake.”

  “Oh, my God, absolutely not! How could you even think such a thing,” said Eva, rubbing Sara’s back. “This baby’s a miracle.” Impulsively, Eva kissed Sara’s hair. It smelled of maple and vanilla. “And you are, too. You’re the miracle in our life.”

  “I am? Really, you think that?” Sara sat up, rubbing at her eyes, snuffling, so that Eva dug in her pocket for a clean tissue and handed it to her.

  “Every day I think that. I love having you here. I hope you love being here, too.”

  Blowing her nose noisily, Sara looked off into the distance. “I do,” she said. “I really do.” She grew suddenly calm again. “I’ve decided something,” Sara said.

  “What is it, honey?” said Eva alarmed, and Sara reached for her purse. For a moment, Eva wasn’t sure what she was doing and then Sara dug in her wallet and brought out a crumpled photo and handed it to Eva. It was Sara, in an Indian-print summer dress, standing next to a boy with brown hair, the two of them laughing.

  “It this Danny?” Eva asked and Sara nodded. Eva tried to study the boy’s eyes, to see what he might be capable of, but no matter where she placed the picture, he wasn’t looking at her, but always at Sara, like one of those pictures with the eyes cut out that they always had in horror films. Eva handed the photo back and Sara waved her hand.

  “You keep it,” Sara said. “For the blue box.”

  “The box?”

  “So the baby will know who its father was.”

  “Sara?” Eva said. The air about her seemed to grow lighter.

  “I think you should be my baby’s parents,” Sara said, and wept harder.

  And that had been that. Sara began coming over every day. She helped Eva cook dinner, she played checkers with George. They all talked on the phone every night, they took so many pictures that the blue
box began to bulge with them, and although Eva meant to get a scrapbook, she waited, superstitious, she kept filling up the blue box with more and more photos and letters. “After the baby is born, I’ll figure it out,” she told George.

  Although Eva was dying to come, Abby wouldn’t allow Eva to go with them to the doctor’s appointments. Sara gave Eva copies of all her sonograms, pictures Eva pasted into an album and couldn’t help peeking at. Eva learned to read Sara like a barometer, tracking her progress by the glow in her cheeks, the swell and ripple of her belly, even by the new way she was walking. “Tell me what it feels like,” Eva kept asking her.

  One day, Eva was lying on the couch, foot to foot with Sara. George was making dinner that night and Eva could hear him chopping vegetables and meat for stew, the thwack of the cleaver against the cutting board. “Ugh, 1 feel so bloated,” Sara complained, and Eva rested her hand on her own flat belly. Absently, she stroked it.

  “My parents won’t touch my belly,” Sara said.

  “Can I?” Eva asked, and when Sara nodded, Eva put one hand over Sara’s belly. She felt a sudden snap under her fingers, making her draw back her hand in amazement. “Baby kicked,” Sara said. She took Eva’s hand and put it back on her belly. “You can listen if you want. The baby makes noises.”

  Tentatively, Eva rested her head along Sara’s belly. There it was, that whooshing sound, and she bolted upright. “George!” she called. “George! Come now! Quick!”

  “What’s wrong?” George rushed in.

  Eva grabbed for his hand. “Listen,” she urged.

  Gingerly, he crouched down. He rested his head. “Oh, my God,” he said, delighted.